Since 1991, when I first met her, I’ve gotten a front row seat to watch Jen grow older and more beautiful. There is no more fabulous view a guy could have. She is an extraordinary wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend, adventurer, writer, director, travel companion, taskmaster, collaborator, and muse. Jen is fierce and opinionated, and she grows smarter, stronger and better every year. (She does have a remarkably bad sense of direction, but it’s so perfectly horrible that if she says turn right you can reliably turn left every time.) It is one thing for a woman to agree to step off the easy path and head out to explore the world — but this woman insisted on it. Happy birthday, Jen. Thank you. From all of us. Let’s go check out Hanoi.
TWENTY QUESTIONS: THE KEY TO SUCCESS
In a visit to another of the world’s lovely coffee houses, we catch the proprietress off-guard with one of life’s important questions.
MOST DISGUSTING BATHROOM ON THE PLANET?
Take a break from election news and consider this: Many men in China have an unfortunate habit of not standing close enough to the urinal. As a result, the government has launched a campaign called “Step Forward For Civilization” and you will find these signs above many urinals. The overall feel you are left with is wanting to dip the soles of your shoes in Purell after standing at one of these urinals.
Now on to titular video for this post. Please click below to see the raw unedited footage of a bathroom we discovered outside Xi’an. (Warning: This video is not for the faint of heart and should not be watched by women who are or may be pregnant, unaccompanied minors, individuals susceptible to nausea, and anyone who is prone to nightmares and/or bedwetting.)Is this truly the world’s most disgusting bathroom? God, we hope so, but we have many months left to travel. You be the judge.
FRANNY AND FINN PRESENT THE FORBIDDEN CITY
Your two young guides take you on a private tour of one of the world’s most legendary landmarks.
BEIJING’S 798 ART ZONE
When we imagined Beijing, the words that jumped to mind were Power, Government, Olympics, Traffic. The last thing we thought about was Art. But on the outskirts of the city, beyond the fifth outer ring, not too far from the airport, something exciting is happening. In a district that was nothing but abandoned warehouses ten years ago, a thriving arts community has arisen. This is happening all over the world where rents are cheap. It’s happening in downtown Detroit, far out in Brooklyn, in the northern suburbs of Paris, and most significantly, in an area called the Beijing 798 Art Zone. This area has now actually been officially commissioned as an area for artists by the government in a sort of “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” kind of move. It’s a must visit destination for anyone who wants to wander off the beaten path in China’s capital. Here’s a brief glimpse at what’s happening there.
OBLIGATORY STATE-SANCTIONED VIDEO ABOUT THE GREAT WALL
It is a strict requirement of all filmmaking families traveling around the world to deliver a short film about the Great Wall of China. We frankly had no choice. Please enjoy.
WE ARE THE PANDAS
Welcome to China. In this remarkable, enormous, profoundly complex, indescribably polluted, yet weirdly beautiful country, one of the great claims to fame is the world’s largest population of panda bears. Visitors from all over the globe flock to Beijing and Xi’an just to catch a glimpse of these adorable creatures. When a panda is spotted, tourists crowd around, snapping photos, elbowing for the best angle, hoping to get that adorable panda to look towards them. We were happily among these camera-weilding tourists.
But we were also given the opportunity to experience what the panda must feel like. There are certain places like the Temple of Heaven and the Summer Palace in Beijing where Chinese people make pilgrimages from the countryside. Many of these people have saved their whole lives to visit the palaces of the Emperors and are traveling from their homes for the first time. When they glimpse foreigners, also for the first time, they react like we are real live panda bears right in their midst and they immediately snap pictures of us and with us.
As you can tell, we enjoyed being pandas for these occasional shutter bursts. We are never ones to shy away from cameras and we even picked up the very popular local habit of making a peace sign when posing for pictures (something real pandas haven’t yet mastered). 
