Yes, I know. This is supposed to be my TRAVEL BLOG. Well, it turns out a single human should never post blogs to more than one site. It's just wasteful. So, you can read all about my travels (as well as a million other lil' tidbits under the sun) over HERE and, most recently, HERE.
Thanks. And please update yr links.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Saturday, September 12, 2009
An Interview with Mr. Adams
Where are you going next, Mr. Adams?
Well, I'm glad you asked! On October 5th, I am flying to Singapore via Hong Kong on Cathay Pacific Airlines. There I will visit with my good friend, Kyra, currently teaching theater arts at an English-language high school. I believe the plan is to work on art and cinema projects, drink many Singapore slings and partake in Kyra's hot tub. After about a week of such tomfoolery, I shall embark on a northerly trek into Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia.
What are you taking with you?
A small backpack with a few changes of clothes, a pair of Chacos, a pair of Chucks, my SLR film camera, my tiny Canon digi-cam, tons of notebooks, a digital voice recorder, a few novels & guidebooks, and a thumbdrive. Also, possibly my Leatherman knife in checked baggage.
How long will you be gone?
Indefinitely. My ticket is one-way. I do plan on being in SE Asia at least through the New Year and into January. Right now there are tentative plans on flying over to New Zealand in late January to be a sheepherder and beekeeper on a farm, but my plans are always shifting.
Any tentative projects you plan on working on?
I want to take portraits of madmen I meet in SE Asia and then conduct short interviews with them. I always seem to stumble across a wide array of quality characters on my journeys, and I now want to document them and ultimately make a website photo-essay out of them.
Friday, February 22, 2008
The Kangaroo Route
So my cousin has an apartment in Dubai, U.A.E., in the Middle East and one of my ex-girlfriends will soon be living in Singapore, and I'm at this moment in my life where the urge and the money and the motivation to take off on a big adventure for 6-12 months is reaching its apex ... so here's the plan: the Kangaroo Route. Starting in Europe (probably Spain), traveling overland through the Balkans to Istanbul, Turkey; taking a boat to Cairo, Egypt; flying across Saudi Arabia to Dubai; flying from Dubai to India; traveling overland through SE Asia to Singapore; checking out one island in the Indonesia island array; flying to Darwin, Australia; taking the Ghan train from Darwin to Adelaide; working at wineries in Australia's Shiraz wine region; ending in Sydney. Then, depending on my bank account (which should be at $-2,000 at this point) deciding whether to check out French Polynesia, New Zealand or Hawaii. Then flying home, where I'll take a lowly job while I write my great travel narrative.
Who is with me? Who wants to sponsor me?
Thursday, January 24, 2008
WHAT I WAS DOING IN MONGOLIA:
Wandering aimlessly, playing indoor soccer, gripping my currency, talking to Mongolian moms about religion/marriage/luxury resorts, playing an Olympic Games video game with my host brother, eating buttloads of mutton, drinking milk tea, drinking horse milk, attending La Boheme, attending Swan Lake, grabbing a German or English brew and watching the storm roll in, going to the internet cafe at least once a day, going to the cinema to see Mr. & Mrs. Smith, herding sheep to other sheep, taking the bus to/from work, snot-rocketing the sidewalk, gesturing wildly like a buffoon while trying to talk with Mongolian dad, eating starchy bread, writing tons in my journal, reading novels like they were articles in a magazine, failing miserably, teaching English, visiting spectacular landscapes, working on my tan, listening to my iPod in the dark before bed, endlessly researching imaginary trips I would never take in Mongolia, fulfilling lifetime dream of utter terror.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Please Buy Puerto Escondido!!!
The New York Times has a story on Puerto Escondido in Friday's paper. Unfortunately, as with nearly every "travel" article in the NYT, it's merely a primer for those wishing to buy a 2nd, 3rd, or 4th home in a foreign paradise because they've got money flowing out their asses and figure real estate in a "cheap" country is salvation.
The link is here.
Friday, December 28, 2007
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
The Distant View (Farewell Wah-ha-Kah)
The sobered, distant view, while not always the prettiest picture, usually paints a more realistic scene than the one writ while submerged in the thick of travel. Especially, for example, if I'm writing about Oaxaca as a destination that you may one day want to visit. I realize it may seem like my visit was fraught with difficulty and hostility. That simply wasn't the case. Well ... mostly not the case. There was the freakish rooftop encounter in Oaxaca city last Saturday night, but even that will get blown out of proportion if I recall it here, so I will leave it for a later, further sobered, perspective.
So the story picks up in Zipolite. Adan & I stashed our freshly laundered clothes in our room & enjoyed one last beachside meal at Lola's. The food good and cheap. As the sun fell toward the horizon, the family from St. Louis pulled into the hotel in their Land Cruisers for their nightly ritual of daiquiris and the sunset view from Lola's. They were staying at a resort in neighboring San Agustinillo but apparently the sunsets were better at Lola's, so that's where they ended each of their evenings. Unfortunately on this day Lola's did not soundtrack the sunset with any music. I'm going to miss their schizophrenic music selection. One moment they're blasting hip hop, the next it's bad '70s funk, the next it's soft piano ballads, the next it's laser beam disco beats...etc. They have their name done up in big lettering (like the HOLLYWOOD sign) and it's lit up at night. A lovely beacon for bleary-eyed hotel guests making their way back from the main village on the beach on a moonless, misty night. When the sign is turned off at 8pm, a pair of christmas lights blink on and off, a good enough beacon.
