Beijing

The Italian poet and novelist Cesare Pavese once said, "We do not remember days, we remember moments." And I get this. But with all due respect to Mr. Pavese, when those moments string together into a day, and those days move into nights, and those days and nights link up to form three days and four ni-

-enh, I'm not in the mood to argue the point.

Instead, I will merely smile to myself and say softly, "I will remember Beijing."

#RogueTripSOTD - 29.10.2014

The Great Wall of China. As advertised.

Mutinya (Great Wall of China), Beijing, China - 29.10.2014, 11a

#RogueTripPOTD - 28.10.2014

Peking Duck, Beijing, China - 28.10.2014, 1p

#RogueTripSOTD - 27.10.2014

Leaning against the Moat of the Forbidden City, Beijing, China - 27.10.2014 - 2p

#RogueTripPOTD - 27.10.2014

Outside of the Forbidden City, Beijing, China - 27.10.2014, 11a  

#RogueTripPOTD - 26.10.2014

Bullet train from Shenzhen to Beijing - topped out at 303  km/h...

Shenzhen North Train Station, Shenzhen, China - 26.10.2014, 7a

#RogueTripPOTD - 24.10.2014

Largo de Santo Agostino, Macau, China - 24.10.2014, 3p

#RogueTripSOTD - 24.10.2014

Because this space has been silent for a week or so, I'll post a POTD and an SOTD for several of the past few days. This eliminates your ability to ever, EVER say I never did anything for you.

First up, Macau, China - a tremendous blend of China and Portugal.

Ruins of St. Paul, Macau, China - 24.10.2014, 12n

@RogueTrip - A THANK-YOU & MY UPCOMING SCHEDULE

Hello to the two or three of you who check out this blog when you've exhausted the rest of the Internet in search of something, ANYTHING else to read...I am currently in Shenzhen, China, back from Beijing. I wanted to thank you for your patience in dealing with my issues posting while in this country that apparently is our new overlord - it certainly has been mine while I've been here, wrecking havoc on my ability to post, etc.

Also, I want to let you know the upcoming schedule - next week, I'll be moving onward to Vietnam (more importantly, back to nations with fewer 'Net issues) for a week or so, then Laos for a couple of weeks, then meeting an ex-co-worker in Thailand around Thanksgiving...So on, so forth. I will try to renew my productivity (which, to be frank, has not been my fault), and try to get some stuff up for you all who're interested.

Again, thanks for watching as I take this journey. I hope you're enjoying the posts and the pictures.

-billy

#RogueTrip Logistics - RETURN TO CHINA

Readers, please be forewarned - I am leaving Hong Kong today and returning to mainland China. Posting from China is quite the pain in the ass, so please understand if my posts are more sporadic. I will try to post when I can.

I will be in Shenzhen through Sunday (26.10.2014), when I am taking the bullet train (I get excited just saying "bullet train" - bullet train bullet train bullet train!) to Beijing for four days. I plan to return to Shenzhen again on 30.10.2014. Some point soon after that I'll be leaving China for the remainder of the trip.

As always, thanks for taking a look at the blog, and I hope you're enjoying it. 

#RogueSOTD - 22.10.2014

Peak Lookout, Hong Kong - 22.10.2014, 8p

#RoguePOTD - 22.10.2014

Umbrella Revolution, Admiralty, Hong Kong - 22.10.2014, 9p

#RoguePOTD - 22.10.2014

Gonna give you a few today...

Admiralty, Hong Kong - 22.10.2014, 9p

#RoguePOTD - 22.10.2014

Ferry from Kowloon to Central Island, Hong Kong - 22.10.2014, 1p

#RogueWMWD - 20.10.2014

Sheung Wan, Hong Kong - 20.10.2014, 4p

#RogueTripSOTD - 19.10.2014

Central MTR Station, Hong Kong - 19.10.2014, 10a

#RogueTripPOTD - 19.10.2014

Tai Tam, Hong Kong - 19.10.2014, 4p

#RogueTripPOTD - 18.10.2014

Hong Kong, 18.10.2014, 8p

#RogueTrip Random Thought of the Day - 20.10.2014

"Think I'll write a screenplay while I'm in Laos," is something I just said out loud, more as a matter of logistics than anything else.

