Costa Rica

Costa Rica is one of the most beautiful countries that I’ve ever been to. The combo of the almost year round weather perfection, combined with more activities that you can fit in to a 2 week long vacation, make it possible the perfect honeymoon destination. @Mollstar and I literally had the time of our lives with plenty of relaxation but enough adventure to never get bored.

We stuck pretty strictly to a one day in and one day out schedule. As fun as it may sound, we both knew that too many days just lounging around the resort drinking Pina Colada’s would get old for both of us pretty quick. Here are some of the highlights…

Crazy Ass Pizote Families

Horseback Riding/Rafting/Zip Line/ Volcanic Mud Bath

No horse back or rafting pics. Sorry.

An Awesome Trip to Volcano Arenal and The Springs Resort

A Day trip on Thanksgiving to Nicaragua

And Some Amazing Animals!

I came upon this video from @reecepacheco, a fellow surfer stuck with no waves (he’s in NYC). I grew up watching Rob Machado surf and even saw him in a contest once at Oceanside Pier. He’s amazing and his career has really been an interesting one. He was once very close to top being the top surfer in the world, then stopped competing and did a lot of videos and travel. I don’t know Rob at all, but it seems that this video is a very personal one, showing off the “struggles” of being a professional surfer. Obviously it’s got to be the best lives ever but coming from someone who get’s sick when I don’t feel like I’m accomplishing something, I can sympathize with how just surfing everyday would be a struggle sometimes.

This trailer also got me very excited because next month I’m getting married, and Moll and I are going on a long honeymoon down to Costa Rica. It might be the best vacation ever… I’ll have the 3 of the most important things in the world with me; my new wife, great weather, and the ocean. I’m so pumped.

As Reece points out in his post of this video, surfing movies don’t necessarily do very well in the box office but I’ll definitely be checking this one out.

Today marks 2 years of blogging. I started out on ActionsTalk.com, then I was on RyanAGraves.com, now I’m on the URL THE DREAM IN ACTION.com. I thoroughly enjoy the process and have learned a lot in the process. This site gets about 3,000 unique readers a month which, in my eyes, with all the changes to the site, is no small accomplishment. I hope that over the next year we can hit 10k per month. Here’s why…

I write about my dreams, and how to make yours a reality. Why, and where do I get off trying to teach other people how to do it? My hope is that as I answer these questions you’ll see my answers as reasons to subscribe to the RSS or come back to the site on a regular basis. I hope that the experiences I have, that turn into blog posts, help you get closer to your dreams… through action of course.

This Is Not A 4 Hour Work Week

First, it needs to be said that this isn’t a get rich quick blog. It’s not a ‘how to blog for a living’ site or a ‘use the internet to scam people and make a quick buck’ site. I’m not going to try and teach you how to live a 4 hour work week, others do that better than I, so why rebuild the wheel. This site is the all about making your dreams realities on a daily basis. It’s about how to make your life better one step at a time so that you not only achieve your goals in life, but that you enjoy the process.

Full Time Job

I’m an entrepreneur. By that I mean I have revenue streams outside of my day job, but let me be clear, I do have a day job. I do not work on my startup full time and I’ve not reached the point that my entrepreneurial ventures are large enough to sustain my life (YET). However, I definitely believe you can live with an entrepreneurial spirit without being a CEO or a founder of a startup. I’ve written about being a corporate entrepreneur and I know from first hand experience that now, when our economy is at one of it’s shakiest moments, is when large corporation need entrepreneurial innovation the most. Put the dream in action and enjoy what you do by changing your workplace and your life for the better.

After Hours

Over the next year I will draw thoughts and solutions from a few different ventures. I’ll be heavily involved in growing NVRnude.com. I unfortunately can’t go into to much detail about what we’re going to deliver with NVRnude.com but what I can say is that the social web and the transactional web are going to come face to face, and we’re going to lead that charge. You can follow more on the NVRnude Blog.

As you know SocialDreamium LLC has been formally shut down and I will no longer be blogging there. However, I will be drawing upon many lessons learned from that experience. I really like the idea of embracing your failures as energy and lessons. We’ll learn from that together.

As far as The Renliv Group and Actions Talk go, they will continue. The Renliv Group is the funnel that I’ve used for any consulting/advisory work that I’ve done over the last 6-9 months and that will stay available but slow down significantly. If you’re a startup founder and would like to chat or are interested in talking more I’m always up for it, just shoot me an email.

