don’t call me a backpacker…

Have you noticed a ridiculous overusage of “Top 5, 10, or 20 lists” in the media over the last few years. Know why? Another symptom of the internet age shortening people’s attention spans and media outlets watering down content to retain readers. They (the lists) annoy the shit of out me.

I’ve noticed upon my return home, that people don’t want to “just” ask me about my trip, because they don’t want to spend more than a few minutes hearing about it, or I must be pretty unbearable. So they ask for a Top 2 instead.

It also amazes me how some supposed friends of mine can’t take 10 minutes out of the last 6 months to even glance at my travels and get an idea of what I did. (you’re all off the hook) Whatever. It was for me, not them.

So without further ado, I reluctantly present to you my Top 6 of my 9 country whirlwind backpacking “don’t call me a backpacker” trip.

6. Lisbon, Portugal – having friends/tourguides made the quick visit of this cool city very thorough, not to mention home cooked meals.

5. The Acropolis, Athens, Greece – yeah

4. diving on Ko Tao, Thailand – an improvised plan that was such a great decision

3. Cordoba, Andalucia, Spain – just a perfect small Spanish town, and the Mezquita was very moving for me. In retrospect maybe it’s just the feeling one gets the first time you see Moorish architecture in person, but still a very special city.

2. Kochi, Kerala, India – the last bastion of old, slow, friendly, beautiful southern India. I sooooooo want to go back and explore more.

drumroll please Anton…

1. Borobudur, Central Java, Indonesia – simply incredible monument surrounded by spectacular scenery.

pictures do not really do it justice. they do not convey feeling.

The similarities between San Francisco and Lisbon are a little startling:

both are one of the furthest western points of the country
both have a large red bridge across a bay
both were almost completely destroyed by an earthquake and fire
both have many hills
both are surrounded by wine growing regions
both present big problems parking a car
both attract many tourists, homeless people, beggars

There are many differences too of course, like the history, but just interesting to note those.

I lost a pretty good amount of weight in the first two months of traveling from all my walking. However, that accomplishment is being threatened by Spain, and definitely by Portugal. It’s a good thing I wasn’t staying there longer!

With my trusty local guides, I was treated to the best of the best of pastries, cheeses, breads, wines, and some Portuguese home cooking! fantastic all of it.

I never did have Spanish sherry, but I think I did better with locally made muscatel in Lisbon. Really tasty apertif wine. I wanted to take some home because it was so cheap, but I knew it would get broken.

Fortunately I was able to take one delicacy home… pata negra, or porco preto from Alentejano!

Black pigs – known as the best pork in the world! They eat acorns from cork trees, and organic grass. We tasted some at a shop that was doing wine and food tasting. The lady was hell-bent selling me some wine, but the shrink wrapped cured black pork seemed more practical to me. It was $20 euros of meat, but tasted amazing, and Teresa confirmed that was a good price, it’s not cheap stuff.

Another surprise was a family dinner with Joao’s family for his sister’s birthday. By family, I mean 16 people in a small apartment! We got more muscatel, more good bread and cheese, and a multi-course meal which included about 6 desserts. ugh. It was great fun, even with only a few English speakers, they made me feel welcome.

Speaking of Portuguese, to me it sounds like a crazy cross between Russian and French, but there’s a few words that are the same as Spanish. I want to go to Brazil in my lifetime, but still seems like a stretch to learn this language. However, it was not that hard to read if you know Latin and a little Spanish, but impossible to speak.

I can’t remember what the oldest thing in my life I’ve ever seen? maybe fossils or something? Oldest living thing? hmmmm. On the road between Azietao and Lisbon, there are several 3000-year-old olive trees! That’s 1000 before Christ, 500 before the Acropolis. The trunks were amazingly fat.

Again, it was so great to have hosts for this part of my trip. To not look at a map, to not deal with public transportation, to not have to learn any words, even if only for a few days, was a welcome relief. Joao and Teresa have been only to Seattle in the U.S. but they were pleasantly surprised at what they found the reality of America to be. Most of the rest of the world does not think of America like it is, more like what they see on t.v. or encounter with tourists. So of course I will play tour guide when they come visit San Francisco which they plan on doing, as part of seeing more of the U.S. and of course rock climbing.

Thanks again you two!

I have much more to write about my short stay in Portugal, but I have to write this first or the pictures will make no sense…

I think I’ve mentioned this several times already, but I met Joao and Teresa on our 3-day Ha Long Bay trip in Vietnam. Of the 16 on the boat, us 3 were the only ones that were getting off the boat and staying the extra day to trek and kayak. I think that’s why we hit it off right off the bat, the “active” ones. They are avid rock climbers.

I remembered that they worked in film, but I didn’t remember exactly what they did. I remembered Teresa was a production assistant and that Joao used to work in electric and lighting, but that they had moved on to some other aspects of film-making. I forgot that it was stunt persons and stunt coordinators!

Joao was working most of the weekend! That meant Teresa had to mostly be my tour guide, but also that we got to watch him film a commercial where he was going to… get this… drive a car through a window of a building!

So this was quite fun as you might imagine. It was for a bank commercial, where they are giving away cars as part of a promotion. So the idea is they have a bunch of people lining up to sign up, etc. And then of course the car winners will be driving the car through the windows in an explosion of glass!?!? I’m not sure about that, but it’s dramatic for television.

The other funny part is it was supposed to be a woman winner – a hot chick of course. I saw them filming her behind the wheel later . So Joao had to don a blonde wig for the shoot. Teresa loved to make fun of how he tosses his long hair around, she said he did it last time he wore a wig too. They are an adorable couple. The funny note on that is they said in America, stunt men cannot play the part of women, they have to use stunt women. Equal rights!

This was on Sunday, and as you may or may not know, most of Catholic Europe shuts down on Sundays… except for the film industry, which takes advantage of the quiet streets to shoot.

As Teresa and I walked around the city after watching Joao’s first take, we saw 3 or 4 more films or commercials being shot around Lisbon. Teresa knew someone working on almost every one. One of them was for the OLDEST LIVING FILM-MAKER IN THE WORLD! Manuel de Oliveira is 98 years old and I saw him working! haha. He looks only about 80 so I’m sure he will still be working at 100.

I don’t know much about his films, but the girl on his crew mentioned the word “boring.” And Joao said, when you reach a certain point in your career as he has, everything you make is good, no matter what the outcome.

Quite a day, and what a difference having tour-guides makes! more later.