Hello and good evening everyone. This is Sleepless in Singapore, episode number 26. My name is Julian. Today is Sunday the 14th of July 2024 and this is the last episode about my trip around half of the world that had started in April of the same year, April 2017 I think that was. And now on October 3rd 2017 this trip is coming to an end. I'm a little sick so I hope I don't sound too weird. But either way this is going to be a short one so please bear with me while I tell you about Guam, Korea again, Japan again and then Singapore again and then back home. So please make yourselves comfortable, sit down, relax and let my voice be your guide to a restful night.

Now from Yap, that island in Micronesia I told you about last time, to Guam the difference could not have been greater. Guam is the United States of America. It's not near the mainland, it's not even close. It couldn't be further away actually. But I landed there, I got greeted by US immigration which I hadn't seen in a very, very long time because it was a Russia, Asia, Southeast Asia trip. And also obviously if you look at a map Guam is still in this vicinity of, you know, Yap and Palau, like a couple hours north of the Philippines. But Guam is US American and you can see that the second you land at the airport and then also when you get out and when you get to the hostel in my case and then after checking in at this hostel I went out a bit and I went to this, I guess, shopping area or shopping mall and I got greeted with an outlet which I have not seen for the last six months or so and I was greeted with Chuck E. Cheese and KFC and IHOP and Ross Shop for Less and I don't even know, Burger King and McDonald's obviously, a Wiener Schnitzel. I don't know, like all these US fast food chain restaurants that you know if you've ever been to the US because they are on every street corner but you don't have any of them in Southeast Asia and if you do have them, you know, like the couple things we have in Singapore, the couple US chains like Shake Shack or what do we have? Five Guys. Honestly even McDonald's is like nice and clean and not the cheapest of the cheapest in Singapore and in the US and by extension in Guam it's just like very cheap fast food. You see like a lot of obese Americans sit there and eat their fast food because it's kind of the cheapest they can find, I guess.

And yes, getting there to Guam I immediately had the feeling I am in America. I am in the US. Good and bad. Also in Guam you have bigger roads, you have bigger cars, you have different architecture. Everything is just different. Everything is very different from Southeast Asia. Everything is very different from East Asia, from Russia. Everything is just very different from all the parts of the world we have been, Philipp and I and then I alone. And it was interesting to be catapulted in this very different world for a while. And I did spend a nice day or two in Guam. Not particularly interesting, nothing super special. I went around a bit. I did some very limited sightseeing but honestly I, except for the IHOP and some other kind of fast food I cannot really identify where it's from, I have not even taken a lot of pictures. And after a day or two, I think I might have stayed one night, two days, I left for Korea, for Seoul with Tiway Air on a very, very horrible flight. Not the fault of Tiway, I have to say, even though it's also not the greatest airline. But there was a crybaby that would not shut up for the whole…how long is that flight? Six hours or something? Or eight hours? It's quite a long flight. And it was overnight and I did not sleep for even a second.

Arriving in Seoul was interesting because if you go back a couple of episodes, you will probably hear me telling the story how Philipp and I ended up in Korea almost by chance, almost by accident. And we kind of spontaneously fell in love with it. And then we went around in South Korea a lot. In Seoul, in Busan, outside of the cities at the border, and we did the tourist program. And this time I was super lucky because while traveling back in Laos, I believe, I made a Korean friend, Yijoo, who I liked a lot and who I wanted to see again. And she offered to show me Korea from her perspective on my strange route I took home. It wasn't that strange actually because Guam to Seoul was one of the cheapest flights. And then Seoul to Japan, Japan to Singapore. It was a little weird. It was a little…not the shortest way, but it also wasn't as silly as it sounds. Like from a flight and pricing perspective, it was quite reasonable.

So long story short, I was very happy that Yijoo invited me over to have my last two or three days of my big trip. Not the last two or three days, but the last couple of days of my big trip in Korea to show me around from a native Korean's perspective. And that was super awesome because I saw a whole different Korea than the one I saw as a tourist. It started with me arriving very early in the morning and her having to work the whole day, I believe. And I hadn't slept in the plane and my hotel was only available for check-in in the afternoon. So it started all that she recommended go to the sauna. And I thought, "Why would I go to the sauna?" And then it turned out going to the sauna in Korea is this whole experience. You don't go to the sauna like you go to the sauna in Europe. You don't go to this little wooden thing and sit and sweat. The sauna in Korea in that case, the one I went to, was a four-story sauna paradise with different kind of wood sauna, stone sauna, hot stone, hammam, Turkish bath, I don't know, everything. And they literally had a gaming hall with all these electronic games and computer games and all that stuff in the basement. And they had a restaurant on the second floor. And the other three floors were different kind of sauna experiences.