#RogueTripSOTD - 16.10.2014

Shenzhen, China - 16.10.2014, 11p

#RogueTripPOTD - 16.10.2014

Shenzhen, China - 16.10.2014, 10a

TRAVEL DISPATCH - WEEK FOURTEEN - 100 DAYS

A Chinese Train's "Hard Sleeper" - 08.10.2014, 9p

I still can’t sleep.

The insomnia I blamed on overnight trains and their too-short reclining seats in Australia has chased me to hotel beds in Malaysia, guest houses in Thailand, friends’ apartments and even sleeper train compartments in China. Every night I lie awake, staring at the ceiling, rotating from side to side, flailing about in an effort to beat the hyperactivity in my brain off with, well, with my brain. It’s folly. My brain is tiny David, vulnerable in only his loincloth, armed with only his slingshot, on little sleep himself, incidentally, while the anxiety holding my brain hostage is Goliath, rageful after a cycle of steroids, rested after a vacation in the Alps, nourished after many, many hearty meals full of protein and carbohydrates for energy.

So, I try to think about calming things. I fantasize about what my life will become after I return from this trip. I can’t help it. It doesn’t mean I’m not having a good time DURING the trip. Even at the end of a good day, lying in bed I wonder where this plan of mine will take me after I get back to the United States, if I ever get back to the United States. For some reason, my visualization puts me in the countryside. I find this bizarre, as I’ve never particularly enjoyed the country and have always considered city life to be more fulfilling. But I imagine living in an Airstream trailer somewhere in Louisiana, near a bayou or on a pasture (I dunno, somewhere where they shot second unit photography for the first season of “True Detective” - (shrug)). My life will be simpler. I’ll rise early each morning, make my own coffee, do my writing for the day, and then allow my brain to relax until it’s time to go to sleep again. I’ll allow myself one beer. Goliath will have by now been slain with a rock slung to the dome. I’ll finish three novels in two years. My wardrobe will consist of nothing but blue jeans, white Oxfords, and Stan Smith sneakers. I will never wear a belt, and my most consistent pleasure will be walking my Irish Setter, MacGowan.

Because I will still have to make money, however, will still have to earn a living - literary novels selling what they do and Airstream trailers costing what they do - I will also be a copy writer for t-shirts sold exclusively in Asia.

The t-shirts worn in Asia are batshit insane. Several times per day, while walking the streets of cities like Singapore, Kuala Lampur, Bangkok, and Shenzhen, I’ve passed someone wearing a t-shirt and caught myself saying out loud, “Are you kidding me?” I feel my brow furrow, an amazed expression taking hold on my face. Because what I’ve just read on somebody’s shirt either makes no sense, or blows my mind.

For instance, here’s a random sampling of t-shirts I’ve seen, just off the top of my head:

“Brave Mind Brilliant Genius”

“Black Find Something”
"Always Be Proud of Yourself - Since 1981"

“Fucking Weather”

“Eat Sleep Pepper Repeat”

I mean, I could do that job! Man, I could write gibberish like that in my sleep! Or even while TRYING to fall asleep. So, creating those t-shirts would be a great way to sustain my countryside living. Imagine writing without needing to pay any regard to grammar, syntax, literal meaning versus contextual meaning, even spelling (unless there IS, in fact, a knockoff luxury automobile called the “Betnley”). Brevity might be an issue for me, certainly. But my college roommate Michael, whom I’m staying with while in China, tells me it wouldn’t even matter if I tried to write “properly” for the shirts, that my Chinese boss would only “correct” them incorrectly, assuring me that he “knows English better than I do.” Quality control would be out of my hands. It’d be freedom.

