So I wrote this a few days ago and I don't feel like changing the tense. As I wrote it the woman next to me was staring over my shoulder trying to look at what I was writing, as if she had any means by which to understand it. Maybe no one writes in China, maybe it's the act she found so mesmerizing.
So I'm on the train from Hangzhou to Guangzhou for the next 20 hours and when I first boarded there were more people on the train than I can recall ever seeing on any train, anywhere, and that's saying a lot because I went to India once. There were people all through the aisles, in the bathroom, in the little cranny next to the bathroom, in every seat, some even sitting on laps of others, very possibly strangers. And there was luggage everywhere, in places you would never even think to put luggage, and no clear space for my hulking bag.
So I located my seat slowly and, unsurprisingly, found it occupied, but, somewhat surprisingly, by a baby. I had a quick discussion with him about how he was in my seat and surely he had simply made a mistake, but only after I showed his mother and every other person around me my ticket, emphasizing the seat number with my finger, did anyone move at all, and even then, very casual and begrudgingly. But happy day I got the window seat by some stroke of luck and there was no way some fucking baby was going to deprive me of that sweet, sweet joy. It truly is the difference between a night of a little sleep and a night of no sleep whatsoever.
Even after getting the baby out of the way, no one was moving to actually allow me access to it, so I threw my man purse over several people (they are rather small, it was easy) and landed it perfectly in my berth.
Next up, my backpack, which was going to be more difficult as I couldn't even move enough to get it off my back. I tried making gestures to my back and then up to the luggage racks and then moving from side to side a bit as if to say "could you please get right up out my way", and soon the man next to me sprung into action, parting the crowd toward the only space I could see in the entire car big enough for my bag, and when we got there he bent down for a moment and materialized some magic purple duffle bag from out of the ether and lifted it up to place into my bag hole. Dick. Even when you think you've found a good one, you haven't.
I realized that my usual approach of polite, soft-voiced tones and incoherent hand gestures wasn't going to work this time; I was gonna have to go Chinese style. I forcefully pushed my way past two people, nearly lifting one of them off the ground, then gently urged a man out of his seat so I could stand on it to begin rearranging the luggage rack to make room for my own. After 5 minutes and with shockingly little regard for any luggage that wasn't my own, I had managed to a small space to fit it, sideways and hanging precariously over the edge, but rammed so tightly between two others as to provide me assurance enough against it's dropping in the night onto some poor Chinese head.
There is a dude whose job it is to walk the entirety of the train making sure all the luggage is safely stowed, moving it around when it isn't, and when he made it my bag he said something rapidly which I took to mean "who in Mao's name does this one belong to?", because directly afterward everyone around pointed and looked straight at me. Then he muttered something like "why did I even ask" or "fuckin' white people" and moved on without doing a thing.
Luggage stowed, I climbed down from the seat and let the rightful owner re-occupy his place and in his movement to my right side used him as a buffer to move past him and, with that new momentum, past the family who hated me with their eyes and their immovable bodies and landed safely into my beautiful window seat.
I've yet to get out of it in six hours because I worry if I do I'll never get back into it. And I worry that if this little kid decided to bounce off me the entire night I might have to club him like a seal. Just kidding, but seriously, just kidding. I saw this kids mom get so pissed at him earlier that when he turned his head away she pushed it right into the table and tried to make it look like it was his fault. He wailed and wailed and at the time I felt quite bad for him, but now I no longer do.
It remained pretty much like this for 21 hours. It was great.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
China
Despite the people, China is a lovely place, naturally one of the most stunning places I've been. The China you've seen in pictures, huge mountains, lush greens, big water, really is the China that you find there. Some of the mountains have such odd formations you wonder how they don`t fall into the sea. And the smog, as well, is quite like you've heard or seen. Except it's worse. In Beijing you literally couldn't see the other end of Tiananmen Square from one end. Even the ever imposing painting of Mao hanging above the Forbidden City gets a little blurry. It was crazy, and quite bothersome as you had to wait until morning to judge how smoggy it was going to be before planning on what to do. Super smoggy, go visit the preserved corpse of Mao Zedong housed indoors, not as smoggy, temples and gardens outside.
And not only the big cities, all cities. Cities I had truly never heard of that house millions of people that you couldn't`t see from across the street.
Chinese people have this great habit of spitting, reaching deep within their guts first to summon every last glorious drop, then letting it fly in the loudest possible manner towards the nearest possible section of ground, be it inside or outside. This might sound awful but I came down with a cold a few days into China that stayed with me the entire time I was there, so the ability to cough up some seriously nasty shit that really wanted out of my body in public was actually a strange comfort. Urte did not see it that way.
In Xi`an we took the bus an hour out of town to see the famous Terra Cotta Warriors, a massive underground tomb filled with over 7,000 life-size terra cotta figures in full battle armor, each with distinctive faces built hundreds of years ago during the Qin dynasty and then buried with terra cotta horses, birds, weapons and the unlucky few real humans who set the final figures in place before the entrance was sealed behind them, burying them alive. I had seen pictures of the figures for years and thought that I would be a bit unimpressed, but once you get out there and see the magnitude of the undertaking and realize the balls of emperor Qin Shi Huang in hoping he could carry all this might into the afterlife, it is quite stunning. There are three different buildings in which the warriors are housed, and the largest of them is as big as two aircraft hangars. And after seeing all the excavated warriors you find out that the excavation is still ongoing, and that they expect to find many more, and also that 2 km away lies Qin's own tomb, a massive underground pyramid that is the biggest known tomb in the world. Mad, mad people have existed before us.
In Luoyang we walked two sides of a river where hundreds of years ago a hundred different people spent years carving likenesses into the rock face.
In Tai`an we walked up and down over 20,000 steps to reach and descend Mt. Tai`shan with thousands of other people.
In Shanghai we walked into the future, or the past, depending on your architectural affinities, and saw one of the world`s greatest skylines.
I spent my entire allowed stay of 30 days in China (for which I paid $198 for my visa in Nepal), breaking off with Josh and Urte a few weeks ago in Shanghai as they flew off to Japan and I traveled further south to Hong Kong. On the way down I stopped in Suzhou, a slightly quiet city referred to (at least by some Chinese people) as the Venice of China due to the canals streaming throughout, then Hongzhou with it`s massive lake Xi Hu, to which every single person in the in Zhejiang province had decided to come the weekend I arrived (apparently the second biggest holiday in China) and then to Guangzhou (ugly, hot) for a couple hours before catching the train to Shenzen (clean, hot) and walking myself across the border to Hong Kong, mere hours before my visa expired. There, I spent a few days walking the streets I walked almost exactly a year prior, watching A Symphony Of Lights at Victoria Harbour every night at 8pm, haggling for a room at the Chung King Mansions, eating red bean curd peanuts (the absolute best peanut in the world), even going back to Hotel New China to ask if they ever found the journal I left hiding under my mattress when I stayed there a year ago. They thought I was trying to use this story to haggle for a better room price. This is why I love Hong Kong. For someone who rarely returns it was nice returning.
And not only the big cities, all cities. Cities I had truly never heard of that house millions of people that you couldn't`t see from across the street.
Chinese people have this great habit of spitting, reaching deep within their guts first to summon every last glorious drop, then letting it fly in the loudest possible manner towards the nearest possible section of ground, be it inside or outside. This might sound awful but I came down with a cold a few days into China that stayed with me the entire time I was there, so the ability to cough up some seriously nasty shit that really wanted out of my body in public was actually a strange comfort. Urte did not see it that way.
In Xi`an we took the bus an hour out of town to see the famous Terra Cotta Warriors, a massive underground tomb filled with over 7,000 life-size terra cotta figures in full battle armor, each with distinctive faces built hundreds of years ago during the Qin dynasty and then buried with terra cotta horses, birds, weapons and the unlucky few real humans who set the final figures in place before the entrance was sealed behind them, burying them alive. I had seen pictures of the figures for years and thought that I would be a bit unimpressed, but once you get out there and see the magnitude of the undertaking and realize the balls of emperor Qin Shi Huang in hoping he could carry all this might into the afterlife, it is quite stunning. There are three different buildings in which the warriors are housed, and the largest of them is as big as two aircraft hangars. And after seeing all the excavated warriors you find out that the excavation is still ongoing, and that they expect to find many more, and also that 2 km away lies Qin's own tomb, a massive underground pyramid that is the biggest known tomb in the world. Mad, mad people have existed before us.
In Luoyang we walked two sides of a river where hundreds of years ago a hundred different people spent years carving likenesses into the rock face.
In Tai`an we walked up and down over 20,000 steps to reach and descend Mt. Tai`shan with thousands of other people.
In Shanghai we walked into the future, or the past, depending on your architectural affinities, and saw one of the world`s greatest skylines.
I spent my entire allowed stay of 30 days in China (for which I paid $198 for my visa in Nepal), breaking off with Josh and Urte a few weeks ago in Shanghai as they flew off to Japan and I traveled further south to Hong Kong. On the way down I stopped in Suzhou, a slightly quiet city referred to (at least by some Chinese people) as the Venice of China due to the canals streaming throughout, then Hongzhou with it`s massive lake Xi Hu, to which every single person in the in Zhejiang province had decided to come the weekend I arrived (apparently the second biggest holiday in China) and then to Guangzhou (ugly, hot) for a couple hours before catching the train to Shenzen (clean, hot) and walking myself across the border to Hong Kong, mere hours before my visa expired. There, I spent a few days walking the streets I walked almost exactly a year prior, watching A Symphony Of Lights at Victoria Harbour every night at 8pm, haggling for a room at the Chung King Mansions, eating red bean curd peanuts (the absolute best peanut in the world), even going back to Hotel New China to ask if they ever found the journal I left hiding under my mattress when I stayed there a year ago. They thought I was trying to use this story to haggle for a better room price. This is why I love Hong Kong. For someone who rarely returns it was nice returning.
Tibet
The Chinese government blocks many websites, including Blogger, Facebook and Wikipedia. They seem rather determined to write their own history, and it may be working: I spoke with many people who thought that when you would type in Facebook.com and arrive at the "web page not loading properly" page that it was because of some fault in the website, not a direct block by the biggest of big brothers. Very strange. Now on to better things.
Tibet was unreal, unlike any landscape I've ever seen. In certain passes you would see these huge 6-7,000 meter mountains one right after the other. You'd see Everest, then turn a corner and see an equally stunning peak you've never heard of. Literally mountains everywhere in every direction all the time. And the elevation of the entire country is always above 3,000 meters (close to 10,000 feet) and at our highest pass we hit 5200, which is 17,000 feet, over three times as high as Denver. The capital Lhasa sits at around 13-14,000 feet. I have never been anywhere near that height and was completely unaware of exactly what it can do to a body. On our very first day as we climbed our first pass I began noticing that it was slightly difficult to breath, and ahead of me in the front seat Josh began to lay his head back against the headrest often and seemed strangely tired. We stopped for lunch and things seemed fine, but an hour after getting back on the road we climbed to the 5200 meter pass and by the time we got there I could tell that my body did not work as it used to. We stopped the jeeps so everyone could get out to take some photos and have a look around at the scenery. I had to pee so I walked maybe 50 yards off the road to a bathroom which had a staircase of maybe ten stairs leading up to it. By the time I got to the top I felt like I had just run a mile. On my way back down I was breathing deeply and feeling totally loopy. I snapped a picture or two because I had to and then got back in the jeep and tried to figure out exactly what was happening. I tried to eat some peanuts and drink water because I figured it would help, but I was having a hard time getting my mouth to do what I wanted of it. For the next hour I barely said a word because I was incredibly tired and somewhat apathetic, zombie-like, and also because I wasn't sure I still knew how to communicate. Finally we came back down to around 4,000 meters and things slowly began returning to me. I realized that none of us had been speaking and that we had all been dealing with the beginnings of altitude sickness. Urte actually seemed slightly drunk for the next hour, which I heard later is common for someone coming out of the heights.
