Tribal dance before the hike

Shortly after the early morning rain, against the backdrop of mist and eucalyptus trees, locals performed a tribal musical evocation.  The base of an inactive volcano rose up just beyond, disappearing into the low-hanging, fast-moving clouds.  Soon we would be traversing that volcano, rain or shine, in search of the Sabyinyo family. This family, led by a massive male named Guhonda, includes 14 mountain gorillas.  The Sabyinyo family is one of 18 families of mountain gorillas, first immortalized by Dian Fossey some 45 years ago, that call the dense rainforest of the East African Virunga mountain range their home.

As it turned out, the high top New Balance hiking shoes I had put on that day were more than perfect for the trek.  Equally so was the Frogg Togg rain suit, which guaranteed to keep me completely dry no matter how torrential the downpour.  While I was packing, such bulk had felt slightly over-cautious and unnecessary, especially given the limited space in my suitcase and short time I would be visiting the country.  Something about the word “rain” in “rain forest” and “wet” in “wet season” almost fell on deaf ears as I put the final touches on my packing before a 30-hour trip across the globe to Rwanda.  But as the rain began to fall with renewed energy, I was glad I had chosen to deal with the added bulk.

Potato fields below Volcanoes

To reach the Sabyinyo family, we weaved along a path cut through narrow stone walls designed to keep Volcanoes’ buffalos in the park and out of the local potato farms.  As soon as we picked up the trail, my foot sank immediately into six inches of black sludge. The thick mud sucked at my boots as I extracted my foot again and again, making my way up the steep incline for the seemingly interminable hike to reach our gorilla family.

The forest canopy was no match for raindrops, which cut through the trees, beating a deafening rhythm on the hood of my rain suit. Soon the trail more accurately resembled a small river or quagmire.   A tracker just in front of us chopped away hanging vines and brush with a machete, creating a crude path through the bamboo and stinging nettles.  As we’d been promised, getting to the gorillas wouldn’t be easy, but the experience would ultimately be well worth it.  I hoped so.

As a child, I loved gorillas and had a favorite gorilla toy.  With a “Go find your gorilla,” my parents could send me off on a search when they wanted a reprieve from my childhood babble. My room, a colorful explosion of toys, could be an artful camouflage for the world’s smallest silverback.  To ensure that I found my toy, my father kept a supply of the small statuette ready to pull out if another should vanish.

The inexhaustible supply of my childhood gorilla toy has not the case for the African gorilla.  In 1980, while I was looking for mine, poachers were combing the Virungas in search of the real deal, and succeeding in their quest. According to a 1978 census, these breathtaking creatures had dwindled to a mere 260. Without a massive push for awareness and action, they would vanish from the planet forever.

Fortunately, the gorillas haven’t vanished, but instead have thrived.  For more than 40 years, massive conservation efforts by various national and international entities have protected the gorilla and his habitat. Activists have tracked gorillas’ behavior in the park, working with local Rwandans to demonstrate that the park is more valuable in its natural state, generating tourist dollars, than it would be if the forest was cut down and used for farmland and firewood.

Lodges in the surrounding area, like the incomparably beautiful Virungas Mountain Lodge, often employ as many as forty people or more. Locals also carve and sell souvenirs, perform dances, provide  entertainment, and work as porters and trackers in the park.

Permits to go tracking, which are usually purchased months in advance, are $750.  Groups are limited to six people and each group visits one of ten habituated families of mountain gorillas.  The hikes are  challenging and are anywhere from 45 minutes to several hours. Once with the gorillas, visitors spend one hour before returning.  Weather, as I quickly learned, can be challenging, especially during the rainy season.  And rain or shine, gorilla siting or not (although almost everyone sees the gorillas), there are no refunds.

Local outside a dry shelter in the potato field

Feliciens, our guide, brings us to a halt. After a little more than an hour we have come to the gorillas. The silverback, he had explained, will either grunt giving us permission to “join” them, or respond with an aggressive “ah-ah-ah-ah,” suggesting that we stay back, they are busy.

At a whisper barely audible over the pounding rain, Feliciens explained that on sunny days, the young gorillas are playful, often intoxicated by fermented celery root. They are curious and often try to play with humans. The experience is typically an intimate one. We are to give the gorillas only a few yards of personal space, and while we must honor their space, they do not have to honor ours.

We are also instructed to remove our backpacks as the gorillas might try to steal them, set down our walking sticks because they are threatening, and turn off the flashes on our cameras as they are startling.

My heart pounds with excitement, which is diminished only slightly as Feliciens explains that gorillas hate rain.  It is still raining. We will be close, he says, but observing the Sabyinyo family of great apes will be challenging.

In hours I would be back on a plane, U.S. bound. There would be no coming back later today or tomorrow. Whatever he meant when he said “challenging to observe,” I hoped meant that we could at least see them.

Guhonda the Silverback

Finally, we push through thick bamboo and come to a clearing. The tracker turns and holds his finger to his mouth. Even before he can speak, I  see the face of a massive silverback no more than ten feet from me on the other side of some brush. His deep black eyes catch mine. The guide grunts twice and we wait. The moment hangs and finally the silverback, as we’d hoped, parrots back the grunt. With his permission, like the small plastic gorilla that entered my world more than 33 years ago, I enter his.

Nonchalant, he chews the leaves off of some foliage. The guide tells us to go closer. We can hear giant silverback breathing. Behind him, branches crash as other members of the Sabyinyo family forage for food. Occasionally he snorts. Again Feliciens urges us to move forward. Next we come across a mother lost in thought while her baby, the newest of the group, nurses. The rain drenches us one last time and then stops.  As it does, so does time.

Ultimately, we spend an hour in that little clearing watching the beasts shake off the rain, roll around, groom, yawn, burp, and stretch. It is peaceful. It is terrifying. Occasionally Guhonda grunts. “He wants us to know that it is okay that we are here,” Feliciens explains.

