26 June 2009

Shanghai-bound!




The Grand Canyon, North Rim.

It's nearly midnight and we have an early, early shuttle bus picking us tomorrow morning, and still a bit of cleaning and packing-rearranging to do, so I am exhausted and probably forgetting about fifty things to pack and do, and it hasn't quite sunk in yet that tomorrow (er, day after tomorrow; thanks, international date line) we'll be back in Asia.

At any rate: less than 12 hours left in the States - the next time you hear from me, hopefully, will be from Shanghai! Still figuring out exactly how much I'll be able to maintain this blog, given China's internet blocking tendencies, but as I can be reached through gmail, skype, aim and facebook, I'm sure I'll figure out some way to keep in touch.

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18 June 2009

the road from the sea to the sky




We said goodbye to LA this morning and - after an amazing pancake breakfast graciously cooked by my eleven year old cousin - set off North towards Monterey along the Pacific Coast Highway, a drive I've never done before and which is even more beautiful than I'd imagined. 



For all my worries about driving out of LA (after the two hours spent inching along the 10 when we arrived), the drive was actually a lot of fun, and was accompanied by two CDs made explicitly for use along the PCH, which Iain's former boss made for him before we left Hanoi. (So if you think it's lame that I quoted the Red Hot Chili Peppers in my subject heading, you should just be relieved I didn't say anything about long strange trips or being a goddess on the highway. All hot-linking aside, the CDs are great company, so, thanks, Iain's old boss!).


(This is my favorite kind of scenery in the whole world.) 

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16 June 2009

Mikka's wagon has reached Los Angeles


On the Scenic Byway #12, in Utah.

We've made it to Los Angeles, which I'm somewhat unreasonably proud of - despite living here for six years, I never drove in this city until this April, and never on any of its fantastically hostile freeways until about three days ago, which means my geography of the city I used to call home is limited to two or three bus routes and the odd mall directory. When I'm not scandalizing my family with my total ignorance ("You mean there's a second Santa Monica Boulevard?!"), we're having a nice time exploring Little Ethiopia, teaching my precocious cousins to play Risk, and getting the living daylights beaten out of us by my four year old stepbrother, who is so cute that I might actually eat him. 

Anyway, things to follow: plans (no, really, plans!) and photos of all that other amazing stuff we saw along the way, including the Grand Canyon and not one but TWO Chimney Rocks. No wonder so many people got lost on the Oregon Trail.

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12 June 2009

snow! in june!




The Continental Divide

After two days of non-stop driving along the I-80, Iain and I made it to Boulder, where we had a great time hanging out with Ryan-from-Hanoi (and also, briefly, my awesome stepsister Nika and her friend). Ryan was able to show us a lot more of Colorado then I'd ever seen before, including more snowy weather than I'd ever thought possible in June. 



Ryan and Iain climbed to the top of Mount Evans (after we drove to the observatory just underneath the top of Mount Evans). I did not, because I am a wimp. Ryan, incidentally, is about to leave on a one month long hike all alone through the mountains, so he probably didn't even notice the two minutes it took the two of them to climb to the top while I picked my way gingerly through the icy snow below and tried not to fall down.


And then we saw Marmots! Best road trip ever! 

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05 June 2009

thou shalt not park here



Guess which state we're still in? 


My new favorite sign, in Winnemuca, NV.

Twelve hours and six hundred miles into the road trip, we're staying the night in Wendover, a "resort" town that straddles Nevada and Utah; we're on the Nevada side, staying alongside a stretch of shady casinos (this wireless network's password, ominously, is "mafia") and resisting the temptation to gamble away our budget at the Red Garter, though Iain succumbed to the Well's rest stop's slot machines and lost a whole 25¢. 

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04 June 2009

on the road ...




Iain shows off in Los Altos.

Setting off early tomorrow in my sister's car, armed with newly-minted AAA membership, language-learning CDs and some Google maps that helpfully show us exactly what the roads look like, to visit our friend Ryan, formerly of Hanoi and now of Colorado. I always have fun hanging out with Ryan (and his awesome girlfriend, Jessica) so I'm really happy we'll get to see him again, and am hoping that said happy thoughts will provide any additional nudges I need to get over my lifelong aversion to freeway driving. I'd like to think I'm over it after driving some of the scariest roads I've ever seen in much worse conditions throughout Vietnam. Nonetheless, while I've borne witness to this drive twice before, it's never been as the driver, so this will be... interesting. 

