flamedragon3 on Xanga

Weblog

Wednesday, 08 July 2009

vancouver (day 2)

Since I had hit most of my destinations yesterday, I allowed myself to sleep in today to rest my legs. I woke up at like 9, and went out to hit the few things I had remaining. I found out I'm only like 2 blocks from the bus station, so I went to pick up my tickets to Seattle for the trip tomorrow (they require picking up the ticket at least 1 hr before the bus leaves. Since I don't want to wait at the station for an hour, I thought I'd pick it up today). The tickets were only $13 booking really early. I suspect even on a full bus at that price, greyhound would still be losing money.

I only wanted to go to 4 places today, most of them were time restricted, so I planned ahead. I first went to downtown, for brunch. The hostel guy mentioned this local diner that was notorious for being rude. I went in all nervous and convinced myself not to say "please", "thank you", or "sorry". The prices were a bit high, but it definitely felt like only locals ate there. They also served many types of toast. I've never eaten sliced soughbread before, so that was a new. Sadly, I didn't hear one unpleasant thing from either waitors, nor the cooks. He actually said please and thank you. It was still an odd experience though. The table next to me sat an older guy with like a high schooler. I didn't pay any attention, I was too busy preparing myself for whatever rude thing the waiter might say. The waiter knew the older guy and started chatting. At some point he said "this one seems older than the usual ones, at least he looks over 18". The kid said he was only 16. They then went on talking about previous kids that this guy's apparently been with. It was incredibly awkward, though I'm not sure if it's illegal here in canada. This kid was apparently the bf of some other kid the guy knew, or something, not really sure how that system works.

Next I went to stanley park, which is this huge foresty park next to downtown. It's surrounded by water, so it has nice views all the way around. The bike path around I think was 6km. It has hiking trails, bike paths, a light house, many playgrounds, etc. I just took a quick walk through like 1/4th of it. Everything looks the same when it's cloudy and drizzling...

After yesterday's pathetic Chinatown, I needed to see where the rest of the asians were. The hatchery gift shop person already told me they were all in Richmond, but who knew where to go there. Dan later asked a friend who told me to visit this mall called the Aberdeen Center. I only had to take one bus from downtown, but it's pretty far, all the way past the airport. Just looking at the people on the bus, it probably started off half Chinese, by the time we got there, everybody that got off was Chinese. The mall was basically transplanted from Asia. It was virtually all Chinese in it, with the occasional caucasian tourist. Everybody was purely speaking in Cantonese or Mandarin. The stores were all selling fob gear that no american would probably ever wear. The receipts I got were entirely in Chinese. There was an asian grocery store in the mall. And there wasn't a single American fast food chain in the food court. The food court was kind of a disappointment though. The shaved ice was like minimum of $4 for like a one topping small bowl. The food was also disappointing, but it sufficed. The place had free wifi, so I stayed there for a while.

Lastly I visited the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. The campus is kind of boring. The buildings are all rather new, and are packed in into a grid. It did have a nice ocean view, though. The museum was also nothing special after seeing Alaska's museums, but the guy let me in free since I arrived 30 minutes before it closed. I did learn though that a person can be given many names in their culture. This famous artist had like 4, but I think it's just many tribes wanted to take credit of him. They also had this cool display of "bent boxes", where tthey would bend wood into a square that was both watertight and able to cook with. Pretty impressive. When I got back on the bus afterwards, it was all students obviously, but it was probably like 80% asian. Vancouver really does have a huge Chinese population.

On a side note, I think I inflammed or sprained something in my knee from all the exertion yesterday. I guess I'll just have to sleep in tomorrow and rest until the bus leaves at 2.