Over the days my body got used to the altitude, but the entire 8 days I was in Tibet it was noticeably harder to breathe. This is made more evident when climbing the innumerable staircases toward monasteries and temples that the Tibetans love to build as high up as possible. All the white kids on the tour were often made to look like old, old men while simply trying to climb up to the second floor to their hotel room.
The next week was quite beautiful, driving the country and stopping in the towns of Nyalam, Shigatse and Gyantse to explore ancient places of worship. I've never met a group of people like the Tibetans, always smiling and loving even when they have no idea who or what you are. I didn't meet one who even looked at me with a frown. One day at the monastery in Shigatse I had walked off on my own to explore quietly when I turned a corner and found a group of 10-15 teenage monks. They invited me to sit with them, as sit was one of the only English words they knew, so of course I did and they instantly began feeling my ears and playing with my earrings. They loved it and couldn't quite grasp it but laughed and smiled. Eventually one of them lifted my jacket sleeve and saw my arms and so I was made to take off the jacket as ten monks rubbed my arms at the same time. Soon word spread to all parts of the monastery and slowly more and more monks arrived to touch me, and soon after a good portion of the tour group arrived to stare with equal amazement at the throng of monks gathered around me. This same story would play out a few more times in the next week, with children or old women in place of monks. Truly unusual people in the most glorious sense of the word.
Arriving in Lhasa I assume everyone has nearly the same reaction, which is something like disbelief mixed with wonder coupled with a frown every time you pass a military base, which we counted 14 of before we made it to our hotel. It really is China there, surprisingly, with military and Chinese flags everywhere in case you haven't quite grasped the concept yet. You have one of the most monolithic buildings in the world in the Potala Palace, somewhat sullied by the new urban mass that has been built up around it. There is a Playboy store not two minutes away. You could be inside a Louis Vuitton and look out the window and see the Potala. I did not expect that. Josh didn't either. We were allowed our one hour inside, basically rushing through the few rooms they allow you to see inside, but the building is truly massive so you know they've got some secret shit hidden in there somewhere.
After the week was spent we said goodbye to our new friends (there were 42 people on the tour) and boarded the Tibet railway for a 36 hour ride towards Xi'an, China. It was crazy packed and the hard seat ticket we bought was truly a hard seat, so much so that Josh and Urte upgraded on the train to a sleeper. I, as I'm sure you would guess, stuck it out in the seat and spent a lovely evening with a complete stranger's head in my lap. No joke, the second Josh and Urte left for their sleeper this guy jumped over to my side and occupied the two vacant seats with his whole outstretched body, and at some point in his slumber he mistook my left leg for a pillow and snoozed away. I, on the other hand, got maybe two hours at most as my pillow was the window or the small table in front of me. I even took a tylenol pm and drank a little strange Chinese booze and none of it helped at all.
You don't really know exactly when you leave Tibet and enter mainland China, because Tibet is, after all, part of China (please sense the sarcasm here), but you definitely feel it in the crazy bustle that moves through every single Chinese city, even the smaller ones, which are still gigantic. And you feel it in the people, who I found for the most part to be rather foul, often looking at you with displeasure and completely unremarkable in any way. There were very few I met who redeemed them, as apparently all the kind ones live in Tibet.
Tibet was unreal, unlike any landscape I've ever seen. In certain passes you would see these huge 6-7,000 meter mountains one right after the other. You'd see Everest, then turn a corner and see an equally stunning peak you've never heard of. Literally mountains everywhere in every direction all the time. And the elevation of the entire country is always above 3,000 meters (close to 10,000 feet) and at our highest pass we hit 5200, which is 17,000 feet, over three times as high as Denver. The capital Lhasa sits at around 13-14,000 feet. I have never been anywhere near that height and was completely unaware of exactly what it can do to a body. On our very first day as we climbed our first pass I began noticing that it was slightly difficult to breath, and ahead of me in the front seat Josh began to lay his head back against the headrest often and seemed strangely tired. We stopped for lunch and things seemed fine, but an hour after getting back on the road we climbed to the 5200 meter pass and by the time we got there I could tell that my body did not work as it used to. We stopped the jeeps so everyone could get out to take some photos and have a look around at the scenery. I had to pee so I walked maybe 50 yards off the road to a bathroom which had a staircase of maybe ten stairs leading up to it. By the time I got to the top I felt like I had just run a mile. On my way back down I was breathing deeply and feeling totally loopy. I snapped a picture or two because I had to and then got back in the jeep and tried to figure out exactly what was happening. I tried to eat some peanuts and drink water because I figured it would help, but I was having a hard time getting my mouth to do what I wanted of it. For the next hour I barely said a word because I was incredibly tired and somewhat apathetic, zombie-like, and also because I wasn't sure I still knew how to communicate. Finally we came back down to around 4,000 meters and things slowly began returning to me. I realized that none of us had been speaking and that we had all been dealing with the beginnings of altitude sickness. Urte actually seemed slightly drunk for the next hour, which I heard later is common for someone coming out of the heights.
Over the days my body got used to the altitude, but the entire 8 days I was in Tibet it was noticeably harder to breathe. This is made more evident when climbing the innumerable staircases toward monasteries and temples that the Tibetans love to build as high up as possible. All the white kids on the tour were often made to look like old, old men while simply trying to climb up to the second floor to their hotel room.
The next week was quite beautiful, driving the country and stopping in the towns of Nyalam, Shigatse and Gyantse to explore ancient places of worship. I've never met a group of people like the Tibetans, always smiling and loving even when they have no idea who or what you are. I didn't meet one who even looked at me with a frown. One day at the monastery in Shigatse I had walked off on my own to explore quietly when I turned a corner and found a group of 10-15 teenage monks. They invited me to sit with them, as sit was one of the only English words they knew, so of course I did and they instantly began feeling my ears and playing with my earrings. They loved it and couldn't quite grasp it but laughed and smiled. Eventually one of them lifted my jacket sleeve and saw my arms and so I was made to take off the jacket as ten monks rubbed my arms at the same time. Soon word spread to all parts of the monastery and slowly more and more monks arrived to touch me, and soon after a good portion of the tour group arrived to stare with equal amazement at the throng of monks gathered around me. This same story would play out a few more times in the next week, with children or old women in place of monks. Truly unusual people in the most glorious sense of the word.
Arriving in Lhasa I assume everyone has nearly the same reaction, which is something like disbelief mixed with wonder coupled with a frown every time you pass a military base, which we counted 14 of before we made it to our hotel. It really is China there, surprisingly, with military and Chinese flags everywhere in case you haven't quite grasped the concept yet. You have one of the most monolithic buildings in the world in the Potala Palace, somewhat sullied by the new urban mass that has been built up around it. There is a Playboy store not two minutes away. You could be inside a Louis Vuitton and look out the window and see the Potala. I did not expect that. Josh didn't either. We were allowed our one hour inside, basically rushing through the few rooms they allow you to see inside, but the building is truly massive so you know they've got some secret shit hidden in there somewhere.
After the week was spent we said goodbye to our new friends (there were 42 people on the tour) and boarded the Tibet railway for a 36 hour ride towards Xi'an, China. It was crazy packed and the hard seat ticket we bought was truly a hard seat, so much so that Josh and Urte upgraded on the train to a sleeper. I, as I'm sure you would guess, stuck it out in the seat and spent a lovely evening with a complete stranger's head in my lap. No joke, the second Josh and Urte left for their sleeper this guy jumped over to my side and occupied the two vacant seats with his whole outstretched body, and at some point in his slumber he mistook my left leg for a pillow and snoozed away. I, on the other hand, got maybe two hours at most as my pillow was the window or the small table in front of me. I even took a tylenol pm and drank a little strange Chinese booze and none of it helped at all.
You don't really know exactly when you leave Tibet and enter mainland China, because Tibet is, after all, part of China (please sense the sarcasm here), but you definitely feel it in the crazy bustle that moves through every single Chinese city, even the smaller ones, which are still gigantic. And you feel it in the people, who I found for the most part to be rather foul, often looking at you with displeasure and completely unremarkable in any way. There were very few I met who redeemed them, as apparently all the kind ones live in Tibet.
Friday, April 2, 2010
Nepal
Hello all,
A week ago right now I was dropping down over the mountains and into the Kathmandu valley in an airplane that was very literally falling apart on the inside, with windows so burdened by the collected dust of fifty desert years that you could barely see past them, shaking violently as the wind pitched us in all the directions you don't want to be moving in the air. About thirty feet from the ground I still could make out no sign of the runway or any piece of land I could convince my mind would be suitable to build an airport upon, so when the engine suddenly kicked in the afterburners like "oh shit we're going to land on earth not runway" it made perfect sense, and when we did finally land on the farthest southern edge of the blacktop I imagined all of us on that airplane communally let our muscles and minds relax and return to the dim and comfortable pulse of the still living world.
All of this after 40 hours from Lincoln to Omaha to Chicago to Frankfurt to Delhi to here. I was very glad to have arrived.
Since my flight from Delhi was rescheduled, then rescheduled again, and then finally delayed another hour I arrived like five hours later than I had told Josh and Urte to be waiting at the Kathmandu Peace Guesthouse, but shortly after I arrived they came walking down the hill yelling my name and we all hugged and got down to the very serious business of bullshitting and making very big decisions like how to get to Tibet and what part of all the many beautiful parts of Nepal we should spend our time in.
So we ate some Momo's, these little balls that look like dumplings filled with vegetables then wrapped and either steamed or fried, and then set about the task of going to different travel companies to find the best prices. As of right now the Chinese government doesn't allow any foreigner into the Tibet region without being part of an organized tour approved by the Chinese. So, I couldn't just take a jeep to the border of Nepal and Tibet and cross by foot as can be done at so many borders across the world. This is a bit annoying but also financially taxing, as tour companies can charge pretty much whatever they please, knowing travelers have no other recourse if they want in to Tibet, which many travelers, Josh and I in the utmost, do. We were lucky enough to find a man named Suman whose tour was hundreds of dollars cheaper than anywhere else in town and also a very nice man to have a conversation about Nepalese politics with, headhunters, matricide and all. So we basically give him a stack of cash and he goes about dealing with all the Chinese bureaucracy for us, the visas, the Tibetan permit, the tour while in Tibet and the train ticket from Lhasa out of Tibet into China, a ticket which we have to prove we have before entering the country and which has to be for a train leaving right after our scheduled tour is over. The Chinese really don't want you in Tibet unsupervised, like a big overprotective father, but more Asian and militaristic.
