Oman's 44th National Day

On November 18, 2014 Oman celebrated its 44th National Day, which is the date of the Sultan's birthday and commemorates him ascending to the throne 44 years ago. In expectation of the event, the whole country was decked out in red and green banners, flags, lights and a sense of celebration. It almost looked like the country was decorating for Christmas...until you realized that Oman's flag is red and green and the color scheme is merely a coincidence.

 

 

A few weeks prior to National Day, the Sultan gave a video conference to state that he would be unable to return to Oman for the festivities due to the fact that he was seeking medical attention in Germany. Many of the Omanis I worked with seemed ecstatic that he was speaking to them via video and everyone tuned in to hear him. In the days following his video, it was all anyone could talk about and I started seeing cars around town that were emblazoned with the Sultan or with the Omani flag, further showing everyone's love for the Sultan and national pride.

 

 

 

I have to admit that as an American I found all of this rather perplexing. No matter how popular one of our presidents might be, I couldn't imagine Americans getting so excited about hearing a speech, nor could I ever imagine Americans decking out their cars with images of the president or of our flag.

 

The Sultan's speech and his inability to return to Oman for National Day also sparked some questions by international journalists and expats as to his health and what his failing health might mean for Oman's future. As far as I can tell, this is not something Omanis discuss, at least not publicly. The Omanis love the Sultan and wish him well and don't seem to speculate about his health or what the future of the country might be without him, especially not during a time of celebration.  

 

Though November 18th was the actual National Day, the Sultan has historically wanted Omanis to stay in Oman for National Day, so people are not given the day off. Instead, the holiday is the following weekend, ensuring that Omanis stay in the country for the actual holiday and then get days off that they can travel with. This year we were lucky enough that the National Day holiday fell November 26-27, which meant that all of us Americans could celebrate Thanksgiving (which would otherwise have been a normal work day).

 

Since I learned my lesson about staying in Oman during holidays (and since my mom would have worried incessantly if I'd been alone for Thanksgiving), I flew to Doha, Qatar to spend the holiday with some of my friends who used to live in Oman and were relocated to Doha a few months ago. While I didn't get out and see much of Doha, what little I did see was such a contrast to Muscat. When I first visited the Gulf region, I found Muscat so much more aesthetically pleasing than the bigger cities like Abu Dhabi, Dubai or Doha. And while Muscat is much more charming than the other three, after living here almost 8 months I find myself missing the bustle of a big city and feeling a little bored by Muscat's sleepy charm. So a weekend in Doha was a nice refresher - not only to see good friends, but to also be reminded that Dubai isn't the only big city in the region. And since it's only an hour and a half flight away, it's an easy escape on the random boring weekend here.

Halloween in Transylvania

So now that I've told you why I wanted to go to Romania for Halloween, I guess I should tell you about my actual trip. I took a 7-day tour of Transylvania through the tour company G Adventures, which was pretty much the perfect amount of time to spend in Romania. 

The trip started in Bucharest, which I'd been warned to have pretty low expectations about. Supposedly Bucharest was called the "Paris of the East" in the 1800s due to its beauty, but 60 years of communism, repression and economic stagnation left it a bit wanting. Knowing there wouldn't be much to do there, we spent our one free day in Bucharest at the Escape Room, which I highly recommend. Basically you get locked in a room for an hour with a ticking bomb to solve clues to escape the room before the bomb goes off. Nothing Romanian about it, but it was definitely a fun way to spend an hour (and no, we did not escape the bomb, though apparently made it farther than most people).

We got out of Bucharest as quickly as we could and headed to Transylvania, which is a region of Romania bordering the Carpathian Mountains. Our first stop was Snagov Monastery, which is supposedly where Dracula was buried. Dracula gravesite or not, I can see why he liked this small Orthodox church so much.

Snagov Monastery

We also swung by Peles Castle before heading to the quaint, medieval town of Brasov.

Peles Castle

Brasov

I was pretty excited to see Bran Castle, which is sometimes incorrectly referred to as Dracula's Castle. It's not clear that Dracula ever visited this castle and, if he did, it was likely only for a short period of time, but it's still a pretty stunning castle. That also happens to be for sale, if you can find $88 million lying around.

Bran Castle

But the real highlight of the tour was Corvin Castle, where we spent Halloween Eve. Every tour group in the country for Halloween attended the costume ball and the castle was decked out for the event. There was medieval jousting in the courtyard, a feast, Romanian folk dancing and a costume contest.

Corvin Castle - most epic Halloween

Getting to spend Halloween in that castle would have been amazing all on its own, but with everyone decked out in costumes and the locals joining in, it was truly the best possible Halloween. I also lucked out and had a really great tour group this time around, so attending the party with a bunch of fun people also helped immensely.

We ended the trip with a visit to Poenari Castle, Dracula's actual castle. The castle was largely destroyed in an earthquake in the 1800s, but what remains is at the top of a mountain...and the top of a very strenuous climb up 1400 stairs. However, the views from the top were amazing and a good (though sweaty) way to end a great week.

Poenari Castle

A view of the Arges River from the walkway up to Poenari Castle

For any other Halloween lovers out there, I definitely recommend Halloween in Transylvania. Or, if you just like stunning mountains and fall scenery, still go.

Now to go finish packing before I'm off to Doha for Thanksgiving!

Visiting Dracula

I've been terrible about updating this blog recently but I have been traveling more than usual and absolutely slammed at work in between all the travel. Which also means that I'm pretty much perpetually tired from the never-ending jet lag cycle. But I finally have a few days off work to relax, celebrate Thanksgiving and actually update this blog!