Tuesday, 07 July 2009

vancouver (part 2)

After visiting the suspension bridge, I was pretty determined just to go back to the hostel and collapse, but then I looked a the map, and the thought of having to go all the way back up to North Vancouver was just too much. Having missed the hatchery in Anchorage, I wanted to visit the one here. I'm pretty sure I saw it the last time I came to vancouver, but that was a long time ago. It was actually pretty far away, but it only required two buses to get there. When I was approaching the area though, it was supposed to be on the left, and as the bus drove by, all I saw were residential streets. Eventually I knew I had passed it, so I got off and asked the bus driver, he's like walk back 15 minutes. 15 minutes later, I found the start of the street that the hatchery was on. I was fairly certain the sign said 1km, so I was like, sure another 15 min walk or something. I kept walking and walking, and like 1km later I saw another sign saying Hatcher -> 1km. So I kept going down this random road. This whole time, not a car was going by, and I was pretty sure I got lost. Eventually some jogger came by and he pointed further down the road. I'm fairly certain it was 3-4km total before I reached the Hatchery. It was a completely outdoor facility (hence why it was free). There was a giant tank with a lot of fish who didn't seem to be moving at all, but the little "upstream" tanks were completely empty. It was disappointing, but the salmon can't always be jumping I suppose. I was pretty exhausted so I went into the gift shop and sat down and talked with the store clerk. She told me how some guy from texas came into the store earlier and was bashing canadians about them not knowing about the revolutionary war or civil war, or other things we learned in US history. Apparently he didn't know anything about Canada either, but I suppose hypocrisy isn't one of those "takes one to know one" things. She was also 1/4th "First Nation" which is the Canadian version of the native people. We talked about how Texas likes to think they're apart from the "rest" of the US, and she said BC people consider everyone east of the Rockies to be the "rest" of Canada. At least they have a geological explanation; texas just has no excuse. The rest of the conversation was fairly meaningless, but I really just needed to rest my legs. Eventually I headed out again to go watch the stream, which she said sometimes had fish swimming in it. I met this guy who was also watching the water, who turned out to be from Spring, but he didn't seem to remember much about Houston, so we didn't dwell on it. Eventually his wife came out of the gift shop, and for some reason the gift shop lady told her that I was walking back to the bus stop, so the wife offered to drive me back to it. I was quite relieved.

There were only two other streets of West Vancouver I really wanted to walk down, so I took the 2 buses and the ferry back. First was this awesome street with restaurants one after another. I was planning on heading to Chinatown to pick up something cheap like the hostel guy suggested, so I stayed on the bus. I got off at the end at the beach called "English Bay". It's the southern edge of the huge park, so there were lots of joggers and people just sitting around.

The place I got off was also the start of the other street I was told to walk down. It was immediately apparent with the continuous rainbow flags all the way down the street what the area was known for. Aside from excessive coloration however, it was a perfectly normal residential/commercial area. In fact, I think it was just for its reputation that they seem to flaunt the theme so emphatically, but otherwise, there would be no way of knowing. I'm fairly certain the vast majority walking through were just m/f couples walking their dog.

At the end of the rainbow flags, I hopped on a bus back towards Chinatown. The bus driver mentioned as I was getting off that most people don't visit at night though. I didn't think much of it til I started walking around. There wasn't a single store open in the entire Chinatown area (except this one coffee house). Instead of the thousands of Chinese walking around like in the morning, it was filled with the homeless people that usually occupied the area 2 or 3 blocks north of Chinatown. I quickly took a turn back towards my hostel and ate at Subway instead.

The hostel was surprisingly alive at night. There were two rooms with couches. The room I was in had like 8 people all with their laptops out. To my knowledge, I'm the only one from the US. There were a few from East Canada, but the vast majority were foreigners. The hostel desk clerk did tell me most of the visitors were German. No one seemed to make an effort to really socialize with other people, so I was perfectly ok on my computer ignoring the rest of them too. When I went to my room though, I'm pretty sure the guy either hasn't done laundry in weeks, or he doesn't shower, cause it definitely smelled like a locker room.
vancouver

Today was the worst navigational failures I've ever experienced. Though I did hit all the destinations I set out for, it usually took me quite a bit longer than desired.

The ship pulled into the dock at 7:30, which was too early to really do anything, so I walked around a bit, and then headed to the hostel to check in. The hostel front desk employee was incredibly helpful, and gave me a lot of advice in cheap alternatives to things. I didn't really plan the logical order of things, so I just went greedy-search style and picked the closest destination.

It was still early so I head off toward Historic Chinatown, which was only 2 blocks away. It's just a traditional downtown Chinatown, like 5 blocks by 3 blocks, market style. It's composed mostly of older people who only spoke Cantonese. I did catch a few phrases of mandarin, but even those had an accent. There wasn't much to do there, it's all just meat, seafood, herb shops everywhere, kind of like walking through a market in Asia. There was this Sun Yat Sen park/garden, but the garden required an entrance fee. The park just had a pond in the middle, with a little gazebo thing next to it, nothing spectacular. It was like the one part of Chinatown with a bunch of white people.

