Progress: Agriculture, Cars, the Internet?

I recently read a talk by Maciej Cegłowski, The Internet with a Human Face. One analogy he posed resonated with me particularly well. Cegłowski suggests that similar to the way the US rushed headlong into car culture starting in the 1950s, we are rushing into a similarly unpredictable future of the unintended consequences of the Internet.

The consequences Cegłowski focused on primarily were those of data collection on the web, but it's easy to see how the analogy extends to the more general culture towards which the Internet seems to be driving us. Some of the more concerning consequences to me are social isolation, as explored in Gary Turk's Look Up video that recently went viral, and the informational echo chamber, as prophesied in the Epic 2014 video.

More than an analogy, I believe the development of the interstate highway system and the Internet are just two examples of a very common pattern in human society: a disruptive technology enters the scene and is eagerly adopted for its immediate benefit, which causes a dramatic shift in the fabric of society that is not necessarily beneficial. Another example would be the development of agriculture, after which human quality of life arguable diminished greatly (eg. with less leisure time, more disease).

Beware progress! I guess I'm officially a luddite.

Ghost Sets and Spirit Cards

Variations on the card game Set.

ghost set -- a set not on the board that is defined by three pairs of cards, such that each pair of cards completes a set with a distinct card in the ghost set.

spirit card -- a card not on the board that completes a set with three pairs of cards on the board.

The game Set can then be played as usual, but players look for the six cards that define ghost sets or spirit cards instead of regular sets. It should be noted that game play is considerably slower because these sets are rarer (I believe. Maybe I'll do the math later.).

I learned about both these variations this weekend. The card above is my spirit card, the first one I found.

Let's play.

Anxiety Dreams

My monitor at work disappeared. Regina Spektor sang at a small table but the piano would not work. She wanted people to sing along but I'd forgotten the lyrics. A little girl knew all the lyrics to Plastic Jesus. David Greenberg was angry. Lily was busy and trying to help Ilana and I crash at her place. I was frustrated with Ilana. I flew through Splashdown's Loch Ness with giant frogs, spiders and snakes. A snake bit my arm.

Pyramid of Problems

The roughest of rough, criticism welcome. Something I think about from time to time. Not even really sure what it is.

I keep coming back to this idea that I have to solidify my idea better. Feelings of being overwhelmed by the complexity of the world, and sometimes even specific situations/problems. Sometimes I can find words, but grammar fails me. Language. Does not being able to talk about something mean that I don't really understand it?

Day 19: Tokyo, Japan

We slept in a bit this morning and left at about 10am to head to the fish market, Tzukiji. The subway in Tokyo was much easier to figure out than in Kyoto because most of the stations in the areas we were in had transliteration and the maps were clearly laid out. We also had an awesome free tourist booklet from our hostel that had attractions and how to get there. We made a plan to get sushie at Tzukiji but wanted to see the main market before it closed in the morning. The market was really cool. A lot of old timey fish stands and weird dried sea products like huge squid and every kind of fish cake variation imaginable. There were tourists, mostly domestic tourists or Chinese, and some business men going for an early lunch. 

We wanted to get a little hungrier before eating lunch so we set off to find a pretty park we found in the tourist brochure thing. The park was called Kiyu Shiba Rikyu. It was a Japanese style garden like the Silver Plaza, except the well manicure trees and grass contrasted tall buildings instead of temples. We were getting hungry at this point and very hot, so we didn't spend too long in the garden. It was a nice place though and cool to see a space of green amidst the shiny metal skyscrapers. 

We walked back to the fish market, Tsukiji, along these "business parks" (Amelia called them). Tokyo looks like New York but with more levels. There are promenades above and below street level connecting the buildings. It gives the city more of a modern feel, because the promenades are cleaner and newer than US city sidewalks and because being above ground is futuristic and shit.