A mother and the newest family member

At one point, one of the males approaches me. He comes close. I fumble with my camera as he gets nearer.  With my hands shaking and lens fogging up, I can’t get a picture. With the gorilla just inches away, I let the camera hang impotently from my neck. This moment needed no photo to be immortalized. A kid in a toy box who finally found his gorilla.  A moment of total childlike surrender, something that, I realized, I could afford to do more of.

By the time we return to the potato fields it is raining again and, somehow, between the New Balance boots and the Frogg Toggs, I am still dry.

Our car waits for us in a small village on the edge of the park. Outside a tiny weathered blue building, several young kids see us and quickly bring out a table of tiny hand carved gorillas for sale. They stand in the rain trying to get us to buy one of these little replicas.

Local kids selling gorillas

I hold one of the crudely carved statues and think of my own endless quest to find a gorilla and how somehow, at least as a two-year-old, no matter how lost the gorilla may have been, thanks to my father, it managed to reappear. And thanks to the hard work of so many conservationists, environmentalists, and politicians, the real gorillas seem to be doing the same thing.

According to Feliciens, the gorilla population has increased to more than 866 from 260 in 1978. Poaching has all but stopped. And while 866 is still an alarmingly low number, the increase demonstrates that these gorillas have hope as long as people in Rwanda and around the world believe that they matter.

So from a table of eager-eyed youth, I buy one of the little statues for my own two-year-old nephew hoping that it will generate a love similar to my own for these handsome beasts. Pocketing my nephew’s gorilla, I think of my dad and how when one vanished he could always produce another so I pull out another five thousand francs and from the Rwandan children making our experience with the gorillas a more meaningful one, I buy another.

Matt in the mist

Because I am in a rain forest, the air is quite thick, though here, unlike other rain forests I’ve been in (annoying things travel writers say), because of the altitude, it is cold. The air hangs, damp and earthy but with a nip I associate with autumn despite the fact that I am pretty sure this equatorial nation doesn’t ever see the leaves change. The chill blends curiously with dense humidity making the low temperature feel somehow more penetrable.

Despite not having a screen and at the risk of a nocturnal monkey (those exist right?), bat, spider, snake or any other African monster entering my room, my french doors which lead directly into a rain forest are cracked. Having arrived  just after sunset to the Nyungwe Lodge, I haven’t the slightest idea what is in the chirping pool of darkness beyond the glass that makes up 1/4 of the wall space of my well-appointed room. What I know is that there are many living beings like myself, who are  awake and most them, like my friends and I on a weekend, spend nighttime hours buzzing, croaking and chirping the same things over and over while saying very little. On occasion, something rustles around in the foliage. I wish it would stop rustling or alternatively announce itself as a very small and adorable, non-threatening mammal that is NOT being hunted by something larger.

I can’t help but think, as I lay here listening to the Rwandan night now fifteen minutes before setting off on a chimpanzee trek about how I’ve always dreamed of coming to this continent. This nation has a rhythm to it. Despite the many horrors it has faced, it has a vitality and a feeling of timelessness, the smiles of the people and the cadence of the music are as electric as the the shrill nocturnal melodies of the mountain. And while a whole new  verdant world of hikes and primates, culture and cuisine waits at the end of this magically restless night, if I could lay here and listen to the buzz of the rain forest a little longer, I wouldn’t mind at all. Being awake, at least for one night Africa, is a beautiful thing.

Carmel, with its elf-like cottages and ancient cypress trees, is an enchanted beach town that conjures up images of elves and magical fairies. Perhaps the secret to these dreamy flapjacks arrived by way of hobbit from Middle Earth. There had to be something esoteric that made these airy, almost crepe-like cakes so special.

“The reason the pancakes are so good here is that we add extra water to the batter and keep the skillet really hot,” my waitress tells me.

I take another bite and consider what she has just revealed. Heat and a couple of lousy hydrogen molecules chained up to a molecule of oxygen are all that separate these ethereal cakes from the likes of bisquick? Clearly the secret to the pancakes at this quaint local breakfast joint isn’t one to be shared.

The Little Swiss Cafe, a family run restaurant since 1972, is a lunch and breakfast spot located on the corner of 6^th Avenue and Dolores just off of Ocean Avenue and specializes not only in pancakes and the usual breakfast fare but also cheese blitzes, Swiss Sausage and liver and onions. No matter what you get here, it is good.

Just off of the Carmel’s main drag, The Little Swiss feels very much as though you have stepped into a tiny eatery somewhere in the Swiss Alps.  It is divided into two rooms. In the front room are a couple of small tables looking out onto the street. The back room is a small, square room with several tight, upright booths.

The walls of this snug room are painted with murals of the Swiss countryside, each wall reflecting a season. At a glance, the landscape seems benign, if not slightly cliché and in disrepair. Duct tape carelessly hangs in the sky above one of the landscapes and on another, a nail, once intended to hang a painting, protrudes from the wall. At least that is how it appears… In truth, there is much more going on.

But if one were to try to remove the duct tape, they would be quick to discover that the duct tape, stringy on the edges and muted silver, is actually painted on the wall. So is the nail. Caught off guard by this peculiar artistic ruse, my eye begins to wander across the European countryside and as it does, what was once a fairly straightforward mural becomes a joyful exercise in observation.

Duct tape… Or is it?

The wintery mural at a glance, features a frozen lake surrounded by some humble cabins and inns. One of the Inns, however has a tiny Motel 6 light on it. On one of the logs coming out of the water rests a parrot. A matador with a red cape antagonizes a bull in a field of cattle. Gollum hangs out in a tree. A seal’s head pops out of a crack in the lake. A penguin reads a sign on the water’s edge that says “No Diving.”

