Less Traveled Path

My friend Sandy and her family had raved about a Tomato Beef Knife Cut Noodle Place in Taipei. While wandering the streets of Taipei, a local had recommended this restaurant to them. It’s a hole-in-the-wall type of place and without an exact address, we only had walking directions from the metro station with a link to a map, plus a photo of her sister in front of the restaurant column like the one here.

On a quest, showing the photo to the hotel’s front desk staff (and I tried reading the Chinese in Mandarin to them first), a jewelry store lady on Zhongshan Rd. (who had only started working there in the last year), and a baby clothing store lady also on Zhongshan Rd. (who said it was in the other side of town on Boai Rd.), no one knew the exact location of this place. I felt like I was trying to solve a photo clue in the San Francisco Chinese New Year Treasure Hunt. I didn’t believe Baby Clothing Store Lady and walking down the stretch of Minsheng Rd. between Zhongshan Rd. and the Shuanglian MRT station, I spotted the sign!

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My trip to Asia began on Thanksgiving night. Opting to grab dinner inside San Francisco International Airport, I was disappointed to discover that both the Firewood Grill and Firewood Cafe inside Terminal A were both closed. Why Firewood almost has a monopoly in the terminal is beyond me. Il Fornaio, the only other restaurant, was also closed. The remaining options included gift shop chocolates and various candies - the secret to a well-balanced meal! Also, it didn’t seem like a good customer service and business strategy to only serve beverages at restaurants that aren’t open all the time especially given the 3 oz. liquid container security restrictions; having mini-shops with refrigerated bottled sodas and water would have been preferable.

The Harbor Village counter outside security was predictably open, however, because it was a Chinese food establishment after all. In my high school days, when my friends and I were looking for things to do, we found that the few places that were open on Thanksgiving included movie theaters, bowling alleys, and Chinese restaurants. (I also discovered this year that AT&T had a few stores open to get an early start on Black Friday.)

Hope everyone got all that they wished for on Black Friday!

Have you ever had someone tell you that they know someone who looks just like you? And subsequently, you wanted to meet said person?

This past August, after attending mini-conference on Net Savviness in Boulder, Colorado, I decided to stay a little longer and explore the area. Many of my friends were busy so I went on the exploration by myself. I decided to take the Boulder to Denver Express Bus and from previous travel experiences, thought that it was a nice way to “take in” the area. Slight complication - it was pitch dark outside and I couldn’t see much outside the window on the bus; basically, I was a little too preoccupied with taking photos around the Boulder area that it wasn’t until around 11pm when I took the bus to Denver.

The bus was pretty empty except for about four other parties. I stuck in my white iPod earbuds when I went to sit down in the cushy seats (think charter bus and not yellow school bus) to listen to my soothing mix for the hour and a half ride to the train station in Denver. As I’m settling with my music, a guy walks up to me and gets my attention. I pull out my earbuds thinking it might be important. The guy then says to me, “I saw you there and I just had to come up and introduce myself.” Confused, but appreciating the friendliness, I say, “Hi.” He continues further and says, “I’ve think I’ve seen you around campus and in my class. I’m Mike.”

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Throughout my travels, I’ve had the chance to meet people with interesting backgrounds and fascinating stories. Many times these encounters are very brief, but enriching.

During my Europe backpacking trip in 2003, my friend and I mostly stayed in hostels and not only was it an economical way to travel, the arrangement encouraged meeting all sorts of travelers, especially during breakfast. One morning, we had a meal with two guys who were coincidentally from California. They were taking a break from studying theology in Rome, or rather Vatican City. After finishing their studies, they would then become ordained priests. Since our next stop was Rome, we had planned to meet up with them to get into the Midnight Christmas mass at the Vatican. However, we arrived at our hostel in Rome pretty late and were exhausted by then, so we sent them an email thanking them for their offer, but wished them well.

What I remember the most about my encounter with The Vatican Guys was when one of them busted out the phrase “tiiight” in conversation as in that would be tiiight, aka cool. Studying at the Vatican… cool. Priests using the word tiiight… awesome.

The last time I traveled to Vietnam (about 8 years ago) was with my late father. Although my mother couldn’t join us, she warned us about her experience going through customs in Vietnam a few years earlier and how she was given a hard time because they thought she spoke Vietnamese; the customs officials wanted her to bribe them and pay them off so that they wouldn’t give her a difficult time just because.

My father refused to participate in such corruption and so when we went through customs and the officials started speaking to him in Vietnamese, he pretended not to understand. We were given a slightly difficult time, but passed through without needing to pay them off.

Just recently, I met someone who is also traveling to Vietnam in a less than a month and was told by a travel agent in San Jose, CA that his visa would cost $50 and his friend’s would cost $75. The reason? The guy’s last name could pass for Vietnamese while his friend’s could not.
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Five months ago, two of my good friends entered the lottery for Olympic tickets and they were informed last week that they were granted tickets to four (out of their requested six) events: basketball, diving, water polo, and volleyball. Which means… I am going to Beijing next summer!

I happened to be in San Francisco’s Chinatown this week and decided to stop by Classic Tours for information on tours in China; I was hoping to find an itinerary that would end in Beijing and allow the flexibility for an extension to stay for the Olympics. The travel agent had just returned from a meeting in Beijing about the Olympics and imparted some advice to me:

1. Don’t go to the opening or closing ceremonies - transportation will only be allowed 1-2 miles from the venue which means a mass exodus of people will cause huge human traffic jams
2. No tour company will go anywhere near Beijing during that time - best bet is to tour around China, then catch a plane to Beijing from there, but that plane ticket will not be cheap
3. Accommodations will be expensive - estimate is around $400-$500 a night

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At the end of this past September, I decided I wanted to travel somewhere internationally between Thanksgiving and Christmas and whipped out my passport only to find that it was due to expire in less than six months from my travel dates. Since certain countries in Asia require a US passport to be valid at least six months beyond the dates of the trip, my two options were to change my travel plans to a domestic trip or to renew the passport and pay an extra $60 (on top of the $67 regular fee) to expedite the processing. I reluctantly paid the avoidable fees that made up almost 50% of the total cost.

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