So about a month ago I packed some warm clothes and headed off to Romania to celebrate Halloween in Transylvania, something that has always been on my bucket list. But before I launch into a description of my trip, I should probably tell you why I wanted to go to Romania so badly. For starters, in my much younger days I was a "goth" kid and went through a vampire phase (fortunately this was long before the "Twilight" craze and I had respectable Anne Rice vampires to obsess about) and, as both a goth kid and a history nerd, I naturally researched the real Dracula, Vlad Tepes. And so began my interest in traveling to the region...

Dracula was a 15th century prince in Wallachia, a region of Romania that was on the edge of the Ottoman advance into Europe. His father had joined the Order of the Dragon, a Christian secret society committed to stopping the Ottomans, and so his father was renamed Vlad Dracul, dracul meaning "dragon". By adding the "a" to the end of Dracul it merely meant "son of", so the son became Vlad Dracula and, like his father, was committed to stopping the Ottomans, which was of critical importance to Europe after the Ottomans defeated and then claimed Constantinople in 1453. 

Vlad Dracula

As a child, Dracula and his brother were held as hostages at the Ottoman court for years. He grew up witnessing torture and war and knew that his life was always at stake. When he finally returned to claim his Wallachian throne in 1456, he was a hardened man and ruled with an iron fist. To consolidate his power, one of the first things he did was bring the Wallachian nobles into line. He invited the nobles over to celebrate Easter and when they showed up in their finery, he locked the doors and killed off most of the men. The women and children he forced into slavery to build his castle, Poenari Castle, high up on a mountain. The story goes that they slaved away in their Easter finery until the clothing disintegrated from their bodies and then they toiled in the nude until they died.

Poenari Castle - an earthquake destroyed most of the castle in the 1800s, but you can still visit the ruins after climbing a grueling 1400 steps to the top. The mannequins try to recreate the impaled victims that one would have seen when nearing Dracula's castle.

While his actions towards the nobles might seem unusually cruel, the nobles had previously killed his  older brother by burying him alive. These same nobles, most of whom were German, also controlled trade and limited opportunities for ethnic Romanians. And, finally, they used their power to try to control the princes of Wallachia, which Dracula clearly wasn't having. So while his methods were cruel, they were not necessarily unjustified.

In addition to cleaning up the nobility, Dracula also took very hardline approaches on theft, adultery and other crimes. Theft was punishable by death and his favorite form of killing was impalement, though he also employed a myriad of other ways to torture, kill and maim. Sometimes he'd impale people through the stomach so they would die quickly - other times he would have a blunt stake pushed through a person's anus until the stake slowly made its way through someone's body, eventually killing them after a few incredibly painful days. And often once he impaled someone he would leave the stakes up, as a reminder to others. He impaled so many people that another one of his nicknames is Vlad the Impaler.

But it worked. There was virtually no crime in Wallachia at the time and the story goes that he used to leave a gold cup at a fountain in the city square for anyone to drink out of and the cup was never stolen. And he was the only European leader of the time to turn back the Ottomans. In 1462, the Ottomans under Mehmet II were advancing on Wallachia. When they neared Dracula's castle they encountered the forest of the impaled - over 20,000 victims, many of them Turks, impaled on sticks leading up to Dracula's castle. Mehmet II was so horrified by Dracula's cruelty that he turned around and returned to Constantinople, thereby saving Wallachia from being overrun by the Ottomans.

Dracula was killed around 1476/1477 and it was believed that he was buried at Snagov Monastery, a monastery that he helped support and which he supposedly favored due to its remote location on an island.

Snagov Monastery

Supposedly he was buried at the head of the church, where the priests would walk over praying every day, thereby helping to atone for all the sins he committed in life. However, when archaeologists dug up his remains in 1931, they found that the casket was only full of animal bones. Rumor has it that at some point Dracula's body was moved to a less holy place in the monastery, and a different casket was discovered with a human skeleton missing a head. Some believe that was Dracula's true final resting place, though rumors abound about other burial locations (and whether he's truly resting at all!).

Supposedly the location where Dracula was buried in Snagov Monastery

While Dracula is most often portrayed as a villain or a cruel and bloodthirsty tyrant, Romanians look to him as a national hero. He fought off the Ottomans, wrested control away from the German nobles, advanced Romanian national causes and made Wallachia a safe and crime-free area to live in. His rules were strict and his punishments appalling, but during a dark time in Eastern European history Wallachians had stability and security and a national champion.

But how did the story of one cruel Romanian prince in the 1400s turn into a vampire legend and make its way to Bram Stoker, an English chap in the 1800s who never even traveled to Romania? Long before Stoker told his tale, Germans, Russians and other Europeans were telling stories about Dracula, embellishing on his atrocities and creating supernatural causes for his tyranny. Pamphlets in Germany were printed during Dracula's lifetime and these early manuscripts, which became bestsellers at the time, tied him to vampires and demons and all sorts of supernatural evils. By the time Stoker turned Dracula into a household monster, Europeans had been telling the tale of Dracula for hundreds of years.

1499 German woodcut showing Dracula dining among the impaled corpses of his victims - this also helped add to the vampire myth, since Dracula did drink blood and did eat food covered in the blood of his victims

So yes, growing up I was a little obsessed with Dracula, who is also rumored to be one of the sources for Machiavelli's "The Prince". But apart from the Dracula history, I also wanted to see the country. I'd heard that the Carpathian Mountains were spookily beautiful and that Romania is one of the last few places in Europe where bears and wolves still exist in large numbers (in fact, there are more bears in Romania than in all of the rest of Europe).

Carpathian Mountains

Spooky Carpathian Mountains

And finally, the Soviet historian in me wanted to check another post-Soviet country off my list. Romania's Soviet dictator, Nicolae Ceaușescu, was one of the worst of the Soviets and Romania had a  harder time catching up to the rest of Europe after the fall of communism. It's still a very poor country by European standards - in fact, in the villages, a major mode of transportation still remains the horse and cart, which we saw repeatedly.