The wall representing spring features a river running through a field of beautiful flowers. In the river, a shirtless man, with his hat on backwards, flyfishes for trout. Puss and Boots sword fight over a log. Shriek and his girlfriend Fiona soak in the stream and the couple from the classic Grant Wood painting American Gothic hang out in one of the rows of flowers while a tennis net stretches across another row of flowers and on either side of the net, two people engaged in a match. In the distance, barely visible is the Eiffel Tower and just a hop, skip and a jump from there, the leaning tower of Pisa.

What all can you see here?

There are more than fifty images playfully hidden in the landscapes painted in 2005 by artist Andre Baylon. By reputation, a serious artist, Baylon, born and raised in The Netherlands, currently shows his more serious work down the road at Jones and Terwillinger Galleries. At The Little Swiss House, however, he let his imagination run wild, much to the delight of both locals who call this eatery their own as well as tourists from all over the world.

Under the watchful eye of the old couple from American Gothic, I finish my pancakes. As I leave, I notice on the mural a strange man in the bushes smoking a cigarette. Above him, a flock of birds heading straight to where I once thought was a nail protruding from the wall. One of the birds is upside down….

Like the pancakes, it is too good.

Full and inspired, I head into the day. I glance into the bushes outside, now half expecting to see a gargoyle stoically eyeing me. Above I notice the clouds. One seems to be shaped like a car. In another, perhaps I see the face of a lion.  A car whizzes by and for a second, I think it might the driver might just be Mickey Mouse. As I take a breath of the Carmel salty sea air, there seems to be more to the world than there was an hour ago and I can’t help but wonder… What was in those pancakes?

Look closer….

Pohang Fish Market

For four days, I’ve been trekking across South Korea exploring the country’s delightfully diverse array of culinary expression. And while bibimbop (veggies, rice, thinly sliced meats and chili paste) and Korean barbeque (thin slices of beef cooked table top)  are the nation’s flagship dishes, it is in the hyper-stimulating markets of Korea that the country’s cuisine truly begins to reveal itself.

bibimbop

From the exotic street food of the Kwangjang Market located in the heart of Seoul to the implausibly fresh seafood of the Jukdo Fish Market in Pohang, even those with the most educated palates will find their imaginations running wild with the varying textures, flavors and temperatures of the fare of this frenetic Asian gem.

JUKDO FISH MARKET

Even with a small cushion, at 6’2″, sitting shoeless on the floor in front of a long table in a tightly packed seafood restaurant located at the Jukdo Market in Pohang is a claustrophobic exercise. But despite my constant readjustment in effort alleviate pressure on my aching legs, I find myself squirming not from discomfort but in guileless anticipation of the fresh multi-course seafood extravaganza that is about to turn me from mild-mannered travel writer to ravenous leviathan.

Shellfish, shellfish, shellfish!

When I ask the restaurant’s name, the look from the waitress suggests it is without. The menu is written in colorfully smeared Korean characters on a dry erase board on one of the peeling pea colored walls. Next to it, a television plays Korean baseball, capturing the attention of the majority of the clientele, most of whom are male, nursing a bottle of soju deep into the evening. Three generations of women bustle over boiling pots of seafood soup and rice in an open kitchen in one corner of the one room restaurant.

Just outside of this mom-and-pop shop, which I later learn is called Seong Jin Heotjib, are more than 200 other raw fish stores and restaurants that make up this open air market. The inescapable pulse of Psy’s Gangnam-Style wheezes through various blown speakers. Scale-covered purveyors clean their catch amid giant blue, halogen-lit tanks abounding with live mollusk, mussels, oysters, squid, octopus, crustaceans and fish otherworldly enough to make even George Lucas recoil.

Crabs!

Soon, along with an ample amount of the Soju (sweet rice wine) and Kimchi, Korea’s national dish made of seasoned, fermented cabbage, radish and cucumber among other vegetables, I will try a sampling of each one of these curious sea creatures immediately after it is taken from its respective tank, cut, cleaned and served. When they say that the seafood at the Jukdo Fish Market is the freshest in Korea, they mean it.

The meal begins with a giant tray covered in conch, mussels, oysters, soft shell crab, crab legs, sea snails, sea food salad filled with crustaceans unknown, roe, abalone, octopus, freshly sliced persimmon, and a rose for color. Served with a side of freshly made soy sauce and wasabi, the meal is a joyful exercise in extraction and exaltation and is only just beginning.

Shellfish, shellfish, shellfish!

Next, the waitress brings a selection of large raw prawns. We each select the ones we would like barbequed. She takes them to the fire outside, where they will be cooked on a bed of sea salt in foil over an open flame. As soon as she is gone, an assortment of sashimi arrives to the table. I ask what kind of fish it is and the waitress shrugs her shoulders. “Fresh. Caught today.” she says. Having earned my trust with the shellfish course and fortifying myself with a generous serving of soju, I dive in. She tell me to save room. The soup, rice and the prawn are still to come.

The fish soup is a fiery, fishy red broth with chunks of seafood, vegetables and a fish head floating on top. We cleanse our palate with a bowl of sticky rice and then it is time for prawn, served in their respective beds of salt. They are the size of lobsters and better than any lobster I’ve ever eaten.

shrimp on a bed of salt

By the time we are finished, the table looks like a battlefield covered with shells, scales, tails and bones. My muscles no longer ache and the soju has been as warming as the food was filling. As I wander back through the market, I note again the men covered in blood and scales, the jettisoning squid, the languid octopus, the menacing eel, the sea slugs, the crabs, the conch, and all the other indescribable but delectable creatures, and think… despite their off-putting exterior… they look delicious.

And with a last fleeting glance, I’m off to the next stop.

 KWANGJANG MARKET

Stacks of Mayak Gimbap

The Kwangjang Market is Seoul’s is oldest and largest market, not to mention the busiest. Built in 1904, the market hosts 35,000 people daily with more than five hundred shops and eateries. The size of more than eight football fields, the market is constantly chaotic, but no place more so than the food court.

