Greetings from Bangkok!

(Note: cc'd to Stuart, Sharon and John and Pat so I can keep them posted.)

Nice notes on the Berlitz approach. I was struck by one point in one of my books about teaching language. The author said that good responses should be indicated and praised--but not overly so. Don't want to give the idea that learning a language is difficult.

All I can say about this city right now is, "Wow!" My head reeled during my first experience on the street. The crush of people and cars and pollution, the intoxicating smells from street food vendors made me dizzy when I first waded into the streets outside my hotel. I'm glad that I had some experience in Europe facing new cultures, new languages and new conventions in social interaction before I got here. If I hadn't, I'm not sure I would enjoy myself so much. The culture clash is profound, as I'm sure you understand from your travels in Asia.

Duk's sister Pee Goiy met me at the airport. She brought along another of Duk's sisters, whose name I don't recall. They were very nice, though their English is weaker than Duk's. Still, it was great to have native speakers at my side to negotiate prices. The cab ride from the gorgeous, brand-new international airport was ฿600 (about $20), and it took about 30 minutes to get to my hotel.

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The feeling that I'm leaving home again for an adventure far across the globe didn't hit me like a wallop this time. When I left to join the mv Grand Princess nine months ago, I felt a wave of emotion on an American Airlines MD-80 en route from San Jose, Calif. to Houston, Tex. My eyes welled up with tears, and I felt my heart reach out to Santa Cruz, Calif., my home of the last 18 years, as if to pull me back before I had a chance to travel almost half a world away.

Today I sit along a corridor in one of the international terminals Thon Yuan Airport in Taipei, Taiwan, and I realize that my only recent moment of travel sadness, or departure anxiety, happened a week ago as I drove from Santa Cruz to my mother's home in Auburn, Calif. I sped north along I-680 just past Fremont, and my eyes again welled up. My heart didn't reach out to pull me back to Santa Cruz, though. After all the changes in my life during the past year, I don't feel that Santa Cruz is my home anymore. Still, I pulled off of the highway to cry for a minute or two for all the good times and all of the good friends I would leave behind me. Then I wiped my eyes and resumed my drive north.

My mother, my sister Cathee and Cathee's husband, Randy, drove me from Auburn, Calif. to San Francisco last night. After I checked in at the China Airlines counter, we took a picture together, and I walked them back to the parking garage. I hugged them all goodbye and told them I would write as soon as possible to let them know that I landed safely in Bangkok, Thailand. After an excruciatingly long flight, I have ended up here in Taipei, where I wait a couple of hours to make a connecting flight to Bangkok.

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On our previous visit to Kusadasi, a small port city on Turkey's Ionian coast, I escorted a passenger excursion to the ruins of the ancient city of Ephesus. Afterward, I took a short walk through the Grand Bazaar, one of the largest Turkish bazaars in Asia Minor, second only in size to a grander bazaar in Istanbul. Hailed every 10 meters as I walked along the broad streets of the bazaar, I quickly soured on the local shopkeepers.

“Hey, cowboy,” they called out to me, since I wore a broad-brimmed brown felt hat. “Hey, Marlboro man!”

“How are you, my brother? I just want to talk to you,” others said. Or, “You want a leather jacket to go with your hat? Spend your money in my store!”

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I had a hunch that I'd find an archetypal Greek beach experience on Mykonos. When we were here previously (about two weeks ago), I saw the beautiful water and picturesque rocky hillsides and knew that somewhere on the island were gorgeous beaches for basking in the sun and swimming. I didn't find any on that first trip, but after we had sailed away, I learned of the island's two famed beaches: Paradise Beach and Super Paradise Beach. So today, when we returned to Mykonos, I found paraside. Paradise Beach, that is.

I slept in this morning, for no good reason other than I wanted to. I finally rose a few minutes after 9am and hauled my tired butt up to the crew gym for 45 minutes on the aerobic cycle before my mind started working and before I thought better of such a crazy idea. I had run around Athens the day before, and my legs were still sore. On this cruise I have found that muscle tiredness means I need to sleep more so my body can recover. I suppose that's as good a reason as any to sleep in.

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(Following is a post I submitted to the online forums of Oceanbound Entertainment, my booking agent. The post was in reply to a member who asked for some description of a day in the life of a cruise ship musician. The full discussion thread may be found here.)

Hello.

Wow, lotta questions there. Here's a start on answering some of them--some notes about my first contract playing music on a cruise ship. After working with Marco Kasel to get organized for the gig, I departed Galveston, TX on April 28, 2007 aboard the Grand Princess. My position is sax player in the showband, which means I brought onboard alto sax, tenor sax, clarinet and flute. However, the showband has two sax players. The other player, who had been on the ship before me, decided he wanted to take the tenor chair, which put me on the alto chair. 

