Mexico City: 🇲🇽, 🌮, 🌸

Ah, Mexico City! I had been thinking I’d spend one or two months in CDMX in 2019, but due to time constraints and a November spent in Taiwan, it only ended up being three weeks in Mexico. As expected and endlessly recommended, Mexico City was dreamy.

It had lovely weather, great food, tons of culture, interesting people, public transportation galore, and was quite cheap. While I was hoping to stay in neighborhoods that were a little less well-trodden by visitors, I did end up basically in Roma and Condesa, split between three AirBnbs -- to get to know different parts of the city, ala Tokyo. I went to CDMX with my usual packed items and nobody else in tow. Yes, it was a pure solo trip, my first in some time. Friends, where are you?

From San Diego, it was recommended by many to just take the Cross Border Express from the border to Tijuana. The CBX is a short walkway that connects the countries and it truly was an easy route, with immigration being a breeze. And with no direct flights from SAN to MEX, it was actually cheaper to do it this way, including the Uber down to the border from my house.

All in all, flights cost me $550 — including a hundred in extra luggage fees and a seventy dollar change fee for a flight I booked incorrectly. However, if I had planned earlier it could have been slightly cheaper. (Flights from SAN, LAX, or NYC all seemed about five to six hundred dollars.) I flew Volaris down and Aeromexico back. The CBX tickets were about $50 round trip and then you have to pay $30 for a visa if you’re staying in Mexico for longer than a few days. With the ride shares to and from the airport -- $150 total, $60 on the way down and $80 on the way up because we took an XL on the return -- everything cost about $750 to get door to door.

• Airbnb 1 (Roma)
• Airbnb 2 (Condesa)
• Airbnb 3 (Condesa)

The exchange rate is roughly twenty pesos to one U.S. dollar, and things were more expensive than Taiwan, but not by that much. I rented pretty big Airbnbs each time, because it was relatively cheap and I was halfway expecting visitors. The three places were about $80-90 each, and for nineteen nights the bill came out to a total of $1,900.

Overall, I spent about two thousand dollars on other things while down there. The bulk of that was food of course, with $300 in shared meals, $180 in solo dining out, $50 in snacks, $50 in groceries, and $35 in boba. Yes, there is plentiful boba in Mexico City and I had it seven times. Delicious!

For the most part, single meals were roughly twenty bucks if you went fancy — like expat brunch at Lalo — or half that for Uber Eats delivered poke. If you went to taquerias and such, an entire meal was probably about eight bucks. I did have one big meal at Iyazaka Kura ($120 for two), another at a steak house ($120), and then a few fifty dollar meals at assorted places. Broadly speaking, snacks and coffee was about two or three dollars. Plus I developed a habit of getting chocolate croissants each day from the local bakery, and those were like four dollars for all the deliciousness.

Recommendations: Go Myang for sundubu-jjigae, Super Mikasa for Japanese and udon, Green Corner for brunch, Marlindo for fish tostadas, Lardo for pastries, and La Casa De Tono for basic Mexican staples.

Museums in Mexico City were plentiful, but knowing I would go back soon, I basically only hit four or five of them. Entrance fees were roughly five dollars or so, excepting the Museo Juguete Antiguo (Antique Toy Museum) which my friend highly recommended to me. I'm coming for you next Soumaya and Casa Barragan.

The biggest ticket item for the trip was front row tickets to Book of Mormon, which was glorious because there was nobody else in our row for the second half and seeing a musical that up close and personal is the way to really live. It reminded me of the days when we’d win the Rent lottery and get to be within spitting distance of the cast.

I watched quite a few movies while down there too, mostly in malls, which were about five dollars per ticket. There’s a movie theater, the Cineteca Nacional, that I wanted to visit because it looks so beautiful, but I haven’t been yet. And of course I hit up a few karaoke places, which cost maybe fifteen dollars an hour for a private room, or about the same for a few hours at a public karaoke spot. I’ll be exploring the karaoke of Mexico City in full next time down.

As for clubbing, I only went to two places: Departamento and Patrick Miller. Entrance to Departamento was ten dollars, and it was a smaller place that is basically just all dancing. I found it my first night out and basically it became my spot immediately. Things are open late here, another huge plus. Patrick Miller is only open on Fridays, and the dance circles are wild, well worth checking out for three dollars person. There are a ton of other clubs and places to check out nightlife, but I haven’t explored them yet. I did hit up a few bars, but not too many since well, I don't really drink?

Oh I also did a bit of shopping, in preparation for a wedding, mainly getting two pairs of shoes at Galerias Insurgentes. There is this Mexican brand, Panam, which makes athletic shoes for quite cheap, like fifteen dollars, and they were much higher quality than the night market shoes in Taiwan. Excellent stuff. Shopping in Zona Rosa and a Zara set me back maybe seventy dollars for two jackets and a shirt. And I got two haircuts, for seventeen dollars each.

And I can't not mention SIM cards! Even though Verizon has free texting messaging, I found out quickly that you are throttled after 500MB a day, and that just wouldn’t do. So I stopped into an ATT store and got a SIM and fifteen gigs of data for fifty dollars.

Ubers were cheap, mainly three to five dollars, I took forty-three of them, totaling $150, with the max one being six bucks. The Uber from the airport to my first place was eight dollars. And I had to bike ride while I was there obviously, and while there are many bikeshare options, I went with the seemingly most popular one, Ecobici. Weekly passes are eighteen dollars, and it’s not much more for an annual pass, but I believe you need a Mexican phone number and address to get an annual pass. I’ll have to find out next time I’m there. Oh, the subway and bus rides are like five pesos, so a quarter regardless of distance or transfers I believe.

The last thing I want to highlight is the food tour that I took, on the recommendation of my friend. He used Eat Mexico when he was there and while I’d never actually done one before, it made a lot of sense to me!

I chose the Navarte at Night option and it was $120 with tip, and it led to meeting my first new friends in the city. In the future I’m curious about more tours in foreign cities -- especially any art tours -- but I could also just explore on my own too I guess. Once you find local friends, every day is a guided tour! Still, even with more time down there, tours seem like a fun and new way to get to know a new place. If you’re on a short trip, I’d highly recommend it! Maybe next time I’ll be leading a boba and karaoke tour...

Overall, I spent $4,600 for three weeks in Mexico City, with $750 to get there, $1,900 for AirBnbs, and $2,000 for expenses. That a hundred dollars a day of variable expenses was roughly what I spent per day in San Franciso earlier in the year — and that trip included free housing — or the same amount I spent for two weeks in Bali. For a winter retreat, Mexico City seems tops so far!

Singapore: 🇸🇬, 🌱, 🛍

And here we go, with the final trip for 2018! I went to Singapore for about three weeks, ostensibly on research for my new book. That means everything’s a write off! Right? Advertised as an uber-expensive city, Singapore proved to be not too bad depending on how you lived. It was easy to eat cheap if needed, for example.

Getting to Singapore was easy, just a mere $300 ticket from Taipei, and since I was traveling with my girlfriend for this trip, that number was doubled. Finding accommodations was a little tougher, as AirBnbs are technically outlawed but there were still plenty of options, just not a ton for so many consecutive days.

Finding something central and near public transportation was a priority but as it turned out, everyone cabs everywhere anyway. We stayed in the CBD (Central Business District), where all the finance high rises are, which was convenient if a bit staid. The best part was that our apartment was right across the street from Lau Pa Sat, a hawker center that proved to be very convenient for picking up fruit or getting quick meals. For sixteen nights, the total charge for accommodations was about $2,500.

To be honest, I didn’t find the food in Singapore to be stellar. There were many average meals and some highly touted foods that weren’t that amazing. However, having said that, I think we were mostly eating in the wrong places, as we often chose convenience — hawker centers and mall food courts — over personal recommends. But compared to a place like Taipei, where nearly everything is pretty good, Singapore disappointed on the food front. We had one particularly distasteful meal at an Indian restaurant that I was very excited for. Oh well, I’ll eat better next time I’m there. Overall food cost about $850, split $550 / $130 / $150 / $30 between dining out shared, dining out, snacks, and boba.

