Sleeping in airports

When I booked my tickets to and from Malaysia the only flights arrived at about very late (about 1:00AM). I spent some time online trying to figure out how to get from the airports in KL and Shanghai to the actual towns and where would be most convenient to stay. In this investigation I stumbled upon a great website: sleepinginairports.net.

For KL I found that it would be easy and not too expensive to just go to town and get to my hostel (and the ratings for sleeping in the airport there were not good). For Shanghai, since I was actually arriving in Hangzhou (about one hour by train or two hours by bus away from Shanghai center) with the late arrival it would be easier to just stay in the airport. Since the airport was new, there were no reviews, but I decided to chance it. I ended up finding a great spot- padded bench seats with no armrests, quiet, no people and with a power outlet close by. I watched a movie and then put on my face mask and went to sleep for about 5 hours. In the morning I found my way to the train and (after going to the wrong address once) checked in at the hotel where I would meet the students from Denver that would arrive later that night.

I spent a little bit of time adding my reviews to sleepinginairports.net for some of the airports I've been stuck in including Iceland, Amsterdam and Tirana. The website is great for those of us lucky enough to fly standby, but not lucky enough to make it out on the first try. My mom wished she had know about the site before they came to see me- it might have made their overnight in Seoul a bit more comfortable. This time in China was the first time I had chosen to sleep in the airport instead of just getting stuck there, but now with this site, I might be sleeping in airports on purpose more often.

Why not Malaysia?

The Philippines allows Americans to stay for 21 days without a visa which meant that I needed to leave by Nov. 9 or pay a big fee. I was meeting the group in China on Nov. 14. I had a few choices- I could go to China early and spend a few more days in Shanghai or I could go somewhere else entirely. With low cost carriers like Cebu Pacific, going from one country to another in SE Asia is pretty cheap and after looking into it I found that heading to someplace like Singapore for a few days wouldn't cost too much more than flying direct to China. But where to go?

When you are traveling, especially when staying in hostels, you meet all sorts of people and in this day and age with facebook and email it is easy to exchange info. It is not uncommon to spend a few days with someone and then leave them with that general invitation, "if you ever make it to Timbuktu (or where ever) on your travels, let me know and we can meet up!" I've given a lot of those invitations myself- "when you come to Denver look me up!". In a discussion with my mom about where to go she reminded me about the girls that we met in the hostel inNorway. One girl was from China and we missed each other when I was in Beijing because of the national holiday. The other girl is from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I sent her an email and she would be in KL at that time. With no better reason to go anywhere else, I booked a ticket to Malaysia. Why not?

KL is an interesting city. The skyline is dominated by huge skyscrapers mostly built in the past 10 years. But when you get closer to the ground, you find an interesting mix of cultures, with China town full of persuasive street vendors and family temples to head-covered Muslims and modern domed mosques to barefoot Hindu temples filled with flowers.

After a day in KL with Sum, I headed to the old capital Malacca. Here I stayed in a hostel and almost immediately after I arrived I was offered a bike ride around town. This was by far my most successful bike outing yet, mostly because I had a good bike and someone to teach me how to use it correctly. I have been thinking more and more about my options for when I get home and I think that biking is a better and better option. I really don't want to buy a car and I know that I will not have the money to do so for a while anyway. Anyway, I spent the day exploring Malacca and shopping. The next day I headed back to KL and straight to the airport for my flight back to China.

Bad day

Everyone has their bad days I suppose. Here's what mine looks like- me blubbering in the backseat of a Manila taxi. Why? I don't really know. I hadn't had a particularly hard day, but something about the driver trying to charge me 350 pesos for what I know is actually a 50 peso trip (if they use the meter) and I was willing to pay 150 pesos for (since that was literally all the money I had left). It just builds up and gets to you after a while. Part of it is that I can feel the end of the trip approaching and I have less patience for things. I'm over it, in fact I was over it 4 months ago when taxi drivers in Bulgaria were trying to rip me off, but I'm really over it now.

I think I'm ready to come home. My trip is almost over, and the last part, my return to China to meet some of my former students from DCIS is going to be great and different. Because of the nature of the trip, traveling with students, homestay, school visit etc, I won't have to deal with some of the frustrations of solo travel.

I've started counting down the days (25- but there is a good chance that you are reading this much later than it was written) and planning things for when I get home. I have a place to live, I hopefully have work (subbing) and I already have a party to go to on my first night home. This has been an amazing trip, but it will be amazing going home too.

Sagada

Sagada may be the most laid back place I've been- ever. Set high in the mountains of the big island (Luzon) it is the type of place that you could see hippies getting stuck in and living there forever and everyone seems to have that "it's ok" slow paced vibe. When I arrived, unlike almost every tourist destination I've ever been to (and I've been to a lot) no one met the bus trying to sell rooms or tours or pearl necklaces. There seem to be a lot of tourists here, but it is apparently a slow enough season that you don't get the feeling of constantly running into people. In fact I think I might be the only guest in my hotel. The locals all seem to be taking it easy too- don't plan a trip up here if you want prompt service from anyone- I had to wake the tourist center guy from his mid-morning nap to set up my tour. Not that fast service is really a big deal- why are you in such a hurry anyway?

In Sagada I took a tour of some local caves. Not wanting to pay for the guide just for myself (cheaper if you have at least two people to split the cost) I waited in the tourist center for a long time (chill out kid) and finally met a Korean girl that was also alone and wanted to go to the caves. With a local guide, you descended down into to cavern several hundred feet to a few large chambers filled with interesting formations. My favorite was the rice field formation that looked just like the terraced rice fields that surrounded the area. There were also animal inspired formations (bear, elephant and snake) and the king and queen, which resembled certain parts of the human anatomy.