Travel

I’m just coming of a very business travel season. After being in Stockholm, Sweden then Boulder Junction, WI then San Diego I was ready to settle down for a bit, make sure my bills were paid and get back to work. Aside from another trip out to San Diego in August, I’ll be head down on projects until September when myself and about 15 buddies are headed to Boulder, CO for a camping trip/ my bachelor party. Should be a great time to get friends from college and friends from home all together. Then, for my honeymoon in November, Molly and I are headed to Costa Rica for 2 weeks. Now that I’m really looking forward to!

Try and Try Again

If you’ve never heard of Morten Lund you should take some time to learn about him. He’s a European entrepreneur who’s attitude towards the process of starting a business, making and losing a lot of money, and what’s important in life is a great one to follow. He’s uneducated, sometimes a bit distasteful, and more passionate that anyone else I’ve seen. It’s refreshing.

If you have a bit, watch this video (13 minutes), and get an idea for who he is.

Morten’s attitude towards trying and trying again is exactly what I want to bring to my career and in the shorter term, this blog. I’ve tried a few different things to grow this blog and I’ll continue to try whatever I think will work. I changed the blog URL to THE DREAM IN ACTION.com because I thought that the idea of enjoying life day by day and bringing dreams to fruition is an idea that ANYONE can support and continue to learn about. I still share tidbits on RyanGraves.org/anized by the way.

I appreciate your support in this iterative process of growing a community and a blog that adds value to your web surfing.

Why I’m encouraged.

There are a few things why I’m very encouraged to take on another year of blogging and life.

The Economy - We all know it sucks but I really think that this will take some of the competition out of the startup market because right now people just want a pay check. This means that the people who aren’t willing to spend 6pm-1am on their startup will stop doing “entrepreneurship”…maybe they should have been there in the first place? This is a crazy environment where the strong will suffer and the weak will parish but the hard working will always see good times again.

The Gen-Y Attitude – The entitlement thing isn’t what I’m talking about, although I’m sure that does exist, whatever. What I’m talking about is the get things done, always learn the new tool, gotta get ahead, attitude. Not all my friends feel the pressure that I feel to “do something big” but many of them do and I think that’s awesome.

Why are you excited? What do you think of this blog this year? How can I provide more value?

Photo was taken flying over Alaska on the way back from China.

Use Dopplr to Document Travel

I’ve been using Dopplr for a couple of years to document and share my travel itineraries. It’s nice to be able to see who will be where and when, and how our trips align. You can see my travel schedule in the widget on this blog and I do my best to keep that up to date.

Another feature of Dopplr that I love is the 6 month and year end reports of my travel. I got this chart (above) in my email last week showing me what I’ve done and where I’ve gone this year. Not a bad start to 2009, and it’s not done yet!

My Travel in 2009

In February this year I had the opportunity to travel for work to China and stay there for a month. I spent the first 5 days in Hong Kong which I found to be amazing. Hong Kong was a perfect mix of western and eastern culture, and the city is young enough that I would probably live there for a while if the opportunity presented itself.

The second half of my Asia trip was spend in downtown Shanghai. Here are some of my reactions to weird China stuff.

Posts from China:

• In Route to China
• Crazy China Stuff
• Tongli, Suzhou
• More Crazy China Stuff
• Shanhai World Financial Center
• My last day in China
• China pics on Flickr

Then, more recently, again for work, I had the opportunity to go to Sweden for a week. I was based in Uppsala during the week (about an hour outside of Stockholm) but stayed in the city during the weekend to take advantage of the perfect weather and epic nightlife.

Sweden blew me away due to the beauty of the cities layout with so many rivers & islands, and the people. A walk through certain areas of Stockholm is honestly like walking through a catalog (people are so preppy!), not to mention the fact that it was light for 20 hrs per day in the summer. I was out until 2am and it felt like happy hour the entire time because the lighting was like dusk all night.

Posts from Sweden:

• My First Day In Sweden
• How To Take A Vacation: A Lesson (Learned) From Europeans
• Investing Yourself and The Value of Strong Relationships
• Sweden pics on Flickr (update coming)

As most of you know I’m getting married in November (wedding site: RyanGotMolly.com) and I’m headed to Costa Rica for my honeymoon. I posted pictures of the hotel on my personal blog.