I’ll skip on shopping details but suffice to say that most of the $550 or so I spent shopping was spent on household stuff for the AirBnb, clothes and thermoses for gifts, and one grey side bag that I had to get because my daily carry items were too much for the trusty fanny pack. Also we had to bring a light umbrella everywhere because there’s rain at least once a day. Oh, SIM cards are readily available and about $25 for fifteen days of 100 GB data, which is more than enough.

Taxis were a huge part of our transportation expense, as the subway cards we got were cheap and rarely used. From what I could tell, each subway ride was under a dollar or so, and our initial fill of $20 for the cards was more than enough. Taxis cost $400 for the whole trip, as I took about forty trips for an average of $10 each. Oh, everyone uses Grab in Singapore, since they bought out Uber. When in SG, Grab away!

I saw two movies in Singapore — Aquaman and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse — and prices were about $8-10 per ticket. Mostly though, I spent my time exploring museums, which ranged from free for the Peranakan up to $20 for the National Gallery or attractions like Cloud Forest and ArtScience Museum.

More importantly, I spent $80 each for two Friends of Wildlife passes, which gave unlimited annual access to four animal theme parks: Singapore Zoo, Night Safari, River Safari, Jurong Bird Park. I ended up going to all of them and then promptly forgot to use the 20% discount when I bought cute things for the nieces. It’s okay, the animals need my extra twenty-percent. The nieces need the cute things.

There was two hours in a casino, in which we played a roulette-type game called sic bo (or dai siu 大小), and three of us all walked out up money, which was amazing. I won a cool $200 to cover that day's shopping and food expenses so it was perfect. I haven’t won money in a casino in years, so I guess I must have better luck gambling in Asia?

Last of all, we had a karaoke night that was three hours of singing and a drinks minimum, which only cost $60 for three people. Karaoke places in Singapore apparently have a little grocery store-like setup in front where you pick up your snacks and drinks, which was quite a novelty and fun. The song selection was also excellent. Singapore wins for karaoke!

I wish I had seen more of the night life in Singapore, but mostly we were too tired at night to be out much. From what I could gather, drinks cost a lot and cover charge at clubs also ran high. There were a plethora of bars and lounges in certain neighborhoods but I only went out once, to a tiny techno bar that was very quiet and I ended up chatting with a bunch of expats. I guess next time I'll find out if Singaporeans dance.

So that was Singapore in a nutshell: $5,400 for two-and-a-half weeks of book research. Averaging all the costs into the days spent there, Singapore tied with the Philippines for my most expensive daily trip this year, at around $340 per day. So I guess it’s either a day on a private island or a day in the city of the crazy rich: your pick!

Philippines: 🏝, 🇵🇭, 🚣

Would you believe me if I said one day in the Philippines cost me more than one day in Tokyo? Well it’s true! How do you figure? Well, let’s find out! First off, this was not the typical trip as about a dozen of us split an island, yes a whole island! That actually wasn’t the expensive part, as the entire thing only cost $360 each for three nights on this exclusive resort. For a closer look at Floral Island, Google away. "How soft is the sand?"

Due to my distrust of the timeliness of intra-Philippines air travel, I decided to fly to El Nido first and spend the night there, thus ensuring that I would be able to meet up with everyone else the next day — with no risk of getting left behind if I had a delay. As it turned out, I was spot on as my flight from Taipei to Manila was on-time but the flight from Manila to El Nido was not.

Anyway, I spent a night in El Nido by myself, staying at the very comfortable One El Nido Suites — booked for two nights, so I could hang out there past checkout till 4PM when everyone came in. That luxurious AC and wait time was $175 for two nights. Throw in the lovely condo-hotel we stayed in Manila for two nights ($90), split among many of us, and total housing costs for the trip was $640 for six nights.

And here with the killer: flights! Pricing for short term hauls don’t get cheaper, and for once I actually bought tickets semi-early, but the bill was still $730 for three ticketes, four jaunts: TPE-MPH-TPE ($440), MPH-ENI ($135), and ENI-MPH ($155). If you want to get to an island destination, there’s no choice but to fly!

So overall the cost to get to a lovely Philippine island getaway was $1,360 for housing and flying.

• Flights: $730
• Floral Island: $360
• Hotels: $275
• Shopping: $280
• Transportation: $160
• Food: $150

So where did the other money go? Well, food was pretty much covered on the island -- my personal bill came to $60 for various drinks and extras ordered -- and then our friend’s family was kind enough to take us out to two fabulous dinners in Manila. So overall food costs was $150 for the whole time, with the biggest meal I personally paid for a shot of Ippudo ramen ($12) I had at SM Megamall in Mandaluyong. When in the Philippines, 🍜!

I also watched a movie at $5 admission with $3 popcorn, because of course I wanted to check out a local theater. And I’m sure glad I did as I discovered that there are bathrooms in each individual theater! It’s a genius move and halfway to the dream of having one-way glass window in individual theater bathrooms so you never miss anything. Way to go Philippines, being so advanced! There was also one night of karaoke ($22) which was glorious, and also a night at a speakeasy bar but I didn’t get anything so that was zero expenditure.

Oh, transportation was cheap, especially local taxis. Like maybe $5 per ride to downtown El Nido from their airport, and even from the Megamall to the Manila airport. My only expensive rides were to/from TPE airport, which averaged about $40 each. As for other transportation, we had a van rented in Manila, which cost $45 each for the driver and car for a few days. And there was maybe $20 in shuttle/boat transport from El Nido an hour-and-a-half south to Floral island. So overall $180 spent on transportation, with the bulk of that getting to and from the Taipei airport.

And then finally I spent some money shopping. Yes, in the waning hours of hanging out in Manila, I went to Massimo Dutti and dropped $160 on a white linen jacket that I just had to have. Once again, shopping in other countries is a dream and the amount of linen in the Filipino stores was fantastic. Give. Me. All. Your. Linen.

Before that I had also spent about $110 on various totes, a shirt each from Forever 21 and Zara, and also a scarf from Kultura -- a store selling Filipino-made stuff. Basically if you’re gonna put me in a mall, I’m gonna buy stuff.

Oh and SIMs are super cheap, like you step off and grab one in five minutes -- I used Globe as the provider -- and I spent $20 on seven gigabytes plus extra for Spotify. Because you know, island dance party.

Overall the week trip to the Philippines cost $2,050 total, with the bulk going to flying and housing. So really, short trips cost a lot because flights are the big killer when spread over a short amount of time. It cost $340 per day for this trip -- versus $255 per day in Tokyo, or $175 in Vietnam and $145 in Bali -- and even taking out the shopping and some of the transportation costs, the daily bill would have been somewhere around $260 I think.

So the lesson is to vacation for a long time, or go hit a beautiful private island with all of your friends! Either or.

Tokyo: 🇯🇵, 💸, 🍣

The post I’ve been waiting all year to write: a trip to Japan! Originally I was hoping to spend two to three months in Japan but after looking at these expenses, maybe it’s good I was only there for thirty-five days. From the beginning of April till mid-May, I was frolicking in the urban beauty of Tokyo. How much did the most expensive month of my adult life cost?!? Let’s find out!

First there were the flights, of which there was only one. From Taipei to Tokyo it was $500 on China Air. That was easy. The housing was not. We literally moved every couple of days, and overall I stayed at ten AirBnbs, which was obviously not the most efficient way to do things but it turned out to be amazing because we got to explore many neighborhoods. For the first week we had three people splitting a place, two weeks with two of us, and then the final two weeks was just me.

My overall budget for housing was $100 a day and that just about worked out, to the tune of $108 per night. If I had stayed in a capsule hotel or opted for less fashionable digs -- we scoured for cool places to stay -- that price would have likely gone down a tad. As it was, I spent a total of $3,800 for housing. Pricey, I know. That number pushes up to over $4,000 if you include the $300 or so we spent transferring between AirBnbs via taxi. But I knew going in that housing costs was going to be expensive, and so it was.

After flights and housing, it was $4,600 total for expenses, of which the breakdown is (and I’ll tackle them in reverse order):

• Shopping: $1,800
• Food: $1,650
• Transportation: $720
• Play: $390
• Misc: $60

Miscellaneous ($60): You know that old adage “It costs money to spend money,” right? All of miscellaneous was ATM fees, which was a necessary evil. I went to the ATM five times and withdrew about $200 USD each, which cost about $11 per transaction.

