Blair was going to France with her boyfriend and 3 of their friends from LA. We had been thinking of going to Paris as well, so we decided to overlap some of the dates.

Dave and I went to London on May 31. We spent 3 days wandering the streets of London, eating pub food, goat cheese, and sightseeing. Even though I’d been to many of the places before, we went to the Houses of Parliament and saw Big Ben, saw the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace, walked along the river, went to Abbey Road and Denmark Street, and had dinner with my family friend Lawrence and his wife.

Afterward, we took the EuroStar to Paris. We spent the first night walking around the Louvre (which is amazing at night). Then the next day, we tried to go to the Musee D’orsay, but the line was so long we gave up and just went for a long walk and lunch. Then, Blair and Dave and I went to the Eiffel Tower. Blair decided not to go tup with us, so we went up alone. Turns out she knew something I didn’t – Dave asked me to marry him!!

When we came down, Blair was waiting to take us out for a celebratory drink. We sat in the shade of the tower at the [name] museum and drank lovely juices (since none of us really likes champagne .

Later, we went to Notre Dame and spent the rest of the day there.

There’s more…

We started at Anton’s house in SF and headed out on I-80 toward Livermore. We followed Google Maps’ directions, which included “Old Priest Grade”, an amazingly cool, winding road that goes way up one side and way down the other. Here’s a video I found on YouTube of someone riding it. We then stayed at the Yosemite Riverside Inn, right at the Western gate to Yosemite Park.

The next morning we all woke up early and rode into Yosemite Park. Within a couple hundred feet of the entrance, we saw a bear in a field, but there were too many people parked by the side of the road for us to stop and take photos. We went on to a beautiful waterfall (here’s Phoenix doing his best impression of a bear, raaaar!):

We continued through Yosemite and up through Tioga Pass (the highest mountain pass in the Sierras), where there was snow on the ground (plowed to the sides of the road) and waterfalls gushing from the sides of the roads. We stopped at more amazing vistas…

And saw marmots!

And took our group photo:

We got through Yosemite and out the other side where we went to a little biker restaurant and bar to fuel ourselves up before the next 50 miles to a hot springs we had heard about named Travertine.

We got there and quickly decided that Paul’s and my bikes wouldn’t do so well on the rutted, unpaved road to the springs so I hopped on Phoenix’s bike and Paul hitched a ride in a car. The springs were perfect…3 pools: 104, 102, and 100 degrees. When we got there, some folks were looking at it but not going in and by the time we left there were about 4 other people in the pools. Check out the view from the tubs:

After soaking and general relaxing, we got back on the bikes to head back through Yosemite and to our hotel at the Western entrance to spend the night. On the way back through Yosemite, we saw another bear!! This time we stopped for a photo.

Needless to say, we all slept very well after yet another amazing day riding.

The next morning we got up a little later and headed to Carson City, Nevada by way of Cherry Lake Road through Stanislaus National Forest. Cherry Lake Road (and then Big Oak Flat Rd) was by far, the most amazing road I have ever seen. Perfectly paved with no center line, twisty and turny with big sections of curves that you could see all the way through and almost no other cars. It was like we had our own private race track.

Once we got to near the end, the road got old and crumbly with “tar snakes” running through it. We had to slow way down because a tar snake in the middle of a curve could easily knock you off the road. When we came out, we were in Groveland and stopped at a little park to relax. A few minutes later, a big group of riders came out and stopped in the park too. We all started chatting and they are from SF too and were doing an almost identical ride to us but theirs was Friday – Monday and ours was Thursday – Sunday! I, of course, marketed that we were from SFSI and gave them all postcards.

Unfortunately, while they were waiting for their friends to come out, a car came over and said there was a motorcycle crash near the end of the road. They sent one of their folks out to look and they came back and said 2 of their riders crashed on the tar snakes. They were fine, but their bikes were too messed up to ride.

We finished our ride to Carson City with Sonora Pass (the 2nd highest pass in the Sierras at 9624 feet!) on Hwy 108. It was one of the scariest roads I’ve ever been on – absolutely no guard rails and a cliff on one side and a mountain on the other. And snow on the ground, so it was freezing cold. And waterfalls leaking out onto the roads. And cold mountain gusts to throw you off. FUN!

We got to Carson City by 7PM at which point I had to get horizontal for a while. We all rested a little and then went out to get food and drinks and absolutely NOT ride our motorcycles

On our way out to dinner we ran into our motorcycling friends from SF!