Just before the sun set, we strapped our bags, walked to the road and caught a taxi in about 4 minutes. We were headed back to Pochutla for the overnight bus connection back to Oaxaca. Dropped off at the dusty bus station in this featureless transit town, we learned the bus was sold out. We pondered the dread of a night in Pochutla for a moment before the bus agent told us to take a bus an hour south to Huatulco and catch the overnight bus there, and "executive class" bus that cost a few bucks more than First Class. So all was well. In Huatulco we dined on tacos with "cabeza" and "al pastor" (pig's brains and pork), popped a Pepto-Bismol, drank Coca-Cola, and prepared for another night of shifty, sleepless rest.
The bus system in Mexico is superior to anything I've found in other countries. Canada's and the U.S.'s disgrace of a bus system, Greyhound, pales in comparison. It's cheap, the seats recline, the buses are all new and clean. But even the best buses are a bitch to sleep on, esp. while navigating Mexico's highways, with their speed bumps every 5 miles interrupting the "magical position" you finally found against the window.
We wandered downtown Oaxaca city in the early dawn hours searching for a hotel room to crash. The hotels were either closed or too expensive or too clinical (the HI hostels) or told us to return later. We eventually settled in one of the nicest hotels of our trip, the Hotel des Cues, just 2 blocks south of the zocalo. We got a king size and a queen in a spacious room for $60. Then we crashed until 2 pm. Andrew and Adan watched the end of "The Birdcage" on TV before we set out for the open-air market. Really the entire city is a big market. All the sidewalks are crammed with booths hawking their wares (usually nail clippers, remote controls, burned copies of CDs & DVDs, cheaply made fashions, and, odd in such summery weather, Christmas decor & ornaments). We wandered the labyrinthe of the market for a couple hours. Andrew bought underwear and socks (he preferred to wash his clothes in the shower and was suffering the consequences with increasingly soiled underpants...ha! He's probably going to flip when he reads this, but dude, you really shouldn't wash your clothes while you take a shower). We bought a mid-sized duffel that was falling aparts at the seams for $8 ... a rip, but we needed it for our hammocks, bottles of mezcal, hot chocolate, rubber chickens, wooden combs, lobster magnets, candles, posters of elk scenes, and miscellaneous plants, herbs, soil samples and other highly suspect items that would easily pass through U.S. Customs due to our rosy cheeks and sleep-deprived, bloodshot eyes.
Mexico is an enigma wrapped in a corporate bubblegum wrapper.
So the story picks up in Zipolite. Adan & I stashed our freshly laundered clothes in our room & enjoyed one last beachside meal at Lola's. The food good and cheap. As the sun fell toward the horizon, the family from St. Louis pulled into the hotel in their Land Cruisers for their nightly ritual of daiquiris and the sunset view from Lola's. They were staying at a resort in neighboring San Agustinillo but apparently the sunsets were better at Lola's, so that's where they ended each of their evenings. Unfortunately on this day Lola's did not soundtrack the sunset with any music. I'm going to miss their schizophrenic music selection. One moment they're blasting hip hop, the next it's bad '70s funk, the next it's soft piano ballads, the next it's laser beam disco beats...etc. They have their name done up in big lettering (like the HOLLYWOOD sign) and it's lit up at night. A lovely beacon for bleary-eyed hotel guests making their way back from the main village on the beach on a moonless, misty night. When the sign is turned off at 8pm, a pair of christmas lights blink on and off, a good enough beacon.
Just before the sun set, we strapped our bags, walked to the road and caught a taxi in about 4 minutes. We were headed back to Pochutla for the overnight bus connection back to Oaxaca. Dropped off at the dusty bus station in this featureless transit town, we learned the bus was sold out. We pondered the dread of a night in Pochutla for a moment before the bus agent told us to take a bus an hour south to Huatulco and catch the overnight bus there, and "executive class" bus that cost a few bucks more than First Class. So all was well. In Huatulco we dined on tacos with "cabeza" and "al pastor" (pig's brains and pork), popped a Pepto-Bismol, drank Coca-Cola, and prepared for another night of shifty, sleepless rest.
The bus system in Mexico is superior to anything I've found in other countries. Canada's and the U.S.'s disgrace of a bus system, Greyhound, pales in comparison. It's cheap, the seats recline, the buses are all new and clean. But even the best buses are a bitch to sleep on, esp. while navigating Mexico's highways, with their speed bumps every 5 miles interrupting the "magical position" you finally found against the window.
We wandered downtown Oaxaca city in the early dawn hours searching for a hotel room to crash. The hotels were either closed or too expensive or too clinical (the HI hostels) or told us to return later. We eventually settled in one of the nicest hotels of our trip, the Hotel des Cues, just 2 blocks south of the zocalo. We got a king size and a queen in a spacious room for $60. Then we crashed until 2 pm. Andrew and Adan watched the end of "The Birdcage" on TV before we set out for the open-air market. Really the entire city is a big market. All the sidewalks are crammed with booths hawking their wares (usually nail clippers, remote controls, burned copies of CDs & DVDs, cheaply made fashions, and, odd in such summery weather, Christmas decor & ornaments). We wandered the labyrinthe of the market for a couple hours. Andrew bought underwear and socks (he preferred to wash his clothes in the shower and was suffering the consequences with increasingly soiled underpants...ha! He's probably going to flip when he reads this, but dude, you really shouldn't wash your clothes while you take a shower). We bought a mid-sized duffel that was falling aparts at the seams for $8 ... a rip, but we needed it for our hammocks, bottles of mezcal, hot chocolate, rubber chickens, wooden combs, lobster magnets, candles, posters of elk scenes, and miscellaneous plants, herbs, soil samples and other highly suspect items that would easily pass through U.S. Customs due to our rosy cheeks and sleep-deprived, bloodshot eyes.
Mexico is an enigma wrapped in a corporate bubblegum wrapper.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