The food court, located in the market’s epicenter, has long been an after-work gathering place where tenacious suit-clad Koreans line up at dozens of family run small counters. Each offer their own culinary specialty, to sip on rice wine called Makgeolli, chomp on one of more than two hundred varieties of Kimchi, and blow off steam over an incalculable assortment of freshly prepared Korean dishes.

No matter where my over-stimulated eyes try to wander, whether to the amorous Korean couple feasting on mung bean and shrimp pancakes, or to the cook, a short, terse woman, as she hovers over a pan of tiny whole fish as the snap in boiling oil, I can’t help but stare at the pig snout that sits in front of me as I wait for my next dish. While there are many culinary conquests in this market, something about pig nose makes me shudder…. I try to focus on my first dish: soft rice, mashed up into balls and covered in chili sauce almost hot enough to serve as a distraction.

Woman cooks at the Kwangjang Market

Moments later, the terse woman sets in front of me a firm, but chewy rice cake covered in hot chili sauce and a Mayak Gimbap which is loosely translated to mean “Addictive” or “Drug.” It is warm rice, carrots, radish, and crabmeat wrapped in seaweed. While this sounds similar to the standard roll found at any corner sushi joint in any city, when prepared in fresh at this bustling nighttime market, this roll is anything but…

I bite through the brittle seaweed into the rice, soft and warm, and then into crunch of the carrot before finally getting to the fresh crabmeat.  The flavors dance with the chili paste from the rice cake I had just finished, and as the flavors continue to blend, I barely even notice the pig snout staring at me through its nostrils. I savor the roll a moment more, thank the cook, and move through the cavernous, chaotic, night market.

Small trucks and scooters share the narrow, indoor thoroughfare with pedestrians browsing the cases of each of the local vendors. Someone mentions Sundae. And while a sundae sounds delicious, I’ve been in Korea long enough to know that they are not talking about ice cream and fudge.

Sundae is steamed pig intestine stuffed with glass noodles, the market favorite. Though daunting in its appearance and earthy in fragrance, the meat is chewy and its strong flavor yields to the soft noodles (sometimes rice) and a spicy, chili-based tteobokki sauce. It is often served with pig liver and/or heart. While it could be a meal in itself, I take only a few bites and press on.

pig intestines stuffed with glass noodles

There are stands everywhere, each with its own specialty. There is yukhoe, a beef tartare mixed with pear slices and egg yolk, and there is Kalmandu, a brothy hot noodle soup with dumplings cooked in anchovy stock. Maeuntang is a spicy fish stew boiled with an ambiguous recipe but usually is made up of assorted veggies and fish cooked with spices hot enough to make you sweat.

There are the surprisingly tender chicken feet, of course covered in hot sauce, and everywhere you go there is Makgeolli rice wine, served chilled and usually in tin cups. Traditionally this milky elixir, similar in taste to sake, is taken in shots, and as my experience has proven, can disappear very quickly.

mung bean pancakes

After a broad sampling of some of Kwangjang Market’s most delicious and curious items, it is time to settle down in one of the restaurants on the market’s perimeter. The restaurant, like most places, is packed. Predictably, within minutes, Gangnam style plays and diners do bashful, diminished versions of the dance.

Men crowd around televisions playing Korean baseball, and unlike in the Korean countryside coast, here, I get a chair. After roaming the market, to sit is a relief, and while I’m getting full, this place claims to be among the best. So good, in fact, that I don’t even order. Food just begins to appear.

The waitress first arrives with the most popular item in the entire market, and besides kimchi, as far as I can tell, in the entire country. Bindaetteok is mung beans (similar to garbanzo beans) that are mashed, mixed with various combinations of vegetables, pork, or seafood, then fried. The texture is more hash brown than pancake, but either way, they are delicious and the variations are endless.

Next is a plate full of jeon, which is similar to Japanese tempura. Shrimp, crab, carrots, mushrooms, onions, and meatballs are dipped into a sweet flour-based batter then fried. You can order specific ones, but in the spirit of all things food, I try every last one and go so far as to get seconds of the crab. Each greasy, unhealthy piece is an expression of fried goodness.

By meal’s end, I am exhausted. I exit the restaurant once again into the chaos of the market, narrowly missing a scooter rushing down the corridor. I notice that the pig snout from my first booth is missing. Someone has clearly taken it home for dinner. I am thankful that no part of the pig was wasted and more grateful still that it wasn’t me who had to eat it. Something about a snout I just couldn’t stomach… even if it is just pork.But beyond that, Korean markets are among the finest.

In contrast, I am notoriously a simple dresser. Solid colored tees and jeans is the normal and on a Friday night I may dazzle with a collar and some blue stripes. I make every effort to appear as though I don’t give a shit (though occasionally I’ve been known to drop $60 bucks on a white tee shirt because I like the cut).

While I’m certain that such simple style of dress may conjure a snarky glance at a yacht club or golf course, and probably would make it even more challenging for me to get into (god forbid I would ever have to go) a night club, it is, at the very least, non-offensive. So, per usual, when I travel, I toss in a couple of tees (black, green,  blue… purple for crazy days), a couple of long sleeve tees (also black and blue), a pair of khakis, a pair of jeans and head to Seoul.

When I arrived to Bradley International Terminal at LAX  for a midnight flight, I was sandwiched by fashion. Ahead of me, a guy in tight reddish jeans, giant black frame glasses, a shirt that sparkled, and a scarf. His bag had what I could only describe as Stegasaurian metal notches along its back. Behind me, a variation of this man, albeit different colors, jewels, cuts, etc., of the guy ahead of me, only this guy had on eye-liner and his hair was at least three different shades of red and going in several different directions. Keep in mind… This is what these guys are wearing for a thirteen-hour flight leaving at midnight and arriving on the other side of the world at 5am. The ticket line was peppered with these types of fashion savvy youth, leaving me, a weed in comparison, scratching my head.

