1 Lap of the Island and then homeward bound

To help you understand the Big Island of Hawaii, I will explain it to you in relation to my home town of Slough. Imagine for a moment, that Slough (Volcano Village) is composed only of 7 shops and a post office, with a sprawling tropical suburb surrounding it and poisonous volcanic fog (vog) instead of poisonous industrial smog. In one direction, 30 miles away is the city of London (Hilo), vastly reduced to a pile of ramshackle buildings, a tsunami museum, some beaches and a Walmart. In the other direction, around 100 miles away lies Manchester (Kona), if Manchester sold no other snack food than shaved ice and had a sea you could actually swim in without freezing. Only, if the drive to Manchester was more like our road trip today, I think I'd get to see my grandparents a lot more.


This is Kyle. He's my roomate. He's from Seattle, allergic to anything with fur, lost about 30 pounds since he got here and is the owner of this laptop (THANKS KYLE FOR MY LAPTOP PRIVILEGES I GREATLY APPRECIATE THEM). As a side effect of his allergies, he likes looking at fish and geckos and other non fluffy crap animals. There's a beach in Hilo called Richardsons with awesome rock pools where you can see lots of little fishies swimmin' about and being about as adorable as fish can be. The plan, formulated on Friday night, was to take the car early on Saturday morning, head out to Hilo, pick up some sea-worthy footwear, get to Richardsons and stare at fish all day. This all quickly got flushed down the drain when we discovered our housemate and his girlfriend wanted the car to go to the nudie beach and Rainbow Falls on Saturday. We got stuck with Sunday. Bugger.

Reformulate.

KONA ROADTRIP.

With a laptop in hand so we could burn CDs for the pick-up truck as we went, Kyle and I headed out on Route 11 with the windows down and the stereo blasting. We would spend the day in or around the truck. We would see the sights. We would explore.

The first stop we swung into was a little beach park called Whittington (or something similar, who knows, I'm tired, leave me alone). It was a lava rock beach with little to no sand, and were it not for the darkness of the rocks, you could be forgiven for thinking we were in Wales. Look at that sky. Just look at it. Now guess the temperature. Now remember where we were. 27 degrees C people. It looks about 13. The sea pounded relentlessly against the rocks, causing tiny waterfalls around the strange sci fi landscape inhabited by monstrous looking black crabs. And hermit crabs (soooo cuuute).

As we reached the ruins of what looked like a pier, Kyle pointed to something against the backdrop of the cliffs. A large monarch butterfly was fighting against the wind, its poor wings no match for the warm Pacific gusts streaming over the water. It was magical to watch. Brian, as I had instantly named the creature, flapped back and forth trying to work out whether he wanted to risk a journey across the sea or into land. His fate was decided as soon as he paused to sun himself on a rock. In a instant, a 4 metre wave had splashed over the side of the rock and dragged him into his watery grave. And with that, all the divine glow of watching a tiny creature battle against the elements was washed out of me into the Pacific ocean, along with a very soggy monarch butterfly.

The scenery of Hawaii changed as we rolled the 100 miles to Kona, from Wales to New Zealand, Mongolian desert landscapes, chocolate brownie lava rock, ranchland and through to Peruvian mountain jungle. More than once we passed a village that looked as if it had been scraped out of Mexico and flung across the ocean on a spatula. There were several baptist churches that seemed smaller than my bedroom, one boarded up with "Save Us" and "Help Me" sprayed on the boards like something out of a zombie film. We stopped at a market and got tasty organic chicken Pad Thai.
On the way to Kona we came across a pet shop selling kittens for $15 but stupid Kyle wouldn't let me get one :(

Down at the Kona beachfront, populated by a spray of tiny shops, I considered getting a hula girl tattoo but realised I hadn't got any ID and wouldn't be allowed. I got a regular sized shaved ice- the size of my head- for 3 bucks in three flavours (cherry, bubblegum, mango) and went and sat on the concrete levy wall next to some fishermen giving us the "urgh, tourists" eye. Much tiki-taki browsing was done, with less than desirable results. Sorry guys, but there's surprisingly little cheap tat in Hawaii that you might actually like. Everything was pretty expensive. Kyle got shouted at for moving a surfboard to get a photo of the Star Wars one behind it and then pointed out that as there was no "don't touch the board" sign that exactly the same thing would happen as soon as the next fat nerd came along. Kona was pleasant. It was touristy. It was too freaking hot and muggy, so we bought some Aquasocks for paddling in sharp rocks, and left.

