Today is the 365th day of my trip abroad.

Although I left on April 30th, 1998, I took a few weeks out to visit home during Christmas so as I write this (25 May, 1999), it's Day 365.

And it was a wonderful day!  My first full day in Sydney.  I woke up and headed across town with a takeaway coffee and a bagel (touch of nostalgia?), skirting Darlinghurst, East Sydney, and walking around the Royal Botanic Gardens--all the while  never turning my head to the left, for fear that I'd catch sight of the Sydney Opera House.

I didn't want to see it.  Not yet, anyway.  I got into Sydney last night and still hadn't laid eyes on it.  I wanted to wait.  The Opera House is, after all, one of the last great milestones on my trip.  The Pyramids, the Taj Mahal, Mount Everest--I've seen them all.  Angkor Wat, Petra, Old Jerusalem, the Blue Mosque--I've been there, too.  But the Opera House remained.

Seeing the Opera House would be more than just seeing it.  It would mean the consummation of a dream.  The last major milestone on a long, long road.  The last proof of my victory over the size of the world, and the size of myself.

So I walked, anxiously, toward Sydney Harbour on the east side of the park, along Wooloomooloo Bay, to Mrs Macquaries Chair.  Not looking left.  Never looking left, because to look left might mean seeing it too soon.

And then, as the sun broke beaming across the green harbor, I stepped out from under an enormous, drooping tree. And there it was.  Sailing in place, like it always has been, waiting for me to finally arrive on my cue.  I gasped a little, sat down.  Stared across the water at my dream come to life. We loved each other for waiting so long.

The evidence of my dreams and a year of my hard work is scattered around the globe for all to see.  They are the Pyramids, the Himalayas, Table Mountain, Sydney Opera House.  The next time you see them, think of me.

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When I left you, I was in Singapore.  The night of my last dispatch, I went to the incredible night zoo they have there, the Night Safari. It's devoted to nocturnal animals, which as it turns out, is almost everything interesting.  It's a huge park in primary rainforest in the middle of Singapore island (which shouldn't imply distance; the taxi from the city only cost nine bucks), and it's only open from dusk to midnight.  They've got the animals in giant paddocks, with no cages and almost always not even any glass between you and them, just moats that look inadequate for the purpose.  You stroll through the jungle in the pitch black of night trying to spy various creatures of the night-- tigers, hyenas, leopards, elephants, French whores.  All with special lighting, like moonlight, that allows you to see the animals without pissing them off.  I heartily recommend that the next time you're in Singapore, you pay a visit to the Night Safari.

As for other things to do in Singapore, I can't vouch for much.  If you stay where I did, at the Lee Boarding House, you can enjoy getting dripped on by a mysterious liquid as you sit on the toilet.  The bathroom ceiling was fringed with stalactites.  But there was air conditioning, so I endured in the name of nature conservation.  Meanwhile, on the streets, the place was a sweltering mess.  I used a phone card to periodically squeegee the sweat from my head.  Eventually, I broke out.

I also caught up on movies.  To escape the heat and the monotony of shopping malls, I arranged mid afternoon entertainment daily, and over several days I caught "The Matrix," "Xiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl," "Analyze This," and "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels."

That was Singapore.  Sweating and movies and malls.  Mocha freezes with little espresso beans in.

Soon time was up for me in this merchandising wonderland.  On Monday, I got up before God and went to the airport for my 4-hourish flight to Hong Kong. The Singapore tourist pap likes to tout the airport as one of its shining tourist attractions.  Stores, restaurants, blah blah.  In fact, there was only one newsstand that I could count and they didn't even carry FHM (I have a weakness for it) so in my book it sucks, even though there was an A&W there that served root beer floats at 7 a.m.

The approach to Hong Kong is one of the most memorable in the world.  For hours, all you can see is the sea.  Then, out of the ocean rise sharp, jungly mountains, ringed with misty clouds and slowly accumulating towards the horizon. Then you begin to suss out the evidence of habitation in this Shangri-La: daunting arrangements of high-rise concrete palaces, narrow as needles, multiplying themselves down the hillsides and toward the shores.  As you look down, you wonder where the hell the pilot thinks he's going to land; it's either sharp mountains, acres of identical tower blocks, or navy blue seas.

