TravelStream™ news feed for member cjs150 on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/cjs150 en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Sat, 21 Feb 2009 13:39:47 -0500 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/cjs150/southpacific1/1126496400/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/cjs150/southpacific1/1126496400/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/cjs150/southpacific1/1126496400/tpod.html Sat, 21 Feb 2009 13:39:47 -0500 Three months in paradise

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Chicago, Illinois, United States

Before breaking off for a new adventure with random strangers, I revisit old adventures with good friends that are moving on. Boarding the plane for Florida I recall making the same steps almost a year to the day before. It is different now. I am alone, and there is no laughing. The airport bar isn't open this time, and I have the overwhelming sense that the better times have slipped away, neither unnoticed or unappreciated, simply evaporated.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/cjs150/igimow/1162964460/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/cjs150/igimow/1162964460/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/cjs150/igimow/1162964460/tpod.html Mon, 11 Dec 2006 06:51:42 -0500 For those who practice not-doing, everything will fall into place. -Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching ch.3)

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Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Knowing when to move on has never been a talent of mine. I'm not even sure if it falls in the "talent" category, but either way, I'm not good at it. Maybe it's just that I don't really know why I'm anywhere in the first place, so I can't really know why I shouldn't be where I am, or something like that. So what, if anything, kept me in Kuala Lumpur, a city my brother refers to as, "a pathetic waste of time" for three weeks? Let me dodge that for a minute.I feel safe in assuming that most of you reading this can read. As members of the reading population of this planet, you may or may not have read something other than my travelogue, and being the brilliant, creative, thoughtful, attractive, and sexy people that you are, some of those alternative, albeit inferior readings probably came from a place familiarly known as a "Book Store". You know the place: Jazz on half volume, designer label lattes for sale in the back, hard wood floors, not enough benches, a table of best sellers near the door promoting Leonardo DaVinci as god and 1001 Protracted Excuses for Living by Dr. Whothefuckcares, art books in the corner. It's the place where anybody can go and feel like a well rounded scholar. One thinks, "Maybe I'm not going to pick up that 'dummies' guide to 4D non-euclidian non-linear geometry, or Plato's unabridged 'symposium' with the forty page introduction by a guy who wears a toga to bed, but damnit, I could if I felt like it." Just browsing the titles makes us feel smarter. "Why Don't Chickens Bark?","The Meaning of Life is Easy","How God Blew It","Women Are Evil","Men Are Evil","Why Women Need Men","Why Women Need Therapy","So You're A Therapist series on Treating women","Nobody Needs Anybody","Everybody Needs Somebody","What Your Pet Can Teach You About Relationships","How to Make Cheese from Cackers","100 Jokes That'll Get You Fired","Advanced Cooling Thermodynamics of Composite Ceramics vol:2","War and Peace","Peace and War","The Old Man and The Sea","This Book Should Be Burned","Read the Book to the Left of This One","The Book to The Right of This One Should Not be Trusted","Gun's & Ammo","Yoga Weekly","The Bible","Tylenol For the Soul"...Maybe Smarter isn't the word. In any case, when it gets to be too much, you can always curl up on the floor an take a nap.They don't let you nap in the parks of KL. More specifically, the roaming guards don't let you nap in the parks of KL. If you so much as lean back beyond a 45 degree angle for a little to long, they'll taser you and drag your body off to the torture booths they have set up next to starbucks. I barely made it out alive. The wafting aroma of fresh ground columbian roast kept me going. Seriously though, they annoy the hell out of you if you try and take a nap in the sunny grass. Nothing pisses me off more than a tease. Why the hell would you bother landscaping beautiful verdant expances of park in a downtown area and then ban people from laying on it. My protests were a bit beyond the musing capacity of my guard, and he seemed determined to stand in my sunlight until I complied with "authorized" park behaviour, so I moved on, but my opinions went not without expression. I was tempted to push the limits of their authority in something of a lay down rebellion, but wisely enough, My Foreign Soil social Miscreance stops at saying "Bullshit" alot, and complaining in a travelog.I found more subversive ways of expressing my discontent, like walking around the mall using a stick as a cane and alternating my healthy leg every three minutes. Actually, that's the only subversive thing I came up with, and I have to say, I don't think many people were all that comfortable with it, so I'm calling it a success. Things got aukward when I leaned on it too hard and it snapped. I was sitting down to dinner at the time, so I didn't have to fake an immaculate recovery, but I think I did a decent job of wadling away after I paid the bill and explained to the perplexed but sympathetic waitress that it wasn't anything too serious, just a strained psychosomatic ligament. When I recalled the experience for a pair of otherwise bemused Scottish Lasses, they got this weird look on their faces, shook like off-balance washing machines on spin cycle, and Imploded. Actually, they just got creeped out and left, but hey, the contextual visual juxtaposition of perceived strength and inherent weakness expressed as performance art in a public mecca to contrived consumerism doesn't float everybody's boat, so good riddens.The books made me do it, all 2.5 Kg of them. I'm helpless in a book store, what can I say.I ended up giving the whole lot to a guy named Dennis. Dennis Manages the only decent french Bistro/bar in town, grew up in Chicago, went to Northwestern, has a father who runs a commune in Amsterdam, drinks scotch on the rocks, and is just barely holding off a marriage to the stunning but fiesty ex-gymnast Russian titled Serina. I threw in a cuban cigar to sweeten the deal. Dennis smokes.I smoke, occasionally. For starters, if you've never smoked a cuban cigar before, buy a small one to start off with, because it fucks with your head. That's not advice everyone should follow, because some of you could use a decent head fuck, and besides, I don't really know that much about cigars, but I have smoked a cuban, and my head did stop moving for a bit, so I know what I don't know, and everyday that feels like more than less, so for anyone who still reads these things... whatever.The Indians got it right. Jon and I take turns pulling lungfulls of apple mist through the Hooka as part of a contest to see who can create the most sultry smoke vapours. Jon is winning, by a lot. I just don't have the right lips. We could be some of the last to turn to such enlightenments. Virtual smoke is taking over. Step into an internet cafe when KL schools get out and you'll see what I mean. It's like "the matrix" without the hovercraft and latex. Asian kids are drug addicts when it comes to gaming. If you find yourself between an asian gradeschooler and Warcraft, don't panic, fall to the ground, take up a bhudda position, and scream "Force field times infinity!" as loud as you can. Whatever you do, don't look them in the narrow bloodshot eyes. I saw a guy make that mistake and the only thing that saved him from being torn to pieces was his shiny necklace. Asian kids love shiny things and they have a short attention span. They're like cats, but less sanitary.Cats like chicken. Asians like chicken. Everybody likes chicken. Maybe we're all cats. It would explain a lot. I suppose this should all be leading to something of a conclusion. Knowing when to move on has never been a talent of mine, and now that I think about it, neither has how.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/cjs150/igimow/1164644280/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/cjs150/igimow/1164644280/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/cjs150/igimow/1164644280/tpod.html Mon, 11 Dec 2006 04:52:02 -0500 For those who practice not-doing, everything will fall into place. -Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching ch.3)

