Japan 2012 - TRU Field Trip

This would be the last time I was overseas. The time before this was my two years spent in Australia. I came home to go to school in 2009, which is where I have remained since (completing my last semester now). So... I decided to go to Japan while in school - genius, right? Squid on a stick mmm (me below).

Japan is one gorgeous country. It's so lush and green, the people are so friendly, there was excitement in each place I happened to discover. Being (barely) more mature than I was during my previous overseas excursions,  I felt that 'culture shock' would not be something I'd experience.. no.. not to me: the experienced traveler. I was wrong. I was so excited the first week I was there. Everything was new again (but the same). For example, I ordered beer and noodles... but from a vending machine!! ;) I think I caught myself taking a photograph of a stop sign because it looked slightly different than what we have here in Canada... seriously. I was going through a phase of where film had caught my attention, however. Photos were taken from a '65 Voss Diax IIb and some expired film... fyi.

The field trip was focused on the walkability of predetermined tourist walking routes throughout Tokyo. We were to choose a route and critique it while visiting its sites, diligently logging every detail of our experience in a journal. This was only a portion of the trip. Our group consisted of about 10 people from all different disciplines. I'm a geography major, but we had a horticulture professor, a geography prof, a sociology prof, as well as students from English and Japanese programs, amongst others. Urban geography is really my niche, so I was very excited to explore Tokyo: the largest city (pop.) on the planet!

The urban structure of Tokyo (pictured right)
is so efficient. The sidewalks are very wide; there are protruding yellow bumps for the visually impaired to find their way, but it also acts as a barrier that guides the flow of traffic. I learned quickly to look (or listen) out for bikes - there are many, and most have cute little bells attached to their frame. The subway system is out of this world. I swear I was down half a kilometre underground with about 4 or 5 lines racing overhead. Everyone takes the subway... ok, well certainly the majority do. Driving in Tokyo is near impossible because there aren't very many places to park. The convenience of the subway makes it desirable as well - you always get out right in the heart of the sector of the city you wish visit. It's great. You can travel from one end of the city to the other in 30 minutes, somehow.

We travelled as a group to see world heritage sites, view tea plantations and absorb some local history, while staying with host families. My host family was so great. The man of this household was nearing 70 years of age. He didn't speak a word of english, but he enjoyed smoking and drinking, so we became good friends over the 2 days ;) We communicated by grunting, hand-gestures, and probably ended up agreeing on a lot of things that were not on the same page. Many laughs were had in that household. At one point we ate some pickled fish intestine..

I finished off my time in Japan on the beaches of Kamakura (pictured below), about 2hrs south west of Tokyo. A friend and I rented bikes and stayed in a hostel near the beach. We got some sun, I went out for a surf and we made friends at seaside pubs.

Since I was only there for a few weeks, I noticed my comfortability with Japan increasing as time went on. As soon as I felt able to live comfortably in Japan on my own, it was time to leave; that is ironic, but a common experience for most travelers. I was so excited for the first week, then the last week I was wondering how I would be able to stay longer and really get a 'true' taste of the Japanese lifestyle. I'd love to go back. I'm sure I will.

Cheers for reading. I think that's my last blog. This has been fun.

-Jayden Riley

Life As A Backpacker in South East Asia

Backpacking: what an adventure! Albeit, I think the majority of it was spent having drinks with other foreigners and lacking a little in the 'culture' department, but it was still a great time. I was only about 20 years old. This was my second time traveling overseas to South East Asia. I was on a Canada World Youth exchange program a year or two before, so I was able to reconnect with some friends living in Jakarta, Medan and Bali. I actually went back to the village that I spent months in volunteering. It was odd because I thought I would know my way back easily. I found myself questioning that confidence after about 20-30 minutes on a motorcycle taxi thinking to myself, "this doesn't look familiar" haha - my memory evidently has a sense of humour!

As for my time as a 'backpacker'... was it a 'cultural' experience? Did I take much from the trip that would help me develop my self? Do I have regrets about being on the beaten-to-death tourist trail? I answer yes and no to all the above questions. I look at life as if everything has a yang to its ying... a zig to its zag.. and so forth. I may have been on the 'tourist trail' but man did I have fun.