Play ($390): A seemingly low amount, I know! But I didn’t really do that much, as far as traditional "play" is categorized. I mean, I went to four movies ($75), had one karaoke session ($40), barely drank as per usual ($35), and really the only other big things were $35 for Sanrioland admission, cover for an incredible dancing night at Sound Museum Vision ($45, of which I paid for others), and a few $5-13 museums, plus about $20 for Epson Aqua Park -- so like $1.50 per dolphin. Heck, I spent more at the arcades than I did doing most things. FYI: Most arcade games cost about 100 JP¥, or 1 USD.

Transportation ($720): It was $45 for two trips via Keisei Skyliner to/from the airport. $95 total for subway rides, of which I barely took any to be honest -- each ride was probably around $3. And then $15 for the bike share, which I used liberally for the first couple of weeks until it started raining a lot. Oh and I used about $30 for storage lockers in-between AirBnbs, which was very necessary.

Of course, taxis were a huge expense, totaling $525, but after taking off -$300 of that for Ubers between AirBnbs, plus maybe another -$100 for airport rides, it was only $125 or so for "regular" taxi rides. Don’t get me wrong, taxis in Tokyo are super expensive, like $12-20 dollars for even short distances. But I mostly avoided taxis and took maybe a dozen rides total, when it was late or I was in a rush. For the most part, when we were in a neighborhood, we never left it, moving out only to meet people or talking a bike/walk to get somewhere. Tokyo is an imminently walkable city, as advertised.

Keep in mind for transportation that we also didn't go to any other cities, which most people tend to do, using the Japan Rail Pass to get around the country. It sounded like a sweet deal but neither of us wanted to travel travel that much on this trip.

Food ($1,650): Shockingly, not my highest category! Food prices in Japan were wildly exaggerated I thought, as in it was much cheaper than I’d imagined. You could easily get a good meal for $10-15, which isn’t far from New York or San Francisco prices. Of course, you could scale up quickly but cheap meals were also easily had.

Overall I spent $950 for “dining out / shared” and $400 for “dining out,” the latter of which was just meals for me. The “shared” dining usually indicates that I paid for whoever I was eating with, and as usual it scaled about 2/3rd of my "dining out" bill. There was too much food to go into any detail but my highest individual eating session was $25 for a standing sushi spot and I basically thrived/lived on $9 bowls of ramen. So much ramen...

There was also $275 spent on snacks and $40 on groceries, which basically means drinks, cookies, coffee, sugar items, and bites in-between meals. At a mere $45 for food per day (on vacation), Japan wasn’t too bad right?

Shopping ($1,800): Let’s start with the wifi and data situation. Over-worried as I was about my access to the internet, I both pre-bought SIM cards and then had to get new ones as we figured out that there was a delay in activation with the ones I bought. Overall I spent a tad over $300 for wifi and that included two separate airport SIMs ($35 each) that lasted one week, a whole lot more spent on Mobal SIM and service ($140) for two weeks, and then about $110 on a Kyushu pocket wifi--for unlimited data and fast speeds. If I had been experienced, I would have worked it so that I had the Kyushu set up pre-trip and ready to go at the airport, thus eliminating the need for all the other solutions. Lesson learned! Next time I just go with the pocket wifi and don’t worry about SIM cards.

Off the top, I spent $450 on general shopping, $475 on clothing, $200 on household items, $190 on gift related things, bought one book (Wallpaper City Guide Tokyo), and dropped $80 at Sanrioland merchandise stores. I regret none of it. In fact, if I had more room to carry stuff I probably could have easily doubled this. Next time I go to Japan I’m gonna shorten the trip so I can just blow all the money on shopping. Consume, consume, consume! Seriously the amount of cute, cool, delightfully designed, beautiful items on sale here are just ridiculous. I went to Loft Shibuya near the end of my trip, and they literally closed down on me at 9PM, so I guess that means someone was watching over my bank account. Thank you shopping gods.

The two hundred dollars worth of household stuff I bought were simply a whole bunch of cute hand towels, wraps, various knick knacks for my home, a stand up rice scooper that I was very intrigued by, three special bird letter openers, and an entire matching set of bird inspired ceramic holder thingys. Like I said, I could have spent all my money shopping in Japan…

Given how little room I had in my traveling bag—and an unwillingness to have too much to carry in-between AirBnbs—I had to curb my buying to small items. Thus most of my gifts for others constituted stickers, baby socks, baby 20mL Tiger thermoses, and uh, more socks. Also I am bringing back an Afuri dry ramen because my friend was kind enough to take back all my housewares to San Diego. At the very end of the trip, I bought an extra roller suitcase, which didn’t hold much, but it was enough to get me over the hump.

I also collected quite a few totes, many Tanuki to Kitsune items (in fact I spent probably $100 on Tanku to Kitsune items once I realized I could only get them in Japan), and resisted just about every stationary item I wanted, save a few key items. Stationary alone could put a huge dent in any Tokyo visitor’s budget.

And then we get to it, $475 on clothes! Everyone in Tokyo dresses amazing. Literally, everyone. And part of the reason is because clothes shopping there is amazing. (Overall the shopping scene is great but the shopping for men's stuff is out of this world.) From American vintage to high end streetwear, to everything in-between, shopping in Tokyo is the absolute dream. Fortunately for my wallet, I couldn’t pull off the the Japanese worker style -- more swag needed--  and also didn’t have much room for extra clothes so everything I bought was (mostly) out of necessity.

Upon arriving, Tokyo was much colder than we thought, so an extra sweater was bought in Harajuku, as well as a denim linen jacket from Zara, and white shoes to replace the ugly orange New Balances that my friend insisted I toss. (Oh yeah, even the Zara in Tokyo is way better. I’ve never bought a single thing at Zara Stateside but immediately bought three must-have items in the Roppongi Hills Zara.)

I did cave and get a pair of linen jeans, denim shorts, and a shirt from the first store I walked into in Daikanyama (and eyed an amazingly looooong denim jacket), and then promptly left the area because I knew the shopping there was going to be great. And on my second-to-last day, my friend wanted to drop by a store and it just so happened to be one I had passed by weeks ago, filled with linen Tibetan type stuff and so of course I had to buy a few things there. In sum, the five hundred or so dollars I spent on clothes was a mere drop in the bucket. I’ll be back for you Daikanyama and all other shopping districts, I’ll be back!

Overall, thirty-five days in Tokyo cost nearly $9,000, which was more than I anticipated but also perhaps less? If I scaled way back on the housing, if I shopped a whole lot less, and took way fewer taxis between AirBnbs, I think it would have been possible to slash that number by half, easily.

If two weeks in Vietnam cost $1,800 and two weeks in Bali cost $1,350, Tokyo would have been about $3,300 for two weeks, all-in. And by living there the cost would be stretched much lower, as I had a friend who was living in Tokyo for about $1,500 monthly rent, in a great area, with a fantastic space. No way you could do that in NYC or SF. Tokyo is a very livable city, much more than advertised I think. Should I move there? Of course I should!

Next time in Japan: Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium and Naoshima!

Vietnam 🇻🇳

Here we go, after two weeks in Bali I went to Vietnam for just about the same amount of time. What I discovered was that Vietnam is supposed to be the new hot spot: for entrepreneurs, for traveling, for doing it all. And apparently Vietnam is even cheaper than Thailand and other surrounding Southeast Asia locations. The conversion I used was one US dollar to 22,750 Vietnamese đồng, VND. Needless to say, lots of calculators were used on this trip.

Housing was $380 total, split among eight days in Hanoi and five in Saigon. Seeing as we had three people, we AirBnb-ed whole apartments, one for $65 a night and the other, located in a fancier high rise, for $80 per. Overall both living situations were lovely, as each of the three of us had our own bedrooms and all the amenities we needed.

A non-stop flight from Taipei to Hanoi -- but back from Ho Chi Minh -- was roughly $300, plus we added an intra-country flight from Hanoi to HCM, which cost $120. (Who knew Vietnam was so tall!) Overall flights back and forth cost about $400. Taxis to and from all the airports cost $140 total, with most of that cost coming from Taipei, as a cab to the airport is about $40. Going from airport to AirBnb in Vietnam cost an average of maybe $12, even with generous tip. Total housing and travel expenses: $920.