By the time we made it back, it was almost 2pm and the market looked totally different, almost all of the stalls were closed. We wanted to get sushi because what better place than a fish market in Japan. We found a cute place in the market which even had air conditioning (thank god). We got a mixed sushi plate to split and a couple extra rolls. It was delicious, although Amelia appreciated it a bit more than me. I was happy to have sushi and it was good, but I've think I've lost the palette for being able to tell what's good and what's better.

Still hot in the afternoon humidity and heat, Amelia and I wanted to go shopping in Shibuya assuming there would be airconditioned malls. Shibuya is where the famous shot of Tokyo with all the lights and stores is, so we wanted to get a photo op. Also, Shibuya is near Harajuku of Gwen Stefani fame. I don't really know what Harajuku actually is and Amelia wasn't sure but we were tourists and felt it was our American duty to go try to find it. So we got off in Shibuya and walked around the shopping. Amelia wanted to go in an arcade again to find DDR (so that she could show off her skills), but we never found DDR! Our cousin Nate told us that it was out of style. The styles in Japan are intense, he said that if something was in you would see it everywhere and once it was out people would often just throw their clothes away. We did do another photobooth pic though without Emily. I'm really impressed by the amount of easy to use photoshop like tools you can use to manipulate the picture. They could make your eyes look bigger or put highlights in your hair or change the background. The Japanese are really not fucking around with their advanced technology.

We did not unfortunately find a mall in Shibuya though and eventually went back to the hotel at like 4pm because we were too tired from walking around outside. We read our books and used the internet for a couple hours before showering and getting ready to go out. Emily had given us a recommendation for where to go out, apparently a place that was usually hopping and fun for non-Japanese speakers because of the number of ex-pats: Roppongi. 

We stopped along the way to get a snack before dinner and some more of the delicious Japenese vodka grapefruit cocktail things. Drinking it public is convenient, although some quick Google-ing showed us that apparently even though it's chill in Kyoto its considered low class in Japan... Oops. Guess we were those Americans. We also spent way longer than normal in the store because I was trying to remember what the Japanese character for pickled plum looked like. They have these delicious rice balls wrapped in seaweed, but most have fish or meat except the pickled plum which is delicious and tangy. We opted for a red bean and rice ball instead because it was easily recognized.

We took a 45 minute subway ride to Roppongi but things didn't really seem hopping. Could have been because it was a Thursday night or it could have been because we asked a boring person for a recommendation on where to have fun... It was still early though so we go dinner. Our plan had been to get ramen but our ramen-blogging cousin did not return out email, so we agreed on sushi again. After all, I only had another day of my self defined period of non-veganness and sushi in Japan is pretty delicious. Neither of us were particularly set on trying ramen (sorry, Devon). We found a random sushi place that was reasonably priced. We had a few beers along with our dinner. It was delicious, I think my appreciation for sushi grew every time we had it. When we got the check though it was 1500 yen (which is about $15) more expensive than it should have been. We tried to figure it out with the waiter, but he hardly spoke English and we obviously don't speak any Japanese. Luckily we had been sitting at the bar and the sushi chef knew exactly what we got. Our night in shining apron came to our rescue and we figured out the correct tally for the bill with no hard feelings- it seemed like more of an honest mistake than a purposeful tourist trick.

Amelia and I set off down the street on a quest to find some fun. Amelia really wanted to karaoke but it was box karaoke so we needed a crew and finding a crew needed to be step 1. Along the street there were a lot of Nigerians who are apparently hired to try to bring people into bars. Amelia fell for it and we went to an empty bar playing reggae music. We were the only patrons. I wanted to leave, but I think Amelia felt bad and I didn't want to be an asshole either. The bar tender was a Japanese-Brazilian guy so we chatted with him while we had one beer before leaving. He gave us some recommendations for where to go, one which sounded like "Hispanic" with a few letters switched around (he had a heavy Brazilian and Japanese combined accent) so we were like "ok sure" and just set back out on the street to find something on our own. 