Because the only requirement for a t-shirt worn in Asia is, it must express attitude. Certainly, American t-shirts have no shortage of attitude, but in Asia that concept is accelerated, heightened, microwaved. A t-shirt’s message must, must convey extreme attitude, more specifically the extreme attitude as expressed by a teenager. The words on the shirt must have either the aggression, braggadocio, or contempt for the world put forth by the average teenage boy, or the pie-eyed, Pollyanna, YA-novel romanticism and blind trust in love and happiness treasured by the average teenage girl.

Typical of attitudes expressed by teenagers, these messages are usually obnoxious, often plain wrong and occasionally disturbing. “Just like me,” I find myself saying with furrowed brow. But these t-shirts have also served as signposts for this trip, as messages or exhortations or admonitions meant just for me.

I sit in the McDonald’s in Shenzhen, China where I come each morning to write. I come for the cheap coffee; my host doesn’t keep any in his apartment, only tea, Starbucks is way too pricy and China, unlike other nations in Asia, doesn’t have a different 7-11 every twenty-two feet. While debating whether or not to get a second hash brown, a chubby teenage boy with a brush cut, a scowl, and a knee-length t-shirt strolls in. He walks to the counter, beginning his order in Mandarin from five feet away. His t-shirt is black, the lettering red. It reads: “Tell Yourself You’re Not Going to Like It”.

“Ugh. This is going to suck. Ugh. I have to take another overnight train; this is going to suck. Ugh, I have to go through immigration; this is going to suck. Ugh, 284 days; this is going to suck.”

Everyone who attended college knows a kid who didn’t want to be there. Maybe he hadn’t gotten into the school he really wanted to go to, maybe there were money issues, whatever. But this kid showed up in your freshman dorm in the fall already hating this school, the college he was forced to attend, the college he was stuck in. He pissed all over the campus, all over the students, their tastes and interests. He refused to even give the place a chance, determined to continue to hate where he was.

And guess what? That worked like a fucking charm - he continued to hate it and be miserable - and it served no one. This isn’t rocket science. Yet I continue to do the same thing, continue to lapse into acting like that same freshman (who, incidentally, I observed at the time and determined, “What an asshole.”). I stand with my arm out, elbow locked, palm up, resisting everything with a scowl on my face until I finally relent, and realize I enjoy what I’ve been resisting. Then I curse myself for being a stubborn moron.

I did it with frozen yogurt. I did it with “The Sopranos” and “Breaking Bad”. And now, I’ve done it on this trip. In a way, it’s as if after forty-five years I finally got my thin rejection envelope from “Normal, Happy Life A&M” and was forced to attend my safety school, “Take a Wild Journey Around-the-World and Hope Something Shakes Loose University” (and this school’s expensive, there’s no in-state tuition, dammit). For the first semester, I think I had my teeth gritted and my jaw set. Happiness is a choice and I haven’t been making it. I’m not sure I’ve ever made it. But I’m working on it. Trying to let go and just take the experiences as they come. This doesn’t mean that everything, every day, is going to be walk in the park. But it might help if I start unlocking my jaw.

It ain’t rocket science, moron.

I’m on a street corner in Singapore, stopped at a light. Waiting, I bounce my knapsack gently up and down off my back. The light turns, the little green man starts moving, and I cross the intersection. Walking the other way is a squat Indian boy, his t-shirt a chalky grey with lime lettering. As he passes me, I read it: “This Is What Perfection Looks Like.” I smile to myself. This is the ONLY pronouncement I’ve seen on more than one t-shirt during my travels in Asia. I’ve seen this shirt no fewer than five times, each time on a dude. And each time I’ve seen it, after needing only a brief thought, I’ve disagreed with the assessment.

I had my route all planned out. Australia for five weeks, fly to Bali, fly to Singapore, up to Malaysia, continue to Thailand, over the Cambodia, up through Vietnam, then to China, arriving at Michael’s around October 6th. But Michael’s schedule didn’t work with this plan; he and his family were going to the Chinese countryside on October 3rd. I was welcome to join them, but it would mean I would have to skip over Vietnam for now. Was I willing to do this?