So we booked with Suman and set about finding a trekking company to take us into the mountains. After quotes from multiple companies hawking all-inclusive three day tours we found Tiger Travel who would rent us a guide for $20 bucks a day, and we could be left alone to fend for ourselves where food and accommodation are concerned, which we'd rather do anyway as these things are very cheap here. So they rented us Lama, a very kind 28 year old of small stature from the Tamang ethnicity with a big smile and a wife named Maya and a young boy named Adus. He spoke passable English and taught me wonderful Nepalese that sounded so good coming out of his mouth but was wholly ruined when I would speak what, to me, sounded exactly the same as what he had just said. So for the next three days we walked deep into the Shivapuri National Park up some very steep terrain to Chisapani and then on to Nagarkot while I shouted Timonie Costishow (how are you, surely not spelled this way but it's how it sounded) and Chutow Hai (goodbye) at some very confused villagers. I received a reply only one time.
After three days of quite intense hiking and drinking coffee on the rooftops of hotels we returned to Kathmandu to spend a couple more days before leaving tomorrow morning for Tibet for our 8 day trek. After that we'll take the Tibetan railway across the frozen tundra of the Tibetan plateau for 36 hours towards Xi'an. If you haven't heard of this railway, go google it now. It's only like five years old and is one of the most striking examples of modern engineering (as well as colonialism and human rights abuses, but that's not for right now); the train travels across frozen earth on a rail suspended above the ground. The cabins have to be pressurized and extra oxygen in available upon request, and we, as white lowlanders, will probably need it. In some strange proof of genetic connectivity, Josh and I have both had a severe fetish to ride this train since we heard about it independently years ago.
Tonight we go to say goodbye to our good friend Qayoom, the rug purveyor and owner of Rug Up Originals. We met him our first night here and have been visiting him since. He makes us tea and tells us stories of all the people he knows. Last night we gave him a framed picture of us and then took him out for pizza. He gave us these beautiful prints of Everest taken by his friend Jeff Bodz. He is seriously in love with Urte. He would trade his rug shop for her. He will be missed by all of us.
Tibet tomorrow. Josh and I are giddy like children.
Love,
B
A week ago right now I was dropping down over the mountains and into the Kathmandu valley in an airplane that was very literally falling apart on the inside, with windows so burdened by the collected dust of fifty desert years that you could barely see past them, shaking violently as the wind pitched us in all the directions you don't want to be moving in the air. About thirty feet from the ground I still could make out no sign of the runway or any piece of land I could convince my mind would be suitable to build an airport upon, so when the engine suddenly kicked in the afterburners like "oh shit we're going to land on earth not runway" it made perfect sense, and when we did finally land on the farthest southern edge of the blacktop I imagined all of us on that airplane communally let our muscles and minds relax and return to the dim and comfortable pulse of the still living world.
All of this after 40 hours from Lincoln to Omaha to Chicago to Frankfurt to Delhi to here. I was very glad to have arrived.
Since my flight from Delhi was rescheduled, then rescheduled again, and then finally delayed another hour I arrived like five hours later than I had told Josh and Urte to be waiting at the Kathmandu Peace Guesthouse, but shortly after I arrived they came walking down the hill yelling my name and we all hugged and got down to the very serious business of bullshitting and making very big decisions like how to get to Tibet and what part of all the many beautiful parts of Nepal we should spend our time in.
So we ate some Momo's, these little balls that look like dumplings filled with vegetables then wrapped and either steamed or fried, and then set about the task of going to different travel companies to find the best prices. As of right now the Chinese government doesn't allow any foreigner into the Tibet region without being part of an organized tour approved by the Chinese. So, I couldn't just take a jeep to the border of Nepal and Tibet and cross by foot as can be done at so many borders across the world. This is a bit annoying but also financially taxing, as tour companies can charge pretty much whatever they please, knowing travelers have no other recourse if they want in to Tibet, which many travelers, Josh and I in the utmost, do. We were lucky enough to find a man named Suman whose tour was hundreds of dollars cheaper than anywhere else in town and also a very nice man to have a conversation about Nepalese politics with, headhunters, matricide and all. So we basically give him a stack of cash and he goes about dealing with all the Chinese bureaucracy for us, the visas, the Tibetan permit, the tour while in Tibet and the train ticket from Lhasa out of Tibet into China, a ticket which we have to prove we have before entering the country and which has to be for a train leaving right after our scheduled tour is over. The Chinese really don't want you in Tibet unsupervised, like a big overprotective father, but more Asian and militaristic.
So we booked with Suman and set about finding a trekking company to take us into the mountains. After quotes from multiple companies hawking all-inclusive three day tours we found Tiger Travel who would rent us a guide for $20 bucks a day, and we could be left alone to fend for ourselves where food and accommodation are concerned, which we'd rather do anyway as these things are very cheap here. So they rented us Lama, a very kind 28 year old of small stature from the Tamang ethnicity with a big smile and a wife named Maya and a young boy named Adus. He spoke passable English and taught me wonderful Nepalese that sounded so good coming out of his mouth but was wholly ruined when I would speak what, to me, sounded exactly the same as what he had just said. So for the next three days we walked deep into the Shivapuri National Park up some very steep terrain to Chisapani and then on to Nagarkot while I shouted Timonie Costishow (how are you, surely not spelled this way but it's how it sounded) and Chutow Hai (goodbye) at some very confused villagers. I received a reply only one time.
After three days of quite intense hiking and drinking coffee on the rooftops of hotels we returned to Kathmandu to spend a couple more days before leaving tomorrow morning for Tibet for our 8 day trek. After that we'll take the Tibetan railway across the frozen tundra of the Tibetan plateau for 36 hours towards Xi'an. If you haven't heard of this railway, go google it now. It's only like five years old and is one of the most striking examples of modern engineering (as well as colonialism and human rights abuses, but that's not for right now); the train travels across frozen earth on a rail suspended above the ground. The cabins have to be pressurized and extra oxygen in available upon request, and we, as white lowlanders, will probably need it. In some strange proof of genetic connectivity, Josh and I have both had a severe fetish to ride this train since we heard about it independently years ago.
Tonight we go to say goodbye to our good friend Qayoom, the rug purveyor and owner of Rug Up Originals. We met him our first night here and have been visiting him since. He makes us tea and tells us stories of all the people he knows. Last night we gave him a framed picture of us and then took him out for pizza. He gave us these beautiful prints of Everest taken by his friend Jeff Bodz. He is seriously in love with Urte. He would trade his rug shop for her. He will be missed by all of us.
Tibet tomorrow. Josh and I are giddy like children.
Love,
B
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
The last month
I've done an awful job of keeping up with this blog and now that I've been sucked into the whole Facebook thing it's doesn't look to be getting better anytime soon. That being said I'll try to give a brief overview of our time since leaving Indonesia.
First we flew out of Denpasar on Bali to Kuala Lumpur to walk three hundred steps up into the Batu Caves with over a million Indians in Arizona-style heat and the next day we caught a train to Taman Negara the biggest national park in Malaysia and the oldest rain forest in Asia to hike and pick leaches off our feet and eat meals on large platforms floating in the river for a few days before taking the Jungle Railway north to Kota Bharu where we got stuck in a great guesthouse that had a television and a box of hundreds and hundreds of dvd's so I stayed up every night until seven in the morning then slept until after noon and did the same thing for five days until we had finally had our fill of movies and decided to cross over into Thailand for the second time and we spent the next two days on the train traveling from the very southeastern corner to nearly the northern border to Chiang Mai where we did a lot of walking and eating and music playing with some new friends and after a certain time every night we did a lot of saying no to the prostitutes which gets old really fast and after a few days of really enjoying ourselves in one of our favorite new cities we took a very small very cramped bus five hours north to Pai where we relaxed in the mountains and enjoyed the cold weather for the first time in quite some time and met back up with our two new favorite people Faye and Luke from England and the four of us went on the most epic motorbike journey 200 KM into the mountain range and back and near the very end Nate crashed coming around a very sketchy hairpin turn but other than some cuts and bruises he is just fine and since Thailand only gives out 15 day visa stamp for anyone entering the country on foot we were forced to leave earlier than we would have as Northern Thailand is one of the nicest places we've yet been so the four of us caught a bus to Chiang Rai to spend one last night in Thailand that wasn't all too exciting as I had spent the night before in the throws of a horrible fever and somehow passed it on to Nate for the day but luckily the next day we woke up and felt much better and were of to Chiang Khong on the Laos border and after crossing the Mekong on a small boat and then paying our $36 visa fee we were in Houay Xai to spend one night before taking the 2 day slow boat to Luang Prabang which was truly slow but such a great time as we met three more people to add to our growing posse, Lisa from Holland and Alex and Will from England, and a river cutting it's way through enormous mountain passes with Laos on your left and Thailand on your right is not a bad backdrop to spend a couple days viewing and after the first days trip we stopped in small Pak Beng for the night where we found out about a local celebration that we were invited to attend and when we got there it was about five hundred locals drinking Beer Lao and dancing quite badly to live music so naturally I fit right in so we all drank and danced for a while before retiring to our guesthouse where they shut of all the water and electric at a certain hour and the next morning we had to get up far too early for our second day on the boat which was much different than the first as my seat was directly next to the engine and it was so deafening that I couldn't hear anything or carry any type of conversation and it took a good day for my hearing to fully come back after arriving in Luang Prabang but it eventually did and now I have a great story of my nine hour boat journey with what sounded like a helicopter directly beside me and either way it was worth it because Luang Prabang is so lovely and slow nestled between rivers and there are three vegetarian buffets that all cost 5000 Kip (about 60 cents) and everyone sells fruit smoothies and there's even a bowling alley where I proved my incredible bowling skills by bowling a 96 two nights ago on Nate's 28th birthday and right now there are seven of us traveling together and somehow we all really enjoy each other's company and have plans to stay together for the near future and Will has even changed his plane ticket to Australia to stay and travel through Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam with us until Nate and I fly to Hong Kong on the 27th of April so it will be a nice change and a different mode of travel for us for the next seven weeks and we're both really looking forward to all of it but before any of that today we rent bicycles to cycle around the city for a few hours before wondering the night market, eating some cheap vegetarian food and settling down on the roof of our guesthouse with a great view of the city for some beer Lao, cards and conversation until the early morning as we've done every day since we've been here and will probably continue to do until we find some reason to leave the incredible peace covering the city.