If you drive in Romania you have to learn to share the road with all the horse-drawn carts

A Week of Boredom

So as I've mentioned, we've had the past week off work due to the Muslim holiday of Eid Al Adha. While a week off work would normally entail me traveling somewhere exotic, I was pretty exhausted after all of my recent traveling and felt bad leaving my cat yet again. And since there wasn't anywhere I was dying to go and had no one to travel with, I opted to stay home and relax for the week.

I underestimated exactly how boring Oman can be without a single person around to do anything. While there are still lots of hikes and excursions in the country I want to do, none of them are really appropriate for a female going alone. So I read a lot. Watched a ton of TV. Explored my neighborhood, played with my cat, went on a lot of walks…and by Tuesday I was ready to hop on a plane and go somewhere, anywhere. So I did the next best thing and checked myself into a fancy resort here on Wednesday night.

The Shangri-La Bar Al Jissah Resort is about 45 minutes away from my house and on an outcropping of rock out over the ocean. While I'd never stayed there before, the drive out to Shangri-La from Muscat is pretty spectacular and something that's well worth a trip out.

So it was gorgeous and I booked myself in for a massage and then a day at the beach on Wednesday. And it was certainly better than sitting on my couch at home and watching tv, but a resort is not exactly the best place to be alone since everyone else is there with someone (as opposed to a hotel that caters to businesspeople, where at least there's a decent chance that some people are there alone for work, as opposed to a resort). 

I also planned on having a fabulous seafood dinner at their restaurant Bait Al Bahr, which is indoor/outdoor. While it has cooled off slightly here, I didn't want to get all dressed up and then sweat profusely, so I opted to eat indoors. What I didn't realize is that outside there are fans and an ocean breeze, whereas the inside is completely open and has no A/C or fans. While the people on the outside deck looked perfectly comfortable, I was so hot and so sweaty it was hard to enjoy my fabulous grilled seafood dinner. In fact, I was so hot I practically rushed through my meal just so I could get out of the restaurant and back into the fresh air, where there also happened to be a beautiful full moon.

My original plan was to head to the bar after dinner and maybe attempt to meet people (or at least just not sit in my room), but I was so hot and uncomfortable after dinner that I needed to escape to my room and get out of my dress for a little while. I had every intention of going back out, but I should have known that once I got undressed that would be it for the evening. So by 8:30 at night I was back in my room, flipping channels on the tv trying to find something to watch and wishing I was back home with my DVR and my cat. Sad, I know. 

But at least I redeemed myself slightly the next day by going snorkeling. I just wanted to get out and do something, but once I arrived at the snorkeling location the guide said that we were going to Turtle Bay and would see lots of turtles. I was suddenly so much more excited about snorkeling since I've never really swam with sea turtles before (and I'm clearly a sucker for non-fish wildlife).

The marina for snorkeling.

When we arrived at Turtle Bay I didn't see any turtles, though I did see lots and lots of slug-like things on the bottom of the ocean. At first I thought they were dead fish, then I thought they were debris in the water, then I realized they were alive and feeding off the bottom of the ocean. As long as none of them raised up off the bottom I'd be fine, since one of the biggest things I'm scared of while snorkeling is eels. And these slugs (I think they're actually sea cucumbers) looked way too snake/eel-like for me to be comfortable.

Just as I was getting comfortable swimming over the slugs, assured that they wouldn't rise up and bite me, I saw the single coolest and scariest thing I've seen while snorkeling - a giant moray eel.

Terrifying moray eel. I actually kept calling it a leopard eel because of it's distinctive markings until someone told me it's real name.

I'm very impressed with myself that I managed to swim over the eel a few times without freaking out. But he seemed pretty happy lodged in his coral and fat from all the fish, so I don't think biting me was high on his list of things to do.

Just as we were getting ready to head back I did finally see a single sea turtle. He swam right past me and an older Italian man and I took off after him (we were the only two of our group to even see the sea turtle, much less be strong enough swimmers to follow him). The little booger swam so fast it was all I could do to keep up with him, much less try to take a picture. We eventually lost him, but I would have been pretty disappointed to go to Turtle Bay and not see a single turtle.

The highlight of my day was probably going to see "Dracula Untold" on opening night to get me in the mood for my trip to Transylvania in two weeks. All in all, while the resort was a nice break from reality, it was not the best place to go when you're already feeling lonely. In fact, I'm pretty mad at myself that I missed an opportunity to travel this week (which it seems like every other person in this part of the world did this week), so in the future I need to find a way to balance needing some days to relax and unwind versus spending 10 full days doing absolutely nothing. And now I can't believe I'm back to work on Sunday...

Eid Al Adha

Yesterday started the week-long Muslim holiday of Eid Al Adha, so the Sultanate of Oman declared that we all had another 10 day vacation since all work stopped Thursday evening and we're off until next Sunday. Pretty much all the expats left already, but with my hectic travel schedule lately I just decided to stay here and rest and relax for a week. 

Last week when I was in the field I wound up talking to a couple of Omani coworkers and they were shocked to hear that I was here alone and had no plans for Eid. They also couldn't believe that I hadn't been to an Omani home yet, so they insisted that I join one of their families for Eid. I smiled, said I'd love to, and then secretly hoped that no one would call and I could spend my week quietly relaxing and sunbathing.

This morning one of the coworkers texted me and invited me to his sister's house for Eid. Though my initial thought was to come up with an excuse not to go, I accepted since I figured this was something I should experience. Plus I felt like I owed all you faithful readers with a true Omani experience. So it's clearly all your fault that I had an incredibly uncomfortable day.