By now Kyle had realised that we could drive around the highways of the Big Island in a huge circle and end up back at Volcano. I approved this message and added that sunset over Richardsons would be gorgeous. Unfortunately, the sun had different ideas about which time to set. I pointed out that a gas station would probably sell flashlights and we could use them to look at fish. They didn't have any flashlights, but as Kyle looked around the store I noticed some beach bums hanging out the front of the forecourt trying to score a ride. They wanted to go the same direction as us. They knew where Richardsons was. One of them was called Kyle and was from Seattle. No, I am not making that up. They hopped in the back of the truck, Mexican style, and were very grateful for the lift.

If there's something I've learnt from the Discovery Channel, the film Jaws and decades of reading shark attack stories, it's that beaches at night are a stupid place to be. For some reason, this didn't fully stop me getting my ankles wet. Sure, the fish were asleep, apart from the sharks Kyle reminded me, but without the screaming tourists and skeletal methheads; Richardsons was just as beautiful. Without a flashlight we could see fuck all, but it didn't matter. The lights from across Hilo bay flickered like fairies in the distance and reflected off the dark water. The sound of Coqui frogs filled the air. Warm water washed over my ankles. It was a monochrome heaven for the senses.

Until I got reminded of the possibility of horrendous shark attack and lack of cell phone, freaked out and got out of the water.

But we'll be back...

Distance travelled: about 200 miles
Money spent on fuel: $30. No, I'm not joking. This is with nearly half a tank of the stuff left too. And Americans complain about gas prices. Pah.

Cough it up, Farm Girl

I have a cold. It's July, I'm on an equatorial island, and I have a freaking chesty cough and sore throat. On top of that, today was the first time in days that we got a few solid hours of sunshine and I think I got sunburnt, AGAIN. I kid you not, work this week has consisted of me standing in the middle of a patch of lava rock, shivering and hacking away like a Victorian urchin. We've been making a rudimentary road from locally sourced materials (digging lava rock out of the side of a hill, throwing it into a pick up truck and then throwing it back out of the pick up at the other end). Respect to the Romans- road building is hard work, and I doubt they had pick up trucks.

Some shit hit the fan when I got here. Our awesome 6 wheeled all terrain vehicle (a John Deer Gator) got stolen on July 1st, which sucked ass. It could handle the mud on the land and only needed one person to push it out if it got stuck, and I was learning to drive in that thing. As such, my first week everyone was a bit on edge. And then the pick up truck got stuck in the mud and took 5 hours, 3 strawberry guava trees, a ton of ferns, and a barrel-full of lava rock to get it back out. There are days here when you quickly give up on avoiding the mud, and that was one of them.

Apart from a mongoose we trapped on the land, I haven't seen much wildlife here. Animals on Hawaii basically fall into 2 categories- endangered and invasive. There's nothing else really. We saw some weird pheasant things on the land and they looked tasty so I guess they count as endangered. Apart from that there's a few cardinals and birds that look like starlings. And cats, dogs, rats. Mosquitoes.

I've been made honorary farm girl down on the land, which I like because it means it's my job to sort out the pigs and chickens first thing every day, so all the animals have gotten used to me. The chickens now eat out of my hands (but I don't have skanky callous hands so it kinda hurts) and I can usually distract them long enough with food to grab one. They're getting big so we should be getting eggs soon, and the rumour is that one of our two little spams is getting luau'd next week. I haven't named the pigs, I just collectively call both of them Spam. There's a lot of chickens that look the same (we've got about 15), but 2 of the more distinct ones have earned names- Rammstein and Dreadnought.

There's not much to do in the evenings unless we go to the beach. The beach has black volcanic sand and I can't really swim there because it's pretty ferocious but it's still a fairly good spot to chill out at the end of the day.