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Jakarta, Indonesia

Indonesia is home to the last remaining fully functional wind powered fleet of trade vessels in the world. When I say fully functional, I mean fully functional by Indonesian standards. When I asked my guide why the docks were so quiet he said they were on holiday. When I asked if they'd be working again any time soon he said, yes, very soon when the holiday is over. The holiday lasts for a month. They use sailboats to move lumber and concrete between Jakarta and sumatra. If you want to meet a group of people NOT against clear cutting of the rainforest, they're it. If you sink a boat in the harbor, don't count on having it moved any time soon. They'll just use it as a bench.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/cjs150/igimow/1158910140/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/cjs150/igimow/1158910140/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/cjs150/igimow/1158910140/tpod.html Thu, 05 Oct 2006 05:38:09 -0400 For those who practice not-doing, everything will fall into place. -Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching ch.3)

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Krabi, Thailand

Rocks.They don't grow on trees. The wisest and simplest human being ever to have lived once, after a long day at the quarry, looked into his bleeding hands and said, "son, you can break, crush, scatter, and gouge rock, but one thing you can never do is insult it." His son, an arrogant prick, climbed to the top of the cliff next to which they were both standing and hautily shouted, "perhaps, father, it doesn't speak your language." after which he lost his grip and fell. The wise and dissapointed man slowly shook his head, Calmly knelt to the side of his moaning injured son and said, "Thanks for translating."Krabi is full of rocks; Tall sharp looming rocks. They hang over the beach like open mouths choking on a frothy incoming tide. They form claws, teeth, belly buttons, and other assorted body cavities/parts that shall remain nameless. For all intensive purposes, there isn't a human body part that isn't represented by the abstract forms the Krabi rocks can take. To a certain extent, climbing is really just getting to third base with a mountain. In this regard, I've had better performances. Sweat pouring from my sun smeared limbs coats the holds as I balance awkwardly before the gap. The Crux is before me. Vibrating muscles spit in my face, defying my every command. It shouldn't be this way. Fruit and Muesli breakfast from the rasta man, and a warm up on the tight rope should be kicking in right about now. What happened to the pullups I used to do so well and often? Breathing heavy I grope the face for a sign, a hint as to where to go and what to do. I'm trying too hard for words. Desperation builds with each rejection and as my perspiration saturates the stone the rock is drying up. My failing fingers, far short of the dreamed for goal, simmer in compressed abrasive pain. It's not happening. Skin shears off my palms as I flaggedly plummet to the end of my rope. I lasted two minutes. How embarassing.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/cjs150/igimow/1158248760/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/cjs150/igimow/1158248760/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/cjs150/igimow/1158248760/tpod.html Fri, 29 Sep 2006 04:19:25 -0400 For those who practice not-doing, everything will fall into place. -Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching ch.3)

