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May 7, 2018

Flew into Panama City, via Houston, via Denver, starting in Reno? Why Denver to Houston? Kind of a challenge, adding what seemed to be a few extra hours. More importantly, it reignited my fear and loathing of the Denver airport. DIA is a modern miracle, but it sucks to fly into or out of. Forget about the frequent thunderstorms, snowstorms, of the fact that it is about an hour drive from Denver. Focus on the fact that an airport this huge has 1, no joke, 1, line for security. The very sight of the line fills me with dread,  and reminds me of the time I missed a flight for an interview in Idaho which would have changed the course of my life in pretty significant ways.  

Had my future employer not been paying so poorly, and therefore so desperate to get a decent candidate, my life would have been very different. I drove down to Denver, and back in the day before 9-11 and TIA and all that crap, if you were a United flyer, you just went to security. You could grab your boarding pass and go through security at the same spot. This is before you could check in while you were in line via the miracle of internet connectivity, but it was almost there. The line was always long, but you showed up at the airport, a mile north of Denver, hopped in line, and checked in at the front of the line, assuming you did carry on. Checking luggage was for tourists.

Bin Laden changed all that, and I hate him for it. I didn’t know, because without text alerts, I don’t know anything, that you had to check in at the United desk. So, cutting it close already, I get to the front of the line only to be confronted by a high school drop out demanding my boarding pass, plus my I.D. I brush him off, I’m a United frequent flyer with a United credit card, don’t you know. This lower level functionary had the temerity to insist that I go back to the United check in. The DIA terminal is layed out in a way that is thematically consistent with the way the airport is distanced form Denver, ie a long fucking way away. So I book it, more of an expedition than a jog, and in spite of frantically waving my arms and glowering, I’m forced to wait like a normal person. The gate agent condescends to me, metaphorically patting my head while explaining that OF COURSE they changed their policies, and after much tut tutting, she prints my pass.

Now I run back to the gate, more arm waving, more glowering, more ignoring of my most insistent verbal and non-verbal demands, and I’m in line at security not being able to sneak to the front, having to remove my damn, now stinky shoes, and then on down to the overly familiar trains.

The trains, the fact that they are needed, serves as a trigger that DIA needs more than one security line. Long story short, already missed that turn-off, but I missed my flight, and had to reschedule my interview for a job that I did in fact get, and moved to Idaho for. Should have known then, based on their willingness to accept that I missed my flight, that this was a fly by night outfit. However, I would never have moved to Boise, never had that whole experience, went to Burning Man, met all my great friends, met my wife. I probably would have found something in Denver, and had kids with some ultra-runner from Golden, and maybe learned how to fish. Dunno, hard to say, but I’m glad those crooks at DBSI were fine with hiring someone who would miss flights, in spite of the fact that traveling was a pretty big part of my job.

That said, I almost missed my flight to to Houston, which normally would be a totally acceptable outcome, but in this case would have sucked pretty bad.

How do you miss a connecting fight when you have two hours and no delays, in fact the Reno to Denver leg arrived early? Simple. You leave your favorite hat on the plane, insist on going back for it, jump on the wrong damn DIA train, which deposits you mercilessly OUTSIDE of security.

So, yes, DIA and that damn single line. I had plenty of time to grab my hat, jump on the tram, and get back to my gate, but NOT to go through security again, jump on the tram, and go two stops. For once, Jen was paying attention to her texts, and was busily schmoozing the gate agents so they wouldn’t leave without me. She didn’t have to pull the old fall down and fake a twisted ankle at the jet bridge entry, but it was close.

So, off to Houston, where I remembered my hat but forgot my travel pillow, and then to Tocumen, aka Panama City airport. No, seriously, I wasn’t drinking, at least not a lot. I think I had a glass of wine in Houston. Still, my head was not screwed on straight. Probably had something to do with the 5 a.m. departure from Reno.

After that, things seem to be settling down. Customs was surly as always, but efficient, with no extortion attempts made, like when  you go to Mexico and get to experience La Mordita, the little bite, and every turn. Also absent were the 500 guys pretending to be airport employees who are really time share salesmen. Our driver from the hotel Las Clementinas was waiting for us, super helpful, and didn’t try to sell us anything. Excellent. Life Pro Tip: If your sales pitch has to include pretending to be something, anything, but what you are, ie a time share salesman, then maybe your product is not being well accepted by the market. Bait and switch at that level has to be bad for the soul.

We head to Casco Viejo, the old part of the city. Not the original part, that was burned down by Captain Morgan. Yes, the Captain Morgan of shitty spiced rum fame. One of my earliest “couple” events with my beloved Jen was a wedding in Sun Valley, where she was ordering double Captains and diets. She was kind of cross eyed. Maybe because we were staying with my friend Julie, who had a big place in Sun Valley, where not one but two of my exes were also staying. Anyway, Jen is not the only one who has suffered melt downs at the hands of Captain Morgan, just ask Panama City.

The thing about Casco Viejo is that it was the fanciest part of Panama City, or PC, as some people try to call it. Not sure if that’s a thing yet. Anyway, it was then put into the old Real Estate cycle, and all the rich people moved out, and the poor people, mostly squatters, moved in. Then, Panama, which actually has some money since it charges like a million bucks to use the canal these days, started to invest there, and now it’s kind of like a hot, sweltering Midtown, or the bowery. Hipsters, gelato, roof top bars, some really great food, and boutique hotels. It’s kind of THE place to be. Las Clemintinas is right in there. Really nice property, without being all five star and hermetically sealed about it. Our room was right on a big patio area, and the back looked out onto a pretty run down alley that had locals living in these kind of ad-hoc junk show homes, some little local restaurant that was both iffy and really popular, and one of three gourmet/hipster burger bars on the block.

The other thing about Casco Viejo is that it is pretty easy to get lost on the narrow streets that go in all kinds of directions, and if you go a few blocks the wrong way, things get pretty favela on you pretty quick. Panama City, as far as Latin American capital’s go, is pretty nice. I’m not sure it’s any sketchier than half of Oakland before the hipsters moved in, or the neighboring junk shows that the hipsters pushed the old residents in to. Still, not the place for 51 year old white guys to be wandering around in looking for some extra toothpaste.

Which is exactly what I did. So, I’m terrible at directions. I drift off after having the first turn described, and even then I’m lucky if I make that one right. So, the super helpful desk guy tells me to go to the Rey supermarket, like a block away. I walk out, promptly go the wrong way, but hey, I’m just kind of exploring anyway, so why not. I find a really pretty bar on the shore, a few blocks down, really nice, great views of the sunset over the towers of Panama City. Walk right past the Chino (aka, convenience store run by the descendants of Chinese rail and canal workers), which had what I wanted, go up the hill, and only then do I look at google maps. Hmmm, where is el Rey? Oh, there it is. I walk a few more blocks, ignoring the fact that things are definitely getting funky, and the sun is setting (no, really, ONE cocktail, seriously), and find El Rey. Not what they described, but it’s a grocery, and they have most of what I need, so I grab it up and head on out.

Make another wrong turn, the streets are full of people, all of them locals. It’s kind of grungy, shanty town, definitely not the tourist section. I’m pretty okay with that, although I’m starting to think that I should try and not look clueless or easy pickings. Definitely not getting any closer to where I need to be. I haven’t seen a craft beer or artisanal anything in about ten minutes. Finally, I walk past a couple of cops. They look confused, and concerned. They wave me over. They are very well armed. Some confusing Spanglish ensues, they point towards my hotel, which is exactly where I thought it wasn’t, and seem really reluctant to just let me go on my way. Clearly, my bulging biceps and obvious pajama wrestling expertise is not making them concerned for the locals, but for me. They waive a police car over, and for the first time, I get in a cop car without handcuffs.

Reading up on the neighborhood, I guess some of the people that are being pushed out by the gentrification don’t much care for the hipster coffees, Dutch wobble step dance parties, or having their homes turned into boutique burger houses. Go figure, sounds kind of like that codger from Reno who’s always yelling at me about parking.

One of the things that makes Panama so intriguing is the canal, and what that means for the country. First off, there’s definitely a big professional class in Panama City. The country doesn’t depend on tourism, or farming, or other extractive activities to run their economy. Unless of course you view the fees they charge to cut across their Isthmus extractive. I’ve heard it runs from $.87 U.S. for a guy who swam it back in the fifties, to up to $1 million, if you go through the bigger, improved, never seen a boat so big canal. Canal pilots, who run those ships through the canal, and the big lake that was created as part of the canal process, make $300k a year. Think about that in a part of the world where $300 a month is considered living large. Also, there’s all the other professionals, engineers, workmen, administrators, etc, that keep the thing running. All Panamanians. There’s a ton of money that flows through here, plus, there’s some shady tax haven stuff going on that’s been in the news, so they’ve  got international business stuff as well.

