Days 361-363: Phoenix

Phoenix isn't much of a travel destination, and most of the travellers there are just passing through. I did my best to see the few sights around, going to the main art gallery for a couple hours before switching to my second hostel. Since I was going to be coming back to the first one the next day I left most of my things there and just took a few clothes to the other one. Downtown Phoenix isn't very big, and it only took a couple of hours to look around and stop by the different sports' stadiums. My favourite part of Phoenix was the Art District around Roosevelt Row, which was full of neat little galleries, cafes and alleyways of street art.

On my 3rd day, when I was back at the original hostel, I spent the evening hanging out with the hostel owners and some of the other guests. We played some board games and ended up going to the nearby park to play ultimate frisbee. When I played ultimate frisbee on the beach in New Zealand I was probably the worst player there, but the difference between playing with a group of very fit people who play 3 times a week and a group of fairly out of shape people who haven't played in years is pretty dramatic, and this time I got to be one of the stars. We spent the evening hanging out and drinking, and overall it was a really fun group of people to end my time in the US with.

My plane the last day didn't leave until late at night. I was taking a really budget airline (the only 2-star airline in North America), and they charged a lot extra for extra bags. By this point I have a backpack, my disintegrating messenger bag and another tote, and I really wanted to get that down to 2 items to save about $30 on the flight. I solved the problem by finding a duffel bag at a goodwill store for $4 and using that to combine two of my other bags. The airport I was flying out of wasn't actually in Phoenix, but in nearby Mesa, and I said my goodbyes in the evening and began the streetcar + 2 bus route trip of about 2.5 hours to get to the airport.

Day 329: The Center of New Zealand

There's a pretty popular farmer's market in Nelson each week on Saturday, and it being Saturday I decided to begin my day checking it out. It was a nice mixture of fresh produce, food stands, clothing, arts and crafts and other bits and pieces. I was tempted by some of the wool clothes, but talked myself out of it and settled on a delicious food stand burrito and an ice cream cone instead.


Next I visited a large park past the hostel because it had been recommended to me as the starting point of a few good hikes in the area. There was a game of cricket going on in the park that I sat and watched for awhile in an attempt to flesh out my slowly improving understand of the sport. I then found the Center of New Zealand trail, which takes you up one of the adjacent hills to what has been established as the centermost point of the country, I guess. Somebody in the hostel had told me it was a short but challenging hike, but in reality it was more just a stroll up a wooded hill. I walked up, enjoyed the view for a bit then came back down in under an hour, but it was still nice to stretch my legs after all the time on ferries and buses, and it did provide a nice view of the surroundings.

Day 289: A Day in Malacca

I got to the city of Malacca (or Melaka) late in the morning and did my usual stubborn habit of walking from the bus station the few kilometers to my hostel. Malacca was made into a UNESCO site jointly with Georgetown, and they both have that architectural and cultural mix of a complicated colonial past. Malacca grew from a Malay fishing village to a major trading city for the Chinese before being captured and passing hands between the Portugese, Dutch, British and Japanese. Since I only had the single afternoon to explore the city I skipped having a nap despite being pretty exhausted by this point, and headed out to explore the city.

The central river though town that passed near the hostel was lined with buildings painted in colourful murals, mostly showing off aspects of local culture and history.

I followed the river down to the town center which contains a cluster of buildings that make up the local museum. The museum was quite varied and had a lot in it, but most of the information was just describing what things were, and there wasn't much historical / narrative information to really put any of it context.

Finally I walked back towards the hostel down Jonker Street. It's the major shopping street that has a lot of antique and artsy shops, and I had a good time browsing through things. I bought a new t-shirt and a pair of Thai fisherman pants to supplement my constantly evolving wardrobe.

Days 275-276: Merry Christmas from KL!

First of all, Happy Holidays to everybody! "Christmas" is different things for different people, and I hope that even those who aren't into the religion bits, or into the consumerism bits at least manage to take a bit of a break to enjoy friends and family.

My bus ride from Tanah Rata to Kuala Lumpur was faster than I thought, only taking about 4 hours. My hostel was within walking distance, but it was a solid walk (although not as gruelling as the one in Panang). The hostel I'm staying in was picked for its proximity to KL Central Station, which wasn't a factor coming in, but will be a factor when I leave since my flight to Indonesia is very early and the only night buses to the airport are from KL Central (see, I actually plan some of these things out, sometimes!) In addition to a good location for me, the hostel is also very cool. It's run by a group of young people who are all into the arts in some manner, and into the youth culture and activism. All the walls and floors have murals or other artwork on them, and they use the common space to put on different art/music/dance/theater shows. After getting to the hostel and checking in I basically just retraced my steps back to where I got off the bus, checking out all of the interesting things I'd seen on my walk down that I wasn't able to stop and explore because of all my bags.