Adjacent to the north of Chinatown was the homeless people area (the hostel guy told me about it). The police turn a blind eye to their drug use openly on the street, and in exchange, they don't get violent with pedestrians, so I was told it's safe to walk through there. He also mentioned there are many organizations that provide food, shelter, even clean needles there, so their needs are generally met. On top of that, the government provides wellfare checks to them, which since they have no expenditures, goes straight back into drugs. Also, the police don't raid nor kick them out, so it's a pretty great system for them. The entire place smells of alcohol and urine, so I took a quick sweep and left.

North of the shady area and along the coast was this street called Gastown, around a street called Water St. It's mainly a trendy area with a bunch of cafes and stuff. It's main attraction was this steam powered clock. It blows a horn instead of ringing a bell like traditional clock towers, but in general it works the same. It even has an adjustable pipe, so it can change the pitch and play songs.

Prior to arriving to Vancouver, I decided to visit the "Lookout" which was just some observation deck on top of an office building, but it costs like $9 for students. The hostel guy told me there's an alternative with a better view. On top of the landmark hotel was a rotating restaurant, which had a lounge to just sit at if you order a drink. I found out once I got into the elevator that they were only open at night, so I had to come back later, but I got an awesome rotating view + a drink for $7.

At this point, I had already walked across town like twice, and I already had to sit down to rest, but little did I know the day had only begun. The next closest event was the seabus that took you across the channel to North Vancouver, which apparently is the actual city name. The locals call vancouver proper as "West Vancouver". Another large attraction in Vancouver is the Capilano Suspension bridge, which was sort of made into an amusement park, with totem poles and stuff, so they can charge $22 to get in. The hostel guy told me on the other side of the city was another canyon, but a free suspension bridge. The seabus was this ferry, that took you across, but it gave an awesome view of the downtown skyline as you rode it. The embarking/disembarking was a pretty cool process. The boat would slowly enter the building, and then a set of ramps would be lowered onto both sides. One side was for exiting, and the other side for entering. It was pretty efficient. I have pictures.

Once I got to the other side, I had no idea which buses would take me to the canyon, I had yet to learn to use the bus map. Someone told me to catch the #4 bus, but for some reason, the bus wasn't on the map, so I had no idea where it was going. I saw a park at some point and hopped off, but unfortunately it was nowhere near where I wanted to be. I found a bus that would take me to the bottom of the canyon, so I took it. Once I got there, I was like, sure I'll walk up the park, see some scenery; the hostel guy had said he took his kids to swim here all the time, so I figured it was nice. The park was only 2 inches on the map, how bad could it possibly be... The bottom half of the park was really nice, it was essentially a walking path, very little elevation change with really large gravel paths. People walked their dogs without leashes and the dogs never had any problems. I did see some uncooperative little dogs on leashes. My conclusion is I'm going to get myself a big dog. The surroundings was the temperate rain forest with plenty of moss everywhere. I didn't get a chance to see nature at any of the alaskan cities, so I figured this was a good opportunity. At some point however, it started to go uphill and the walking path became a hiking path. It was ridiculous. I found a lady later on walking her dog, and she's like, "the bridge is far far away." I had no idea how to exit the hiking trail, nor how I would take a bus up there, so I just kept going. 2 miles of hiking, exiting the trail, 2 miles of walking, 2 buses, and another half mile of walking later, I got to the bridge. It's really hard to determine your direction when you don't see the sun the entire day. It was just a typical suspension bridge. I met a group of asian tourists there, who were ever so slowly crossing the bridge. I was fine with it, since my acrophobia kicked in. I had to keep telling myself, "you're in your 20s now, you can't be paranoid like you were the last time you were here 10 yrs ago". The bridge did feel like it was constantly rotating, but I saw that there were enough ropes to ensure that wouldn't happen. On the way back, I got over it, and laughed at a bunch of girls saying how scared they were in Chinese.

End of part 1.
the cruise

The cruise had no internet, the precious minutes at the hotspots had to be reserved for emailing and facebook of course.