The other thing that the canal does is keep things on an even keel. 5% of all the goods shipped by boat in the world comes through the canal. That’s a lot of stuff going from the east to the west, less going the other way, especially now with our well thought out tariff policy, and stuff going mostly north/south. You want that Chinese made Walmart item, that’s a canaling. Grapes from Chile? Yep. Pretty much anything you get on the West Coast that didn’t come from the U.S., or Papua New Guinea (shrunken heads anyone?), came through the canal. So, China wants it working right. The U.S. wants it working right. Canada, well, who cares, really? What are they going to do, register a firm but polite request for someone to take a peek? Seriously, how do these guys do hockey? Anyway, the whole world has an interest, and a right to use, the canal. So, they all take a very dim view of anybody messing with it. Which is probably why Jimmy Carter, who was busy ruining America by trying to make us use centimeters, gave the canal to the Panamanians without too much hassle. I’d imagine just about everybody, from OPEC to Oslo, told him he’d better not let the canal fall into chaos. Imagine how much more expensive that IKEA desk that you can’t put together would be if it had to go by reindeer train from Sweden?

The other thing about Panama is that it is in the tropics. Rich, sultry, green, lush, hot, fucking hot, humid, which means that my personal eco-sphere is hot and humid, and fetid, and well, stinky. It’s May, the beginning of the wet season, and Panama City is a sauna in which somebody just put too much water on the stones. For people from places that are not here, ie where I’m from, it’s really humid. I lived in Dallas for a few years too many, and it  was humid. Panama is more than humid. At least in May in Panama City.

We stay at a little boutique hipster hotel in Casco Viejo called Las Clementinas. Really nice place, we get a big room with two beds. Jen loves having two beds. It’s not that I thrash about in my sleep, snore, talk in my sleep, steals all the covers, or have night terrors. It’s that she does, and she’s sweet, and worries about how I’m doing whiles she goes through her nightly activities. So, she loves having her own bed. However, she’s sensitive to my theory that sleeping in separate beds, in spite of the obvious benefits, is bad for a marriage, and she appeases me while we’re home.

We have a big shower, two beds, a fridge, coffee maker, a little balcony overlooking the strangely popular Fonda Piri Piri, French doors onto a second story patio, which overlooks the courtyard to the restaurant. I drink Rum, or Coffee, or coffee and rum, on this area, and enjoy.

 First day we get picked up by Ancon Adventures, and head up to the jungle town of Gambo, about half way up the Canal. We jump in a little boat which seats about twenty, like a Cadillac from a Athens Georgia party, and it’s just us, the captain, and the guide. We zoom around the national park that was created to keep anybody from getting to or living on the water ways that are part of the canal. It’s full of peacock bass, birds, crocodiles (we’ve heard), and monkeys. Love monkeys. We see three kinds, including the black kind, the kind with a white face, and the kind with white faces but red backs. Very enviro. If you want to be fancy about it, Howlers monkeys, red cowled tamarinds, and capuchins. They’re like little children. So cute when you’re out of range of their poo.

We decided to stay in the Canal area, instead of heading back, and in spite of spending a lot of time looking at an empty channel, it was worth it. We got to the locks around noon, and there’s not much there besides the locks, and a small museum about the locks. The short story is that the locks fill with water, boats go through about  half way, then the locks empty some water, and the boats go the rest of the way. It is, in fact, way cooler than that. It’s kind of a long process, but pretty damn neat. You should really google it. We watched a biggish boat go through. There is a new lock system, and we saw a boat go through from a distance. Biggest boat I’ve even seen, and I grew up near San Pedro, Port of L.A.

One of the benefits of being all sweaty and gross is that nobody wants to sit near you. Either that, or it’s kind of low season, and things are quiet. I don’t who else was staying at our small hotel, but it seemed about half full. Jen scored us a reservation at a super fancy, six table restaurant, kind of a Thomas Keller goes to Panama place, which is supposed to be three months’ lead time, and it was mostly free of drunken Brits.

Second full day we did a walking tour of our neighborhood. Hipster beer bars and a lot of early Panamanian history, pretty sweet. It always kind of amazes me how much into history Jen is. She loves this kind of thing. Undeterred by my brush with death from the night before, we head out, and this time I get most of the turns right. Casco Viejo has old battlements, hopefully better than the ones before they let a cheesy spiced rum huckster burn their town, really old churches, of course, and even a gun placement named for the nuns. Catholics. Defend the faith is taken quite literally.

It pours rain, while we hang around a place famous for having an arch that didn’t fall down, which recently fell down. Then it clears, we have lunch at a little bar with the second best ceviche I’ve had in two days, and view some art work taken from the former dictator of Panama. It’s mostly really nice post-impressionist paintings of nude women and fish, but I see a carved dog a la Joey tucked away in the back.

We survive the trip, and have a late dinner by Jens’ standards, aka the first seating, at Donde Jose. It’s eight courses of haute cuisine inspired by Panama, and it was really fucking good. Second best razor clams I’ve ever had, and I’ve had Razor clams at Clamata in Paris. Tiny little place, six tables, wonderful service, and the Jose is not afraid of smoke in his food. Total Top Chef kind of stuff, but in a very non-pretentious style. Little Panama style tortillas, but with smoked cheese. Chinese steam dim sum with pork belly. Razor clams. Very cold tuna crudo, two kinds. Chicken, three ways on the same chicken. Smoked, fried, bbq. Duck skewers a la street food. Two desserts. One a riff on cappuccino with goat cheese and croutons, and the best thing of all, a Panamanian shave ice with dried fruit. That last one was really, really amazing.

Wake up, coffee, not so much rum, maybe a little, since I have to drive, and we leave to get a rental car and head out of Panama City. Ummm, don’t drive in Panama City. Ever. It’s like driving in NYC, but you can’t read what few signs there are. Ugh. Plus, they have a really strange toll road system, where there are only two toll roads, near the airport, but if you get on them, there’s no way to pay the tolls unless you have a toll pass electronic system. I don’t know what happens if you drive on these without the toll being paid correctly. I don’t want to know.

We leave Panama City behind, after a few miscues, and start driving SouthWest, out of town. We’re heading to Valle Anton, which is a high country town about two hours away. It takes us four. We got on the right roads, pretty nice! The highways are good, the towns pretty similar to any highway small town, and we only had to bribe one policeman. To be fair, I think I was going too fast, not sure, since it’s in kilometers, but he seemed pretty sure of it. $20 later, we’re back on the road.

During this time, we find out that we have finally won the battle against t-mobile, and have unlocked the tablet we paid off two years ago. Cell phone companies have brought us amazing technology, and tied it all to the worst impulses of the human condition. We started trying to unlock the tablet weeks ago. T-mobile would claim they couldn’t find the information on our old account, sent us a helpful link telling us to use an app that wasn’t loaded on the tablet and no longer available for download, and then just stone walling. Ten calls later, they refer me to an on-line hacking company, telling me it would be free of charge. T-mobile can’t unlock a tablet they sold us, and locked themselves. Got to be honest, they’re still probably the best. Verizon let somebody steal a cell phone by hacking my Verizon account, charged me for the cell phone and the service, and then refused to refund the money because I hadn’t noticed that my auto-pay, paperless bills were incorrect. I’m currently with AT&T, who had previously disconnected my phone early when I wanted to switch, charged me to reconnect it to correct their error, and then reported me to the credit companies when I disputed the erroneous charges. Magic technology, brought to you by the biggest bunch of scum bag grifters.

So we pay somebody to hack the tablet, it doesn’t work, I pay somebody else, and now we have an unlocked tablet, running a Panamanian Sim card I bought for $3 from the Chino. That’s a store. Not a person. Plus, I’m not making a racist slur against Chinese people, who run most of the convenience stores here. I guess it’s like calling the local grocer a bodega? I hope it’s not like calling my local 7-11 an Apu. I guess that’s not okay now.

So, after slipping the officer a $20, we arrive in Valle Anton, which reminds me a lot Arenal or Monteverde. It’s in the mountains, almost 4,000 feet high, significantly cooler, and really pretty. We stay at the Golden Frog, named after a small amphibian that is pretty endangered. It sits in the extinct caldera of a huge volcano, and is green, and lush, and not sweltering. In fact, I have to wear a layer at night.