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Koh Phangan, Thailand

Game 2:Stare out the closest window you can find.Imagine that on the other side of that window, is the place you wish most to be in life.Now think of all the reasons you wish to be there, and not where you are. (assuming the window you've chosen is not, in fact, a mirror. If it is a mirror and you have chosen it intentionally, you are jumping the gun on what you are probably assuming to be a simple metaphor about visualizing dreams and carpe diem and all that. I'm not going there. Never the less, put on some more eye liner, you look sullen. That means you grandpa.)Take the monitor that you are staring at this very minute and throw it through the window, don't worry, I'll pay for it.Those of you still reading and not getting fired or yelled at by your significant others for brash stupidity, are clearly understanding my point.We take ourselves way too seriously.Changing Computers.Koh Phangan puts the beach in parbeachty. I'd call it the poor man's Ibizia, but I've never been to Ibiza, so I can't really say. There's a beach and beach things, such as volleyball, topless women, topless women, and a few other things like the ocean, bars, sand, etc. In all actuality, I've evolved to see breasts a sublime expression of molded symmetry and softness delicately cradled over the heart and under the mind of women. In all actuality, there weren't that many topless women running around. In fact, there were so few, I decided to make my own. Go figure my sand girl would bring around the real ones, but alas, such is the nature of breasts. They attract us all.When the full moon party hits its stride, the entire length of the beach is swarmed with painted bodys, consumed by the spirit of the dance, among other things. I would have been right there with them, if it weren't for my frightfully escapist inclination to choose art over frivolity. By 3:00 A.m., having spent the better part of 5 hours body painting the interned and helpless victims of my focused creative fury, I subsided to the caos and ambled around a crowd too far gone to recognize a friendly face. With no intention of catching up, I sat out the revelry in anticipation of the ever revealing sunrise, pondering the mysteries of my personality and hoping to get laid. Can't say I accomplished much of either, but the dawn of a new day was delivered, as promised, on the horizon before me. Sauntering back to my cabin for a much needed day's sleep, I warmed to the idea that in a place and time such as this, while the monitor implodes and the broken fragments of glass descend, a reflection is the most I'll ever find on the other side.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/cjs150/igimow/1158047520/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/cjs150/igimow/1158047520/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/cjs150/igimow/1158047520/tpod.html Fri, 29 Sep 2006 04:14:15 -0400 For those who practice not-doing, everything will fall into place. -Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching ch.3)

