Inoculous

Note to self: when traveling in Asia, do NOT look at the CDC website first. Okay, that’s bad advice, but prepare yourself mentally before you type in the name of your destination country, because the laundry list of things that can happen to your body on your travels will make you want to cancel your tickets and stay home, hooked up to a Flintstone vitamin IV drip. I only had vague suspicions that there were that many types of potentially nasty microorganisms out there, much less that they’d be lined up at the airport taxi stand waiting to hop into my body.

Which, of course, they were not. So far, common sense and a bit of caution has prevailed even, and I won’t go into detail here, as far as that frequent source of travel problems, the midsection, is concerned. As with much of life, common sense goes a long way. Unfortunately it comes up short stopping Dengue fever, Japanese encephalitis, malaria, and typhoid.

Therefore, I went to the Chuuk hospital several weeks before vacation started in order to get the proper inoculations, immunizations, and mosquito borne disease prophylaxis. See all the cool words you can learn on the CDC website? Here’s a couple more: amoebic dysentery and hemorrhagic fever, but hey, let’s not dwell. Long story short, when I started trying to get medication and shots, the people at the Chuuk hospital looked at me like I was growing a second head on my shoulder, which is pretty much the only type of extreme circumstance for which you’d want to darken the doorway of said hospital. It’s scary there. Through perseverance and a significant amount of kicking myself for showing up within three hours of lunch, I drilled down to the most qualified and knowledgeable person I could find. The doctor made a good point: we don’t have those diseases here, so why should we have inoculations and prophylaxis against them? Fair enough. Her follow on, though, was classic, and the inspiration for this post.

“You go Asia, you think hepatitis, you think malaria, you no get bit by mosquito, you no eat.” Blink, blink. “I’m, uh, I’m going to be there for a month and a half. I am bound to get hungry at some point.” She clarified her point, telling me to only eat canned and packaged food, a commonly employed practice in Chuuk, but you know I’m eating my way through Thailand with great vigor, so not possible. And as for mosquitoes, swaddle yourself in Eddie Bauer expedition clothing, DEET your skin until it combusts, hotbox your room with mosquito coils, wear one of those crazy noise generators on every limb, but if you are somewhere that mosquitoes lurk, from your local creek to the jungles of SE Asia, the crafty, persistent little bastards are going to get you at some point. So, armed with whatever common sense I’ve been able to scrounge over the years, a couple painful shots in the arm administered by a Bangkok doc in the box, and a packet of pills that may or may not rock my liver as hard as having malaria, I emerge from my mosquito netted bed in a bamboo shack (another story) with less than long sleeves and pants and mesh veiled pith helmet, sometimes, gasp, at dawn or dusk, to eat everything in Thailand that swims, hops, or gets washed if at all then in non-purified drinking water, hoping that these precautions will suffice. If they do not, I can always diagnose myself in full living color and hyper-realistic detail on the CDC website.

Missednomer

The picture isn't great, but you can still see the model name of the scooter. Automotive companies try pretty hard to come up with unique names for their products. I think Honda may have missed it's mark here, though. Is next year's model to be the Breakdown? How about the ever popular Recall? Definitely get the extended warranty for your Honda Tuneup.

Thai One On

I’ve been eating a lot of Thai food lately. Which makes sense, seeing as to how I’m in Thailand. Not that you’d have to work that hard not to eat Thai food here. Spent the first portion of the vacation in a bunch of uber-touristy places, where non-Thai options abound for the closed minded or those who long for a taste of home, wherever that may be (read Australia, Europe, or Russia). But if you want Thai food, Thailand is certainly a good place to get it. And I want Thai food. The food may wind up being the highlight of the trip, and I’ve seen some pretty cool stuff so far. Two of my top ten foods of all time are of the Thai persuasion, and you can get them just about everywhere here. So I do. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Coconut milk, lean pork, chicken, or seafood, and fresh veggies over rice or noodles in one form or another. Cooked to order with fresh ingredients in sit down restaurants, outdoor cafes, beach huts, airport kiosks, and, my favorite, stalls on the street. Despite best third world judgement, I’m generally pro street stall food, and the Thais make it easy with their focus on fresh ingredients and general cleanliness. I’ve mostly, ahem, mostly avoided eating pre-prepared foods from serving bowls that have been sitting at room temperature for who knows how long, sticking instead to dishes made to order, and so far so good. False sense of security due to the hepatitis A vaccine I got when I arrived? Maybe. But combating whatever may be lurking in the food by scorching it with hot peppers and drowning it in local beer seems to be working. By the end of this trip I am going to bleed coconut milk if wounded. I may get tired of it by the time I leave, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Galangal, anyone?

Fashion Foibles

A note on Japanese fashion. Tie your shoes. Lose the sequins. Blouse your pants to hide the faux leopard fur sticking out of the top of your motorcycle style boots. Eschew mauve and acid green as foundational outfit colors. Strive to avoid jangling like a post apocalyptic scrap metal trinket cart when you walk. And go easy on the menagerie of animals festooning your backpack. And that’s just my advice for the men. I’m no fashion maven, but, c’mon, fellas.

Origamied

As long as we’ve got half a day to kill at the Narita airport, let’s take a gander at the origami museum conveniently located in one of the terminals, shall we? Holy cow. Forget about folded cranes and cute little boxes and jumping frogs. Actually, don’t forget about folding cranes, but now, instead of picturing a single crane, picture that crane with either one or a series of smaller cranes sprouting from and attached to the larger crane, without glue, tape, or tearing of the single square or rectangular sheet of paper. Big crane, small crane sprouting from the tail. Or the wingtip. Or both wingtips. Or a whole halo of small cranes surrounding the big one, delicately connected by tenuous paper bridges again, all from a single sheet of paper.

And that’s just for starters. Everything from completely convincing animals of every shape and sort, down to the wrinkled appearance of hippo hide or the jutting lower incisors of a bulldog standing over a food bowl that contains a bone, to entire dioramas of folded fleets at sea, dragons sacking towns (Look out! Godzilla!), and dojo courtyards full of martial arts practitioners in identical poses. Flowering trees with falling petals, Escher knockoffs with square patterns of paper morphing into gradually more detailed fish and birds going in opposite directions, intricate kimono designs. Did I mention that this is all done with folded sheets of- right, I already said that. Enchanting.

Narita Nap

I fell asleep at the Narita Airport in Tokyo. Not particularly remarkable, sure, except I did it in a bed. I know a lot of you world travelers are used to swanky airports with hotel type day rooms, but a new one on me. A combination of six months of sleep deprivation, a convoluted travel schedule with an all day layover, and curiosity took me to the lobby of the airport day room and shower facility. Twelve bucks an hour rented me a spacious cubby of a room with a single bed and a pocket shower, toiletries and sundries included. Granted it wasn’t particularly plush nor overly peaceful with people walking up and down the hall checking in and out, but it was meticulously clean, Japanese clean, and, bottom line, I was snoozing in an airport without having to arrange myself across a series of airport chairs, uncomfortable armrest to be navigated half way down my body and luggage wedged under me so someone didn’t make off with it while I slept. Then a hot shower before stepping back into the terminal to face the world. Pretty neat.