Hong Kong, though, has an airport beyond belief.  It's not even been open a year; the old was was essentially smack dab in the middle of town (think in terms of an international jetway on the Brooklyn Esplanade) and giving pilots and civic planners alike fits.  So they built a new one at a cost so astronomical that if I told you, it might have lasting effects.  The new one has a main baggage area the size of something like eight Yankee Stadiums.  Shops galore with international press at bargain prices (I picked up an EW for HK$30, or about $3.75) and so much carpeting that I swear you can SENSE it with your skin the minute you walk into the place.  It's got a baggage claim conveyor that detects where there's already baggage and only deposits new luggage into the empty spots.  It's got a sleek commuter train between downtown and the airport that zips back and forth in about 25 minutes, has individual TV sets in every seatback, talks to you in several languages, and come complete with a luggage check-in in the middle of the city.  When you take a flight, you can give your luggage to the ticketing agents and then go back onto the street for more shopping.  It's amazing, and I'm jaded.

The minute I got off the plane and onto the people-mover bringing the Chinese hordes home, I felt solidly out of place.  Malaysia and Singapore have their cultural identities, but here in Hong Kong's airport I was the only brown head bobbing in a sea of shorter black ones.  Hong Kong, for its deserved reputation as one of the world's leading cities, is one of the world's most homogeneous ones.  I can't think of a more powerful city where the people look down on you for being genetically different.  Everyone's Chinese by origin, and if you're not, you're a gwailo--an outsider.  And where there are so many Chinese, the gwailos can stick out.

I was made extra aware of my foreignness by dint of when I arrived.  I arrived in China the day after NATO bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.  The moment I picked up a Chinese paper (particularly the subtle government mouthpiece The South China Morning News), I sensed the anti-American talk picking up.  Each day, the headlines discussed Chinese rage over "American" blundering, how hurt the government was and (sniff) maybe things won't be all right after all.  Editorials complained (and here I think rightly so) that the official American response was cavalier and arrogant.  But day after day, in wording so subtle as to be accepted by Hong Kong's well educated masses, America in particular was painted as a careless bully who'd really stepped in it now.  It was a little bit scary to see that message land on my doorstep every day.

I don't know how many English-speaking Chinese were buying it.  But I have no doubt that the others were.  On the mainland, the government hasn't been telling the people about all the Serbian-sponsored death programs.  They don't have a full picture of what's going on in Kosovo.  So NATO's asinine bombing campaign, though justified in the media at home, is seemingly without basis in China.

I wish I could understand the Chinese.  I try so hard.  But I just see that ugly Asian tendency to encourage everyone toward sameness.  I hate that.  I understand that sameness is important. When you have over a billion people, too much individuality is a real threat to the balance.  But a lack of individuality has always been one of things I detest most in other people, and here I was thrown in the central of Sameness Central.  Granted, I'm only seeing exteriors.  But it's also true that Asian culture stresses rote performance over creativity.  In Hong Kong, as in Japan, how people seem to express themselves is dependent on the configurations of products they can buy.  Self through consumerism.  It should be on the city seal.

Don't overestimate Hong Kong.  It was British up until almost two years ago, but today it's more Chinese than anything.  Chinese paper money is creeping in to replace the old Hong Kong notes.  And more Hong Kongers, who speak Cantonese, are leaning Mandarin over English so they can tap into the Chinese market.  Pretty soon, Hong Kong's division from the rest of the world will be more pronounced than ever, and it will have nothing to do with anything the regime is doing.

Which is odd, considering China is communist and Hong Kong is all about capitalism.  The CBD, called Central, screams its materialist mantra through architecture.  I.M. Pei's Bank of China building spears the skyline, flouting all principles of fengshui, like a razored phallus pointed derisively at the gods. Nearby, the Bank of Hong Kong building, once the party boy in town, now seems to squat troll-like in comparison.  Its piping and support struts are visible around the building's shell, giving it a robot-like appearance, and the inside is an atrium so cavernous and thrilling that tourists pretend to have business in the bank just to see it.  Another building in Central is tackily festooned with colored light rods, which at night gradually change color. At nine o'clock nightly, the skyscraper provides the city with a garish lightshow, with the building twinkling and beaming and chasing color all over itself in a five-minute bout of what can only be called architectural masturbation.  Yep, Central Hong Kong sings the praises of money. It tells you that the money places are the places to be, the places to worship.  Its skyscrapers glare contendedly over the bustling harbor, but they fail to surpass the majesty of Victoria Peak behind them. Try as they might to reach over its summit, the mountain's winning, and cradles them from above and behind.

But only the rich enjoy that.  Most of the people live in legions of concrete stacks outside of town.  Rows of repeating rows of high-rise houses, most of them full of cheap fluorescent lighting--the bane of Asia.  It gets pretty oppressive.

