Bolshevik Rage> Anti-Belarussian Propaganda

In this article some guy goes off on Belarus. Maybe I was not allowed into Belarus as precaution to protect their elderly population. Fair enough I guess, but they could have let me on the train and kept me shackled to a seat, outside of striking distance from any sectagenarians, octogenarians and nonagenarians. Fuck you Belarus...you goddamned peasants!

Ancient Chinese Scaffolding> Doug Moldover, Guest Blogger

My friend Gus Jenkinberg, a construction worker I know back in Wisconsin, told me that while I was in China I couldn't miss Lao Long Tou, the first section of the Great Wall located in a small town called Shanhaiguan. When he was there in January for Christmas vacation he saw some triple gated Kingston style scaffolding, only it was made of bamboo! I just had to see this! So I drag the wife and kids out to Shanhaiguan (They wanted to stay in Beijing and go shopping.) and we enter what I think is the entrance gate to Lao Long Tou. It was only after a few minutes and several wasted admission tickets later that I realized this was not the LLT but instead some Great Wall Museum. Fuckers. Fortunately they had one room where they had a life size reproduction of the construction techniques that were used when building the wall. You can see by my picture that the scaffolding they use was a death trap. No wonder so many people died building the wall. I had to fight the impulse to reinforce the joints with duct tape. I wouldn't have had time anyway because Billy pissed all over the reproduction Emperor Qin Shi Huang. That's no way to treat China's first emperor. We finally found the LLT but the triple gated Kingston style scaffolding had been removed (see picture) as the restoration had been finished. What a disappointment. -Doug

#81> The 100 Most Underwhelming Tourist Attractions in the World

I visited the Terracotta Warriors over two months ago and I still can't quite shake the sense of disappointment they inspired in me. I went pretty far out of my way to see these guys only to find out that most of them have not been uncovered and the ones that have been are all under a huge airplane hanger. Where's your sense of showmanship Shaanxi Province? So they are over 2,200 years old and there are several thousand individually unique soldiers. It just wasn't all that impressive. Check them out and you will feel it too.

Searching for Adventure> Traveled

Norway
Norway
Bergen, Norway (With Bentine)
Nara, Japan
Itsukushima Shrine, Hiroshima, Japan
In front of Seoul Tower, Seoul, Korea (With Xavier)
Seoul, Korea
At the top of Tai Shan Mountain, Shandong Province, China
At the top of Emei Shan Mountain, Sichuan Province, China
Train to Xian, China (With Shirly)
Big Goose Pavilion, Xian, China
Simitai Section of Great Wall, China (With Jen)
Jinshanling Section of the Great Wall, China
Jiao Shan section of the Great Wall, Shanhaiguan
Temple of Heaven, Beijing
Beijing to Ulan Batur Train
Terelj National park, Mongolia (In Oxcart)
Terelj National Park, Mongolia
Irkutsk, Siberia, Russia
Olkhon Island, Siberia, Russia
Trans-Sib Railroad, Russia
St Basil's Cathedral, Moscow
Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic (With Kyra)

The Cough God> Travels

I found this in Shanhaiguan, a town at the start of the Great Wall of China.

Now with Pictures> Traveled

Last night I had this dream that I was in an argument with someone and we both kept trying to get the last word in. I was awoken by the ring of my phone. A friend of mine in the US thought I was home and the call had been forwarded to my Czech Cell phone in the middle of the night. The thing is, I was still half asleep and for 5 minutes kept trying to argue that the letter T could be used as a vowel. I have since been proven wrong.
Anyway, I have gone through my whole Asia trip and illustrated it with pictures so now you can see the 50 kilo tuna I sold as sushi on the streets of Tokyo, Angelo the 6 foot 9 Dutchman and of course, Chairman Combover. The trip starts in June so you will have to go back into the archives to get the full experience. You can click on any of the pictures to see a larger version of the image.

Going to the Country, Going to Pick a lot of Mushrooms> Expated

This past weekend I went with some friends for a weekend out of town in a small village 2 and a half hours from Prague. There we camped, went to a party for Blacksmiths and picked mushrooms. Allow me to elaborate. We began the trip with Kyra, Nate, Katka and I on a bus playing 20 questions across several rows of non-descript, somewhat interested Czechs. The best answers:
"Wind shield wiper"
"That thing that breaks the glass on a bus when it flips over"
"A first base coach"
"Djibouti"
"Kyra's Belly"
"Two Iains in a wheat egg"

The bus took us to a Karlovy Vary, an old Czech spa town. If you ever wanted to find a lot of old Russian women drinking urine flavored natural mineral water in square-ish shaped ceramic mugs with handles that double as straws, well, you are a sick freak. Oh and this is the place for you. There was lots of nice looking architecture, spigots with different tasting and temperatured water and tourists. Ummm...tourists.

From there we took a train to this small village where we went to some small castle for a blacksmith party. I wish I could say that those blacksmiths know how to party, but to be honest, I am not sure they do. For many, many too many hours, two different blacksmiths would heat and bend pieces of metal, surrounded by a crowd of onlooking blacksmiths and well-wishers while ABBA and Simon and Garfunkel blared in the background. Don't these guys know that blacksmiths are tough and that tough people do not listen to Simon and Garfunkel. Oh, they also dress as pirates.

From there we went to a friends house and camped in his backyard for the night. The next morning we woke up and went mushroom hunting. Apparently this is a very Czech thing to do. You basically wander around forests and find wild growing mushrooms and try your best not to poison yourself and the one's you love/like/loke. Mediocre times! After a long day in the forest we caught a train back to Prague and went to a friends house for some mushroom soup, made from the day's haul. Nobody died or got sick so all in all the mushroom hunt was a winner.

Kamikaze> Doug Moldover, Guest blogger

On Larry's suggestion I took a vacation in Asia this Summer as well. Here is a photo of Yakumoto, a man I met in Kyoto. As you can tell by the scaffolding, he's a painter. I liked the guy, but come on man, that scaffolding is putting you and passerbys in grave danger. In fact I was so worried I said to him, "Ohio my Japanese friend. Your scaffolding is weak. Are you on some kamikaze mission." The bi-latteral connecting joints looked terrible so I climbed up on the scaffolding and reinforced them with some gaffers tape. I know, it's a quick fix, but I also used a layer of 1/4 inch steel wire to give it some more strength. Hey painters, leave the scaffolding to the big boys!

Buy Me Some Udon and Cracker Jacks> Travels

Here are some pictures from a baseball game I went to in Hiroshima. The last two pictures are of people blowing up balloons. I am not sure why they were shaped liked penises or why everyone in the stadium had them but us. They were all released at once, which was quite a sight. Also, isn't that the Philadelphia Fanatic on that bike? How did they get him?

Urinals with a View> Travels

These two urinals are in the highest buildings in Seoul and Shanghai.

Fushimi Inari Taisha Shrine> Travels

This shrine outside of Kyoto was one of the highlights of the time I spent in Japan. There are thousands of these Tori gates rising up a f orested mountain.

Homeless Men in a Tokyo Park> Travels