Just Imagine...

Thu 27 Nov 2008, 20:46 GMT

Thanksgiving 2008 at the American Book Center: the spoils

As I did in 2007, 2006 and 2005, herewith an account of my Thanksgiving shopping spree at the ABC. Since I'm again cross-posting between the message board and the weblog, a short intro for any non-messageboard people who weren't weblog people yet last year either (there's some, according to my feed subscription counts): English science fiction and fantasy books are somewhat scarce in regular bookstores in the Netherlands. Yet there is one place to go to, one place which makes up for it all. The American Book Center imports from both the US and the UK, and as such has a collection that many people from both the US and the UK have mentioned to be larger and more diverse than anything they know. Members of the ABC and students get a 10% discount. And every year at Thanksgiving, they add another 10% discount on top of this. (20% discount is a big deal in the Netherlands, especially with the lack of choice.) And so there's a yearly pilgrimage to stock up on all those books that everyone's been meaning to buy for a long time now... (Plus the atmosphere at the ABC is always great on this day; very welcome as it doesn't seem to permeate the shiny new store as much as it did in the old place.)

Despite a lot of reading time during my Round the World trip, this past year has not been very good for getting a lot of reading in. As such, my to read piles don't seem to be all that much smaller, and I even still have a couple of volumes from last year's Thanksgiving left in them. Together with some weird pricing of a couple of paperbacks on my list on the ABC's part (€18 for a Janny Wurts paperback that costs £9 in the UK? For real? (And that while most other paperbacks cost €10?)), this meant that I was a lot more discerning in what I put in my shopping basket than I was last year. I still picked up a large number of unknown authors, but just didn't go as all-out as I tend to do other years.

So, herewith, in alphabetical order, the spoils:
* Neal Asher - Shadow of the Scorpion. (Although I'll never consider Asher one of the truly great science fiction authors out there, I've grown to like his books well enough; being all caught up on the regular polity novels (at least until Line War comes out in paperback), I'll enjoy this out-of-sequence early Ian Cormac novel.)
* Stephen Baxter - Flood. (I was a big fan of Baxter due to Manifold: Time and Manifold: Space, and then he set off to explore prehistoric themes and ancient Rome, which I've had too many bad experiences with to feel like bothering even picking up his attempts, and so I kinda lost track of what all he did. With Flood he seems to have returned to near-future science fiction, and so I'm ready to see how he's evolved as an author. I have high hopes!)
* Eric Brown - Helix. (Every thanksgiving I gamble on a couple of paperbacks by authors I've never heard of otherwise. This one even had a (reluctant) recommendation by Karin, the ABC's bookbuyer for science fiction and fantasy. Neither cover nor blurb makes me expect too much, so I'm hoping to be happily surprised.)
* C.J. Cherryh - The Collected Short Fiction of. (I still have barely touched upon the mass of work Cherryh has out there (mostly because I started with her early space opera, which is mostly out of print), but what I've read I've liked much more than I suspected. I'm hoping this short story collection will give me a good overview of the rest of her universes.)
* Glen Cook - A Cruel Wind. (A one-volume edition containing the Dread Empire trilogy. It's fantasy, but it came highly recommended by Steven Erikson when I asked him for obscure recommendations many years ago (above the Black Company novels for which he's better known), so I figured it could go on the pile.)
* Cory Doctorow - Little Brother. (I suspect this is going to be the "must read" novel of the year. The little I've read of Doctorow's prose hasn't impressed me too much, but in this novel that should be more than overcome by his thorough knowledge of the subject matter. Will probably be the first novel I'm going to read from this haul.)
* M. John Harrison - Light. (Another gamble, featuring a very awesome cover and a pretty hopeful cover blurb.)
* Matthew Jarpe - Radio Freefall. (Yet another gamble; I didn't have all that much on my "must buy" list this year, so that gave a reason to go for lots of unknowns. Based on the cover blurb, the book is apparently positioned as Heinlein meets cyberpunk. That isn't making me too hopeful, but we'll see.)
* Sergei Lukyanenko - Night Watch, Day Watch and Twilight Watch. (I've seen the first two movies, and liked them well enough for what they were. The books should be only tangentially related, and although they probably won't be quite my cup of tea, they've come with enough high praise that I've finally relented and am going to give them a try for myself.)
* Scott Lynch - The Lies of Locke Lamore. (In fact, I've been gambling so much that I bought this, an unknown fantasy (first in a trilogy/series?), mostly on the strength of the excellent covers of itself and its sequel (not that they're good covers, but they are very shiny), plus a blurb which sounded a bit more interesting than those on most fantasy novels.)
* Gregory Maguire - Wicked. (The novel that the musical is based upon. All plans ever made to go see it fell through, so I figure I could then at least read the book.)
* Philip Palmer - Debatable Space. (Yay for gamling. This book has a very plain and understated cover, and its coverblurb is weird. I have no idea how they're trying to sell it to people who aren't into gambling, which makes me hope that it's by word of mouth through indrecibly strong writing. Hey, a guy is allowed to hope, right?) :)
* Marianne de Pierres - Chaos Space. (I bought the previous volume (Dark Space) last year as a gamble, based mostly on her being Australian. It mostly disappointed, but despite my prediction back then, I found upon seeing this sequel that I wanted to know what'd happen next anyway, and so into the basket it went.)
* Tim Scott - Outrageous Fortune. (Books which claim to be "outrageously funny" seldom are, but since I was on a gambling streak anyway, I figured I'd give it a try. The initial premise didn't sound entirely without potential.)
* Charles Stross - The Family Trade, The Hidden Family, The Clan Corporate and The Merchant War. (Stross's books seem very hit and miss to me, with some being totally awesome, and some just really not worth bothering with. I've been kinda fearing that these would be the latter kind, especially as they were about the first he had published (the first arrived between Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise). Still, with them having gained the status of being the only Stross I don't own, I'm too much of a completist to not pick them up on a day like today.)
* Jo Walton - Farthing. (An alternate history based on a truce between Britain and Nazi Germany in 1941; written in 2006, it's probably much more about the here and now. Since Jo is a person I've heard named a lot in the circles of the right kind of weblogging authors, this made picking up the book the obvious course of action.)
* Tad Williams - Rite. (I've resisted picking up this book for far too long. I've grown to really loathe these "specialty" publishers with their overpriced limited edition volumes, and promised myself that I wouldn't give in to getting any more, no matter how shiny or gorgeously bound they might be. It's just not worth the money. But given the thanksgiving discount, this trade paperback edition didn't feel too overpriced anymore, and it's been entirely too long since I read any Tad, plus I've always enjoyed his short stories, and so I finally relented and got it.)

