In August 2009 I traveled to Managua, Nicaragua with Central Community Church, based in Greensboro, NC, to assist in the construction of a school. It was an eight-day excursion, involving cement, collapsed chapel roofs, snakebites, 25000 palm fronds, and swimming in volcanoes.
We flew into Managua via Atlanta, and after glimpsing the western tip of forbidden Cuba, arrived shortly after sunset. Our contact was Henry Vargas, a Venezuela-born missionary; he met our group at Sandino International Airport with news that the chapel we were to stay in had collapsed twenty minutes before our arrival.
We stayed Henry's house instead - he was in the process of building it, so it was a bit like the lawn-and-garden section of Home Depot: lots of open air, lots of potted plants, and stacks of masonry. It would be our home for a week... my personal space was the cement floor just under the edge of the roof.
Day One was pretty easy - we visited a local Nicaraguan pentecostal church, and then headed to a volcanic lake for the day. Not a bad way to spend the afternoon. We finished off the day shopping in Managua's Old City... Cuban cigars, local whiskeys, and some Nicaraguan wall art filled our packs.
A lake in the center of a dormant volcano
Architecture in downtown Managua
At 6:00 am Monday morning we set out for the worksite. We were divided into two basic workgroups: the first was construction, assigned to adding the second story of the new school building. The second was essentially a cleanup detail in charge of cleaning up the collapsed chapel. Some 15,000 palm fronds composed the bulk of the roof - they were thatched over a rickety two-by-four frame - and had to be removed to a storage location a few hundred yards through the jungle. I spent the first five hours on construction duty before being transferred to clean-up... apparently they needed an extra hand and there was one too many clambering across the walls.
We quickly determined that the most effective way to get the job done was to have several people removing the fronds from the frame and tossing them in enormous piles while several more of us loaded them onto a ramshackle cart and hauled them to the storage hut. The trail wound down a steep hill, across a stream (there was a footbridge, thankfully) and into a picturesque clearing. We rotated the pulling duties, switching during every load.
We toiled under the merciless tropical sun for four straight days, and by Thursday we were done. On Friday the groups combined to knock out the final level of the school building... we flew home Saturday morning.
Left to right, from top: Carrying palm fronds via two-wheeled cart to storage hut, a hibiscus flower in the jungle, Enrique, the son of a local Nicaraguan farmer, and a horse feeding on the school grounds.
Two months ago I returned to the United States of America. While on layovers in Taipei, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia, I painstakingly compiled a list of statistics, digging into my journal and poring through maps and online geographical databases. The result was a makeshift odometer reading, split up into several parts.
Miles Traveled
-airplane: 28,707
-bus: 1,522
-train: 940
-car: 587
-foot: 407
-bicycle: 165
-taxi: 52
-songatew: 49
-river ferry: 12
-tuk-tuk: 8
-raft: 5
-motortaxi: 3
-motorcycle: 2
-elephant: 1
Total Miles Traveled: 32,458
Four months. Thirty-two thousand, four hundred and fifty-eight miles. Desert, jungle, mountains, ocean. Villages, cities, towns, slums. Los Angeles, Kuala Lumpur, Sydney, Bangkok, Manila. Philosophical discussions, jungle treks, snake farms, gearless cliff climbs, starvation and survival. Food poisoning. A kid with a machine gun in one of the worst countries on the planet. The most perfectly-formed conical volcano in the world. Bushwalking through the wilderness. Poisonous freakin snakes. Poisonous freakin lizards. Hitchhiking, dehydration, cycling monstrous hills under a 113 degree sun. Speaking German to Germans, speaking German to Austrians, learning some Thai, photographing ancient archeological ruins, sketching coastal highlands, sliding down waterfalls, composing guitar pieces by the sea. Missing home, reflecting on life, fording a river in a 4x4 with a burnt-out clutch, dodging motorcycles on sidewalks, eating street cuisine, collecting foreign currency, entertaining hostels with renditions of Cat Stevens and The Eagles, playing chess under the setting sun, midnight beach strolls, missed flights, changed plans, rafting down rivers on sinking bamboo flats, heinekens and pool, abandoned rail tunnels, kangaroos, Pacific typhoons, abject poverty, letters home, worries, fears, awe and wonder, existential musings, the clarity of ten thousand stars in the night.
