morocco: in retrospect by essaouira

sitting inside this capsule, i travel west towards my home.

home

i dont even know where that is anymore. the more i go on these trips the more distant everthing else becomes. morocco was such an unexpected turn in what i thought i knew. the sixth continent yet to visit and it only happens to be the tip of a big big sub-saharan iceberg. 7 years almost sailed by without giving this chunk of dirt a visit and its now that i realize i've missed so much. 

the cradle of civilization is what they call this place. maybe not morocco exactly but i'm definitely closer to it that i've ever been.  i'm not going to pretend to say that i've got this place figured out because i'm far from it. 

but what i will say is that from the minute of landing and interacting with the moroccans, i sensed something familiar. kind of like seeing that side of the family you vaguely remember as a kid

i was only in essaouira for a day and a half but things kind of clicked here. not exactly sure how or why it came to be.

i thought about the man who showed us his beautiful riads full of beautiful & magnificent hand woven rugs, i thought about magic greeting us at our hostel door in essaouira probably baked out of his mind struggling to check us in, i thought about the night i walked out of a random marrakeshi barbeshop having experienced one of the best shaves in my life while laughing and having a great time. 

all of these moments, they all congealed in essa.

to essa, the sleepy town that woke me.

a stranger: eid in marrakesh

it hasn't been but a few days since i last walked the streets of marrakesh during the holy day but the sights and smells of that day are still quite fresh in my mind. 

the day began with some tea and bread atop the hostel roof terrace. junice and i met up with stephanie and edith, two french girls we had the pleasure of befriending over the weekend. we quickly stuffed our faces with bread dipped in fresh apricot marmalade and walked downstairs. 

as we meandered through the dusty streets, i noticed something strange. the daily buzz of running children, motorcycle engines, local haggling, all of it was non-existent. the streets were all filled with an eerie calm. i looked at the time and it was 10:07am, which meant that the residents of marrakesh had already begun the slaughter. i'm not sure what exactly i was expecting, it was all just very strange.

by the time we got to souks market and medina square, we found it to be practically empty. no henna tattoo artists, no snake charmers, no monkey wranglers, all were gone for eid. we kept walking and spoke with a man we had met the previous night while i was getting my beard trimmed (an experience in it of itself). he recommended we check the tombs next to the palace walls, or something like that. we walked towards the direction he pointed us but when we got there we found it to be closed. 

it was a bummer at first, but we kept walking, aimlessly really. after a few beats though, we found ourselves in small corridors deep inside the unknown neighborhoods. this is the part where things really began to get interesting. 

as we walked through these long skinny corridors the light and mood of the place began to change. a teenager walk outside with a basket filled with freshly stripped sheep skin, wool intact; they were practically sweaters. he gave us a kind smile and quickly walked past us and headed to God knows where. i looked at the girls and even though they didn't really want to verbalize it, they knew what was up. deeper and deeper into this catacomb, we would see the same thing, but then it changed from sheepskins to stomachs, then limbs and eventually heads. 

from the corner of my eyes i would see doors opening and quickly closing as we walked past by them. "what was behind them!" was all i kept asking myself. my curiosity burned until i finally saw an opening. a little girl with mom opened a door and were about to quickly close it but i smiled, waived and yelled "salaam!" the mother slowly opened the door and returned the greeting. behind her, hanging from the roof, the fresh carcass of a naked sheep hung freely. the husband was right next to it and he waived at me with his butchers knife. i asked for permission to take a picture and he smiled and said of course. the girls were behind me the whole time and they were troopers, mostly. edith was probably the most visibly affected by the sight of the hanging carcass. 

we began to move our feet again. the streets now began to come alive as bikes quickly and sometimes dangerously zoomed by us as they carried their precious cargo of random sheep flesh - one bike actually crashed head on with a french or spanish woman. she was ok i think - outside homes teenage boys pulled out wood and old metal mattress frames and other types of metal amalgamations. soon after this was when the heads began to show up. once the fire was going, homes would bring out the heads of their former livestock and began placing them on the street fires to cook. it was definitely a sight to see. we came across a group of teenagers who were in charge of one of the many fires and asked them if we could take pictures, they said sure. 