All that comes down to a pitiful 22 books (compared to last year's 47), though at least they still required two of the shiny new blue ABC bags to carry out. Probably a good thing, though; will give me the breathing space necessary to finish the remnants of last year's haul and read all of this year's haul before we reach the next Thanksgiving. :)
If you're interested in what I think of the books (especially the gambles), keep an eye on the What's everyone reading at the moment? thread.

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Sun 2 Nov 2008, 13:35 GMT

Change

While travelling, whenever there was a conversation with Americans, the decline of the USA often came up. Nine times out of ten they felt the need to mention, I didn't vote for him, and we all felt their pain.

I suspect that two, three years from now, the same people will proudly be able to say, I voted for him!, and we will all feel their joy, and know what a difference they made.

Hope is such a powerful sentiment.

With two days to go, my thoughts are with all my American friends. Make us proud. (And remember to go out, even if change seems certain. You will want to be able to say, I voted for him!.) :)

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Mon 13 Oct 2008, 18:25 GMT

Crazy ideas wanted: apply within

An hour ago, waiting for the bus, I was lifted out of an impending funk by the well-timed combination of a startlingly warm and gentle breeze and Trocadero's "A Girl Named Tex" coming up on my Rio Karma. (Thanks as always to the Tess for introducing me to RvB and this song.)
The reason for the funk was trivial, as always: The bright sunshine from the afternoon had been replaced by dark grey clouds, and the dim light was prematurely heralding the time of travelling to and from work in the dark which lies but a few weeks in the future. Dutch winters can have startlingly beautiful moments, but overall they are bleak and lifeless, and this coming winter seemed to loom larger than life ahead of me.

When I examine myself, I seem in many ways a fickle creature. Activities which at one point are completely fulfilling, challenging me to the edge of my capabilities, seem boring and routine a mere year later. The only things which ever seemed to buck this trend have been travelling - and with a world this gorgeous and large, I believe I can rely on that never changing - and the relationship with my ex-girlfriend. Yet continuous travel is not yet within my grasp, and although I guess I could go frantically searching for a new girlfriend to once more give me that fulfillment, that just is not me. (Plus somehow I just don't believe that frantically searching is the right way to go about finding.)
Anyway, back to my fickleness: Work is currently suffering the brunt of this, as I search for a new horizon to keep web app development fresh and interesting. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy creating web apps and fighting with code and ever expanding my knowledge of techniques and technologies - but I'm beginning to see the stretch in it all running out, and where it once seemed capable of keeping me intrigued for virtually forever, now I'm reaching the point where I need to start thinking about the next step.
A marvelous opportunity for exploring such a possible next step came to me nearly two weeks ago, in the form of a project where I'd be consulting and teaching best practices to other programmers. I don't know for certain if that's going to be a type of activity which I'd love to have as my main focus longterm, but finding out definitely appeals. Yet the timing for this project was bad, in that I have my current project to finish first, while the planning for this consulting gig is very sharp. Another candidate for the same project would be interviewed last week (probably having better timing), and not having heard more since, I sat in the train today, looking out at the dark grey sky and realizing that this project probably wouldn't be for me, and so the winter ahead did appear bleak indeed.