Day of Cruise
After such a productive day before, I had a busy day planned. The cruise leaves officially at 9pm. I told my parents I would show up at the airport at 3pm when their flight arrives, but I was decently confident there were shuttles from downtown Anchorage as well.

First in the morning, I walked toward the bus stop, but I caved and got McDonald's for breakfast. Then it was off to the hatchery. 2 buses which took like an hour, and a mile walk later, I found a sign saying the hatchery was closed for construction... Then I walked a mile back to the bus stop, took another bus back to downtown. I was so bitter and tired that I decided to go to the boat early. I went to the convention center, which turned out to be the location of the shuttle after all. They had buses leave on the hour from like 12 til 4. Lucky for me, they had one spot left on the noon bus. Apparently no one travels alone go figure, so I got that ticket. Why they had the cruise depart from a port 1.5 hrs away from Anchorage is beyond me.

The driver told us the history of it (Whittier, AK). It was during WWII, and apparently Alaska was in a strategic location to Japan. Whittier was a deep water port, and in an area with almost constant cloud cover, which he said was ideal for a military base. The problem, like most Alaskan cities, was that it was surrounded by mountains. They had to drill a huge tunnel. For years it was only trains that could use the tunnel. Cars had to get on some flatbed train which transported it across. Now, the tracks were modified to allow cars to drive on it, though it's only one way, so every few minutes, the direction reverses, which requires some terrible logistics.

I got on the boat (Island Princess), which was smaller than I expected. There were 14-15 floors, only 10 of which were accessible by passengers. Each floor nor only had a number, but also had some corresponding name. I was on Baja 11. Other names were like Caribe, Dolphine, Lido, etc. And of course there was no level 13. Naturally my first item on the agenda was to hit the buffet, which was somewhat disappointing. I also explored the ship. Virtually anything you wanted to do costs money, including most of the classes and activities. I played some putt putt golf, and played virtual golf during their trial period. There's also a pretty puny basketball/tennis area at the very back of the ship. For novelty they also had one of those giant chess boards next to the courts. There were also a bunch of bars, and lounges. They must make all their money from alcohol or something. Aside from that, I think the only places I spent any significant time was in the buffet room, the dining hall, and my room. Then I went back and watched a couple movies. Eventually we had a evacuation drill was practically used as some form of entertainment. We sat in the theater while the guy did some kind of routine while briefly mentioning the required statements.

Cruise
At the start of the journey, I was all gung-ho about making use of every minute, and going to as many events and shows as I could. Halfway through the day, I realized all the dance lessons, seminars, and games were catered toward older people. I quickly resorted to spending my days in my room watching tv/big bang on my computer.

The service on the ship was relatively decent. The steward actually cleaned the room twice a day. I'm not sure the difference between the two times. I think in the morning he would put on the colored bed covers, and he would take them off at night. Also, at night he would leave a piece of chocolate The dining hall servers were also delibrately entertaining. Our guy was from Romania, though I was almost positive he was Italian at first. He definitely had an italian accent and reminded me nothing of Sra. Frunza. He picked up a bunch of Taiwanese/Shanghainese sayings, and didn't stop using it throughout the trip. Then there was the head waiter. I'm fairly certain his only purpose was to go around and celebrate birthdays and anniversaries. He was filipino, but he definitely knew a few Chinese songs. It was quite impressive. He sang the theme to Meteor Garden, in Chinese. On my mom's birthday, they did this thing where the guy would make a bunch of firework sounds. He'd make the whistle sound of the shell flying, and another guy would slap the menu together for the exploding sound. It was pretty entertaining. Btw, apparently the entire culinary staff was filipino. They all had hispanic sounding names, but all their name tags said Philipines.

So my trip was with largely family, and their friends. So there were a bunch of old people, and then my sister and her friend. Throughout the trip, I think I met maybe a total of 10 college students, none of which I had any inclination to have any social interaction with, so I didn't really have much to do. In retrospect, I have no idea how 7 days passed.

Skagway
This was our first stop, and possibly the smallest. It has a population of 800 people, but has to host 4 or 5 cruise ships at a time. There was essentially one main streets, filled with 95% jewelry stores. One store that stood out was one that sold apparel that changed color in UV light. Most of the stuff was white/transparent indoors, and becomes colorful outdoors. We learned about the history of the gold rush to the klondike. Skagway was the entrance to one of the paths to Dawson City (the center of the gold rush).