I think most of the white guys on Hong Kong's streets look as pasty and sparkless as Nick Leeson. Okay, he was in Singapore (Changi Airport is quite near his home in Changi Prison), but the type is the same.  Money hungry, status-mad, devoid of spiritual curiosity.  They made me mad.  Though in time, I can see how Hong Kong could make me materialistic.  Even over a few days, I found myself looking up at some warmly lit three-zillion-dollar high-rise condo and thinking, "I could live like this."  Then I'd bash my head on the pavement to clear the moment and proceed on my way.

I was excited about coming to Hong Kong for two more reasons.  One is my friend Leon Ko.  We started writing together in college, and went to grad school together, which meant we both were the first in our group to move to Manhattan.  It was us versus the world back then.  He's a Hong Konger by blood, and last year--about the time I left New York myself to take this little spin--he moved back. So I'd finally get to see him, and in his hometown.  It's great to see your friends in their natural habitats.  And my New York friend Jeff Williams was also going to see me; he was on a short trip of his own and was stopping in Hong Kong the next day.

Leon picked me up at the airport and whirled me around Hong Kong Island.  He dropped me off at Kowloon, across the harbor from the skyline, where I checked into my room and saw my impressive view of the city.  We went for noodles at a real live Chinese noodle shop, where everything was in Cantonese (usually the case in HK).  We walked through Times Square in Causeway Bay, with half the population jabbering into cell phones.  (HK has the highest cell phone usage rates in the entire world.  Dunno why.  Local calls are free to make!)  We drove on the winding back roads, over the central peaks, down through the beaches like Repulse Bay and the village of Shek O.  He took me to the observatory at the tip-top of the island and we strolled on the footpath way, away above the skyline. That night we had mad Italian food at Fat Angelo's, a family-style restaurant. I felt like I'd been transported to another world.  Indeed I had.

And let me say one more thing.  My friends are such gems.  I don't know how I do it, but I always seem to make friends with some of the most worthwhile people in the world. Leon and I are total opposites in many ways, but in the important ones we click.  I sat there thinking of what a great guy he is and what a great life he has and how he always manages to reduce me to my elementals just by sitting down and talking to me.  I have some incredible friends in my life.

Whenever I stay in a city for a few days, event seem to blur.  I enjoy getting up and exploring without a compass.  Among the stuff Hong Kong showed me in the next few days: The Central Escalator, which snakes from harborside all the way into Midlevels, a trip that's over a kilometer long.  It's a string of peoplemovers and escalators built above street level that carries commuters down in the mornings and up in the late day. You can commute to work by escalator!  Central, in fact, is outfitted with a tangle of suspended walkways; you can walk forever without touching asphalt.

Another thing that makes HK such a fun place is the ferries.  Chief among them is the Star Ferry, which has been taking people between Central and Kowloon for over 100 years.  It's dirt cheap and the views knock you on your butt.  The harbor itself is ajumble with ferries, tugs, fishing boats, barges, tankers... it's like another city on the water, with vessels narrowly missing each other at every turn.  It must be what New York had been like at the turn of the century.  It's possible to go days in Hong Kong without getting into any other vehicle but a boat. As a mode of travel, it's unparalleled for beauty, fun, and often, speed.

Jeff and I developed some strange habits.  One is, we became addicted to sushi.  The conveyor belt kind.  We must've gone to Genki Sushi about five times.  I'm wasabi nutty.  We also discovered the Lovegety Station, a Japanese contraption that capitalizes on the Asian love for personalized sticker photos (machines are everywhere you look in Asia) by making personalized trading cards.  You step in the booth, choose the card design, have your photo taken, and it prints them up.  Of course, they're not your average Topps card.  They're Japanese.  They make no sense. One of our favorites says "Cutie Friends" on it.  Another is mysteriously labelled "The Day of Fresh Green."  Jeff and I did a Lovegety card for every day we were in Hong Kong.  Ask me and I'll show you!

Try as hard as I can to be cool, I'm still a white guy trying to be cool.  Which still makes me cooler than the average blow here.  But also makes me a definite outside.

Our beloved Lovegety station is in the basement of Chunking Mansions in Kowloon.  Chunking Mansions is a tall concrete mess of dirty laundry and sooty windows better suited for prison than its main function, which is budget travel accommodation.  Although Jeff and I were staying at the posh YMCA (fresh fruit basket, in-room movies, pool), we wanted to see how the other half lives.  They live like caged animals.  We walked into one dump, the one recommended first by the Lonely Planet, and were greeted by a fat white guy with red hair whose striped shirt barely reached across his belly.  He waddled us through his gloomy establishment--concrete walls, sticky floors, and patrons sitting in windowless corridors eating toast and picking their noses.  Everyone looked depressed, and everything in the rooms felt like it had been stolen.  Out in the stairwells, the squalor reached nightmare pitch.  The airshafts were dank, littered with tattered and dripping shards of cloth, mysterious mounds of puddly could-be-feces, drizzling with fetid water, without air or light.  Jeff and I looked at each other and said, "Brazil."