And yet then I stepped out of the train, and walked to the bus stop, with a ten minute wait ahead of me before my bus would arrive, and this strong but gentle breeze of the perfect temperature came blowing out of these foreboding clouds, and Trocadero sang My playground is the world, and the incongruous and wonderful contrast of it all hit me. I lifted my head into the wind and broke out in a smile. Winter might be ahead, but now is autumn, which is forever my favorite season; not least for its capability of reminding me just what a silly human I am.

Honesty compels me to say that coming home I also received an email about this project, telling me that the interview with the other candidate will only be tomorrow, and so I have to face up to the fact that my chances on getting that project are basically as good as ever. (I *know* I'm good at what I do, and I think I managed to convey that to these people, so unless the other person is an amazing guru, timing really is the only thing standing in my way, which is now a week less significant.)

Yet before coming home I also resolved to do the following: My playground is the world, and the reason this is so is because travelling said world keeps presenting me with new challenges and ways to get outside of my comfort zone. Yet when I'm back home, I rarely leave the house. Oh, of course I do try to engage the world - going to lots of concerts, having friends over, etc; but faced with the prospect of winter, it doesn't seem nearly enough (plus all of that is familiar and safe and unchallenging, too - it's good, but it doesn't last much beyond the moment, and there's far too many moments still where I'm not surrounded by friends or awesome live music). I need someone to challenge me to go outside my comfort zone, same as I'd be doing when I'm travelling. I need someone to entice me to go to masked balls, to wake up for sunrise, to do crazy things which'll end up being actually pretty fun. And so, dear reader, I turn to you. Go and give me goals that will require me to confront the world head on. Sitting here behind my computer, I ride the waves of communication and drink from floods of information - but I still lack input. My life does not have enough momentum to careen out of this comfortable local minimum I've created for myself. So please, reply and suggest crazy (but doable) things for me to do these coming months! Activities to attend, events to organize, people to meet, hurdles to overcome - I want them all. Don't be shy, tell me the things you've always thought I should go and do - or which you wish you dared to do yourself (if you want to do them together, I'm probably game!). Give me the impetus to rush through winter in such a way that I'll barely notice it's there.

I can't guarantee that I'll do any of the things you'll suggest (that'd be giving you all far too much power, and I know how shamelessly some of you would abuse such power *g*) , but I will give each suggestion serious consideration, and if it's the right kind of crazy... well, I've done a whole lot of crazy in my life, so I'm totally up for some more. :)

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Sun 12 Oct 2008, 21:57 GMT

Photo update: Lima and Arequipa

I never realized how popular my photos were until I went on a round the world trip and 'neglected' to toss you guys any photos. Woo boy; you all sure are good at reminding me. ^_^ And so I've been toiling away during my scant free hours to produce some edited photos that I'm happy enough with to show the world. It's going to be a long and arduous route before I'm done, but I'm happy to say that at least the first batch (consisting of an estimated 2.6% of the eventual total output) has now been pushed online.

The above is but one example of my photos from Lima and Arequipa. I've also updated the first half of the relevant tripreport, in case you'd like some context with the photos, or just want to refresh your memory of what these places are.

I don't know how often I'll toss photos online like this, but I do intend to keep doing this until I've worked my way through them all. I don't know if I'll give an update every single time, but at the very least I will let you know whenever I've filled an entire tripreport with photos.

In other news from my world, life continues. Don't have any travel plans to look forward to in my immediate future, but I am tentatively plotting a RTW trip for 2010, with the Himalayas, Worldcon 2010, Lake Tekapo and Patagonia identified as the major destinations. Will probably be another year before I can be certain any of that will be feasible though. Otherwise I keep myself occupied playing boardgames and attending quite a few concerts (autumn seems to be the favorite time for singer-songwriters to be touring). Also busy with work, and I got voted onto the board of Fronteers (the Dutch trade organization for front-end developers), activities for which also fill up some odd hours.

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Wed 20 Aug 2008, 11:42 GMT

Tripreport: 2008-05-04 - 2008-08-16: Journey's end - a summary

Having now returned home, I figured it might be worthwhile to summarize the past three and a half months of travelling, to see just what goes into a Round The World trip like this.

Number of travel days: 104 (averaging 24 hours and 14 minutes per day, and totaling one fewer day than the calendar would tell you; yay for the international date line).
Number of continents visited: 4.
Number of countries visited: 9 (10 if you count a stopover in Madrid).
Number of different locations overnighted at: 36.