When I arrived my coworker immediately handed me off to his sister, since the men and women congregate separately at gatherings and parties. His sister had a houseful of people (about 60-70), so having to babysit me was probably the last thing she needed. She asked me to sit on the couch in the front room, which happened to be the kids' room. She spent a few minutes with me, but then needed to run off and attend to the food. So after a few minutes of awkwardly sitting with the kids, I wandered out and tried to figure out where the rest of the women were. My hostess caught me awkwardly standing in the hallway and insisted I sit with the old ladies who couldn't speak English. A slight improvement over the kids. 

Finally a woman about my age came over to me and said that my coworker asked her to keep me company. Her English was excellent and she was really friendly, so I was incredibly grateful that she got volunteered to hang out with me. Shortly after she came over to me it was time to eat and all the men went through the buffet first. After the men they insisted I go next, since guests in Arab households have a sort of "guest of honor" status. 

Lunch was a giant vat of rice and lamb, a type of coleslaw salad and then some pickled vegetables that I couldn't determine. My usual approach is to try a little of everything, though before I did that I should have remembered that Arab hospitality is double-edged - you're expected to eat a lot and clean your plate, otherwise people will fret that you will go hungry! Also, in Omani households everyone eats with their hands, so everyone fussed over me washing my hands. Then the women went into a bedroom to eat - a plastic tablecloth was laid in the middle of the floor and everyone sat on the floor around it and dug in with their hands. They only eat with the right hands and somehow managed to scoop up rice and pick lamb off the bone with only one hand and without making a complete mess. I had planned on trying to eat with my hands, but I must have looked panicked, so someone brought me a fork. I was incredibly thankful for that since I would have made an absolute mess trying to eat rice with my fingers.

So one of the pickled "vegetables" was a small ball that was cut into quarters. I actually thought it might be a small tomato or something, so I popped a quarter into my mouth fully. A few miserable seconds later I realized it was a pickled lemon, complete with seeds and rind! It was so awful I actually would have tried to spit it out…if only we'd had napkins. Instead I managed to swallow it and then took a mouthful of the spiciest thing ever. At this point I decided to stick to rice, even if it made me look rude.

While the hostess fussed over me and why I wasn't eating enough, all the other women in the room completely ignored me. It could have been that they didn't speak English, but I suspect at least most of the younger ones did, so they probably just didn't want to bother having to make small talk with a stranger. The few minutes where no one fussed over me or spoke to me were actually okay. At some point during the lunch, as I was listening to everyone speaking a language I didn't understand, I realized that they weren't speaking Arabic. Turns out everyone at this party primarily spoke Swahili! The Omani empire used to encompass Eastern Africa and many Omanis emigrated there during the reign of the Sultan's father and only returned to Oman after the Sultan took over. As a result, many of them still speak Swahili as a first language. 

As soon as everyone finished eating, most people left immediately without even eating dessert. I tried to sneak out, but the hostess wouldn't have it. Actually, as more people left I spent a while talking to the hostess alone and that was pretty nice. A lot of questions (and shock) as to how I'm here alone, why I'm not married, why no children, etc. I even got invited to another lunch tomorrow, but I think I successfully managed to beg my way out of it. After a while I finally said I needed to leave to make a movie showing, otherwise I'm not sure how long I would have needed to stay.

Though the entire experience was awkward, Arab hospitality is still so impressive and the hostess really went out of her way to make sure I was fed, comfortable and enjoyed myself. It was also nice of them to invite me into their big family gathering (think of it as the equivalent of inviting someone home for Christmas dinner with your entire extended family). But now that I've experienced an Omani gathering once, I don't think I need to rush off to do that again anytime soon!

Trip to the Desert

One of my favorite things about working in the oil industry is getting to go to the oilfield. I like seeing what it is we actually do and I love meeting the people who work in the field (and being seen as an approachable lawyer). This week I finally go to go the field here, partially because it had been too hot all summer and partially because it's a 5 hour drive each way, so I needed to make sure I had sufficient time to spend a few days there.

On the drive there we passed some spectacular scenery...namely tons of small villages, ancient forts and craggy mountain ranges (of course having to stop at a gas station and use one of their horrible squatter toilets left a lot to be desired).

After about three and a half hours of driving we pulled off onto an unpaved desert road where the main hazards are dust clouds and camels. We hit a "traffic jam" as we waited for a herd of camels to cross the road in front of us - a couple even got so close to the car that I could have reached out and pet them (or at least reached out and angered them into spitting at me).

The field we were going to has some pretty spectacular orange sand dunes, so at the end of a bumpy 5-hour drive we were met with some awesome scenery of the orange dunes.

We hiked up to the top of a dune and though I didn't quite catch the sunset, it was well worth the sweating.

 

 

After three days of being in the field I felt a bit rejuvenated again. It was a good reminder of how beautiful Oman can be, how great some of the people in the field are and how many wonderful connections with people I've made at this company over the years. And on the way back we passed through a pretty large herd of camels (though none attempted to cross the road):

Jet Lagging

I just returned from my first trip back to the US since I moved to Oman and I have to say the jet lag is killing me. Against my better judgment, I spent all day yesterday in bed sleeping, which is sure to screw me up for this entire week. I'm pretty sure it's karma, since I was bragging that I had no jet lag going to the US (and even wondered whether all of my recent travels have gotten my system so used to traveling that now I don't get lagged).