Now, it seems like small issue but at the time, I didn’t like the change, didn’t want to alter what had been shaped as a fluid line rotating around the continent.

This fixation with perfection, even in such a minor, design way, must be hereditary; when I told my mother about the line I would trace around the world, going west from San Francisco, through Asia, Africa, up to Europe, over to South America, then up through Central America, ending up in New Orleans, she expressed reservations, only to finally admit that she didn’t like it because going back east to New Orleans after re-entering America ruined a relatively perfect circle.

But to Hell with it. Was I willing to do this? Yes, I guess I was willing to do that. And it’s been fine. I’ll hit Vietnam coming back. Currently, I don’t know where I’m staying in Hong Kong, my next stop. My next hard agenda item isn’t until the end of November, when I’ll meet a friend back in Thailand. I have no idea how I’m going to get from here to there. I have to fill the time. I will fill the time. I am determined to go to Africa, but where? I’m interested neither in truckin’ with Muslim fundamentalists nor the ebola virus. A recent email I received began, “I have serious reservations about every country that you’ve listed on the remainder of your itinerary,” and as much as I wanted to be flip, I couldn’t argue the point. But I’ll figure it out.

My itinerary has changed. It will continue to change. It has ceased to be perfect. Hell, my budget ceased to be perfect the moment I walked into the first pub in Sydney, Australia. Money and time has made me trim, made me adapt, made me shape this trip differently than I had it in my head lying awake trying to sleep in North Hollywood in June.

But the perfection lies in the imperfection. Every city I’ve visited, each day that goes by, contains not only great experiences but experiences I’ve MISSED, sights I’ve not seen, things that have fallen through. Each day comes with a conceivable regret. If I spend it sightseeing from morning to night, I worry I’m not really appreciating each stop and I fret I’m not getting enough work done. If I decide to relax one day, I kick myself for not fitting in three museums and eight temples. These imperfections are part of the trip. They make it mine. “Did you see such-and-such?” “Nope, that wasn’t part of this trip, MY trip.” This trip is singular. The regrets mix with the non-regrets to make it mine, and mine only.

Besides, there HAVE been perfect moments. Many. A young woman overhears me talking to a guide at the Jim Thompson House in Bangkok. She introduces herself as from San Francisco, and we wind up spending the day together checking out temples by tuk-tuk. I wake up in Siem Reap at dawn and am driven to Angkor Wat, where I wander from gorgeous temple to gorgeous temple by myself, no earbuds necessary, no other stimulus necessary, sweating buckets as the sun pushes down on me, looking at architecture that seems crumbling yet indestructible. I play rock-scissors-paper against two girls - they’re ten years old? - who can only be referred to as LITERALLY street urchins, to see if I have to pay one less dollar or one more dollar for the three woven bracelets they’re selling me on the riverside of Phnom Penh (I lose two series, one 3-4 and one 4-5, after blowing a 4-2 lead; C’mon, Billy Norrett, you vile choking dog!) I take long walks through farmland in the China countryside, earbuds now in, letting Paul Simon wash over me as I take in acres of blooming cotton and ripe peppers, waving at old women in straw hats picking crops. I play gin rummy with Michael on the overnight train back to Shenzhen. I receive a shy smile from the manager of the McDonalds where I write this when she recognizes my “Xie xie,” after she hands me my coffee.

