Sweet Dreams Til' Sunbeams Find You

First let me apologize for the long hiatus but I'm in the middle of writing an album so give me a break. Man I needed a vacation so badly.. I recently traveled to Taiwan which was extremely eye opening and made me only want to continue traveling but I must be in LA for I have a debt to pay to my music and blah blah blah. Now, falling asleep on airplanes for me is like trying to catch a shadow with a flashlight, it's quite impossible. I slip on my headphones and  close my eyes. Then, as me and Doris Day danced on the wings of the plane,I look over at the sky exuding this incredible purple/blue indigo color and it really just made me feel free. It was the color I would imagine heaven to be.  Traveling can make you feel so free, for after all exploring is in our blood as humans. I realized, until this moment I had been dreading the flight and just constantly worrying about everything going on back in LA. Excuse the gigantic metaphor but my life was just like this flight, just trying to get through it until I get to something better. For once I just wanted to enjoy this flight and be there in that moment, not just block it out and try to get through it.

Taipei was a modern amazing little city full of some of the kindest people I've ever met in my life. For the love of god some dude tapped me on the shoulder and warned me that my shoe was untied. Are you kidding me? I almost hugged that bro. The Metro in Taipei was the cleanest most efficient thing of beauty I've ever seen. Now if you've ever taken public transportation in NY or LA then you know how terrible it can be. There was no one screaming about killing all of us,no one trying to sell you things and above all it was.......clean. Everyone was so respectful and actually honored the rule of no food or drinks while riding the trains(which is why it was clean).I don't mean to rant about public transportation but it's part of my everyday life and anyone without a car feels me. Some of the things I saw just blew my mind. People just leave there helmets on their scooters and bikes unlocked wherever they like and no one steals them. I got my bike tire stolen in ten minutes while getting coffee in Koreatown. There is just this amazing respect everyone has for each other  and their belongings. I would walk by temples or shrines that had offerings that laid undisturbed. One of my good friends lost his wallet in Taipei and it was returned to him a year later, shipped to America with all of his belongings. Anyways, I digress, Taiwanese people are nice as fuck, you get it. Somewhere along the way America has lost this sense of kindness towards each other and it took me traveling abroad to really realize how bad it's gotten. Now on the other hand ,I'm not making excuses for America but we are a melting pot and we have many many different kinds of cultures from all over the world so realitsically cohesiveness can be a bit harder. Honestly though I couldn't really pinpoint a reason why things are so different in America. Another thing I noticed was I saw literally maybe only 9 homeless people in a two week span. Coming from downtown LA thats mind-blowing  but the homelessness situation in LA is a whole other ball of yarn that we will pull on another time.

Now on a lighter note lets quickly talk food. What the fuck, the food in Taipei was all so delicious and cheap. Now I'm not the most adventurous eater I'll be honest, so i stuck to a couple things I really liked. A pretty much daily must have was something called a "Bomb Egg" which could be completely wrong but that's what I was told so we'll run with that. A super simple delicious piece of heaven that consisted of a fried egg , a fried wonton type shell, some mysterious black slightly sweet sauce and "spicy" red stuff. now you could have the yok runny or hard ( figuring this one out was an uphill battle), which I fully suggest getting it runny. The best part about these is they cost 30 NT which is roughly a Dollar US.Aside from the 10 million delicious potstickers I had, I also got to go to Din Thai Fung which lives up to all the hype you've heard. Xiao Long Bao is great across the board but they have really perfected it. One can only hope to attain such greatness at anything in life.Aside from all the incredibly reckless eating I did the past two weeks, I also got a chance to travel down south of Taipei to a place called Hualien. A cool little touristy town surrounded by incredible majestic mountains. The night market there was expansive and had some really cool music(not to mention of course a shit ton of cheap awesome food).The highlight of the trip though was undoubtedly  Taroko National Park. This may be my favorite place on the planet I've ever been, aside from my generous donation of blood to the local mosquito population. It was so peaceful, from the ancient ground we walked on up to the sun drenched tree tops. I was lucky enough to visit a couple Buddhist temples in the mountains that made you feel a profound sense of peace even walking through them. I was so envious of the stillness here and I hope to find a way to replicate it in some sort of way in my daily life.

All in all it was an incredibly eye opening trip and honestly I can't wait to explore more of Asia. Great food, extremely kind people and plenty of nature porn, what more could you ask for really? I learned a lot really, mainly to live more in the moment which is a notion I'm constantly trying to adopt and to also take my headphones off every once in awhile and just be kind to other people. Im always so cold, cut off and distant here, which means I am part of the problem.I hope to travel  and learn more and contribute to the places I find myself. I miraculously fell asleep in the plane on the trip home, until I was awakened by a warm beam of sun shooting through the window. Instead feeling trapped by going back to the grind of the city I felt a sense of freedom. As the sweet voice of Doris Day serves as the soundtrack for my vindication, I smile at the sun and slip back into a slumber to dream of all the more places i'll soon go to tap into the wisdom that travel provides.