It was also an incredibly whirlwind trip, since I was "home" for only 7 days (I actually consider Oman "home" now). I was there for a work conference and to spend a few days catching up in the Houston office, but I also needed to do a tremendous amount of shopping, as well as squeeze in doctors and dentists appointments. And yeah, you hear shopping and you think fun and glamorous stuff, but I was really shopping for routine things like cold medicine and heating pads and hair products and shampoo and other incredibly boring and mundane things that you don't think about needing...until you can't buy them because you live in the freaking desert. In my haste to leave Houston last Thursday, I even forgot to pack a 6-month supply of prescription meds as well as my Omani liquor license! Fortunately my tenant is sending me everything, but geez, talk about forgetting the critical stuff (and here's hoping the package makes it through customs)!

 

Since this was my first trip back and since I'd had a rough couple of weeks in Oman with no running water or internet (my water is working again, though still no internet), a few people wondered whether my trip back would cause me to want to stay back in the US. Not even a little bit. Look, it was nice to see my friends, it was great to be back in my nice house (with running water and internet and even shower pressure!), it was nice to drink gallons of Diet Coke and wander the glorious aisles of Target, but none of that made me want to move back to Houston permanently. I really like being an expat, despite all the trials and tribulations in living in a place like this. Also, as crazy as Omani drivers are, driving in Houston was so much worse because of the traffic, the enormous highways, the oblivious drivers, the narrow lanes and the sorry state of the roads. It was flat out terrifying.

 

In addition to the jet lag, I think I'm also just exhausted from all the traveling. A few weeks ago I was in Japan for two weeks, then here for one week (dealing with all the house maintenance issues), then the US for a week, then I'm here for one week, then a week off work (I'm thinking of going to Germany if I can figure out all the details in the next few days), then here for two weeks, then a week in Romania, then here for three days, then the US for a week...I got tired just listing all that. And my poor cat. But after the first few weeks of November I'm not planning on going anywhere for a good, long while, so I need to make the most of these opportunities while I have them. And because I really need to go back to the US in November so I can hug my dog.

Tours R Us

You may have noticed that I had some nifty maps for my trip to Borneo and Japan showing the route. No, I didn't create them, I took tours and stole the maps from the tour companies. Since a lot of people ask me about traveling with tour groups or how I pick them, I figured I'd tell you all about it.

 

It happens to be really hard for me to find people to travel with. For one thing, I want to go weird places that not many of my friends want to go to (Turkmenistan anyone?). For another, most of my friends either don't have money to travel or don't have time off work to travel. And finally, as we grow older, more and more of my friends are settling down and choosing to travel with their significant others rather than with friends. So a long time ago I realized that if I wanted to see the world I'd either have to go by myself or go with a tour group.

I don't actually mind traveling alone, but here's the problem - I could go the entire week/two weeks/vacation without speaking to another person since I'm just not sociable enough to strike up conversations with strangers. I recently had a day to myself in Tokyo and I didn't speak to a single other person who wasn't a waiter or a salesperson. I enjoyed the freedom to get lost in the city and go where I wanted and nap on a bench when I was tired...but I also was pretty bored after a few hours. And, unless I'm willing to take some hated selfies, it also means that I won't be in a single picture. It's also a lot of work to plan the itinerary - where to go, where to stay, how long to stay in each place, what to see, what to eat, how to get from place to place, etc. Traveling independently (even if you're traveling with a friend) is exhausting and requires a lot of planning.

 

So over the past 10 years, about 90% of my travel has been with tour groups. When I was younger I did mostly Contiki trips, which are designed for 18-35 year olds. The perk of a Contiki trip is that you're with similarly aged people and if you're traveling as a single person they will pair you up with a roommate. You also have to do zero planning or research, other than figuring out your plane flights to the country. I did 5 trips overall with Contiki: New Zealand, Southeast Asia (Thailand, Laos and Cambodia), Vietnam, Eastern Europe (Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Bratislava and Budapest) and Croatia Sailing. The problem with Contiki is that it gets a bit of a well-deserved reputation for being party tours. And I have always been too old of a soul to enjoy being with a bunch of drunken 20-somethings partying all night and puking all day. I loved my Southeast Asia and my Eastern European trips, but I think that's partially because I had really good groups of people for those two tours. I pretty much hated my Vietnam trip (people were literally vomiting on the bus every day from their hangovers) and Croatia Sailing was underwhelming (despite how awesome it was to sail around Croatia). Finally, while the idea is that you're with similarly aged people, there is nothing similar between a 19 year old and a 34 year old. That age gap is just waaaay too big. And creepy when you factor in the number of drunken hook-ups that occur on a Contiki trip.

 

Not the classiest way to see Europe

 

Last year, after a tremendous amount of research, I found two other tour companies that are designed like a Contiki, but perhaps for an older crowd. Both G Adventures and Intrepid are good for singles since you can get your own room without paying a huge single supplement or get a random roommate. They also offer tours in a ton of weird and random places and range in price all the way up to some ridiculously expensive tours to the North Pole or Antarctica (one of my complaints with Contiki is that all the trips felt like budget travel and sometimes you just want to stay in a decent hotel).

 

So last year I took a trip to Peru with G Adventures (Machu Picchu and the Amazon) and went gorilla trekking in East Africa (Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda) on an overland trip with Intrepid. This year I did Borneo with Intrepid and Japan with G Adventures. With the exception of my Africa trip, I have been underwhelmed by both tour companies.

 

First, Contiki trips had better organization pre-trip. Prior to joining a tour, Contiki would send you via snail mail a package with your tour itinerary (and your specific dates of travel), a trip-specific packing list and a few other relevant documents. G and Intrepid just have general packing lists for all their trips, but the gear you'd need on an overland Africa trip is completely different from what you might need in Japan, so you wind up with people being ill-prepared for the trip they're on. The detailed itinerary that G and Intrepid give are just on their website and don't necessary have your dates (just say Day 1, and so on). I was absolutely panicked in the airport on the way to Africa because, based on what the internet itinerary was saying about my trip, I was going to be a day late for the tour start (turns out it was an internet glitch). Not fun at all.