Today I finally got to do some yoga with my David and Rebekah and a friend of theirs. They do acro-yoga which basically involves being lifted up by David's feet and spun around upside down whilst being told to keep your legs straight and down, which by then is completely impossible because the concept of "down" has been erased and you now only believe in one direction and that's hitting the floor. It's freaky circ-du-soleil stuff, but you feel good afterwards. Hopefully I'll be much more flexible when I leave.

Anyway, as a last note, here's pics of me before and after the demon barber of Samadhi Village got hold of my hair:




As you can see, David forced me to ride in the back of the truck like a dog because I said I'd never had that experience. I'm on my way to becoming a fully fledged hick (no dermatologist wants to see my neck and shoulders right now).

From one small rainy island, to a volcanic one, to a small volcanic rainy one

Because my mother is always, and I mean always, right, I didn't have the best time in small town America. I got cabin fever. Having to walk 20 minutes in one direction to get to the laundrette and 20 minutes in the other to get to the shops, combined with the fact there was nothing to do but play Fallout 3 or casually shop, made me a little psycho.

It didn't help that my host's bipolar girlfriend would leave her dirty panties on the floor of the room I was staying in and conveniently forget to take her medication.

So I thanked myself for having a good financial pool, rearranged my bus, reserved myself a room in a Travelodge for $80 and shipped out to Portland. That one weekend made up for a less than exhilarating week.

Portland was beautiful. The sun was shining, and the gentle wind whooshing in from the river kept the world cool enough. There were restaurants. There were people. There were museums. CULTURE. Aaaaahh, sweet culture.

Portland Art museum was a pleasant surprise. There was an excellent M.C.Escher exhibition with lino stamps as well as prints, sketches, plans and the PS3 game where you have to use crazy Escher rules to guide your man around the maze. Seeing Metamorphosis 3 in the flesh was awesome, even if I did end up colliding with a bloke in the middle (we started at opposite ends). Other highlights include a piano strung through a tree playing a 20s jazz and a piece by Robert Notkin called The Gift, which I studied at A level ceramics. It's a mosaic of body part tiles arranged to look like an atomic mushroom cloud. Sadly, my low blood sugar quickly rendered a large section of the modern art terrifying.

Portland is full of hippies, homeless people, people who live in vans, and students. I got invited by a man down at the waterfront to sing along with him to Hey There Deliah. I fed tropical Skittles to a chihuahua. I bought an arboreal necklace and was constantly complimented on it thereon. A man asked me if I knew my ass was fine. Another told me I had a nice piercing. A third asked me if I would give him a dollar because his girlfriend was hungry. I said no.

I overslept on Monday morning. My alarm was supposed to go off at 5.10 and I somehow woke at 6.40. To put this in perspective, my flight was due to leave at 8.45, and I wasn't packed. Cue a freakout packing, sadly unintentionally abandoning several packets of M&Ms and my copy of Life of Pi, only a quarter of the way in. I made my plane. Watched Coraline on a badly contrasted screen 4 feet away without sound (refused to pay $5 for a headset). Gasped at how beautiful Honolulu was from above.

Hawaii was hot. I say was, because my first night was cloudless and freezing. Today it rained non stop and I got very very very muddy and cold. But it's okay. Hawai'i is a lot like a holiday in Wales- during the course of a day you may get sunburnt, frozen, hungry, rained on and cold, but at the end of the day I get to go home to a cosy cabin, watch movies on Kyle's laptop (woo, Coraline with sound), cook a nice dinner and get clean and warm.

BTW, Kyle is my housemate. He's cool. Of course, I'm bias because he lets me use his laptop. Tomorrow we get another housemate and then on Sunday yet another, but number 4 is only here for a week. The other folks (my boss, his girlfriend, the foreman) and I all get on really well, which is a relief after the friction in Corvallis. I'll upload some photos as I go along, but it's hard to take photos during the day when you've got a machete in one hand, a water bottle in the other, and chicken shit on your arse.