How do you sum up something so vast in scale?
Before I left, my battle cry was that "if you don't take chances, you won't have any stories to tell." I wanted to take a chance. And I did.
There is a reason I flew back to Manila from Legazpi City: I took a bus to get there. It was not a an experience to be had more than once.
On the last day of April I checked out of the hotel and headed for the bus station. I had a couple of places in mind... Cabanatuan, Lingayen Gulf, Legazpi... the latter of the three had caught my eye when I read that the most perfectly-formed conical volcano in the world sat several miles north of the small harbor town. The first bus portal I came upon had a big sign that read "Legazpi City." Volcanotime it would be. I paid a 350-Pisos fare, surprised at the low price, and clambered onto the bus.
The driver explained that it'd be about a seven-hour ride into town, southeast along the snaking end of the island of Luzon. Seven hours... no biggie. I relaxed contentedly in the wide seat that I had to myself, updated my travel journal, even pulled out my guitar and whipped up a few casual tunes. It was a nice day outside, the window next to me was wide open, and I was pretty excited to be headed for the largest active volcano in the entirety of the Philippine Islands.
Then came the extra people. An hour into the ride the bus was packed full. I was jammed into a little corner, my legs wedged into the seat in front of me... the bus was obviously not built for tall people. Then came the rain, forcing me to shut my window, which was the only thing keeping fresh air in the bus.
I would later learn that a violent tropical storm had blasted straight through the region during the trip south, killed several people, upending buses, stranding ferries, and, thus, clogging the roads completely. I was unaware of this during the time, and as the trip stretched from seven hours to eight and ten and twelve, the bus jammed to sudden stops, lurched sickeningly into potholes, out of them, and into another one just as quickly. It became nauseating very quickly... I'm not entirely sure how I managed to keep the contents of my stomach down, but I did it.
At around three in the morning a rooster started crowing. On the bus. Somebody had brought a freakin chicken on board. It wouldn't shut up, either. If I'd been a few seats closer I'd have opened the first international Chick-fil-A branch. No such luck; instead I turned my greenish face to the window and concentrated on not heaving.
Thirteen hours into the trip, the driver called out the Legazpi City stop, mercifully ending my punishment. It was after five in the morning. I found a hotel closeby, walked in drenched from the rain, paid for a room and crashed for the next five hours.
Legazpi City was extremely small by most standards. The main section of town was clustered around the innermost portion of the bay, and the national highway ran west, away from it, into the western end of town, much smaller, and back up towards Manila. To the north of the two sections of town was the Legazpi airport, and, perhaps three miles beyond it, the base of the Mayon Volcano. The sight of it startled me when I first noticed it. It was massive, rising up, as volcanos do, imposingly behind everything else. The tip was shrouded in clouds (and smoke) the entire time I was there, which was slightly frustrating, but the enormity of the thing was still awe-inspiring.
Several days into my stay, which would turn out to be nine days total, I headed out for the volcano. I wasn't aware of a way to actually get ON to the thing (and I wasn't entirely sure I wanted to) so I settled for the popular obersvation point north of the airport. I walked for miles, passing village after village... I found the people in Legazpi to be much more friendly than the ones in Manila. I was gawked at everywhere I went, but the stares were quickly followed by huge smiles and calls of "Hey Joe!" (The name, I presume, is a relic of the World War Two days when American troops fought the Japanese in the region and were known, synonymously, as "Joes." The kids all demanded high-fives when I walked by, usually following it up with "wassup man!" Western slang, it seemed, was not without influence in southeast Asia.