 

Second, with the exception of my Africa trip, the Contiki tour guides overall were more impressive (of the 5 Contiki tours, I had two phenomenally excellent guides, two shitty ones and one so-so one). For starters, before one can become a Contiki tour guide you have to spend about six months in training learning about the countries, the cultures and following other tour guides around to learn the ropes. The Contiki tour guides are also generally from the UK, New Zealand or Australia, so they understand the perspective and concerns of many of the travelers (Contiki is also often criticized for this since they're not using local guides, but everywhere outside of Europe we had local guides when I traveled with Contiki in addition to the Contiki guide). G and Intrepid pride themselves on using local tour guides - while it's great that they support the local economy, there are language barriers and cultural issues with having a local. The range of experience of the tour guides also varies a lot - on my Japan trip we had a retired engineer as a tour guide who had never led a tour before and spoke very little English. Not only was he frustrating, but I didn't learn nearly as much about Japan as I would have if I'd had a Western tour guide who'd spent the last 6 months learning about Japanese culture and history.

 

And look, no matter how well traveled you are, sometimes you need to be babied. In Laos we all got really swollen ankles and our Kiwi guide told us we were dehydrated because we weren't getting enough salt (we're used to consuming so much salt that when our food doesn't contain salt, we get dehydrated no matter how much water we drink). We immediately started adding salt to our food or buying salt tablets at pharmacies and we felt better quickly. A Laotian tour guide might not have realized why we were so dehydrated. In Peru I was absolutely appalled at the idea that I couldn't flush any toilet paper in the toilets (something I didn't realize until about Day 3 of the trip and I'd been flushing TP prior to that). I had a lot of questions/concerns about it ("You mean to tell me even the fancy hotels don't let you flush TP?!?!?") and it was awkward asking my Peruvian tour guide about it since that's all he's used to.

 

The groups on all tours also is completely hit or miss. While my favorite Contiki trips were solely because of the awesome group of people (and while I disliked Vietnam because we had a shitty group of people), overall you kind of knew what you were getting. Young people who wanted to party. The crazier the country you went to, the greater the likelihood that there'd also be some people on your trip who wanted to experience the local culture. The four non-Contiki trips I've done recently have had all completely different groups. The group in Africa was fantastic and everything I'd hope for when traveling with people - well traveled, interested in learning about the local cultures, interested in experiencing everything and not big partiers. The group in Borneo was frankly the worst group I've ever traveled with - too many complainers, very few people were prepared for the trip (no cameras, no pants, no hiking boots, no malaria medicine, no apparent realization that we were traveling to a jungly Muslim country) and many seemed not at all interested in the country we were visiting and just wanted to sit on a beach (even though we weren't on a "beach" trip).

 

The sole exception to all these criticisms was my Africa trip. It was an overland camping trip, which means you basically live on this big truck, which pulls off to the side of the road to cook meals and you camp in tents at night. The tour guide, driver and cook were all fantastic and the group was largely amazing (except for a few weirdos). Because all of my other tours lately have been so disappointing in comparison, my conclusion is that Africa is one of the last few places that most people don't feel safe traveling alone. So seasoned adventure travelers will travel to most of the rest of the world on their own, but Africa they still feel the need to go with a tour company. That's why the only people that show up for tours to non-African places are either weirdos with no friends (like me) or inexperienced travelers.

 

I'm also running out of itineraries that I really want to do. I can't even count the number of hours I've spent trolling the G Adventures and Intrepid websites looking for tours to do on all my leaves and I'm seriously running out of tours that I can get excited about. For example, I've been seriously considering Nepal and Tibet for my leave in March/April, but the only tours available aren't that appealing - I don't want to spend 8 hours traveling on a bumpy bus everyday just to see 240 different temples. I'd be templed-out almost immediately.

 

So I have one more tour this year (Transylvania for Halloween - totally going to be full of [hopefully] the good kind of weirdos!) and then next year the only tour I'm thinking of at the moment is an overland camping trip through Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, which I assume would only attract seasoned adventurers (since that trip is even crazier and less popular than going to Africa). And I am so excited about that trip that I managed to convince my dad to come, so at least if the group sucks we'll have each other.

 

But the problem is, if I eliminate tours, then what? Where do I go alone for my two week leaves?

Land of the Rising Sun Part 2

In Part 1 of my post about my trip to Japan, I talked about how much I enjoyed Koyasan and learning about the Buddhist monks. But because I didn't have all of my photos yet (due to not having internet at my house for the past week (still no internet)), I made do with what I had on my iPhone. But here's a photo of the morning fire ritual performed by the monks:

After Koyasan we headed to Hiroshima. As many of you know, Hiroshima is the first place where the nuclear bomb was dropped by the Americans during World War II on August 6, 1945. The epicenter of the bomb was over the Genbaku Dome, so while the area around the dome was completely flattened, the epicenter wound up being the "safest" part of the blast since most of the building remained. The remainder of the dome, now dubbed A-Bomb Dome, is a UNESCO heritage site and is now the center of Peace Park, which is a memorial to the victims of the nuclear bomb and a reminder of the horrors of nuclear war.