The only people we saw around our age were two gay Germans. They were just heading to dinner and didn't seem intent on going out, but were helpful in pointing out a few places in their guide book and giving us some recommendations for karaoke (should we happen to find a crew). One place they said they passed that seemed to have people was an American themed bar with middle aged ex-pats. Well, some people is better than no people, so we found the bar. 

We started chatting with a group of men who were about 40... the sort of age where it's not really polite to ask. They were interesting enough and had been living in Japan for a few years or more. They were all friendly and helpful in finding places to go- except Keith who was a total debbie downer. "Are you looking to have tonight? Because you might as well just give up now," was his general message and potentially his exact words. Cool Keith. Nobody likes you. But we had some good convos about Twitter with the other guys. 

Inside we also met some guys who seemed about our age. There were two British guys and two Americans talking to them. You can always tell if someone's American by the patterned frat tanks. The Americans were down to go find somewhere to go out, they had just gotten to Tokyo that day and wanted to find a fun place. They were even down to do karaoke if we couldn't find a fun bar to hang out at, which showed they were flexible and in a mindset to have a good time even if it was some silly karaoke.

We walked back down the area of the street with all of the Nigerians. The American boys were clearly sketched out by them, but one Nigerian guy mentioned the name of a club, "Gas Panic", and I realized was the one the Japanese-Brazilian had suggested. Yes, the club was called Gas Panic- a horrible mixture between a flatulence joke and a Holocaust reference (Amelia's words). The drinks were only 300 yen, so even if it sucked at least the drinks would be cheap. The music was some very housey but tolerable and got better as the night went on. 

It turned out our male companions were Harvard people, but they weren't that pretentious. One had just graduated and the other was a rising junior. The one who just graduated was in Japan for the summer to study Haikus and was going to law school in the fall. "I know I sold out" was how he prefaced going to law school... which I guess goes to show the difference between Penn and Harvard. They were fun to hang out with even though the kiddo kind of wanted to dance with Amelia and she wasn't having it. 

The subway closed at midnight so at 11:45 we needed to decide whether or not we wanted to stay out. The boys told us that they were planning on cabbing back to their place which was only 15 minutes away so we could stay with them if we wanted. Because our subway ride was long, we thought that sounded like the best option that would allow us to stay out since I thought our cab could easily have been $100 USD.

Once we had danced ourselves out, the kiddo had already left so we cabbed back with Mr. Haiku. I was kind of worried about the kiddo, but Haikus said that the kiddo had an amazing way of always making it back. We hopped in the cab and the cab driver had no idea where the area their hotel was in was. Because Haikus had just arrived in Tokyo less than 24 hours before, he also didn't know how to explain to the cab driver where it was. Luckily Amelia and I had the map, but with the language barrier we still had some major struggles, especially because the map didn't have the detailed map of where they were staying. The cab driver drove around for almost an hour and had to get out of the cab to ask for directions not once, but three times. Eventually we made it.

Lo and behold, the kiddo was already there which is good that we didn't need to worry about him. Also he had a head start and probably didn't take the longest cab ride ever. Apparently their hotel had some mineral baths and we planned to soak in them for a bit before going to bed but then the people who were working their were like "yeah, obviously it's closed at 3am on a Thursday, you stupid Americans" in nicer, more broken English so we gave up and went to bed.

In the morning we commuted with the business from Bumblefuck nowhere, Tokyo, Japan to the center of town. It became clear to us, that the boys had been bad at estimating distances, didn't realize their hotel was on the outskirts of Tokyo, and we should have just gone back to our hotel which was probably easier to get to from Roppongi than theirs, although theirs technically may have been closer. I made a sort of Queens to Manhattan sort of analogy. Oh well, no harm no foul and we made some new friends.

-Ilana

Days 16-17: Kyoto, Japan

Day 16

We arrived in Japan bright and early at 6 15am. Of the countries we visited, we knew already that Japan would have the least amount of English speaking people and English translated signs. We had booked a shuttle from Osaka airport to Kyoto per our cousins suggestion.

