Wednesday, June 29th, 2011
Five and a half months after landing in Hong Kong, the journey was finally over. Returning home from Tokyo was a hard landing. Combined with my time in Europe the year prior, I had spent nearly a full year in different parts of the world. There was always someplace next on my horizon, until I landed back on familiar soil and, suddenly, there wasn’t any more. Looking back I had accomplished so much, and looking forward it wasn’t clear if I’d ever have the opportunity to do anything quite like it again.
So let’s look back on it all one last time.
Since landing in Hong Kong in January of 2011, I traveled across China, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan, visiting close to fifty amusement and theme parks and riding 133 different roller coasters, along with many cities, historic sites, and natural parks.
Among the experiences that continue to stand out to memory a decade later:
- Celebrating Chinese New Year in and around Hong Kong.
- Marathon riding Space Mountain at Hong Kong Disneyland.
- Riding my first “Chinese death coaster” (whilst getting seat belt repair) in Guangzhou.
- Watching Peking Opera and hiking to hidden waterfalls in Hong Kong with friends.
- Meeting monkeys and Lord Murugan at Malaysia’s Batu Caves.
- Sampling spicy chili crab in Singapore.
- Hiking along the crystal blue waters of Jiuzhaigou Valley.
- Sweating out a meal of spicy Sichuan Hot Pot in Chengdu.
- Exploring Taiwan’s natural wonders at Yehliu Geopark, Wulai, and Taroko Gorge.
- Having an impromptu roadside beer party while waiting for the bus from Farglory Ocean Park.
- Managing against the odds to thrice ride both Gravity Max and Diving Machine G5.
- Being among the first to witness (but not ride) Wood Coaster at Knight Valley.
- Wandering the streets of Shanghai.
- Becoming an unintentional celebrity at Suzhou Amusement Land.
- Riding the first, only, and now defunct installation of a Vekoma Stingray coaster.
- Being among the first to experience the bizarre glory of World Joyland.
- Stepping foot into North Korea.
- T-Express all day and night with efficient operations.
- Exploring Bulguksa temple and hiking to Seokguram grotto, both UNESCO Heritage sites.
- My first taste of hakata ramen in Fukuoka.
- Riding Pink Magnum at the now-defunct Space World.
- Discovering Universal’s best coaster in Space Fantasy: The Ride.
- Meeting deer and Buddha in Nara before dining on okonomiyaki in wet socks.
- Having Fuji-Q Highland practically to myself and riding Fujiyama and Eejanaika all day.
- Reveling in the vintage charms of Hanayashiki.
- Having a fifteen minute girlfriend for Big Thunder Mountain at Tokyo Disneyland.
- Tokyo DisneySea is still a Very Good theme park.
To be frank, I didn’t find that the best roller coasters I’d experienced in Asia quite compared to the best coasters I’d find in North America or Europe. Most of the parks I visited seemed to treat their coasters as a product to buy, something to check off a list of “things an amusement park should have.” While there were many rides to encounter, on average it felt like there were fewer examples of either highly unique or creative coasters, or coasters with a special history behind them (although there were still more than a few). This was more or less what I expected going in, as the purpose of the trip was much less about discovering the best in the world, and more about discovering the nuances of how these entertaining experiences are made and experienced in a different part of the world. Nevertheless, if I were to rank the top roller coasters I’d ridden in Asia:
- Fujiyama – Fuji-Q Highland, Japan
- Space Fantasy: The Ride – Universal Studios Japan
- Eejanaika – Fuji-Q Highland, Japan
- T-Express – Everland, South Korea
- Kawasemi – Tobu Zoo Park, Japan (+ Happy Valley Mega-Lites)
- Starry Sky Ripper – World Joyland, China
- Space Mountain – Hong Kong Disneyland, China
- Fireball – Happy Valley Shanghai, China
- Battlestar Galactica: Cylon – Universal Studios Singapore
- Gravity Max – Discovery World, Taiwan
- Atlantis Adventure – Lotte World, South Korea
- Megaton Ultra Twister – Mitsui Greenland, Japan
- Big Thunder Mountain – Tokyo Disneyland, Japan
- Dive Coaster – Chimelong Paradise, China
- Camel Back – Woobang Towerland, South Korea
- Supersonic Odyssey – Berjaya Times Square Theme Park, Malaysia
- Roller Coaster – Hanayashiki, Japan
- Black Hole Express – Kumdori Land, South Korea
- Steel Dragon 2000 – Nagashima Spaland, Japan
- Diving Machine G5 – Janfunsun Fancyworld, Taiwan
Obviously my visit to Fuji-Q Highland made a very good impression as far as roller coasters go, with Fujiyama being the only coaster on this list that I’d might consider for “essential” status. Most of the rest of the list are either fairly modern coasters from western manufacturers standing as good if not typical examples of their makers’ respective “house styles” that you can find elsewhere around the world, and/or heavily themed attractions from the major players. And apart from Fujiyama, there were a few other older, more humble, yet still commendable locally-produced creations further down the list as well, which I wanted to make sure to recognize.