While visiting the A-Bomb Dome, one of the other Americans on the trip (there were only three of us) turned to me and asked if I felt guilty witnessing the effects of the nuclear bomb.  And I said, "Not even a little bit." Less than three weeks before I'd been in Borneo and visited some of the World War II memorials that were erected due to the horrors that befell the communities conquered by the Japanese. The Sandakan Death March is perhaps the grimmest reminder of what the Japanese did to prisoners of war - because the Japanese did not believe in surrender and felt that one was morally weak if he surrendered, and because the Japanese had not signed onto the Geneva Convention and therefore owed no duties to prisoners of war, the conditions in the camps for capture Aussie and British soldiers was abhorrent. When the Japanese began losing the war, they needed to get rid of the 2500 prisoners in the Sandakan camp, so they set them off on a death march across Borneo. By the end, only 6 survived and it's only because they escaped. The atrocities the Japanese committed during the war were no less severe than the Germans; they just managed to kill less people and less methodically than the Germans.

Additionally, I truly believe that the nuclear bombs were the best option the American military had at the time. It is estimated that approximately 250,000 people died as a result of the nuclear bombs (both those who died as a result of the bombing and those who later suffered radiation sickness) and the US believed that far more people would have died in a land invasion of Japan. Furthermore, for a culture that doesn't believe in surrender, it had to take something truly debilitating for Japan to surrender and the nuclear bombs were our best option. So no, I don't feel any residual American guilt for the bombings.

In addition to the sobering history of Hiroshima, we also visited Miyajima Island. The itinerary said there'd be monkeys on the island, which is pretty much all I cared about, but it turns out that there's wild deer all over the island. They wander into stores, try to steal food from humans and don't particularly mind being pet. While they weren't as exciting as monkeys, it was still nice to get a little bit of nature and be that close to wild animals.

We then took the bullet train to Kyoto for a couple of days of serious sightseeing. Kyoto was formerly the capital of imperial Japan for more than 1000 years, so there was definitely a lot to see. The main Shinto shrine complex we visited was the Fushimi Inari Taisha Shrine. Shinto is the main religion of Japan and has literally thousands of deities - animals, trees, plants, ancestors, etc. As best I could tell, supplicants visit the shrines (which are meant for specific deities), give an offering of food or money, ring some bells, clap their hands and, at least in the case of the Fushimi Inari Shrine, climb a thousand steps. The Fushimi Inari shrine's deity is the fox and the shrine is supposed to grant good luck in agriculture and business. What the shrine is really known for is its 10,000 toriis (the vermillion shrine gates). What no one told me was that you had to climb a freaking mountain of stairs to get to the top of the shrine - my FitBit said I climbed 80 flights of stairs and burned enough calories to eat an entire cow. It also didn't help that Kyoto was about 90 degrees with 90% humidity, so I swear I've never sweat so much in my entire life. It was cool to walk through all the torii gates, but I'm not sure it was worth the pain, sweat and tears to get all the way up there.

The vermillion torii gates

On the way back down from the shrine there's Japanese writing on the torii gates. I like to think they say things like: "Good job, you made it!" "Eat all the cake!" "Achievement unlocked: go stuff your face!"

Kinkakuji Temple (also in Kyoto)

Fushima Inari pretty much wore me out for Kyoto and the rest of it is sort of a blur of temples and castles. Japanese castles aren't nearly as cool as European ones - all the rooms look the same, everyone sits on the floor and the only decadence is in the paper wall murals. So yeah, I got "templed-out" pretty quickly.

The other real highlight of the trip for me was Hakone. I really want to go in the winter when the snow monkeys play in the hot springs, but I was hoping at least to get a glimpse of Mt. Fuji. Unfortunately the weather did not cooperate, so we didn't get to see Mt. Fuji, though we did get to see the hot springs. The sulphur in the springs can make black boiled eggs, which the locals say can add seven years to your life.

Black sulphur boiled eggs - tasted like a normal boiled egg to me

I could definitely see going back to Hakone in the winter (and not just to see monkeys). 

And finally, Tokyo. I did not expect to like Tokyo and…I didn't. It was just a really big, really crowded city. I felt like I spent hours on the subway going to and fro everywhere. I thought Harajuku Street (where all the anime and cosplay kids hang out) would be much wilder and there wasn't really much I wanted to see in Tokyo. By my second day there I was completely bored - I even sat down in a Starbucks for an hour and read a book (to be fair, I sprained my quad muscle on the Fushari Inari hike from hell, so I was in a lot of pain when standing or walking). 

Determined to find something interesting to do in Tokyo, I wandered over to the War Memorial, which wound up being my favorite thing in Tokyo. As I mentioned earlier, in Shinto there are thousands of deities and the Yasukuni shrine was dedicated to the soldiers who lost their lives in defense of their country and who, through their sacrifice, became deities. So if you ever thought people would have to be crazy to be kamikaze pilots, keep in mind that if a Japanese soldier lost his life in combat, he could become a deity and be worshipped forever more. Might be enough to get young boys to sign up. 

In addition to the shrine there was also a war museum (Yushukan), which was primarily devoted to World War II. The guide book warned me that many people found Yushukan really controversial as a result of their depiction of WWII, but I found the spin on the war fascinating. The museum detailed how Japan was forced to invade the neighboring countries and how America's actions gave Japan absolutely no choice. And after fighting valiantly and trying to give the poor people of Southeast Asia freedom from colonialism, the Japanese finally lost the Greater East Asian War. Yup, they don't call it World War II, they call it the Greater East Asian War (much like the South still calls the Civil War the War of Northern Aggression). So all in all, Yushukan kinda saved Tokyo for me, though it's also where I fell asleep on a bench in the museum for about an hour or so. 

In Part 1 I described all the reasons why I didn't really want to go to Japan, but it turns out I really enjoyed the country and learning more about the culture. I'd like to go back in winter and see everything covered in snow and also check out some of the more rural areas (and maybe spend some time at a mountain monastery). 