Anhui Province, China - 04.10.2014, 2p

There have been perfectly horrible moments too. Within two weeks I see two dead bodies in two separate traffic accidents. The first body is outside Siem Reap, Cambodia,. Cars and motorbikes are shepherded by police past a bloody corpse lying face-up on the highway, its dirty clothes almost completely ripped off of it. A van with a spider-webbed windshield idles nearby. No one moves to help the man, because there’s nothing to be done. The people in my minivan, all of us coming from the Thailand border, raucously discussing Bangkok strip clubs not two minutes earlier, are now silent. Two Saturdays later, Michael’s family and I are being driven to their nanny’s farm on a road atop a levee near the Yangtze River and we pass a man lying on the narrow road. This body is facedown, his motorbike is toppled to the side. A large wooden beam has crushed the man’s bare skull. Two men stand by an Audi, not moving to help him because again, there’s nothing to be done, and I mumble, “Well, there’s another one.” The moments are vivid but there’s nothing to be done.

I have several places where I’m taking notes about this trip. In one place, I keep a “Moment of the Day” listing. Not every moment is a good one. Some are somber. Some still make me angry. Each day has one, though. Those moments weave together will make this trip perfect, no matter where it takes me.

None of those dudes wearing the “This Is What Perfection Looks Like.” t-shirts come close to the word, however.

Another intersection, this time in Shenzhen. I’m rushing back to Michael’s apartment, as it’s after 6 p.m. and I’m worried my tardiness will delay their supper. The light turns green and I trot across the street, passing a girl whose turquoise t-shirt reads, “Great Hopes Make Great Men”.

A banging on the door to my bedroom snaps me awake. But I ignore it. A few seconds pass before the banging happens again. It is quicker this time, louder, more insistent. Squinting, I look at my phone: 7:12 a.m. What is this? My mind races to its home: the worst-case scenario. Maybe it’s the government, coming to arrest me, to throw me in prison as a political dissident. This is China, after all. Maybe they’ve found out a writer is hiding out in the farmland. The writer’s a satirist, the most dangerous kind of writer. Jonathan Swift. George Orwell. William Norrett. “It could happen,” I insist to my own scoffing. Now, I hear voices. They’re counting, “One, two, three,” hesitantly, timid. Their banging, however, is not. “Get it over with,” I mutter, launching myself out of bed. As I unlock the door, I have visions of diplomatic negotiations for my return to the United States, of international outrage at my mistreatment, at press conferences, my family trying not to lose their temper at reporters’ stupid and cloying questions, President Obama jabbing his finger at the cameras, insisting on my return, and finally, a hero’s welcome. “How much tail would I rate as a former political prisoner?” I ask as I open the door to-

-two teenage boys. Each holds a piece of paper and a pen in his hand.

They’re the kids who live next door to where Michael’s family and I have been staying these past few days. They want my autograph. I write out “BILLY” twice. They each look at their sheets, read “BILLY” out loud in concert, and smile. I nod, shut the door, and try to go back to sleep, to return to the Airstream in my mind. I am way too comfortable with what has just taken place.

After a few days in Shenzhen, a bustling city of over eight million people, we had taken a fifteen-hour train ride from Shenzhen to the nanny’s family farm in the Anhui Province. Michael and his wife Joan wanted to show their two kids what rural life in China is like. The kids have been, not surprisingly, somewhat ambivalent about this. Sometimes, they can barely muster up the enthusiasm to repeat their favorite imitation of me, shrugging and offering my own accepting-yet-laced-with-its-own-ambivalence, “All right.”

Although I had fun in the farmland, I certainly could’ve explained what it would be like to them before we left. Life in rural China is isolated. It’s deprivation of the highest order. I mean, there is NO Internet up here, man. Electricity, sure. Television, well, yeah, okay. But only Chinese television, dude. I’ve already had to deal with no Gmail and no Facebook for days. Fifteen hours north in the boondocks, you can’t even get Bing, bro.

(shrug) "All right."

But for me, life in rural China has also meant something else: celebrity. Now, I’ve read enough world census reports to know that while traveling around Asia, I was going to be a minority. In every country up until now, however, there have been at least SOME people who look like me. Bali had plenty of ex-pats from America and Europe, Singapore reminded me of Hong Kong in terms of the Asian/Anglo ratio (roughly 20:1 by my unscientific eye), and in Thailand and Cambodia the locals might stare at you, but you didn’t feel like you were the first white person they had ever seen in their lives. Even Shenzhen felt different, more familiar with me, than it did when I visited in 2006. In 2006, people in even major cities seemed to look upon me like I was an exotic animal.

