It's been a slow couple of days after we returned from Kazbegi. We mostly lounged around Tbilisi, ate at grandma's unnamed kitchen again, and took the night train up here to Mestia. I also found that it's no longer possible to get a Azerbaijan visa with my Taiwan passport, even though it was possible just a few months ago, as apparently the Taiwan passport is now no longer recognized by the Azerbaijiani government. I'm suspecting the PRC and oil has something to do with this (Ah-Lan I'm calling on your husband to find out!), WTF.

We decided to give our overworked livers a break and head for some detox in the mountains. Mestia is a small town in the remote region of Svaneti, high up the Caucasus mountain range. Svaneti has historically had very little contact with the outside world due to its harsh elements, impossible altitude, and remote location. Fortunately this has also enabled it to remain mostly undisturbed from various foreign forces which have come and gone through the Caucasus region throughout the centuries - Tartars, Persians, Ottoman Turks, Russians, Arabs, etc. After taking the fanciest 1st class sleeper I've ever been on for 15 laris (!), we woke up at 5am to the conductor's door pounding and stumbled out of the train with bags in hand, only to be greeted by this massive downpour. Seriously, it was everything and the kitchen sink falling out of the sky. We ran around drenched to the bone listening for the familiar sounds of "Mestia Mestia!" from a marshrutka mini-van going there. We piled into the marshshrutka with a bunch of other wet and freezing packpackers, and after much shouting and cajoling in Hebrew, English and Japanese, we finally set off for Mestia. 

From Mestia, we jeeped up to Ushguli, an UNESCO heritage village that's smaller than Mestia. I think the entire village had maybe 20 families? Here, one could see how life now is not all that different from what it was hundreds of years ago. Most people are still farmers or cattle herders, and still grow most of their own food. Livestock run wild throughout the village, and the surrounding mountains have probably looked upon this village mostly unchanged for thousands of years. 

After fighting off a massive bout of toilet runs the last couple days, I vow next time to 1) always remember to bring non-expired cipro and 2) suffer elsewhere besides a wet, freezing, remote mountain top. That sidebar aside, I managed to recover enough today to trek up to see the Shakhara glacier. The view was truly breathtaking - the blend of green, gold, and red autumn leaves along with the brilliant white of the snow capped mountains and the gray floating mist casts an entirely ethereal spell upon this valley. Furthermore, we were the only tourist trekking this trial for the entire 8 hrs today, which was just fantastic. Not seeing anyone for hours on end in this medieval setting, I almost felt like Frodo in his ring quest through some remote part of middle earth, ha. It was snowing pretty hard for the last couple hours when we got to the glacier, which made the scramble for the top ridge pretty challenging but fun. And I managed to climb a huge natural boulder on the way back too without killing myself on wet shoes. Not bad for a day's worth of work! 

Wow, we got a giant 6" dump of snow last night. The white fluffy blanket look definitely gives it a nice winter wonderland look. It was freeeeezing though with no heat at all and electricity being knocked out, definitely ready to get off this mountain now. 

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Chatting with Cherng today, we both would love a chance to go back and tell our younger selves a few things before going to university. For me, while I tried to make the most of my time in uni, there were just so many things I lacked the perspective to pursue or appreciate. For one, it's only now that I can really appreciate what an incredible learning environment that was. Never again will I have the privilege of learning any random subject that fancied me or walking into any class because the course description looked cool, and not have to worry about any real world repercussions. Pure learning for learning's sake. Once you graduate, even if you continue with school - be it engineering, law, medical, or (drum roll) bschool, the pressure to generate immediate ROI on your education becomes so much more imminent. This never really sunk in till now. If I could do it again I would

• Stress less about grades and more about learning
• Take fewer classes but dive into them with more gusto
• Take all the random classes in the world and not worry about whether "I'll finish on time" or "but it doesn't satisfy a GER" or "what would my friends think?". I'd kill to be able to go back and do some art, or photography, or developmental psych, some AI, and oh man, all the jazz classes I can lay my hands on. I will forever regret not sticking with jazz arrangement junior year, should've just opted to flunk EE113 instead. 
• Not worry about getting the "right" job out of school. Seriously. 