The first of these stops was at a canal / reservoir I had to cross. Both sides of the canal were covered with lovely street art murals, and I've since learned that it is really the focal point of street art in the city. I walked the length of the painted sections of the canal admiring the art before climbing back to stree level and continuing on.

I also visited the Central Market, which is a building full of shops focused on Malaysian art and culture. A few parts were neat, but I found a lot of it to be just more gift shop like places selling the same cheap stuff you find everywhere else, only more concentrated. I also visited the nearby Petaling Street, which is the central hub of KL Chinatown. It's a long pedestrian market street similar in feel to the markets in Hong Kong and Taipei.

After a good sleep today was my day to really explore Kuala Lumpur. I wasn't sure how much Christmas would alter the. The signs of it were certainly present, but not like you'd fine in North America (for one thing, everything was open). The big shopping malls all had Christmas displays out, and I came across a group singing carols in one mall, but the malls didn't seem unusually crowded. The people working at food stalls and in convience stores all wished me a merry Christmas, but that could just because I'm western.

I found a very cool shopping mall called parkamaya that had a definite Japanese flavour to it (it's the one with the purple trees above). It had cosplaying mall girls handing out flyers and all the walls were posted with anime/manga figures. One of the shops had legitimate anime for sale at ridiculously low prices that I just couldn't pass up. In the end I spend about $35 CDN for what would have cost me over $400 to buy at home. It's going to be a bit of a pain to carry it around for the next 4 months, especially since I can't watch any of it on my tablet, but I didn't go as crazy as I could have, so I'm sure I'll manage. After that I swung by the famous Petronas Towers. After visiting most of the famous cities of the world a few more towers aren't all that impressive, but there was a park nearby that was a nice place to take a rest and enjoy the day. I suspect the weather at home doesn't allow for quite the same sort of outdoor recreation.

The collection of unique towers in Kuala Lumpur makes it pretty easy to keep track of where you are when travelling on foot, although the roads tend to wind and cross over each other a lot. On my way back towards the hostel area I angled by the even taller KL Tower.

Back at the hostel I was treated with some of the other guests to a Christmas dinner prepared by one of the hostel co-owners and her girlfriend. We had spaghetti, chicken, potatoes, salad and corn, along with a mix of desserts. Not quite the traditional Christmas dinners of Canada, but the food was good and the gesture very much appreciated!

Day 271: Getting Organized and An Unexpected Quest

Since the wifi in my hostel in George Town had been terrible, I had fallen behind on planning things and getting information. I was planning on leaving the following day, so I couldn't really put things off any longer. I walked to the huge mall nearby. It's not as fancy as the one I went to earlier in the week, but far more massive and with an interesting personality. I've always found malls fascinating, as in many ways they become little mini cities. This one deserved that title more than most, as over the years it had branched from the main building to adjacent ones, connected with walkways and tunnels. The core building is fairly modern and has lots big brand name shops, but turn down a few side alleys in the mall and it becomes the run down wild west of shuttered shops, abandoned hallways and security guards in the jewellry shops sitting with shotguns across their lap. It is also where all the tourism companies set up shop, so after searching around a bit I bought a ticket to Cameron Highlands.

I wasn't able to book a hostel my normal way, but I sent out a few emails to some places in the area and by the end of the day was able to make a reservation. Not wanting to leave Penang on quite such a dreary note, I decided to go on one final walk through the city. During my walk, I saw a few really nice pieces of street art that were similar in style to a few pieces I'd seen in town earlier. I also found a map with the locations of most of the pieces by the same artist, and the hunt was on!
(Continued in the following Spotlight, since I haven't had a chance to do one in awhile!)

Day 262: Skyship (and Rain)

Without anything terribly pressing to hunt down in Singapore, my first day was a meandering exploration with another guest at the hostel. The exact route we took doesn't much matter, but we covered the majority of the city center, including the bay, the business district, the Muslim, Indian and Chinese districts, and a variety of other places, mostly while lost and not really knowing where we were going.

As I mentioned before, architecture is pretty impressive in Singapore. They have a lot of money, a lot of people, and not all that much space, so the inclination is to build up, and to build fancy. Things in Singapore don't get much more fancy then the Marina Bay Sands. Marina Bay Sands is a hotel/casino/shopping mall resort complex standing over the bay. It cost $8 billion (yes, billion) to build, and the hotel consists of 3 towers that support a giant ship/park. I know that sentences is confusing.

Three towers, giant ship, see? The bay has a lot to see around it, including a double-helix shaped bridge and a skyline of a bunch more tall hotels and office towers. We walked around the bay once earlier in the day, then again at night to see all the lights. Here are a few random mix of pictures from the area.