(Back then, I occasionally used this to my advantage. Side anecdote: in 2006, when I last visited Michael, one day he and I took the train an hour northeast to Guangzhou to see the United States National Basketball Team play Greece in a warm-up for the World Championships. The crowd was entirely Chinese and very, very quiet, really only cheering three point attempts - I guess the fans were impressed by the distance, the shots didn’t have to even be made - and the U.S. team was playing extremely lackluster, content that nobody in the arena knew anything about basketball and that nobody around the world gave a shit about this exhibition game. The Chinese man sitting next to me would eye me suspiciously whenever I would raise my voice above a whisper. At one point in the first half, LeBron James was bringing the ball up court and made a lazy pass that was almost intercepted by Greece before being tipped out of bounds. As he waited for the referee to hand him the basketball to inbound, LeBron stood about thirty feet from where Michael and I were sitting, his back to us. Standing, piercing the library silence with my best impersonation of an irate coach, I yelled, “Hey, LeBron! Stop being so casual with the goddamn basketball!” The man sitting next to me looked horrified until he saw LeBron James whip around, searching for the voice, shocked, chastened, as if he had just been caught masturbating.  Seeing LeBron’s reaction turned the Chinese man’s expression ecstatic, as if by seeing me elicit a reaction from the player I had affected the game. I had taught the man a secret about how to watch basketball, and he was grateful. He smiled at me for the rest of the game. I think the U.S. wound up winning by a point, and I bought a pair of Chinese National Team reversible basketball shorts that became a prized possession of mine for a long time. One of my proudest sports’ fan moments. A’ight, back to 2014.)

China is different, however. It started with my layover in the Nanning Airport. Sitting at my gate, scrolling my (useless in China) phone, awaiting my connecting flight to Shenzhen, I made eye contact with a young woman who walked by me with her husband. She was cute but I thought nothing of it, until two seconds later, I heard chattering Mandarin beside me. I looked, and it was the same woman. She made a motion with her hand and showed me her own (useful in China) phone. She wanted to take a picture with me. Uh, okay, sure. I felt it was so strange that I asked if I could have one taken with MY camera for ME - I dunno, for proof? - and she eagerly obliged.

Nanning International Airport, Nanning, China - 28.09.2014, 7p

If I had known how common that interaction would be over these past few weeks, I wouldn’t have bothered. It didn’t happen so much in Shenzhen, where the most I got were stares, but get outside of a city center in China…and I finally got a sense of what it was like to be famous. I was gawked at by strangers. I was laughed at by strangers (I’m used to people I know laughing at me.) I was repeatedly asked to have my picture taken, often with women, and I’ll confess, I’m struggling to grow weary of that. One afternoon we were trying to find a place to eat lunch, and after being rebuffed by the only restaurant in the small town, while standing outside, a man dressed in a tuxedo grabbed my elbow and pulled me back inside. I thought he was the waiter, but it turned out he was a groom who had just gotten married and was in the midst of his reception. He wanted me to take a picture with him and his wife. Then with him and his wife, AND his brother and HIS fiancee. THEN with his parents. AND then we got a table. While taking walks, I was followed by people, adults and children alike. I think I now know what it’s like to be the Easter Bunny, to be a figure that for billions of people exist only as an idea and may not even be real. I’m not saying I felt like George Clooney or anything, but maybe an actor who people “know was in that thing” and “that guy who did that thing with that chick” and “I don’t know your name but I know you’re good.” Maybe not George Clooney, but I dunno, maybe William H. Macy after Fargo.