We have less than a month left in the States and many plans are afoot, though I'm going to wait till they're a little more solidified before blathering about them on the internet. I've figured out how to update this thing via text messages*, so will post more from the road! 

* Also, in the realm of newly discovered technological advances - I have a webcam now! Which would have been a slightly embarrassing admission back in 1999 (when my soon-to-be college roommate freaked me out with a similar announcement) but which, in this age of iSight and general online overexposure, is probably just sadly passe. At any rate, not much point to this except to say that even if I can't yet promise to stay in better touch than I did in Hanoi, at least I'll be able to make an actual smily face at you on iChat this time around. 

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12 May 2009

You, me, and about sixty cyclists in spandex



This last Sunday marks a year since the night Iain and I met; it was also, weirdly, the day I was supposed to leave Hanoi according to my original ticket, so yay for changed plans and dumb luck. To celebrate, we took a day off from the job hunt and Japanese studying to go into San Francisco, where we rented bicycles and - alongside a herd of bewildered-looking tourists on identical bikes with their identical tourists maps stuck to their handlebars and a fleet of humorless, spandexed cyclists who did not enjoy sharing the road anymore than the cars - rode along the piers, across the Golden Gate bridge, and into Sauselito. Biking in the States is a far cry from riding my bicycle in Hanoi (the bad: seriously? you have to obey the traffic signals? the good: so does everyone else, which makes the likelihood of bus-inflicted death significantly lower)  but we had lots of fun and, as ever, I still don't quite know how I was ever lucky enough to meet such an wonderful, smart, sweet and funny person with whom I can have all these adventures, but I am grateful for him every day, no matter where in the world we end up. 

 


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02 May 2009

VIP moss, 日本語を and other california things




A break from the never-ending photos of the Northern mountains to post a few of Kyoto that I never got around to posting last year, because endless photos of beautiful mountain views get monotonous, and reading and thinking endlessly about Japan has made me even more easily distracted than usual. All of these are from my massive day of shin-splint-inducing temple hopping last February, though I can't remember which temple was which anymore.




The sign (in English) says: Special Moss, like VIP! Do not touch.

I don't have any photos of being home yet, mostly because my camera and lens are both at the camera hospital, being cleaned (the camera) and massively repaired (the much-abused lens) after more than a year of being rattled all over South East Asia, and because they served put up with so much abuse at my hands, I am trying not to resent them for the horrific cost of the repairs and resign myself to being a grown-up by taking care of my nice things. At any rate, being here means mostly looking for work and studying Japanese, with varying levels of success; not many of the larger schools are willing to accommodate couples looking for work together, which has been frustrating, as we want to live if not work together - but we have a few leads and also some backup plans if those should fall through.



Branches reflected in a pond.


It is weird how distant Hanoi feels after only a month away, even if I still feel like I know the roads there better than the roads here; still, it's been guiltily easy to settle into a routine of whiling away every afternoon in a cafe (we rotate so that no one gets too mad at us for ordering one cup of tea and as much hot water as it takes to get through three hours of studying). My spoken Japanese is still pretty hopeless, though I can read both the kana alphabets now and am picking up a little kanji. So that's here, and what our plans are, for the moment; once we have our Japan plans settled, we'll hopefully do a little travelling (and I will hopefully get better at driving freeways, to make said travelling possible); more photos of the Vietnamese mountains to follow and maybe some of home, when I get my delinquent camera back. 

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22 April 2009

the road north




As muddy as it every got, thank god, because driving through mud sucks: my much-loved motorbike on the road from Ha Giang to Yen Minh, on about the third day of our three week bike trip. More photos to come over the next week or so as I try to stop hibernating and get organized...

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04 April 2009

...and then we came to the end.


View from our beach shack/hotel on Phu Quoc island; as you can imagine, the last few days in Vietnam were pretty grueling.

Back in Oakland (!) - California is sunny and cold and quiet after a few last days spent on Phu Quoc, and I miss Hanoi but am happy to be home for now. I would write more but it would all be about food (oh my god I missed a lot of food) and so will post more photos soon, I promise. 

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