Love to all,
B
First we flew out of Denpasar on Bali to Kuala Lumpur to walk three hundred steps up into the Batu Caves with over a million Indians in Arizona-style heat and the next day we caught a train to Taman Negara the biggest national park in Malaysia and the oldest rain forest in Asia to hike and pick leaches off our feet and eat meals on large platforms floating in the river for a few days before taking the Jungle Railway north to Kota Bharu where we got stuck in a great guesthouse that had a television and a box of hundreds and hundreds of dvd's so I stayed up every night until seven in the morning then slept until after noon and did the same thing for five days until we had finally had our fill of movies and decided to cross over into Thailand for the second time and we spent the next two days on the train traveling from the very southeastern corner to nearly the northern border to Chiang Mai where we did a lot of walking and eating and music playing with some new friends and after a certain time every night we did a lot of saying no to the prostitutes which gets old really fast and after a few days of really enjoying ourselves in one of our favorite new cities we took a very small very cramped bus five hours north to Pai where we relaxed in the mountains and enjoyed the cold weather for the first time in quite some time and met back up with our two new favorite people Faye and Luke from England and the four of us went on the most epic motorbike journey 200 KM into the mountain range and back and near the very end Nate crashed coming around a very sketchy hairpin turn but other than some cuts and bruises he is just fine and since Thailand only gives out 15 day visa stamp for anyone entering the country on foot we were forced to leave earlier than we would have as Northern Thailand is one of the nicest places we've yet been so the four of us caught a bus to Chiang Rai to spend one last night in Thailand that wasn't all too exciting as I had spent the night before in the throws of a horrible fever and somehow passed it on to Nate for the day but luckily the next day we woke up and felt much better and were of to Chiang Khong on the Laos border and after crossing the Mekong on a small boat and then paying our $36 visa fee we were in Houay Xai to spend one night before taking the 2 day slow boat to Luang Prabang which was truly slow but such a great time as we met three more people to add to our growing posse, Lisa from Holland and Alex and Will from England, and a river cutting it's way through enormous mountain passes with Laos on your left and Thailand on your right is not a bad backdrop to spend a couple days viewing and after the first days trip we stopped in small Pak Beng for the night where we found out about a local celebration that we were invited to attend and when we got there it was about five hundred locals drinking Beer Lao and dancing quite badly to live music so naturally I fit right in so we all drank and danced for a while before retiring to our guesthouse where they shut of all the water and electric at a certain hour and the next morning we had to get up far too early for our second day on the boat which was much different than the first as my seat was directly next to the engine and it was so deafening that I couldn't hear anything or carry any type of conversation and it took a good day for my hearing to fully come back after arriving in Luang Prabang but it eventually did and now I have a great story of my nine hour boat journey with what sounded like a helicopter directly beside me and either way it was worth it because Luang Prabang is so lovely and slow nestled between rivers and there are three vegetarian buffets that all cost 5000 Kip (about 60 cents) and everyone sells fruit smoothies and there's even a bowling alley where I proved my incredible bowling skills by bowling a 96 two nights ago on Nate's 28th birthday and right now there are seven of us traveling together and somehow we all really enjoy each other's company and have plans to stay together for the near future and Will has even changed his plane ticket to Australia to stay and travel through Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam with us until Nate and I fly to Hong Kong on the 27th of April so it will be a nice change and a different mode of travel for us for the next seven weeks and we're both really looking forward to all of it but before any of that today we rent bicycles to cycle around the city for a few hours before wondering the night market, eating some cheap vegetarian food and settling down on the roof of our guesthouse with a great view of the city for some beer Lao, cards and conversation until the early morning as we've done every day since we've been here and will probably continue to do until we find some reason to leave the incredible peace covering the city.
Love to all,
B
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Good things
Twice in the last two weeks I have found myself in truly alien landscapes, looking around only vaguely understanding where I am, putting it all together very slowly, allowing myself to be taken by it and relegating the understanding to a later day.
The first was at Gunung Bromo, an active volcano in Eastern Java, which constantly spews a steady stream of sulphur and rests in the shadow of another much bigger volcano that shoots ash into the sky every ten minutes. The very lazy take a far too small horse from the base of Bromo to the foot of a staircase that carries you the rest of the way to the summit, but I, along with Anna and Joanne my two new Dutch travel partners, decided to hoof it for the twenty minutes it takes, half amused and half horrified by the fat tourists weighing down their horses. At the summit you stare into the heart of it, a very unusual chalky color flecked with deep maroons in places, then turn to view the surrounding hills and flat lowlands, giants buried in the earth with their spines exposed, colors as rich as you think possible.
The second was the very next day a few hundred kilometers further into East Java at the Ijen Plateau, a place I new almost nothing about before I came other than that it was to be something beautiful, and to some, quite amazing. What I was never told before is that you are going there to witness humanity in a form completely incomprehensible to most, to see a mountain and it's crater merely as a backdrop . As you walk the hour hike to the top of the mountain you begin to see many workers coming up the hill behind you carrying two baskets suspended between a plank of bamboo. At the moment you have no idea what it's used for. The farther you go up, the more workers you see, and eventually you notice that some of them have incredibly large pieces of sulphur rock filling both baskets. When you finally reach the summit you look down into the crater and see the small sources of sulphur leaking out, the brightest blue lake, the fluorescent yellow and dark red walls, the sand trails snaking through the water; then you see to the very bottom, a very, very long and steep way down and you finally realize what these men are doing, where the rocks are coming from, and how completely impossible it seems that men as old as 60 are carrying out loads of sulphur weighing upwards of 150 lbs from the bottom of a volcano up a steep and extremely perilous path only ever wide enough to barely squeeze two people by at the same time, then all the way down the mountain to unload, a journey they can complete twice a day working ten hours each day, being paid the equivalent of US$6 a day. Every one of these men works for 20 years or until they die, which many do from falling, exhaustion and heart and lung problems due to the fact that they are constantly covered and breathing in sulphur, sometimes so thick that you can't see a few inches in front of you, dependent upon the wind to shift to clear the path again. I walked all the way down the path to the source of the sulphur, talked to many of the workers, saw exactly how they were working, got horribly in the way, surely made their jobs more difficult by my presence but not one of them didn't smile and say hello, offer to give me a sulphur rock or ask me for a cigarette that I wished I would have bought a pack of just to give away. None of us, myself, Joanne, Anna, or Kendra and Irene my new American travel partners could make any good sense of it at the time, and even days later we are still enjoying being completely baffled by it.
I decided to follow Kendra and Irene into Bali, and they invited me to come to Pemuteran with them, a small beach village with few tourists, kind locals and good food. Nate eventually met up with us there, and we all snorkeled every day and spent a lot of time relaxing. After four days we had made many new friends and I had traded my t-shirt with Bang Bang, the cook at our favorite road side food stall.
Nate and I are now in Ubud, after a disastrous trip to Kuta to try and find a bar that played the Super Bowl but failing. It's perfect here, everyone loves art and music and the Balinese culture is evident in most everything you see. Today we played with monkeys and Nate almost got his face eaten off, tonight we'll see a gamelan and dance performance, tomorrow maybe some white water rafting then meeting back up with the girls, the next day touring the countryside, Friday to Denpasar to catch a flight to Kuala Lumpur, Sunday the Indian festival of Thaipusam, after that we have no idea.
For those of you worried, last night Nate and I finally found a bar to watch a replay of the Super Bowl, and it was only fitting that the two Arizona boys were joined by another traveler living in Seattle who was from Pittsburgh. The locals working the bar had no idea what we were watching or why it made us so happy.
Love to all,
B
The first was at Gunung Bromo, an active volcano in Eastern Java, which constantly spews a steady stream of sulphur and rests in the shadow of another much bigger volcano that shoots ash into the sky every ten minutes. The very lazy take a far too small horse from the base of Bromo to the foot of a staircase that carries you the rest of the way to the summit, but I, along with Anna and Joanne my two new Dutch travel partners, decided to hoof it for the twenty minutes it takes, half amused and half horrified by the fat tourists weighing down their horses. At the summit you stare into the heart of it, a very unusual chalky color flecked with deep maroons in places, then turn to view the surrounding hills and flat lowlands, giants buried in the earth with their spines exposed, colors as rich as you think possible.
The second was the very next day a few hundred kilometers further into East Java at the Ijen Plateau, a place I new almost nothing about before I came other than that it was to be something beautiful, and to some, quite amazing. What I was never told before is that you are going there to witness humanity in a form completely incomprehensible to most, to see a mountain and it's crater merely as a backdrop . As you walk the hour hike to the top of the mountain you begin to see many workers coming up the hill behind you carrying two baskets suspended between a plank of bamboo. At the moment you have no idea what it's used for. The farther you go up, the more workers you see, and eventually you notice that some of them have incredibly large pieces of sulphur rock filling both baskets. When you finally reach the summit you look down into the crater and see the small sources of sulphur leaking out, the brightest blue lake, the fluorescent yellow and dark red walls, the sand trails snaking through the water; then you see to the very bottom, a very, very long and steep way down and you finally realize what these men are doing, where the rocks are coming from, and how completely impossible it seems that men as old as 60 are carrying out loads of sulphur weighing upwards of 150 lbs from the bottom of a volcano up a steep and extremely perilous path only ever wide enough to barely squeeze two people by at the same time, then all the way down the mountain to unload, a journey they can complete twice a day working ten hours each day, being paid the equivalent of US$6 a day. Every one of these men works for 20 years or until they die, which many do from falling, exhaustion and heart and lung problems due to the fact that they are constantly covered and breathing in sulphur, sometimes so thick that you can't see a few inches in front of you, dependent upon the wind to shift to clear the path again. I walked all the way down the path to the source of the sulphur, talked to many of the workers, saw exactly how they were working, got horribly in the way, surely made their jobs more difficult by my presence but not one of them didn't smile and say hello, offer to give me a sulphur rock or ask me for a cigarette that I wished I would have bought a pack of just to give away. None of us, myself, Joanne, Anna, or Kendra and Irene my new American travel partners could make any good sense of it at the time, and even days later we are still enjoying being completely baffled by it.
I decided to follow Kendra and Irene into Bali, and they invited me to come to Pemuteran with them, a small beach village with few tourists, kind locals and good food. Nate eventually met up with us there, and we all snorkeled every day and spent a lot of time relaxing. After four days we had made many new friends and I had traded my t-shirt with Bang Bang, the cook at our favorite road side food stall.
Nate and I are now in Ubud, after a disastrous trip to Kuta to try and find a bar that played the Super Bowl but failing. It's perfect here, everyone loves art and music and the Balinese culture is evident in most everything you see. Today we played with monkeys and Nate almost got his face eaten off, tonight we'll see a gamelan and dance performance, tomorrow maybe some white water rafting then meeting back up with the girls, the next day touring the countryside, Friday to Denpasar to catch a flight to Kuala Lumpur, Sunday the Indian festival of Thaipusam, after that we have no idea.
For those of you worried, last night Nate and I finally found a bar to watch a replay of the Super Bowl, and it was only fitting that the two Arizona boys were joined by another traveler living in Seattle who was from Pittsburgh. The locals working the bar had no idea what we were watching or why it made us so happy.
Love to all,
B
Monday, January 19, 2009
Indonesia
Nate and I have been in Indonesia for about ten days now, starting in Jakarta for two days and then on to Bandung for one night. We quickly grew tired of the traffic and the noise and the general rush of both cities, so we moved on as fast as we could, as Indonesia only gives us 30 days on our visa.
Most of our time has been spent here, in Pangandaran, a sleepy beach city (at least outside of tourist season) with good waves for surfing, at least one large rainstorm a day, and food for 80 cents. I've have done almost nothing outside of read, swim, run, eat, walk, sleep.
Nate has taken up surfing, and since it's cheap to learn and to rent a board here, he has decided to stay for a while. So, tomorrow I will be taking off alone for Yogyakarta, where I'll spent a few days traveling around the area to see Borobodur, the Prambanan temples, the Dieng plateau and Gunung Merapi. Then I'll head East to Solo, then off to Gunung Bromo before reaching the Easternmost tip of Java to catch a ferry to Bali, where, at some point and some location, Nate and I will meet up again to fly back to Kuala Lumpur by the 6th, our last legal day in the country.
(About a minute ago there was a massive motorbike accident outside the internet cafe that wiped out about ten motorbikes. Everyone seems alright though.)
But, on the 1st of February I will be desperately seeking out a bar or restaurant or any place that has a television and is broadcasting the Super Bowl so I can watch the Cardinals win their first championship.
Love to all,
B
Most of our time has been spent here, in Pangandaran, a sleepy beach city (at least outside of tourist season) with good waves for surfing, at least one large rainstorm a day, and food for 80 cents. I've have done almost nothing outside of read, swim, run, eat, walk, sleep.
