Atelman, Nooooo!

Well, here it is, after months of watching Terrace House and scheduling around Tokyo’s weather, I arrived in Japan and it was…cold! Well, not really cold cold but anything around fifty degrees is too cold for me. Within the first few days I’d already bought three warmer weather tops: a hoodie, a cotton duster, and a denim-ish jacket. My light packing — lighter than even my previous two trips — was completely ruined. Also, my friend hated my orange New Balance shoes so much that after a few days of harassment, I turned those in for some fresh white ones. Of course, these newfound beauties, Clearweather Donny , cut into my heel so I had to keep the orange ones around anyway until I could break the new ones in. And that is the extent of anything bad about Tokyo. Everything else is exactly as everyone says. The people are wonderful, the food is terrific, the transportation seems easy, there’s a bajillion places to explore and familiarize yourself with. And the two things that people t...

With two weeks in-between trips, I was back in Taiwan for the end of March and beginning of April. We celebrated Qingming Jie, Tomb Sweeping Day, on the fifth, a holiday I’d never participated in. My maternal grandfather passed away late last year, and apparently you can’t actually pay your respects in the traditional way until a year past. We did visit Shandao Temple to say hello to his ashes, bow to my grandma, and shuffle in and out with the procession of people doing the exact same thing. It was all very quotidian, with no pomp or circumstance. Which I guess, is both more or less what I expected. In another cultural event, I went to go watch a local professional basketball game. There are seven teams in Taiwan’s Super Basketball League and I’d been waiting to attend a game after finding out that one of the teams was called Taiwan Beer, with a logo that features a fierce Formosan black bear. My friend got us tickets, allowing use to sit as close as we wanted -- also the stadi...

In contrast to Hanoi, we started our Saigon trip off slow. Margot was sick (and me by spiritual link), so we spent the first two days sort of just caving in at our AirBnb, watching TV, doing laundry, resting up. We had a very cute space lined up but there was some incident with a fight and a shower and blood, and we couldn’t tell if we were being AirBnB catfished or what but at the end of the day it was all okay. As long as there's a washer, a television, wifi, and air conditioning, the living space can't fail! I was also excited about our rooftop pool but we didn’t use it once… Oh the downstairs lobby of this fancy building did have an automatic fresh orange juice machine, which was an attraction with a delicious output. During our many hours sitting in front of the TV, we consumed some episodes of Ugly Delicious and Somebody Feed Phil (both grating for various reasons, aka both hosts kind of suck) and discovered Nikki Tran, who has a streetside restaurant in Saigon s...

After a brief two week respite in Taipei, I was back on the road again, this time to Vietnam. I was waiting for podcast partner in crime Margot to wrap up her short Taipei jaunt, and we were going to meet up with K, whom I had left behind in Bali a few weeks prior. First stop: Hanoi! I knew very little about Vietnam before going and these days I do very little pre-trip prep. I figure once I arrive I’ll be on the internets and guides and looking for stuff, so as long as I get there in one piece, it’s all good. This time we rented an AirBnB which turned out to be very nice, with three floors and three separate bedrooms. I planned on doing only eating in Vietnam so I needed lots of room to sit around doing the day/night in the house. And sit I did, as quite a few nights were spent LoLing, especially since Margot and K left me for a few days to do an overnight trek to Sapa and also a Halong Bay cruise. So for half of Hanoi I was basically on my own! (Okay not really, but more on tha...

On Valentine’s Day we took a car to Ubud, located an hour north into the mountains. Home to rice paddies, yoga, and traditional arts and crafts, Ubud was a nice change of pace simply because there was more to do there. On our second day, we visited the Agung Rai Museum of Art, just one of the many museums in the area. ARMA’s mix of traditional and modern Balinese art was housed in two buildings on an extensive — and beautiful — garden. The whole experience was lovely. In general, Ubud had many more things to do, from restaurants and shops to monkey forests, elephant temples, and various dance shows. I, of course, didn’t do any of these things, as my main goal was to visit the Bali Bird Park, which I did on a sunny Friday afternoon — the only wholly sunny day we had. I didn’t even know about the bird park until we drove by it on the way up from Canggu, and immediately made it my singular goal. There was a zoo nearby too, and an adjoining reptile park but I skipped both of those t...

A lot of people asked me: Why Bali? Great question, since I’m not exactly into beach vacations, nor am I into the whole Elizabeth Gilbert thing. Well, over the past year or so, two separate friends have spent extensive time there and both have told me — specifically me — that I had to go surf there. One is a fluke but two is a trusted recommendation right? So off to Bali for a month! I was waiting for my friend to quit her job in New York and she finally did back in January. Bags packed, apartment ditched, belongings stowed away, she met me in Taipei and then we set off to Indonesia together. My main concern heading to Bali was the volcano situation but as it turned out, that potentially Bonnie situation wasn’t really a situation at all. Nobody told me about the food though. But more on that later. Our first stop, Canggu, is on the southwest coast of Bali, about a half hour from Ngurah Rai airport. A friend of a friend was already there and he said “It’s like Brooklyn.” And i...

Taipei has been dreary. Grey skies, light rain, flippy winds. All much colder than I remembered. Aren’t I supposed to come here to escape winter? Instead I find myself wearing all my layers, including my New York leg thermals, simply to stay warm. And when I’m at home, curled up reading or watching NBA, I’m under two blankets and too afraid to move outside the comfort zone. Why don’t Taiwan apartments have heat? No need, it’s a semi-tropical place! Psssh, yeah right. Bali sunshine couldn’t come fast enough... Before leaving, I had a semi-disaster as I stupidly locked myself out of my phone. Did you know that if you unsuccessfully attempt to unlock your iPhone ten times it goes into shutdown mode? While my fingers were still damp, I tried to access it to Shazam a song (never got it) and summarily took it from “oh forgot my passcode” to “panic, it’s gonna have to be wiped!” So my last day in Taipei was spent running from Apple Store to semi-fake Apple store, eventually paying $1...