Juneau
Pretty much the entire city hated Palin. They were all excited at her recent resignation. Pretty much all there was to do was go to a nearby glacier. It was a nice view, but nothing was falling off or anything. The tour guide was a native alaskan, and told us about some of their culture. In the area, the everybody was classified as a Eagle or Raven or some other animals. To prevent "inbreeding", you couldn't marry somebody of your own family. The animals were passed down through the mother. If the tribe found out you ran away with someone of the same animal, they would hunt you down and forcibly separate you.

Ketchikan
It was independence day. We went off the ship eager to get to the Totem pole park, but there was a parade which impeded public transit temporarily. The silly girls shopped near the boat until the parade happened. Then we died of boredom watching the parade. I think like half the city came out on whatever vehicles they owned and just drove down. There were several floats of high school reunions. It was kind of depressing the '79 group was louder than the '89 group, which was louder than the '99 group. After the parade, waited at the bus stop for an hour, before the party decided it wasn't worth it. I was quite content spending that time at the internet cafe.

In retrospect though, my $500 cruise + $74 tip, was not a terrible deal. If I took half a room at any decent hotel, it would be about $50-75. 7 nights, that comes down the $350+. Furthermore, if you pretend you were going to Alaska anyways, you need a trip back, so this gets you to Vancouver, which would probably cost another $200 or so. Then food every day, assuming 2 normal restaurant meals and a nice meal, that would easily be $40-50 per day, then there's the random afternoon snacks and free room service. I'm fairly certain they don't rely purely on our cruise cost, but they need all the profits from all the stores they own on-shore, and all the shore-excursions they host, and all the alcohol, and random spurious expenditures they trick you into doing, to make up for all their costs.

Monday, 29 June 2009

meandering in anchorage

Just to clarify, no it does not ever get dark in alaska during the summer. I woke up when the other guy in the room came home at like 3 in the morning. It was at about the luminosity of dusk; I definitely thought it was morning until I checked my cell. I'm eternally grateful I bought those eye shades before I came.

Furthermore, I found out Anchorage is surrounded by 6 mountain ranges. How a semi-circle of mountains can be split into 6 ranges is beyond me. Most of the mountains are about 6000 ft in altitude. Mt. Mckinley (like 200 miles away) is 20,000. If it didn't cost $200 to take the train there and back, I would definitely go see it. The tour guide says that on a clear day, the mountain could be seen from the city, though he said most of the time, even if you were right next to it, you still couldn't see the peak due to the constant cloud cover.

So have you ever had one of those days where everything just lines up?

The tour guide says anchorage has been cloudy/rainy almost continually for the last month. Today it was perfect weather. Sunny and decently warm, I believe in the upper 60s.

I started off my day waking up at like 9:30. I found out a bowl of cereal at this hostel costs $3, and decided against it. I walked to the nearest intersection of two seemingly large streets on google maps. There was largest mcdonald's I've ever seen (aside from the one on I-drive in orlando). Since I live a block from a mcd's, I decided to try out the Carl Jr's across the st. They have a pretty brilliant marketing plan. Outside of the restaurant, there are signs for their $1 breakfast croissant, and $1.50 burger or something. Inside however, there was nothing on the menu less than $2.50. Of course if you order the items, they'll serve them to you, but I suppose the idea is attract you with low price items, and then entice you with all the pictures of delicious looking things once you get inside.

Due to it being Sunday, the first bus wasn't until like 10:45, so I explored the area. I found an internet cafe, and this random building called "The Alaska Club". It didn't look like a gym, cause all the outside facing rooms were offices, so I definitely thought it was some political organization or something (google says it is a fitness center).

Eventually the #7 bus came, taking me in a huge circle all the way to this area called "Dimond". It took over 45 minutes for the bus to loop all the around (compared to a taxi which later took only 12 or so). Up to this point, my exposure to Anchorage commerce was almost exclusively local stores (besides fast food). I haven't seen a known grocery, electronic, convenience, restaurant, etc anywhere. It's almost as if the city stopped developing after the boom in the '80s (which is probably what happened). At the end of the bus route was this area called the Dimond Center. Every franchise I could think of was at that intersection. The shuttle driver says the area developed around some company that programmed something for the pipeline, I have my doubts.