Koi feasting

Land of the Rising Sun

I'm a little late in writing about it, but I spent the first ten days of the month traveling around Japan:

It's a bit weird that it took me so long to get around to visiting Japan, but I have to say it was never high on my destination list.  Crazy, I know, but here's why:

1) Japanese Tourists. I hate traveling to places where there are hordes of Japanese tourists, snapping photos of everything while they grin and make the "peace" symbol. Two years ago I visited Auschwitz and I was practically in a homicidal rage following around a pack of Japanese tourists who gleefully took photos of themselves (and the ubiquitous peace symbol) in front of everything.  All while talking (and giggling) loudly on their cell phones. Anyway, I just figured that if Japanese tourists were so irritating, I wouldn't want to be surrounded by a country full of, well, Japanese people.

What do all major tourist destinations have in common? Japanese tourists and their cameras.

Seriously, just google images of "Japanese tourists", it's so worth it

Scooby (or Godzilla, as I'm
sure the locals thought of him)

2) The first year I lived in Los Angeles I lived in the part of LA dubbed "Little Tokyo". It was a cute part of town that had a ton of sushi restaurants and where the street signs were primarily in Japanese rather than English. The cuteness wore off pretty quickly as I was kept up late at night by the favorite pastime in the local bars - karaoke (or, as I like to pronounce after living there, "karra-oh-kay") and the smell of tempura-fried food. My fondest memories of Little Tokyo were walking my 90 pound wolf dog while the tiny locals ran in fear - I dubbed them my Godzilla moments.

Yeah, kinda like that.

3) I figured I'd hate Tokyo. I just assumed Tokyo would be crowded and hectic with lots of neon signs and anime kids and annoying girls trying to pull off the Lolita look. And while saying I don't want to go to Japan because I'd hate Tokyo is like someone saying they don't want to visit the US because they'd hate LA, it still felt like a relevant reason to not want to go.

4) Japanese culture is very "other". In college I minored in anthropology and loved studying other cultures (part of why I love to travel and see different cultures firsthand). In one of my classes we did a segment on Japanese culture and, of all the cultures I studied, Japanese culture was the hardest one for us to understand and accept. According to that long-ago class, it was still socially acceptable to commit suicide if one shamed their family - and "shame" could be as simple as getting a bad grade in class or losing a job. I suspect the recent recession has lessened that somewhat, but that mentality still felt so foreign to me. I also learned more about Japanese culture while studying World War II - one of the reasons the American military felt that the nuclear bombs were so critical is because the Japanese did not believe in surrender (see Part 2 of this post for more on that).

All of that being said, I did really want to learn more about Shinto (the Japanese national religion) and to see rural Japan. I figured the temples and shrines in the mountains must be gorgeous and well worth whatever frustrations might be caused by Tokyo. Plus, I couldn't think of anywhere else I really wanted to go for the first two weeks of September.

The first main stop of the trip was Koyasan, which is the center of Buddhism in Japan. Shingon Esoteric Buddhism, to be exact. Koyasan is on Mount Koya, so to get there from Osaka we took a bullet train and then a cable car up the mountain. Koyasan is a quaint little town filled with monasteries and temples and loads of monks. We stayed at the Ekoin monastery, where we slept on the floor, ate vegetarian food on the floor (lots of mushy soy products) and learned a little bit about Shingon Esoteric Buddhism. Shingon Esoteric Buddhism involves a lot of meditation and chanting and practitioners believe that the founder of this sect of Buddhism is still meditating in a temple in Koyasan.

The first afternoon in Koyasan, after viewing what felt like endless temples, we attended a meditation class with the monks. Gotta say, meditation isn't really my thing since I spent the whole thirty minutes thinking of how much my legs/hips/ass hurt from sitting cross-legged on the floor. And then dinner was also on the floor...

Our vegetarian dinner at the monastery. My hips and legs hurt just remembering having to eat on the floor.

Our vegetarian dinner. I ate a little of everything, though we were all hungry again about an hour later.



After dinner one of the monks took us on a tour of the local cemetery, which was enormous and included both Shinto and Buddhist elements. What is interesting is that most people in Japan are both Shinto and Buddhist, since both are polytheistic religions and pretty accepting of other paths to enlightenment/heaven. My favorite part of the cemetery was the monk explaining some of the grave markings - for example, many had a depiction of the moon in one of its phases. The idea is that, like the moon, humans also have different phases. Some days we're happy, some days we're sad and so on, and it's important to remember that we will wax and wane just like the moon.

 

The following morning I woke up at the crack of dawn to view the monks' morning ritual and fire ritual. Because none of the monks spoke English, I actually have no idea what the rituals were for (though I'm assuming the fire ritual was for cleansing and purification). All in all, I wish I'd gotten to spend a little more time learning about Shingon Esoteric Buddhism. I had so many questions for the monk (How young were you when you became a monk? Was it your choice or your parents' choice? How did you learn English?), but there were just too many people around for me to hog his attention.

 

Apart from the weird food and interesting accommodations, we also got to try a traditional Japanese onsen, or bath. (Remind me to tell you guys later about my experiences in public bath houses.) Ekoin was helpful enough to provide us some directions on how to use the onsen, since it's a bit overwhelming for us prudish Westerners.

I sort of thought that the people sitting on the tiny stools was an exaggeration. Oh no, you definitely squat on tiny stools in front of mirrors. Awkward!

The onsen in our monastery. You bathe while squatting on the tiny stools to the right in front of the mirrors and then get in the massive shared tub to the left.

While awkwardly trying to figure out what to do and how to bathe myself while seated and in a crowded room of women, I was lucky enough to sit next to a brazen Aussie woman. When I looked befuddled, she turned to me and said, "Don't forget to wash your bum!

Well, this turned into an epically long post, so stay tuned for Part 2!