After climbing an absurdly-steep switchback trail up a protruding bluff several miles south of the volcano, I downed a bottle of water to rehydrate and then took some pictures. Some of them turned out pretty well, and the panorama feature of my camera delighted me once again. I was bummed that the clouds never seemed to disappear from the tip of the volcano to allow me a full shot, but there was nothing I could do about that.
On the way back down I discovered a tunnel in the bluff, converted by the Japanese into an ammunition dump during the Second World War. It'd been turned into a makeshift museum. The history nerd in me came alive and I took the short tour. Most of it had been bombed to Hades before U.S. forces landed in Legazpi and took over, but two tunnels still existed, and exploring them was fascinating. The styrofoam Japanese soldiers were a bit much, but there were several preserved relics, including a typewriter, some ammunition cans, and cartridges (probably still live.)
The rest of the week passed rather quickly. I did my share of walking around, exploring the area, but my financial situation didn't allow me to do much more. Instead I found a bookstore and re-immersed myself in the world of Jack London, awed by it as much as I had been as an eight-year-old kid. Some things never changed.
The week passed quickly, I got sick, and then, mostly unsick, then boarded a plane for Manila, and here I am now, even less sick, and ready to come home. Today is my one hundredth day of traveling, which is an astonishing number... the time has absolutely flown by (and, paradoxically, it also feels like I left a full century ago.)
Tomorrow I will get on a plane, fly to Taipei, then to Los Angeles, then to Philadelphia, then to Raleigh, and then, finally, Greensboro. And home.
Manila is listed by many travel guidebooks as among the top three of the "Dirtiest Cities in the World." An ignominious reputation, to be sure, but it didn't dispell any of my excitement as my flight dipped over the Luzon shoreline. Absurdly bookish during my childhood and adolescence, I'd pored over countless books about the conflicts of the Second World War and the significance of the Philippine Islands as a stronghold in the Japanese-held Pacific realm. Never once, in my unquenchable intake of the stories then, or during my education as a history major at UNC-Greensboro years later did I imagine I'd ever actually be there. To most travelers, Manila was the third-dirtiest city in the world. To me it was a storied land. My plane was landing in Oz.
Aesthetics is a funny subject, often difficult to articulate... oftentimes it's beyond specific description, only identifiable when it's fully realized. Walking along Manila Bay was one such moment. Through the eyes of reality, it was an atrocious walk. Descriptions of conditions were not exaggerated; the way was lined with the poorest of sights, families living on the rocky, trash-strewn shores, children splashing naked in putrid waters we at home wouldn't deign worthy of spitting in. And yet it was, to me, enormously significant, for while Manila Bay proper was never the subject of any noteworthy significance, it was always there, mentioned offhandedly with other very significant events. And so Manila Bay became offhandedly associated with Corregidor and MacArthur and Bataan and the events surrounding the Japanese siege in 1941-42 and the subsequent promised return of the Allied forces in 1944-45.
Thus to me, my mile-long walk was as aesthetically pleasing as anything possibly could be. The nerd within was well pleased.
Aside from those moments, my experience in Manila was rather mundane. And truthfully, I planned it that way. As I mentioned in my last column of the semester in the Carolinian, I often try to capture the essence of a city - as much as can be captured in a short ammount of time - by skipping out on the touristy stuff and observing everyday life. And for a week that's exactly what I did. I stayed in a run-down, flea-infested traveler's inn on Roxas Avenue, roaming the filthy streets for miles everyday.
Photography, I found to my surprise, was nearly impossible. What I was observing was everyday life; while foreign to me, and thus worthy of photographing, I felt strangely odd in doing so. Pictures should have subjects, noteworthy subjects, and somehow capturing the images before me seemed petty and foolish, like driving down Wendover Avenue in Greensboro to take a picture of the inside of Walmart. For the most part, Manila is committed to the memory of my mind where, I feel, it remains more properly remembered. A photograph can capture an image, but that is all. It cannot capture sound and smell - it cannot capture being, or essence. And Roxas Avenue had an essence all its own.