Don’t get me wrong, though. The value of celebrity is relative. Being the William H. Macy of China doesn’t mean any business in that nation suddenly now takes Visa. Every time I’ve had to squat to crap into the equivalent of a dash cut into a cement floor, I’ve wanted to shout out, “Don’t you know who I am!?!” No one in China understands a word I say after “Xie xie,” or “Wo jiao Bill!” and I don’t understand a word anyone says to me. I have to point for everything I want in a store or restaurant. I’ve discovered that I’m a pretty shitty, inaccurate pointer. Everything here is a struggle for me, nothing is simple. I miss my native language (that’s my excuse for how long this post is). I’m lonely. There are days I’m tired of the food, of walking, of the struggle to live as a stranger.

But that struggle is also what makes it great. When I’m able to communicate with someone, pierce through the differences, get the exact type of soda I want, have someone tell me THEIR name because they understand I’ve just told them mine (“Wo jiao Bill!”) that is great, that is a moment, that makes this perfect. That’s better than celebrity.

And I’m finding my groove. I’m not counting the days as much. But the number of days is building. I’ve been traveling for 100 days.

One hundred days. Holy shit. It feels insane, on some level. FDR might’ve done a lot in a hundred days, but he probably didn’t have to do it while not understanding 99.9% of what was said in his presence or having to crap in a hole. So, you know - we’ve all got our achievements, yo.

There’s still a long way to go, and I’d still like to see some more toilet seats around here. But I’m hopeful.

A mall in Shenzhen. I need running shorts. I’ve decided I’m going to start running, that even with all I’m doing, everything going on, there is still plenty of time left in each day to fill up with activity and even though I’m losing some weight on this trip I’d like to lose more and if I’m going to get some experiences just walking around these cities I’ll get some running around them too. That when I return home and move into my Airstream and walk the countryside with MacGowan reminiscing about this trip I’m gonna have to get slim jeans if I wanna wear ‘em without a belt, like a 31 or 32 waist. But I’m having trouble finding a store that sells athletic gear, only high-end boutiques that sell jewelry or perfume or luxury watches, with mammoth pictures of models and beautiful, slender saleswomen with amazing legs under black cocktail dresses, who lean against glass counters looking bored out of their minds. Maybe the second floor, I think. I find the escalator and as I start to rise, a woman with dyed rust hair in a ponytail passes me on her way down. Her lemon yellow t-shirt reads simply, “Live Life Today.”

(shrug) All right.

#RogueTripPlaylette - 28.09.2014

INT. PHNOM PENH INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT CHECK-IN - MORNING
TICKET AGENT: You speak Chinese?
BILLY: (sighs) No.
TICKET AGENT: (sighs) No. (looks at Bill's backpack) You will have to get your bag after you land on our plane before you get on the other plane.
BILLY: (looks at bag) Really? 'Cause I'm going on separate airlines?
TICKET AGENT: Yes.
BILLY: (sighs) Ai ya.
TICKET AGENT: You know "Ai ya"?
BILLY: (nods) I know "Ai ya." (sighs) There's no way I'm not losing this bag, is there?
TICKET AGENT: No way.
BILLY: Yeah, I mean there's no possi-
TICKET AGENT: I know "No way."
BILLY: Oh.
(Pause. Ticket Agent nods to herself, then takes a sticker out of her desk and wraps it around Billy's backpack handle. It reads "Approved Carry On Baggage". Billy looks.)
BILLY: Oh, I can carry it?
TICKET AGENT: I will allow you.
BILLY: You'll allow me?
TICKET AGENT: (nods, closes/opens eyes) I will allow you.
BILLY: Wow. Thank you.
TICKET AGENT: (smiles) I know "Wow." Wow.

#RoguePOTD.09.10.2014

Apologies again for the lack of posts this past week or so; China makes it difficult. Give you a couple today, and more when I can. I'll be back up to full-speed once I hit Hong Kong.

Huikou Town, 04.10.2014 - 4p

Little Fat Lamb "Hot Pot" Restaurant (with Michael & Joan Gallagher), 29.09.2014, 8p

Taihu 5000 Year Cultural Expo Park, 06.10.2014, 11a