Sauna in Korea is also different in that you are wearing some kind of pajama or some kind of jogging suit. You're not naked, not even like at the actual sauna inside, you're not naked, which feels a bit weird at first, but you get used to it. And then it works just as well. What we also did after we met then is to go to different restaurants to visit the Hanok village, which are all these amazing old houses. And then of course we were just walking around in the city a lot. I only had a day or two days, I don't know. We were walking around in the city and I was trying all the foods I didn't even find the first time, or I didn't have the courage to try the first time, but we tried amazing things. And I learned a lot about Korean food. I think maybe I still have the list of dishes I had eaten in those two short days somewhere on my phone in the notes. I came across that recently. If I can find that again quickly later, I will add it somewhere to the corresponding blog post, I think, and then you can have at least my list of favorite foods, favorite Korean foods. It's a list of 20 or 30 things that are typically Korean, but you probably, unless you're into Korean food, have not heard of most of them, except for probably barbecue.

Yes, so I had an absolutely amazing time in Korea and I'm very thankful, very grateful that I got the local version. And then after that very short time, I left for Japan and I kind of did the very same thing. I had met a Japanese friend and they were showing me around in Japan, in Osaka and in Kyoto specifically that time. And even though I know my friend Daniel in Toyama and he showed us around, I think also in Kyoto or in Kobe when Philipp and I went to Japan, it was still different to have a local friend living there, born and raised, show me around the local temples and the local sightseeing things. But also the food and especially in Japan, I feel there are a lot of places that are not even on English Google Maps and that are not in the usual guidebooks or, you know, at the Lonely Planet or wherever. There are a lot of restaurants that seemed like secret tips from a local. And also when we went there, sometimes they were only local people. They were only Japanese people. Sometimes I gotta say, they looked at me a little funny. Sometimes I think they felt a little, I don't know how to put that so it doesn't sound wrong, but let's say sometimes I felt a little bit like the odd one out.

What else did we do in Japan? We definitely remember, I remember definitely going to Arashimaya, this very nice bamboo forest. We spent a great day there. And then in the evening we went for a chicken barbecue. And I had all parts of the chicken. I remember having, you know, the things you would think you can have of a chicken, just regular meaty things. Then there are some inert, some gizzard and things like that, which you also think, okay, if you need to, you can have that too. And then there was also really weird stuff like grilled uterus, chicken uterus. Actually, it might be pork uterus. But we also had a very weird part of the chicken, I remember. And then there were also raw chicken bites, which is something I would never eat anywhere in the world except for Japan. Because you know, raw chicken can be quite dangerous. But the Japanese love for food and the way they prepare everything with so much love and so much passion somehow made me not afraid of eating the raw chicken. The raw chicken mixed with a raw egg, and then you eat it, it tastes amazing, it was good. Nice seasoning. And I felt good, nothing happened.

So again, I had a very great time in Japan. Again, I bought a few things so that I don't have to buy them elsewhere where it's more important, sorry, where it's more expensive. I bought a MacBook, I bought some other Apple stuff. I bought a lot of stationery because they have very nice stationery in Japan. And I packed a box and I sent it to Germany so I don't run into my limited luggage limits on the flight. And then finally, I went for my very last stop on this very long trip, and that was Singapore. And that one day in Singapore, it wasn't even a day, it was an evening, I had the best time with the friends I made in Singapore, the ones I mentioned so many times before. We partied hard, and the next morning I more or less went to the airport directly. And I had a slight hangover on that 13-hour flight from Singapore back home to Frankfurt and then to the place I was born after being out for, well, the better part of the year. Seven months or eight months, I don't remember.

In hindsight, going on this trip with Philipp, but also in general, was probably one of the things in my life that changed me the most, where I learned the most, where I got to know the most amazing people. And I really do not regret doing that, and I would do it again any time. Philipp, this is for you, if you are listening. Let's go again someday. I know probably this very last part of the trip I should be a little bit more exhausting. I should be talking a bit more about how I felt about all that, and I should probably have a bit of a better summary of the whole thing. But as you can hear, I'm really quite sick now. So this is going to be a short episode, and I'm going to skip the Tom Sawyer for tonight. I'm really sorry.

Actually, you know what? I'm not going to skip it. I'll just give you a short one, just because that's how it's supposed to be. And then next week, I have a probably also multiple episodes spanning story about a US road trip to, as one of my friends says, the most boring states in the US. But I promise you, it's not boring at all. I had a very, very good time with my good friend Marcus on this road trip. And actually, there are two road trips, because we repeated the same thing the next year in a different place, obviously. And both of these trips are going to make for an interesting episode 27 and following of Sleepless in Singapore.

All right. Then let's move to a short part of Tom Sawyer in English first, and then in German.