Why Is Finding A Hotel So Difficult

You would think that with all the online tools available to find accommodation that one could find a single place to stay wouldn't you. Wife is planning a three day swing to do some photo shooting. She gave me a list of the ten or so towns that we are going to be visiting. I duly began to check my various tools for finding a place to stay. Agoda, Booking, Orbiz, Trivago, HomeAway, Airbnb. Nothing, nada, zip. How could that be?

I went back to Wife to register my frustration.

"Dear, these are the ghost towns we are visiting. Not the places where we would want to stay."

"Oh."

So is there some kind of psychic Trivago I missed? A seance version of Booking I'm supposed to use?  Do you have to be a ghost to stay in a ghost town accommodation? Clearly more research will be needed.

Encounters With Endangered Species

I am on one of my infrequent trips for business and flew to Chicago yesterday. While in transit, I ran into that rarest of creatures. I was so amazed I had to take pictures.

Yes! The Rare and Endangered Empty Middle Row Seat!!!

I luxuriated during the flight. Putting up the arm rest, crossing my legs into the space next to me. Putting my drink on the table of the seat next to me while I worked on my computer on mine.

As an additional reward, while there were thunder storms,  we managed to beat them with our flight arriving early. In fact just as we finished landing and taxiing to the gate, the skies broke open.

Golden Grey Photos

So channeling still the spirit of my muse and photo master*, Wife, I ruthlessly culled pictures and tried to get only those that had some kind of artistic merit. This has been VERY DIFFICULT because I have NO SENSE OF ARTISTIC LOOK whatsoever. But for better or worse here we go.

*(So since Wife is female is the term 'photo master' incorrect? Should I use 'photo mistress'? I think that creates all kinds of bad connotations. Maybe 'photo guru' that's more gender neutral?)

Embracing the Shadow

Focus on Color

I love this because I think it captures the intensity that Wife brings to her photography

First every Black and White attempts

Capturing those few moments where we had the 'magical golden light'

Using our workshop leader in Tokyo's idea on diagonal lines

 

Chasing The Golden Gray

Golden light...it's what the photographer craves. At least that's what Wife tells me. When last year we were in Bryce Canyon National Park Utah, Wife bemoaned the fact that we did not have a chance to take pictures during the sunset period when the light is supposed to be the best. Coming on a separate trajectory, Wife and I have been saying for years that we really need to do more short trips around our own area which is just filled with natural beauty. I noted that because I tend to go right into work mode after we return from our big trips, that my schedule doesn't allow easily to do this type of thing on an impromptu basis. Therefore, the answer was to start scheduling things. I threw out the idea of running up to Bryce Canyon to do that shoot she wanted. It was booked into our calendar.

So on Friday we tootled up the 550 miles/9 hours to get to Bryce Canyon. This morning we went out to scope the various places where we wanted to take pictures. We also took a lot of pictures; I in particular as I wanted Wife's critique on my composition. After a break in the afternoon, we set out again at 6 PM. Having watched the sun setting on the drive in yesterday, we knew that we had about 2 hours from 6:30 to 8:30.

We got to our first stop at 6:15. It was still really bright but one could see the changes taking place. Then as we made to go to our second stop, in came the clouds. Soon there was no setting sun to speak of. Bummer. But we continued on and found that while we were not favored by the 'golden light' at least the scenes were not bleached out by the high midday sun. I haven't looked at the pictures yet from this evening but I'm hoping that the level of color and detail will be much better than the ones from this morning because of the lack of bleaching bright light.

Tomorrow we tootle on back the 550 miles/9 hours back to Albuquerque. AND I DON'T WANT TO HEAR any snide remarks from various offspring that Wife and I are not slowing down! We are slowing down. We're just slowing down very...well slowly.

Asia Mega Tour II Retrospective - Part Three

So for this last installment of the great review of the Second Asian Mega Tour, I am going to list all of the wonderful experiences and people that we met along with links to the posts if you'd like to revisit them.

