Project Hitchhiker | travels, stories and adventures in lifestyle design
welcome to my blog
Project Hitchhiker is the online creative outlet of Mike H.
Mike’s adventures have taken him across 3 continents, including driving a motorcycle for 6 months across Southeast Asia, hitchhiking across Canada and Japan, and walking 1000 miles along the coastline of Nova Scotia.
Mike’s passions are music, travel and motorcycles (in that order).
Mike’s dislikes include writing about himself in the third person.
This site is a collection of his travels, stories and adventures in lifestyle design.
A wise man once said, If you have nothing good to say…. Post some pictures.
This weekend, I spent almost all my time at work and writing music, and I’m pretty tapped out. So here’s some pictures from Kachoen Bird Park in Kakegawa. I went there a few weekends ago with Kim and though I expected it would be interesting, I had a total blast.
We saw a lot of birds that start with ‘P’ — penguins, parrots, parakeets, peacocks, pelicans…
As well as some other letters: ostriches, flamingos, and a large variety of angry looking owls (they are, after all, nocturnal).
The parakeets loved kim for some reason. At one point, there were 2 birds up her sleeve and another trying to unzip her jacket.
My favorite by far were the Toucans. At first they’re a little intimidating because they’re pretty big. But they’re really gentle and surprisingly light on your arm.
That’s it. Kakegawa Bird Park. Definitely going back, since I’m here for the next year.
1. A Map For Saturday. This is the film that inspired me to write this post. It`s a documentary that follows a successful twenty-something as he quits his job to backpack around the world for a year. Watching it, I felt it really captured everything about travel and backpacking that I love. Amazing film. This is required viewing for anyone thinking about taking time off for an extended trip.
2. One Week. Follow Joshua Jackson`s (remember Charlie from the Mighty Ducks?) character, Ben,on a motorcycle journey across Canada after being told he doesn`t have long to live. Awesome soundtrack, beautiful Canadian scenery, and great cameos by Gord Downie, Emme Gryner and Joel Plaskett.
3. Motorcycle Diaries. A future revolutionary and his friend ride motorcycles across South America. Need I say more? The book was good; the movie, better. Great soundtrack too.
Consolation Prizes:
1st Runner Up goes to Into the Wild. Would have got the award too, if the idealistic protagonist didn`t die at the end.
2nd Runner Up goes to The Beach. As a film, it`s not bad. As inspiration for an adventure or a visit to Thailand, amazing.
3rd Runner Up is Y Tu Mama Tambien, which would have taken the prize save for the final sex scene. Shudder. Bad shudder.
And the award for least inspiring travel movie goes to… Brokedown Palace. Thailand rocks. Thai prison, not so much. Don`t do drugs, kids.
What movies make you crave travel? Opinions please :)
This weekend has been a bit hectic, with all the earthquake and tsunami-related stuff going on not too far away. To be clear, I wasn’t directly affected here in Shizuoka (aside from feeling the earthquake), but it was enough to seriously change my weekend plans. On that note, my thoughts are with all the people affected by the tsunamis.
I decided to take a break from writing this week and introduce a monthly series, Unconventional Interviews: conversations with people who are living interesting, outside-the-box lives.
This month’s interview is with Tanissa. In the last ten years, she’s taught English in Korea and China, worked as a divemaster in Thailand, for an NGO in Azerbaijan, as a bike guide in eastern Canada, and even as a volunteer coordinator for the Olympics in Vancouver. She’s traveled all over the world, and she’s just an all-round awesome person. Here’s her interview:
Where are you and what are you doing now?
I am currently in Cape Town, South Africa, doing a three month term placement for my Masters degree.
Of all the places you’ve been, which is your favorite?
It’s hard to pinpoint just one, as every place is steeped with it’s own memories, relationships and experiences specific to the time and reason I was there, so every place has left a lasting impression on me. I would have to say that I have really fallen in love with the East Coast of Canada and that the Caribbean will always hold a piece of my heart, likely because Jamaica was the first place I ever lived/worked in for an extended period of time.
Was there a place that was your least favorite, most disappointing, or most challenging?
Undoubtedly, my time in Azerbaijan was one of the most challenging and frustrating years of my life. The combination of crusty, old-school (Soviet) mentalities, heated tempers and difficult development work was much to endure, which I credit to the support and companionship of my colleagues and good friends there. Visits from family and friends, as well as holidays outside the country, also made a big difference. Despite the challenges and the grief it caused, I still value this time in such a unique part of the world and often find myself longing for a bowl of delicious lentil soup and the random, absurd encounters only found in this part of the world!
