Not as Advertised

6/25/10: London, England

I’ve made a startling discovery in the last months of the trip. I love big cities. This surprises me for a few reasons. 1) I hate crowds. 1a) I hate it when strangers brush up against me or touch me unexpectedly. 2) I am afraid of loud noises. 3) I don’t like crossing busy streets. But despite all these things, I loved Tokyo, I loved Sydney, I loved Madrid – and I love London. It surprised me too, believe me, but it’s our first day out in the city (Wimbledon doesn’t count), and there is so much to do here. Luckily, we have a lot of time.

Our first stop of the day: Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery. Most of the museums in London are free, including the National Gallery, and when we walked in, the first thing we saw was a big clear donation box with a sign saying “Please give ₤3 to help keep this museum free.” The irony.

Giant ship in a bottle at Trafalgar Square.

I can only assume this is Trafalgar, whoever he was.

Kevin tames a lion.

Trafalgar Square reminded me a bit of some of the other plazas we’ve seen, with one very notable exception. It is forbidden to feed the pigeons. Good idea, London!

Then we walked over to St. James’s Park. Not as famous as Hyde park, but beautifuller.

Look, it's the London Eye!

A bird with very, very strange feet.

We kept walking, and lo and behold, we ran into Buckingham Palace.

Hanging out by the Queen's house.

The Queen Victoria Memorial in front of the Palace.

Hi Liz!

Poor neglected Mr. Turtle makes an appearance.

We missed the changing of the guards by about a half hour, and we didn’t get to take any pictures with the men in the funny hats. If you asked me before this what things I associated with the city of London, I would have said men with the funny hats, double decker buses and red telephone booths.

One out of three ain't bad.

Then we walked up to the British Museum.

Me and my gummy bears are excited about the museum.

The British Museum was really cool, one of the best museums we’ve been in.

Wait, are we in Egypt again?

The Egyptian section is particularly large. Apparently back when a lot of excavations were being done in Egypt, some British archaeologist got permission from the Egyptian government to remove any artifacts he wanted. So he did, and then he sold them all to the British Museum.

The Rosetta Stone. I'm not sure how they got this. They only have a replica in Egypt.

We bought a copy of this papyrus painting in Cairo.

I’ll reveal my ignorance by telling you this, but I always thought that the Rosetta Stone had a lot of different languages on it. I basically thought it was a magic stone with the same thing written in ten or fifteen different languages, and that’s what helped us decipher the ancient languages. But it’s really a big stone plaque with a decree written on it in just three different languages: Hieroglyphics, Egyptian demotic script (the standard written Egyptian language) and Greek. They did use the stone to help decipher Hieroglyphics, so at least I wasn’t too far off on that account.

The British Museum also has a fairly large (and free!) collection of mummies. We didn’t stay in those rooms for too long. Being around dead people in glass cases sort of freaks me out.

Cleopatra is in there. Shudder.

They have also somehow managed to acquire many of the sculptures that used to decorate the Parthenon.

Part of the east pediment.

They also have a moai! When we first saw this, we both thought the same thing: “Wow, that thing is tiny.”

He's quite a little dude.

After the British Museum, we went to catch the matinee showing of Avenue Q. We bought the cheapest tickets possible (₤10), but when we arrived at the theater, we got upgraded to the eighth row. One ad had billed it as “pant-wettingly funny,” but that was an exaggeration. I enjoyed myself immensely, but I didn’t wet my pants at all.

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Picture of the Day: Flowers from the “South Africa Landscape Exhibit” at the British Museum.

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Not To Be Confused With Thigh Driving

2/19/10: Taupo, New Zealand

If you simultaneously drop a 160 pound sack of feathers and a 160 pound sack of me from the sky, which one will hit the ground first? If only I carried a huge sack of feathers on me today, I would have found out.

Today I went skydiving!

Zhou and I can’t remember exactly what brought this world trip up in the first place, so part of me is tempted to believe it was centered around skydiving in New Zealand. Ever since I’d talked to Jing (one of our best friends) about her NZ jump, I knew I would one day have to do it as well. I’ve been looking forward to this day for longer than Democrats had been looking forward to the day Strom Thurmond called it quits.