Nate has taken up surfing, and since it's cheap to learn and to rent a board here, he has decided to stay for a while. So, tomorrow I will be taking off alone for Yogyakarta, where I'll spent a few days traveling around the area to see Borobodur, the Prambanan temples, the Dieng plateau and Gunung Merapi. Then I'll head East to Solo, then off to Gunung Bromo before reaching the Easternmost tip of Java to catch a ferry to Bali, where, at some point and some location, Nate and I will meet up again to fly back to Kuala Lumpur by the 6th, our last legal day in the country.
(About a minute ago there was a massive motorbike accident outside the internet cafe that wiped out about ten motorbikes. Everyone seems alright though.)
But, on the 1st of February I will be desperately seeking out a bar or restaurant or any place that has a television and is broadcasting the Super Bowl so I can watch the Cardinals win their first championship.
Love to all,
B
Monday, January 5, 2009
New Year
Don't have a lot of time, but a quick update that Nate and I had a very lively time in Kuala Lumpur on New Year's Eve in which we probably walked well over 15 miles all over the city to catch all the millions of people celebrating across the city.
The next day we woke up early to catch a bus to Melaka, an old historic city once taken over at different times by the Dutch, Portuguese and British, resulting in quite a mix of peoples and architectural styles. We've been here for the last five days, which should say a lot about how much we enjoy this city.
Tomorrow morning we wake up very early to walk a few miles to the bus station, then catch a bus to Singapore where we'll spend two days before catching a ferry to Batam, a small island just off Singapore that is part of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, from where we'll fly to Jakarta, a short hour and a half flight away.
Happy New Year to everyone.
Love,
B
The next day we woke up early to catch a bus to Melaka, an old historic city once taken over at different times by the Dutch, Portuguese and British, resulting in quite a mix of peoples and architectural styles. We've been here for the last five days, which should say a lot about how much we enjoy this city.
Tomorrow morning we wake up very early to walk a few miles to the bus station, then catch a bus to Singapore where we'll spend two days before catching a ferry to Batam, a small island just off Singapore that is part of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, from where we'll fly to Jakarta, a short hour and a half flight away.
Happy New Year to everyone.
Love,
B
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Langkawi to Kuala Lumpur
So after nearly five weeks in Langkawi, Nate and I made the rather quick decision one morning to leave Langkawi to head for Indonesia. We planned on going to Penang to catch a ferry to Medan in northern Sumatra, but the ferry was sold out so we caught a ferry to the mainland of Kedah, got a cab to Alor Setar, took a bus to Butterworth and then finally a ferry in Georgetown on the island of Penang. Once we arrived we realized that the ferry for Medan was sold out for three days, so we made another hasty decision and made a brand new plan to head south for Kuala Lumpur, to either catch a ferry from somewhere nearby, or keep moving south. Before leaving Penang early the next morning for KL, we went to our favorite Indian cinema in town and saw Silambataam, a Bollywood movie about a devoted Hindu who turns out have a killing machine waiting inside of him, only to be released when coaxed out by the violence of others. Luckily for him, he is also an extraordinary singer and dancer. Very good stuff. Three hours long.
Last night, our first night in Kuala Lumpur (KL), we met up with our friend Pitt who we had met in Langkawi, who is the brother of a good friend of ours in Langkawi named Aji. He works at an incredibly nice bar near Bukit Bintang, the main shopping district in KL, called The Social. We ended up hanging out with him as he worked for a few hours, and somehow the Langkawi trend continued and we didn't have to pay for a single drink. Nate and I figured our tab would have been close to 200 RM, nearly $60, not because we drank a lot but because alcohol is incredibly expensive in mainland Malaysia, and especially KL. Once again we were shocked by the kindness of the people here, and promised to buy Pitt a meal the following day.
Today we plan on walking around the city and finding a used book store, maybe going to the lake gardens and the city center tonight, and tomorrow we plan on waking early tomorrow to go up the Petronas Twin Towers, something I have wanted to do since I was a young boy.
And the decision we're facing right now is this: catch a ferry from Klang, a nearby city, or travel south to Melaka to catch a ferry to Dumai (Sumatra), or possibly head for Singapore to catch a ferry to the small island of Bitam and then fly into Jakarta (on the island of Java). Knowing the two of us the decision will be made on a whim as neither Nate nor I possess the ability to plan ahead, nor do we really want to.
We'll let you know when we figure it out.
Love,
B
Last night, our first night in Kuala Lumpur (KL), we met up with our friend Pitt who we had met in Langkawi, who is the brother of a good friend of ours in Langkawi named Aji. He works at an incredibly nice bar near Bukit Bintang, the main shopping district in KL, called The Social. We ended up hanging out with him as he worked for a few hours, and somehow the Langkawi trend continued and we didn't have to pay for a single drink. Nate and I figured our tab would have been close to 200 RM, nearly $60, not because we drank a lot but because alcohol is incredibly expensive in mainland Malaysia, and especially KL. Once again we were shocked by the kindness of the people here, and promised to buy Pitt a meal the following day.
Today we plan on walking around the city and finding a used book store, maybe going to the lake gardens and the city center tonight, and tomorrow we plan on waking early tomorrow to go up the Petronas Twin Towers, something I have wanted to do since I was a young boy.
And the decision we're facing right now is this: catch a ferry from Klang, a nearby city, or travel south to Melaka to catch a ferry to Dumai (Sumatra), or possibly head for Singapore to catch a ferry to the small island of Bitam and then fly into Jakarta (on the island of Java). Knowing the two of us the decision will be made on a whim as neither Nate nor I possess the ability to plan ahead, nor do we really want to.
We'll let you know when we figure it out.
Love,
B
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Back in Langkawi
Nate and I made it back to Langkawi a week ago and realized very quickly that the tourist season was in full bloom. Apparently Malaysian students all across the country get "summer" break during December and January, and many of them, along with Europeans and Australians and all manner of white folk, flock to the island at the same time. So, with a little help from our old landlord from our last time here, we got what may have been the only room left in Langkawi. She had to spend an hour just getting it ready for us, and she charged us a ridiculously low price in accordance with it's quality (there was no water). The worst news, however, was that she no longer had a room to rent us out for the month.
So for the few days we stayed there, we started thinking of moving on, back to the mainland to see what the rest of Malaysia was like. But then we met Lan and his girlfriend Joanna, who own the only local art gallery right on the main road. We initially just stopped in and started talking to the two of them, with no intention or motive, but somehow the topic of us looking for a place to rent for a month came up, and within half an hour we had been invited to come and live with them for 200 RM a month, 150 Ringgit less than what we were willing to pay for a guesthouse. The next day Joanna took us to look at the house, which is set back from the main road, about a five minute walk from the beach, and secluded nicely by palm trees and local families. We loved it right away. We have our own large room, a big kitchen we can use to eat for cheap, a living room with cable tv and dvd player and a separate space for the shower and the toilet, something I've learned I greatly enjoy. We moved in on Monday and have been busy settling into life in a home, buying groceries, pillows, sleeping bags.
We also rented motorbikes for the first time, and spent two days riding all over the island. We rode to the top of the highest mountain on Langkawi (890 KM). We saw many small fishing villages as well as the five star luxury resort beaches where they told us we couldn't sit in the chairs or swim in the pool before we were anywhere near either of them. We watched monkeys tend to their children. We saw a Chinese man crash his motorbike into an SUV and flip. Nate road on the wrong (right hand) side of the road a few times. We have made a firm decision to rent a motorbike for the entire month we'll be here, and with the help of Lan who gives us all the local inside information, we found a shop that will rent one to us monthly for 250 RM. Most bikes are rented daily for 20-35 RM, so this would save us tons of Ringgit.
Life has definitely slowed down. We don't have to think about moving or how to get to the next city or when to catch the ferry or the bus or the train and it's a nice change of pace for a while. We've watched a little television, which is very different when you haven't watched one in a while. Luckily Lan only likes to watch National Geographic and Discovery, so at least we're learning. We cook at home now instead of eating out every night. We went out for Joanna's birthday and met even more great people, like Vladimir the Russian, Johan the Swede, Wan the Malay artist, Zool the Malay husband of a very rich local German. Nate met a Malay girl that he likes. Lan very quickly told him she was bad news. People are very good to us and treat us like old friends. We can't walk down the street without seeing people we know and having a conversation. I can't say I've ever felt that way anywhere I've lived.
All is well, more soon.
Love,
Brent
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Pictures
I uploaded some more pictures from Nate's camera to Flickr, and hopefully Kinsey will able to upload the thousands that we took on her camera from back home in Austin at some point in the future.
So, if you'd like to see them, head on over to www.flickr.com/photos/whales-were-deers.
Also, happy Thanksgiving to all our friends and family back home. We love and miss you all.
Hug a Native American.
Brent
So, if you'd like to see them, head on over to www.flickr.com/photos/whales-were-deers.
Also, happy Thanksgiving to all our friends and family back home. We love and miss you all.
Hug a Native American.
Brent
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Malaysia
The first thing different that we noticed about Malaysia, at first struck us as something similar. Getting through customs we encountered the same throng of desperate men hawking taxis and guesthouses and foot massages and snake oils and, as we've grown used to them, we now just push through the group to find the honest people on the other side. But this time we met a man who looked as shady as any we've seen, who tailed us and kept offering help. As I often do, I kept walking and let Nate get ensnared because he is often too kind to tell them to fuck off with his body language. This man followed us for a few minutes, guided Nate to a money changer and Kins and I to an ATM, then passed us on to his associate. This new man then followed us for a few minutes, answered a few of Nate's questions about the city and how to get to the Pantai Cenang beach, and then did the strangest thing. He wished us luck and walked away. He was only there to help us, which we had not yet encountered at a ferry terminal, bus station, train station, taxi terminal or anyplace where travelers arrive.
This was our first impression of Malaysia, and it would prove to be very telling.
We caught a cab to the beach and found that since it was the weekend and there was a school holiday, everywhere was booked. We eventually found a guesthouse that rented us a room that was not meant to be rented, as it had wallpaper on the floor, was dirty, small and had a secret room built into the side of the wall and covered by a curtain that looked fit to hide stolen children in.
So the next day, Sunday, we set out to find a better room, and since the weekend was winding down we found a place right next door with two big beds, a nice shower and even a large piece of furniture that we couldn't really figure out what to do with. The next day we moved to a different room in the same guesthouse that was just as nice if not better, and this is when the landlord informed Nate and I that she would rent this room out to us on a monthly basis for $350 RM (almost exactly $100) total. This is the moment when Nate and I began to think differently. We had planned on spending a few days here then moving on south to another island then to the mainland. But if we took this offer we'd be paying $50 each a month, less than $2 a day to stay in a perfectly nice room. She also told us she was opening a Rasta Bar in the next few weeks and that she was looking for a cook and a waiter, so we might be able to work as well. So, we decided to spend a few days in Langkawi to see if we liked it before we made the decision.
This is what happened while we were deciding.