At one point late in the afternoon we were walking through a park when we saw dramatic black clouds coming towards us as if the armies of Mordor were afoot. Just as the rain started to turn from drizzle to downpour we jumped into a random shopping mall (Singapore is one of the few places I've been where seven floor shopping malls are truly random buildings strewn about). The ground floor was littered with cafes and restaurants, but a few odd things caught my attention and led me to investigate the mall more thoroughly. My suspicious about the mall proved correct when I checked out the 5th floor and found 6 video game stores, 2 video gaming accessory stores, 4 stores relating to other forms of games, and 5 stores selling figurines and models. It was a nerd mall. It was actually more of an electronics mall, and the 5th floor was where the nerdier elements of it gathered, but still, a fortunate refuge from the storm.

Day 244: The Floating Market

Since I had spent all my time in Thailand so far in Bangkok I decided to do a day trip to a place a couple hours away from the city - the Damnoen Saduak Floating Market. I had booked the day trip through my hostel the evening before, and the company running it picked me up with a shuttle bus early in the morning. After a few stops for other people the bus went to the main office where everybody got off and switched to various new buses, depending on which of the many tours out of the city we were doing. The ride to the market was pretty uneventful, and not with any terribly interesting scenery unfortunately.

The floating market is about what the name suggests. It's a section of canals with some shops set up along the sides of the canals, and other shops and vendors being on boats, some tied down and some floating freely. When potential customers float by they will hook the boats with a stick and draw them in next to their little shop to browse. The shops tended to be pretty touristy, but it was still a nice, bustling atmosphere and certainly a unique type of shopping.

After looking around the market I met back up with the others on the trip and we got on a faster boat to go further through the canals, leaving the market and going through more resedential and eventually rural areas. Outside of town we finally docked and found our bus waiting for the trip back to Bangkok. Unfortunately the ride out wasn't as smooth as coming in. It started to rain, and now that it was in the afternoon traffic was much heavier. The ride that took about 2 hours in the morning took about 4.5 returning, most of which was in traffic jams trying to get through the city. After the long, dull ride through the city I was happy to get a bowl of my favourite curry once again and relax in the hostel for the evening.

Day 237: How Not to Recover

Kathmandu Valley is full of temples and stupas, and it would have taken me a lot longer than the two real days I had to see everything, even if I was at full health. Unfortunately I wasn't even at full health, or anywhere near it, and my priority was really to rest and gain back energy, so I didn't get to do all that much sightseeing.

My first full day in the city I didn't venture too far from the hostel. I wandered around the surrounding streets of Thamel, which is where a lot of the backpackers stay and so full of touristy shops and restaurants. I walked as far as the historic Kathmandu Durbar Square and down to the Bishnumati River. The streets were really run down here, and the river was choked with garbage, so I didn't feel too keen on exploring deeper in.

The evening began with rambling conversations involving such characters as an English drug dealer, a French space engineer and an Australian hippie and led to us going to a bar with a live band that was performing an entertaining mix of everything from Pink Floyd to Radiohead to traditional Nepalese music. Deeper into the night we ended up at a Nepalese club, which was a fascinating experience. In western culture, dancìng in clubs is largely female, and the males tend to just all do the same boring stuff and try not to make a fool of themselves (at least this is my personal observation). In Nepal, people go for it. There seems to be a lot of Indian/Bollywood influence, but people (guys especially) are just there to be active and have a good time. The hilarious part was the discovery that because we're white, we apparently are assumed to know what we are doing. This meant that no matter how wildly/terribly we danced, they would subtely copy us, absorbing our stylish western dances. Fun night out, but long nights of drinking and shishas is probably not the best way to recover from severe illness.

Days 228-230: Diverging Paths

The bus ride from Chitwan to Pokhara was a scenic one along winding mountain roads. Since we had a private bus we could get the driver to pull over to the side of the road to enjoy a few especially scenic spots along the way. The best stop was at a long bridge suspended over a river valley between the mountains, and it made for an excellent way to stretch our legs.

Pokhara, especially the touristy lakeside bit we were in, is a really fun place. It's definitely touristy, but touristy in a kind of hippie/adventurer way, geared towards nature lovers and young people and with lots of cool bars, restaurants and shops. I'm not normally much of a shopper, but it turns out I love traditional Nepalese fashion and could have replaced my entire wardrobe for a quite reasonable price if it wasn't for the fact that the clothes are a bit bulky, tend to recommend hand washing and possibly will all fall apart in a month. I did manage to pick up a few things without too drastically altering the variety of my travel wardrobe. Another type of shop everywhere in town are trekking shops with trekking clothes, backpacks and other equipment. The stuff is all quite obviously counterfeit, but even counterfeit stuff for the right price has its uses. I replaced my old 36L backpack with a pseudo-"North Face" 50L one. The old one had served me well, but I just needed something with more support and cushioning and I figured it was a good time while they were cheap and just prior to me doing any trekking of my own. Otherwise, we just had time to hang out around town and relax some. I visited the lake a few times, and on our second day we got up early and drove up to one of the nearby hills to watch the sunrise.