Recently, I was in Costa Rica and was floored by the birds. Much like the colorful fish that make their homes on elaborately colored coral reefs, these birds have evolved into brilliant reds, cobalt blues, and rich greens with epic plumage suitable only for royalty, not because of a divinely appointed lineage but because they match their landscape. It wasn’t until after my plane landed and I set foot into the immaculate, neon, radiant city of Seoul did the otherwise flamboyant style of dress begin to make sense.

In a word, Seoul is ebullient. The architecture is so other-worldly that one finds it hard to believe that the valet isn’t parking flying cars. The city is mirrored and glowing, exploding with combustible color and this chromatic fervor extends beyond its buildings to the cuisine, its temples, and is ultimately and primarily expressed through its people. There isn’t a crayon box large enough to contain the hues of this exuberant expression of urbanity. And suddenly, in this techno-garden that is East Asia, I find myself walking down Meyong-Dong, the epi-center of this cacophony, and feel like dusty sparrow in a world of macaws and toucan.

The sidewalks and streets are lined with vendors selling elaborate cell phone cases, bejeweled hats, hooded sweat shirts with animal ears and bunny tails, glasses of impossible shapes and sizes and even anime-covered socks. Even on a Wednesday night, stores bustle with colorfully clad teenagers looking for that next great piece of apparel. It is a virtual sea of electric humanity and despite what I had always believed, in this environment, I love it.

The city and its people have a pulse. It is superlative. It is clean, the people are kind, and if ever were an urban hub where hyperbole infectiously reigns, this is it. It is a grand expression and while I don’t find myself reaching for a pair of Gangnam-style Psy-inspired socks or non-ironic, over-sized Harry Potter glasses, I do find myself thinking that maybe it is time to add a little color to my wardrobe. Who wants to be a weed anyway? After all… I live in Los Angeles.

Yesterday was genuinely fantastic. Even on absolutely no sleep in the kind of fog that previously I associated with three day party weekends, it managed to be one of the most inspiring, beautiful days I’ve had in ages, and while I’d love to write a play by play of the twenty course dinner I had, the traditional Korean village I visited, or the “Iron Chef meets Stomp” musical I got to see last night, what I liked best was my morning walk right after I arrived.

In South Korea on my first walk, I noticed the speed limit signs tell you how fast you are going. If you are going the speed limit, they make a happy face. If you are speeding, they make a frown. The sidewalks around the parks are green. Everyone wears suits. There is an indoor driving range about every hundred yards, and between each indoor golfing facility are at least three coffee shops. There isn’t a piece of trash on the ground anywhere as far as I can tell. Everything feels electric. Elevators don’t go to the forth floor.. But enough on that. These were jut a few observations, but it got me really thinking about the broader motivation for travel.

There is something about those first moments walking around alone in a new city. Everything is amazing. Every corner is electric. Every street sign is fascinating. The smells coming from every café are intoxicating. The fleeting glance of a stranger is captivating. The old folks seem wiser. The parks are quieter. Mundane birds seem exotic. Modest alleyways are worthy of a photograph. Mediocre art is inspired. Flavors explode. The band at the pub has an album worth buying. The crying baby is no longer intrusive, nor is her publicly breastfeeding mother. The homeless guy hitting you up for change seems worth the cause. His story worth the listen… In fact, when you travel, everyone’s story is worth the listen.

The lousy local beer tastes so good you want to save the bottle cap. Trinkets, no matter how cheap, have appeal. Houses of worship conjure a deeper sense of stillness. People holding hands are more love. Money becomes and ceases to be an object at the same time. Some kid sells you a crappy bracelet and you swear to yourself you will wear it forever to remember the moment. You want to say yes and keep walking. Sleep matters and doesn’t. If there are fruits growing on trees, you notice them. When you meet someone from your own country, you become friends even if at home, they’d drive you out of your mind.

When you spill it doesn’t matter. When you are hungry you eat. When you pass a bookstore, you are more inclined to go in and if you buy a book, the chances are higher that you’ll finish it, and more importantly, remember what you read and how it affected you.  It is easier to be honest with other people. It is easier to be honest with yourself. It is easier to remember. It is easier to fall in love, it is easier to let things go, and it is easier to discover things about yourself that you had no idea existed in you. It makes you want to call your family and friends and tell them you love them. It makes you want to say you’re sorry. It makes you want to be a better person and it reminds you of the good person who you really were all along. It is the only thing in the world that you can do that reminds you that the most important place is not on the road, but actually home.

That is paradox of the traveler. The more you travel, the more you know home. Sure. Every city has a top ten list. Do it all. But there’s nothing like leaving a hotel for your first time in Paris and just taking a walk until that Eiffel Tower pops up off of the Seine River. When it happens that way; when you stumble upon it, it means you found it, and then that moment and all the beautiful things that happen along the way are entirely yours.

Blurry Seoul Skyline

My travel companions are travel agents from Veitnam. They don’t speak a word of English. Nor do they speak their native tongue to each other. They just kind of sit silently in the back seat. My cab driver doesn’t speak English or Vietnamese so he plays the quiet game as well.

It is a challenging carload of companions when you are driving into a new city and have a million questions and are absurdly jet lagged. Are the ashy colored ten to twelve story buildings that line the highway for mile after mile all housing? Why does everyone go to work so early? If everyone gets up so early, why are all thousand of the coffee shops still closed? What do these people that are in traffic at 6am doing for a living? What is that thing over there? Is every single person in this t-jam jamming to Gangnam style? Why aren’t we listening to Gangham style? Can you dance gangnam style? Is that gangnam style guy gay? Where are all the KFCs and Starbucks? And seriously…. How much extra do I have to pay you to take me to the DMZ and if you’d take me, what would it take to get a round of golf in with Junior?