One particular real panda caught our fancy, a very rare brown panda named Momo. Inspired by our time with the pandas, Finn wrote the following entry, describing our first encounter with actual live pandas at a lonely animal reserve outside Xi’an:
“We went to an animal observatory today where we saw pandas. The pandas we first saw were in cages and had glum looks on their faces. My mom’s heart splattered over the cage (not really). Then we walked to a grassy area were we saw no pandas — then one walked out. He was an older male, black eyes and soft white fur. Then we walked over and saw the only brown panda in the world. He was about two years old and we called him MoMo. He scratched himself and played with his stomach and exercised. It was funny. Then the other panda looked through his gate and him and MoMo looked at each other. They began a friendship. Then I realized that they had something like emotions. MoMo will live forever in our hearts.”
And so begins our adventures in China.
FINN PULP FICTION
If you only watch one video of a nine-year old performing both parts of a classic scene from Pulp Fiction, this should be the one. As we are about to emerge from our time in China, we offer this tidbit for your viewing pleasure:
AN ARTIST IN KYOTO
Never have we witnessed more love and attention put into a single cup of coffee. Twenty-five years ago, Ishihara transformed his home into a small coffee shop on an unassuming block far off the beaten path in Kyoto. His clientele is almost one-hundred percent regulars. Six days a week, he makes between fifty and sixty cups of coffee with an inspiring single-minded attention to detail: notice the hot water warming the cup, the carefully poured condensed milk, the way in which he lets the coffee grinds moisten before he pours. Watching this artist at work is one of life’s great pleasures.
ROAD FOOD: PART 1
By popular demand, we offer this brief post about some of the awesome and unusual food we’ve sampled on our journey so far. The most exotic prize goes to GUINEA PIG, a favorite dish in Peru, which Mark felt compelled to order for his main course on his birthday in August. Though we don’t have great pictures of the guinea pig (which was consumed at our favorite restaurant in Cusco, Fallen Angel), we can report that it was tender, sweet and offered very little meat to the hungry birthday boy. Even though they grow their guinea pigs fat in Peru, they don’t seem to grow them fat enough to make a grown man resist finishing the food on three other plates on the table.
Second place in the most exotic category goes to KANGAROO, which we forced ourselves to sample as we prepared a backyard barbecue at our friend Kelly’s house in Tamborine, Australia. The kangaroo was prepared two ways: (1) seasoned simply with salt and pepper and (2) marinated in a teriyaki sauce. Both ways were less gamey than we thought they would be, though none of us at the table felt we ever needed to sample kangaroo again. We all preferred the other four proteins on our barbie that night: wagu beef, shrimp, sausages, and lamb. Interestingly, though we were dining with native Australians, some of whom were close to sixty years old, it was the first time any of us had ever tried kangaroo. One might deduct it’s not as popular down under as we once thought.
Now let’s move on to the food we’ve got pictures of:
1) EGG CUSTARD IN BUENOS AIRES. We ate at Arumburu, what is universally considered to be the best restaurant in this Argentinian capital. They served a ten course tasting menu and around course five (after the artisinal breads, well before the three dessert courses), an egg shows up filled with a mushroom foam that we can still remember today just with a simple glance at the picture. The meal is a three-hour event, but probably the best dinner we’ve had on the road so far.
2) TROUT CERVICHE IN CUSCO, PERU. The restaurant was Pacha-Papas and it’s nestled up the hill from the main square in town, near the artist’s district. There are two things that one must order at this restaurant — the lomo (beef with peppers and gravy served over french fries, not to be missed) or this incredible trout cerviche, served with Peru’s famous unpopped corn that compliments almost any plate in that part of the world.
3) OKONOMIYAKI IN HIROSHIMA. We apologize for eating so much of this incredible dish before we remembered to snap a picture. This is a must-eat local dish served in this part of Japan — most famously in Hiroshima. It’s a savory pancake, sort of a Japanese crepe, filled with noodles, shrimp, pork, or any other savory protein you can imagine. We thought we would eat just one, but ended up eating four of them. The dish costs about 8 bucks, but it’s worth the price of a ticket to Japan.
4) HOMEMADE CHOCOLATE IN CUSCO. This gets a special shout-out because it was as fun as it was delicious (actually it was more fun than it was delicious). Franny and Finn took an afternoon chocolate-making class at The Chocolate Museum where they ground the cocoa beans themselves, stirred the paste, crushed nuts, added salt and vanilla and turned out these mini-masterpieces. A master could make better chocolate, but there’s something nice about doing it yourself.