The Inn is run by a German kid, and his Czech partner, and it’s been here a while. It’s really great. Again, totally reminds me of our place in arenal. We have a big room, pen with a patio, an amazing view of the valley. It’s got a pool, casual restaurant with great food, a pool, a bar, a table that is, in my view, a pool table, but a billiards table according to the German. It sits in a big green, jungle and lawn property. Not fancy, not catering to the super rich, just really nice. I love these kinds of places. Give me a well run family owned ten room inn over a W hotel anyday.

We get here, chill out, have dinner. Jen is super stoked, that makes me happy, we don’t do much but stare at the jungle, and I drink rum. Awesome. BTW, Jen is currently obsessed with Filet Mignon. They have it, it’s pretty damn good, I have ropa vieja, it’s really good.

We get up in the morning, way earlier than you’d think, in fact too early for breakfast. I’m a little bummed they don’t have a coffee maker in the room! Nor a fridge, or cups or even water glasses. Hmmm, weird. They do have all that about fifty steps away, so I don’t think I’ll bitch. Even though I just did.

Breakfast is awesome, typical euro style, plus eggs and pancakes. Rather than take a pancake caused nap, we head out for a hike. Drive through town, ignore Google Maps’ suggestion I go up a dirt road (I was wrong, it was fine on the way back), find the trail. It’s got people suggesting we hire a guide, we don’t, but we pay a few bucks to the cute school girls, and I, apparently, steal a hand colored map. Jen says the girl who was coloring them by hand in pencil expected money. I just grabbed and went. Typical. #whiteprivelege #modernconquistador. Douche.

The hike is pretty standard jungle hike, maybe not so hot, no roaches or land crabs. Steep AF, lots of tree roots, really beautiful stream and some middling waterfalls. It reminds me of Hawaii. Or Costa Rica. Not surprising, but a good thing.

The top is something else. I have told the story before of Jens’ lack of fear in the face of heights, and my abundance of reasonable caution. When faced with falling to my death, I feel like I’m being prudent. We climb up to the top of the sleeping Indian woman, at the rim of an extinct volcano, and peer over the edge. It is truly a freaking knifes’ edge. About 100 feet down in the jungle. Just sheer rock, not oven those steep slopes Hollywood types are always sliding down into a river. Wowser. Amazing. We can see a big beach resort, I think Playa Coronado, off in the distance. The other side is Panama countryside. Gorgeous. Sweaty, but not that bad, about an hour up, but we see clouds rolling in, and it’s time to turn around. I give the nice young girl a dollar, thank her for the map, and we find our car, unmolested, and head back to town, with Google still trying to send us down dirt roads.

We stop, accidentally, at another tourist location. This one is zip lining, which we skipped. Been there, done that, this one seemed kind of small compared to the Costa Rica one we did so long ago.

Cool little waterfall, called El Macho. They charged us $5 each to walk on an elevated walkway and to see their kind of disappointing waterfall. Jen makes the point that we’ve seen a lot of fabulous waterfalls for free, and so maybe this one just evens up the cosmic tab a bit. I’m unconvinced, but hey, it’s $10, and I’m kind of a cheap bastard, but not that cheap.

This time we accept Googles idea of driving down the dirt road, and it’s not too bad, and it is much quicker, and we’re back at the Golden Frog for the afternoon deluge. Lunch at our inn, since it’s now raining so hard that you couldn’t really drive in it, plus the food here is awesome, so why not.

Blog 2

Golden Frog was awesome, and cool, and peaceful, but Valle Anton not really a candidate for the ex-pat life. Maybe a second home if money was no object. Bryan and Janet could have a beach house, and we’ll have a mountain house, and go back and forth. No surf, no diving, no jiu jitsu, it kind of doesn’t make it on the list.

So we head to Playa Venado. Baby brother Eric was right. I knew he was when he said, but this time he was more right than usual. I can totally admit this since it’s unlikely he’ll read this far.  

Anyway, this time, as is often the case, he was correct. Google Maps, which works better here than I was led to believe, says it’s going to take four hours to get from Valle to our little beach at Playa Venada. Eric says add 25%. Right on the money. Six hours. Part of the problem is that Google doesn’t account for speed traps, of which there are many, dogs lying in the street, which are even more numerous, or having to pull over and breathe deeply to calm yourself when the local busses pass you on blind corners.

This not Andean Bus Plunge territory. The busses are numerous, new, clean, white. They don’t drive insanely fast. The real issue is that I have no idea what the speed limit is. I was going 100 kph when I got pulled over. That’s about 50 mph. That’s a rare speed limit. More often the highway is 80 kph. Through the cities or highway towns, it slows to 60. This is actually fairly clear.

The problem is that when you’re on the smaller roads, there are little towns, and the speed limit is rarely mentioned. You’ll see reducidar su velocidad, or something like that. But to what? And, unlike on the bigger highways, you never see resumar su velocidad. So, I’ve slowed down for the kids and the horses and the dogs, but to what? And for how long? Then there’s the construction. Part of the road is clearly new, easy sailing. But there’s signs that say the road is under construction, or broken, slow down. To 20. 20 kph. Less than 10 mph. The road is good, why go at a crawl, but is it a $20 trap? Don’t know. I err on the side of caution, and it takes me almost 8 hours.

We finally get there, and much like our trip to Costa Rica in the early rainy season, there’s nobody around. Villa Marina, which doesn’t have any kind of a Marina, is really pretty. Cabanas, with a central rock lined pool, steps to the water. The beach is a huge, grey sand crescent, with big rocky islands on the edges. We’re at the far end of the beach, and there’s no other camps or resorts until about ¼ mile. You walk down the beach, past jungle and sand, to where the hippie/surfer/yoga spots are. There’s a fair bit of construction going on with at least one larger resort going in, but it’s quiet. The surfers are in larger numbers, hanging out, living the dream. Later at night, they are a lot more active, partying, but where we’re at, it’s just us and a couple of Panamanians out for the weekend.

To get here you drive through a lot of small towns, some bigger towns, and the ex-pat favorite of Pedasi. Pedasi is pretty cute, you could see it being pretty buzzy during high season. It sits a little inland, but there’s a beach, and a local fisherman bar, about five minutes down the road. There’s even an ex-pat bar, with a bunch of Americans in the forties to sixties hanging around nursing tequila hangovers. I’ve been told that many of the ex-pats just hang out here, pretty isolated from the Panamanians. I could kind of see it, since not only is there the language and culture, but this is more of a farming area, and the people are farmers. There seems to be a pretty vibrant middle class in Panama, with people driving newer cars, going on weekend beach trips from the city, everyone on cell phones, but Pedasi isn’t where they go. Lots of beach resorts closer to Panama City, but the beaches here aren’t the swim and get drunk listening to loud music kind. Funny note for later, dark skinned Hispanic people still need to use sunscreen. Saw some sunburned Panamanians later on in the trip. Good to know.

The beach is quiet and safe, very shallow, and I hear the waves can be good. Not much swell while we’re hear, but enough for the new surfers to be out trying to catch the beach break, which is long and slow. I’m tempted, but I planned poorly, and we don’t really have enough time. We arrive late, and we have a dive scheduled in the morning.

The dive setup is kind of fun. We meet Kerri, who turns out to be a divorcee from Dallas, at the local gas station. We drive down to the beach in Pedasi, and load into a small panga from the beach. 15 minutes later, we’re at Isla Iguanas, a beautiful little island that was used for target practice by the US navy in WWII. They still find unexploded bombs here occasionally, and Kerri says it really messes up the dive business when they have to cordon off the island. The first dive is okay. Lots of life, but the reef is mostly rock and trashed coral. Locals used to come here and drop anchors in the coral, plus bleaching and other eco issues, and the reef is pretty broken up.

Second dive is much better. We dive off some big mushroom coral heads, and we see turtles, and sharks. Moray eels, which are one of my favorites, are so plentiful you start ignoring them. They used to fill me with terror. Snorkeling as a kid, plus watching The Deep, in which a huge moray bites the villains head, left with me with an unwarranted fear of these big dummies. Now I love them. The dive ends tragically as Jen can’t find her favorite shoes, which somehow got lost between the beach and the boat. Go figure. She buys a pair of croc knock-offs, which are even for crocs, horrible, at the local Chino. Later on she tries vainly to give them away. Nobody, not even shoeless street vagrants, will take them. They may be poor, but they have their dignity.

Back to Venao, and I met John, a transplant from New Jersey, via Colorado, who runs a surf/jiu jitsu camp. Jen, for some reason, decides not to join me for drinking and talking about Jiu Jitsu. Weird. I get some good info on moving down, on this spot, and it goes on my list for places to really think about. He’s got a good connection to a Panamanian businessman who owns the camp, and is looking to develop the resort more, while wanting to keep it low key. Surfing, diving, chilling, jiu jitsu. Works for me. We make a play date for the next morning.