• Sightseeing Train in Kyushu
• The wonderful singing canal boatman in Yanagawa
• The lovely weaver in Fukuoka
• Getting to wander an empty temple in Kyoto
• Our incredible photo workshops in Kyoto and Tokyo
• The geek culture scene in Namba-Nisanbushi Osaka
• Tamsui, Taipei temple celebration
• Our Maokong Gondola experience talking with the Taiwanese couple
• The guides and talking with the Taiwanese soldier during our Taipei walking tour
• The Takoro Gorge and Taiwan East Coast
• Cremation ceremony, coffee and walking through the village in Bali
• The Galungan temple ceremony experience
• Our wonderful Bali driver Putu
• The afternoon at the warung with the gamelan
• Kula Lampur cityscape and the Petronas Towers
• Eating in Langkawi and the amazing Coffee Warung and its Nasi Lamak
• Massive kindergartner hide and go seek in Tokyo
• Outdoor free theater in Shinjuku
• Culinary Backstreets Tour in Tokyo
• Quest for the one true Ramen in Shin-Yokohama
• And last BUT NOT LEAST, the wonderful experience of sharing photography and blogging all through the trip with my Love!!!!!

Asia Mega Tour II Retrospective - Part Two

Continuing on with the deep reflective dive into our trip.

Things we were surprised by:

• Amount of English in Japan - Everything we read said we'd find little English. Instead we found most places, even out in Kyushu, a wide prevalence of understanding and use of basic traveler English and many more English menus than we would have expected

• Credit Card Usage in Japan - Again all we read warned that Japan was mostly a cash economy. But no, we were able to use our credit cars at the majority of places we shopped and ate.

• Room Sizes - Warnings and reviews about the small size of rooms especially in Japan before going, for the price we were paying (NOT super premium), we found the rooms as good as what we find in Europe.

• Fitting in and Not Being Stared at - There wasn't anywhere on this trip where we felt people were looking at us because we were Westerners. A big difference from our experience in China the year before. 

• Feeling at Home in Japan - Other than the language and alphabet, the whole vibe of building construction, urban layout, transportation systems, store layouts, etc. in Japan was totally not jarring. I was rather amazed by how at home I felt there.

• Taipei - My favorite place we visited. It was friendly. There was way more English used and understood than in Japan. People were helpful, even solicitous. In six days there we did not do everything on our list. The closeness of wilderness and countryside to city. It is on my short list of places I really want to go back to.

• Accepting Being Taken Care of In Bali - Wife and I are pretty self-reliant and at least up to now, not all the comfortable having people who are 'help' doing things for you. Maybe we perceive having 'help' as being snooty. However, finding ourselves in a villa with all kinds of help to do cleaning, cooking, washing, laundry, we found ourselves getting accepting it all with aplomb pretty darn fast.

Things not loved:

• Eating in Japan - Many people expressed surprised when we commented on this during our trip. But even before going, I would have said that Japanese was on the bottom of my list of Asian cuisines liked. But particularly for Wife, the flavor emphases and the preponderance of highly fatty meat were highly negative. It was only by our last stay in Tokyo that we found means of dealing with the situation.

• Airbnb in Asia - We only did it in Japan but the difficulty of finding where you were when dealing with a foreign alphabet and the tendency of these places to be crammed with bedding to accommodate the largest number of people made them less that relaxing for us.

• Discount Airlines - We are really getting tired of dealing with the restrictions of discount airlines. Unfortunately they are frequently the best connections and the price differential can be significant. Not to mention a lot of the full fare carriers have similar restrictions.

• Driving in Bali - Ugh, developing country driving. Hard on the body. So long to get anywhere.

• Being Overwhelmed in Tokyo - The sheer mass of humanity that you encountered was really too much. The scope and scale of everything was a bit much for us. Wonder if we would have felt different if we had started here or done this when we were not tired and at the end of the journey

Things Loved!!

• Rail Travel in Japan - Yes there are some quirks you have to figure out about making certain reservations and paying for the journey and the reservation separately but OMG it is so easy to get around, so dependable, and so convenient. When you add the fact that each major train station is like a little city with hotels and department stores around it, you can make the train the focus of your travel. And there is the whole sub-culture of the tourist trains going into the countryside too!