There were other weird moments, too.  Leon and his friend Stephen took me for pigeon in the New Territories.  I gamely went along with it, even when the pigeons arrived, marinated and gawking at me, on a dinner plate.  Leon took charge, ripping off the heads and tearing out the spines for me.  I was so flustered that I spilled my Coke.  Stephen told me I had a pigeon complex.  (It tastes like chicken crossed with a mild duck.)  Another night, we took Jeff out for a hot pot dinner--very popular in Asia--where you all sit around a pot of boiling soup and throw fun ingredients into it: prawns (shrimp), beef, vegetables, fish, shrimp balls, noodles. We had a total blast that night.  The Asians know how to throw a social meal.  And Stephen and Leon amazed me.  We'd decide to have dessert somewhere and they'd whip out their cells, make the reservation, and suddenly we were off--across town, under tunnels, up over peaks, wherever.  They looked like they owned that city.

Jeff and I took a few side trips, too.  We had cocktails atop the Peninsula Hotel at Felix.  Designed to the hilt; the lights dim in the elevator as you approach the bar.  The place unfolds like a John Woo set as you enter it.  There's a view of the skyline that packs the yuppies in; Jeff had a Cuban cigar and we pretended to be cool for a while. (Result: I was more successful.)  The urinals were extra special, too: They were positioned before a plate-glass window high above Kowloon.  As you pee, you're looking down on the huddled masses (and Chunking Mansions).  We also hit Cheung Chau, a little fishing island, and walked around to the cave allegedly used by a band of pirates to store their schwag.

We also spent the day in Macau, an hour by ferry to the west.  Macau, like Hong Kong, is a series of island off the Chinese coast.  It's under Portuguese administration, and it's due to revert to China in December.  As casinos, and not international trade, are its main draw, it remains to be seen whether China will be as kind in maintaining its present way of life after the changeover.  For now, it's a pleasant place heaped with European charm.  Walking down the streets, it felt like the Chinese had taken over Seville, with the mustard-colored houses, rococo churchfronts, and general Mediterranean flair.

Jeff and I stopped in at the Lisboa casino. We observed roulette for a while, and then to the dice table, where Jeff came away a winner.  I didn't bet.  I never do.  I enjoyed watching the Chinese pit posses survey the room, in their red coats, through the cigar smoke haze.  Very atmospheric.  Suave in the way that only certain kinds of trashy behavior can be.

Our last night was spent on Lamma Island, where the expats tend to live.  It's got a Cape Cod thing going on, with vegetarian restaurants and seafood pubs crowding around a perfectly sweet bay.  It's the kind of town where the dogs seemed to know everyone, and when the ferry arrives the crowds belch forth from the jetty to the bars for one last cool-down before bed.

Then it was pretty much time to go.  Sorry as I was to leave Hong Kong, I wonder if I could live there. You're pretty much stuck on a few islands, hemmed in by China, and hours by jet from any other interesting destination.  Still, the consumer paradise of the city is comfortably insular.  Clean underground system with color-coded stations, lots of little restaurants for you to stick a flag in and proclaim your very own.  It's a seductive place.

And my Asia leg was over.  Bang, like that.  Another major transition.  The third chapter of my trip closed.  The fourth--and last--began.  Australasia.

I flew to Auckland for one night, but as I only spent 23 hours there (and I'm going back), I don't think I'll go into it other than to say New Zealand is a great place to raise boring children.

Then to Brisbane.  Australia!  Can you believe I'm Down Under?  I can't!  I always had a secret doubt that this place actually existed.  I mean, most of the Australians I've met just didn't have their stories together.  Turns out they're like that.

With Oz, I've now been in every continent except South America.  Well, and Antarctica, but who goes there?

I spent the first two days resting.  Macau and Lamma and Auckland all took it out of me.  So I watched a ton of movies to regroup: "Ed TV," "Celebrity," and "A Midsummer Night's Dream."  And the next night, me and this great girl Louise (American in London and I swear she was like another me) went to see "Three Seasons," which I thought looked gorgeous.