I show up the next morning, and he’s got a sweet setup. Good size space on thick tatami mats, no puzzle junk, and we play. He’s smaller, about 150 lbs I guess, and very flowy. Tricky. Good. His wife is a purple belt, about 5’ on a good day, and tough. Like me, she plays a big persons’ game in a smaller package. I love it. She and I go a bit harder, but keeping it fun. I try to footlock her. I don’t know how. Great time, really welcoming, and it gave me a good feel for the slow down life.

After that, I have to wring about ten pounds of disgusting man-juice out of my gi, and try to hang it to dry, which is unlikely to work. Pack it up, and head out onto another Panamanian guessing game, aka, how fast do I go? The Eric rule of 25% holds, and six hours later, we’re at Santa Catalina.

This town has a very bohemian/surfer/crack shack vibe. There are way more euro/American surfers and divers, hanging around town, living in hostels. Don’t see any white sand beaches, places to lay around, no sun bathers. This is a tough, big surf break, and the jump off to Isla Coiba, the hot spot for diving in Panama.

The Island used to be a penal colony. When Noriega got booted by Bush and his political prisoners got set free, Coiba became a nature preserve. The locals stay away, partly because it’s the law, partly because the island has a bad juju sort of reputation. Because of this, and no building allowed on it, it’s truly amazing. No fishing either, and we see tons of stuff, including a giant jack or tuna, sharks, rays, eels, again with the eels. Also, I think I saw two octopi. It’s hard to say, since they camouflage so well.

The things are simply amazing, btw. Thank god they don’t live long, or we’d all be working for them. Also, I don’t get how they end up on menus. If you see a Pulpo, it’s usually a big deal. I have no idea where there might be enough of them in an area for them to commercially available. One of the things I do while diving is try to guess whether I can eat the animals I see. Also, whether they can eat me. Speaking of which, I saw a ten pound lobster. I’m not sure I would win that fight.

Jen skipped the dive, having poked a hole in her dry suit, which renders it un-dry, and having trouble clearing her ears. Although I won’t know about it for another ten days, this is when she decides that dry suit diving is not for her. Since she’s flooded, gotten squeeze rash, had uncontrolled ascent, and some other dry suit b.s., this is a good choice. Dry suit diving requires a certain level of nerding out that she just doesn’t have in her. Thank god.

We stay at a cool little compound in a double bungalow, run by a Panamanian Chef and his Swiss wife, and they’ve got kitties and puppies and little kids, and Jen makes friends with them all. They’ve also got a ton of bugs, many of which get into our room while we’re loading in, and Jen does not make friends with them. In fact, she goes to war, and hundreds die. She can be ruthless, especially to June bugs and flying ants.

It’s gorgeous here, although there isn’t much a beach, and although I dig it, it’s off the list. Too remote, the surfing is too high level, there’s no Jiu Jitsu.

It’s time to turn around, realizing that we really don’t have enough time to do it right. This trip had a very specific purpose, to do a quick reconnoiter trip, more so than a vacation really. I also realize that my refusal to pay an $80 drop off fee is biting me in the butt. I definitely wanted to stop in at some of the beach resorts nearer to Panama City on the way back, and that’s what we’re doing, but now that I understand the lay of the land a bit more, I’m less enthused. I’ve also figured out that flying from David to Panama City would have been really smart. We’re skipping the whole northern part of the country, including Boquette, and the whole Caribbean side which is supposed to be awesome.

 A big part of the plan was to be within driving distance of the International Airport, and to be honest, Santa Catalina is too far, and Playa Venado is almost. Once the construction over there is done, and I’m more comfortable with speeding and not getting pulled over, it’s within range. However, direct flights from Denver with a quick connector to the airport in David makes more sense. I kind of wish we’d gone up that way, and maybe will. Another time.

Heading back down, you really notice how much is going on. We stay in a B&B run by a friendly gay Argentinian guy, a few doors down from where General Noriega had a place. He tells a funny story about how Noriega got deposed by the Bush army, somebody pilfered a hat rack, and gave it to him. He later became friendly with one of the Generals’ daughters, who came by for a visit. Kind of a low-level bird cage farce ensues, with he and his partner trying to hide the hat rack, or disguise it, so the Noriega daughter wouldn’t notice. I imagine Nathan Lane throwing capes over the thing. It probably wasn’t that good.

This is a resort area that caters mostly to Panamas’ wealthy and wealthy adjacent. The guide books describe high-rise hotels and condos, of which there are many, and a quaint fishing village that’s left over from the by-gone days, a pastoral scene of the old ways. The thing is filled with friendly people, but it’s a dump. Open air shacks, communal tables made of washed up trash, no power, no water. Not exactly quaint. I’m not really big into giant beach developments, but if that’s progress, well, good for them.  Not that I’m against more traditional ways of life, but when the tourism board passes off poverty for quaint, I kind of think that’s wrong.

I’ve been working on this off and on for a month now, and to be honest, if you’ve made it this far, I thank you, but I also get that I’m running out of steam, so let’s just say this. Do not drive in Panama City. It’s like New York, but on steroids. It’s a big, bustling city, and the drivers are not crazy. The traffic and the street layouts are. It’s kind of like the way I describe learning to drive in Los Angeles, which is where, I did in fact, learn to drive. You do things there that are dangerous, that would make most people cower in terror. You do things that maybe you’re not proud of, and there are unspoken rules which must be followed, or the  whole thing breaks down.

In Panama, street merging has nothing to do with the lights, the legal niceties. If you don’t careen into oncoming traffic, cutting off cross traffic and forcing them to slow in a way you would never do here, well, you’re doing it wrong. Doubt that? Well, I started to pull out, lost my nerve, and for the first time in my entire trip, was yelled and honked at.

In spite of that, and after doing about ten laps, we got to the place to drop off the car, and that went way easier than I thought. I was worried about the horror stories about Panamanian, as well as other countries, rental cars. We had some small issues with the air dam since we ended up doing a river crossing, but I fixed it with a bobby pin. Honestly, I don’t think I was the first one to make an on the road repair to this particular item. We grab a cab, after negotiating a $12 fee to the airport.

Traffic is, well, Panamanian. It takes over an hour to get to the airport, Heavy traffic, construction, crazy drivers. It’s pouring, and I mean pouring, rain most of the time. When we get to our airport hotel, which is like a little slice of generic Americana, might as well be the embassy, I give the driver $20. Hazard pay, and doing the drive myself would have taken off ten years from my life. I couldn’t justify being tight fisted with the guy, so I overpaid him.

I don’t know if the screwing we experienced at the airport is worth a story. I’ll just say that I’ve never boarded, and then had to deplane, until this one. I’ve never had a flight straight up cancelled until this one. I’ve never had to go through immigration twice, get my bags back through BOTH sides of a foreign countries border control until this one. I’ve never spent nearly 12 hours in an airport with no idea of when or how we were getting back, buying internet access in 90 minute increments. You get the story. An early flight and a late arrival stretched out over two days, and we ended up flying out of Los Angeles the next morning. At least the hotel we didn’t want to stay in was nice.

For 9 months now I’ve been travelling full time around North America in an RV with my girlfriend, exploring the continent while training Jiu Jitsu along the way. Travelling for this long, in this way, comes with a lot of unique experiences and challenges. So many that blogging about the entire journey we’ve had up until this point seems daunting. Fortunately we are not done travelling. This is now a sustainable lifestyle for us that has no end date in sight for the time being. I’ll be continuing to travel and train all over the continent and hopefully keep this blog updated regularly, so long as I have an internet signal within reach.

We began traveling in Southern Ontario (where we are from) and made our way down through the United States. Although the plan was to make our way South at a comfortable pace, the cold weather approached faster than we had expected. This forced us to head South sooner than expected. Although we did have to rush passed some things we wanted to do, I was able to find multiple gyms to train at along the way.

We arrived on the northwest side of Florida and stayed here a few days after discovering what is now the most beautiful beach I’ve ever been to — Grayton. It’s in a small village located in the Panhandle which means beautiful clear water and vibrant white sand. Had there been a gym in the area that I could train at, it basically would’ve been impossible to leave.

We continued travelling along the southern US border — Texas, Arizona, Nevada etc. The desert was amazing. Not as I’d expected. It was not flat, sandy stretches out to the horizon, with tumbleweeds blowing in the wind. It was mountainous landscape with constantly varying degrees elevation. Cacti and ancient historic sites with all kinds of interesting things to see. We stayed quite a while in Arizona. Aside from me finding a gym that I absolutely loved, there was so much to do. Although the local people made me well aware of the torturous heat here in the summer, I could definitely imagine myself living here in the winter.