Number of plane flights: 20.
Number of helicopter flights: 2 (to and from Fox glacier).
Number of boat trips: 11.
Number of train (+subway/metro/skytrain) rides: 30.
Number of bus (+minibus) rides: 38.
Number of cars rented: 4.
Number of taxi rides: 19.
Number of tuk-tuk rides: 2.
Number of motorcycle rides: 8 (hard to count this, as there were lots of short stops; I've counted travel to a distinct "destination" as one ride).

Number of times laundry was done: 9.

Number of shutter-presses on my camera: 12,462 (not counting a series of ~500 presses where I was testing if my 4 GB card was really suffering from bad sectors).
Number of resulting photos not immediately deleted: 10,687.
Average number of photos taken (and not immediately deleted) per travel day: just under 103.
Average number of pixels produced per kilometer travelled: somewhere between 1.6 and 1.8 million (I know I've travelled at least 60,000 kilometers in flights and major surface distances, but all the little sidetrips might add up to a couple of thousand extra kilometers beyond that; thanks to MightyMu for suggesting this totally useless statistic).
Total space in gigabytes needed to store all photos: 141 GB (since I shoot in RAW plus high quality JPG, an average photo takes 13.5 MB of space).
Number of DVDs with photo backups burned: 66 (33 DVDs are needed to store those 141 GB, and then I burned everything twice).

Number of books bought: 11.
Number of books read: 20 (not counting one which was so atrociously bad that I abandoned it halfway through).
Number of CDs bought: 22 (not counting the ones I bought for a friend, nor the ones which were stolen).
Number of CDs signed by artist: 6 (2 by Wendy Rule, 2 by Jess McAvoy, 1 by Clare Bowditch and 1 by this female artist in Chiang Mai of whom I only have the name in Thai script).
Number of DVDs bought: 27 (which is rather insane; it all started out innocently enough with looking for some Chinese movies, as those come only with Dutch (no English) subtitles in the Netherlands which really just won't do at all, and then I saw all of Angel for insanely cheap, and then I kept seeing DVDs for 3-5 euro, which even with the cost of shipping them home calculated in is just too good a deal for Dutch standards not to pick them up (erm, except that having returned home, I'm not seeing local DVDs go for the same - oh well, it was still a good deal)).
Number of boxes of books, CDs and DVDs shipped home: 3.
Other other non-perishable things bought: 1 woolen hat, 2 works of art (for small values of art), 2 candlestick holders, 1 t-shirt, 1 pair of flip-flops, 1 pair of shoes, 1 pair of headphones, 2 lamps.

Number of friends met up with: 18.
Number of new friends made: 8 (as defined by the rather arbitrary but decently strict criterion of sufficient contact information exchanged for future contact to be possible; "acquaintance" is likely to be a more correct term for each of them than "friend", but allow me to remain hopeful for now).

Number of tripreports written: 13 (including this one).
Number of words in all tripreports: 40,994 (as reported by wc).
Average number of words written about each travel day: 394.
Number of comments by other people on said tripreports: 22 (up to the point of writing, and not counting lots of comments received via email and IRC).


This trip marked the first time in my life I visited South America and South East Asia. I'd been expecting rather heavy culture shock, but instead fell in love with both places. I do think I'll keep limiting my exposure to both to small doses (after a month in Peru, I really needed a break from it, and in many ways, two weeks in Thailand did feel nearly sufficient), but returning is quite certain.
My biggest problem with South America was by far the noise; even when escaping the bigger cities with their honking taxis, barking dogs were universal and impossible to escape from. When I return to Peru, I'll mostly do so for multi-day hikes in the Cordillera Blanca (after acclimatizing at some lower altitudes), and maybe for a return to Machu Picchu via a different trail (Salkantay is high up the list), plus perhaps a visit to the jungle ruins of Vilcabamba. At least on those long hikes, dogs should be far less frequent.
Higher up on the list for South America than Peru is a visit to Patagonia; mostly the Chilean side, but probably not ignoring Argentina either. Torres del Paine is a must see now. Stories told by Hafaella and Marcello (the Brazilians I met up with in Nang Rong) have also put Brazil on the itinerary, though I imagine that'd be as a minor sidetrip from either Peru or Patagonia.
Easter Island and French Polynesia were great, but I won't bother returning there anytime soon, if ever.
New Zealand continues to amaze with its stunning landscapes, and more and more feels like a friendly home to return to, with friends scattered about everywhere. I'll definitely return here in combination with attending the 2010 Worldcon in Melbourne - maybe this time I'll manage to visit Taranaki (Mt. Egmont), or perhaps even Stewart Island.
Australia is still too large to really grasp, so I'll just have to keep picking away at it, little bits and pieces at a time. Even more than with New Zealand, friends here are everywhere, and I'll definitely need to plan in more time to properly hang out with them all (apologies to the Brisbanites for not heading up your way this time around). Tasmania is high up on the list of places to revisit and properly explore, Kakadu remains as the one major "must see" destination which I haven't visited yet, but might again be swamped out by dozens of more minor destinations which are easier to get to from familiar bases like Melbourne and Sydney. I'll probably give the west coast a miss next time, unless I can finagle enough time to really had up to the far north of the west coast; the biggest problem with that is that, yikes, Australia has gotten incredibly expensive these last couple of years.
Thailand was by far the biggest surprise of the entire trip, with textures and colors completely outside of anything in my previous experience, which I suspect is strongly due to it having a culture nearly completely free of European/Christian influences. The captivation with the opulence of its temples didn't have long-term staying power, and the climate - although much easier to stand than I'd expected - isn't really my cup of tea, but despite this, Thailand will definitely warrant another visit in order to see some more of its natural wonders, with Khao Yai National Park headlining the list. Travel to other countries in the region definitely is an option as well, now - although I imagine I'll keep initial visits short and careful.
Helsinki and Tallinn were both pretty cities whose charms were quickly exhausted, but they did both wet my appetite for seeing more of their respective countries. Still, that's Europe, which is easy to do and won't be the subject of any major trips anytime soon.