What are the rewards of your nomadic lifestyle?
Being stretched outside my comfort zone and growing in new ways. Continously learning more about myself and others. Meeting wonderful and interesting people I might not otherwise associate with, and experiencing the kindness of strangers. A life where nothing is ordinary and every day is an unexpected adventure.
2010. The year of half-baked plans, false-start projects, and half-finished songs. It was not a good year for me and productivity. We had arguments. We threatened each other (“But you need me! You’ll see!”). And for a long time we didn’t speak.
My passion and hobby of writing songs (something I started in 2009) fell by the wayside to watching downloaded episodes of Top Gear and late nights immersed in Japanese animation series. My promises on the blog homepage to restart writing were continually extended – “I’ll write again when I start traveling” became “I’ll start writing when I’m working again”. Any regular readers I may have had are long gone, I’m sure.
But I let it happen. And sometimes it takes reaching a certain level of dissatisfaction to be able to make a drastic change in your life. In the past, writing on this blog has helped keep me motivated and accountable for my goals, something I sincerely miss. So, I hereby reclaim Project Hitchhiker, and commit to writing one post per week for the next year. To be clear, this is a promise to myself, and to any readers willing to trust me again: I will post every Sunday, for the next year.
What did I actually do last year? 2010 in Review
Despite hardly accomplishing anything of note, I did have a great year. I had fun and traveled a lot – and there were certainly periodic intervals of awesomeness.
What would you do with your time if you didn’t need to work? This is really an interesting question. Because that’s the situation I’m in at the moment.
It’s no secret that I have a lot of free time. Last year I saved enough money to take an extended vacation (a Mini-retirement) of at least six months. Six months, if I were extremely reckless with my money, that is. So here I am with a huge amount of time on my hands.
One thing that I’ve learned from traveling in the past is that having too much time and nothing to do can actually be bad for you. A quick glance at the long-term traveler scene and you’ll see the same people at the same bars 6 of 7 nights a week. In some backpacker areas, it’s not uncommon to see people drinking beer on the street or in front of their bungalow at 8am, 10am, 3pm. Which is fine if all you’ve got is a week or two. But a good number of the people I’ve met have been traveling and partying hard for a full six months to a year. One guy I met in Vang Vieng, Laos was 320 consecutive days into a river tubing bender, going for a full 365 days (I’m not sure that Guiness will share his enthusiasm about his “record”). They party for two reasons: because it’s fun; and because they’ve got nothing better to do.
Sure, not all backpackers party. Some fend off their boredom by traveling frantically from place to place, visiting all the museums and seeing all the sights. Because when you finally get away from that busy job for a few months, you’re left with an abundance of time that you haven’t had since summer holidays in grade school. I’m not claiming any moral high ground here. I’m not against partying or museum tours (although I don’t think I’ve ever voluntarily gone to a museum), I just think that there’s another way to spend that gap year than getting trashed every other night interspersed with frantic sightseeing.
The other option: The Learning Sabbatical.
What would you want to learn if you could learn anything — if you had a few months off work and had nothing but time and ambition? Vietnamese cooking? Spanish? Classical piano?
Wouldn’t it be more effective to study Vietnamese cuisine one-on-one with a private teacher in Hoi An? Or learning Spanish while staying with a local family in Guatemala? Or classical Piano from a Chinese master in Bejing? It would not only be more effective, it would also be cheaper.
This is part one in a true series called Montreal Rock City.
The question you gotta ask yourself is how badly do you wanna see the greatest fucking rock and roll show in the fucking earth, right? We’re talking Gene and Paul live, yo. We’re talking about the most voluptuous women hanging out in the audience. I’m talking big breasteses in tight dressteses. We’re talkin’ ‘bout people passing around joints in the audience. I’m talking about fucking Detroit rock city. Shake your wee wee.
– Scalper in the movie Detroit Rock City
The Scene
I’m seventeen. It’s the summer after graduating high school. A rough summer of alcoholic hazes and sleepless nights. I sometimes get headaches when I don’t drink. The august heat makes my shitty job of cleaning car interiors even more hellish. I tell by boss that if I have to scrape one more dead bird from under the hood of a Pontiac Aztec, I’ll quit.
What would you do with your time if you didn’t need to work? This is really an interesting question. Because that’s the situation I’m in at the moment.