Oh I also Uber-ed quite a bit, and took taxis, as it was most necessary in Saigon and partially necessary in Hanoi. Uber trips in Saigon averaged $0.90 to maybe $1.40 and that made coming back and forth between places super easy. Cabs in Hanoi were actually pricier, probably due to longer distances traveled but even with taxi-ing everywhere, the total cost was probably about $60. And oh right, SIMs were $14 for 10GBs over thirty days. So, about normal.

In contrast to Bali, the food in Vietnam was delicious and it was hard to go wrong. We lived on a beautiful street that served chicken pho right across the way and it was $1.50 for a glorious bowl. Overall the food in Hanoi was roughly $2-5 dollars, and to honest, my daily boba was probably more than most of the meals we had. Oh yeah, I found boba in Vietnam and lots of it! The Gong Cha in Hanoi was about $2.50 per cup and I went like every other day. I think I drank more boba than Vietnamese coffee this whole trip, easily.

Meals down south in Saigon got pricier, as we moved away from street foods and more into restaurants and such. Prices were roughly double for everything, and there were a whole lot more non-street options to explore. Overall I spent about $250 dining out — with caveats below — and roughly $60 on various snacks and boba. The biggest single dining expenses were about $12-18 for more upscale dinners in Saigon such as a catfish place, a vegetarian restaurant, and stuff like that.

I did do one big dinner for everyone in Hanoi, at Ưu Đàm Chay, which was $60 for four of us. I reaaaaally wanted the pineapple fried rice so I made us go to this fancy spot. Delicious and lovely presentation, but also ultimately disappointing from a pineapple fried rice perspective. Lesson I'll never learn: Don't order stuff in fruits just because it's in a fruit...

We watched one movie in Saigon, at about $5 per person. I'm happy to report that there are four popcorn options, and they can all be half/half-ed! We also went karaoke twice, once in each city, for a total of $250. I forgot the hourly rate but I think mostly the bill was drink related. Either way, singing is priceless and the decked out rooms and not-too-horrible electronic interface were doable.

And other than a Bavarian rose showcase we randomly went to that featured a nine-dollar entrance fee, it was just museums, museums, museums, which were about $2 per. In theory we went to some night clubs but Vietnamese night clubs apparently have no cover and you just waltz right in. You basically have to buy a table -- I have no idea for how much -- but we mostly just stood in the back, with the penned peasants, and then left quickly. Overall “play” was super cheap. Keep in mind that I didn’t actually do that much some days except stay-in at the AirBnb playing League and only emerging to eat... So take what you will out of that.

What I did do more in Vietnam than in Bali was shop! I bought a fantastic striped Faguo duffel at L'Usine Dong Khoi for way too much, used some hard American cash to buy bowls for my house, picked out some plastic jewelry and a trinket or two, plus some baby clothes for the nieces. Oh, and a  book I figured I could get nowhere else called A Summer in Sapa, which was located in the War Remnants Museum gift shop. Gotta support local writers you know. Oh wait, she's a white expat... I also got a haircut in Saigon, at a salon, for about $18.

Overall, two weeks in Vietnam cost $1,800 give or take, with half of that going to transportation and housing. I guess overall the bill is more than Bali but it definitely felt like there was more to do. And plus, the food was way better and a lot cheaper. Pho dreams!

Next up: Japan, aka “the place that will take all my money…."

Bali: 🏖, 💩, 🐦

What does two weeks in Bali look like? Let’s take a look… The exchange rate for Indonesian rupiah is currently IDR $13,680 to one US dollar. For the purposes of my trip I just divided everything by 13,500 because big numbers are confusing.

Flights cost a total of $650, with tickets being bought a week beforehand on the way there and then three days before on my way out. We flew Air Asia there, and I was wary of the budget airline, but it was fine even with a layover in Kuala Lumpur -- and overall cheaper even with the extreme baggage fees. On the way back though, I opted for China Airlines and a direct flight, which was about $400 one way. (Just had to get home!) Tack on about $100 for getting to and from the airport six separate times, and the total cost of getting door to door from Taipei to Bali was about $750.

Housing was cheap, as we had two people and opted for hostel-like conditions. The first AirBnB was bare bones and clean, and the second one was very nice, with daily breakfast and cleanings. The first one was $23 per night and the second $17. Split that between two people, plus tip, and all our housing costs came out to about $150 each for two weeks.

We didn’t scooter around, as recommended, so mostly it was walking around. But there were still taxis needed to go from Canggu to Ubud, about an hour's ride away, and that was roughly $18 one-way. Overall I spent maybe $40 on taxis and a handful of Ubers, but really didn’t ride in a car unless it was to another town.

SIM cards were easy to acquire, and even though I ran out of 10GB data three days before I left, I just got anther one, to the tune of $16 total, so about a dollar per day for 3G/LTE action.

Food was a problem, as we were in pretty touristy places and the options were limited to Westernized sit-down spots, or warungs, which were local road side restaurants (that mostly served the same thing). We avoided most of the upscale/midscale dining places, and shied away from all the "amazing fusion" food Bali is apparently becoming known for. Also, keep in mind I basically eat once or twice a day, so my food bill was pretty low.

Food in beachy Canggu was more expensive certainly, but overall a basic meal cost $4-7, with prices scaling up by a dollar or two either way. Portions were large, acai bowls and healthy type smoothies were plentiful, but finding cheap decent local food was mostly a bust. We did splurge for big dinners at La Favela ($65 for two), Room 4 Dessert ($60), and an Indonesian tapas place ($17) but otherwise most of the food was around ten bucks. Oh, except for my airport hamburger on the way back, that was a whopping $16 by itself. Also the one local chain I tried, a fried chicken place, gave me diarrhea for two days. So there's that...

Snacks of all kinds were consumed, to the tune of $25, plus $7 on groceries which probably means water and drinks, and maybe another $7 on laundry, extra paper towels, and toilet paper. I paid $6 for two packs of cigarettes, which came in just about the same for my drinking costs, since I don’t drink. Also, I didn’t really shop/buy anything, aside from $6 worth of trinkets at a gift store and $20 for a pair of big poofy pants that I'm very excited about.

“Play” in general cost $65 and that included $30 for the Bali Bird Park, $6 for Agung Rai Museum of Art, and about $20 for beach chair and surfboard rentals. (Standard beach rates were $7.50 for a chair and $3.50 for two hours with a board.) I actually did very little, so that represents the low end of what could be possible. There were no temples, shows, or much of anything else on my play list, so mostly it was just birds birds birds!

Overall the two weeks in Bali cost $2,000 all inclusive. As you can see, most of the cost is in getting there, but once in paradise you could live there for semi-cheap -- although not as cheap as you'd expect. Was paradise worth it? Well, I came back two weeks early, skipping Gili Islands and more surfing at Uluwatu, so you tell me!

Oi, Oi, Oi

And I’m back, squarely in San Diego and soaking in the sun. So far my routine consists of waking up at a reasonable hour — before 11AM, which is a miracle for me — drinking a bottle of Soylent for lunch (not a total meal replacement, unfortunately), and then lounging around until I take a daily dip in the pool. I’ve been back for about a month now, since returning from Brazil, and basically haven’t done much. Well, let’s rewind, back to Brazil.

So after two months in New York, I bounced down to South America in the beginning of August and landed in Sao Paolo. The reason? To see my friends! Two of my best friends from Taiwan happen to be Taiwanese-Brazilian and this was a chance to visit both of them. The trip down is surprisingly easy, with a direct flight from New York to GRU airport in Sao Paolo taking just ten hours or so. (Anything under ten hours is a short flight these days.)

My main fear would be that I’d emerge from the airport and be immediately lost, but my friend assured me if I just got my bags and headed outside, she would find me. And indeed she did, at 7AM no less. From there, we booked it to the bus station to pick up our other friend, who was arriving via bus from her hometown, sixteen hours away. So basically I had a shorter trip from the U.S. to South America than my friend had traveling across the wide expanse of Brazil. Did you know Brazil is actually bigger than the contiguous United States, so asking what Brazil is like is similar to asking “What’s America like?” There’s the coastal bits, the middle barren parts, and of course the rainforests, which were nowhere near where I went.