One night we stumbled upon a bar called Submarine (so named because the bar right next to it is called Yellow) and we met some really nice guys that happened to be the house band. We all sat around playing guitar together, and when it was time for them to perform they invited us to play with them. So Nate and I fumbled our way through a bunch of cover songs, from the Beatles to Radiohead to U2 for about an hour. After we played, one of the guys in the band, Saiful, sat us down and paid us 20 ringgit for playing. It was the sweetest thing anyone has done for us yet and this led to Saiful and I spending the next five hours talking about music and religion and politics and to us becoming good friends. He teaches music to children and cooks at a restaurant, and when he's not working he plays in three bands. After the show we ended up going to a dance club called Sanba (still don't know how I was convinced to go to a dance club) with some friends we met at the bar. A.C. cleans yachts and looks like Jack Sparrow if he was a boxer (he's missing teeth). He's offered to see if he can get us jobs with him and wants to take us to South Africa with his company. He's also normally drunk, so I'm not banking on it. Mi sings in the band and has a great voice, and he can speak English very well (most people here can) but he can sing it fluently. His girlfriend Atti also plays music and sings, and Kinsey thinks she is the most adorable girl in the world. Yen plays upright bass and djimbe, and sings like John Fogerty. Matt and Lisa are from Canada and are brother and sister and somehow have found a way to travel with each other without killing one another. Brooke and I would never survive. Jevin is from Melbourne and gave us great advice on getting jobs in Australia. Jack is the employee at the mini mart where I go to buy beer and snacks and last night I found out that he is a tattoo artist who moved back to Langkawi to help his family run the store. He showed me some of his tattoos and they're remarkable. Jai and Bet are from the mainland in Kuala Kedah and they are our neighbors at the hostel. All the employees at our favorite Indian restaurant in town live a door down from them, and we're hoping to become good friends with them in the hopes of getting free food or cooking secrets.
So it was pretty easy to love this place, and we had all but made up our mind when the following day, Yen passes us on the street as we're taking a walk. He asks us to get in a then drives us out to a beautiful new restaurant right on the water. He tells us his band is playing there tonight, and since it's the grand opening there will be free food and drink. We tell him we'll meet him there later that night, and continue our walk where we eventually veer far off the main road and find ourselves in a small village apparently populated only by children who want to smile and wave and yell "Hello!" and "Goodbye!" at you over and over. At one point there were probably twenty kids yelling hello at us. On the edge of town as we walked by a small house we hear a very desperate sounding hello coming from behind us. We turn around to see this gigantic child (seriously he was less than five feet tall and weighed at least 160) running after us wearing nothing but his bath towel which he is fighting to hold up, and when he finally comes face to face with us he simply says, "hello", then takes a moment to catch his breath and triumphantly announces, "goodbye".
We arrived at the restaurant at seven and found Yen and his band mates eating before their performance, and we were instantly encouraged to go get as much food as we could handle. So we loaded our plates then sat down to watch Yen cover everything from CCR to Pink Floyd to Robbie Williams. Apparently the only music people in Malaysia want to hear is classic rock or pop, because that's all every band around plays, and they can make good money doing it. While eating we met Adam, and Australian who started the restaurant with another man with the help of some locals and a connection to a powerful politician. We attempted to sweet talk him in hopes of getting a slot to play at his restaurant, which pays a few hundred RM (ringgit) a night. Nate and I live off of 35 RM a day, so that would be quite a bit of money to us right now. Later in the night Adam smuggled Nate and I free beer which endeared him to both of us. Some of the more strict Muslims expressly forbid alcohol, and since there were some rather powerful people in the Malaysian government (which is comprised mainly of Muslims) in attendance, we had to be careful for Adam's sake.
So we spent a few hours eating and drinking for free, watching our new friend Yen play music, and when he was done he offered us a ride back to town where he was performing at another bar on the beach. This was basically the same band but since they play on the beach they are allowed to play at a much higher volume and use electric instruments. As seems to always happen now that people know Nate and I play music, eventually we are called on stage and told to start jamming. So, I picked up a guitar and Nate picked up a bass we started playing something very random and thought up on the spot. Of course, Nate and I thought it was total rubbish, but the crowd would explode into applause at certain points, and there was a very drunk, very white, very just-graduated-from-college-and-I-miss-my-frat-buddies dude about our age that danced very badly and very near to me the entire time I played. He loved it, so I guess we succeeded.
After the show we sat down with Yen and talked to him about his life and family and how he liked living on Langkawi, and like everyone before who we asked the same question, he thinks it the best place in the world and has no desire to ever leave.
At this point, Kinsey was pretty sure that she was going to fly back home in a few days from Singapore, since it was much cheaper than flying out from anywhere else. To get there, she needed to take a ferry down south to Penang to get back to the mainland and catch a bus to Singapore. So, Nate and I had planned to go with her to accompany her as far as Penang to see her off, then return to Langkawi. We told Yen about our plans to catch a cab to the ferry the following day and he would have none of it. He had a car and the day off, so he would wake up to drive us there himself.
And he did. The next day we came to his house and woke him up and he drove us all the way across town (a taxi would have cost 28 RM, $9) to the jetty, then had lunch with us and hung out until our boat left.
At this point our minds were well made up, we would stay in Langkawi for the near future. We had already made some great friends, found an outlet for music, could live for incredibly cheap, maybe work, swim in the ocean every day and stop moving for a little while.
Right now, after spending the last week in Penang, a loud, congested, busy city of over two million people where beer is more expensive than it is in the states (I haven't had one the entire time I've been here) and the people are noticeable less friendly (except Durai, who after ten minutes had invited us to stay at his house and use his car and his motorbike), we are even more certain of our choice.
Kinsey left us on Sunday to catch a bus to Singapore and a flight back to Austin in time to be with her family for Thanksgiving. We all had a great time together and we wish her the best as she now faces the very scary world of working for a living. Oddly enough, since she left, Nate and I have been to three malls, one of them the biggest in Southeast Asia. She probably would have enjoyed them more than we did, as we were trying, unsuccesfully, to find guitars. We did have a chance to catch the new James Bond movie, which we both thought was great, so it wasn't a total waste.
We head back to Langkawi tomorrow.
This was our first impression of Malaysia, and it would prove to be very telling.
We caught a cab to the beach and found that since it was the weekend and there was a school holiday, everywhere was booked. We eventually found a guesthouse that rented us a room that was not meant to be rented, as it had wallpaper on the floor, was dirty, small and had a secret room built into the side of the wall and covered by a curtain that looked fit to hide stolen children in.
So the next day, Sunday, we set out to find a better room, and since the weekend was winding down we found a place right next door with two big beds, a nice shower and even a large piece of furniture that we couldn't really figure out what to do with. The next day we moved to a different room in the same guesthouse that was just as nice if not better, and this is when the landlord informed Nate and I that she would rent this room out to us on a monthly basis for $350 RM (almost exactly $100) total. This is the moment when Nate and I began to think differently. We had planned on spending a few days here then moving on south to another island then to the mainland. But if we took this offer we'd be paying $50 each a month, less than $2 a day to stay in a perfectly nice room. She also told us she was opening a Rasta Bar in the next few weeks and that she was looking for a cook and a waiter, so we might be able to work as well. So, we decided to spend a few days in Langkawi to see if we liked it before we made the decision.
This is what happened while we were deciding.
One night we stumbled upon a bar called Submarine (so named because the bar right next to it is called Yellow) and we met some really nice guys that happened to be the house band. We all sat around playing guitar together, and when it was time for them to perform they invited us to play with them. So Nate and I fumbled our way through a bunch of cover songs, from the Beatles to Radiohead to U2 for about an hour. After we played, one of the guys in the band, Saiful, sat us down and paid us 20 ringgit for playing. It was the sweetest thing anyone has done for us yet and this led to Saiful and I spending the next five hours talking about music and religion and politics and to us becoming good friends. He teaches music to children and cooks at a restaurant, and when he's not working he plays in three bands. After the show we ended up going to a dance club called Sanba (still don't know how I was convinced to go to a dance club) with some friends we met at the bar. A.C. cleans yachts and looks like Jack Sparrow if he was a boxer (he's missing teeth). He's offered to see if he can get us jobs with him and wants to take us to South Africa with his company. He's also normally drunk, so I'm not banking on it. Mi sings in the band and has a great voice, and he can speak English very well (most people here can) but he can sing it fluently. His girlfriend Atti also plays music and sings, and Kinsey thinks she is the most adorable girl in the world. Yen plays upright bass and djimbe, and sings like John Fogerty. Matt and Lisa are from Canada and are brother and sister and somehow have found a way to travel with each other without killing one another. Brooke and I would never survive. Jevin is from Melbourne and gave us great advice on getting jobs in Australia. Jack is the employee at the mini mart where I go to buy beer and snacks and last night I found out that he is a tattoo artist who moved back to Langkawi to help his family run the store. He showed me some of his tattoos and they're remarkable. Jai and Bet are from the mainland in Kuala Kedah and they are our neighbors at the hostel. All the employees at our favorite Indian restaurant in town live a door down from them, and we're hoping to become good friends with them in the hopes of getting free food or cooking secrets.
So it was pretty easy to love this place, and we had all but made up our mind when the following day, Yen passes us on the street as we're taking a walk. He asks us to get in a then drives us out to a beautiful new restaurant right on the water. He tells us his band is playing there tonight, and since it's the grand opening there will be free food and drink. We tell him we'll meet him there later that night, and continue our walk where we eventually veer far off the main road and find ourselves in a small village apparently populated only by children who want to smile and wave and yell "Hello!" and "Goodbye!" at you over and over. At one point there were probably twenty kids yelling hello at us. On the edge of town as we walked by a small house we hear a very desperate sounding hello coming from behind us. We turn around to see this gigantic child (seriously he was less than five feet tall and weighed at least 160) running after us wearing nothing but his bath towel which he is fighting to hold up, and when he finally comes face to face with us he simply says, "hello", then takes a moment to catch his breath and triumphantly announces, "goodbye".
We arrived at the restaurant at seven and found Yen and his band mates eating before their performance, and we were instantly encouraged to go get as much food as we could handle. So we loaded our plates then sat down to watch Yen cover everything from CCR to Pink Floyd to Robbie Williams. Apparently the only music people in Malaysia want to hear is classic rock or pop, because that's all every band around plays, and they can make good money doing it. While eating we met Adam, and Australian who started the restaurant with another man with the help of some locals and a connection to a powerful politician. We attempted to sweet talk him in hopes of getting a slot to play at his restaurant, which pays a few hundred RM (ringgit) a night. Nate and I live off of 35 RM a day, so that would be quite a bit of money to us right now. Later in the night Adam smuggled Nate and I free beer which endeared him to both of us. Some of the more strict Muslims expressly forbid alcohol, and since there were some rather powerful people in the Malaysian government (which is comprised mainly of Muslims) in attendance, we had to be careful for Adam's sake.
So we spent a few hours eating and drinking for free, watching our new friend Yen play music, and when he was done he offered us a ride back to town where he was performing at another bar on the beach. This was basically the same band but since they play on the beach they are allowed to play at a much higher volume and use electric instruments. As seems to always happen now that people know Nate and I play music, eventually we are called on stage and told to start jamming. So, I picked up a guitar and Nate picked up a bass we started playing something very random and thought up on the spot. Of course, Nate and I thought it was total rubbish, but the crowd would explode into applause at certain points, and there was a very drunk, very white, very just-graduated-from-college-and-I-miss-my-frat-buddies dude about our age that danced very badly and very near to me the entire time I played. He loved it, so I guess we succeeded.
After the show we sat down with Yen and talked to him about his life and family and how he liked living on Langkawi, and like everyone before who we asked the same question, he thinks it the best place in the world and has no desire to ever leave.