In a lot of ways skydiving is like going to the doctor’s with the flu. First, you sit around in a waiting room forever feeling like you’re about to die. Then it’s fairly nerve-wracking when you’re called up, but you don’t have long to fret because before you know it you’re out the door and heading home with nothing to worry about.

Ok, so maybe it’d be more similar if your doctor was Robbie Kneivel. Skydiving is one of the best, most exhilarating, most unique experiences of all time.

I’ll pick it up during the rising action. 16 of us (seven tandem jumpers and two videographers) piled into a plane that probably would have been given a six person capacity by a competent fire marshal. I was the last one in (foreshadowing: LIFO), and the only spot left was pretty much right on my instructor, Ian’s lap. Within seconds the door was closed next to me and we were cruising down the runway.

As the rickety old plane climbed higher and higher, I kept wondering when my nerves would set in. Not trying to be macho (I don’t have to try, I already am!), but I’ve been more nervous while waiting to see if the chef remembered to not put mayo on my burger. For some funny reason, whether it was because I was enjoying the views or just trying to savor the moment, I wasn’t anything but excited.

At 12,000 feet, Ian pulled up the door and the altitude’s cold air came whistling in. Then, in the span of what felt like 10 seconds, I swung my legs over the plane’s edge, my videographer slid by and hung on to the outside rail of the plane, a mounted camera took a picture, Ian pulled my head back over his right shoulder and we fell. And fell. (There really was no “dive” or “jump” out of the plane. It felt more like that team building game where you simply close your eyes, lean back – or in this case forward – and hope that the person behind you knows what they’re doing.)

Falling at terminal velocity through the clouds is one of the coolest feelings in the world. Whereas while on the ground I just hoped my parachute would work properly, while falling the last thing I wanted was the instructor to open the chute and slow us down. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) he didn’t feel the same way about that one. I’m really not sure how to describe the actual feeling, but I do know that while free falling not only did both of my shoes come untied, but also one of the aglets was ripped all the way off. And these are fairly new Merrells, not some raggedy pair of Starburys.

As fun as skydiving is though, I doubt I’ll ever go again. Not because the free fall ended up costing $10/second, but because of the time spent parachuting down.

Just like when paragliding in Nepal, I got really queasy while heading slowly down to earth. It was so hard to concentrate on the gorgeous countryside when all I could think of was not throwing up on it. That being said, if you ever get the chance to fall out of a plane (with a parachute on), don’t even hesitate. You won’t regret it.

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Pictures of the Day: What could possibly top skydiving? Taking pictures of Zhou and Mr. Turtle at Honey Hives before watching bees make honey!

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My Thai

12/15/09: Patong Bay, Thailand

Today we spent over ten hours in a bus. Actually, three different buses. In the past several weeks, we had been told by a few different people that Southeast Asia is the easiest place to travel.

Hah. Ha. Ha.

After being woken up at 5:05am by incessant knocking on our door because our 5am bus was waiting for us at the front gate and we were still in bed (me dreaming about mango sticky rice), we realized that our 4:35am alarm had never gone off. This might have been because our alarm, my iPod, had spontaneously switched itself back to Eastern time after being connected to our computer, which we never changed from EST. Because, you know, when we turn on the computer we like to see what time it is at home and imagine what all our friends and family are up to (usually, you’re sleeping).

If that sounded creepy, then the real reason we never change the time when we change time zones is because we’re too lazy.

Of course, when the knocking happened at 5:05am, we still had half of our belongings strewn about the room and so we had to hurriedly jam our things into our packs (which will lead to a future post entitled “The Case of the Missing Floss”). We packed ourselves up in record time and then hopped onto the bus, with Kevin still wearing his mouth guard (he’s a teeth-grinder).