Even though we had hardly slept we started touristing right away, because we couldn't check into the hotel until 3pm. Nate met us at our hotel, we left our bags in the bell closet, and set off walking. We walked along the "Philosopher's path" which took us on the backstreets of Kyoto in a residential area along a river with Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines along the way.

Our cousin Nate, who has a professorship at Bard and has a Phd in modern Japanese literature, was a great guide. He taught us some Japanese history. Kyoto was the old capital of Japan until the mid 19th century. The city was planned to mimic the layout of some city in China that was a symbol of power at the time when Kyoto was built in the 6th century (?). Kyoto was the ideal place for a city because it had mountains in the northwest which is the direction bad energy comes from and no mountains in places that makes all the good energy fly around in ways that bring good luck.

The main religions practiced in the history of Japan are Buddhism and Shintoism. Shintoism is more of a practice than a religion, focused on local deities and shrines. Both religions feed into what I would call "superstitions" of Japan but I wish I had a better word. Instead of a God or gods with a personal relationship to the people, the religions focus on actions that bring good or bad luck.

The shrine we stopped at had many statues of rats and foxes. Foxes are spirits who like Sake and sometimes disguise themselves as women to trick local people. Nate said he knew a lot of Japanese people who would never go to a shrine at night because they're afraid of spirits and ghosts.

The practice of Shintoism and Buddhism are similar in Japan so its sometimes difficult to tell which place of worship belongs to which and people of both religions may worship in the same place, kind of like Hinduism and Buddhism in Cambodia. Shrines are free because they are owned publicly; temples charge a few and are owned by the monks.

We visited a temple afterwards that also had a grave yard. The morning itself was gray and wet, so the stone graves look nice in a calm yet eerie way. Lawns of moss stood out against the grey. There were also planted cedar trees adding more green and some reddish brown.

The next temple we visited was the Silver Pavilion. The pavilion, which is just one of a few buildings in the temple complex is no longer silver,but the gardens are as beautiful as ever- Nathan said theres a small army of gardners who keep it in top shape. They have the traditional Japanese zen garden look with ponds, twisted pines, stone paths curving around mossy boulders and trees, and even some sand paintings. Nate told us how the gardens are carefully designed to be a representation of Nature in its "Platonic" form and maintained to offer varied picture-like views designed to balance nature with architecture from stopping places around the path. For example, from one bridge you can see how the curve of a branch has been trained by gardeners to match the curve of the pavilion roof, while another spot is ideal for seeing the pavilion straight on framed by the mountains.

We left via the main street that leads to the entrance to the temple. It was lined with little shops selling sweets, pickles, and some souvenirs like slippers and fans. It was very crowded with tourists, almost all Asian. Apparently most of them were domestic Japanese or actually Chinese. Visiting temples is very important in order to obtain what Nate calls "buddha points." Just a block or two off the main street the streets were practically deserted. It sounds like there are basically prescribed tourist activities and anything else isn't really done. There isn't as much of the idea of exploring a place. It's all about the Buddha points.

We found a lovely udon noodle shop where we sat on tatami mats on the floor to eat lunch. This was our first meal in Japan. Amelia and I were worried about being the rude Americans who don't know the Japanese customs since everything seemed so formal and we were glad to have Nate with us.

After lunch we took the bus to one of the furthest temples along the eastern mountains of Kyoto. This temple was actually on the side of the mountain so it looked out on all of Kyoto, to the western mountains. This also meant that there were many steps, at the top of which were two massive wooden statues of demons, at least 15 feet tall. Unfortunately they were enclosed in mesh cages and not well lit so they were hard to see.

Next we walked along the most traditional streets of kyoto, in search of a sweet shop. We found a traditional sweet shop. Almost everything was green tea flavored with accents of vanilla and sweet red bean. Many also included weird gelatinous substances from mochi to flavorless jello blocks. The restaurant was in the traditional style so we sat on tatami mats again. There was a carp pond outside with huge prize winning carp- we saw about a half dozen huge trophies for their fish.