• Honeymoon hotel in Costa Rica

One thing I’d really like to start doing more often is exploring the ol’ US of A. So much travel is focused on getting outside of the US, but there are some phenomenal sites right in our own backyard. For my birthday I started getting camping gear. I’m preparing for trips (with my wife-to-be) to go around the US to check out National Parks, monuments, and other natural treasures.

I’ve been reading Backpacker magazine and there is an overwhelming amount of amazing hikes and camp sites to check out. Probably not far from you! In September, for my bachelor party, I’m headed to Boulder, CO to camp, white water raft, hike, and yes, probably drink a bit as we’re headed to the brewery tours in Ft. Collins. I’m excited to start checking out some great travel/get away opportunities right here in the US.

Blog posts to come!

Finding Opportunities to Travel Outside of Vacation

Not every job is going to provide opportunities to travel, I understand that. But, many do, and I highly advise you never miss the opportunity to travel for work. Not only is there huge value to getting out of the office to meet people face to face, there is no cheaper way to travel on your personal pocket book. If you’re traveling with work, bust your ass Monday to Friday and use the weekend to explore. Maximize your personal time so it feels like a mini vacation! You may be tired when you get back home but it’s absolutely worth it. Believe it or not, red-eyes are your friend.

Another way to get away is to volunteer. Last year a good friend of mine headed to Tanzania, Africa for 2 weeks on a solo trip with plans to volunteer. He ended up meeting people that that will be friends of his for years to come. You don’t always have to do the “it’s all about me” trek through Europe. Select a random destination and find a way to help people and I guarantee you’ll have a blast and make some lasting memories.

Learning About Yourself During Travel

Through my travels this year I’ve found that one of the best ways to learn about yourself is to travel solo. I’ll be the first to admit that I really don’t love being alone for a long time. I enjoy having someone there to share sights and experiences with. This has been one of the greatest things about getting engaged. My fiance and I love to travel together and it makes trips so much more fun! However, when you set out solo, you are in complete control of your itinerary and you learn what’s important to you. When I’m solo, I never go to museums or sight seeing, I find spots where locals hang and try my damnedest to get into conversations with them. It’s only through the people that you can truly learn about a city. Get out and go solo.

The other strategy I’ve employed to learn more about myself during travel is to go with the flow. I rarely have a plan and I’ve really never regretted it. I sort out my day about 2-3 hours in advance. If I miss an opportunity (which I have) then I guess it wasn’t meant to be. This way if I meet people I can turn on a dime and jump in another direction if needed. This no plan strategy can really piss some people off but I’ve found it’s the best way to relieve stress of commitment and enjoy my travels most.

Summary

The gist is that I feel incredibly lucky to have had as much opportunity to travel as I have. Travel is one of my favorite things in the world and this year, my job has allowed me to see quite a lot. As I write this blog post I’m sitting overlooking the ocean at home in San Diego. I realize that as much as I absolutely love travel, what’s really important is who you are with. So, take sometime to get away from work and see the world but keep the right priorities and focus on the people who you love.

I’m not a fan at all of this “staycation” trend. There are plenty of options for cheap travel out there, you just have to seek them out. Find a trip, even if it’s close to home where you’ll see something brand new. Look for experiences that will challenge you and do them. The money spent will be worth it! Best of luck in the second half of 2009 to find great places to travel.

Vacation is important because…

Vacation, as the Europeans have discovered, is critical to ones ability to contribute effectively in the workplace. As I’m in Sweden this week and our project time lines are surely impacted by month long (or more) vacation schedules, I figured there would be no more appropriate time to write about vacations and the value of them.

Note: This trip is for business and not a vacation, however, I am spending a free weekend in Stockholm. A mini vacation I guess.

Although the “American way” seems to criticize the European vacation mentality, I think that it may be important to consider the value of extended breaks for multiple reasons.

1. Taking a break allows one to recollect their focus and return to work with a laser focus on their work.
2. A vacation allows one to recharge their batteries, release the pressures that can build at work, and return energized and excited.
3. Taking a vacation, perhaps a luxurious one, gives you a sense of reward and helps you to feel really good about giving 110% to your work.

Don’t focus on refocusing.