Of course learning never stops even after uni ends, but it's just not the same. I try to read as much as possible now, and Taipei has a really fantastic network of community colleges & night classes, but I wish I had the luxury of not having to squeeze studying into scraps of time throughout the week or being surrounded by people who are just flat out hungry to learn. I really wish I understood what an incredible luxury this is when I was 18!

Granted, 20/20 hindsight isn't very interesting, and it may be unrealistic to expect an 18 yr old me to have this perspective. I suppose the more interesting question now is if the 40yr old me could tell the current me a few things now, what would they be? Or, if I could imagine myself to be 40, what would I not stress about now, and what would I worry about instead? Is it love? money? career? something else? What would the older you tell the current you? 

 

Due to bad timing, our original plan of doing dahab to sharm to el
hurgada by ferry and then to luxor by bus is foiled, because no
ferries run on sundays. So instead we resorted to an all night bus
from dahab to cairo. I've been on a few night buses before and this
was a decent one, given the seats actually recline. Then the bus woke
everyone up at 430am with prayer chants and bright lights, and it was
equally fascinating and annoying at the same time for those of us
heathens trying to sleep, watching the men take their mats out of
their luggages and start praying by the roadside.

 Then we just tried for half an hour to flag a bus to the pyramids at a
streaat corner, because there are no bus signs in cairo. We were all
excited when a gray bus finally stopped and we jumped on. But before
we could ask whether the bus goes to the pyramids, we saw all the
"passengers" sitting behind bars and chain linked at the ankles, with
armored guards and ak47s in front, we were like oh shit this aint a
regular bus. Then the driver smiled, shook his head, and gestured
handcuffs with his hands, inviting us of join them jokingly. Needless
to say we scrambled off that bus, though I guess the idea of riding a
prison bus is somewhat intriguing in the abstract...

OK finally got to an internet cafe where I can write properly, so here now jumping back in time to Jerash & the Dead Sea, before we went to Mataba and Petra -

We met Vasily, a former Russian paratrooper turned skydiving instructor, on our way to Jerash and the Dead Sea. He's seriously got one of the coolest jobs around. Basically he's been traveling the world for *three* years, with a beautiful 27yr gf back in Russia. When he runs out of money, he just jumps out of the airplane for a few times and he's got money again to travel. I mean, what a life! His full-time job is traveling the world, his hobby is to jump out of a plane at some of the most gorgeous places (Hello south island, interlaken, patagonia??) AND get paid for it, and he's got a hottie back home. That, makes my desk job seems infinitely pathetic.

I'm always reminded of how ordinary, no, downright boring, my job/life can be compared to peope I meet on the road. I love how it reminds me of a world out there that's so much bigger than OKRs, perfs, and traffic charts. Let's see, just to name a few - canyoning/rafting guides, skydiving instructor, divemaster instructor. They just seem to be an ideal combination of adventure, decent money, travel, and opportunities to meet tons of interesting people. And it's not like they're blue collar jobs - they're highly specialized labor with decent pay that's challenging both intellectualy & physically. I think once you work a job like that, you'll never be able to do a 9-to-5 for long again. Your life just fundamentally changes when you jump out of the rat race. Sometimes I wonder if I could be happy working one of these kind of jobs, where although you wouldn't make mad money, you'll have stories to tell for the rest of your life...Sigh.