we came across more of these as we walked and edith and stephanie's curiosity of the burning heads led us to ask a group of both teenagers and elders exactly whay they did with the heads. in a nutshell, this is what they told us: 

we cook the head, we crack the head, we eat the brains, we eat the tongue, and we eat whatever is in the middle. 

sounded wonderful to me

it was barely one in the afternoon when we got back to our hostel. everything was pretty much closed in marrakesh so i went to my room, laid in bed and reflected on the events that had just transpired. 

and i continue to still do so 

tight connections

friday, october 3rd, noon-ish. 

i'm currently on my third and final leg of my journey to marrakech, morocco and its been nothing but hail mary moves to get to where i'm at right now. yesterday began with me snoozing through all of my alarms and finally waking at around 8am for my 8:25am flight to philly; needless to say, i missed my flight. 

the panic light inside my head began to blink as i aimlessly scrambled through my room. i opened the laptop and began to lookup all east coast cities i could fly to that could take me to madrid with enough connection time to hop on my flight to marrakech. i began to loose hope until i saw an iberia flight from jfk to mad leaving at 8:55pm EST. and wouldn't you know it, there just so happened to be a flight with virgin america to jfk leaving at 10:30am. 

i burned through almost an hour on my web quest so by the time i showered and had all of my gear ready, it was 9:10am. pasadena to lax at that time is not the prettiest drive but luckily i bought myself a fastrak transponder from costco a few months ago so i was able to get to lax by 10:00am. another smart investment i made a few months ago was getting global entry, which included tsa pre-check and had me in and out of security in under 5 minutes; worth every penny! i got to gate 36 by 10:15am and just in time for final call. 

a few hours and several sam adams later, i landed at jfk and hit the ground running. we landed in terminal 4 and iberia was at terminal 7, by the time i got on the airtrain it was almost 7:20pm. i didn't have much cash on me and i knew there was a chase atm in jetblue's terminal 5. it was going to be tight but i quickly got off and made the long walk across the sky-walk towards terminal 5. i spotted the atm but not before also noticing the dunkin donuts halfway down the ticket counter. precious seconds ticked away as i contemplated my decision, but in reality it wasn't even one, deep down i knew i was going to get myself a coffee and bagel, how could i not.

i raced back up the ramp and hopped on the airtrain towards terminal 7. i finally reached the iberia counter and all i can think of is the warm round gooey goodness that's inside my bag. i inhale my bagel in seconds and dashed towards the iberia counter: it was 8:06pm and jose, the iberia agent told me the flight was closed for check-in. i took a long sip from my delicious dunkin donuts coffee and made my case. he must've felt sorry for me because next thing i know, he's calling the gates and after a few spanish exchanges with his supervisor, he gives me a boarding pass with a row all to myself. i thank him and again i'm off to the races, get through security and get to gate 4: it is 8:35pm. 

once boarded, all good, mellow was what i thought up until we began our taxi to the runway. the ground traffic in jfk was bananas so we spent an hour in a conga line waiting to take-off, which ate away at my tight connection in madrid. when we finally landed and deplaned, the time was 11:10am and the flight out to marrakech left at 12pm. i didn't have a boarding pass for my flight, which usually means you have to go past security and re-check at the ticket counter; i definitely did not have time for that. just my luck, i came across an iberia full service counter and spoke with a kind agent who helped me out and was able to print me my boarding pass and also give me a seat assignment. i thanked her very much and sped walk towards gate s23. it was 11:30 by the time i reached the gate and not only did i get there with enough time but my two friends were there waiting for me.

so now i'm back, here, where i first began flying across the straight of gilbratar unsure of what will happen in the next few moments and looking forward to the next set of tight connections. cheers

 

marrakesh impression

atop the roof terrace of the equity point hostel in marrakesh, morocco, the ladies of the kitchen staff bicker amongst each other and hurriedly shuffle across to get breakfast started. it was supposed to have been ready 40 minutes ago but apparently someone took the terrace keys last night and forgot to drop them off at the downstairs lobby. 

it hasn't been a full 24 hours since i made landfall but marrakesh's charm has already begun to take a strong hold. 