Small Town Science- The disgusting food challenge USA

Everyone knows that America has an obesity "epidemic", although from what I've heard Scotland and Australia are catching up. There's also a whole host of culturally relevant foods I felt I should have the misfortune of exposing myself to, so we walked down to Circle K and shelled out $17 for that pile o' crap you see above. I wanted a copy of Playboy to make the experience even more disturbing but the guy ID'd me and Oregon's homeless problem has dissuaded me from carrying my passport in public. They have sticky fingers, you know.

I decided to go about this in a somewhat scientific manner, instead of just picking and flitting between foods. I opened the packets and took a deep, evaluating sniff before reluctantly surrendering to the food stuff. Each mouthful was evacuated with a swish of Mountain Dew, although I decided to be ladylike and not use the sick bucket I'd latched onto.

Here we go...

a) Smell
b) Texture
c) Taste
d) Would I willingly eat this again?


1) Mountain Dew
a) kind of lemony
b) overly fizzy to the point of pain
c) like watered down Sprite...but worse
d) No.

2) All American Beef & Cheese (stick of meat and a stick of cheese)
a) like an old cheese and ham sandwich
b) Horrible. Truely Foul. Like chewing a shoe and pus in one mouthful.
c) See answer to b
d) No. Not even for the novelty value of stick food.

3) Slim Jim Original
a) gaggy
b) insanely tough. Rolled up piece of leather
c) Go lick a McDonalds grill at closing time. You're close.
d) No.
bonus- perfect consistency to make a riding crop

4) Hostess Cup Cakes
a) sickly with a chemical afterglow
b) Not too bad. Got into every mouth crevice imaginable.
c) Meh.
d) If there was no other source of sugar on earth.

5) Candy Corn
a) When Andy and I went fishing, we put this weird sweet stuff on the bait to disguise the cigarette smell. Candy Corn smells just like that.
b) Was expecting chewy. Got indescribable fall aparty
c) Fudge gone wrong
d) Yes.

6) Reese's Peanut Butter Cups
a) Peanutty
b) Too soft. Gag-worthy soft.
c) REALLY sugary. The chocolate got lost in a sea of peanut butter
d) Yes

7) Jerky Chew Teriyaki Shredded Beef Jerky
a) Fish food
b) Sawdust. Would not form anything remotely chewable in my mouth
c) This stuff looks like rolling baccy and smells like fish food. It's supposedly made of cow, but judging by the taste is just made from the crates they ship beef in.
d) No. NEVER.

8) Hot Pocket Ham N' Cheese
a) greasy ham stench.
b) Disturbingly soft. No dental traction whatsoever
c) Trashy? The cheese was far too liquid, the bread was like raw pizza dough and I don't want to recall that meat again
d) Maybe. I'd have to be desperate and it would have to be free.
lab note- this thing is the French crepe's evil twin

9) Hostess Twinkies
a) Corn syrupy
b) Wallpaper paste. I don't understand how something so solid in appearance can do that
c) Bizarre. Bypassed sweet straight into sickly territory. Foul throughout.
d) Oh Jesus No. They say these things survive nuclear blasts, but I sure as hell hope not.

10) Lucky Charms Cereal
a) My first reaction was "small children?" followed by "Leprechaun piss?"
b) chalky when dry. Pleasantly crunchy when wet
c) Meh, better with milk but still meh. The "marshmallow" wasn't mashmallowy
d) Maybe. By this time the Mountain Dew was beginning to affect my judgement.

11) Wrigley's LUSH Tropical Gum
a) Overpowering. Spill a bottle of Surf Tropical detergent in a Lush soap shop and you're about there.
b) Crumbly. Then Drooly. Then just normal gummy.
c) Fruity. Much less offensive that the smell let on.
d) Maybe. It's bite was pretty aggressive, but the actual taste wasn't too bad.

So there you have it. The disgusting food stuffs available at a Circle K store, as consumed and described by me. I've yet to try a corn dog, but there's two months in Hawaii for that... *shudder*

Favourite Photos from Japan

La-nd of the BRAVE, helpful and chubby

Apologies- I didn't get everything sorted before I got on my plane from Narita and there wasn't an internet cafe at LAX. In fact, tbh, L.A Airport was pretty shit.