Toilet time machine

As the line up of questions never-to-be -asked reaches and exhausted, jetlagged level of absurdity, I’m taken back by the Seoul skyline as it comes into view. It is radiant.

Behind it, the sun rises turning the sky an unworldly pink and blue and the city itself seems to float in a body of water that rests before it (I couldn’t tell you the name of the body of water.. I wanted to ask… alas… language barriers…) The skyline is dignified and less dense than I had imagined. The buildings themselves, feel like they are waking up and appreciating the sunrise. It’s spectacular.

After an hour, I get to my hotel. It is called “Hotel the Designers.” That isn’t a typo. That is the name of the hotel, and despite the strange verbiage, the hotel is exceedingly contemporary and unique. If the hotel in any way represents the superstitious collective conscience of the country, then according to the elevator, they are not into the number four, as the floors skip from three to five. My room should be on the fourth floor… However, not the case. I’m on five.

unlucky number four?

The room is an fantastic enigma. Especially the bathroom. The bathroom, when it comes to the toilet, sink, etc., has more choices than a cheesecake factory menu. The toilet flusher alone has so many flushing and “rinsing” buttons that I’m afraid to use it for fear that by pushing the wrong button, I’ll go back into time. The shower with its levers, heads, and faucets guarantees cleanliness, if you are smart enough to make it work without causing a Noahic flood.

The beds are about half the distance to the floor as my own and despite being a little hard, are incredibly comfortable and there is no window. Well. There is a mirror that you can open one inch. And it looks at a wall. Not really sure what you’d call it. Anyway, despite being nine in the morning, right now, in my room, it feels like night. Kind of like a Vegas Casino. Only I’m alone with me and my fancy bathroom.

As if the standard American remote control hasn’t come to be too much, trying to understand one in Korean is a lesson in resignation. To watch tv, all I can do is turn it on. Beyond that, much like the toilet… I got nothing. I’ve settled, as I write this for first, a Korean game show (they seem to have so much fun!!!) and now a soap opera. So far as I can tell, it involves love, lust, and attractive people who tend to emote more than necessary. Sounds as American as KFC… man KFC sounds good. As long as they also serve kimchi.

I also have a little LCD screen that flashes the views of all of the various (and there are at least fifty) security cameras around the hotel. I don’t know if it is for safety or to satisfy voyeuristic impulses. For me, it functions for both. A lady I watch is confused right now. Ha. And based on the direction she’s going, she doesn’t appear to want to come to my room and kill me. Good… Voyeurism/security. Dig it.

Jungle breakfast!

And as for meals, I’ve had one. Standard Western breakfast in a small also windowless room and the decor is decidedly animal. For its centerpiece, a four foot tall stuffed giraffe munches on the leaves of a fake tree with a equally large stuffed giraffe.  As I chewed on my honeydew, like my stuffed friends chewed on their fake leaves, I thought…. Not the Korea I expected… but I kinda like it.

The rest of my group arrives and we are gathering at 1pm for lunch. Maybe one of them will speak english and be smart enough to explain the many luxurious functions of my toilet. There’s five days and a country to see and if it is 1/100th as curious as the room in which I type this, I’m sure it will be a blast.

Stay tuned for more!

I can’t stand the fact that today I have to go to a temp office where I’ll have to take an aptitude test to let them know that I can do basic math and operate spreadsheets, so that starting tomorrow, I can go back to a job filing and making other people’s phone calls because apparently, despite all the effort that I have put into building a body of work that is honest, passionate, and entertaining, I have somehow still managed to fall short enough that in order to keep an apartment roughly the size of the first apartment I ever had in Norman Oklahoma, I must stop doing what I’m good at for a period of time and start doing what I hate.

Then there is the one thing that gets me the most. No matter how much, this particular day, I can’t stand everything, I know for a second that none of this shit I just wrote above is true.I hate the fact that when people, friends, loved ones, and family members try to cheer me up, my response is to tell them that they just don’t get it when they are the ones that actually do. I hate the fact that I choose to blame the industry and the world for the fact that my career as a writer has no value when that thought can be attributed to no one but me. I’ve been blessed with a remarkable life. Beautiful people that care about me, a passion for something that I care deeply about, a world that I want to know and understand and a world that I want to rest of the world to understand and care about with the passion that I do. Ahead of me are endless opportunities and I know that. And I hate that sometimes that slips my mind.

So I’ll take this moment when fluffy pillows and kittens remind me of being caught in barbed wire and I’ll remember it, because it is a terrible way to live. People love to tell you to always stay positive but I partially disagree. Better to call it as you see it in a given moment so that  shortly there after you can see it for what it really is. Life is never any clearer than that moment you let something completely hate-filled and juvenile slip out of your mouth and all you want to do is take it back. Regret sometimes leads to revelation. I can attest to this because I just re-read the first two paragraphs (sigh) and as much as I want to delete them, I’ll just leave them there as a friendly reminder….

Anyone reading this might wonder what brought this on… Here it is. Travel writing doesn’t pay. It’s great, but it doesn’t pay. TV jobs are also great when you’ve got them but it is a tough world to re-enter and right now, as far as that goes, I got a handful of unread scripts, a few good people who’ve got my back and that’s fantastic. But ask any writer. it doesn’t pay the bills.

I have to remind myself that the basic, primal reason that I AM a writer and I do what I do, is because when I sat down thirty minutes ago, I wanted to drown this day. I wanted to rant about it and carry on, and exaggerate and embellish and just sit and stew in my frustration. So that is what I did… and in working through all that agitation, somehow, now the birds don’t bother me as much. In the time it has taken me to write this blog, and as I go back to read the opening paragraph, I’m not even sure who wrote it. Whoever he is, I hope he keeps his mouth shut from now on. I’ve got a cat who is thirsty, and I’ve got to see what South Korea’s all about and finally I figure out whether all those math classes were really worth it… and when I’m all done, the stories I’ll be able to tell….