i'm not quite sure when it started

maybe it happened during our drop off, when our taxi left us on the outskirts of the medina and a gentle giant appeared pushing a crate on wheels. he asked us where we were going and offered to carry our roller bags and lead the way. 

it probably happened during our walk around the market square as a man approached me and had a snake wrapped around my neck while somehow making me feel safe next to a pair of lethal moroccon cobras.

also, the man with the toothless smile and shriveled hand might've played a big part if only he didn't tell me that he had leprosy in the hand i that i just shook.

nah, it must've been when we rolled up to one of the many food shacks outside souks market and literally came head to head with goats and lambs, and shortly after their tongues and brains.

to tell you the truth, my head is still spinning by marrakesh's hustle and flow. there is no denying that the people of this city are hustling, and they're doing it hard. but underneath all of that, the human element is very much so alive in the sense that the smile and kind eyes that first approached you never fade; they remain. even when they try and insist that you really need, YOU NEED to buy a black rock that can only found in the atlas mountains. 

batam, i dont know where to start

it hasn't even been 2 months but again i find myself in indonesia; this time with the gf :)
this time its on the island of batam.

not much to do on this island but all was good, we made the most of it.

we stayed at the ace hotel next to the massive nigoya mall and ventured out on day 3, had ourselves brekkie and then decided to check out the local beach next to turin. the experience? 

interesting.

the taxi dropped us off in front of these village huts. i turned to the driver and he looked right back. yep, this was it.

he didn't know much english but he did nod, which at this point was at an all-time high. 

this was definitely our stop.

Amerie and I looked at each other and began to walk towards the shore. we meandered through rickety old wooden planks and find the shore.
indonesian families in the dozens all strewn across the shallow beach,
naked toddlers running here and fro,
the serious and stern looks of middle-aged indonesian men all pointed directly at us.  

i hold Am's hand tight and do what i always do in these situations,

i smile and walk as if my feet were light as feathers.

after a good mile of walking we took a little break and lay our beach towel. we settle next to a family and take everything in. its nice
we resume our walking and find ourselves at the edge of the cove in a park where groups of 10-20 indonesians deep were cooking goodness, dancing, and having a great time. 

we didn't not want to stick around much longer so we began to walk back to see if we could find a cab to turin beach but no cabs were to be seen. we walked along the highway in the humid and heavy indo heat and after a few close calls, we found a random ferry terminal that had shuttle services to turin beach.

i guess i should also mention here that this is when the food poisoning began.

yes, again.

i was and currently still am suffering the symptoms of food poisoning. not as severe as the first time in bali, but the diarrhea; well, it hasn't been pretty. Amerie also wasn't feeling all that great but we held it together. 

ok, so we found turin beach and its pretty much controlled by the island resorts and the shuttle that took us there spent almost an hour touring around the enclave of the resort villas. 

we finally made it and my stomach wasn't feeling that great. thankfully the resorts had amazing and beautifully scented washrooms.


we made our way along the resort grounds and they sure did cut themselves a nice slice of beach. it was nice even with the patchy clouds looming around.



the moral of the story?
getting food poisoning sucks.
getting food poisoning a 2nd time in less than 2 months sucks even more.

but seriously, even in the midst of difficult and challenging circumstances, your company will always be the breaking or selling point. it truly reveals someone's character and i was so blessed to have spent it my gorgeous angel.

the last time i was in indonesia i felt like i was going to die. this time i had Amerie with me :)
my singaporean ray of light. 

yardhouse love

its been almost a year since i barbacked at the yardhouse. 

it was a short lived 7 month stint. i met some amazing people...really really bad ones as well. a few foot injuries, numerous pints of brew and delicious plates later, i write and retrospect.

with no doubt, i know that the restaurant business is not for me. it is the succubus of jobs. but do i regret working at YH? not one bit

i remember the day i decided to apply.
i'd looked up all the restaurants on colorado blvd. and began my assault on lake and extended it to fair oaks. 

zero experiencia made me a hard sell. by the time i got to los robles, i was feeling pretty shitty. "a man can only take so much rejection" but wow, tough crowd. long story short, i finally arrived at the steps of YH. it was a long shot but i mustered the courage to walk-in and ask if they were hiring. the friendly face replied with a very familiar, "we're always accepting new applicants". but she mentioned that on tue-thurs from 2-5, they conducted open interviews.

well, it happened be tuesday around 1ish so i waited. 3 interviews and no experience later, they asked if i wanted to barback. 

this is my way of thanking YH. they gave me a chance when everyone else showed me the exit. barbackin' aint easy but i'm glad and thankful that i did it at YH. its a tight ship and they accept nothing but the best from their employees.

