Things I Remember About Americaland

1. “Public” transportation is meant for people only, not livestock
2. Mommies and daddies buy meals for their kids in boxes instead of killing it the hour before the meal
3. Employees don't take naps at work with reckless abandon
4. Roads are meant strictly for driving, not drying food or playing children's games
5. People point with their fingers, not their lips
6. Rice doesn't have rocks in it
7. It is rude to hock loogies in public
8. Restrooms generally have tissue in them
9. It's rude to stare, ask personal questions, or point out that someone's baby is fat and white with a long nose
10. People don't talk about their bodily functions or recent illnesses
11. When they don't know the answer, people honestly reply “I don't know”
12. When food at a restaurant is served to you cold, that is unacceptable
13. Ketchup isn't made from bananas
14. Men get arrested for public urination
15. I can't buy or flirt my way out of any problem
16. Gas is sold via pump, not coke bottle
17. I don't need to lock my toothbrush in tupperware at night for fear that cockroaches will get to it
18. Not everyone and their mother's neighbor's chicken's breeder knows me
19. When I raise my eyebrows as a means of saying hello, people think I'm coming on to them
20. I don't need to plan my outfits based on how much I think I'll sweat on that day

On Top of the World

This is what it looks like to stand on the top of the world. Mt. Kinabalu is just under 14,000 feet, and the last 2 or so kilometers of hiking is on granite just like this. It was cold at the top, but because it is near the equator it is not nearly as cold as other mountains of the same height. The good weather conditions make it an "easy" mountain to climb compared with others of a similar height. When I typed easy just now I laughed out loud, because it was exactly the opposite of that.

This is a view of Low's Gully, which is on the other side of the mountain. It doesn't look much like a gully to me, more like a vast canyon of death and despair, which is pretty much what Low and his crew found out when they had an expedition there to "see what it was like." During rains the gully fills like a tub, and this happened during Low's expedition, resulting in the deaths of many men. To ensure that the same wouldn't happen to foolish tourists, the park put up a 12,000 volt electric fence, which you can see rather close behind me in the next picture. On one side is the gully, and on the other are endless flat slabs of granite rock that, frankly, after having climbed them in the dark, seem no less dangerous. Just kidding about the fence being electric.

Incidentally, although I am accused of saying this every time I step into less-than-90-degree climes, these pictures capture the coldest day of my life after having left America.

Side effects of altitude include: dizziness, drowsiness, nausea, confusion, and sausage fingers.

The Keys are in Thai

Considering that the Germans and Filipinos have no street cred in Thailand, my language skills are rendered useless here. Thai computers apparently like to speak in Thai, which makes my internet experience tantamount to me, in monkey form, trying to play the piano with mittens on. I'm just pushing a lot of pushie button thingies and trying to not ruin the box.

This is trip number two to Thailand, which was preceded by a trip to Malaysia and will follow with a trip to Cambodia, and before you start thinking that I'm such a world traveler, I'd like to defend my vicious travel habit by saying this: blame the airlines for making flights cost only $30. It is amazing how cheap it is to travel for days and days and days. It is so cheap that a $3, hour-long massage on a beach starts looking quite expensive.

This vacation was a precursor to the giant vacation to come, which I like to call "joblessness in America." It began in Borneo where I hiked a mountain and thought the pain afterward would never, ever go away. Of course I read up on this hike before the trip, of course I did. I'm not so stupid as to just climb mountains the world throughout before reading about them and finding out if the climb will most certainly or only probably kill me.

The literature swore it was an "easy mountain to climb," which meant only that it was easier compared to other mountains. Like Everest.

Mt. Kinabalu was certainly more than a jaunt. It was a tall, difficult, rocky, mountainous mountain that left me and my seven companions wheezing and panting and crying for mommy. What made it bearable was that the seven who went with me are some of the most wonderful people on this planet, and surely ranked as the seven best people on that mountain. They outranked all of the Korean package tourists, the western Malaysian girls school students, and even our guide who had hiked Kinabalu 500 times but still succumbed to amoebas on our summit to the top.

Dan, Shauna, Kevin, Rudy, Heather, Andy, Nicole and I conquered the mountain, and we remembered this for eight days thereafter when, with each step, at least one or all of us was guaranteed to moan and wince in deep regret. We could only descend slopes and stairs, however slight, by sidestepping and holding on to guard rails. The pain was so bad that I'll describe it like this: I wanted to cut my legs off and replace them with wooden pegs so that I would never feel pain like that again. That's about how it felt.

But the pain subsided, and we spent the next few days walking in the jungle and seeing snakes and orangutans and thieving monkeys and birds and bugs and trees that can kill you. It was spectacular.

Because we are now island people, all of us volunteers, we decided that we needed more islands instead of jungles and mountains, and that's how I found myself on a white sandy beach in Thailand over the past few days. It was everything I expected: hot, sandy, white, boring, and without a lot to do. Such is the nature of islands, and I don't want anyone telling me I take hot, tropical, beautiful beaches for granted. I do not. They are hot, yes, and beautiful, yes, but based on my experience they don't do a whole lot to inspire productivity. And with all of the chickens and dogs and whining babies, they don't do much for relaxation either. It's true.

But we were there just long enough to remember why we left our respective islands in the Philippines in the first place, and now we are safe and sound back in the noisy, dirty, tourist-infested city of Bangkok. Ah what relief.

If this trip proved anything, it is that beer in the Philippines really is that cheap, and despite my complaining, the English there really is that good...and as far as beautiful, hot, tropical islands go, well, maybe I shouldn't complain too much. I'm told that they might be hard to come by in Washington State.