It’s important that when taking a vacation you don’t think ‘to much’ about work. Recently, there has been a big push towards the “stay-cation” or taking your vacation time at home. This is being encouraged due to conditions in the economy and also the green aspects of reducing your travel when vacationing. I am strongly against this. I believe that vacation is for getting away, seeing something new, and putting yourself in a different environment so that you can remove your thoughts from the norm and focus on something new.

Focusing on something new is the key to getting ‘mentally’ away. Using this time to focus on refocusing is counter productive. If you do this, you’re really still focused on work. You’re essentially trying to find a way to work better. I am a huge fan of continuously finding improvements in behavior and maximizing productivity but your vacation is not the appropriate time for that.

Lastly, although your away from work, I believe it is important to stay productive on vacation. If you stay in bed until noon everyday during your break and never really accomplish anything then you may be well rested but you’re going to feel like you’ve wasted your time away from work. Make sure to keep a busy schedule even on vacation so that you can look back to your time off and feel that you’ve made the most of it. When I’m on vacation I like to get up as early as the night before will logically allow :) and maximize the time I have to see new and interesting things. That’s why I love abroad travel so much, there are always new experiences to be had.

Finally get some rest.

To combat the maximize your time sentiment, it is important to get much needed rest on a vacation. Although it may seem impossible to satisfy both of these ideas, here is a solution: Early in your vacation it’s all good to maximize your day. During the beginning of your vacation, do what you want. Get up early, stay up late, and do it all in between, it’s fine. However, towards the end of your break it’s important to be conscious of the amount of rest that you’re allowing yourself. You want to return to work fresh, sharp, and at the top of your game!

For people who have trained themselves to operate on only a few 3-6 hours of sleep, you must be careful! I’m not going to tell you need to get 8 hours of sleep, I usually get about 6 until the weekend (then I binge sleep). However, you do need to be careful not to lose your ability to only sleep a few hours. If you take your 2 week or your 1 month vacation and sleep 10 hours a night, you will not be able to jump right back into your 4 hour plan without any affect. These habits are conditioned so you can potentially derail your sleep pattern during your vacation, so be careful.

The most fun, must energizing, and most rewarding aspect of my vacation is the time I get to spend with the people I care about. In August of 2007 my girlfriend, now fiance, and I went to Ireland for 2 weeks and drove the southern coast from Dublin to Galway and back. The trip put us in so many situations that challenged our relationship but made it so strong. One night we got to Cork and realized we did not have a hotel, B&B, or hostel booked. We ended up sleeping in a tiny Nissan Micra Sport all night…freezing. Yes, it sucked but the time we spent and laughs we shared together were priceless. If your spending time with the right people, it almost doesn’t matter what you do for your vacation time.

You earned it.

Finally, by taking a vacation, whether its 2 weeks or 8 (the French), you’ll be able to be proud of your time off. Knowing that I have a vacation coming up always helps me to drive towards it knowing that my hard work now will really make the off time sweet.

Because of the build up that comes with a vacation, I seriously recommend doing them big. Do something that you will remember. Don’t do the stay-cation at home, instead plan a trip to somewhere you’ve not been before that will create memories. It’s a big world out there so don’t do the same trip over and over. Explore!

When you come back to work you’ll be relaxed, re-focused, and rested. In short, you’ll be ready to kick ass. The time spent off will have a significant affect on your productivity and your contribution to your business. It will also have a profound affect on the relationships in your personal life. You’ll be able to relate with people from another part of the world and you’ll have common experiences shared with the people you traveled with.

Vacation is worth taking as an employee and it’s worth paying for as the employer. Vacations are all around valuable and necessary. I hope you enjoy yours!

via Lisa Brewster

For THE DREAM IN ACTION Case Study #2 I wanted to learn more about how someone can use the mobility of web work to live/work abroad. I reached out to a good friend, Nate Ritter, about how he has done the travel while working thing multiple times. With travel stints of 3 months Nate, and his wife, have been able to see some incredible things while keeping clients happy.

Meet Nate:

Nate has been a web developer for over 15 years for the likes of Worktank Seattle,Microsoft, Land Rover. He is also a consultant and public speaker and has appeared in publications such as Wall Street Journal, Wired Magazine, Fast Company, The Epoch Times, Lifehacker, and Mashable…”yea, he’s sick.”

Who are you and what are you currently working on?

I just received this picture of Allen (co-founder of LibraryforLaos.org) at Big Brother Mouse HQ in northern Laos.