Grant, William, and Karl: thanks for giving me a shot and not taking it easy on me. 

Wilson and Fabian, couldn't have survived without your help.

***
originally posted on jonjvazj.blogspot.com

fool me once...

a few weeks ago i found myself in the warm and soft beaches of bali, indonesia. in a short 4-day span, i managed to enjoy most of what bali has to offer:

hit the bustling night-life of kuta.

 
layed out.

hopped on a questionable moped and cruised inland to the countryside for some rice paddy and ancient temple action.

and of course, i did alot of the eating. lots

i wish i could say that this trip ended well but it didn't.

long story short, i had a severe case of food poisoning. the pain was real. 

what made it worse was that it all started on the day i was to make my trip back los angeles, which included:

6-hour flight to sydney

5-hour layover 

14-hour flight to the states 

it was bad. 

not sure why i'm describing my ordeal but i'm doing it anyway. the sickness began like this:

 

feeling like a million bucks!

but then...

muscles and tendons, starting from my neck working themselves to my lower back and calves began to tense-up.

a few hours later the joints in all of my bones began to swell as if they were calcifying.

simple movements painful.

--- 6-hour flight to sydney---

i wake up mid-flight and i'm burning up yet i'm shaking from how cold i am.

a terrible headache begins to emerge just as the sun begins to rise from my window pane.

---5-hour layover in sydney---

the headache has now taken over and its become a blistering fever. 

i am weak and for the next few hours i curl up in a fetal position.

minimal movement 

its time to board and i can barely walk; luckily i'm in good company. brianne and jenny prop me up and try to make me look decent in order to avoid quarantine. a few dodgy stares and clumsy stumbles later i was in my seat. barely

---14-hour flight to la---

the headache and fever still rages but i manage to fall asleep. 

i wake up and my shirt is completely drenched as if i'd had fallen in a pool. it was gross

headache still going strong, i ask jenny for an aspirin. it helps

i fall asleep again 2 more times and same result. i'm drenched 

---home---

the fever works its course and when i land and drive home everything seems to be feeling better.

...but then the diarrhea kicks in. hard 

the next 3 days my body rejects everything, even water. nothing stays

at the end of it all i lost 10 lbs. and i'm sure some chunks of my lower intestine.

ok, so what's the moral of the story?
i don't know. but i guess its take a second look at your food. especially when you're in indonesia. 

rio de janeiro: dia 1

The flight landed 20 minutes early. half hour later, i cleared customs and immigration. countless stantions were strewn across the airport but no bodies to fill them with. Something tells me that this is not the norm. I make my way through the corridor of welcome, the point where people hold signs with names, the place where the people hug and kiss. Taxi drivers are hawks and quickly spot me. I quicken my pace and walk outside. A blue bus called the real bus is what I'm scanning for; I find it. I wait about 10 minutes and off I go. The busses in rio are nuts in a tokyo drift kind of way.

I have some what of a rough sketch of where the bus is supposed to go and stop. Still, I miss my stop but manage to find my hostel with ease. The hostel is a story in it of itself, one which I've included in the post below.

An hour later I was gone and on the road again.

Here's the thing about the busses in rio, if you don't deliberately waive them down to the point where it almost becomes a fist pump, they will not stop! It took me a few tries but I finally caught one.

Another hour on the bus and I finally reached my hostel. The staff was great.  I was given a key to my room but most importantly the door had a knob!