Here's where the awesome day started. It was quite confusing at the end of the bus line, because there were 3 stops around the center, and everyone (minus 3-4 of us) got off at the second one. It didn't look like the end of the line, which is where I thought I needed to be, but I figured I could just ride the bus back a stop if it was the wrong one. As I got off the bus at the last stop, the shuttle to the Alaska Zoo was right in front of me. I walked on and the bus took off.

The zoo was pretty amazing. It didn't feel commercialized. The paths were all gravel or boards. Even walking up to the ticket desk, I was pretty sure I was going the wrong way because it was a dirt path and kind of went around some building. The zoo had exclusively animals from northern North America. I learned that reindeer = caribou, and grizzly = brown. The brown bear was definitely just sitting on the floor, so I had very poor pictures of it. The polar bear though was plenty active, running around the exhibit as well as swimming in the pool. There were also black bear cubs, baby moose, and a newborn mustox. Furthermore, the zoo had yaks, tigers, lynx, fox, bald eagles. My favorite though was the snow leopard. Its exhibit was a mountain-face facade. When I walked up, it climbed to the top, and just sat there as if it was posing for the camera. Quite the beautiful specimen. I bought a stuffed animal of it, and named it "felix" ("F" is next on my list for animal naming).

Leaving the zoo, I started talking to this couple who was on the shuttle with me on the way to the zoo. I no longer remember anything about them, since I've talked to like 5 other groups of people since then, but I remember them saying how dumb cruises were. Anyways, we got back to the Dimond Transit Center, and we sat there debating which of four buses would get us to downtown quickest. Pretty much all four would arrive there at the same time (an hour later). The couple figured that was too long, and called a taxi, and offered me a ride with them. At this point, I had given up my plans to visit the Alaska Native Heritage Center (due to bus schedule misalignment). The couple was staying at the Sheraton, which is the last stop for the heritage center shuttle. Coming up to the hotel, I realized the couple had told the driver to drop us off at some other place nearby. There was still 5 minutes left, so I asked the taxi to take me to the hotel when they got off (and they paid for the trip). After getting off at the hotel, I ran inside to ask the concierge, and then ran out the other side just as the shuttle drove up. It was quite the miracle.

The heritage center is for native alaskans obviously, which are composed of several groups which I don't care to remember. The site was situated like Epcot: a lake in the middle with sites of different groups around the sides. Apparently none of them used igloos. Each of the sites had some native alaskan teenager inside answering questions. Most of them were fairly informative, except this one girl who definitely didn't look like she knew anything about her heritage, and didn't appear to want to be there. Afterwards they had this session on the "Alaskan Games". Most involve hitting this ball hanging from a string using different techniques. There's a height advantage in almost all of them. At the end, this group did numerous dances for us. It was very odd because every dance they did, they would introduce it in the beginning with who wrote it and what it means. Most of them were written in the last 20 years, and were all written by people like "Sam Jones" and "Bob Smith" or very American sounding names. Then when the dancers introduced themselves, it was always some super exotic thing that required tranlation. A few things I learned was that although the culture is still patriarchal, family heritage is passed down through maternal parentage. Also, "Eskimo" means "eater of raw meat", so many alaskan groups consider themselves eskimos, none of which use igloos (Inuit in Canada).

Just as a side note, the influx of tourists on cruises is tremendous in Alaska. Pretty much anywhere you go, you'll meet people waiting to get on a boat, or just on a land excursion from a boat. Of the 6 groups or people I talked to, 4 of them were going on the cruise I'm getting on tomorrow. Also, some small towns like Ketchikan double in population when cruises get in. That's just mind boggling. The city is already supposedly using every possible inch of space (due to the steep mountain ranges surrounding it). How is it possible that 10,000 people can unload into it?

Afterwards, I visited the open air market, where I found that reindeer is the local delicacy. At the market, there were lots of ads for the wimax service here, which is provided by at&t, which is strange since Clearwire is here too.