Rio was hosting the Olympics at this exact same time, but I avoided that of course. All the images of Brazil that flutter over to us — the beaches, the favelas, Carnival — were nowhere to be found. Instead I was in Sao Paolo for a week, which is considered the New York of Brazil. (Although I found it, at first pass, more like San Francisco.) During that time, I didn’t venture out much at night, because it’s dangerous, but did get to spend the week crashing at my friend’s new apartment watching Stranger Things and Gilmore Girls, before relocating to a beautiful AirBnB-ed loft apartment that overlooked the city.

And then a week in, I took the sixteen hour bus ride myself from Sao Paolo to Ponta Pora, which is way on the other side of the country, on the border of Paraguay and Brazil. My friend’s family lives on the Paraguay side, running an import/export business, and I spent the rest of my time there.

For the most part, Ponta Pora is a city that exists solely to import stuff from the Paraguay side to the Brazil side. Also, it’s the drug delivery center for Paraguay, so it’s also quite dangerous, with drug related killings happening quite often. I was assured “normal” people were never harmed though, during these incidents. One wild thing about Brazil/Paraguay is that the news outlets have no compunction against publishing the goriest photos of crime scenes and killings. It’s quite a shock to see the grisly images splashed on the front pages.

I spent most of my days hanging out, talking with D’s family, watching their daily life unfold, and getting to see a side of small town Brazil that most people wouldn’t experience. The entire town is only twenty thousand people, but in actuality it wasn’t that small, despite what D had advertised before. I had thought no movie theater would mean it's tiny, but really it's just like say, a Rancho Bernardo, minus the neighboring communities.

It was interesting to be immersed in a culture that I understood very little about, and to be in an environment where I understood nothing. From how banks worked, to all the armed guards at every place of business, to how people thought about various things (especially their views on race and ethnicity). It felt like the first few months in Taiwan, where everything was interesting simply by it being new and different.

Overall I found myself adapting to the rhythm of each day, and it coincided nicely with the kind of quiet I was looking for. And I turned from a late-night person into a semi-normal time person. I haven't really lived with another family for so long, not since my time in England, and D's family's strict mealtimes and schedules was a change for me. But like I said, I adapted pretty easily. I think.

And I found it very interesting to learn more about the families who moved from Taiwan to Brazil, seeking a better future and finding it in creation of their own businesses. Nowadays when we overthink every decision to go from even one coast to the other, it's hard to fathom how parents of our generation just picked up and left their home country, without any language, any prior conception of their destination, and often with no money in their pocket. Immigrants are so brave.

While originally I wasn't sure how long I'd be down there, I ended up coming back to the U.S. after about six weeks. And on the day before I left, I turned thirty-eight. And thus I turned into an adult. But more on that later. Here’s more about my trip down south, from the other blog. And with that, "boa noite!"

Days Are Gone

Since being back in New York, I've just been trying to catch up to my online life. Mostly that has meant doing emails, slamming together a bajillion fantasy sports blogs, and trying to capture via documentation all the things that happened in September. For most of the month I was in San Francisco and if moblogs are the true measure of exciting things happening, then September was a banner month. I had fifty-five moblogs for the month, a huge number considering that I had just 169 for all of 2012. The last time I had over fifty entries was in June and December...of 2007.

The first thing I dropped into SF for was houseboating year two. It was a slightly different lineup, and this time we invested in both a bigger boat and one with a top deck jacuzzi. I had this whole theory about the inevitable decline each year of group trips, but this one was spectacular. Everything exciting about last year's trip was amplified and being a more experienced crew, we knew how to iron out all the kinks. It felt like two days was actually too short, as another day or two of relaxing would have been nice, but between the jumping, swimming, singing, dancing, flip cupping, and having funning, there was just no time.

Sidenote: I was horrific at flip cup -- in contrast to last year -- and I was equally inept at beer pong. It's been awhile since I've been so terrible at something that everyone made fun of me. I mean, I usually try to avoid those situations. The whole point of life is to not do things you'll suck at right? Or was it to not suck in the first place? Anyway, this time out even my buddy, a sweet sweet someone who won't be named, turned on me and berated me for my inadequacies. That's okay though, I understood. In the heat of competition, it's sink or swim and I definitely sunk (the whole team). Why was I so bad? I have no idea. But if there's a year three of houseboat, I'm coming for redemption. While there were many highlights of the trip, one of mine was everyone getting invested into doing the cup song thing from Pitch Perfect. I don't care if it's overdone, my greatest dream was to have it happen. And it did.

You know you wish you were there to learn it too.

Every weekend in SF was jam packed with stuff. In-between it was major laundry and recovery days. George had cleared out all the stuff in the front alcove where her desk usually sits. She announced that she wanted me to have all my stuff in there and that I should drag the tatami mat into the room to sleep. I refused, because it was too far from the action and not in front of the TV. I took to calling the room "the doghouse" and used it as a staging and storage area, but didn't cave in to her demands to be relegated to the time out room.

Also the first day I was back in SF, coming off the high of a beautiful warm weekend on a lake, I was all like, "I'm ready to move back!" A few hours later, stuck on the wrong bus down to the Mission, all the things I detested about San Francisco came rolling back. Of course, that was before AMR lent me his spare bike. Riding around New York all summer had been super fun but now it was an essential part of my transportation. Without a bike to zip me from George's to AMR's, I would not have survived.

For our birthdays, George had the brilliant idea to gather everyone up for a ride across the Golden Gate Bridge and we did exactly that. We got our little crew together, waited out the delay of me popping a tire not two minutes into our journey, and then had a perfect ride down to Sausalito for brunch. Actually, come to think of it, the only other time I did that ride was right around our thirtieth birthday, five years ago. I was once again in SF piggybacking off of George's birthday plans and for some reason we had rented bikes and done the exact same SF to Sausalito route. This time around, everyone had their own bikes and AMR, Victor, and DLMOU did the trip in fixies. From what I understand, that's an impressive feat. Click here for their recent joyride video. The West Coast riders club is getting big. (JMZ is already threatening to defect if I don't step up my game.) I even took a bike on the BART, and rode from Oakland to Berkeley with the quickness. Although my friend

To live in San Francisco would require like every mode of transportation possible. Walk, bus, bike, drive, board. The costs must be enormous. Also we/they started playing basketball in the Mission on Tuesday nights. There's a beautiful near empty court right on Valencia and it's lighted with glass backboards. I only got to stick around for two sessions but so far the enthusiasm has kept up and if it keeps going, it's my number one reason for re-visiting. I don't recall there being a time when we had enough people wanting to play sports altogether in SF. Next, next, I got next!

On weekend three, we drove forty minutes south to an YMCA campsite for our friend's wedding. I knew Camp We+Do was going to be incredible because Stef is just the type of person who would know exactly how to make a camp wedding be perfect. Back at Michigan, Stef was literally the coolest person on campus and it was intimidating just to talk to her. I remember when she left a super nice message on my web page's guest book back in the day -- yes, web page -- and it was like "Stef knows who I am!" Fast forward many years and I was gearing up to attend her wedding.

The whole thing was inevitably amazing. Each detail was perfect and when the saxophonist burst out of the tree stump squawking out Estelle's "American Boy," that was the capper. Best wedding ever status. I mean, the ceremony itself was already reaching Hall of Fame levels because two guitars strummed a few chords and then Stef's family started off singing "Edelweiss" as the whole crowd joined in right when Stef and Mike walked in. All of this happened under a canopy of lovely trees. I haven't been touched watching two people get married in awhile, but this one almost made me shed a tear. For some reason, half of our friends sitting next to us had no idea what was going on. "Why does everyone know the words to this song?! I'm so confused." A group viewing of The Sound of Music was clearly in order.

Also, shout out to the debut of AMR's handmade boomcases. We had them on the houseboat but at camp they were even more of a hit. Speakers in a vintage suitcase? I've never felt cooler holding luggage. Speaking of music, the second night of the wedding, we danced from like nine in the evening until three in the morning. No stops, barely any bathroom or cigarette breaks. The music was that good, and the freestyle saxophone guy was killing it. Stef and Mike found him playing during Pride and hired him for the wedding. It was an incredible touch. The whole atmosphere of that night was magical.

