I like big things. Big buildings. Big bridges. Big boats. One of my favorite places in the world is the St. Louis Arch. It is neat to be able to stand directly under something 600 feet talk. Taipei 101 is one of those big, neat places. In most major cities, you will see a skyline …
I don’t think I was prepared for Saipan. Most of the places I’ve been in the Pacific have been….well, Pacific. There has been a common thread to them. They are all sort of laid back and underdeveloped to various degrees. They take pride in local customs and languages, even if they are only used to …
Here is a list of random first thoughts: I’m surprised that there is as much English as there is. Almost all the signage is in English. I was expecting much less and more Tagalog. The Philippines is a big place with a large enough population that they should have a critical mass of speakers so …
I’m leaving Hawaii soon, so I figure I better get back into the habit of writing. Many people have a very romantic view of island life. They can think of nothing better than sitting on a beach with palm trees. That is their version of paradise. You go to the mall and in some kiosk …
Tonight I’m going back to Samoa to pick up my Chinese visa. It will be my fourth trip across the date line in a month. I’ll have to make a 5th trip across in a few days going back to Fiji. I might have to make a 6th and a 7th crossing, but I’ll know …
I’m at the Nadi, Fiji airport and about to leave for New Caledonia. I’m glad I spent the last two days in Fiji. If I hadn’t, my opinion of Fiji would have only been shaped by Nadi, which honestly, is a shithole. Suva and Lukaota are much nicer cities. I got my Kiribati visa and …
When I started my trip I had originally planed on staying at a decent hotel once every one or two weeks. Nothing super fancy, but just nice. So far, I really haevn’t done that at all. My luxuries have been in the form of single rooms at the hostel. Well, I decided to go for …
Almost every night I get to tell the same story: the story of my trip. Most people I meet on my travels are just visiting somewhere for a weekend. Sometimes I’ll pull out my laptop and show them the Google Earth map and walk them through the places I’ve been and the places I’m going. …
Over the course of my trip I’ve been playing around with a photographic technique called High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography. Basically, it involves merging different images of scenes that have very dark and very bright elements into one photos. Today I went into Noumea to play around with it and see if I could take …