Some quick pictures of us from Jerash & Dead Sea

Eric and I just finished two awesome days of msssive climbing and
bouldering in Petra, site of an ancient city carved out of rock faces
and canyon deep in the desert. It's actually the film location for
indiana jones and the last crusade, where Indy and Co venture inside
the mountain temple for the holy grail. The natural sight of the
temples are pretty amazing, but what I really liked was all the
bouldering and rock climbing. The natural mountains are just
absolutely amazing; eric and I climbed just about everything in the
book, including wadi masala the canyon that narrows to just shoulder
width at parts, and the al bi-yarra this massive tabletop mountain in
the middle of petra. We definitely have got quite few facebook-worthy
vanity shots on this trip ;)

 Also met some really cool people on this trip; Miku, who reminded once
again of how shitty my japanese has become, and how I should really
study again. And these two cute taiwanese girls who're sutyding Arabic
in Kuwait. It's the first time I've met tw people backpacking btw,
pretty cool out here in the middle of nowhere. Oh and there's Joo
who's finishing her English studies at Cambridge, and just finished up
volunteering in indonesia. Btw, both eric and I agreed that any girl
who's an experienced solo traveler gets major points in our books. If
she's been to more places than I have, even more points :)

 Ah our diving class is about to start, gotta go. Write more later

Then they brought out the main meal, the mensa, which was rice,
chicken, yogurt soup, tomatoes and cucumbers. And Hussein taught us
how to eat with our hands. Boy trying to make a riceball out of
chicken, pita, wet rice and soup with one hand (using the left hand is
impolite) was no joke. Needless to say eric and I failed miserably and
provide much entertainment for the family as they saw us futilely try
to shove rice into our mouths and ended up smearing it all over. And
they have the sweetest childrern, including one baby Juju, who was
just the cutest thing. She loved kissing everything (particularly the
house bunny) and once she figured out she could see pictures of
herself on my camera, she terrorized anyone who tried to ake her new
toy away. And the other kids were super nice, always scrambling to
pour us tea or fetch us shoes or bring us blankets, without our asking
for them. I showed them pictures of eric and I massively toking up
with our water pipe last night, and they really dug that. That and
plus the fact they thought Eric was Jackie Chan's son really broke the
ice. I guess all asian people do look alike yea:?

 I'm getting some massive blackberry thumbs now type more later

Eric and I just had the most amazing night, we were in our car heading
to petra from karak, in comple desert darkness, when our driver
slammed on the brakes and we started reversing. When we saw he was
picking up this hitchhiker wearing a headscarf, I was originally a
little alarmed. Then he turned out to be a Bedouin, one of the ancient
desert tribes from jordan, and needed a ride to his home. In return
for us picking him up, he invited us to his village for tea. Eric and
I looked at each other, hesitqted for 2 seconds - getting dropped of
in the middle of nowhere desert in complete darkness, with no idea of
how to get to petra (we have to hitch our way out of there), with a
total random desert nomad? Hells yeah! Where do we sign up?

 What followed was the most incredible night of warm hospitality I've
ever experienced, and I say so after having been to a few countries
myself now. The village was seriously out in the middle of nowhere
(the stars at night, were incredible btw, if only we weren't freezing
our asses off). The man's name was Hussein, and he lived with his
mother, 4 brothers and sisters, and all their kids. So really big
family. They were poor; really poor, but so rich in spirit, if I may
sound clicheish for a second. There was only one room in the house
that functioned as living, dining, and bedroom. We were welcomed in
and they brought out everything they had, tea, cheese, yogurt,
everything. We just sat on the floor mats, and the heater doubled as
pita roasters.

I will be on Chinese New Year holiday from 1/22 to 2/8 in the Middle
East. Will not have email access

 For maps browse - maps-browse
For maps suggest - maps-suggest
For China maps - china-local-team
For China classifieds search (Shenghuo) -
classified-search-team
For Hong Kong and Taiwan Maps - geo-tw-tech
For China Geo team managers - mli, xan, bluk
For China PMs - china-pm
For any other emergency that can't wait - my manager jareds

 If the sky should fall, try my blackberry mobile at +1-650-284-6112.

 Thanks,
Yu-Kuan