That night, we slept really really well and headed out Sunday at about 10. We rode back through 50, stopped in the adorable town of Fair Oaks, CA for lunch. Apparently it’s well known for having free range chickens in the streets. We were visited by some very pretty roosters at the lunch place. We then finished the ride up on Hwy 160 which rides along the top of the dike above the Sacramento Delta. We raced motorboats and got giant white puffs like snow in our visors.

After Sacramento, it was all highways and then the Bay Bridge and then home.

Can’t wait to do it again!!

Cancun was total Spring Break headquarters, with American chain restaurants and lots and lots of booze. There was prescribed silliness in all the bars, like clowns and dirty nametags:

Despite the complete lack of Mexican culture, it was also completely beautiful, with white sands beaches, bright blue water, and a nice breeze to keep it from getting too cold.

More than anything, we drank and partied by night (including the last night dancing til we fell over) and relaxed, read, and snorkeled by day. Not a bad way to spend a long weekend

Also, Magnificent Frigatebird:

Groningen is a little university town and it was cold and snowy when we got there. The canals were frozen over and there was a dusting of snow on the ground. On the canals were houseboats that looked like they couldn’t move if they wanted to, it’s like a little neighborhood on the water.

I spent the days looking for jobs online, using my cell phone (with local SIM) to do phone interviews, and walking around in the afternoon once the snow melted. I found fun things like the FEBO (Dutch fast food, automat style):

And went to the mall and found where Peeps come from:

We went to come fantastic restaurants on the quest for good vegetarian food. We went to the Restaurant de Zevende Hemel (7th Heaven) and I had lunch at Eetcafe Roezemoes (yummy egg salad sandwich).

After a week of the cold and job hunting, we went to Amsterdam for the weekend for some fun!

I hadn’t been to Amsterdam since around 2000, but I remembered things like the crooked buildings held up by the neighboring homes:

Since we only had a couple days in Amsterdam, I looked up some things to find. I had read about the Homomonument and we made it a goal to find it. Turns out it was a dock which was made into a monument against gay oppression:

Another thing I wanted to find was the poezenboot (cat boat), which is a cat shelter on a boat. The cats mostly roamed free on the inside of the boat and they solicited people to adopt them.

We also went to the Red Light District, which was less scary than I remember. The only thing I really wanted to find was the place where Jim and I stayed when we were there in 2000. It was a haberdasher’s house where they rented out the top 2 rooms to boarders. I found it by memory! And they had hats in the window still!

But my main purpose was to see Keiara, my very good friend from high school.

We spent the whole day together in Covent Garden and Soho. I got to meet her husband Steve and heard all about what she’s been doing in the last XX years.

The next morning, we left for Amsterdam…

Besides the moving and the reverse culture shock, we didn’t do much. I bought groceries and cooked dinner every night and spent a lot of time watching movies and jogging. The reverse culture shock was an interesting thing to experience, especially since my parents have a business training businesspeople in expatriation and repatriation. I had a lot of anxiety and general worry about my life back in SF as well as the usual breakup stuff.

Once I was back on my feet, I booked my flight back to SF where I would stay with my friends Kevin and Diamond before moving in with my friend Jody.

We mostly spent time in Pete’s house hanging out and eating. It was snowing out and the ski resort next to his place was covered in snow.

After a couple days, we decided to drive up to Pittsburgh to visit the rest of the family, who I hadn’t seen in about 12 years. We drove in Pete’s El Camino:

Getting to Pittsburgh, I stayed the night with my grandmother in her apartment and in the morning, we went to my aunt Anita’s house. I got to meet her 12 year old daughter Li’an for the first time and reconnected with my cousins Debbie and Sandy. The next day, my aunt Emily came over and we spent the day playing Wii and catching up. My grandmother used to bowl competitively and she kicked so much butt at Wii bowling:

In the end, I was so happy to have gotten back in touch with everyone and I left hoping I’d come back soon.

My friend Kristin joined us in Bangkok. We spent a couple days there where we went shopping, went to the Grand Palace and some temples. One of the highlights was a restaurant called Cabbages and Condoms where the food is amazing, the grounds are lush and beautiful, and the money goes to support safer sex in Thailand.

After a couple days, Kristin and I left Jacob alone and headed to Koh Samet for a night. Koh Samet was beautiful and warm and a nice break for me from the hustle and bustle of Tokyo and then Bangkok. We swam, sat on the beach, read, and ate. Ahhh.

We went back to Bangkok and got on the night train to Chiangmai.