Several years back on a trip to the south of France, my mom and dad were walking along one of the art gallery lined streets and my mother noticed a painting in a window that she liked. My father, also an art guy who had dabbled in a little painting of his own was taken by the painting, but not as much as my mom. She needed it. The only problem with the painting is that it cost about the same as a small luxury automobile and given that the trip was the annual big splurge, buying a painting quadruple if not more than the price of the trip itself seemed excessive.

The next year, as was usually the case, my sister and I returned to Oklahoma for the family Christmas. Christmas over the course of the years in the Payne family has always been unique. While the wine flows and gifts are exchanged, the past ten years in my family, Christmas has coincided with a stroke, a crippling snow storm, the precipice of two divorces, a terrorist attack, and a homicide so while we make an effort to enjoy the Christmas, and each has had certainly had its moments (my grandmother in Italy dancing around in a giant bra outside her sweater with flashing lights where her nipples should be), thematically, it has been a trying holiday.

This particular year was the exception. In a lobster and wine-induced near-coma, after the family had left Christmas Eve dinner, we usually exchanged the more good-humored gifts. Guides the bird scat. Marshmallow guns. That type of thing, but this year, my dad told my mom that he had something special for her. A minute later he comes down stairs with something flat covered in a towel. Having forgotten all about her trip to France, my mom curiously removed the towel, not quite sure what it could be. As she removed the towel, her jaw fell upon and tears welled in her eyes. It was the painting from France.

Over and over again she kept saying “you got me the painting?” and with each rhetorical question, her voice shifted slightly from a tone of absolute elation to abhorrence. My dad just kept asking if she liked it. “Of course I like it but are you crazy? Do you know how much this cost?” She asked.

“I didn’t buy it,” he told her, adding confusion to the many emotions on her face. “I painted it.” He had gone back, photographed the painting and spent the next several months replicating the piece of art she had loved so much.

And with that, we all fell apart in what has become unquestionably my favorite Christmas memory.

Jane Anderson painting

But what came of that was much more. Not only did the romantic gesture reaffirm my parent’s relationship after more than 30 years of marriage, it created a new one.

My dad, whose desire to paint was re-inspired, decided he wanted to paint more. In Carmel, CA, he found an artist’s work that spoke to him. He inquired as to the artist’s name and managed to get in touch with her. She was not the high-brow “art-eest” that make most people’s skin crawl. Instead, she was a vivacious lady well into her 80s named Jane Bradford. She wore bright orange lipstick, loved a glass of wine and despite her age, still loved to paint every day. My dad asked if she’d be willing to help him with his own paintings. The bright orange corners of her lips turned up, child-like.

Having recently lost one of her children and going through several frustrating relationships, it was a lonely time in Jane’s life. It felt in many ways like the end. My dad, whose mother had been an artist had passed away years before. There was a clear empty spot in his heart when he painted that painting of the French Riviera for my mom. He’d wished his mom had been there to share in his enthusiasm.

Suddenly, as he filled the empty spot in Jane’s life where once her son had been, she filled the spot in my dad’s heart that had once belonged to my grandmother. The friendship has lasted for years. Every time my parents would arrive in Carmel, she’d show up with a pot roast. When my dad finished a painting, he took it to Jane who quickly sent him back to work. When she finished a painting, my dad would find someone to buy it for her (and if no one bought it, he usually did.)

While I only met her a few times, I adored her. Of course she was a character, she was talented and she didn’t mind more than one glass of wine, but mostly because of the love she had for my mom and dad and because my family’s love for her. Through this strangely discovered relationship, the world, at least ours, became a better place.

This morning, at 7am, I got a text. My reaction was the only reaction anyone has to an oddly early text from home. Something bad had happened. Before I read it, I thought of all the people I knew and loved. I went down a list. It was a long one. It was the kind of list that make you grateful to be alive. I finally flipped on the phone and there was a name I had somehow forgotten. Jane Bradford had passed away. And for forgetting her, as I thought of those important to me in that moment before I looked at my phone, I’m truly sorry. She was as good a person as anyone I’ve known, and I’ll miss her.

That day on the French Riviera, my mom and dad looked at a painting and the reaction was that it was over-priced. Some pompous French painter inflating prices to take advantage of vulnerable tourists caught up in the romance of all things France. If only he knew just how valuable that painting was. RIP Jane.

This is the gorilla armor they made me wear.

By Wayne the Disgruntled Tourist

So earlier this week, I had to go to Winter Park. I guess I should have known the whole thing was gonna be messed up just by the name of the town. Here I am going to a place called Winter Park and it’s the middle of the god damn summer. At any rate, nomenclature issues aside, the point of the trip was to go biking. Simple enough. I love biking. Had a bike when I was a kid. Shoved a queen of spades in the spoke, and I’d come down the street sounding ike a locomotive. If you were a blind guy you’d have thought I was a Hell’s Angel. Loved that shit. Bike was a Schwinn… But hey… who gives a shit what kind of bike it was. Point is… I know how to ride a bike.

Anyway… Winter Park. Or Summer Park… or whatever and I’m gonna be biking. So that’s the deal. Next thing you know, I’m in some kinda bike shop that smells like rubber and half the periodic table of elements. Should have known something was afoul when I walked in and they’re bunch of hippies playing The Grateful Dead on the loud speakers. Then the Beatles come on; as if we haven’t all heard that band a million times. The 60s were in the 60s. Let it go.

So everybody’s real nice and smiling and I tell them I need my bike. Next thing you know, some chick with a moose tattooed on her leg puts me some kinda armor before you know it I look like some kind of thing from the bowels of a Phillip Dick novel. Chest plates like a futuristic gorilla coming to warn us all. Helmet like the Lord Vader himself. All that was missing was a glow in the dark sword and a cape.