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Koh Taoh, Thailand

Scuba wrestling is a sport. It happens underwater. It's more fun that way. The objective is to drown one's competitor before one's air runs out. Matches are held in freezing cold water so that the loser(s) can be brought back to life without brain damage, sometimes. As the season progresses, the water becomes warmer and warmer so that more and more brain damage befalls the loser. Better ratings that way. The winnings are donated to the Jack Kustow Center for Brain Damage Resulting from Scuba Wrestling Research and Development. Jack Kustow invented scuba wrestling. Incidentally, Jack Kustow was also the first person to lose in scuba wrestling. In the early days, freezing cold water hadn't been invented to prevent brain damage. Jack Kustow didn't really invent scuba wrestling, he just thinks he did. The actual inventor is a 96 year old working girl from Lithuania, but she and everyone else agrees that it's better for Jack if he thinks he invented scuba wrestling. In reality, the Jack Kustow Center for Brain Damage Resulting from Scuba Wrestling Research and Development is just one of 127 Centers for Brain Damage Resulting from Scuba Wrestling Research and Development. They all start with a different name. Most of the research has to do with finding lost M&M's and getting hamsters to hold their breath. They're making great progress.Sometimes there are sharks at the big scuba matches, but sharks aren't really into scuba wrestling because they think it's fake. Sharks are condescending elitists who think that just because they're evolutionary billionaires they're better than everything else. Dolphins are nicer than sharks but they don't care much for scuba wrestling either. Dolphins consider themselves to be too sophisticated for such trivial competitions and generally prefer scuba painting and scuba reading to scuba sports. Occasionally a dolphin will stop in passing to observe a match or two, but for the most part, a dolphin wouldn't be caught dead at a scuba event. If you ask a dolphin why they'll say, "Oh, it's just that growing up we were more of a scuba basketball family." and then they'll change the subject. Tuna love it, but then again, tuna love all scuba sports. Many of them watch for the commercials and the scuba cheerleaders. It's really just a distraction from their dull tuna lives, but I guess in way that's what everyone's after, who can blame them. Humans don't really watch scuba wrestling as much as they float around and ponder how strange everything is. Many fish attend scuba events just to make fun of the humans. Fish can be mean sometimes. "It's a good thing they're so damn tasty!" Jack Kustow has been known to say, but he could be talking about M&M's. It's the only thing he's said since the day he invented his fingers. He has an IQ of 19843woofsi43pskl;r394. He makes the tests. He's the best damn scuba wrestler who ever lived. Everybody says so and they're never wrong. How could they be? They all have IQs of 19843woofsi43pskl;r394.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/cjs150/igimow/1156621440/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/cjs150/igimow/1156621440/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/cjs150/igimow/1156621440/tpod.html Sun, 27 Aug 2006 18:40:57 -0400 For those who practice not-doing, everything will fall into place. -Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching ch.3)

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Bangkok, Thailand

Because I have accumulated an impossibly frustrating lag in my journal entries, I've decided to break with chronology and just catch you up with what's happening this very day(don't worry, I'll fill in the links eventually). Jon and I are in a well lit and heavily air conditioned internet cafe at the base of our hotel on Soi Rambuttri, a road in Bangkok, Thailand. Jon is talking to my parents on the phone and I am typing in what could be called a mostly sober state. It is 2:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning and we're up early, you know, getting a jump on church. Bangkok comes across differently the second time around. The food tastes better, things don't seem quite as seedy, and the overwhelming free-for-all leaves the mind a little less detached than before. When you stop to smell the roses, or in this case, a padtai, engine exaust, jungle curry, dog shit, perfume, and herbal tea combination similar to a rose, you find the flavor quite intriguing. -Skip Forward 28 hours- (I'm tired and time is flexible)Now is the new now and in this now I am newly old being 24 on this day the 28th of August, 2006. For all of you who knew about and took part in the coordinated and synchronized midnight shot heard round the world, I admire and resemble you. For all who are just tuning in. well, I didn't know you'd be interested, but you're welcome to join in next year. Same time, different place. If you're looking for the best club in Bangkok, go to Bed Supper Club. If you're looking for the best Gay night in the best club in Bangkok, go to Bed Supper Club on a Sunday night. If you're not Gay and you find yourself in the best club in Bangkok on Sunday night, relax, they'll like you anyway, besides, it's your birthday. The hardest part will be explaining what it means when you say your brother is your brother. Why bother? Its half off cover, the bouncers think you're cute and overlook the flip-flops, you're confident in your sexuality, the females in the crowd are much friendlier, music is music, people are people, and what the hell, a party is a party. Besides, if there was ever a place and a time that blurred the lines between men, women, and sexuality, this would be it. Bangkok: The greyest black and white city on the planet.Hope the pictures ingnite your imagination, and fire your loins. (maybe not the last part, but if so, don't tell me about it. That means you Grandpa.)
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/cjs150/igimow/1154968500/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/cjs150/igimow/1154968500/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/cjs150/igimow/1154968500/tpod.html Mon, 21 Aug 2006 10:44:07 -0400 For those who practice not-doing, everything will fall into place. -Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching ch.3)