After all our touristing and lack of sleep, we were exhausted. I was also feeling sick from the side effects of Imodium like dry mouth and nausea (See previous email and sorry if TMI). It was after check in time so we could finally go to our room. We walked in ready to pass out and realized we had no beds! Our room was traditional Japanese style, so our sleeping mats were folded up in the closet. We put the mats on the floor and tried to nap. I had some success. Amelia had none. We did get to relax though and showered before going to meet Nate for dinner.

As it turned out we had serendipitously planned our  two nights and a morning trip during the two nights and morning long summer festival in Kyoto. Or maybe they had the festival for us this year and the past few hundred years. Up to the interpretation of the reader.

We had seen a lot of men and women in summer kimonos, more common around festival times and at temples. It was pretty neat to see.

Before dinner we took part in the traditional Japanese activity of public drinking, which is totally legal. We stopped at a convenience store and got canned mix drinks. Amelia had a particularly good Japanese vodka and grapefruit thing. We then went to one of Nate's favorite restaurants to get fried soba noodles with egg on top and an egg pancake with mochi and onions inside. The place is a hole in the wall and delicious, both of which you can always expect from a Nate recommendation.

After dinner we went to the festival. The festival took place in downtown Kyoto. They had blocked off a large portion of the city to cars so the hordes of people could mill around and people could set up booths. There were booths set up for food and games. Amelia got fried mochi with a kind of yakitori sauce. We had a couple more dranks from stands along the way including sake for Amelia and Nate. We watched Nate play a traditional Japanese game of catching fish with a paper net. Some of the other people playing were really good but Nate didn't catch any. We looked at some of the floats which were set up on the street and are used in a parade on the last day. In the larger floats, there were people in traditional festival outfits playing "festival" music which was not on the traditional Western scale, so it sounded dissonant to me. A lot of wooden flutes and bells, a little droning.

They closed down the festival at 10 30. The Japanese people all evacuated the street immediately, completely unlike what would happen with a thousand tipsy Americans. We got a pretty hilarious video of Nate talking about the guys with blinking vests ushering the people off the street.

- Ilana with help from Amelia

Day 17

For our second day in Japan we decided to take a hike to some hot springs in the mountains in Kyoto. We stopped at a convenience store first to pick up breakfast. The store people in Japan have a habit of talking in Japanese even though we know they know we don't understand. I asked Nate to translate and he told us it was something like, "Hi, welcome to 7 11. You have purchased two rice balls and a tea. It cost 450 yen. You have given me 500 yen. Your change is 50 yen. Do you need a bag? No you don't need a bag. Are you sure, ok, sure. Ok. Thank you for visiting 7 11, have a nice day, come back soon." All without a response from either of us. 

The beginning of the hike was just along the road next to a stream. There were many fancy restaurants along the way that had built platforms across the stream so the stream actually flowed underneath you as you ate. We stopped at a temple and bought a paper fortune for ourselves. It was a water fortune, so first the paper looked blank, but once it got wet in the fountain the writing appeared. Nate told us that it was basically the second to worst fortune: take extra care of your health, success will not come in business, love will come late if it comes at all, etc. Great. Supposedly fortunes from temples that are harder to visit are usually better... Maybe because you get more buddha points the harder it is to reach the temple. I guess we're just not hard core enough. We tied our wet fortune to an array of horizontal dowls, as you do with unwanted fortunes, and continued on our hike.

Off the main road finally, we started up the side of a ridge. The whole area that we hikes through for about an hour was part of one temple complex, so as we hiked we saw the occasional stone with writing carved into it or a fountain. There were also some more modern looking sculptures, very geometric but sill organic-looking. At the top there were many temple buildings and a nice view of the valley on the other side, where we would find the hot springs.