Having already hit up a summer camp earlier this year, I think it should be an annual must do event. Since there's no cell phone reception and no schedule, camp is just a glorious time to be free and to have fun. I highly recommend summer camp for all of life's ailments, especially if you're planning a wedding.

Last thing. During afternoon activities announcements, my friend said that they were looking to organize a Dirty Dancing flash mob. Needless to say, I could not have been more excited. Re-enacting Dirty Dancing at summer camp! That's the dream! Under the guise of a yoga class, a dedicated group of us got together and practiced an impromptu routine set to "(I've Had) The Time of My Life." It came off perfectly, complete with some leaping (off tables) and twirling. Ultimately I declined to actually perform because it was only the girls doing it, but I recorded some footage and boy did I make sure I knew the moves. My only regret is that JonG was laid low by allergies, otherwise he would have replicated the Patrick Swayze moves. I mean, during practice he got up off the bench and showed us the proper steps ("No no, that's wrong, it's this move...") and literally every girl swooned. Dirty Dancing man, whew.

Videos:

• Houseboat: Cup Song | Heads Up | Dancing (via George)
• Birthday Ride
• Camp We+Do | Dirty Dancing
• Mission Basketball

My original flight out had me leaving a few days before Jasmine's thirtieth birthday. Influenced by George's poor decision making, it was clearly the wrong move. George had told me that I should just leave SF after the wedding but it didn't take long for me to realize that it was just an attempt for her to rid herself of me. Jasmine's birthday weekend was going to include too many festivities to miss out on so I just bought another ticket back to New York while ditching my original non-refundable one.

Fantastic decision obviously, as it's not every day you get to attend a birthday roast and toast. It takes balls to put yourself in front of people and have them say mean (but hopefully nice) things to your face. Like one of the video roasts declared, "Cuz Jasmine has the biggest *bleep*!" Haha, the best.

There was more of course. Old friends, new friends, camp friends, lots of naps, movie nights, Hello Kitty karaoke, birthday dinners cooked by top chefs, a lot of stuff. Fifty-five entries worth.

The Rest Is Still Unwritten

After leaving Utah, otherwise known as the place Footloose was filmed, we traveled on to Denver. Because Leslie's friend was still at a concert, we spent our time eating Chinese food at a place called "blue ocean." I'm pretty sure the name was aspirational, as was the food. Afterward, still with nothing to do, we pulled up in a parking lot and played Whitney Houston and Deniece Williams from the stereo and danced with reckless abandon because who the hell did we know in Colorado? The guys closing up the pizza place stared and two girls from the coffee shop came out on a smoke break, saw us dancing, and mock danced also. Whatever, you all want to dance with somebody, I know you do. I also received my first house dancing lesson from Leslie. This was all caught on video and the footage is available here.

Despite a late arrival, we decided to head into downtown for brunch at this place called Snooze. They are apparently opening a location in San Diego soon, which is swell because SD lacks in good brunch places. Well, this location had a two hour wait and that left us with lots of downtown exploring to do. Denver is basically like San Diego actually. If you've been to both, you'll know what I mean. Leslie's friend whom we stayed with is just about the nicest guy ever and he not only housed us but then paid for our lunch. Also he had some amazing white couches in his condo. Getting white leather couches is a statement you know? It says that you are somebody who cares about cleanliness and am unafraid of having your friends sit in gleaming perfection. I would never dare to get white couches in my house.

This is quickly turning into a recap, which is not what I wanted. Basically after Denver we embarked on the bulk of our road trip. Originally Leslie wanted to pass through Chicago but it was decided that having Kansas City barbeque was more of a priority. Housed in a gas station, Oklahoma Joe's was listed as one of Anthony Bourdain's Thirteen Places to Eat Before You Die. While I'm not much of a ribs guy, Leslie said that they were definitely the best ribs she'd ever tasted and with the casual atmosphere and cheap prices, OK Joe's was well worth the trip. Later on, as we approached St. Louis, we reminded each other of how both of us had applied to Washington University. Basically that meant Leslie and I were fated to meet regardless of where we went to college.

I don't know if Leslie had any trepidation about spending a whole week with me but I sure didn't have any concerns about her. I mean, even though we've never attempted a trip of this magnitude together before, we've been in each other's lives for so long that even in our annoyances I knew we would be fine. Our biggest disputes were probably what kinds of music we could share, our differing stances on the death penalty, and my lack of motivation in the mornings. I did learn that the girl had to be fed every four or five hours, like a ravenous Tamagotchi. (Why do girls get so cranky when hungry?) Back in college, Leslie and I often acted like an old married couple and ten plus years later, the energy was pretty much the same.

For her, the trip was a necessary adjustment period from life in San Francisco back to living near family. She said she welcomed the time to let the Bay slink away versus just jumping into an airplane and being deposited on the East Coast. I was hoping to come to some life decisions on our trip too, but singing and dancing got in the way. The good news is we played a game where we categorized our friends according to what colors we think they would be. We also talked a lot about the criminal justice system as she tried to get me to start Season 1 of The Wire. I refused because I knew it would suck me in and ruin the rest of my October.

Overall, driving cross country was much easier than I expected. Five hundred miles a day works out to about eight hours, give or take, and even with just two drivers, it wasn't too bad. Sure we didn't quite go coast to coast -- I'm getting dropped off in Penn State for a week or so -- but we made it with energy and enthusiasm to spare. Both of us would have wanted to take a longer trip across, as our schedule left little time for dawdling post-Utah. I didn't really get to soak in the stillness of middle America, nor did we make many stops, except for once to a kitschy tourist trap called Nostalgiaville that specialized in Elvis, Betty Boop, and Wizard of Oz paraphernalia.

Leslie took about a thousand photos and let's hope they see the light of day soon. In the meantime, here are mine: Roadtrip 2011. In total, we drove approximately 3,075 miles, stayed in Mt Carmel Junction (UT), Panguitch (UT), Denver (CO), Topeka (KS), Brazil (IN) and only almost died once. Well, not even, but Leslie screamed like we were about to die, even though the deer crossing the road was walking incredibly slowly and I was driving even slower. #trust

Ain't No Mountain High Enough

Years ago, three of my good friends went on a road trip to Utah and Arizona. They were going to camp, hike, and take in the sights. After initially being considered their fourth, I was dis-invited. They could not fathom how an indoor loving, dirt hating, physically frail person such as me could survive the rigors of their upcoming trip. Now I must use this forum to set the record straight.

I have camped before. Successfully.

I have carried a hiking backpack through the wilderness to a clearing, made a tent, and then slept there dirty and unwashed for a day or two. I've rowed a boat through the water and then slept on the sand as wild pigs ran over us in the morning. I have snow shoed across endless terrain until I got sick (ok, maybe I feigned sickness to skip the next day). I have lived on a house boat for ten days while digging holes on the shore for our feces. I have slept in huts, hammocks, and bare ground. I have been places where there was no electricity and Wifi. Yes, most of these experiences were more than ten years ago -- thus violating my "If you did it over ten years ago then it doesn't count" rule -- but they were done.

Admittedly, I generally avoid physical exertion but if the end result is worth it, I'm willing to do it. Which brings me to my next point. The whole idea that the harder you work to get somewhere, the more valuable the experience, that's entirely bunk. Applied to hiking, this is the idea that if you go twenty miles through the wild, the picturesque scene at the end will be worth more. Bullshit I say! If there's an easy tram around, I'd rather just take that. What would motivate me to get to the top of a mountain isn't a sight that I could easily see elsewhere, but something actually valuable. Like ice cream.

When I'm made hiking captain of the world, I'd install ice cream and Jamba Juices at the end of every trail. "But that would ruin nature!" What's ruining nature is two million people crunching through this man-made trail buddy, just shut up and hand me a spoon.

As we ascended near the top of one of Zion's mountains, we asked people coming down if going all the way was worth it. Generally their answer was that the sight was okay but nothing particularly amazing. "There's an unimpeded view of the canyon but you can also just see it from much lower. It's about the same." I know this missing pot of gold doesn't hold true for all hikes but if you handed out gelato and sorbet at the top, that would instantly make everyone motivated to keep climbing. At some portions of the Great Wall, you can toboggan down to the bottom after hiking up. I'd install these too, but change the toboggans to water slides. Why not think outside the box a little? I could make hiking so much better.

