A day before I'd stepped off a train in Vladivostok in snow and ice, still hung over from the vodka hug-fest with the silver-toothed gangsters, India and Afghanistan just over my shoulder, on my mind, and then, wham, a taxi through warm L.A. -- "Fuck, man, look at that traffic!" said the driver, who'd emigrated to the U.S. from Jordan when he was sixteen -- and I was plunging into a place I hadn't seen in months. As a T-shirt in India read, "Same, same, but different."