Brisbane isn't much.  A drag with bars, a main downtown area with a pedestrian shopping mall (those Ozzies love pretending they're British) and a few other bells and whistles.  One night a bagpipe band marched down the street; Louise and I watched from our dorm room high in the tower of the Palace.  (I think they were heading to the convention center, where Gorbachev and Schwartzkopf were speaking.)  I found some fun diversions.  One was to go to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, where you're actually allowed to hug the Koalas.

(That reminds me of a totally lame Ripley's Believe It Or Not I saw in Bangkok: "Koala Bears ARE NOT BEARS! (They are marsupials.")

Apparently it's illegal in many Australian states because the Koalas sometimes have heart attacks from all the excitement.  My bear, named Riff-Raff, was man enough to take a hug from me. I understand they're also quite savage in the wild.  They're pretty good at gouging your eyes out. Also at Lone Pine, there's a huge sanctuary for kangaroos.  They give you a bag of kanga chow and off you go into the fields to feed them.  (They're also marsupials.)  Kangaroos are such freaky animals!  They walk with their tails and their hind legs, and they're as sweet-faced as does. Long eyelashes, cute squirrelly paws and twittery chewing.  They ate all my food and licked my hands clean, too.  I bet they'd make good pets. (You can order them at some restaurants.  We'll see about that.)

And I also hit an important stop: the Crocodile Hunter's zoo!  You've seen Steve Irwin, that crazy guy on Animal Planet or Discovery Channel. He's always wrestling some crocodile or snake in the deepest wilds of the outbacks, getting all excited as he shows off his catch to the cameras.  ("Don't try this yehself!  I've been spec'ly TRINED!")  Well, he's got a zoo north of Brisbane.  I trekked out there.  And yeah, the crocs were amazing, and so was the python the size of an oil pipeline, but the real thing for me was Harriet the Giant Land Tortoise.

Harriet--get this--was hatched in November 1830!  That is not a typo!  She was born on the Galapagos Islands and Charles Darwin himself collected her as a specimen when she was a baby.  And she's still alive.  She's the oldest living animal in captivity.  I couldn't believe my eyes. I couldn't believe I was looking at an animal that old, that had seen all that history.  She was a mammoth momma, too--something around 1000lbs.  Isn't that so Australian?  The nature here is out of control--it's like another world.  Giant, colorful flightless birds!  Kangas and koalas.  Eight of the 10 most venomous snakes.  Yahoo Serious.

(Recommended viewing: A movie now out in the US called "The Castle."  It's hysterical, and skewers the typical dim-bulb Australian.  I saw it last year in Cape Town and again last week on video in Brisbane.  It's a new cult hit here.  See it!)

Which brings me to Sydney.  Well, sort of.  It took me 15 hours to get here by train.  Look at a map.  Australia's HUGE!  A little under 19 million people in a land mass the size of the 48 American states.  It's a giant sand trap out there.

But I LOOOOOVE Sydney.  You can tell a good city right away.  There's that vibe in the air.  It's not too small and not too big, not too new and plenty old.  Hip as heck. I still have lots to explore.  I'm here another week, and still have the future Olympic site to explore.  Anyone want any Olympics stuff?

Just when I got tired again comes another exciting spell.  I love traveling again.  Yeah, I'm thinking about coming home and ordering that giant Smokey the Burrito at my favorite Mexican joint.  But Sydney's great.  Hong Kong was a trip.  It keeps getting good.  Rewards are everywhere.

At the Gardens overlooking the Opera House I met a Kiwi, Mark.  When you travel alone, can't be in your own photos without the kindness of strangers.  You meet a lot of people when you ask them to take your picture for you. I met one Japanese lady who said she was 50 (Me: "NOO! I just don't believe it!" She: "Tee-hee!").  Then Mark.  Mark was typical of the people you meet for one day during your travels.  Not too bright, this Mark, but you do what you can.  He sells garden ornaments for a living and has never really been out of New Zealand.  I heard his life story. Got into his business by selling garden gnomes. His big seller right now is a pig in a waistcoat  pushing a wheelbarrow. "People like it because the wheelbarrow's a planter, see," said Mark. "I can't make enough of 'em."  Mark was fascinated with garden kitsch.  We'd walk through the Botanic Gardens and he'd stop at a statue of Pan and say something like, "That's a very good one."  Or we'd be strolling across Darling Harbour and he'd point to a tree and say "Do they have trees along walkways in America, too?"

Traveling is so enriching.  Not only have I eaten pigeon, but I've met someone who sells garden gnomes for a living.  Well, someone has to, right?

++Reach me anytime on my cell phone!  414 016 443.
Right now I'm in: Sydney, Australia
Days: 365