During the boreal winter of 2010-11, I was working in New Zealand and couldn’t quite afford to make it home for Christmas.  To take my mind off the missed holidays, I bought an old American touring bike on Trade Me – a Kiwi amalgamation of Ebay and Craigslist –  for a few hundred dollars from a bloke in Woolston.  I left Christchurch on sheep-flanked backroads, my boots wrapped in old gaiters and bungied to a crushed down backpack on the rear rack. Meet Optimus Climb: it transforms from bicycle touring to full-on backpacking in 3 minutes flat. Thus equipped, having never bike toured before, I made my way across the South Island by foot and wheel. The first adventure went well. From the desolate and windblasted Mackenzie Country, Optimus charged past the turquoise waters of Lake Tekapo and up the access road to Mt. Cook Village. Here, Aoraki/ Mt. Cook (12,300ft) looms over the valley and glaciers hang from the higer slopes and pour melt water off seventy degree slopes in an endless cycle.

Alone on the trail due to heavy winds and downpouring rain, I climbed 3000 feet up to the rock and ice of the Mueller Range and checked in at the alpine hut in the shadow of Mt. Olivier. This is a day route- nothing to be proud of really, but I was walking in the footsteps of the Great One, and I knew it. Sir Edmund Hillary, Conqueror of Everest, had climbed Olivier in the 1930’s- it was his first peak. I was in one of the world’s temples of mountaineering, and alone on the rain and wind blasted ridge, I felt it. “The wind was hurtling up and over the tussock choked pass, each gust stealing away the myriad ‘konnichiwa’s from smiling, elderly tourists. The sweat had dried, etching salty Rorschach designs all across my shirt; below, the road twisted down the way I had come- steep enough to make me glad it was a memory. Rising from my perch, I grinned at the busload of Japanese tourists invading my triumphant siesta, giving a thumbs-up before getting back in the saddle for the descent towards Tarras.”

For more, check out HuffPost TravelFormer X Factor winner James Arthur is battling for the number one spot in the charts with his comeback song Say You Won't Let Go.The track has leapt 23 places to number two in the midweek chart, and is the most downloaded track of the week so far.smiggle backpack singaporeCurrent chart-topper Closer by The Chainsmokers and Halsey is still leading the way, and is 10,000 combined sales ahead of James's song.alko backpack 150Say You Won't Let Go is James's first single release since 2014´s Get Down.DJ Snake and Justin Bieber's Let Me Love You is at number three and Major Lazer's Cold Water is in fourth place, said the Official Charts Company.Calvin Harris is on track for a top five debut as his new single, My Way, is currently number five.backpack urumqi

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Konnichiwa entered the Official Albums Chart at two when it was released back in May.I got naked with a bunch of old men and tried to figure out how to wash my booty without insulting anyone, and that pretty much sums up my trip to Japan. Everything that happened in those two weeks happened in the public bath. The furtive glances, the failed attempts to blend in, the unfamiliarity and the discovery and the bafflement and even the necessity of it all. I was in Japan for Calvin’s wedding, and I was in the Kyoto bathhouse because after three days of sweating in ninety percent humidity, lugging a thirty-five pound backpack through streets and temples and shrines, and sleeping in parks and train stations, I smelled worse than nattō. I knew how get to the bath thanks to Google Maps and a sign above the doorway that, after circling the block and ruling out all the other options, I suppose looked somewhat like a hot spring. I knew how to pay for it, because if I knew if handed the attendant 10,000 yen, he would give me the right change despite my sunburnt skin, sweaty blond hair, and inability to say anything more substantial than konnichiwa.

Japan appears on every Top 10 list for safety and lack of crime, and after spending a summer several years ago hitchhiking through a country that never appears on those lists, I felt safe here. Lost and illiterate, but safe.The attendant mimed rubbing his chest. “No body wash, no shampoo.” “I have a towel.” I pointed to my backpack and made a thumbs-up. The public baths, called sentōs, are traditional. Communal and extremely not private, aside from a wall dividing the men’s half from the women’s half, they snuggle into small buildings throughout Japan. Cultural relics preceding in-home bathtubs, sentōs have joined the realm of paper walls, shoe removal, and bowing—a realm that isn’t necessary or practical, but elegant. Showerheads lined the walls, stunted showerheads, waist-high and useless. Three baths took up the middle of the room, each as large as a hot tub, and beyond those, there lurked a fourth bath and a sauna room, and then a door leading to an outside courtyard where a sitting area and a fifth bath awaited, this final one, I later learned, fed by a natural hot spring.

All of it felt crowded and unknown and elaborate, filled with old men and old customs that I would almost certainly offend. One of those old men stripped down and headed for one of the stunted showerheads. I dropped my backpack and followed. I picked a showerhead on the opposite wall so I could sneak glances at him through the mirror. Although language and currency and grooming habits do not transcend the Pacific Ocean, openly staring at another naked man does. Things I learned from watching him: Things I did not learn: Things I did not learn until too late:He was very naked. “I don’t know yet. It’s my first one.” “I come every week. Where are you from?” “I’m sorry, I used your soap earlier and didn’t realize it was yours. I used your soap.” “Yes, but I accidentally used your soap.”The man pointed to one of the baths. “You like that one?” Maybe he was being polite and deliberately misunderstanding me. Maybe he hadn’t seen me use his soap.

Maybe he didn’t care. But he pointed at the bath again, so I left my stool and slid into the hot water. I lasted half a minute. And the second bath was even hotter; my butt started spasming as soon as I sat down. Muscle spasms twitched through my right cheek, giant, jerking spasms like the kind that happen after a long day at the gym at the end of a long week at the gym. I must have walked more than I thought—and then my legs went numb.No spasms, no numbness. Then the butt-twitching and the dead legs started again, stopped again, started again, stopped again, and I gave up and moved to the third tub. Sauna: slightly more hot and humid than the streets of Tokyo, where a five-minute walk left my shirt soaked. Fourth Bath: too cold for soaking, but, as demonstrated by the still-grinning man who had misunderstood me, ideal for scooping up in a bucket and pouring over your head. Hot Spring Bath: just right. I shared this one with the still-grinning man who was now my friend, and we discussed Ichiro Suzuki and Seattle at the very limits of bad English, nonexistent Japanese, and crude sign language.

And that was Japan for me. Sitting naked in a dichotomous country, overwhelmed by the glare and density of Tokyo, where 38 million worked and shopped and hurtled on overcapacity trains past skyscrapers and advertising, and just as overwhelmed by the other side: the ancient shrines, the Buddhist temples, and the gardens hundreds of years peaceful. Sitting naked in Kyoto, illiterate and impolite, dependent upon grinning old men who showed civility and graciousness to an unprepared traveler. Sitting naked in a sentō that was as strange as any other custom—Christmas, or a church service, or a tailgate party—but more refined, somehow, by the nakedness of it. Back at my stool, I shaved and brushed my teeth. One old man had spat toothpaste into the gutter that lined the room, so I did that, too. I now had clear pores and wrinkled fingers, and I smelled like minerals and a stranger’s soap, and I was ready for another day of culture shock and awe. But the butt-spasm tub. I needed to go back.