Also, I must put on record my aversion to pretty sights. While Leslie was gushing and awestruck at every moment by the majestic beauty of Zion, I found myself uninspired by anything that I saw. "The forests in Yosemite are nicer. The rocks here are interesting but not that great. Where are the mountain goats?" ran my inner monologue. When we got to some water advertised as "pools," they were more like dribbling streams and tepid ponds. Yippee.

At one stop, a woman was posing on the rocks as if she were an aspiring Sports Illustrated swimsuit model. Another guy, a young foreigner, was high up, sitting barefoot, smoking a cigarette, and looking pensive. I guess the clicheness of what people do in nature gets to me. Yes it's pretty. Yes it's unbelievable God put this here just for us. Yes it's amazing we get to live on this amazing Earth. Yes it's nice and we can share a moment. But overall I'm unmoved by views without some context.

I think I'm generally more interested in the science of nature than actual nature itself. Like how did these rocks come to be these striated colors? What's the topography like? Are these plants native or imported? Who settled this area? Is this a good place to hide from mountain lions? Just looking at something pretty does nothing for me. (Unless it's the ocean, then it does everything for me.) I also prefer exploring versus "hiking." I'd rather just walk around and see where I end up as opposed to going toward a destination. The destinations tend to disappoint unless there's a deep pool I can dive into or something.

In related news, Leslie is out at Bryce Canyon National Park today while I'm at the motel sucking up Wifi. My Google Reader proved to be more enticing than different but the same rock formations. For the record, Zion is beautiful though, and gorgeous, if you listen to Leslie versus my Negative Nelly soundtrack.

"Which reminds me: we were driving home yesterday and the person I was with asked if I liked to travel. I said no, I didn't like traveling. She looked at me like she was seeing me for the first time. We were climbing a hill. Everybody likes to travel, it seems. If you read the personal ads almost everyone mentions traveling. The only thing more popular than traveling is hiking. So I amended it slightly. I said, I like going places with people I care about. She said she liked seeing things she'd never seen before. I could see where this was all headed."
-Excerpted from Stephen Elliot's Daily Rumpus-

The High Road

Concerned about arriving at our reservation late, Leslie suggested that we leave San Francisco in the middle of the night. Lucky for her, the middle of the night is when I'm most awake. So a day later than originally planned and in the dark, we set off for Utah at five in the morning -- aiming to arrive by nine, to avoid the twenty five dollar late fee. Three blocks away from George's apartment, we started hearing scraping sounds every time we hit a minor bump.

Other things about Leslie's Accord that I discovered a few minutes in: The dashboard lights don't work, the right side mirror is warped and cracked, the driver's seat doesn't slide back. But the air conditioning was fixed and the headphone jack she installed earlier that day worked beautifully. Good enough. Driving her car reminded me of my own 1997 Accord, which was in a similar state before we gave it away earlier this year. Perhaps illogically, I have no real concerns that the car will break down somewhere along the way. I tend to take a "if I don't see/think there's a problem, there isn't one" philosophy with vehicles.

The scraping was a concern though. Leslie's initial thought was that there was too much weight in her trunk. While a hundred or so extra pounds didn't seem like it would affect much, it made logical sense that luggage needed to be jettisoned. So instead of heading for I-80 and the open road, we found ourselves at a slow moving FedEx in the Financial District, preparing to ship two of Leslie's bigger bags across the country.

Despite waking up at five, we didn't actually leave the city until seven. The sun was up and there were still seven hundred miles to go. As we shot across the Bay Bridge, the car did it again. Bump, scrape, scrape. Oh well, what's the worst that could happen? Something drops from the undercarriage? A tire pops?

Lessons learned during the first day's worth of driving. The groves lining Bakerfield are pistachio trees. That's what we've decided after ruling out apricot and olive. Also, in shocking news, Bakersfield is California's ninth largest city and the 51st largest city in the United States. It is also home to the world's largest ice cream plant. Impressive right? In reality Bakersfield took five minutes to drive through. What other sorts of towns are we going to come across if Bakersfield is a relative metroplis? I'm excited to find out.

Lesson two: My co-pilot has a lead foot and despite being a recent law school graduate, has absolutely no regard for driving restrictions. After being pulled over for speeding, she expressed annoyance at getting caught at only 20 mph over the limit and then she told the officer that it seemed wrong that there was no ticket amount on her paperwork. "Well that just seems ridiculous! Don't you know how much it will be?" The officer was not swayed by her indignation.

Seeing as she's accrued a ticket in only three hours of driving, the over/under for number of citations Leslie will accumulate on this trip is three. Lay down your bets now people. I've also dubbed her car "The Black Hole" because so far she's lost or misplaced her eye mask, her cell phone, sunblock, and a few more items despite the fact that we've only exited the car like twice. At the end of this trip, when she cleans everything out, there's going to be a pile of goodies shaken out.

A thirteen hour drive, one time change, and two stops for food later, we pulled into our country inn at eleven. Before the trip I looked into our audio book options. I thought something intellectually stimulating would keep us engaged. After downloading stuff like The Souls of Black Folk, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Don Quixote, the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and the Communist Manifesto, I'm pretty sure none of them will be used as the passenger is just going to knock out if we put these on. Music and podcasts it is!

The Land of Make Believe

Over the past weekend I went on a holiday retreat to Palm Springs, located about a hundred miles northwest of San Diego. It's a man made oasis in the middle of the California desert. After driving through miles of sandy landscape, we descended into the valley to see acres of golf courses, suburban tract homes with well manicured lawns, and gleaming resorts. I'd never been to Palm Springs before but a friend had a timeshare so even though it was one of the least likely places I'd normally agree to go, I said, "Yes."

A little more history on Palm Springs is in order. I think originally, Palm Springs was a place for celebrities to hang out and have an escape from Hollywood. Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, Clark Gable, Gene Autry and those good old boys would come out and carouse in the desert sun. Nowadays Palm Springs is probably celebrity free since everyone I know mostly associates the place with old people and golfers. On this last fact, it's jarring to see so much green in the middle of a giant dirt bowl. I immediately wondered where the water was being pumped in from. Turns out it's from the Colorado River and Palm Springs uses more than half of California's share for its farms -- more than Los Angeles and San Diego's usage combined.

Now I don't know how much of this water is necessary for farming but I'd suspect a lot of it goes toward tending those golf gardens. Upon further research I can't even figure out what is being grown in Palm Springs with all this water since the only farms I could find online were references to wind farms. The miles of modern windmills fascinated me by the way. They are awesomely symmetrical looking and I liked spotting the ones that were out of order and not spinning along with its siblings. Well they were awesome until I found out that the electricity generated by the 3000+ windmills is mostly used to keep the Coachella Valley humming. Someone correct me if I'm wrong but it seems like there's a lot of water and infrastructure being used here for only a few hundred thousand people.

To be fair, Palm Springs also serves as a semi-oasis for the gays. "Current estimates are that up to thirty three percent of Palm Springs' residents identify as gay and lesbian. In addition, there are a number of gay resorts, bars, restaurants, and clubs. Wikipedia further illuminates by providing this tidbit: Palm Springs has one of the highest per capita rates of HIV/AIDS in the nation because of their extensive health-support systems.

Forget my hastily researched history of what keeps Palm Springs around, let's focus instead on the people. We stayed at very nice Marriot resort and everything about the place was classy. Our spacious condo overlooking a golf course, a beautiful soaring lobby, gondolas and caged parrots there for entertaining, and a staff attentive to every need. In fact, the place was the very definition of luxury, if by luxury you mean the entitled upper middle class versus dirty sopping rich luxury.