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Beijing, China

After a brief layover in Hanoi, Beijing.CHINAIt's just one of those words you use to talk about things far away, and things close by that are made far away. You hear rumors circulating about their up and coming position as an economic power. They're hosting the Olympics in 2008. It's supposedly going to be they're coming out party. You hear of the insesitivity of its governement and the ease with which 3,000,000 homes are unwillfully evicted to make room for a lake. You hear about millions dying from hunger and starvation in the past because of an emperor's whim. You hear about censorship and propoganda. The supposed naivity of the people and the awe inspiring power of the state leave you wondering how it's even possible that one is allowed in. You get in line at the customs and immigration counter and you hope nothing gets you "quarantined" or "dissapeared". Then they stamp your visa, and you're off to catch the longest taxi ride of your life for what equates to 20$ U.S. Majestic towers do not rise from the horizon, and the crystal blue sky does not merge with glorious rolling hills seamlessly merged with historically relective and insipring architechture. Daunting gray masses of aged concrete wrapped in drying laundry stretch as far as the eye can see. An hour of 10 lane traffic congestion later, and you start to feel like a colorblind ant with cataracts wandering around a congested and hazy monopoly board trying to find its way through a grid of fourty six games worth of apartment buildings. Your cab driver is a chinese women, the first you've seen, and she does not strike you as the kind of woman you would date, but then again, you know that there are half a billion to choose from. Actually, that's not true. Because couples are only allowed one child, most female babies are aborted in favor of a socially prefered male. In some parts of the country, brothers will share a wife because there just aren't enough women to go around. You begin to wonder what it means to be a woman in China, but then you realize that you've never really grasped what it means to be a woman anywhere, so the wondering ends as it usually does, with a nap. You hope that when you wake, something beautiful and cultural will great your rested eyes. The Penninsula In Beijing has great room service hamburgers, and while waiting for my family to arrive, I consumed many of them while watching censored versions of american movies on HBO. At one point, The passion of the Christ was playing. Having never seen the movie before, I was a bit baffled at mel gibsons decision to emit the last supper, the entire crucifiction, and the resurrection. I feel free to assume that the Chinese government has it's own version of the story, which is decidedly shorter and harder to follow.Besides the engulfing sprawl of the overcast city, Beijing does afford a few worthwhile visual experiences. None, however, are as heartwarming as the faces of your most loved emerging from the arrival terminal. Reunited with my travelweary and horrificly jet lagged family, the long ride to the hotel felt quietly like home for the first time in a long time. Sentimentality aside, 6 months of NOT sharing time, space, and decisions with four of the most independant and willful individuals you know does not prepare you for doing exactly that. Perhaps I'll write more on this later, but for now I'll say this, sometimes getting closer means moving further away. Overall it was a hell of an adventure, and in leu of my 24th Birthday, the gift of a new camera was bestowed upon me, so I'll be sharing few less words, and a few more pictures from now on.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/cjs150/igimow/1154845020/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/cjs150/igimow/1154845020/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/cjs150/igimow/1154845020/tpod.html Sun, 06 Aug 2006 03:13:25 -0400 For those who practice not-doing, everything will fall into place. -Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching ch.3)

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Hoi An, Vietnam

Hoi An is a city of quaint streets, pleasant walks, fine food, and some of the cheapest and most efficient tailoring on the planet. Whatever dream in wool, or silk that evades your cost strapped wardrobe can be brought to life in hours with the help of this humble town. Mannequins line the clustered shopfront avenues, and a custom suit is never more than ten feet away. You'd think that every one in this town would be dressed to the nines considering the prolific gusto with which clothes are made, but it seems that tourists save the dawning of their garments for the box-ride home, and standard shabby tank tops and cotton skirts abound. Take up a Moto driver on his offer, and you'll be wisked down rice lined streets to the expansively white and inviting HoiAn beach. Days melt away into Dragonfly peppered vanilla sunsets, and a golden vietnamese lager fades the salty ocean taste lingering from a day of ponderous floating. The complete lack of stress practicly condensates from the air, and I know that life can only get more complicated from this point on.Despite the zealous and over-ambitious efforts I made towards exploring my inner fashion designer, I slowly came to realize that what looks cool on paper just makes me look like a fast food employee in real life. I resigned to have a few shirts and linen things constructed, and leave the mysterious realm of fashion to people who know things like, what color socks to wear with a turquois hat.Other than my short day-in-life-of-armani saga, I spent a majority of my time drinking beer Larue in the shade of the cargo club, and constructing a tent on the roof of my hotel to work on a painting which has yet to be completed.Most people pass through HoiAn in a couple of days. I stayed for close to a month.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/cjs150/igimow/1154608740/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/cjs150/igimow/1154608740/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/cjs150/igimow/1154608740/tpod.html Sun, 06 Aug 2006 03:08:37 -0400 For those who practice not-doing, everything will fall into place. -Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching ch.3)

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Nha Trang, Vietnam

Lots of pondering. Nha trang is a pseudo contemporary beach town with a reasonable night life and just enough limitations to make choosing anything a managable affair. Fell into a bit of a pattern. Even if I had a camera, I'm not sure I would have taken any pictures. Did a fair amount of reading, and drawing. Not too much else to say.
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