At this point, Kinsey was pretty sure that she was going to fly back home in a few days from Singapore, since it was much cheaper than flying out from anywhere else. To get there, she needed to take a ferry down south to Penang to get back to the mainland and catch a bus to Singapore. So, Nate and I had planned to go with her to accompany her as far as Penang to see her off, then return to Langkawi. We told Yen about our plans to catch a cab to the ferry the following day and he would have none of it. He had a car and the day off, so he would wake up to drive us there himself.
And he did. The next day we came to his house and woke him up and he drove us all the way across town (a taxi would have cost 28 RM, $9) to the jetty, then had lunch with us and hung out until our boat left.
At this point our minds were well made up, we would stay in Langkawi for the near future. We had already made some great friends, found an outlet for music, could live for incredibly cheap, maybe work, swim in the ocean every day and stop moving for a little while.
Right now, after spending the last week in Penang, a loud, congested, busy city of over two million people where beer is more expensive than it is in the states (I haven't had one the entire time I've been here) and the people are noticeable less friendly (except Durai, who after ten minutes had invited us to stay at his house and use his car and his motorbike), we are even more certain of our choice.
Kinsey left us on Sunday to catch a bus to Singapore and a flight back to Austin in time to be with her family for Thanksgiving. We all had a great time together and we wish her the best as she now faces the very scary world of working for a living. Oddly enough, since she left, Nate and I have been to three malls, one of them the biggest in Southeast Asia. She probably would have enjoyed them more than we did, as we were trying, unsuccesfully, to find guitars. We did have a chance to catch the new James Bond movie, which we both thought was great, so it wasn't a total waste.
We head back to Langkawi tomorrow.
Travel day
As normally happens after you spend a good deal of your time doing little more than sleeping and eating and drinking and reading and swimming, you eventually must pay the world back for your excess of luxury by submitting to the travel day. So, after weeks on Koh Tao and Koh Samui, and motivated by the fact that Nate's Thai visa was about to expire, we embarked upon our thirty some odd hour quest to make if from Thailand's East coast all the way to Malaysia's Northwest coast.
We started out by walking for two and a half hours towards the ferry. Then we boarded a bus that drove us around the island to a different ferry terminal. Then we boarded a very large boat. Then the bus we had just arrived in boarded the same boat in a hold beneath the boat. Then we sailed across the Gulf of Thailand. Then we arrived at Donsak where we got off the boat. Then we got back on the bus. Then we drove for an hour and a half toward Surat Thani. Then we found out that the direct minibus we planned to take straight to Malaysia was twice as expensive as we thought it would be. Then we changed plans. Then we boarded a local bus toward the train station. Then we found out that the train ticket to Malaysia was twice as expensive as we thought it would be, about the same as the minibus. Then we changed plans again. Then we bought very cheap night train tickets to Hat Yai, a city close to the border. Then we played cribbage and rummy while we waited five hours for the train. Then we slept for a few hours. Then we woke at the crack of dawn. Then we found out that a minivan to Satun (where we need to get to catch a ferry to Langkawi, Malaysia) was more expensive than we thought. Then we changed plans once again. Then we caught a cab to the local bus station. Then we caught a local bus towards Satun. Then we arrived in Satun and caught a taxi to the ferry. Then we found out that Nate was being charged 500 Baht ($15) for overstaying his visa by one day. Then we sat down and waited three hours for the ferry. Then we finally boarded our ferry, taking us an hour and a half towards Langkawi, a place that we would find to be lovely, would change our idea of traveling for a while, and would wholly justify the effort. When we found out that it is also a duty free, and that everything is ridiculously cheap we all wept just a little bit.
By traveling in such a circuitous way rather than just taking a bus or train direct, we cut our expenses in half and saved ourselves over a day of living on the road.
We started out by walking for two and a half hours towards the ferry. Then we boarded a bus that drove us around the island to a different ferry terminal. Then we boarded a very large boat. Then the bus we had just arrived in boarded the same boat in a hold beneath the boat. Then we sailed across the Gulf of Thailand. Then we arrived at Donsak where we got off the boat. Then we got back on the bus. Then we drove for an hour and a half toward Surat Thani. Then we found out that the direct minibus we planned to take straight to Malaysia was twice as expensive as we thought it would be. Then we changed plans. Then we boarded a local bus toward the train station. Then we found out that the train ticket to Malaysia was twice as expensive as we thought it would be, about the same as the minibus. Then we changed plans again. Then we bought very cheap night train tickets to Hat Yai, a city close to the border. Then we played cribbage and rummy while we waited five hours for the train. Then we slept for a few hours. Then we woke at the crack of dawn. Then we found out that a minivan to Satun (where we need to get to catch a ferry to Langkawi, Malaysia) was more expensive than we thought. Then we changed plans once again. Then we caught a cab to the local bus station. Then we caught a local bus towards Satun. Then we arrived in Satun and caught a taxi to the ferry. Then we found out that Nate was being charged 500 Baht ($15) for overstaying his visa by one day. Then we sat down and waited three hours for the ferry. Then we finally boarded our ferry, taking us an hour and a half towards Langkawi, a place that we would find to be lovely, would change our idea of traveling for a while, and would wholly justify the effort. When we found out that it is also a duty free, and that everything is ridiculously cheap we all wept just a little bit.
By traveling in such a circuitous way rather than just taking a bus or train direct, we cut our expenses in half and saved ourselves over a day of living on the road.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
The Thai islands
Getting of the boat at 5am on the island of Koh Tao last week we had no idea where we were going or how to get anywhere and it was pitch black and the city was asleep and it may have been the only time we'd arrived anywhere in Thailand without throngs of people offering us hotels and taxis and guesthouses and exotic foods and massages and as we were walking what we could only assume to be the main drag a drunk native told us to beware of the tigers and dragons and we had put ourselves in this situation because Nate and I especially are incredibly cheap (I like to describe it more as having a discerning eye for value) and we had saved a few dollars by taking the night boat instead of the faster, more reliable morning boat that gets you to the island at a respectable time and amidst all of this uncertainty we meet Adam, the only American we have seen so far in Asia, a very well-prepared college grad from Missoula, Montana, toting with him the holy grail of travel literature to the congenitally under prepared likes of the three of us, the Lonely Planet Thailand Guidebook.
So, after a little walking, we found a place to stay for $4 a night right near the beach, and then spent the next week traveling with Adam all over Koh Tao, from the tourist geared beach of Hat Sai Ree, to the opposite side of the island, Hat Tanote, where we shared a desolate beach with maybe 20 other people.
I hold a small level of disdain for the gigantic all-consuming guidebook, but I would be lying if I said it didn't help us out quite a bit while it was in our possession. We never would have made the hour trek across the island through the jungle and up the sheer cliffs and down the other side to find Tanote, but in the end it was the most enjoyable part of our journey so far.
I convinced Kinsey to swim in the ocean by telling her there were no dangerous sea creatures lurking just beneath her and waiting to attack, and about ten minutes later I was attacked by a very mischievous and pissed off crab that latched itself onto my head and did not want to let go. We also were the only customers at a beautiful restaurant high on the hill overlooking Tanote beach where we ate the best food we've had so far and then proceeded to somehow get trapped into a game of dress up that "Momma", the proprietor, drunkenly insisted on. So we put on wigs and cowboy hats and I was forced to wear a hideous cat mask, and then Momma took a bunch of pictures of us. It all seemed very creepy for a while and we thought we may have stumbled into a horror movie, but once she started giving us free alcohol we realized she was just drunk and a little bit bored and lonely since the tourist season was in a lull. So we placated her for a while, posing in preposterous ways and taking pictures for half an hour, and she rewarded us with free scotch. In my mind, a very fair trade.
So after a week in Koh Tao relaxing and reading and eating and drinking and playing a lot of cribbage and rummy and hearts, we parted ways with Adam as he went back to the mainland and we travelled on by boat (a ride that both Kinsey and I threw up on) to Koh Samui.
We decided to bypass Koh Phangan, the middle island, as there was a Full Moon Party (if you don't know what this is, google it - I'm looking your way Mom) tonight, and Kins, Nate and I weren't really in the mood for it. The good thing about the party is that it took a good amount of the people who were vacationing on Koh Samui and deposited them in Koh Phangan, so now we have what is normally a rather busy and rowdy island to ourselves and the few other travelers looking for a peaceful time.
So that's where we are right now, and we'll be here for two more days until we catch a boat back to Surat Thani on the mainland. From there we'll catch a bus to take us all the way down into Malaysia before the 15th, as Nate's visa expires then, and we chose rather than paying for visa extensions or border hopping just to jump back into Thailand, to just continue south through Malaysia and onto Singapore and Indonesia. It looks like Kins will survive with us for another couple weeks, and then she'll probably take a train to Singapore and fly back to Houston from there, as it's much cheaper than Bangkok or Kuala Lumpur.
On a side note, we have all developed this amazing ability to attract dogs of varying size and demeanor to follow us everywhere we go, whether we encourage them or not. It's gotten to the point where we have to deliberately pay no attention or even be mean to them to get them to leave us alone. Not that we don't all love dogs, but it's getting us into situations where we feel like we have to take care of them, and a lot of these dogs belong to other people and when we leave, as we invariably do, it puts the animals into difficult and sometimes dangerous situations.
On another side note that only one or two of you will care about, even from Asia I am winning my fantasy football league by two games, and I haven't even seen a game since I left.
On a very final side note Kinsey and I woke up at 6am last Wednesday morning to watch seven straight hours of election coverage over a few Chang's and some of Thailand's best "blended spirit", Hong Thong. It was a very exciting day for us, and it was remarkable to see how many Thai people were concerned with the outcome. Over the last week we've spoken to people from all over the world and when we tell them we are American the first thing every one of them talks about is Obama. There is enormous support for Obama all across the world, and we are all beginning to understand how big a role America plays in the lives of people whose countries we know little about, and about whose politics we know even less.
Love to all, and with no malicious intent towards McCain supporters, let me quote my good friend Tyler Romes and say...
Barrack me Obamadeus
B
So, after a little walking, we found a place to stay for $4 a night right near the beach, and then spent the next week traveling with Adam all over Koh Tao, from the tourist geared beach of Hat Sai Ree, to the opposite side of the island, Hat Tanote, where we shared a desolate beach with maybe 20 other people.
I hold a small level of disdain for the gigantic all-consuming guidebook, but I would be lying if I said it didn't help us out quite a bit while it was in our possession. We never would have made the hour trek across the island through the jungle and up the sheer cliffs and down the other side to find Tanote, but in the end it was the most enjoyable part of our journey so far.
I convinced Kinsey to swim in the ocean by telling her there were no dangerous sea creatures lurking just beneath her and waiting to attack, and about ten minutes later I was attacked by a very mischievous and pissed off crab that latched itself onto my head and did not want to let go. We also were the only customers at a beautiful restaurant high on the hill overlooking Tanote beach where we ate the best food we've had so far and then proceeded to somehow get trapped into a game of dress up that "Momma", the proprietor, drunkenly insisted on. So we put on wigs and cowboy hats and I was forced to wear a hideous cat mask, and then Momma took a bunch of pictures of us. It all seemed very creepy for a while and we thought we may have stumbled into a horror movie, but once she started giving us free alcohol we realized she was just drunk and a little bit bored and lonely since the tourist season was in a lull. So we placated her for a while, posing in preposterous ways and taking pictures for half an hour, and she rewarded us with free scotch. In my mind, a very fair trade.