Allen had the opportunity to go to a BBM book party and watch and even help out with handing out the books THAT YOU”RE GOING TO DONATE FOR to the kids.

After chatting with him it was clear the affect that the experience had on him was profound and that our efforts towards this cause and helping the children of Laos were worthwhile!

Our Progress

So far we’ve raise about $813 bucks. We’re realizing that it may be difficult to hit our goal by the end of the week without a significant surge! We want to sincerely ask beg you to get out there and help us spread the word. I only have so many emails I can email but we’re relying upon the power of the social web to help spread this effort around the world and reach hearts to make a huge difference. I’ll be posting again the morning of the last day (Friday) with a last update of our progress. Go out there and fund raise!

Our Thanks

I do want to be very clear how grateful we are for the people who’ve donated already. In a tough economic climate donating is not easy and makes a much more significant impact peoples person lives and personal finances. We want to take our hats off to you to for maybe stepping out of your comfort zone and helping out.

Follow the progress on Twitter!

Give A Poor Child the Gift of Reading – In Just 5 Minutes!

LibraryForLaos.org is an ONLINE campaign to raise $5k in 5 days for children’s books in rural Laos? It only takes 5 minutes!

Dates: Monday, April 27 – Friday, May 1!!!

Donate here.

via vadirajcs

I’m pumped that now my Tweets feed directly to Facebook. All the friends that made fun of me for using Twitter are now commenting and joining in conversations around my Tweets and my blog posts that I share on Facebook via Twitter. This is a huge “crossing of the chasm” for Twitter because the “normal people” are now joining in on web based conversations at a rapidly increasing rate.

Sorry this post is so late, I’ve been thinking/working on it for a while. First, I’ll share why you should use Twitter for status updates, then show you how.

9 Reasons Why You Should Use Twitter for Status Updates

I have found multiple reason for using Twitter. I’ve use the service for almost a year and have been able to meet a ton of cool people using the service. I’ve used Twitter for personal and business cases. It’s a phenomenal communication platform that allows for extreme flexibility in communication. Here are my top 9 reasons why you should use Twitter to update your Facebook status.

1. Twitter allows for mobile status updates – Go to the ‘Devices’ tab under your Twitter account settings and give Twitter your mobile phone number. Then SMS or txt message ’40404′ your message. This will update Twitter and now also your Facebook status. Easy peasy!

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2. Stay involved in technology or turn into a grandparent early – Haven’t you ever gotten annoyed at your grandparents (or even parents) for not even caring about a new technology?  Well if you don’t continue to adapt and adopt new technologies, your going to be left in the dust. A huge difference between our generation and theirs is our ability to learn things quickly and continually adapt. Please don’t get old while you’re still young.

3. Twitter’s community is creative and powerful - I’ve learned so much from my Twitter followers. I actively engaged them by asking questions, asking advice, and reengaging with them. I’d like to think I’ve helped as many folks who have helped me. Whether your trying to figure out what movie to watch, what restaurant to eat at, or what the weather is, your Twitter community can be an extremely powerful resource.

4. Travel updates – When I was in China, I was able to send an SMS message to 40404, Twitters number (after I setup the new number in my Twitter profile under ‘Devices’) with “d Mollstar I love you.” and it would send a direct text to my fiance with no charge at all. Using the internet instead of standard text messaging I was able to stay in touch at a fraction of the cost. Another example is my buddy Allen Burt, my partner in LibraryforLaos.org, has been able to keep his friends and family informed of his travels through the South Pacific over the last few months using Twitter.

5. Status updates are the new diary – Who has time to diary these days? Now with short updates on a semi-regular basis you can have a track record of the joy in your life. One sad but powerful story is of  @martin, a well know entrepreneur and networker throughout the tech world. He was an adventurer to the fullest extent and recorded some of his last joys via Twitter. He was taking flying courses at the Santa Monica airport and shared his last great experience before his plane later crashed. His joy and adventure  was shared and saved through Twitter.

6. Get your Google juice going! - It’s more and more important to control what people find when searching your name on Google. Every recruiter now days is going to perform this search on your name, so get a head start in controlling what they find. I recommend blogging too, but that’s for another conversation. Twitter actually has very good Google juice so you can influence what is found by being an active and powerful Twitter user.