We knew a couple folks from our Burning Man camp who were  living in Chiangmai, Robin and Daniel. They were teaching there for 2 years, so they knew the area really well and took us to some cool places we might not have found on our own.

One of the places we all went was the Friends of the Asian Elephant Elephant hospital. Apparently there is another elephant hospital which is more well known but does less for the long term benefit of the elephants in Thailand.

With Kristin, we went all around the temples, restaurants, and major attractions of Chiangmai until she left (a total of 10 days in Thailand). Once she left, Jacob and I rented a motorbike and went to Doi Suthep, a temple I’d visited on my last visit to Thailand. It’s a giant, gold temple about 30 minutes out of Chiangmai.

Interestingly enough, we both barely got sick at all during the entire 7 months of traveling. That was apparently enough luck, so we both got the flu. Mine was bad enough that I was stuck in our room for almost a whole week eating white rice and drinking Emergen-C.

Once I got better, we spent a bunch of time with Robin and Daniel doing things like going to the movies (they stand and sing the national anthem before each movie), going to the mall, walking around night markets, and eating at the amazing food market in the old town.

I also learned how to rock climb!

This is where our trip ends. Jacob and I broke up and we both came home separately.

From here on out, this blog will be about MY travels.

For the 2 weeks that Mike was with us, we walked and subwayed like fiends, Mike taking in the city with new eyes and us finding new and interesting bits we hadn’t noticed and going to new places. Jacob was excited to have some newfound time to himself and play lots of Go (Igo, in Japan).

Here’s Mike at the Meiji Shrine near Harajuku, you can’t tell he’s heartbroken that he broke his favorite lens by dropping it in a 100 Yen shop:

Over the next few days we went to Shinjuku, Harajuku (shopping!), and Akihabara. Mike freaked out about as much as we did over Akihabara and we took him to a maid cafe where he was possibly more uncomfortable than I was! We tried new foods as we had a companion with different tastes than us, however, we never could figure out the restaurant vending machines.

While Jacob was playing a fighting game in a video game shop, we went to a Kawaii Photobooth. Mike pretended it was work research since he works on Photobooth. You can see him here seriously deconstructing how they box up the cute (photo from his Flickr):

After a few days of Tokyo silliness, Mike wanted to go see Kyoto while our train passes were still valid. Since Jacob was “shrined out” and I can go to temples and shrines indefinitely, we took Jacob’s Japan Rail Pass and went to Kyoto for the day (a very long day).

Kyoto was great the second time! We went to Tōdai-ji, the world’s largest wooden building.  Then we took the subway to Gion where we had lunch and went to the major shrines there. It was quite warm as shown here by Mike cooling his feet in a stream wating ice cream:

We spent a lot of time on the river relaxing and watching people and birds. Then we got on a train that would get us back to Tokyo before the subway stopped running. In all, a silly trip to make in a day, but we had a great time!

Kai, the front desk guy at our hotel, mentioned that there would be fireworks (for some festival) visible from the roof of our hotel. We had a fantastic view of 2 different shows!

Another night, we went to Odaiba to see the Gundam. We made it there right at sunset for some amazing photos and the show I heard rumor of: where the Gundam lights up, moves its head and smoke comes out of its chest. I had never seen so many cameraphones come out at once!

When the show was over, we went to the other part of Odaiba to ride the Hello Kitty Ferris Wheel. I don’t usually have a fear of heights, but on the way up, I couldn’t move and could only clutch the hand rail out of complete terror. Here’s Kitty mocking me:

For some reason, the way down was much easier. Probably being able to see the rest of the wheel and the other people in their ferris wheel cars.

Something we all wanted to do was go to the Studio Ghibli Museum. Jacob had read that you can buy tickets ONLY inside Lawson’s convenience stores using a special machine. We had been buying food at the Lawson’s right next to our hotel, so we went in and Jacob attmpted to use it. Unfortunately, it was 100% in Japanese with no English options. We got the guy at the store to help and (after many frustrating minutes using very bad UI) managed to buy them for a few days later.

It was totally worth the wait! Going in, there’s a little room in the front with doors leading off of it into at least 4 more rooms, and a second floor with balcony and a spiral staircase enclosed in wire. We opted for door #1, a room with zoetropic displays from many of the movies and a really interesting movie projector-like thing that showed bits of movies in different parts of it by shining light through the film. Then we headed over to the movie room to see the special 20 minute long, changes every month, movie. It was a cute film about some kids in school building a ship and setting sail in it. No subtitles, but easy enough to understand.  After that, we all separated and went off to the other rooms and to explore outside.

