Cam t'Asia

After spending a few days on Bali and drinking too many Bintangs, Dana and I headed to Nusa Penida for a bit of a quieter time. We reached our accommodation mid-morning after taking a few boats and short ride on the back of a scooter taxi when we got to the island's port. We waited for two hours to check in to find out that the dorm was out of commission due to bed bugs the night before, so we could get an upgrade to a bungalow or find somewhere else to stay. We had had a hard enough time booking this place, so we elected to take the discounted bungalow. We paranoiacally checked our own beds for the nasty little roaches, thankfully finding none. We explored the island on a scooter. Lucky for me, Dana was well experienced with one, so I could ride on the back of hers. Our first day there, we tried to go to Atuh beach. We failed to find it, instead hiking to a nice viewpoint and then down to a rocky beach, where I stupidly tried to swim and cut my hand on some coral. The coastal r...

I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth and there it was, sitting in the sink: a giant roach, several inches long and meaty. This was the second one I had to deal with in a few nights. The last one had found its way onto the top of my bed canopy, inside the mosquito netting, to greet me as I was lying down and looking up. He was tricky to get rid of, but the random electric tennis racket bug zapper I found in the room helped. This time I was on my own - there wasn't even any toilet paper in here. I went outside to grab my flip flop to kill it, and returned to the bathroom to find worse news: it was gone. I frantically looked around, searching the floor, the walls and the ceiling. Nothing. I noticed the door to my room had a huge gap in the bottom of it, so I went in and searched my room as well, but no sign of him. I was getting ready for bed, so I continued where I left off. After I brushed my teeth, as I was rinsing my mouth, I saw legs and a head poke out from the sink p...

Japanese food is weird and mostly amazing, but we had our share of food-related fails in our time there. My first real taste of the strange and varied food there was when I met up with Casey and Jordan in Yamagata: not a typical tourist destination, but we were there to chase cherry blossoms. After having some delicious Yamagata beef the night before, we had a day straight out of a fairy tale: we walked in parks with the trees' small pink and white petals falling all around us, and once we found a comfy tree to sit under, we watched local people having picnics, eating food from the nearby food stalls and drinking sake from large bottles that they brought from home. We were feeling hungry, so we decided to visit the food stalls and get a snack. Many food stalls were selling the same thing, and we had seen dozens of people walking around eating it: a small ball-shaped snack called konnyaku, which kind of looked like a glazed meatball. It came in threes, on a skewer, with a tiny doll...

Hi, there! It's been a while. I'm several months behind in my posts at this point, so I decided that rather than try to keep writing posts in chronological order and keep dates accurate, I'm just going to start writing reflective posts interleaved with random events that have happened over the past two months, in no particular order. I might fix the dates later. For the first reflective-style post, since I'm a little over halfway through my trip, I started thinking about things I miss from home, and things I don't. Don't miss: TV I enjoy TV shows arguably more than the average person my age, so I thought it would be pretty hard to be abroad while some of my favourite shows aired their new seasons. Oddly, however, I just don't really care. It will be nice to watch some of these shows when I get back home, but it's not going to be first or even probably twentieth on my list of things to do. I wouldn't even say I'm really "looking forward...

When I remember it now, it seems like everything happened fast. I only remember little tidbits, truth be told. But when I was living it, when I thought I was going to die, time seemed to tick by so slowly. It began like any other day. I awoke with the sun, but it felt later than usual. I hoped that meant that there would still be plenty of breakfast left. There was no one else around - they must already be at the water. I scurried down there, but there was no one around. Where were they? I wondered, not thinking much of it. I was glad to scavenge some food after getting such a late start to the day - there hadn't been much around yesterday. I was so busy stuffing my face that I didn't notice the smell at first, but after a few moments I was filled with a sense of dread as I realized what it was. Blood. Nearby. Things get blurry after that. Barred teeth. Sharp claws. Growls. I took off as fast as my feet could carry me. I ran and swam. I hoped everyone else got away, but I ...

Just over a week into our Himalayan trek , I had a bad night. I was awake and in the bathroom every hour throughout the night, so I didn't sleep much. Constantly leaving and coming back into the room woke Jon and Heather up, and I took some medication at their behest. In the morning, I didn't feel any better, so we decided to spend an additional day resting in Yak Kharka. I stayed in bed most of the day, only emerging from the bedroom to try to eat. One of the toughest parts about the trek was the cold. During the day, the cold wasn't a big deal when we were hiking. In fact, I was hiking in a t-shirt when we were 3500-4000m up. However, it got cold fast if we were in a shady spot or if we stood still for too long. The teahouses had small fireplaces for heat, but they only put fires on at night, so during the day there was no way to get warm. This was amplified tenfold when I was sick. I was in bed under several blankets with most of my clothes layered on, but it was st...

The Annapurna circuit is one of the most popular treks in Nepal, after Everest base camp. The plan was to follow a river upstream for about 10 days, go over one of the highest mountain passes in the world (~5400m), and then come back down and, at some point on the way down, grab a bus back to Pokhara. I had never done anything like this, and was excited to start. I met up with Jon, Heather, his cousin, Krista, and her boyfriend, Matt, in Besisahar after a fun morning on the bus . From there, we set out on the trek after a quick lunch, en route to Bhulbhule, our first stop. There was a road from Besisahar all the way to Manang at ~3500m, so we had the option of taking a Jeep or another vehicle to shave a few days off the start, but opted not to. We were very glad we chose to walk the whole way, as every day was different, gorgeous scenery, and climbing gradually not only helped us acclimatize, it also helped get our legs into shape. We did have to walk the road sometimes, and other t...