We then made our way back up the West Coast — California, Oregon, Washington — all the way to British Columbia, Canada. We also spent some significant time in California. Needless to say, fantastic Jiu Jitsu training and one million and one things to do and see — Balboa Park, San Diego Art Museum, Santa Monica Pier, Seal Beach, La Jolla and the Pans BJJ tourney to name a few. We continued to slowly make our way North, back across the border to Canada. We then of course traveled from British Columbia across the prairie provinces back to Ontario.

This route took us about 8 months to complete. We stayed in any given location for a couple of days or a couple of weeks, depending on weather, things to do, and training in the area. I don’t usually have a set time I’d like to spend at a gym. If I happened to find a gym I enjoyed training at, I would spend a couple of weeks there. If there happened to be all sorts of things to do and see in an area, we would spend as much time there as we’d like.

So 15 States, 5 provinces and about 10–12 gyms later and we’re now back home in Ontario. We will be visiting friends and family we’ve missed over the past few months and taking care of some things that couldn’t be done in the United States at the time. We are still living in our RV as we bounce around between seeing everyone and I will be training the whole time in different gyms as we continue to explore new places.

When the cold seasons return, we will head out again and continue to follow the warm weather to travel, train and explore. I’m going to continue to update this blog regularly, even now, since we see so many cool places and meet so many interesting people, it would be a shame to not share these experiences with others.

Making the decision to live out of an RV and travel full time was very difficult for me. I enjoy structure and routine, which is the complete opposite of this lifestyle. However, once this option started to become a real possibility for us, I knew that throwing myself so far outside of my comfort zone would likely lead to some valuable personal growth and life experience. So far so good.

Greetings from Yangon, Myanmar! (17-23 Sept 2017)

As I detailed in the last post my traveling experience to get from Albania to Myanmar through the United Arab Emirates was long, ill fated and left me completely drained and exhausted after the back to back overnight flights to get to Yangon. By the time I had landed all I wanted to do was find an ATM, pick up some water as I was feeling greatly dehydrated from the flights and get my ass to the hostel to rest. The problem with the Yangon airport and the transit options from there is that there’s all sorts of ‘taxi drivers’ hanging out at the airport pestering anyone who walks through the arrivals door while the bus stop is a few blocks away. This creates quite the tourist trap for paying for overpriced taxi’s that’s really hard to get through to the cheap taxis or buses. One ‘taxi driver’ followed me asking me if I needed a ride and telling me to come to his car, over and over. I told him ‘No’ many times and even stopped in the overpriced cafe for some food and to use the shitty airport WiFi. After being there for some time I was sure the taxi driver had left or found a new victim, no luck. As soon as I stepped foot outside the cafe area he appeared begging and trying to coax me to his car again.

I wandered around, taking my time in the overpriced airport convenience store to pick up some bottled water and hope he maybe listened to me saying No for the 50th time. No avail, he just waited. I had read that grabbing a taxi down the street would be cheaper or that the bus into town was really cheap but once I stepped outside and felt to the heat and humidity I couldn’t stand searching for a cheap taxi or taking a 90 minute sweltering hot and crowded bus to the city. I was worn out and done with fighting. I needed to rest more than I needed to save $10. I caved in and followed the beggar to his car. It had AC and was clean, so it at least enjoyable, although he tried several times to get me to go see some sights for employ him as my driver for my stay. Hard to tell if the AC was worth it. All in all it only cost me about $20 which is a fraction of what it would have costed back home or anywhere in Europe, but it’s also about twice the price it costed me to take a city taxi back to the airport when I left.

I arrived at the hostel and after checking in and being shown around the place I immediately crawled into my cubical, downed a bunch of water and passed out for the afternoon. I didn’t mean to sleep for over 4 hours, I remember wanting to lay down and try using to hostel’s shitty internet but it happened and I woke up at 10pm wondering what happened to the day. It messed up my internal clock for a few days afterwards where I never woke up before noon and never fell asleep until after 3am. Yangon was too hot for me during the day so I wouldn’t be exploring until the later afternoon or evening anyways. Resting, re-hydrating and acclimatizing was best until I found my bearings and was able to go to the gym again.

The Sights

Yangon has its downfalls, it’s a dirty city with shitty internet and its share of bugs everywhere, but that’s most south Asian cities. It’s something you get used to after a while. The redeeming qualities far outweigh the downfalls. Throughout my exploring I saw a city that just seemed like it couldn’t maintain it’s past economic boom and judging from how busy the city and the sprawling harbour that borders it was Yangon is probably hitting another economic growth.

The temples, pagodas, that are throughout the city are quite beautiful, especially the main temple grounds Shwedagon Pagoda. I spent a day walking the grounds looking at all the statues and prayer temples to their gods. The giant Bodhi trees were magnificent to be in the presence of and the overall spiritual sense of peace I felt while walking the grounds was intense. I seemed to also be on display while walking the grounds or just on my everyday exploring. I was stopped by a few people at Shwedagon Pagoda to take a picture with, including a group of kids who ran across the street to meet me when I left the place. Apparently my tattoos and red beard seemed to be quite the hit with the locals.

In the mall that the gym is in there was a ramen shop, Monster Ramen, and it had a ‘Monster Ramen Challenge’ that is a giant bowl of ramen. Basically it consists of enough noodles for 5 bowls and enough toppings for 3 bowls and the challenge is to eat it all within 20 minutes and you get it for free (not actually for free, you pay then when you eat it all you get a gift certificate for that amount). The trick is that the broth is boiling hot so trying to eat it all fast will just burn your mouth and tongue. I accepted the challenge and made fast work of the eggs, pork and sprouts, the noodles and boiling hot broth was a bit harder. I had to use the spoon and chopsticks so that I could pull the noodles out of the broth and let them hang to cool while eating previously grabbed noodles. Like a conveyor belt of ramen from the bowl to my mouth. I still brunt my lips and tongue and even the roof of my mouth but I finished the bowl in 17 minutes. I was sweating profusely from dealing with all that boiling hot broth and they gave me some iced tea after my triumph to cool me down. A picture with the winning certificate and empty bowl was taken and put up on their wall. I hope one day a friend ends up there and sends me a picture of my ginger face on that wall of local winners. No longer feeling like eating ramen during this visit I gave the the certificate to the gym.

As always you can see more of my pictures over on my Flickr account.

Transcend Fitness – BJJ Myanmar

I first started talking to the BJJ Globetrotter contact for Yangon, Tammi, months before heading to Myanmar. I knew nothing of the area and was curious to see about maybe traveling and seeing more of it than just the one city. Also I was trying to figure out how I would spend my holidays at the time and had the idea of staying there longer and perhaps working temporarily at a hostel. I later made different plans but Tammi was very helpful on filling me in about the area and connecting me with the gym, unfortunately she wasn’t around during my visit and we never got to meet. I talked to BJJ Myanmar before showing up to find out the schedule and once I was rested and feeling up for training I made my way over to finally meet them. The gym was only a 10 minute walk from where I was staying, on the top floor in the Yangon Junction Mawtin Mall, about the only modern building in the city center. It was a bit awkward to get to at first because the stairs and main elevator don’t go up to the top floor. I walked around and searched for the entire top floor, and even went back the the main floor and entrance to look for a floor map, before finally finding another elevator hidden in a back corner.

Once I found my way to the gym I introduced myself at the front desk and the owner Joey, a very friendly and welcoming guy who is also quite built and intimidating to watch kick the pads. The gym itself is small and completely open to the rest for the mall floor for all to watch, separated from the concourse of the floor only by a fence. The wall across from the fence is done up in a big street art style mural of the gym name ‘Transcend Fitness’ with the area in between a matted floor and where the BJJ class is usually held. Off to the right was the front desk and behind it a lower floor area with a heavy bag where the Muay Thai kickboxing was held. The change rooms were off from the gym, across from the outdoor pool and spa also on the top floor but not apart of the gym. Once I changed I headed to the BJJ area and started stretching out before class.

Joey runs the kickboxing classes but a purple belt from Australia was teaching the BJJ classes when I was there. Other than the instructor everyone else was a white belt at the time. I believe there has been some belt gradings since I visited, I know that a few of them, like Joey, were well deserving of a blue belt back then. The students were all happy to have a visitor to train with and even learn from as they asked me all sorts of questions before and after class. We went over a cool entry into a single leg takedown using the gi and lapel for control and guard pass sequence for class and worked on adding to it the next day. It was fun stuff with a few details I really enjoyed adding to my set. Single legs aren’t my thing, I’ve never been good at them, of course I’ve also never drilled them continuously until they worked, but the details of the angle the purple belt used to attack the leg and the grip controls he used for the technique make it seem much more easier for me.