These springs had been turned into traditional Japanese baths, and of course the waters have healing powers. Men and women bathe separately so we had to part with Nate, very concerned again with our ignorance of the customs. Luckily they had a few signs in English informing us of the proper way to do things. For example, always sit on the provided stool while you shower. Surprisingly comfortable! I may adopt such a stool for my own daily cleansing :) The baths themselves were very peaceful and serene. The small pool was in a courtyard surrounded by pines and other trees, above which you could see the tops of the mountains around the valley. For most of the time we were the only people there, so who knows if we did it right.

Lunch was on tatami mats again, which is apparently not as common as our small sample would suggest. I had the traditional Kyoto boiled soft tofu and Amelia got udon with tempura. Unsurprisingly, putting tempura in soup eliminates most of its crunchy charm, but it was tasty nonetheless. Ilana and Nate enjoyed their tofu.

On the way back to Kyoto, Nate got a call from his friend who was visiting saying he had arrived. We met Nate's friend Bryan, a fellow ramen blogger who also had a column in a Japanese Playboy type magazine sold in convenience stores. We walked around a covered promenade and bought my mom tea.

We went to an amazing small plates dinner. We had miso eggplant, sesame lotus, eggplant with fried fish, sashimi and mackerel, a Kyoto specialty. Amelia, Nate and Bryan had some nice sake too. Afterwards we walked around the festival again with a couple brewskies.

Days 14-15: Climbing in Chiang Mai, Thailand

Day 14

So glad we canceled the second day of that scammy tour. Instead, we got to go climbing! We booked an excursion through our hotel and were picked up in the morning with two other travelers, given gear, and driven an hour outside Chiang mai to crazy horse buttress (fig. 1). Our guides were Mario and Jun, two Thai thirty-somethings, and our fellow travelers Sebastian, a comp sci student from Holland and Kana, a nurse from Japan.

Tldr: I got my climbing fix and Ilana got a bit tired out and discouraged, but it was overall a great day. This next paragraph is full of climbing jargon so skip if you like. But then keep reading!

They used the French system to rate the routes so who knows how hard I really climbed, but I started with a 6a chimney. Maybe like 5.10b ish? But it was hard after not having climbed for three weeks! On real rock. In shitty shoes. And 90 degree humid weather. I was basically dripping sweat the whole day. I sped up all of the 5as and bs, then led (clean!) a 5c (fig. 2). Deeericious. Jun was super encouraging the entire time and seemed impressed. Ilana made it up a few 5as and bs but struggle with the c and refused to try the 6s except the 6a chimney that I did first. And she made it up that one! And didn't even whine as much as Kana!

The most adorable dog came to visit us as we were climbing. Brown and super soft, she just couldn't get enough love (fig. 3). And then she stole our guide's lunch. Oops!

Ilana and I rode back to Chiang mai in the back of the pickup truck until it started to rain and Jun offered to swap out for one of us. I found the rain very refreshing :) chatting with Jun was also fun; he was very friendly (though his English wasn't great) and we talked about deep water soloing and Thailand in general.

We got back to the hotel and cleaned up to go to dinner. Sebastian had told us about some street food along the moat of old Chiang Mai and that there was a good are for going out called zoes garden nearby so we tuktuked our way there. We wandered around the street food to see what there was to see and settled for some delicious pad Thai and pad see ew. Om nom nom. Authentic. Some chang beers from the convenience store two doors down and we were set.

After dinner I was ready to ptfo. We wandered over to Zoes garden but it was still pretty empty. This was probably around 9:15. I whined but Ilana convinced me to stay out, suggesting some sugar might get my energy up. Queue the greasy banana roti. Om nom again and I was ready to party.

We sat down at a table at zoes and ordered a couple beers. A few sips and we had the courage to join the table of reasonable-enough-looking guys a few rows over. Looking maybe, sounding...not so much. David, Ryan, and Kevin were from Toronto and had just graduated with a degree in business and just sold their flower company. (My parents and I actually likely encountered their stands at Penn's graduation in may.) They had settled on doing one exciting thing a day...because they were consistently too hung over to so any more. I think I prefer our m.o. Ryan's head sweatband should have been warning enough.