Overall this was an extremely worthwhile trip, an I'm still boggling at just how much I've managed to see and do in such a short time - all without ever really feeling that I was rushing too much. Major thanks to the parental units for keeping an eye on my house and dealing with mail (especially of the tax office and bills-to-be-paid variety), without which it'd have been a whole lot more difficult to just take off like this. Thanks also to friends and family for feeding me, taking me in, showing me around and generally hanging out with me. You are half the reason I keep travelling, and make the experience a thoroughly pleasant one. Please come visit the Netherlands so I can return the hospitality, and make this guest room of mine feel more useful! (And I mean that, dagnabbit!) :)

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Sun 17 Aug 2008, 00:43 GMT

Tripreport: 2008-08-07 - 2008-08-16: Into the west

Another day, another airport, and I'm sitting here waiting for my flight, completely unable to think of something witty and engaging to start this tripreport with. At this point I'm thinking I should just trust that if you've continued reading along this far, you won't need such an intro anymore and will be actually interested in what all I did and saw in Chiang Mai, Helsinki and Tallinn, and so I should just head straight on to telling you about that.

I last left off at Ko Samui, from where I took a shuttle bus to the airport. Incongruously enough, the airport was by far the nicest place I saw during my entire stay on the island. It was spacious, with open buildings that a breeze could blow through (and fans to help keep things pleasant when no breeze was present), meticulously clean, and the waiting area at the gates was the nicest I've ever seen (exceeding most business class lounges), with comfy chairs and couches, plus complementary drinks (yay, tea!) and snacks going up to yummy chocolate cake (!) which I happily took a second (and third) helping of. I really didn't expect this, but yes, there's an airport out there which royally beats the best the Schiphol (Amsterdam) and Auckland airports have to offer.

From Ko Samui I flew on to Chiang Mai, where I managed to walk straight past mik cauthin (who is taller than me, and so I really shouldn't have been able to just overlook him!) - but luckily spotted him after turning around outside. Mik cauthin, I should mention here, is a friend from the book forum who I previously met up with a few times in his hometown of Sydney, Australia. Shortly after I'd come through there, he set off on his own world travels, where he got as far as Moscow before returning to SE Asia to start teaching English there, which he's been doing for the last couple of years.
Balancing two people and three bags (including my really heavy backpack) on a tiny motorcycle (barely more than a scooter) - and driving through traffic at the busiest time of day (schools had just ended) - was something of an adventure, but we made it to my guesthouse without problems. After arranging to meet up again for dinner, Mik left to teach one of his classes, while I went to explore Chiang Mai for a little bit. Didn't really see much of any note during this walk, but got a basic feel for the inner city (there's a square moat around the old city area, with ruins of the old brick city gates remaining, and I spent most of this time walking within the moat area), and took mental notes on the locations of the main temples I wanted to see the next day.
Dinner was at a forgettable place with excruciatingly slow service, but that was okay, as it just gave us more time for catching up and comparing notes of travelling experiences. Mik's girlfriend dropped by during dinner as well, so it was good meeting her, too. I also helped an old couple figuring out how to access their email on the computer which was placed there for guest use, but was horrified to see that it was set up to remember all usernames and passwords entered into it. The risk to people who have no real idea about how a browser works is just humongous. I gave the couple a few tips and recommended them to change their passwords, but there's only so much knowledge you can impart in a few minutes of talking... :|
After dinner we found a nice place to lounge with a cup of tea and talk most of the rest of the evening away.