At night, I went on a Segway tour. It came to me pretty naturally. I kept asking him to up the governor on the thing (The thing came with 3 speed limits, 6mph, 8mph, and 12mph). We really didn't get to see anything, but I thorougly enjoyed riding the segway around. Even being on a tour was a miracle though. Usually, the guy only offers 3 tours a day, which have been booked for the past couple of days. There was this one girl however who came for some science competition from Wisconsin, and the teacher somehow convinced this guy to offer another tour afterwards. When I called in the morning, he let me join them on this night tour. Somehow, although every tour in the last few days have been booked, nobody else got into this one, so instead of 8 people being on the tour (the usual), only there was only three of us. The Wisconsin people were going to meet some people in two hours, so the guy skipped like one site, and dropped the price from $65 to $45. Meeting the Wisconsin people was kind of fun. It was the first person I got to talk to that was near my age. She participated in this science fair like thing, that had to be related to water. The project involved testing the sizes of certain particles and the effect on certain acquatic species. It all sounded kind of boring to me, but I was fairly impressed that the high school offers a "Independent Science Research" class. She was the state winner of Wisconsin, and came up for nationals. The wiinner goes on to stockholm. How people come up with 50 different projects about water is beyond me.

I hadn't eaten salmon yet, which I figured was a waste. The guy recommended a nice bar (the only place nearby he could think of in my price range) to eat at afterwards, named Humpy's (it's the name of a specie of salmon). It was the first time that I have ever been carded. I thought it would be odd to eat at a bar by myself. I saw this one lady at a large table by herself, and sat down with her. She came up for a nephew's wedding or something. She's from Santa Clara, and is like the most liberal person I've ever met. I'm pretty sure she's against all social constructs. She definitely bashed home owner associations for a while. She mentioned visiting a relative in northern Houston, and said if she had to live in that kind of "community" (aka suburbs), she'd have to kill herself. In the beginning of the conversation she started ranting about how divorcees can claim their husband's social security forever (until they get remarried). She says her sister has had kids with this one man who are like in their 30s, and she's been living with this guy for over 30 years, but refuses to get married because she nets more money taking her husband's social security. I have to admit it is kind of messed up, but I can see the merits when it originated (in the Great Depression). It occured to me like an hour later that she was kind of drunk; she kept laughing excessively animatedly, but maybe that's just how she acts . She told me about her travels through Alaska, and all the things she's seen. There's this governmental ferry that goes up and down the Alaskan coast (kind of like a cruise, but without the amenities, though with the same price), and stops at all these tiny towns.

I then took a 32 block walk home through some not-so-nice parts of town. On the map it looked pretty close, but I guess when I start on 3rd ave, and I'm supposed to end up on 36th, it should give me an idea of what to expect. I did find a b&n and a walmart along the way, which was good since I had forgotten to buy some basic things. Because the city is so old and underdeveloped (in the areas I walked through), it has a certain feel that's different from others. Every building, even ones that appear to currently be in use, has very little color nor design. It's usualy white, and square. The buildings are also spread far apart. One of the shuttle drivers was saying how the period of strip mall development was one of the periods of recession in Anchorage. The first mall here opened up at 9% capacity she said. Also, oil drilling has been significantly decreasing (probably much more with the current government), and currently the pipeline only runs at 50% capacity. One of my tour guides was saying, he wonders what's going to happen to the state's economy when it ends. Currently oil nets 70% of the state's income. I suspect tourism is the other 30%.

Now I'm sitting in the hostel, and the manager of the place randomly came over to talk to me. Either she is severely strange, or highly stoned. She hasn't stopped talking in the last 15 minutes. I have shown little to no interest, but somehow, she keeps going. She pretty much told me her life story about her current and previous boyfriends, and how many times she had to move, and all the things she gave up for these guys. I never fully understood why she's running this place, and who she's doing this favor for. She tells me that her current bf is like extremely "spiritual" and is like "master of masters" in "some asian kung fu martial arts thing", "way above black belt". She says that he had problems with several exes because they had messed up "spirits" or something, and that she had a "simple spirit". He's also like super OCD; she's not allowed to go into his kitchen, and the toilet lid has to be put down "to prevent the evil spirits from escaping" or something. This whole "conversation" went on while I was typing on my computer with minimal eye contact. Ironically, she walked up initially saying "I don't want to disturb you or anything", then proceeded to talk excessively loud (during "quiet hours") so that I'm sure everyone in adjacent rooms could've heard her perfectly. I asked an employee later about her, and they confirmed she's just strange, no drugs required.