As wild an odyssey as this entire experience was, writing about it was an almost crazier adventure that took a full decade to complete.
The entire five-and-a-half month experience across Asia was almost too big to capture just in my own memories, let alone attempt to commit it to words. When I returned from Tokyo, I resolved to keep the pace of writing I had been doing for a couple of years prior with my writing from the Midwest and then Europe, first digging into the California reports from my pre-Asia travels (which I’m not even counting as part of this trip even though it technically was). However, towards the end of that west coast mini-saga I struggled with a lagging motivation in the face of a daunting, never-ending task I had set for myself. My European reports I had just completed totaled around 203,500 words, and here I wanted to turn around and repeat that endeavor a second time, while staring down a super-senior year at college and whatever Real Life had in store for me beyond that, a far more terrifying and unknown horizon.
So I focused on smaller tasks and reports to build up to begin writing about my Asian odyssey, but instead of helping to build back motivation I gradually fell out of habit and the lived experience only became increasingly distant and unimportant to me. I graduated from college. I spent a year not doing much at all. I worked at Cedar Point for a summer. I got hired as a theme park designer shortly afterwards (a gig I still hold nearly eight years later). I got married. I did more traveling, including a return to China. I helped open my first theme park project in Abu Dhabi (another experience I have yet to write in-depth about).
Finally, upon realizing that I was getting closer to a full decade since this trip began, I either had to start writing about it now to squeeze it in under the ten year mark, or finally admit that I would never write it. So, in 2019, I started. It was slow to begin but I soon developed a rhythm… until I quickly lost the rhythm again for several months, barely a quarter of the way through the list of places I had left. Little would I have suspected back in 2011 that a global pandemic that forced everyone to stay inside would finally provide me the motivation to hunker down and focus on a time when the whole world seemed to open up to me. From my calculations, I’d have to complete an update almost once a week to meet my original deadline within the decade, with a couple months to spare. And I actually did it. (With barely two weeks to spare!) I hadn’t been motivated to write like that since I was in college, which is less an ironic blessing of the pandemic, and more an ironic blessing of having put off this endeavor for so long until I finally needed it to stay sane amid an unprecedented time in all our lives.
I ultimately added a total of sixty-seven pages to this website to tell the story of my 2011 Asian experience, adding up to over 147,500 words… a bit short of my European stories, but with far more photographic content included this time around that potentially made the workload even greater. Indeed, I’m amazed that after ten years I could recall as much detail as I have been able to, and in large part that’s thanks to the nearly 12,000 images and video clips I captured during my travels.
I’m tremendously privileged to have gotten experience everything at the time when I did, and I’m grateful to everyone who joined me years later to share in that experience as I tried to capture it on these pages. It won’t be the last time, although I doubt I’ll ever travel or write something quite like this experience again. As this story comes to an end, it’s almost too much to contemplate what it feels like to finally close both my chapters of 2011 and COVID-19, and look ahead to whatever is next.
Comments