as promised on the last post of my previous blog i would like to start this one with snippets of writings from my mass mails i sent out while traveling from Okinawa back home. My friend David and I set out from Naha's port on a ferry at the end of July and I ended the trip by flying to Chicago's ORD from London Heathrow on November 21st.
From Okinawa we ferried to Korea, from Korea we flew to Mongolia where we spent a week with a personal guide who then put us on train #5 bound for Moscow, after four days on the train and one night in Moscow it was 2 weeks in St. Petersburg and setting off on my own through some of eastern europe including: Latvia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Bosnia, Serbia, and a lunch in Slovakia; next i spent two fantastic weeks in Turkey which were followed by two weeks in Greece and then a flight to London where i finished off my trip with friends from Okinawa, spending most of my time in Oxford and throwing a weekend in Amsterdam in the mix just for fun.

and now for more details

from first mail written on July 29th in Korea


Quick update of things that happened to David and I in the last 2 days
left Okinawa at 7am
watched Liz dance at the Motobu port with toilet paper streaming in the wind
cried as the ferry pulled out
crashed on the ferry
played Mario Kart with a 5 year old and 11 year old
ate bento that was deemed trash but tasted just fine
waited to be picked up at an expressway entrance for an hour and even went as far as to hide David in the bushes
gave up hitchiking and got picked up by an amazing gentleman who drove us 2 hours out of his way, took us to a shrine and Fukuoka castle, treated us to lunch and wouldn't hear of taking Okinawa sugar but loved the Wisconsin sticker
told we overstayed our welcome in Japan and couldn't leave Korea on a ferry we booked three weeks ago and devised a new plan of action
plan foiled by nice police guy who kindly escorted us in a police car to a police station where several lovely police guys questioned us separately to make sure we were telling the truth about how we possibly couldn't have noticed that we overstayed our cut off date on the visa
got personally driven to the immigration office in Shimonoseki at 8pm by the immigration officer who spoke superb english and handled all our extension paperwork in a dark immigration office, solved a crossword puzzle
took bus and train to Fukuoka
stayed at an internet cafe and had amazing sleep
got our tickets refunded
got haircut ;)
went to fast boat terminal in Hakata and were told all afternoon ferries were sold out and got wait listed
ate an ice cream
got onto the ferry when someone canceled (yipee!)
watched Transformers with korean subtitles and not being able to hear the english (awful film, sorry!)
got into Busan and were helped by kind people with bus info and went to Gyeongju-si which looks great on pamphlets so we might stay two nights

more on the way...