Days 1 thru 3. Also known as Days 2 thru 4. Or is it Days 1.5 thru 4.5?

This is the true story. Of two college roomates. Picked to live on the road, and have their lives blogged. To find out what happens, when Americans stop being quite right, and start being confused.

The Real World: Asia.


Let's begin. For those of you who may not know, I will be spending the next six or so weeks traveling throughout various points in Asia, to include: South Korea, Central/Southern Thailand, Vietnam, and China (definitely); and Cambodia, Northern Thailand (potentially). I will be traveling with my college roommate, Don Kim, who has been teaching English and questionable life lessons to impressionable Korean children for the past two years and who recently, like myself, quit his job in order to embark on this soul-searching expedition.

So now you know exactly as much as I know.

Where will we be staying? We're not sure. How will we get there? We don't know. Why does the list of Need To Know phrases for Thailand include "Help", "I need a doctor", and "Call the police"? We hope we never find out. All we know is that the next six weeks promise to be, if nothing more, a "tell-the-grandkids" caliber experience, and I've decided to document it all (or what I can) via what the kids these days call "blogging."

Some quick notes:

The flight: Surprisingly enjoyable 13.5 hour trip that took us over the North Pole. I know this because KoreanAir has personal television sets in front of every seat that includes satellite imagery of the 747's across-the-world trajectory, plus video games, TV shows and On-Demand movies. Unfortunately, KoreanAir also serves the first meal at 3amEST (I would understand this later as an attempt to help set our body clocks to Korean Time, which falls 13 hours ahead). This meal consisted of a mixture of shredded vegetables and unidentified ground meat alongside a tray of white rice and a toothpaste tube of red chili paste. Of course, I ate the whole thing, rationalizing that I had no way of telling when the next meal would come and, hey, everybody else was doing it. I would very soon come to regret this decision. But still, On-Demand movies!


The food in Korea: Very good so far, though I was unable to eat from late Thursday until 9pm Friday due to a 24-hour bout with powerful nausea that may or may not have been caused by...

Meal #1: Shanghai Spicy Chicken Sandwich at the Incheon Airport McDonald's (shortly after arrival, Thursday). Pleasantly similar to it's less-spicy, American equivalent (though I'm pretty sure this is actually a bad thing).

Meal #2: Chicken-and-cheese Quesadillas with whiskey at a "foreigner bar" called Gecko's in Seoul. (7pm). Also very good and above-average from its states-side equivalent, however at this point I realized that I was in Asia, damnit, and demanded to be taken to...

Meal #3: Korean BBQ (8pm). Absolutely fantastic. Basically, you sit down at a table with a gas burner in the center, and order a type of meat, which is brought to you raw along with some side dishes: shredded and diced kim-chi (spicy cabbage), plus some yellow things and possibly some orange things. You cook the meat yourself with tongs and a pair of scissors. It's perfectly seasoned and magically delicious. And at this point my body still didn't hate me, until...

Meal #4: Occurred at approximately 6 hours and several beers later, consisted of canned-tuna-fish filled sushi and "I swear, it's meat, dude (Don)"-filled dumplings. I'd rather no elaborate other than to say I just recently was able to stand up from a chair without running to the bathroom for a chorus of dry heaving and screams "dude, I hate you."

That said, it seems that after a long-awaited good night of sleep and resetting of the ol' mental clock (see Title), I'm going to find a way to wake up Don whose Himalayan-rattling snoring currently sounds like a cross between a chainsaw and a guy who enjoys cutting people up with chainsaws.

Off to Thailand on Tuesday, will try to get in a post or two before then. Love you all.