Unfortunately, photos aren’t allowed at all inside, so we only took photos outside, mostly of the Castle in the Sky robot:

We left Studio Ghibli happy and tired and went back to the hustle and bustle of Tokyo.

We decided on which day we would go to the Tsukiji Fish Market and Jacob and I decided to sleep for a few hours somewhere near the market and be among the first people to get there. So, we went to a karaoke salon and booked a room for 5 hours (11-4AM). They have a special for that time knowing that a lot of people just use it (like we did) to crash while they wait for the subway to start running again. It wasn’t the most comfortable few hours of sleep I’ve ever had, but it worked. We were quite early to the fish market and were 4th in line for the tuna auction viewing. They shuttle the tourists in to a special area where you don’t get in the way and then they start their business.

The giant tuna are laid out on palettes on the floor in groups. Each group is its own auction with its own auctioneer (and a guy on the side who goes “hup hup hup hup” for some reason).

The tuna each have a piece cut out of their backside for inspection and their gills and tails are cut off. Because there are so many auctions, the whole thing lasts quite a while. When it’s all over, you’re free to walk around the wholesalers’ market – and in our case, go home and sleep.

We also took a day trip to Kamakura where we rented bicycles and went around to some of the shrines. My favorite one was the giant Buddha where it had windows in its back and you could go inside it.

In all, it was a very busy 2 weeks in Tokyo with some excellent side trips. We all left on the same day: us to Bangkok and Mike back to San Francisco.

Next up: Bangkok and Chiang Mai withour next visitor!

We knew Kyoto would be amazing because of its rich history: it was Japan’s capital from 794 until 1868 and is currently considered the cultural capital. Now it’s the home of the last remaining geisha (and maiko) and an amazing array of temples, shrines and old homes.

We planned our trip to Kyoto around Gion Matsuri, the Gion Festival, which is the largest festival in Kyoto. The Wikipedia article does a good job explaining it. It’s mostly about these 10 ton floats called Yamaboko and in one particular neighborhood, the Byōbu Matsuri, or Folding Screen Festival where people open their homes to the public to show off their heirloom screens, fans, and kimono.

At night for 3 nights, the main streets of Gion close to traffic and people walk around in their yukata (casual wear kimono), eat festival food, and look at the yamaboko.

Here’s a yamaboko where there are musicians playing bells on it:

We spent 6 days in Kyoto and saw 2 geisha and 2 maiko. Unfortunately, they’re fast, so the only photo I got was 2 blurry geisha speeding off in a taxi.

Nagoya

On the way from Kyoto to Tokyo is Nagoya, a place we would have skipped had it not been for a really awesome woman we met in Seoul. Kazumi was staying at the same guesthouse in Seoul and invited us to visit her in Nagoya. We had a bit of an adventure getting there: I realized once we were in Nagoya that I left my phone in Kyoto, so we took the shinkansen back to Kyoto and then back to Nagoya all in a couple hours. Thank goodness for the Japan Rail Pass!

Anyway, we stayed with Kazumi in her “room”, which is the Japanese equivalent of a tiny efficiency apartment. The first night we had a girlie night where Kazumi painted my nails using her airbrush machine. Here is the result:

The next day she asked if we’d like to visit the shop where she works as a photographer. There is a custom of the “20th Anniversary”, which is like a national celebration of a girl’s 20th birthday. Everyone celebrates their 20th on the same day in January and the celebration includes dressing in kimono and walking around to show it off. She and the “kimono expert” dressed me in a formal kimono and Jacob took photos of me. Here’s the finished product – Kazumi is the one in the jaunty hat:

That evening was what we were really excited for: SUMO! We really wanted to see a sumo tournament while we were in Japan and the timing worked out so that the only one during our stay would be in Nagoya. Jacob got to the ticket counter at 6 in the morning to wait for general admission.

Sumo was really amazing – there is so much formality before each fight and between each type of fight. Here are the famous fighters doing a thing in their formal attire before they start their fights:

Then on to the fights!

There’s some thing we just don’t understand having to do with staring each other down before the fight. Apparently someone “wins” because when they separate, the crowd goes wild over one guy. I think it’s too subtle for us to really see though. In this photo, one guy has won the staring fight and has now flung his salt into the ring very pridefully (he didn’t win the real fight, see what excessive pride gets you? ).

Then they face off for the last time and fight. The fights are really short, some as short as seconds, most within about 30 seconds. I was surprised to see so many with ankle, knee, and elbow braces from past injuries, but what my camera caught explained it all:

OWCH!

Next up: back to Tokyo!