Anyway, nothing much happened on the rest of the journey, except the two bus transfers, one of which happened on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, which was a little unnerving. “Go! Get on other bus!” our crazy Thai bus driver said, as he unceremoniously shoved us and our bags off the bus. “But where is that bus going?” I wanted to ask, but the thing is, it’s hard to argue with a crazy Thai bus driver. Luckily, the coach bus we got onto said in big letters on the front windshield, “HAT YAI — PHUKET,” which reassured me that we would eventually end up in Phuket.

Which we eventually did. And even though we’ve only been in Thailand for a few hours, so far, it does not disappoint. The people have been really friendly and helpful (maybe excepting the crazy Thai bus drivers), the food that we’ve eaten has been excellent, and our room has a refrigerator! Awesome.

I’ll leave you by sharing a little conversation that we had tonight as we walked along Patong Beach.

Z: How’s the water temperature?
K: It’s good. Not too cold.
Pause
K: But not too warm either. It’s no Indian Ocean.
Pause
K: Oh wait, it is the Indian Ocean.

It turns out it’s not, it’s actually the Andaman Sea, but I didn’t know any better at the time either.
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Thought of the Day: I love Thailand.
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Picture of the Day: Smallest. Orange. In. The. WORLD. Yet another reason to love Thailand.

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It’s a Jungle in Here

12/9/09: Singapore

One of these pictures doesn’t belong. Can you tell which one it is?

The misfit picture was taken in Africa, but to the untrained eye it may be harder to spot than it seems. Why? Because today we went to the Singapore Zoo, hands down the best zoo in the city/country known as Singapore.

Zhou and I were both a bit leery of visiting a zoo after touring the Masai Mara and Serengeti in Africa. It felt like we were being demoted from hanging with Albert Pujols in the Big Leagues to Chuck Knoblauch in Single A. Upon arrival though, we were surprised to see that Chuck Knoblauch could still play some ball.

The Singapore Zoo feels less like a zoo of confined animals and more like a meet-and-greet with orangutans, pygmy hippos, penguins and kangaroos, among other domesticated wild animals. We attended three fun, free shows in the morning and followed the afternoon feeding trail where we watched pampered tigers, lions and polar bears dine on big slabs of raw meat thrown at their feet. (Just as my family’s own cats would never survive on their own, neither would these “Kings of the Jungle Gym.”)

Because I feel a little bad about taking up three minutes of your day with pictures from a zoo, I’ll cut the post short here, but if it helps please think about it as a foreign tropical paradise that you’ll probably never visit since not many people really go to Singapore.

[The correct answer to the question above is: Picture 6, the one of the cheetahs.]
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Thought of the Day: I would like to start a hotel in Vegas where room rates fluctuate inversely with the performance of the Dow on the following day. I don’t know how this would work (other than the hotel would have a bunch of money invested in the DJI), but I think it would be fun.
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Picture of the Day: Zhou pulled a “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids” so she could take a look at Mr. Turtle’s recurring toothache.

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Victoria Falls and One Blue Dress

10/18/09: Livingstone, Zambia

Victoria Falls: the biggest falls in the world. It’s not the tallest falls or the widest falls or the falls with the most water falling over per second or the most powerful falls but the biggest falls. I suppose that means by area? I really have no idea.

Anyway, since this is the dry season, Victoria Falls is only a miniature version of itself at its most majestic. Walking four feet from the edge and looking across at the gorge, which had water flowing over in just a few places, I could only imagine how amazing it would look with water coming across over the entire sheet of rock and crashing into the canyon below.

I think looking at the falls must have affected Kevin’s head, as he literally threw good money after bad, buying worthless Zimbabwean billion and trillion-dollar notes with good US dollars. I didn’t fare much better at the market; while Kevin was haggling over these worthless pieces of paper, I accidentally bought a stone soap dish with a little giraffe in it. It really was an accident, I thought I named an absurdly low price. Luckily, I did manage to barter Kevin’s blue dress (“It’s a party dress! It’s really very nice.”) for a small wooden mask. Now the only question is what we’ll do with all this stuff. I really have no idea.

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Scrabble Picture: While we set up this picture, one of the locals stopped and asked us about the game – we are Scrabble evangelists!

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Picture of the Day: I never break the rules – never

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