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This is my soliloquy, spoken directly to the audience, somehow unheard by the other characters onstage: I love to travel, but mostly, I love to get home.
Vacation trips always seem to last one day too long — except when they’re entirely too short. No matter how long the voyage, it’s usually at about the three-quarters mark that I realize I’m not, in reality, a traveling man of leisure. Phone calls, emails, and blinking cursors will always be waiting for me when I get back. Fortunately, so will my bed, my TiVo, and my dogs.
I’m writing this from the lounge at Incheon airport, waiting for my flight back to Los Angeles. Beijing, Shanghai and Seoul were all amazing, not just for their antiquities but also their dynamism. For example, Shanghai’s Oriental Pearl Tower is ridiculous, but worth a visit just for the view from the observation deck. In most cities, you’d see the horizon. In Shanghai, you just count the number of five-story buildings being ripped down to make room for new skyscrapers.
Shanghai feels like New York, Paris and Tokyo crammed together. Seoul, on the other hand, is the metropolis Los Angeles would probably be if there were more than one industry in town. It’s very spread out, but with ample freeways and a competent subway system.
The most fascinating part of Korea was a trip into the DMZ. For about ninety seconds, I was technically inside the North Korean border, with a few thousand armed soldiers ready to shoot if I were to do something stupid, such as pointing with my finger, or trying to defect. (I did neither.)
One weird observation: I loved China, but their national firewall is a pain. It prevents access to giant swaths of the blogosphere, whether or not the sites have anything to do with nationally sensitive issues. Although I could pull up johnaugust.com just fine, many of my friends’ sites were completely inaccessible. (Of course, simply mentioning the firewall may block johnaugust.com. The irony is appreciated.)
Articles
April 8th, 2005 at 10:45 am
I find it all very interesting. I recently had a friend who went all over Asia. Cambodia was one of the most interesting places I have ever heard of. Hearing about all of the stuff that happened involving The Killing Fields and just how crazy the leader really was.
DMZ is another thing I found interesting. How there is a border, which is kind of, not there. Like Embassies in other countries, its foreign soil, (e.g. US Embassy in China).
April 11th, 2005 at 6:49 am
Nuts! John August, screenwriter of Big Fish and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (among others), visited China recently to do research. Had I known he was going to stop by Shanghai, I would have shot him an email offering to show him around a bit. Alas, h…