One day I was asked to fill in and teach, with some asking for some no gi techniques. With the recent series in mind I decided to expand on it as a “what if?” class to work other options if you lose the grips to control your opponent. This way with a simple option we could work using both gi or no gi. I brought back the low single leg takedown Kamen showed me in Bulgaria and added that as the second option for shooting in for the single but losing the grips in the process. They all seemed to love it which I was happy for as I was really working out my own ideas of what I could do for my own game while teaching them the sequence. I also taught my guard break and passing series I had been working and showing all through this Odyssey, it’s a staple for me in my game so fine tuning it any time I can is a bonus and teaching it goes over great lower belts learning the basics. The higher belts like seeing it to try and pick it apart and break my pressure game down as well since I seem to be a good candidate to work on defending against a top pressure game.

The Death Match

The gym was awesome to train with and I had a great time there, I felt very welcome and would love to visit them again sometime. I did however have an usual situation during one of the classes. I was training with one of the white belts during class and he seemed like a nice shy individual who was very open to getting help during our time drilling techniques together. In fact he was really good at taking the notes that both the purple belt and myself were giving him to fix any problems with drilling the techniques and correcting it. Then came time to roll. Once we bumped fists he became a whole other person, overly aggressive, doing anything to attack while not willing to tap himself. He came at me like a bat out of hell but quite quickly ended up in my guard on the receiving end of a cross collar choke. There was no way out but he refused and fought it with all his might, choking and sputtering, eyes going red and glossed over as he used all the strength to fight the choke and try and tear my grips off. I just sat there holding the grips and told him “Just tap, there’s no problem with tapping and resetting. It’s not worth going out for” but he persisted. I was stuck with the decision to teach him a hard lesson by putting him to sleep or letting it go. Not wanting my first time putting a training partner to sleep to be in a gym I’m visiting, and on the first night too. I let go.

I stopped the match and gave the white belt a lecture about how unnecessary and dangerous it is to have a ‘fight to the death’ mentality and not wanting to tap at his early stage in his Jiu-Jitsu journey. I’m all for training hard at times for a number of reasons, like preparing for competition or wanting to get a good workout, be the hammer that night, or for work situations but this type of training of just going all out fighting everything until you’re either broken or put out is going to get him or his partners hurt and likely end their Jiu-Jitsu journey early. The key about it all is at this young stage 99% of the people rolling like this really do not mean to or understand what it is they’re doing or what situation they were in. It takes a lot for some people to finally see that, for me it was realizing that if I trained with less energy to work on technique instead always focused on ‘winning’ that, although I would tap and ‘lose’ more I wouldn’t end up hurt as much and be able to train more. Then along the way you realize that tapping is part of training and there’s no winning or losing, just learning. I made him sit there and think about it for the rest of the round to have it sink in. I’m sure there’s lots of people out there that think it’s Ok to roll like this kid was because they “always train like you fight and always fight to win” or think I should have put him to sleep and moved on and let him learn on his own. To each their own but in my opinion at his stage of learning the basics of Jiu-Jitsu, unless he’s getting ready for a competition, he should be solely focusing on defending and using less power to get out of the spastic white belt style we all started at. This, luckily has been the only time I’ve had such a situation and hopefully the student has learned from it and will change before getting hurt or hurting another student.   

Even with the death match I had a great time training at BJJ Myanmar and making new friends (the guy was a really friendly, good natured person who had no hard feelings and I was bound to have this event happen at some point in the Odyssey). I also enjoyed exploring the city and I hear going north into Myanmar more is really beautiful, maybe I’ll return for a visit to travel around more to really explore the country next time. In fact, without giving away my future posts I really loved this area of the world and would gladly return to explore more of it. Maybe with friends next time. Maybe I should look into creating a group of BJJ South East Asian Jungle Globetrotters where we hike all over the area and set up impromptu classes in the forests and on mountains. Whatever the future holds I look forward to seeing how BJJ Myanmar progresses. Thanks Joey and the gang for all the good times!

I was off to my next stop, one I had been really looking forward to since the start: Fight Street in Phuket Thailand! Spoiler warning: It’s a combat athletes’ vacation spot paradise! But that’s another story.

Until next time,

see you on the mats!

OSSS!!

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About a month ago I had the idea of compiling a multilingual phrasebook for travellers interested in training, teaching, or competing in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu around the world. BJJ is, after all, a remarkably international sport – as even a quick glance into the BJJ Globetrotters Facebook group will show – with hundreds, possibly thousands of grapplers bumping fists on mats everywhere from Ukraine to Bhutan at any point in time. I’ve been lucky enough to be able to train in 15 different countries myself, and although grappling is as close to a universal language as you’re likely to get, sometimes it would have been handy to have had some linguistic insight into what my training partners were saying other than “Ирландия? Ah, Конор Макгрегор!”

In this globalised age there’s no denying that English will get you pretty far when it comes to communication, but depending on where you are that is by no means guaranteed. And besides, learning some of the local language is an immensely satisfying aspect of travelling as well.

And with that, the idea for the BJJ Travel Phrasebook was born.

There was the occasional cup of coffee involved.

The first step was the easiest – coming up with the list of phrases that would form the basis of each chapter. For this, I basically sat down and made a note of everything I had either said or tried haphazardly to formulate when introducing myself at academies out on the road (reminding them we’d previously been in touch via Facebook, asking if there’s a drop-in fee, enquiring if they have patches or anything else I could buy as a souvenir etc.) or would have found helpful during warmups or rolling. Given the almost limitless anatomical permutations it’s possible for us twist ourselves into over the course of 90 minutes, and the almost equally wide range of academy-specific drills and routines out there, I decided to focus on the basics (pushups, situps, stretching) coupled with a list of all the core submissions, actions, and body parts. This, or so I hope, will at least enable you to pick out the key parts of an instructor/training partner’s explanations, and provide the foundation for building your own sentences if you’re feeling particularly ambitious.

Given the extent to which the international tournament scene has been growing in recent years, I also considered that someone might want to go abroad and compete, and thus want to ask officials where to weigh in or just know what that Uzbek guy’s coach is screaming at him with 30 seconds left to go in the match. Here as well, there is a considerable range of questions and minor variations thereof that might arise during the typical tournament day, but with the final list I hope to have at least laid some solid building blocks with enough vocabulary that will let you improvise if the need arises.

Once the list of phrases was in place, it was just a matter of finding people who would be able to translate them.

In a recent podcast I did with BJJ Globetrotters founder Christian Graugart, we briefly digressed from talking about polar bears and abandoned Cypriot cities to discuss the pros and cons of Facebook. Although Zuckerberg’s evil empire – and social media in general – has earned itself a deservedly questionable reputation for privacy violations and propagating countless societal hours of heads-down, timeline-scrolling monotony, there’s no doubt that it can be absolutely phenomenal as a networking tool. After several years of travelling and a handful of Globetrotters camps along the way, I have people in my friends list based everywhere from Nuuk to Ushuaia who speak languages from every major family under the sun, and who are all unfailingly passionate about this sport we share in common. So right there was my first source of input. I posted a list of suggested languages, asking if anyone would be willing to contribute roughly 30 minutes of translation work to a project that would hopefully be of benefit to the worldwide grappling community as a whole, and several hours later I already had volunteers for 14 languages in the bag.

Keeping track of languages as they came in

As that initial wave of volunteers jumped into action and the individual Google Docs began filling up with input, I started considering exactly which/how many languages I ultimately wanted to include. Initially I had intended the phrasebook to be an entirely utilitarian and pragmatic guide to navigating your way along the mats of the world, and thus my preliminary list focused almost entirely on major world or regional languages – i.e. languages you would actually need in order to communicate with the average inhabitant of a country. Thus there was German and French but no Luxembourgish, Danish but no Greenlandic, and not a single mention of Irish, Maltese, Basque, Kazakh etc., since every single inhabitant of those countries most likely speaks another, more “important” language that was already on the list.

However, after several days of thinking about exactly what I wanted this project to stand for and achieve, I realised that this was far too reductive a way of looking at things. After all, who’s to say what languages you really need out in the world? You could quite realistically spend months hitchhiking the length and breadth of Iceland without needing a single word of Icelandic other than “Takk” (possibly prefaced by “No, I’ve had quite enough hákarl for today, .…”), but does that mean Icelandic should be excluded from the list? Or Dutch, because of the universally impressive command of English in the Netherlands? Or Georgian, because most people would probably understand some Russian?