Much like human trafficking statistics or news of Darfur genocides, it is particularly hard to make a true connection with reality at home and that reality abroad. It may well be impossible... there's simply a disconnect between what's familiar and what's ground into cliche and familiar newspaper stories. Sure, goes the thought, I feel bad about because that's a really big number, a lot of poverty/death/pain, but since it doesn't directly affect me and I've never seen it firsthand, I can't connect with it. I don't think it is possible to understand it without actually experiencing it firsthand. Thus, my understanding of things was about to change.
Roxas Avenue, running north-south from the Paranaque district of southern Manila, up along Manila Bay and into the Ermita business district and beyond, was to be my first experience with true poverty. Of course I'd seen beggars and shacks and poor living conditions in Thailand and Vietnam and especially southern Burma, but nothing compared to this. The street was lined with the most destitute of society. Filthy children splashed murky puddles, their parents nearby, equally as dirty and threadbare, plying their trade - usually selling various objects from stalls. Along the crumbling sidewalks permanent homes were constructed of whatever objects could be found. A rancid canal ran for miles along the street, clogged with trash and human excrement, an absolutely vile fluid that served as a life source for the Roxas inhabitants. Children actually swam in it, adults fished from it, pulling small flopping creatures that somehow lived in it. The smell was so bad I could barely stand to walk along it.
It was a unique experience, I daresay, and may well take me some time to fully digest and particularize. I passed a week on Roxas, spending my days reading James Clavell's Shogun (a fantastic novel, by the way) and walking the streets inbetween meals at various restaraunts. My memory of Manila will not be of shopping at malls and visiting spas and staying in nice hotels. I will remember the real Manila. There's a pretty big difference.
Now, a week later, I'm four hundred miles away in Legazpi City, several miles from the most perfectly formed conical volcano in the world. Getting here was an adventure.
My last column for the UNC Greensboro newspaper, The Carolinian, will run on Tuesday. Normally I just convert one of my regular blog posts with a little bit of editing and run it, but for the last article I wanted a little bit of a different feel. Here it is:
With two weeks to go before my return to good ol' Greensboro - I'm amazed by how much I miss it - I'm exploring the Philippine Islands... wandering the streets of Manila, trekking southern Luzon volcano regions, relaxing on black-sand beaches. It's only two weeks, but I'll make the most of them.
This'll be the last issue of The Carolinian you'll read until August; exam-time is in its death throes (or putting you through yours) and the freedom of summer awaits... three beautiful, beautiful months. Thinking about doing some traveling? If you're headed abroad, I'd like to advise you of several priceless things I've learned during my overseas adventures, things I wish I'd been told.
1) Don't Lose Your Credit Card. Especially if you're travelling by yourself. Trust me, you don't know how reliant you are on it. To safeguard against theft, make sure you use lockboxes provided at hotels, guard your pockets against pickpockets if you're headed to areas where that's a problem, and make sure you get your credit card back after you use the ATM. This is not something you want to experiment with. (To safeguard, you may wish to open a separate bank account and get a debit card for emergencies, storing it in a separate place... it'll keep you from starvation and rooflessness while you get a new card sent to you. Or you could:
2) Bring A Guitar. Besides being a lifesaver if you lose your card and you're broke (if you didn't read about it, I got stranded in northern Thailand and played on street corners to earn enough money to survive) music is a priceless commodity during travels. I've pulled mine out in airport terminals, inside a bus, on a train, on the beach, next to the pool (this is not recommended if people are jumping in) and in hotel rooms. Boredom is never a factor if you've got a guitar... and its ability to bring groups together is priceless. Perfect strangers of different nationalities who might otherwise never be friends suddenly hear Wonderwall playing and start singing along, chatting, and then everyone's best friends. It's like a magical force. And for an awesome travel momento, buy a sharpie, and when you meet people, have 'em sign their name or a brief message on it. It's something you'll treasure forever.