Last day in Tokyo was good. I bought enough super cute writing paper to last me for life (I will literally be writing gym notes for my kids on this stuff. Don't be surprised if your invite to my funeral is written on Hello Kitty stuff covered in strawberries. A combination of lugging around heavy bags and sleeping on a youth hostel mattress had royally fucked my back and so, after spending 20 minutes establishing that it wasn't a brothel, I went and got a massage. It was HEAVENLY. They make you wear pyjamas and then lay towels over you so they never directly touch your body and then the man got to work pushing my back into alignment and making more cracking noises than a tap dancer in a pile of lolly sticks. He said in very broken English that judging by the state of my back I must be a very hard worker. He then nearly put his own back out getting my suitcase back down the stairs.

They gave me stamps on a loyalty card, so now I HAVE to go back to Tokyo :D

My flight over was fantastic though because I somehow got upgraded to premium economy so I had a chair with lots of interesting adjusting buttons and sat next to an executive of an eco friendly lighting company called Kevin. Kevin gave me a fantastic aerial tour of California ("there's wine country, that's the Hollywood sign, that's Beverly Hills" etc) whilst I sat and acted like a tourist the whole time (asking if the fog was snow). I didn't sleep well though and got to LA having had around 2 hours kip. The sunshine outside the terminal was nice, but I despite my long wait between flights I didn't want to take a cab down to Venice Beach out of fear of drifting out of conciousness and waking up with nothing but my hairclips.

Sajan- Burger King in America is horrible! This country is weird!

I refuse to call the transport I got from LA to Portland a plane. It was a bus with wings from the 70s. But I managed to sleep for another 40minutes on it, and it got in slightly early, so I caught an earlier bus into Corvallis.

And here I am, in a hippy coffee shop in small town America. The only way I can really describe it is that it's like living in a weird mirror. I think I actually understand it less that Tokyo. Although I did see a llama...

Harajuku

Apologies, there would be more photos, but Blogger is being a bitch and whenever you upload a photo it adds about 6 lines inbetween paragraphs.

I've laid out the currency in dollars because

1. there are about 100 yen to a dollar so to convert you just slot in a decimal place or add some zeros.


2. this keyboard doesn't have a pound sign
   

Like I said, I went to Harajuku on Tuesday afternoon. But first I'll bore you the other places I went.

Shibuya was a big scary shopping district down the road. I didn't like the vibe so I didn't stay long at all.

Then I went to the woods just outside of Harajuku. It was really weird to be surrounded by forest 5 minutes away from the station. Fun fact: damp Japanese forests smell different to damp English ones. They also have scary living noodle worm things-

It was hot and fairly gross, so I went and chilled out in Yogogogoyooogoogogi Park. There were people asleep on the grass and loads of freaky evil crows (you can really see why they put them in Resident Evil).

Oh and also some bloke bashing out beats on his bongos.

Anyway

boring

As I said to Jenny the other day, Harajuku is the bastard child of Camden and Carnaby street, dipped in marshmallow fluff and black glitter. Naturally, I loved it. The boutiques were really pretty, and every shop I went into I was greeted and fawned over. Pricing was a bit weird though- a designer tshirt was anywhere from $25-70, but they were selling My Little Ponies in one store for $30. If I'd known that, I would've bulk bought when Woolworths closed and then tried to flog them out here.

Lol condom shop

and in the boutique next door?

looooooooool

I would've bought it, but it was about $80. Boo.

There were so many shops that it was pretty hard to work out what order to go round in. Every street split off into 5 backstreets, each with shops on 3 levels in some buildings. Tokyo is a very vertical city- they don't really have a system of shops on the bottom with flats on top. It's shops shops shops for 6 floors. There's the main Harajuku street and Takeshita Street (I just read that out as Take A Shit Street...), but if you only visit them then you are depriving yourself of a lot of the little independant shops metres away.

Pro tip- there are bargains to be had in Harajuku and a plethora of styles, so if you're not into that frilly gothic lolita lace fest then you will still easily be able to find something to wear but beware; many of the clothes are made of really lightweight fabric. This is because it's in style in Tokyo to make up an outfit of layers, and if each layer was as thick as standard clothes then girls would overheat and faint in the street. They don't do that fake layering thing we do with the long sleeves sewn onto the bottom of short sleeves.