The rest of the day I spent it walking through Ipanemas' board walk, had myself an amazing dinner with an even more amazing dessert! Some kind of coconut pudding cake. Bomb

I met some chill Americans at the hostel, had some local brew. Laughter and insults followed. I was in my bed by 11pm.

rio nature hostel: a review

since they took half of my cash, i think its only fair that i express my thoughts about the place. to be fair, if their "policy" is to keep half of the reservation when canceling then fine; my bad. but to keep half when you haven't even been there a whole hour! keep the first night's costs. but half? when the hostel isn't even fully booked? ok ok so it went down like this:

after 20-30 feet of climbing uneven slabs of concrete stairs into the sky, i finally reached the lobby. it was a stale and mosquito ridden space of fifa propaganda, walls covered in astro-turf. the receptionist gave me a quick rundown and hurriedly handed me a map and plastic bag of sheets. no key? odd.

she walks me to my room, again more steps to climb. we get there, the door knob is TAPED TO THE DOOR! i guess that's why i didn't get a key. we walk inside and there's 5 bunkbeds/10 beds inside; exactly what i had chosen on the website. what i didn't forsee though was how close in proximity they were going to be of each other. the room was no bigger than 12x12. nay! i would say 10x10! TO THE POINT where the guy next bunk would've had his grimy feet next to my pillow. 

in my head i said, ok. hey, you're here for the world cup, you've seen worse - and have i - i walked back to the lobby hung out for a bit, got on the wifi, checked in with loved ones and took it all in. but something just didn't click. the place was plain ol' sketch and when i say sketch i mean: the area, the people who were staying there, overall safety of the hostel grounds. still i dismissed these thoughts and told myself that it was no thang.

i come back to my room. i forget that my door knob is taped to the door and there goes the door knob flying into the murkiness that is my room. i finally find it and attach it back to the door. i wiggle into my space and begin making my bed. i unwrap the plastic bag and take out the bed sheets and pillow covers to see that my sheets have blotched stains on them. i freeze and close my eyes for a brief second. in my stillness again i think of other worse situations that i've been on. i hunker down and crawl to the farthest corner away from the blotches of God knows what. 

after a few minutes of looking at my rape cell, i come to the realization that this hostel is truly a piece of SHIT! i pack my stuff and head out to the lobby where i talk to the receptionist. she's real polite and in the back of her head, i know that what i'm telling her is valid. but since she's probably staying in the hostel for free, she didn't want to risk her job and still decided to keep half of what i paid.

to the owner of this hostel...you p.o.s.

i'm sure that you're not the only person who's been blinded by FIFA greed but wow, i've been to 30 plus countries and this has been one of the worse hostels i've ever witnissed. at least keep your hostel clean! and have lockers that conventional locks fit! instead of a hostel, just list this place as a brothel or a love hotel. you truly shame the name of "hostel" and trust me, that is a very hard task to do. 

anywho, if i dissaude just one person away form this hellhole, than i've done my job. trust me, just pay the extra bucks and stay at better spot. that's all i have to say. 

in between australia and singapore

a lot has changed over the past few months.

i don't know where to begin but to point to the biggest and most important change.

(taipei, taiwan)

her name is Amerie.

(taipei, taiwan)

and she's completely rocked my world.

australia changed everything, which is why i couldn't finish my last post.

during the last hour of the flight, as i was trying to sum up my time, i couldn't find the right words to describe sydney. 

(sydney, australia)

4 months later, i can clearly see how sydney wouldn't have been the same without her. i am truly one lucky dude to have found such a loving and understanding woman like Am. 

alright, so long story short.

after a few fights, flights and breakdowns (mostly on my part), i find myself in my girlfriend's homeland: singapore!

australian expectations

i just woke up. my sleep consisted mostly of scattered fragments. i didn't fly first class but luckily i had the complete row to myself making the 14-hour long journey that much bearable. i jab the window shade up; the sun has barely peeked its finger through the cloudy horizon. at the moment i'm soaring on a boeing 777-300er and my carrier is no other than virgin australia. 

i have about an hour and half left before i land in lax and it all still feels so surreal. australia!

--- 4 months later ---

yeah, and 4 months LATER it still feels surreal.

especially since i'm writing this from the inside of a mall in the city/state of singapore!