After meeting up with my Indonesian friends (aka CWY Alumni) I took a flight into Bangkok. I stayed a night on Khao San Rd by myself before meeting up with a couple good friends. Wow... what a place. I wouldn't go back there to stay, but I'm glad I experienced it. Everything is for sale on that road - and I mean everything. I spent a lot of my time hanging out with other tourists and my hometown friends swimming on rooftop pools, smoking cigarettes and drinking Chang beer. It was great. We would go into the seediest looking clubs just for the experience - a story to talk about at a later date. I still have the privilege of bringing these stories up to my buddies every time I am lucky enough to see them.

We went from Bangkok to Siem Reap, Cambodia. Yes, this is the tourist trail, and for good reason. Siem Reap is near Angkor, which is littered with over 100 temples that were built nearly 800 years ago. Angkor Wat is absolutely breathtaking; it is encompassed by a 1.5km square moat with carvings on the walls that create the peripheral boundary, with a trail that leads you to the central temple (pictured). We would  be able to climb all the way to the top of the stairs of the temple and watch the sunset. Our collection of friends grew larger, absorbing a couple Swedish guys who were also keen to drink beer with us ;)

We traveled all the way south to Sihanoukville and then through Laos along the Mekong, staying in little bungalows that were perched over the river. We also got into Vang Vieng - that was a weird place that made me a little sick to be a tourist. Let me paint a picture for you: imagine yourself walking up these dirt roads then hearing the TV show Friends being played at mid-volumes with a packed house of tourists eating and drinking, not so much conversing, but watching the show; then looking to your right (assuming the first place was on your left) and seeing the same thing... but maybe, just maybe, a different season of the show... I'm telling you, every single restaurant/bar was set up exactly the same way, playing the same show all day, every day. Aside from that, I guess the big attraction to this place was the climbing. The topography was incredible with Karst landscape as far as the eye could see. We did however go kayaking and tubing down the river, also taking a guided tour under these mountains where there were freshwater lakes, incredible drip curtains, stalagmites and other wickedly cool geologic features. I guess I was just really off-put by the Friends atmosphere that seemed so popular at the time.

To conclude, I would say that my time backpacking wasn't as rewarding as my initial experience in South East Asia as a volunteer. I'm not saying it wasn't fun, because it absolutely was. It was a different beast. What I'm saying is that I was cognizant of my impact as a tourist. It seems that it's almost a right of passage that these countries exploit their tourism sector in this way. Sure it boosts their economy, as they are largely dependent on tourism, but the externalities associated with it equates largely to a bunch of young drunkards polluting their most pristine environments. What I learned form this experience is how to be an ethical backpacker - how to enjoy myself but make the right choices that minimize my footprint on these gorgeous areas of the world. I think if I would do it again, I would look to get involved in some volunteer work, whatever that may be, to get engaged with local issues and meet local people. I think it's totally fine to enjoy beverages and hang out with a bunch of tourist - that's a lot of fun - but I would plan it in the future with a little more zig and less zag, if you feel me.

Cheers for reading all of that - congrats!

My next blog will be about my experience in Japan a year and a half ago.



Jayden Riley

My Canada World Youth Experience in Indonesia (2004-2005)

This is my first blog so bear with me, please :)

I realize that it has been quite some time since I have been back to Indonesia, but my experiences in the country will forever hold a place in my heart. Sometimes, when I see old photos of my time in the village, I can remember the smells and the bright colours, along with all the smiling faces of children in their uniforms off to school. The memory of being surrounded by children is usually the first one to come to mind. Why, might you ask? My host family lived only a few houses down from an elementary school. It just so happened that our house was the place where the kids ditched their bikes while they were in class. I think this was a strategic allowance based on the fact that my host family had a store on the property, making it a convenient location for the kids to grab a treat for the trip home. There must have been close to 200 bikes in our yard 5 days a week. The village was 45mins north of Kisaran in the province of Sumatera Utera (North Sumatra). I would say the village had a population of one thousand, but I have never been certain about this. The way the villages are set up is a little confusing and I still do not, to this day, have a great grasp of their organization. The roads were all dirt and travel was done primarily by bicycle. I think there were only a few cars in the village. I happened to be seeing an Indonesian woman (another participant of the Canada World Youth program) and I would ride to her house almost everyday - I believe that was a 3-4km journey through these incredible jungle trails, accomplished by a truly vintage bicycle and a tiny flashlight, if it was dark...