At the end of the day, a language – any language – is a living record of a people’s history, culture, struggles, and path across continents and through countless shifting borders, empires, and wars from the time it was just the mutually understood gruntings of a small group around a particular campfire. And I want them all to have a voice here, regardless of how many millions, thousands, hundreds, or dozens of people speak them in the modern world.

I went back to the list, expanded it, and opened it up to a wider audience – the BJJ Globetrotters Facebook group. By the end of the week I had doubled the amount of languages I had volunteers for, and a handful of other people that came from r/bjj or via secondary referrals bumped the final tally up to the 36 languages you can see in the first edition of the phrasebook today.

All the countries you can communicate in using the first edition of the BJJ Travel Phrasebook.

Challenges along the way:

• Where and how to publish? Right from the very beginning, I wanted the phrasebook to be as easy to access as possible – no weird plugins or new software required for people, no signing up for accounts, and no hidden costs. After consulting with some friends that are significantly more tech-literate than me, I decided to go with Dropbox since it’s about as straightforward as it gets. It also lets me see which countries the most downloads are coming from, so I can determine if any languages/regions of the world are finding it particularly more useful than others.
• When building the book in Adobe InDesign, there were several languages that dug their heels in and initially refused to cooperate for a variety of reasons, usually due to writing system or direction. Getting Hindi or Georgian to display correctly was just a matter of googling the right new font to install, but figuring out a way to persuade right-to-left Hebrew and left-to-right English to get along in the same place is still an ongoing struggle…

RTL vs. LTR, round 1.

Random observations and discoveries:

• Growing up and studying Irish in school, I remember finding it strange that we used that same word for both leg and foot – “cos”. As the input for this project came in, I realised that this is the case for actually quite a few languages – where you basically have no way of verbally distinguishing between foot and leg without clear context, or just pointing. In a sport where a few inches can make a difference between an effective grip or a successful submission, I’d be curious if any coaching difficulties ever arise when you can basically only shout “50% of the human body” and hope they get which one you mean.

• Many languages simply use the original English/Portuguese/Japanese names for techniques and positions, or else just localise them in a very minor way. Of all the various ways of cranking, twisting, and repositioning each other’s limbs that we’ve come up with though, the one thing that remains absolutely unchanged across all languages is… *drum roll* De La Riva guard. Even other stalwarts like “kimura” and “omoplata” might sometimes be described generically as some variation of “shoulder lock”, but De la Riva is De la Riva everywhere from Malaysia to Greenland.

The future of the phrasebook:

Even before the first edition of the phrasebook was online, I started thinking about what the next step(s) could be. I am most definitely going to publish a second edition at some point in the next few months, and this time I’d really love to dive in and open it up to a whole series of smaller, lesser-known languages. I already have a draft list of the ones I’d particularly like to include, and from mentioning this in passing on Facebook I even have one of the first volunteers lined up – for Māori, which is pretty fucking cool.

As well as an expanded set of languages, I’d also love to move with the times and publish the phrasebook in a more mobile-friendly format. Certainly something like an app would be much more useful than a set of crumpled printouts to the average traveller nowadays, and this is something I’m actively looking into as long as I can keep it a.) easily accessible to as many  people as possible and b.) free. In fact, there might even be something in the works there already.;-)

Lastly, I think it would be even more helpful to have some kind of pronunciation guide for each of the phrases in the book. After all, it’s one thing to send someone in to a gym in Georgia and tell to introduce themselves with “Tkvens kakakshi viknebi ramodenime dge, sheidzleba tkventan vivarjisho?”, and another thing entirely to pull that off comfortably without stumbling over half a dozen throaty Caucasian consonants along the way. I already thought about including an IPA (international phonetic alphabet) accompaniment for every phrase, but this would take a lot of additional work and ultimately in the English-speaking world there aren’t that many people that can read IPA anyway.

So I think the absolute best option would be to have an actual audio guide where you could click a phrase and hear it spoken aloud by a native speaker, Forvo-style. That way you could practice your pronunciation beforehand as many times as you like or, all comes to all, just press the button and hold it up to the person you’re trying to communicate with.

Of course, that would be significantly more work that just adding a written pronunciation guide, but it’s something I’ll definitely look into.

Stay tuned!

——-

Get the first edition of The BJJ Travel Phrasebook in PDF form here, entirely for free:

https://goo.gl/D3FKSu (Dropbox link)

I have every intention of publishing a second edition later in the year, and would really like to branch out and include more languages. If you speak any language that isn’t currently in the book and would like to contribute translations, just get in touch! Either PM me on Facebook or drop me a line at [email protected]

Greetings From Tirana, Albania (10-14 Sept 2017)

The bus ride to Tirana was a peaceful beautiful ride through the mountains, watching the sun shine down on the vast green fields and rocky landscapes. Leaving Ohrid and catching this bus was a bit sketchy at first. Men in plain clothes, who were apparently bus drivers and loading staff at the bus station, asked people where they were going and directed them to the according bus. Three men directed myself and an American to an unmarked and quite worn out white van which was going to be our ride to outside of town where we would catch the real bus. I knew this beforehand but I don’t think the American did as he was quite uneasy the entire time. The whole thing made me a bit uneasy and on guard as well but I’m glad I knew of this set up beforehand or I probably would have asked many questions and not been OK with it, just like the American.

After we switched to the main bus it was a scenic ride the rest of the way, in fact it was one of the most beautiful treks I’ve been on. Driving a bus through the mountains, especially an old beat up one, doesn’t sound too amazing but when you’re cresting the mountain ranges and see the sun shining down on the countryside it’s by far the best rides I’ve had. It’s even completely worth the scare of driving along a narrow road we could roll off down the mountain side with one bad turn just to see the view. The bus station in Tirana was only 10 minutes away from the hostel I was staying at so that was a bonus of not having to deal with taxis or transit there. In fact the whole time in Tirana I was able to walk around the city, although I hear there are some great sights to see outside the city limits.

Greetings From Skopje and Ohrid Macedonia! (2-10 Sep 2017)

I left Bulgaria on a bus feeling fine but once I got to Skopje and had my first night’s rest at the hostel I woke up not feeling very well. I had a sinus cold starting, messing with my respiratory system, and the ear infection was still giving me grief. I ended up not training at Skopje, the post camp flu had finally caught up with me. Instead I tried working online to catch up on some writing as well as plan out the next part of the Odyssey. At this stage I was looking to make my way over to Myanmar and Thailand which gave me the opportunity to make a stopover and possible class along the way, I’ll tell you all about that adventure next article. Although I didn’t get to train in Skopje I did talk to Martin who runs a club there. We spoke a lot about me coming to visit and had planned out when would be best to come for class, when I ended up sick and just decided to rest he told me all the best places or sight seeing. Skopje is a really nice city with a mix of old historic sights with new modern monuments. I really like the statues to various leaders and generals throughout the city to remind everyone of the long history of Macedonia.

I also took a bus from Skopje to Ohrid and it was a very scenic and quiet route, the hillsides and valleys through Macedonia are really beautiful. There was nothing too eventful, I caught the bus at the station which was right next to the hostel I was staying at in Skopje and away we went through the country side to Ohrid. Ohrid is a small town, built in a valley along the shore of Lake Ohrid, which shares the other half of it’s shore with Albania, and up the side of one of the hills where the fortress rests on top. The view is amazing coming in to town as we crested the hills and saw the beauty of the surrounding area. I was very happy to be traveling to see this place and meet Nenad and his gym and looked forward to exploring Ohrid more while I visited. 

The Sights

As I said before Skopje has a cool mix of old historic landmarks with new ones and the best example of that is the town square. There is an old stone bridge linking the modern town square to the old town market. It’s a historic sight, with statues and water fountains at each end and leading up the square that has a giant water fountain and Statue to Alexander the Great in the middle. The roads leading to the square have a series of old monuments and statues, like the arch ‘Port Macedonia’ that covers one of the streets to the square.

The market, or Old Bazaar, and the remains of old Skopje Fortress are also great examples of the history of Skopje and Macedonia. The market has a few main roads lined with stalls selling practically anything but the whole area is a series of catacomb alleys. I could see a growing part of the catacombs was becoming trendy stores and restaurants for tourists. The fortress is just outside of the catacombs on a hillside overlooking the city. From up there you can see the whole town stretch out in front of you with the town square right below. There’s nothing too special about the fortress grounds itself, it’s been knocked down over the years and other than the outer wall facing the city most of it is half crumbled brick walls, pits and piles of rock inside. The important thing isn’t what it is now but rather what is was before and the history it carries.