7. Learn, share, network, create opportunities – With Twitter growing at a faster pace than even Facebook itself, it is becoming more and more likely that your next job, sale, or even romantic relationship will come from Twitter.  I know this sounds absurd but I know you’ve probably met or encountered people on Facebook that you hadn’t yet met. Then you may have met them and maybe you dated? This will happen more and more from Twitter as it’s popularity increases. I  know it sounds Match.com-ish creepy but just wait and see. Create opportunities from this growing crowd of intelligent and plugged in people.

8. Shaq and Britney do it - Well maybe this isn’t that good of an argument.

9. Twitter is the new filter to good online content – You used to read the newspaper, now you read Google news or maybe even Digg.com if your web hip, but more and more Twitter becomes my source of good news. Think about it, if you get to choose exactly who you follow you have a 100% personalized filter of the type of people you want sending information your way. If they suck, drop’em, if they’re awesome, tell others to follow them (see #followfriday). Twitter is the new content filter than no algorithm can beat.

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7 Steps to Connecting Twitter & Facebook

1. Log into Facebook and search “Twitter” in the search bar (top right)

*don’t let TwitterSync fool you, it’s not what you want.

2. Select the first option, the window below with show and then click, “View Application”

3. I’m sure you’ve done this before, just add the application.

*(Same process as adding iLike, WhereI’veBeen, etc.) You’re giving the Twitter application the right to interact with Facebook and input information into your Twitter profile. Make sure you have a secure Twitter password. Using the same password as you use on Facebook is fine.

4. How do you want Twitter to interact w/ Facebook? I recommend publishing to your Newsfeed but keeping email notification off.

5. Give Facebook your Twitter login information.

6. Allow Twitter to update your Facebook status (I’ll explain why in a minute)

7. Allow Status updates without notification –> Authorize Twitter

*This is the final approval process. Make sure to click the box “Allow Twitter to update my status…”

Now you’re done! Twitter will do the rest for you! No more logging into Facebook for status updates.

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I hope this helps you all in connecting two great technologies, not for technologies sake, but for the purpose of making your life easier and improving communication between friends…after all, that’s the point of all this anyway, right? Please don’t hesitate to ask questions about how to set things up, usually the community is pretty helpful in helping one another but I’ll chime in if need be. :)

My last day in China was another amazing one. I decided to head solo to Tongli, one of the ancient water cities in China. I was to arrive at the bus stop by 8:30a and travel for about 2 hours by bus to Tongli. I chose Tongli because my guide book said that it was less touristy, thus less crowded, and I wanted  to experience authentic, rural China on my last day. I wanted the reverse culture shock to be as drastic as possible as I came back into the States . I wanted the sites, sounds, and smells of China to be as memorable as possible as I returned.

The Sprint through Shanghai

That morning I decided to take the subway to the train station. I got on the subway about 45 minutes before my bus was scheduled to leave. Plenty of time, so I thought. Well, I some how misread the map and went one exit too far. This added an extra 10 minutes. Then, when I finally got off at the correct stop, I asked a woman, “where exactly is the train station?” I was pointed in the direction of the Shanghai Stadium. At this point I had about 15-20 minutes to spare. The stadium however was a good 10-15 minute walk from the subway station. I started walking. As I check my watch at 8:25am I realized I was really pushing it. Picture this… a white man, standing 6’3, with a full day pack, absolutely sprinting through downtown Shanghai. I became the laughing stock of many Shanghainese that morning!

I finally recruited someone to help me find the train station at about 8:31am. Me and my recruit were both running towards the train station and all around the stadium, neither he, nor I, had any clue where exactly this station was. How I convinced a commuting Chinese guy to run through downtown with me, I’ll never know. As we arrived at the station and ran to the counter I didn’t need to understand Chinese to understand that my bus had left and there wasn’t another one coming…all day.

At this point I really wasn’t upset at all. I just decided there’s gotta be somewhere else that would be cool for a day trip. I refunded my ticket for 80% of the cost and purchased a ticket to Xitang, another water city. This one was about an hour and fifteen minutes away. Closer but much more touristy.”Oh well”, I thought, “better this than nothing”.

“Be Back On-time!”

I got the bus to Xitang about 9:15am and we were on our way. I read as much as I could about Xitang but my guide book didn’t include much other than saying, “this place is touristy”. No biggy, I’d explore none the less, and I was excited to be traveling solo again.