So if you love thirty dollar entrees, retiree shuttle van drivers, fifteen dollar poolside chargers, and an amusing mix of douchebags and their entourages -- in various sizes and ages, although not colors unless you differentiate between levels of tan -- then Palm Springs is the place for you. The very definition of classy yet trashy, Palm Springs was like a Vegas-lite. And you know how much I dislike Vegas. What's even worse about Palm Springs though is its absolute lack of minorities. At least in Vegas there are packs of minorities and mixed groups of people milling around. Lately I've been hyper conscious of spaces that are only filled with white people and Palm Springs was the definition of that. Sure there were a few European tourists, a gaggle of Asians there for a ballroom dancing competition, and the service staff had any number of Latinos and blacks, but the clientele was basically all the same. Semi-young adults transported from the worst areas of downtown San Diego or Pacific Beach, or families from Rancho Bernardo.

I may have to start a Tumblr about spaces with only white people in them. But I fear I'd have to do too much field research. Don't get me wrong, I love my white friend, but there are certain places that are overwhelmingly a particular type of white that makes me all sorts of uncomfortable. It's not the whiteness so much as the attitude. I'll try to explain it better in another post. And it's not whiteness per se, I mean, any spaces with a mono-ethnic crowd makes me weirded out lately.

The biggest problem I had with Palm Springs was how comfortable I felt. Intellectually I detested it for the utter lack of diversity, the overriding sense of economic entitlement, and a "these are people here to serve me so they better do it well" attitude, but this was the sort of place I grew up visiting. The accomodations, the marble floors, the delusions of grandeur settings, all of these were vastly familiar to me. I can easily imagine myself saying, "Hey, a gondola! Cool!" And that's the problem with Palm Springs. I went for research and found exactly what I expected, which just supported and heightened my hypocrisy.

Never Never Lands

We're back, alive and well from our European vacation. The good news is that my gold star travel buddy reputation has been burnished and I'm awaiting a Yelp-ish review about the whole bit. "Safe to take overseas! I'd do it with Jon again in a heartbeat! Don't hesitate to make a reservation!"

The bad news is that I was chided for being too agreeable. "Don't you have a damn opinion? I know you do! Say something!" My advance strategy to be the quiet voice of optimism failed because my travel mates have known me for too many years, and too well, to think that a lack of verbal negativity meant I wasn't stewing up judgements on the inside. They called my bluff and didn't want anything to do with my false enthusiasm. "Just tell us what you want to do, you're being annoying." Like I said, a four star review is forthcoming.

I think I owe the world, and my future self, a thorough documentation of our two week long exploits. Luckily I won't actually subject anyone to the details since there's nothing worse than an "I did this, I saw this, I loved this" post. Still, the afterglow of the vacation is settling in and I can't help but share my joy with you that I was on vacation while you likely were not. Take that, take that.

That last statement was brought to you by one of my travel friends, who didn't want to aggressively update her online life out of fear that her co-workers would get slightly jealous. For reasons I don't fully understand, people hate on other people for traveling far and wide while they're stuck in an office. I say more power to the people who can get away, more power to the ones who can skip outta town.

A condensed version of our trip exists in photo and video form. I'd recommend the video version because the slideshow track is Miike Snow's "A Song for No One," which is wildly appropriate because despite pre-buying tickets to their show in London, we missed the entire thing.

Friday night, as we exited the Tube and headed toward the theater, a crowd of edgy and fashion forward London kids went streaming by. This wouldn't have worried us except they were all coming toward us, as we were the only people wading upstream. Not a good sign. The tickets said doors open at seven so we figured it would be safe to arrive around ten. Running just a little late, we got to Camden Town and found the concert doors wide open and the event concluded. Miike Snow had appeared on-stage at nine. Bands never start when they're supposed to Stateside, especially on a weekend. We used our American brains to assume British conventions.

To add injury to the whole experience, a web show was using Flip cameras to interview concert goers. "Hello, how was the show? Would you mind telling us about your experience?" she said in a beautiful accent.

My companions and I looked at each other. I was willing to just pepper the air with platitudes, anything for a chance at air time. Before I could answer, Ameer admitted, "We missed the concert." Camera off, look of sadness from the previously beaming hostess.

"I'm sorry. It was really amazing. They were amazing. And such a great venue too. You guys should really come back." Thanks lady, we're here for another thirty hours, of course we'll be back. But that was the worst thing that happened on the entire trip. Everything went swimmingly, we encountered gorgeous weather everywhere we went, and we each took two to three showers a day, depending on the activities lined up. I had never been so clean and yet so dirty at the same time.

Brief notes on the cities we hit up.

[London]

Most of the major "take a picture here" attractions can be hit up in an afternoon of walking, mainly around the Square Mile. The Tower of London, London Bridge, Millenium Bridge, St. Paul's Cathedral can all be easily accessed. To my infinite disappointment, Westminster Abbey was closed when we visited. Big Ben is good for a quick snap or two but otherwise it just hangs out in the background. I'd only go on the London Eye at gun point, or blackmailed. Of the musuems, the Tate Modern stuck out for having gads of famous pieces. The British Museum houses all of England's stolen cultural treasures, but the main lobby is architecturally kind of cool.

Avoid Piccadilly Square at all costs as it's overrun by tourists and looks trash infested. Trafalgar Square is far nicer. Nothing gets the hip hop club bouncing like La Bamba followed up by Mambo No. 5. Express trams to local airports not named Heathrow are easy and convenient. Delicious digestive biscuits and Magnum ice cream bars are my dream diet. If I had a Top Shop near me I'd be so much better dressed. This is a paparazzi photo of me emerging from a fish and chip shop, run by a Cantonese proprieter and thus overwhelmingly authentic. England, I speak the language and that's always a bonus.

[Amsterdam]

Everyone speaks English here too, which they start learning at a young age. If you don't know the difference between Netherlands, Dutch, Danish, Denmark, Holland, you should probably watch the World Cup. The Red Light District and cannabis clubs are for noobs. To rent a display box, not even a high traffic one, costs about 200 euro a day. A generic suck and fuck (or was it the other way around?) costs fifty euro. You do the math. The Asian food is excellent here, and Indonesian food is the adopted cuisine of the Dutch. The Anne Frank Museum actually sells VHS video tours alongside DVDs. The VHS copies are two euros more. I'd pay quadruple quadrople that much to have that hour of my life back. I hear the Dutch Resistance Museum is far better. Take a bike tour through Amsterdam, it's not only beautiful, but slightly dangerous dodging in and out of traffic, and childishly thrilling. The canal ride, by contrast, is comparable to the Disneyland tram for excitement.

The progressive attitude and laid back atmosphere of Amsterdam won me over. It's the literal whore with a heart of gold city. And they have quite the interesting history and politics and policies, which is lovingly explained to you on Mike's Bike Tours, which we highly recommend. While there are few minorities to be found, I felt comfortable even when faced with the occasional "ching chong ching" commentary. Hey, when in the Netherlands right?

[Barcelona]

My beloved city. I've been saying I would move here above any other city for a good decade now. After another few days there I've shelved that dream. My problem? The language barrier. I don't speak Spanish, few people speak English. I could learn Spanish but I have only so few brain cells left to go around. There is almost nothing I don't like about Barcelona, barring its lack of Asian food. I love the Gaudi, the art, the open space, the old town corridors, the beach, the lifestyle and the siesta. Oh how I love the siesta and arriving at a club at two in the morning knowing nothing will close.

Our big night out in Barcelona involved getting dropped off where all the touristy folk go clubbing. Instead we found a strip of raucous techno and salsa bars that basically reeked of Tijuana. Every club tried to rope you in with free shots. Most of them were worth five minutes of your time. The clientele was lower to lowest class. We about gave up after an hour until we happened to walk two blocks over and found the mega dance clubs. Never have I been so relieved to see douchebags lined up to go inside. Whew. After nearly being kept out due to my cartilage piercing (the guy ahead of us was rejected because of his hair style), we danced the night away at some one syllable name. The girls met some Italian rugby players and were picked up and thrown around, perhaps to the beat. That ended when George was faced with the wife of one the players. "That's my husband," she informed, probably jabbing a well manicured finger at my poor defenseless sister.

I was nowhere to be found; I was dancing remember?

One note about dancing/clubbing in other countries: It's all the same old shit. Same songs, same stereotypes, same everything. If you've been to one over/under crowded club you've been to them all. What is different is McDonald's, I make it a point to hit up at least one in every city.

Over-enthusiasm over, back to regularly schedule griping now that I'm back in the US. Aren't you excited?