What’s with capes anyway?

So I’m like “Lady, I’m going on a bike ride. Not to Neptune. What’s with this get up?” and she smiles and tells me it’s “Just in case.” “Just in case? Just in case what?” I say back and then I remind her that I used to drive a schwinn with a card in the spokes back in the day and she just keeps smilin’ and tells me “Just in case,” like I didn’t hear her the first time. “Lady, I know how to ride a bike. Six year olds know how to ride bikes. Mentally challenged six year olds at that.”

After I’m properly prepared to absorb radiation from solar flares, she tells me its time to get me a bike. “Hope you got a queen of spades, honey. That’s the only way I ride,” I tell her. She didn’t laugh at my joke, but Trust me with a capital “T, ”she thought it was funny.

So we get my bike and if my techo-armor was a little excessive, this bike looked like some kind of overgrown prehistoric arachnid made out of beryllium. It’s got springs and pistons coming out of everywhere like an unkempt old lady and I’m standing there all constricted from my armor and thinking “what the fuck is this?”

“A bike,” she tells me. Apparently, according to Moose Tattoo, this thing costs a few grand and if I scratch it at all, I gotta pay for it. What Moose Tattoo doesn’t get, even though I told her a half dozen times. I know how to ride a bike… or at least bikes how they were made before NASA got involved.

Then some guy with all kinds of energy starts running his mouth about a lesson. At this point, I’m thinkin’ I’ll just play with him. “Sure,” I tell him. “Why don’t you teach me how to ride my little bike..” Next thing you know, he’s shoving me on skilift and we’re heading to the top of a giant hill.  And let me tell you this. Not a road to be seen. Anywhere. Am I supposed to ride this thing through all these conifers?” I ask the guy and he looks at me all chipper and goes… “Yeah, bro.” Bro. Fuck you, Bro. Don’t even think the guy knows what a conifer is.

“First off,” I tell him, “I’m gonna get eatin’ by a damn bear. Bears scare the shit out of me.” He tells me there are no bears. Well, Dingleberry Hound, bears live in forests. Below us are trees. Do the math, Jerry Garcia. This has to be a joke I tell myself but for now, I’m stuck with the hippy, hanging five hundred feet or so above the damn ground and as scared as I am of bears, let me tell you this. I hate heights. With the fury of a score of burning matchboxes.

Me kicking ass on a bike. You couldn’t do it.

We get off the lift, and this guy tells me to ride down this little hill. But I shouldn’t sit. I should always stand on the pedals. “Stand on the pedals?” I ask. “Yeah,” he tells me. “And get your butt low. And lean on your heels.” “I ask the obvious question. “If you’re supposed to stand, then what the hell is the seat there for?” “In case,” he says, as vague as Moose Tattoo back in the shop. After that, he tells me that instead of turning the handlebars to turn, I just lean to the side. “Then why do the handle bars turn?” I ask, “and don’t tell me in case!” I say, my blood boiling. “In case you need it to turn,” he says.

So I ride down the hill and lower my ass, lean on my heels, turn the thing to the side a couple of times and that’s that. Now give me my queen of spades and let’s do this thing. He warns me about some shit called “Burms” which are like turns and says let’s go have some fun as if that’s possible.

Next thing you know, he takes off down some path and we start going kind of fast, then BAM! A root. BAM! Another root. BAMBAM! Rocks everywhere! “This ain’t no road!” I yell, my coffee breath stinking up the facemask of my helmet. BAM! Another rock and then we’re going straight down! I’m riding this thing like a cat lady on a dryer. No wonder he told me not to sit. This seat would sodomize me. We’re in a damn forest on a path an inch wide and tree branches are smackin’ me and I’m sucking wind like an asthmatic. My hands hurt from gripping the handlebars so damn hard. I catch up to Jerry Garcia and he’s grinning like some kinda circus monkey on free banana day and I wanna wring his neck. “What the hell was that?” I ask, expecting an answer. “That’s no bike ride! That’s suicide,” I tell him. “You almost killed me,” I say, waiting for my brain to stop shaking.

“You don’t like it?” he asks. “Like I said,” you almost killed me!” I tell him. Then he’s got the nerve to say to me… “You sure look like you’re having fun.” Then he gets on his bike. “Let’s go.” And takes off. That little son of bitch.

I jump on my bike and go after him. The faster he rides, the faster I ride. Before I know it, I don’t even feel the bumps. I just smash over the damn things so I can catch up with this kid and skin him and tan his hide with his beloved patchouli. But he’s way ahead me so I just start focusing on what’s ahead and let me tell you something. Regular biking compared to this? Not the same at all. This? This is a sport. What I’m doing ain’t for every man. I take another burm. And another. I’m like a downhill skier on a bike. I’ll tell you this. You couldn’t do it. That’s a fact.

Jerry Garcia. Look at this Dingus.

So I get to the bottom and I’m all out of breath. Adrenaline is pumping and Jerry Garcia’s there all smiling and sweaty. “What’d you think?” He asks. “I think next time you go tearing away from me on top of that hill, I’m gonna catch you.” I tell him.  And I mean it, too. Then he looks at me all cocky and says “It’s not a hill. It’s a mountain.” Hill/mountain. Winter Park/Summer Park. Relax, Jerry. Moose Tattoo sticks her head out of the store. “You still want to stick a card in those spokes?”

“Only if you’re watching,” I said, and again, she didn’t laugh but she was smiling on the inside.  “She’s got a boyfriend,” he tells me.  ”I put on my helmet, ready to go again. “Not for long.”

This is in no way a reflection of any company in Winter Park, Colorado and should be taken in jest. Look for Matt’s many extra-ordinary musings on his trip to Colorado in the week to come.