At the heart of the program was community development and building international relationships - perhaps not to the degree that I happened to be involved, but it was about making friends with people from another culture and getting to know and appreciate each other's differences. It was the best thing I could've done coming out of high school. I remember being a young, classic-rock-loving, hippie-wannabe with aspirations of traveling the world (and not much else other than getting famous playing guitar). At that age, I don't think I fully conceptualized traveling to mean what it means to me today, but I look back on it as if it was an experience that I didn't over think. I jumped in head first not knowing how I'd come out - and that was just fine. It was very spontaneous. I wouldn't change it for anything.

I remember arriving at the village - everything was such a shock to me. I wasn't in Kansas anymore (mind you I've never been to Kansas, but you get the point). The heat was tremendous and I didn't know a lick of Bahasa Indonesia (Official 'Indonesian language'). To top it off, our host families knew about as much english as I did Indonesian... The dictionary was my bible. There was no furniture. I would spend most of the first month in the house at night getting to know my new family. I was welcomed by four girls aged 10-25 and a young man, along with my Hibu and Bapa (Mom and Dad) on a property with 2 small houses (one being a small store). Because of the noticeable roles that constituted gender, I lived quite luxuriously: my bed and laundry were taken care of by my 'sisters' and food was prepared for me daily.  They would cook outside, using fire and a cast iron pan. It was usually fried rice. My host family did have agriculture land a short bike ride away. I would help my host father plant different vegetables and legumes and harvest coconuts once or twice a week. There was rarely any meat to be had, only on special occasions. I rarely had an alcoholic drink, but, again, on special occasions my host family would provide me with a little Tuah. Tuah was a drink that tasted foul in a variety of ways, but I came to realize it was just fermented coconut juice... imagine it, if you will. The 'Tuah Man' would come around on his bike every few weeks and collect the coconut juice that was held up in the trees, just sitting there... waiting... waiting to be 'enjoyed.'

My work did not stop at helping my family on their agricultural land. As a group - which consisted of 10 Canadian youth, 10 Indonesian youth, and 2 project supervisors (1 Canadian, 1 Indonesian) - we had a budget of a few thousand dollars that we were to put toward community development projects. Each project was discussed amongst us and the community. We rebuilt the elementary school, built a library, cleaned out the trenches on the sides of the main road to enable better drainage, built at step-up dock to enable the women of the village to wash their laundry in the river, no matter if it was the wet or dry season, as well as organized a plot of agriculture land to provide for the operating costs of a day-care we established. Each day we were either collaborating ideas and/or muscles with community members, or working at one of our work placements. My work placements were teaching at the primary school, 'supervising' at a kindergarten school in the larger, adjacent village, and, of course, making/cooking bricks. I loved them all. I felt I learned a lot about myself and the people of the village. It was nice to get dirty and work together to achieve goals that were not only set up by our group, but that reflected the wants and needs of the community.

I think one of the most significant outcomes of this experience was learning about a religion I was not very familiar with: Islam. I often would look at Islamic customs and question why I didn't grow up with anything as such. I don't think I knew whether it was a good or bad thing, or even if I should ask myself such a question. I suppose I went into the CWY program basically oblivious to world religions, and during and after the 8 month program I was very interested to learn as much as I could;  I think the entire program has worked in this way for me. I came home with a thirst for knowledge and a wide open mind. I felt like a new person, capable of anything. It was empowering.

I could write about my experience forever, it seems. I still remember it like it was yesterday... It is difficult for me to understand it's been nearly 10 years.

My next blog will be about my time coming back to the village and traveling throughout S.E Asia as a backpacker.

-Jayden Riley