Ramble on?

last of the goat?

Tokyo Narita International Airport, Japan

Wow, so it's finally down to this. Not without a heavy heart this morning did I set out for Don Muang airport for the last time, both because it's over (for now...) and because I had about 3 hours worth of sleep after sortieng with friends way out in Bang Na at the fabled "The Street of Hollywood" disco (and my exploits there over the last few weeks there probably deserves a blog of its own, but...) I knew this day would come eventually (and sometimes it seemed like it would never come.) But overall I can't believe it happened so soon.

But the sun came up today and I got on the plane regardless, just like the sun will come up tomorrow (which is 36 hours or something away for me. So I'll just resign myself to business class splendor (if American Airlines business class can be called that....btw, I bought the tix on JAL, which was great the first leg, it turns out second leg was JAL 740 operated by AA...glad I paid a premium for that..)and my shiny new Omega watch and try to ease my pain through the false comforts of material goods. After all - it's christmas everybody. My compliments, by the way to Captain Takahashi, who set down the 747 at Tokyo with a landing as smooth as a thai girl's countertop.

On approach and landing in Tokyo I was confronted with two semi-comforting images. The first being one that I've seen a few times on the way over and back here when flying over the land of the rising sun (where strangely i've never been save the airport)and that is the sight of Mount Fuji poking up above the cloud cover. I hate to be cliched but there is such a zen-like serenity to any image of Fuji, but especially so from above. If you were god and you set out to create an aesthetically perfect looking mountain, your finished product would look like this. No wonder guys like Hiroshige and Hokusai spent years and years illustrating it again and again.

The second was the sight of the winged horse logo and a Mongolian Airlines jet parked on the taxiway (it was either the "Chinggis Khan" or the "Kublai Khan", being that they only have two jets). This is significant to me insofar as that same jet (well, that one or its sister ship) served as the vehicle for my first penetration into the heart of Asia back in 2003 when I packed up for Mongolia basically on a whim. Mongolia itself was all right but ultimately not that impressive, though it was a great primer for traveling into places that are the back of the ass of beyond. Importantly that trip set the stage for last year's himalayan adventures and of course the wandering goat tour which I can without a doubt say was the greatest 6 months I've ever had.

As the shock of coming back to a place where beer costs 6$, nobody calls me a farang, and being back in real life dissipates over the next few days I'm going to congratulate myself a little bit and be a little proud of myself. Looking back, holy shit, I've done a hell of a lot in six months. Off the top of my head: I traveled 4000k down the Silk Road and went to the very end of China, hiked the 50k Emei Shan trail in two days, sipped gin at the Peninsula in Kowloon, climbed a 22,000 foot Himalayan monster (and conquered a bunch of smaller peaks for good measure), survived two months of travel on the most dangerous roadways on earth in India, safaried through the jungle at night in search of poachers, hacked my way through the Borneo rainforest, jaywalked and chewed gum in Singapore, partied well into the morning with the young and restless of all of Southeast Asia, motorbiked through the mountains of Vietnam, traversed the heart of the Mekong, trained and fought with professional fighters in the heat of Bangkok, and befriended folks from around the globe, from Ladakhi herders to Uighur urchins to Hmong hawkers to Bang Phli barmaids. And that's just the short version. It was fucking great, pardon my french.

But I'm not done yet. More to come.