Ohrid also has a mix of old culture and history with modern tourism. The downtown core has many shops and restaurants, a lot of them lining Lake Ohrid for scenic waterfront views. All this downtown is at the base of the hill that old Ohrid is built upon, walk up the winding roads and you see the houses get older in style and after a while they open up to the Ancient Theater, an old outdoor amphitheater on the hillside overlooking the lake. Tsar Samoil’s Fortress sits up on top of the hill itself, overlooking all of the surrounding land. Again, like Skopje the Ohrid fortress was nothing more than a big brick outer wall, with the inside gutted, but the views but up on top were amazing. From up on the lookout there you could see all the surrounding valleys to the next peaks of the far off mountains. Anyone back in the day marching an army in, or rowing one in from the water front, would be seen from far off.

I also happened to walk by the old UN base in Ohrid. It’s gated and boarded up now so I couldn’t go inside but I managed to take a few pictures from the street. The people of Macedonia aren’t happy with the UN from the events that happened during the split into their own country and the UN’s exit from helping them so they don’t like to talk about this base or that time.

You can see my photos from this visit and all my other stops over on my Flickr Account.

Roots BJJ Ohrid

Nenad trains at the only gym in Ohrid, Roots BJJ Ohrid, a small group of very welcoming people who are genuinely happy to have visitors come to see their beautiful town. Nenad is a really fit guy, training at the gym at least once a day as well as doing Jiu-Jitsu 4 or 5 times a week, he even asked me to come out to the gym with him and although I wouldn’t mind being completely made a fool by someone who looks like they warm up with my max weight I was just getting over the cold and really didn’t want to push it too much. So instead we just met for Jiu-Jitsu. Although I was staying just down the road from the gym Nenad picked me up since it’s a bit tricky to find. The gym has some partitions for changing and a washroom around the corner, with the rest of the space tatami mats. The coach, whose name I forget, is a purple belt we spoke a little and he was very happy to have me come visit telling me I’m welcome any time. I got from the sense that they, being isolated from the bigger cities, are really grateful to have any visitors and take every opportunity to invite people in and make them feel at home with the gym.

The classes are started with a good warm up, which in my first class giving my rank standing at the end I was supposed to lead but I didn’t want to disturb their usual routine and held back for someone else to take the lead instead. Of the things I like to see when visiting different gyms their warm up routine is one of them. I’m not a fan of huge crossfit like exercise class long warm ups but I like to see the different movements that gyms do, often I find a new movement or chain of movements that I think would be great to remember for later. Just like submission techniques everyone has their own little differences in moving the body to warm it up before class. You can tell a lot about the gym and what style of Jiu-Jitsu they have by their warm ups most times as well. The next part of class was drilling takedowns, which Nenad and I worked different entries for Judo throws for gi class and arm drags into single legs and low singles for No-Gi. It was great drilling with Nenad, not just the takedowns but the whole class in general, because he doesn’t just quickly drill over and over, he’s like me where each rep gets dissected and analyzed and improved upon next rep. Together we worked to really get the moves we were drilling down. I’ve been to other gyms where sure we drill a lot but maybe I don’t feel like I got that technique down too well despite all the reps. Maybe Nenad and I just overthink or maybe other people under think and prefer quantity or quality, either way I enjoyed training with him.

Rolling with Nenad wasn’t as fun, his gym routine definitely made a difference when we rolled. Nenad had no problem controlling and submitting me at will. I guess I should’ve taken him up on those gym sessions after all. Seriously though he was a nice guy and even though he firmly controlled me he wasn’t crushing me like I know he could have. All the guys there were no joke in the physical department and could have easily run circles around me, not that they were looking to hurt or humiliate me, they were just a bunch of fit guys with strong Jiu-Jitsu, lucky for me they were also really nice and I was on their good sides. Nenad and Roots BJJ were great hosts I thoroughly enjoyed my time visiting, thanks for having me guys!

I made a video of my time training with Roots BJJ Ohrid that you can watch it, and  any of my other videos, over at the Panda’s Odyssey YouTube Channel. Please show some love, like, share, comment or even subscribe, thanks!

My time in Orhid was way too fast and over before I knew it I was on another bus off for another adventure. This time I was bound for my last stop in Eastern Europe before heading for Asia: Tirana Albania.

Until next time,

see you on the mats!

OSSS!!

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So, I started writing this blog a few weeks ago on our return but got so caught up returning to our “normal” life I kept forgetting to finish it.

Our journey back to Western Australia would see us stopover in Sydney to go through customs and board our connecting flight to Perth, unfortunately our flight out of Hawaii was delayed 2 hours which meant we missed our connecting flight and had to spend the night in Sydney. As it was a fault with the airline they supplied meals and a hotel. We weren’t too bothered as one of the benefits of travelling so much is you get accustomed to little hang ups like this. I had already committed to turning up to train at the Submission factory the next day so was a little bummed I wasn’t going to get as much rest as I had planned. Being just on Australian soil again felt a little weird and the kids were amazed at the smallest things such as everyone sounding like us again hahaha.

The Jet-Lag struggle was real!

The next morning, we got up at 4:30am so we could get to the airport and make our 6am flight back to Perth. Feeling quite tired we arrived back in Perth at around 10am, we were met at the airport by Dee’s mum. Both Lilly and Kobe couldn’t contain themselves as we walked down to pick up our bags running and jumping all over her. We somehow managed to fit the 5 bags and us into the car and headed home. I jumped straight into getting our car back up and running which had been sitting in the garage with the battery removed while we were away. Unfortunately, we still had to jump start it and for a few days it was a bit of a gamble if it was going to start or not.

Fun Times

The plan for the next couple of weeks was to spend a few days in Perth training and getting ready for Christmas, something we hadn’t organised for and it was only a few days away. We were then heading to my parent’s place in Leschenault where we would spend Christmas before heading back to Perth and then back home to Newman. That first night back in WA I headed to up to the Sub factory where I was able to share a few things that I had learnt during our trip. It was great to catch up with everyone some even traveling around an hour to come and hang out with us.

Sharing some of the things I learnt with the crew at the Sub Factory

A couple of days later we headed down to my parent’s place, the kids couldn’t wait to see my Mum and Dad. The days around Christmas were spent either at the beach, water skiing or just lazing around. We headed out water skiing after Christmas, something that I had spent a lot of my time doing at this time of year as a kid. Lilly was able to get up Skiing on around her 5^th pull which for anyone is an amazing achievement that pays tribute to her determination, balance and strength. Dee also made it up but just couldn’t stay up ?. We spent the entire day out on the water which was fantastic even if we did succumb to the intense Aussie sun and got a little burnt.

Great day out on the water

After almost a week of not training it was starting to feel a little weird as it was the longest time I had gone without training since my rib had healed at the start of our trip. We left Leschenault and headed back to Perth to get some more training in and get the things we needed before taking the 12 hr drive back home to Newman. As most of the gyms closed around this time of year I made a few phone calls and ended up driving back down to Rockingham to train at The Arena with Jamie Morrison and the guys there. Jamie had helped me out earlier in our trip with putting us into contact with Robert Drysdale who would allow us to take part in his World Masters Camp. We had a few great days training down with the guys at the Arena and Lilly and Kobe even got to get a class in which they loved.

The Arena

Grappling Technics

We also visited Brandon at Kaizen Lab BJJ and Leigh at Grappling Technics a few times where I also got to catch up with the person who introduced me to the art Gerald Burton-Batty, who was visiting from Melbourne. I didn’t get to visit them previously before I left but it was great to catch up and see how strong their clubs were going. I managed to get in a session with Stacey Wilson. We had some great rolls and was happy to share with him some of the things I had learnt while away. After a couple of hours of training Stacey surprised me, by promoting me to Brown Belt.

Kaizen Lab

Getting Promoted to Brown Belt by Stacey Wilson

We had planned on leaving on Saturday morning but after Cleve Williams gave me a call to let me he was celebrating the new venue of his academy we decided to postpone our trip back…. After 6 months what was one more day? It turned out to be a great event and saw people from all over the Perth area and other affiliations come and train together. Even after being super tired from all the training I had been doing that week I rolled from the moment I got there until we left (we were the last ones there). It was so good catching up with everyone and I’m sure the new place with be a huge success.

It’s really unusual for Cleve to talk this much :)

Cutting the Cake at the new Imperial Jiu-Jitsu location

We headed home to pack for the long journey back north to Newman, after all this adventure I don’t think any of us were quite ready for it to end yet… I’m sure our next adventure won’t be too far away ?

-Woody

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