After my jaunt to Sagada I returned to Baguio "the summer capital" to spend one more night with my hosts there- a couple from Colorado that are teaching at an international school. I was able to talk to them about my plans for teaching when I go home- both of them got certified in Denver, Adam taught for three years at South and they lived in my neighborhood. It is always a bit funny to meet people when you are far from home and be able to talk about local politics and reminisce about your favorite places, like the Decker branch library.

I was sad to leave the Philippines- I had a really amazing time there, but I also know that unlike a lot of places I've visited, I have a permanent connection there.

Surfs up!

After my parents left, I headed up to Luzon (the big island) for a bit of couch surfing (with Philippines PCVs) and a bit of real surfing. You know like in the water. I am not particularly good at things in the water- growing up in Colorado and all that (I know, I know, there are a lot of people from Colorado that are good swimmers, I'm just not one of them!). Not that I can't swim, I can swim, I just feel more comfortable on snow skis than on water skis. Also, I learned to swim in a swimming pool, so the ocean is a totally different thing. I've never been particularly good at holding my breath and I don't like it when water gets in my eyes, especially salt water. In Bohol, my mom and I tried a bit of snorkeling- it didn't really take; I kept breathing in water and the flippers were hard to use. Its ok, I just know that water things arenot my sports. But that doesn't keep me from trying . . . I must just be a glutten forpunishment . . .

The thing is, that the Philippines is one of the cheapest places to learn to surf, so if I was going to fail miserably, I might as well be doing it for only $10 an hour instead of the $100 an hour I might pay in Hawaii . . . and it looks like fun, right?

I headed up to San Juan, the home of the Philippine surfers. As a whole, the islands (surprisingly) don't actually have too many good places to surf and the native people didn't

actually do it historically. Surfing is something brought by the Americans and still mostly done by foreigners (except the handful of local instructors that have capitalized on some good waves in this area).

I only had one day and the weather was not so great, but I decided to try anyway- I headed to the beach to seek out my teacher. The waves were big and there were not many people in the water. I finally found an instructor, but even I could tell that the waves on this beach were going to be too much for me. We tried anyway, but after about a half hour of me wiping out in huge waves, we gave up. He told me about a better spot further down the shore that had gentler waves that we could try after lunch- Well why didn't you tell me that before! After lunch we headed down to the "cement factory" where the waves were much better and tried again. After a few more wipeouts, I finally was able to stand up! Then I really got the hang of it and stood up three times in a row! After a couple more wipeouts and a couple more successful rides, I was beat. Surfing is hard! I knew that I would be sore the next day, and I was for sure. I have so much more respect for people that do this well- it is basically like doing push-ups over and over for hours (not to mention the beating you get when you wipeout). I think I'll watch Point Break and Blue Crush with a lot more respect from now on . . .

Would you like rice with that?

According to Filipinos, a meal without rice is not a meal at all. Even at KFC and McDonalds (which are as common here as in Kentucky I'd wager) you can get rice instead of fries or cole slaw. In Cebu i experienced the ingenious invention of "hanging rice" they put the uncooked rice into a pouch made of woven palm leaves, dip it in water to cook and voila! Personal sized portable rice packet!

This abundance of rice is something I've been experiencing my whole life at FACC (Filipino thanksgiving- turkey. . . with rice). Anyway, since I left Denver in August I think (it's hard to know for sure without access to a scale on a regular basis) that I had lost a few pounds. When I travel, I actually tend to eat a lot less and walk a lot more. The walking a lot is easy to explain, when you are traveling (at least the way I travel) all you tend to do is walk. I arrive in a new place and I walk around to get a feel, walk to where ever I'm staying (when I can) and a lot of my favorite travel activities involve walking (long hikes in the mountains- basically walking all day). But why don't I eat as much? For one thing, thinking about food all the time is exhausting when you are traveling- you need to constantly be finding new places, eating takes a lot of time and when I'm alone sometimes I just don't bother.

But in the Philippines with my parents things are different. First, I'm with my parents and it's not good for them to skip meals. Second, we have been staying with friends of theirs- in Davao, with their Peace Corps family and in Bohol and Cebu with family of friends from Denver. They don't let me skip meals- good Filipino cooking doesn't let me eat light . . . lots of rice with every meal. Thanks to my wonderful hosts in the RP any pounds lost have all come back! Talk about lost and found . . .

Patring

Now, about Patring. Patring was a teenaged girl that lived with my parents the whole time that they were in the Philippines, the two years in Davao and the year and a half on Bohol. When I was younger, that didn't seem too strange- that was just how it was. But as I grew up it started to seem more strange- we don't even have a housekeeper now! When I joined the Peace Corps myself, I started to seem even more strange. They had a housekeeper? And Peace Corps paid for that? Of course it is not strange in the Filipino context, I don't think they intended to have a housekeeper, but they did and it became part of their Filipino normal. My mom wrote about how Patring came into their lives (and about the dogs and cats that kept them company too):

http://mindanoinday.blogspot.com/2008/03/of-girls-and-dogs-and-cats.html

So the first thing we did in the morning after arriving in Davao was go and visit Patring. We found her at home, in the house across the road from her clinic. She is not practicing right now since she has been having problems with her eyes lately. Because (I think) of the visit a few years ago, this was not the tearful homecoming that they probably had then, but it was emotional nonetheless. Patring is exceptionally sweet and I can see why my parents loved her so much. She came with us for a few hours and met us again when we went to the beach.

For me, more than any other person, Patring was the one that I had an image in my head about. In some ways, she is the Philippines for me.

And she is beautiful.