The next day saw rather atrocious weather, with temperatures and humidity shooting through the roof, and the frequent rain not helping to cool things down at all. I visited Wat Chedi Luang, which houses the base of a huge square brick chedi - the top of the structure having been damaged several centuries ago, and left unrestored because no one knows what it once looked like. I was just about to take my first photo of this place when I noticed that my camera was completely dead, and I'd left my extra battery back at the guesthouse. Luckily it really was a case of the battery having been completely drained - but I'll be forever puzzled by it draining that swiftly (I last used the camera three days earlier). I was talking about this with mik, and he mentioned that several of his rechargeable batteries had suffered a similar fate, so maybe it was the heat and humidity having some effect?
Anyway, back I trudged through the rain, to finally go take many photos of this chedi and the naga which surrounded it, as well as of some of the other temple buildings on the same grounds.
After Wat Chedi Luang, I walked on to Wat Phra Singh, which had the usual gorgeous brightly colored inlays and big serpents guarding its entrance, as well as a collection of Buddha statues which felt Matroesjka-doll like in their size differences (one of them being the "most revered" one of the city, which the temple was named after). I was noticing myself starting to be all Watted out though - the newness of these temples was abating, and it was hard for them to compete with the truly superlative temples in Bangkok - and so I skipped plans to go visit a third Wat, instead returning to my room to hang out online for a while (yay for free wifi!), before setting out to find dinner (which turned out to be rather difficult, as I was looking for a place without TV, to escape having to witness the opening ceremony for the Olympics - and such places were few and far between).

That night was one of the most uncomfortable ones I've ever had, as I noticed the bed crawling with bed bugs. I'd noticed a couple of bites the night before, but didn't know for certain when or where I'd picked them up, and was asleep like a block otherwise. This night however I woke up around midnight with half a dozen itching new bites on my arm, and turning back the covers, I actually spotted one of those bugs. I killed it, and then kept waking up every other hour throughout the night to feel a new bite and turn back the covers and spot and kill yet another bug. Ick, ick, ick! My first encounter with bedbugs, this, and that in the (otherwise) nicest place I'd stayed at in all of Thailand (although that's really not saying anything - all it takes is one previous guest having spent a night in the forest and bringing these things along).
I was impressed by the thoroughness of the reaction when I told the owner of the place the next day - I was shuffled over to a new room immediately, with my luggage checked to make certain no bedbugs were migrating along with me (I also brought all my clothes which could've been exposed to a nearby laundry place), and when I walked past my old room ten minutes later, it had been effectively emptied, with the bed lying in pieces outside and being thoroughly disinfected.

The rest of the morning and early afternoon I explored the city east of the moat (up to the river, which was an uninspiring dirty brown expanse of muddy water), and then by midafternoon met up with mik again, who took me over to Wiang Kum Kam area, which used to be a city nearby Chiang Mai, before it was abandoned due to flooding of the river it was built next to. Many ruins remain scattered all over the area, including the decently impressive Wat Chediliem (Wat Chedi Si Liam according to my Lonely Planet, which often follows a slightly different transliteration scheme). It took us quite a while before we located this chedi, as the roads to it are very confusingly signposted, but eventually (after circling the entire area, seeing far too many signs proclaiming the remaining distance to be just a single kilometer) we succeeded. The remains of Wat Pupia and Wat E-kang were also visited, and then we headed back to the city via a much more direct route than we'd taken to get out there. My legs were grateful, for they were decidedly not built for long rides on the back of mik's motorcycle. (*g*) Yet despite that, the following morning we started bright and early with yet another motorcycle ride, this time up the hills (whee!) all the way to Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, located picturesquely near the summit of Doi Suthep, overlooking Chiang Mai (which we could see at times, when the clouds before and below us parted for a few minutes before closing in again). A long staircase (306 steps) flanked by gorgeous naga led up to the temple. Masses of people kept posing before these naga, but eventually I managed to get a photo in where the only people there were ascending or descending the stairs. The Wat at the top was definitely one of the nicer ones I've seen, and managed to pierce through the feeling of being "watted out". Nicest was perhaps a translucent green buddha, which nearly shone with the sunlight filtering through it. Unfortunately the big golden chedi here was undergoing repair works, but the people clambering around the scaffolding surrounding it provided just as rewarding a subject for photography.

From Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, we went higher up the hill to Phra Tamnak Phu Phing (aka Bhubing palace), the winter palace of the king of Thailand. We ambled over the grounds here, cringed at the horrible music playing at the Queen's "musical fountain" (and groaned at the artificial bird sounds), and spotted a gorgeous gigantic butterfly, which (after much chasing) finally acquiesced to being photographed. The most impressive sight at the gardens here was probably the truly gargantuan stand of bamboo which we came across near the end of our wandering.
Onward we went, to a viewpoint looking down the other side of the hill (noticing the rather marked deteriorating condition of the road right past the palace; we suspect the king and queen never head in that direction) - and then back down the hill to the decently picturesque Huay Kaew Waterfall - decently picturesque, that is, except for the tons of trash scattered about. Thai people are even worse than Europeans or Americans with littering. :(

After Miklos had given some private English class, we met up again (including his girlfriend) at a rather nice Thai restaurant. From thence we wandered over to the "Sunday Walking Street", a night market stretching along most of the main road through the inner city. I spotted a Thai artist with a decently gorgeous voice performing here, and lingered until she stopped singing, after which I bought her CD and even had it signed.
As my guesthouse had turned out to be cheaper than advertised (maybe because it was low season, or to make up for the bed bugs?), I had quite a few Thai bahts left, and had resolved to spend them all here at this market. Spotting a gorgeous small lamp which was being sold as a "flat pack" (for large values of "flat"), I figured that with just three flights left in my trip, I could conceivably fit it in, so spent the rest of my money on that.

The next day was a boring travel day, whereon I travelled west by means of a tuk-tuk ride, two plane flights, a bus ride and a tram, to finally arrive at a Helsinki hostel and collapse into a long and deep sleep, my exhaustion easily overcoming the long lingering daylight.

Under a grey sky, I set out the next morning to start exploring the city. My first stop was the orthodox Uspenski cathedral, a rather interesting building with its dark red stone, green roofs and gleaming gold domes and spires, for it strongly showed the Russian influence in this otherwise quite Scandinavian looking city. I found an unexpected appreciation for this church (and others yet to be visited), as no longer did these churches remind me of far too many childhood visits to churches, but instead I saw them with newly thai-temple-trained eyes, and could compare the differences and similarities between styles of symmetry and opulence.
While I wandering around this cathedral - first outside and then inside - the sun managed to break through the clouds, and barely half an hour later the clouds had all but vanished, to such a degree that I even returned to the hostel to drop off my coat and walked around in just a t-shirt for the rest of the day. This Uspenski cathedral is standing on a hilltop at the east of the city. Looking out from there you can see another large church on another hilltop just a bit west. This is the lutheran Tuomiokirkko, and it became the next place for me to visit. A much more austere place on the inside, I think it impressed me even more than the first church did. After a late lunch, I continued exploring the city, walking over the main shopping streets and through several parks to the harbour on the south-side of city. Returning to city center from here, the curse of the "homemaker" in me (what? who is this guy?) struck, and I noticed the most gorgeous Tibetan lamp in an Asian furniture store that I passed. I really don't have any good place left in my house to put extra lamps, this one was ten times as expensive as the lamp I'd bought in Thailand, and didn't come in a flat pack either - but hell, it was just so gorgeous that I needed to have it. (*wails* What's wrong with me??)

The following day I woke up bright and early (helped, no doubt, by still living partially on Thai time) and took the 08:00 ferry across the Gulf of Finland to Tallinn. During this hour and a half long crossing I read most of the Estonia chapter in my Lonely Planet. The history chapter in particular left me feeling quite humbled; it's rather amazing to realize the magnitude of the changes this country has gone through, and all so recent. I guess I was just a bit too young to really experience much of the fall of the soviet union, but I never quite felt the lack of not knowing about it as much as I did while reading that.

Anyway, Tallinn. I basically explored the inner city without any plan, just heading wherever looked interesting - but with a solid mental map of the inner city, so that I could be certain not to miss any place. I entered the inner city through the Great Coast Gate, and from there followed the town wall (mostly because everyone else coming off the ferry was following the main road, and so bending toward the right to the town wall seemed like the natural thing to do). Staying just outside the inner city, I ambled through the green beauty of Toompark, to come upon Toompea Castle from the far side. Tourist hordes surrounded me here, as literally dozens of busses were busy dumping their loads of visitors. While these crowded Lossi Plats in front of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, and filed in and out in long laboriously moving lines, I wandered around along the edges of the crowd and slowly made my way around the cathedral. With its white and orange/brown walls, big domes on top of its towers, and golden iconography on the walls, this cathedral really showed how intertwined Russia has been with Estonian history. A mild rain started up while I was wandering around here, which helped disperse the crowds, and so I managed to take a few photos without too many people in the way. Onward I wandered, past the 'famous' Kiek-in-de-kök tower (closed for renovations or somesuch), and on to the east side of the inner city, where I finally found an ATM (Estonia is set to start using the Euro in a year and a half (assuming they'll manage to keep inflation under control this time around), but for the present I still had to get Estonian Krones in order to pay for stuff) and thus could buy myself some sorely needed lunch. From here I finally stopped skirting around the edges of the inner city, and headed straight on to Raekoja Plats, forming the heart of the inner city with the Town Hall and lots of prettily colored buildings around this square. After wandering down most of the remaining streets in the inner city, I worked my way back to the western town walls, where three towers and the walkways between them are open to the public. Pretty cool to explore, though the nailed-shut windows in two of the towers were rather frustrating from a photography point of view.
Climbing a set of staircases straight up to Toompea (where before I'd skirted the edge), I found myself at two viewpoints with excellent views over the red roofs of the city, with both the town wall towers and the spires of various churches reaching for the sky above the rest of the roofs, and lending a rather picturesque feel to it all.