Eventually we spotted Sebastian and joined him and a few friend from his hostel. Much more pleasant company.

Then came drum and bass. Fuck yes. Danced hard for a bit, with Shaggy and Azaelia. If only I'd worn shorts. Unfortunately the dance floor was soon too crowded and hot so I sat back down. It was also now too loud to talk so I was pretty ready to peace. But Ilana wanted to keep going.

After some more dancing at a less crowded, less poppy, electronic club, Ilana and I split up. She kept dancing while I wandered back to the hostel with the boys to  sample some greenery via Germany. Sebastian and I had a great time talking about cyber security/identities and quantum computing. Fabu and Deepin, his hostel mates, seemed a little lost so they went to sleep and Sebastian followed shortly.

I walked back to the club, past the cafe with the toads in heat that Ilana and I had mistaken for recordings of cows. I bumped into Ilana on the street and we tuktuked it back to the hotel.

- Amelia

Day 14

Our flight was at 6 30 on our last day in Chiang Mai, so we could have a lazy morning and afternoon. Amelia had wanted to get her haircut so we envisioned a spa day because Thailand is famous for its pampering. There was a wide choice for massage, but finding a place for a haircut was a little more difficult. We asked for a recommendation from the hotel but the place was closed. We asked for another recommendation from the money changer and he suggested a place across the street.

The proprietor of the barber shop was eating lunch so Amelia and I went to wonder around the mall. I was pretty hungry for lunch while Amelia wasn't because she had eaten half my breakfast while waiting for hers. Equating street food to mall food, I got Pad Thai at the food court. This operation included a confusing system of buying coupons in one place and ordering food in another. The Pad Thai was even better than last night and we wandered back to the barber shop.

The only person working the shop was a fairly convincing transvestite. I opted for a manicure instead of a massage but Amelia and I couldn't be served at the same time. The hair dresser struggled to understand what Amelia wanted for a haircut and did a hack kind of job. Not seeing this as an indication of her/his lack of prowess in the personal care industry I still opted for a manicure and pedicure (not something I've done since high school but it was cheap and we were going to Japan the next day). Wrought with fears about hygiene and feeling the onset of the 3rd world traveler's inevitable intestinal discomfort, I was not a happy camper. Torn between my reluctance to brave the squat style commode with my freshly done toes and the peristalsis of my lower digestive tract, eventually the latter won out and I walked in bare foot to a cesspool of who knows what. Without getting into details, I'll just say Amelia's reaction on seeing me led from the backroom with the shorts pantsuit wearing ladyman was that I had unwilling been giving a happy ending to my manicure that was neither happy nor at the end of my manicure. Yes, with no sink or disinfectant I sat back down for the end of my manicure. By the end we were antsy to get out. All in all my Thailand spa experience was shitty.

Chiang Mai airport was the easiest and most pleasant airport so far. Clear signage, pleasant gate agents and comfortable places to sit. Not to mention it was small and empty, so it was pretty hard to get lost.

We settled into our seats on the plane and suddenly "Haaa!" The head and arms of a toddler (whose existence was literally surprising to us) popped over the seats in front of us. Ilana jumped and cowered instinctively and then we all, the boy's parents included started laughing uncontrollably. It looked like a tricky matter to ask the boy to apologize to us when his mom could barely stop giggling.

Our travel from south east Asia to Japan was otherwise uneventful and unfortunately not that restful. We had a red eye of two less than 4 hr flights and a 3 hr layover in Hong Kong. We descended into Hong Kong through a thunderstorm. It was a spectacular sight, looking down on all the colored lights of the city, illuminated building-lined streets twisting around mountains and bays, massive clouds flashing electric light at different altitudes.

- Ilana