After the sunrise most of the group wussed out and took the bus back down to get more sleep, but a few of us decided to hike down the trail back to town, passing through some of the small farmsteads along the way.

The rest of the group was continuing on to Kathmandu for the end of the tour, but I decided to stay behind in Pokhara to do my trekking first before continuing on. I lost out on one night of accomodations from the tour, but I just didn't see any point in taking the 6 hour bus ride to Kathmandu, then back to Pokhara, then back to Kathmandu. I spent one extra day on my own in Pokhara relaxing and setting things up for my trek. In hindsight, I could have managed to do it on my own for less money, or tried to contact a guide directly instead of going through one of the many agencies around, but I just wanted something safe and convenient and not do anything too ambitious for my first real multi-day trek.

Day 217: Group Dynamics

The hotel where I was meeting my new tour group was in the same general area as the one I was staying in on my own, so I shouldered my bags and decided to walk to it. It wasn't too hard to find, especially with (paid) assistance from one of the shoe shiners, and the most interesting part of the journey was an utterly naked man strolling casually down the center of 4 lanes of traffic along the way. Oh India.

The group meeting was pretty early in the day, so I hung out in my room until then. Each group I join has its own personality. In China were were a pretty active, adventurous lot with even the older people being quite physical. The group in India consisted of 3 couples, me, and 8 other females - and if there was one recurring theme through the trip it was shopping. The happy coincidence that I was the only single male on the tour meant that I had a private room to myself the entire trip, which was an unexpected perk. Our well-moustached local running the tour goes by Harsh for short, and was something of a character.

After getting through the paperwork and chatting a bit we had a short rest then went by metro to Connaught Place, which is a large circular shopping plaza in New Delhi. After I just did some looking around the bazaars near our hotel before a group dinner.

Day 184: Making the Most of It

With only one full day in Taipei, I wanted to squeeze in what I could. I started by visiting the site shared by the National Democracy Hall, Concert Hall and Theater since they were just down the street from my hostel. The traditional architecture of the buildings adds a nice touch, and it's interesting comparing them to similar architecture I've seen in Korea and Hong Kong. I find the little characters on the roof edges an especially interesting shared feature. They mark official buildings, and the number of figures on the roof reflects the importance of the building's function. The most obvious difference with the Taiwanese buildings is the colours. Most of the temples and other traditional buildings I've seen have the roof tiles painted dark colours (usually black), but in Taipei everything seems to be painted up in orange, green, blue and violet. The buildings also have lots of very colourful carvings and ornamentation on them which really catches your eye.

One of the major things I wanted to visit was the National Palace Museum. It contains a lot of objects from the Forbidden City, and is probably the most complete collection of Chinese art and artifacts in the world. I really liked some of the artwork, especially the long painted scrolls of sweeping landscape scenes and some of the elaborate jade carvings, but in general it was a lot of furniture, jade, small bronzework and pottery, none of which I really have the background to appreciate.

I visited a few other temples in the afternoon. I wasn't really hunting them out, but they do stand out more than anything else, and look more interesting. The most interesting of the places I visited were the Xingtian Temple and the Taipei Confucius Temple. The Confucius Temple, in addition to the temple itself, had small exhibits through the surrounding buildings talking about Confucius and his teachings. There was also a school band practicing on the grounds, and while they weren't terribly good it was interesting to see all the differences in instruments to what our bands have.

My final stop was to check out some of the Taipei night markets. There are many different ones throughout the city, each with their own focuses. I found them to be much less touristy than the Hong Kong ones, and were a mix of clothing, shoes, electronics, food with some random carnivalish games thrown in. I found a lot of the street food smelled pretty terrible, and I wasn't going to take any risks when I had to get up early for another plane, so I stuck to things that weren't quite so exotic.

In general the city seemed less built up than any of the other big cities in Asia I've been to, but that could also just be that I didn't see enough of it to get a good feel. The temperature was still hot, but I found it to be much more comfortable than Hong Kong was just because of the lower humidity. My biggest complaint was things relating to getting around. Street signs were confusing and misleading and the huge number of scooters zipping around combined with poor/no sidewalks made walking a pain at times, but again, it might just be that I never had time to adjust properly. On the plus side, Taipei is the cheapest city I've been to so far (that won't last long), with none of my meals costing more than $5 CDN, and often considerably less.