• Japanese Gardens - Love em. When we go back to Japan it will be to focus on tourist trains and gardens

• Japanese Department and Convenience Stores - Oh if only we had figured out earlier that the large department stores have restaurants on their top floors and grocery stores with prepared foods in the basement, I would have just found where the largest department stores were and made hotel reservations near them! And if you needed a quick meal, some inexpensive whiskey, an umbrella, a cash machine...there were the plethora of 7-11's, Family Marts and Lawsons.

• IC Cards - Whether it was the Easy Card in Taipei or the Suica Card in Tokyo, these prepaid cards made transportation so incredibly easy and there were discounts on transportation associated with using them.

• Taipei Metro - Not sure quite what made it different but it just seemed that his system of anyone we used was the easiest to navigate and the most comfortable. It was one of the many reasons I loved Taipei so much. 

• Experiences in Bali - I will give a review of all of our experiences in the next post but truly some of the most extraordinary interactions we had were in Bali.

• Architecture in Kula Lampur - All the written material plays down KL as a place to visit other than for eating and shopping. I was totally impressed with the architecture and loved the cityscape especially the Petronas Towers and our spectacular view of them from our hotel!

• Eating in Langkawi Malaysia - A lot of this was because we were with the #2 clan and they love to eat but love of eating doesn't mean that you're always going to find good food. The variety and quality and value we found there was top notch. 

Asia Mega Tour II Retrospective - Part One

After having walked barefoot with only a loin cloth to a lonely spot in the Sandia Mountains where I contemplated for weeks on end existing only tree bark, grubs, rain water, the dew on morning plants and ample amounts of VSOP Cognac, the full truths of the Asia Mega Tour have been organized and are now ready to set down for posterity. It took longer than anticipated to get these truths in written form as Wife had to bail me out of custody after I was arrested for public indecency on my way back from my mountain retreat.

As there is a lot of material, I'm going to put this in three posts. Let's start with the deeper, more navel gazing types of revelations.

• Finding Our Way to Travel - As I mentioned in earlier posts, it was amazing how energized this trip made us feel. I think we have discovered that there is a process that really seems to fulfill all we are trying to gain from travel. That process is going somewhere, going through the initial 24 hours or so of trying to get oriented, followed by another day or two of gradually feeling we have this particular locale understood, followed by another day or two of saying, "Yes, we got this one figured out, we like it, don't like it, would come back, wouldn't come back", after which we are ready to move on. There is something about this process that results in our being stimulated but not overwhelmed and is deeply gratifying too.

• Self-Planning Opens the Door for Experiences - We had so many amazing serendipitous experiences that totally enriched this trip. And I can point to all of them as being a result of our doing our own planning. I am the first to admit that I enjoy doing the travel planning and making all our arrangements. But it also allows us to get ourselves into places that would normally not be on the travel radar screen. And it is these places where we keep running into the experiences that are so enriching.

• We Miss Our Physical Capabilities - When we first were dreaming about traveling like this a decade and a half ago, both Wife and I were big time into hiking. We dreamed of going around the world and being able to combine our travel and hiking loves. Sadly our bodies gave out and hiking a lost pastime long before we got to our ability to travel. We are very, very thankful for the physical ability to do what we still can do. But there is hardly a day that passes on our travels where we encounter something that requires climbing or walking that is now not realistically things we can do. 

• Smaller Versus Larger - There is certainly a point as far as the size and density of a city, its complexity and just the sheer mass of people where Wife and I both kind of shut down. It's hard to pinpoint exactly where this point is. It's not as if we only want to be in small towns and villages. Far from it. We like being in places where they have metros, tram systems and relatively easy to use buses. On this trip for example, Taipei which has 2.7 million in population and 7 million in the region, seemed to us very approachable. While Tokyo with over 13 million in its prefecture and over 37 million in its metropolitan area was just too much.

• Developed Versus Underdeveloped - We find we are somewhat conflicted on our enjoyment of going to a developed country like Taiwan versus an underdeveloped country such as Indonesia (Bali). In a developed country we have significantly more freedom of movement, to get around on our own, sometimes driving, other times using public transportation and always walking. In an underdeveloped country we need to have drivers and walking is much more difficult and dangerous. Water and eating are safe in developed countries. You have to be careful in underdeveloped countries. The starkness of difference in our level of economic well-being and what is encountered in developing countries can weigh on you. But some of the best experiences we've had and most interesting things we've done have been in developing countries.