So after a week in Koh Tao relaxing and reading and eating and drinking and playing a lot of cribbage and rummy and hearts, we parted ways with Adam as he went back to the mainland and we travelled on by boat (a ride that both Kinsey and I threw up on) to Koh Samui.
We decided to bypass Koh Phangan, the middle island, as there was a Full Moon Party (if you don't know what this is, google it - I'm looking your way Mom) tonight, and Kins, Nate and I weren't really in the mood for it. The good thing about the party is that it took a good amount of the people who were vacationing on Koh Samui and deposited them in Koh Phangan, so now we have what is normally a rather busy and rowdy island to ourselves and the few other travelers looking for a peaceful time.
So that's where we are right now, and we'll be here for two more days until we catch a boat back to Surat Thani on the mainland. From there we'll catch a bus to take us all the way down into Malaysia before the 15th, as Nate's visa expires then, and we chose rather than paying for visa extensions or border hopping just to jump back into Thailand, to just continue south through Malaysia and onto Singapore and Indonesia. It looks like Kins will survive with us for another couple weeks, and then she'll probably take a train to Singapore and fly back to Houston from there, as it's much cheaper than Bangkok or Kuala Lumpur.
On a side note, we have all developed this amazing ability to attract dogs of varying size and demeanor to follow us everywhere we go, whether we encourage them or not. It's gotten to the point where we have to deliberately pay no attention or even be mean to them to get them to leave us alone. Not that we don't all love dogs, but it's getting us into situations where we feel like we have to take care of them, and a lot of these dogs belong to other people and when we leave, as we invariably do, it puts the animals into difficult and sometimes dangerous situations.
On another side note that only one or two of you will care about, even from Asia I am winning my fantasy football league by two games, and I haven't even seen a game since I left.
On a very final side note Kinsey and I woke up at 6am last Wednesday morning to watch seven straight hours of election coverage over a few Chang's and some of Thailand's best "blended spirit", Hong Thong. It was a very exciting day for us, and it was remarkable to see how many Thai people were concerned with the outcome. Over the last week we've spoken to people from all over the world and when we tell them we are American the first thing every one of them talks about is Obama. There is enormous support for Obama all across the world, and we are all beginning to understand how big a role America plays in the lives of people whose countries we know little about, and about whose politics we know even less.
Love to all, and with no malicious intent towards McCain supporters, let me quote my good friend Tyler Romes and say...
Barrack me Obamadeus
B
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Since Tokyo
After meeting up with Nate, we all spent a week in Bangkok and met some great people both staying in our hostel and running the art gallery two doors down from us. We went to markets and ate great food and walked for days and days and at the point where it was a little hectic we decided to leave the big city for the country, or rather the jungle. We took a train to Kanchanaburi, then walked for a couple miles, caught a bus for an hour or so, drank a beer and finally hired a man who had a truck to take us six miles up a mountain where we found the Shanti Farm, run by a small family of five (Wan Pen, Mr. Hey, Nat and her two kids Bang and Ben) who we spent the next three days with, doing little more than eating and exploring the surrounding temples and jungles and monkeys chained to shrines.
After the farm we got a free ride down the mountain from a nice man then took the bus back to Kanchanaburi where we spent the next four days at a guesthouse directly on the River Kwai. We had planned to stay there one night as a transfer point back to Bangkok, but we were all too relaxed too often to motivate ourselves to leave. So we spent most of our time reading and eating and walking and then reading again and then avoiding the monsoons which came in every night near dusk.
Right now we're in Bangkok for the last time, staying at a hotel near the train station as we leave tomorrow at 1pm toward Chumphon, where we catch an overnight boat to Koh Tao to spend the next couple weeks living on the islands (Koh Tao, Koh Samui and Koh Phangan) off the eastern coast of Thailand.
Sorry that we haven't posted more pictures, as Kins stated below we're having a hard time with our memory card and Thai computers, but we'll try to post more soon.
Love to all,
B
After the farm we got a free ride down the mountain from a nice man then took the bus back to Kanchanaburi where we spent the next four days at a guesthouse directly on the River Kwai. We had planned to stay there one night as a transfer point back to Bangkok, but we were all too relaxed too often to motivate ourselves to leave. So we spent most of our time reading and eating and walking and then reading again and then avoiding the monsoons which came in every night near dusk.
Right now we're in Bangkok for the last time, staying at a hotel near the train station as we leave tomorrow at 1pm toward Chumphon, where we catch an overnight boat to Koh Tao to spend the next couple weeks living on the islands (Koh Tao, Koh Samui and Koh Phangan) off the eastern coast of Thailand.
Sorry that we haven't posted more pictures, as Kins stated below we're having a hard time with our memory card and Thai computers, but we'll try to post more soon.
Love to all,
B
Saturday, November 1, 2008
my failed love affair
so, computers and traveling. Seems like they would have a decent relationship, but don't be fooled. The computers in Thailand are racists. They hate white people and they especially hate white peoples photo uploading devices. This is of no fault of mine. I have tried everything, bribes, sex, sex and bribes. The computers are not having it. And so our pictures upload at the snailish rate of 30 PER HOUR. I will have you know that we have shot over 1300. Pictures, that is, not computers. (though tempted). And as soon as I figure out the right combination of money, booze, and boobs, I will have thos pictures uploaded for your viewing pleasure. Until then, enjoy some of Brents handsome writing!
love, k
miss all you assholes.
love, k
miss all you assholes.
Tokyo
So way back on the 13th of October Kinsey and I flew to Tokyo for what was supposed to be a two day stopover before flying on to Bangkok to meet up with Nate. However, instead of saving enough yen to buy train tickets back to the airport two days later, we got thirsty and decided to buy the biggest container of orange juice imaginable, and upon arriving at the Nippori train station realized that we were 60 yen (basically 60 cents) short. We were already late because we had been walking around Shibuya with the two English kids we met and spent most of our time in Tokyo with, Nicky and Tim, so I was sent on a mad dash around Nippori trying to find an atm that accepted Kinsey's American bank card, which is much, much more difficult than you would think in such a cosmopolitan city like Tokyo, while she stayed back at the station with our packs (mine being of exemplary quality, thanks pops). So, five atm's and half an hour later I make it back to the station but am not allowed to enter the area where Kins is waiting for me, and after buying our tickets am directed directly to the platform where the train picks up. So, coupled with the dual emotions of complete panic and complete terror, I double back around and break through a toll gate going the wrong direction, find Kinsey literally bawling her eyes out, slap some sense into her (just kidding), grab her and my shit and rush back through the same gate I just broke through to make it onto the train seconds before it leaves.
"Thank God, everything's going to be okay, they've got over two hours to make it to the airport and the train ride only takes about an hour" is surely what you're thinking at this point.
Nope.
Kinsey and I have this amazing ability to form some kind of horrible anti-superhero team when we combine our powers, and these great things tend to happen to us, like getting on trains that go almost all the way to the airport but then divert to local access and take us to the middle of nowhere before we see a station attendant running at us telling us to get off the train because there is truly no more track left.
So, we scramble around the station, find a train going back the other direction, realize where we made the mistake, get on another wrong train going the right direction, realize our mistake quicker this time, jump off, jump right back on the last and final and right train that does in fact go to the airport which gets us there with just enough time to make it to the United counter at 6:30 pm, the same time our flight is scheduled to leave. It is at this point we are told that we can't catch a flight out of Tokyo for Bangkok until two days later.
So from here our worry shifts to Nate, who is currently boarding a plane in the same airport and expecting us to meet him on the other side of customs in Bangkok. We run, and I mean that, I actually ran, across the South terminal of the Narita airport to find the North terminal where at the Northwest Airlines counter I am lucky enough to find a woman who speaks nearly perfect English, and who can translate a message to the attendants on Nate's flight, letting him know we missed our flight and will e-mail him with all the details.
At this point neither Kins or I really have any energy or motivation to do anything. After an hour or so of silence, we finally decided to head to the city of Narita, about a ten minute train ride from the airport. Neither of us have any hope or desire of finding anything of merit in Narita, we just don't want to go all the way back to Tokyo. So we eventually find a hostel, after walking the city for hours due to horrible directions, and fall asleep right away. We are woken early in the morning by the lovely sounds of two Englishman snoring, and that oh so delightful smell of whiskey and beer finding it's way out of the body through the skin. In the morning we begrudgingly talked to these two men because proximity forced it, and we found out they were flying to Las Vegas later in the day. Such surprise rushed over us.
But after all of this, all the hassle and toil and running, we were given the chance to explore a quiet, quaint little city, tucked away in the Japanese countryside that we never would have gone to otherwise. It is always amazing how in the bad moments there is no way to see outside of them, even when you know the only place they can lead you is somewhere sweet and unknown.
We spent our two days roaming outdoor markets filled with traditional foods and instruments and old country people so separated from the crush and flow of Tokyo. It was here, while walking down a long winding road, happy with what we were seeing, content in the culture and kindness of the people, that we turned a corner at the bottom of the hill to find a temple complex as big as any I'd ever imagined, unassuming and shy in it's placement, here, in the middle of nothing, with only the trees and the waterfalls to speak of it's existence. It was here that we found the Japan we had seen in our minds since youth, unaffected by the way memory can change things, natural, silent, green, bigger than our ability to accept it.
At night we stayed in a traditional style Japanese room where we watched Japanese television we couldn't understand but still found all of the hilarity in. We had the entire upstairs to ourselves and were drinking very cheap and very bad Sake when Austin walked in and instantly became our friend. He was from Galveston, and his family had recently suffered from the latest hurricane whose name I can't remember. He had been teaching English in Taiwan for the last few years, but had finally run into trouble with his visa and was in Narita because he missed his flight due to the hassle with customs. We spent the next day at the temple again, showing him all we had seen the day before and finding new paths in the walkway that led to fish ponds and graveyards. In this way you make new friends, when for no other reason than random chance you stumble upon people with common interest and purpose, and you have no reason to not accept them into your life.
Later in the day, after eating grilled sweet potatoes and watching traditional Japanese music performances, we said goodbye, and shortly after, Kins and I caught our train, this time far earlier than we needed to, and made it to the airport on time. On the plane we watched The Hulk and ate awful food, waiting to greet Bangkok, but really, waiting to greet Nate.
Love,
B
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
The beginning
I promise you, this blog does exist and we really are traveling around Asia. In fact, I have been derelict in my writing duties for just that reason: traveling is generally more fun than writing about it.
However, that changes now as this first blog will be the one to get everything moving.
We are having quite an incredible time, and have already spent time in the Jungle (deep, deep jungle), saved a hurt dog, eaten Tom Ka the best soup ever, missed airplane flights, slept in a guesthouse on the River Kwai, been given Thai lessons by kids and have enjoyed many a Chang, local Thai beer that is surprisingly delicious and costs almost exactly one US dollar.
More soon, love to all,
B
However, that changes now as this first blog will be the one to get everything moving.
We are having quite an incredible time, and have already spent time in the Jungle (deep, deep jungle), saved a hurt dog, eaten Tom Ka the best soup ever, missed airplane flights, slept in a guesthouse on the River Kwai, been given Thai lessons by kids and have enjoyed many a Chang, local Thai beer that is surprisingly delicious and costs almost exactly one US dollar.
More soon, love to all,
B
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)