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 Today the ship leaves Venice after three days in port at this most-beautiful of European cities. As luck would have it, today marks a number of coincident milestones. It's a pivot point on the ship's itinerary. From here on out, we reverse direction and head generally south and west toward Gibralter. It'll take a couple weeks to get there. The ship has many stops in Greece, a few along the West coast of Italy and a couple more along the French and Spanish Riviera. Also during this stay in Venice, we exchanged our guitarist. Leaving is Troy Male, who worked with the showband during the tail end of the ship's stay in the Caribbean, for the crossing of the Atlantic and for part of the foray into the Mediterranean. Sam Pettiti, whom I met very briefly yesterday, replaces Troy, and that means I'm no longer the new guy in the band. Lastly, today marks the end of my first full month aboard.

I couldn't help but feel a little wistful as the ship glided along the Canale di San Marco and out toward the Adriatic Sea early in the afternoon. We have spent more time here than any other port I have seen, and I have explored the famed sestiere at the center of Venice enough to get a basic sense of direction. It's a city that delights the eyes at almost every turn with famous vistas. Even the deadends are picturesque, often stopping at the edge of a canal or meandering through tall residential buildings to terminate in a small piazza. Around many corners, the city delights the nose, too. I walked two and a half hours this morning to Piazza di San Marco hoping to attend a mass in the city's main cathedral. I didn't manage to get into the basilica for any service, but all during my walk I came across bakeries taking the day's wares out of the oven—fresh bread smells from one side of the city to the other.

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After climbing a mile through donkey shit on the island of Santorini, I didn't have high expectations of Mykonos, Greece. I knew of it as a favored resort of gay men, who no doubt delight in the stark use of color on all the town's buildings. Virtually every man-made surface is stuccoed and painted white, except for dashes of color on winow shutters, doors, stairways and other trim. It sounds like a cliché, but the effect in a town of some size, like Mykonos, is strikingly beautiful. Combined with a gloriously warm sun, a clear and green slice of the Mediterranean and beautiful and cosmopolitan young people, Mykonos is something of a paradise on Earth.

I only walked the town for a few hours with my touring companion of late, Pat, one of the solo pianists onboard. She and I walked down the tourist district, where souvenir shops, clothing stores and sidewalk cafes crush together along narrow pedestrian-only streets. Then we followed a winding highway up into the hills, finding some gorgeous views of the town stretching out the sea.

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Yet another perk available to crew the on this ship is free shore excursions. Space permitting, crew may sign up to tag along on tours with passengers. Some tours are elaborate day-long affairs including lunches of local cuisine. The cost can run up to $150 or even $200 depending on the length of the tour. If there's room on the buses, however, crew ride for free. The tradeoff is that crew members must be willing to serve as escorts herding passengers into the proper muster areas before they're dispatched onto air conditioned touring buses.

For our stop in Kusadasi, Turkey, I signed up to escort a short tour of ancient Ephesus, an important nearby city founded in the time of Alexander the Great. During the Roman republic, Ephesus became a Roman colony and the capital of Asia Minor, and the city later served as an important center for the apostle Paul's missionary work among the Greeks. Having read some history of the Roman empire and of Paul's travels in Greece and Asia Minor, I was quite interested to see the city where Paul preached to Ephesians assembled in the city's theatre. Where the great emperor Trajan visited, and where the emperor Constantine's mother made her home.

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After a relaxing sea day during which the ship rounded the boot of Italy and struck out to cross the Aegean Sea, we made landfall in Santorini, a volcanic island among the Greek Cyclaides. The band master had scheduled two rehearsals for the day, one in the late morning and one in the late afternoon, so I only had a narrow window of time in which to explore this famed Greek resort.

One of the solo pianists, Pat, joined me, and we set out shortly after noon. The ship had anchored just off the the town of Fila, which lies atop a ridge some 700 feet high. There's a cable car that ferries tourists to the top for 4 Euros and a donkey train that climbs to the top via a steep switchback of some 600 broad steps for 8 Euros. Thinking that we could get in an excellent workout and save the cost of tranport, I convinced Pat to join me in climbing along the donkey trail.

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It must have been in Cannes that I noticed the slim fueling stops that Europeans call gas stations. They're all over Naples, which makes sense since the city is famed for the congestion of its streets. In America, gas stations are grand plazas of fueling and automobile maintenance. In Europe, they're simple, narrow lanes off of a main thoroughfare with a couple pumps and a kiosk for the attendant.

As I walked along the streets of Naples today, I mused on this disparity, and it started to make some sense. When I left Santa Cruz to join this ship, fuel ran about $3.30/gallon. Today in Naples, I noticed that fuel was priced around 1.40 Euro/liter. To convert: Roughly 3 liters to the gallon and roughly $1.50 to the Euro puts the price of fuel in Naples today in the neighborhood of $6.50/gallon. Naturally Italians drive much smaller cars than Americans. It's the fuel economy, stupid. In Naples, a VW Golf seems relatively large among many of the tiny cars that likewise ply the streets of Italian cities. Fueling islands, therefore, are built to get in and get out quickly—and, presumably, as infrequently as possible.

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