Having now exhausted the charms of the inner city (which really isn't all that big), I set off on a sidequest for finding some local music, specifically an artist by the name Kirile Loo, who my lonely planet described as "Estonia's Enya". Being something of an Enya fan, I was intrigued. The inner city being devoid of music stores - and the rain getting decidedly oppressive by now - I headed to the big box shopping malls just to the east. En route to a CD store, I got sidetracked by a rather decent bookstore, which featured the most awesome cafe, serving cups of looseleaf lapsang souchong tea. (First time in my life I've ever seen just a regular cafe (e.g. not Peet's) serve lapsang!) So I sat here for a while, sipping my tea and making use of the free WiFi. Just before I left, an Estonian girl asked me to take a photo of her writing. Now I've been asked to take quite a lot of photos of people during my travels (and in Hong Kong and Thailand, I was asked to be the subject of quite a few photographs), but this one was special, as an hour later (having successfully bought two CDs by Kirile Loo (though I wish I'd found the second one first, for it sounded much better than the first one I found), and having made a halfhearted attempt at doing more sightseeing, before deciding the rain was just too much) I returned to this bookstore, and riding the escalator up I saw the same girl still sitting there behind the windows of the bookstore cafe, noticing me riding the escalator and smiling down at me. So having ordered another cup of tea, I went to sit beside her again, and we got to talking. Turns out Dina (ru) - for that was her name - has just returned from an exchange camp in Germany, and she was writing down her impressions from it, as it had been something of a life-altering experience for her.
Now I'm not the most extroverted person out there, so I don't get to meet and talk to quite as many people as those lucky extroverts do. Of the people I do meet and talk to, it's rather rare (and always extremely gratifying) to really connect with a person, to go beyond the surface courtesies and be able to, learn what makes them tick. But to have this, with someone who just before was a complete stranger, and who very recently had her entire concepts of what life is about drastically challenged - who had just discovered travelling? That's... electrifying; unique to such a degree that the hour long conversation which followed kept me buzzing for most of the day after. Definitely the highlight of my visit to Estonia. (Plus she gave me yummy Estonian candy called "Kalevs"!) ^_^


Back in Helsinki the next day, I visited Akateeminen Kirjakauppa, the largest bookstore of Northern Europe (and very bravely only bought a single book; though since it was a hardcover, I don't quite know what I was thinking, other than perhaps "just one more flight to pack for, surely I can fit this in..."). After this I wandered to northwestern parts of the city, to visit the Temppeliaukion kirkko, aka the "church in the rock", which had 'famously' been located in a space dug out of solid rock. Of all the churches and temples I've visited the last couple of weeks, this was the most minimalist one, and probably also the most impressive one.

On my last day in Helsinki, I managed to meet up with the crazy Finn known as Ryoga (after emails gone lost, I finally managed to track down his weblog and leave a comment there to get in touch with him). Last time I saw him was at the Swedemeet, back in early 2003; it's just crazy how long ago that is, now... Anyway, we sat down in the sun at his favorite local bar and had some drinks and talked, before setting off wandering through the embassy district in the southeastern part of town, through a beautiful park with great viewpoints over the harbour. After quite a while we circled back to the city center and then to the same bar, where Skene (another swedemeet attendee) shortly joined us. A pizza dinner later, we returned to the city center for me to go buy some Finnish CDs (I'd had trouble locating a place that sold CDs here in Helsinki, so Ryoga had helped out with that; mentioning how the local "free record store" chain (a Dutch chain which sucks tremendously, but which I'd previously seen being non-sucky in Norway, and which apparently had been non-sucky in Finland, too)) had gone out of business, and so there now weren't really all that many places left which sold CDs. Anyway, we said goodbye there, and I dug into a stack of five CDs to listen to, and eventually pick two from to be my introduction to Finnish music.

The following day I trammed and bussed back to the airport for a flight home, and thus endedeth my time in Finn-land (sorry, old WoT joke), and with that my round the world trip. Much reflecting needs to be done to properly assimilate all the experiences, and insane amounts of time will be needed to edit all my photos and insert them into these here weblog entries - but that will all have to start some other day, for the hour here now is way and far too late, and I really should be off to bed - I'll do a final entry with some summaries and looking back and useless statistics in a couple of days, to at least in that way create a proper ending to this all.

*yawns widely* G'night!

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