I continued to read ‘The 4 Hour Work Week‘ on my drive and really enjoyed the chance to read, take it the country side, and get out of the city for at least one day on my trip. I also met a guy named Paul (English name) who had lived in LA, and now in Shanghai, but was from Taipei. I love how traveling around the world, everywhere but the US, is normal. I make a promise to myself that life won’t stay in one country, I will live outside the US at some point. 

As we get off the bus I had Paul ask if I understood what time to be back, I responded, “Yes.” Then I had the bus driver show me a sign with the departure time, asking, “do I understand”. Finally, as I was walking away, a girl name Christine (real name) grabbed me and asked if I was sure I understood what time to be back to the bus. I confirmed, “I got it, I’ll be here at 4:00p and we’d leave at 4:15p”. I appreciated that they were helping but I felt absolutely helpless. I felt like those kids who travel alone under the age of 10 and need a stewardess to assist them between gates. At somepoint in time, I was that kid, but I’d like to think I’ve grown out of that. Apparently, not in China. Oh well.

The Serenade

After walking around Xitang for a while, bartering for gifts, and taking some pics, I was looking for a spot to chill and grab lunch. I decided upon a place where I could sit on the second floor overlooking a popular bridge (where they filmed part of MI3) and the river to watch the boats. I have no idea how to say the name of the place but somehow without speaking good Chinese, I got a HUGE plate of fried rice with egg, and a big bowl of veggy dumplings. It was amazing, and I paid a total of 38RMB = $5. Awesome. As I was wrapping up lunch, this lovely man (video below) decided to serenade me for a few minutes. 

I didn’t want to give him cash so I started drawing a picture of him (also below) and he loved it as my form of payment (he later came back for real money and I obliged). I guess the bartering culture worked in my benefit this time! This was a perfect way to wrap up my $5 lunch of veggy dumplings and fried rice, overlooking the river. Although touristy, Xitang was proving to be a great day adventure!

Kung Fu Fighting

At the end of my lunch the waitresses of the restaurant brought out a friend of theirs who spoke minimal, but some, English. He proceeded to tell me how much he likes Kobe Bryant, Allen Iverson, and Kung Fu. I called him on his interest in Kung Fu and politely asked him if he would show me some Kung Fu. He obliged and I got a 2 minute Kung Fu show. He then called me out and I tried out a few kicks myself, which obviously got a laugh from everyone. The kid who spoke English was Allen (English name). Allen and I ended up spending the next few hours together, walking around the town, seeing a home or two of local Xitang-ites and grabbing tea. He clearly took me to the most expensive tea place he knew of in the city but at a total of 8 bucks I was ok with it. I told him of my need to be back to the bus by 4pm and we started towards the buses at 2:30p. As the afternoon went on his comments about how much money I must have started to slightly annoy and I worked hard to redirect the conversation. He was relentless with bringing up how much money my family must have since I was American. I thought we were connecting on the fact that both of our families owned a Honda. I left out that my Mom drives a Mercedes as that would definitely just drive more money related questions. After a while Allen got me to the bus stop but I was about an hour early. I thanked him for my Chinese lessons and the tour around Xitang, he asked for more money and cigs, I said sorry about 100 times and thanked him again. We parted ways and in that moment the difference in culture, attitude, and privilege was made extremely apparent. For the next couple hours as I returned to my bus (on time), I felt bad for Allen. I felt guilty for not being able to give him more, and I felt intrigued by the drastic difference in lifestyle between us in the west, and the many impoverished in the east. This is a world need that I’d like to be able to address later in life. I will be back to China.

A Close to Xitang

On the way home I was back to reading and gazing out the window at still very crowded rural China. Soon I’d be back in the the big city. Knowing that I’d leave the next day, and be back with the guys, I tried to make the most of each minute of that ride. I spoke with as many people as could understand English on that bus and even made some more Facebook friends. 

Thought on Facebook: Facebook is brilliant and has literally brought the world together. So many people I met in China are on Facebook and I will no easily be able to stay in touch with brief but memorable friends from across the world. I hope to return to China and when I do I’ll definitely leverage the relationships that I made in China, via Facebook. Any web start-up, or community driven company not looking at how Facebook will affect them either as partners, or competitors is seriously missing the boat. The breadth of their reach is far greater than I had imagined before my trip.

The trip would be over the next day but with the help of my Flickr account the memories would be shared and would last a very long time.