3) Forget About Hotels. Unless you're into the ritzy spa-and-massage type of getaway, or into spending way too much money (given you're college students, you'll probably not fall into those categories) hostels are the way to go. Known as youth hostels or backpacker's hotels, they're basically dorm rooms fitting bunk beds, anywhere from four in smaller to sixteen in the larger ones, for prices far less than standard hotels. You surrendur privacy, but the social aspects are beyond price. Get a hostel for the night, mix in a touch of friendliness, and you've got instant conversations and new friends.
4) Don't Just See The Sights. See some of them, but not all of them. If you have time on your hands, spend a week on a nondescript section of town, walk the streets, and see daily life as it exists outside of all the touristy locations. You'll get a much clearer view of everyday life in the place you're visiting... walking down the slum-lined canals of Roxas Avenue in Manila is a much different experience than staying in the shopping district and lounging on the beach. Tourist attractions can be fun, but they seldom leave you with the proper feel for where you're staying.
5) Go With The Flow. I can't count how many times I've learned and re-learned this lesson. If you're restricted to certain dates of travel - that is, you've got your return ticket already purchased - you're naturally going to be limited in your ability to wander at your heart's whim. But don't make my mistake: before departure, I spent hours planning every detail of my trip. Google Earth, Google maps, Lonely Planet, Frommer's guides... I filled out calendars with itineraries, browsed travel forums, and determined exactly where I would be, when I would go, and what I'd do there.
Virtually none of it happened. And with a bit of hindsight I see just how much better off I am for it... the entire trip has been packed with surprises and whimiscal ventures, irreplacable in my memory. Be spontaneous. Be smart and make sure you've got a backup plan - but be spontaneous. You won't regret it in the end.
So there you have it... five things I wish I'd known before my own departure. If you're headed out, be safe, be smart, be free... and have fun. I know I did.
Having the opportunity to write the column was an absolute joy, and it lent more of a sense of purpose to my journey.
...but, that said (or typed, as the case may be) the journey is not yet over. I'm still in the Philippines, in a tiny town called Legazpi. I'm two miles from the most perfect conical volcano in the world... and it's far from dormant. I have ten days left, and I'll make the most of them. I still have stories to tell.
...actually that about covers it. This comes, thankfully, not from personal experience, but from the fact that I have eyes. You don't have to get hit by a bus to know that it's gonna hurt.
The first thing I noticed upon my arrival in the Philippines was the ammount of security guards everywhere. I dismissed it at first, because I was in the international airport, where heavy security is to be expected. But it wasn't just in the airport. Every single street corner, I realized, had an armed guard, anywhere you went, revolver dangling jauntily from his waist. Gas station guards weilded pump shotguns. Bank guards, AR15 semiautomatic machine guns.
Filipino police don't mess around. Neither will I.
More chaos reigned in five days than it has in any given five years of my life (though USMC Officer Candidate School several years back is a pretty competitive runner-up.) In one hundred and twenty hours, I've been to five countries, been on five flights, missed a flight, been broke, been hungry, and lost my luggage. In other words, it's been an adventure.
April 21 - Tuesday.
Tuesday was my last full day in Thailand, and, being about fifty miles from the border of Myanmar (Burma), I decided to venture in. I admit to feeling slightly on edge as I entered customs... Burma has a reputation, and for good reason. It's home to the world's largest child army, and the grisly scenes of Rambo IV are far from exaggeration. Burma is legitimately one of the worst places on earth.
I entered anyway. The Thai town of Mai Sai ended at a muddy creek which served as the countries' border, and continued on the other side, where it was known as Tha Chalek. The moment I stepped onto Burmese soil, I was assaulted by dozens of dirty, half-clad children chattering away in their local language (none of which I understood) and demonstrating their hunger by miming eating. I'd been told most of the kids in these sorts of crowds were owned by adults looking to make some money off of soft-hearted foreigners, but I couldn't resist, and distributed a handful of Baht.
Those kinds of conditions really make you think... how many screaming brats with Gameboys have it so much better, but still complain, back home? I saw a kid, no older than thirteen, sitting on a brick wall with a machine gun resting on his dangling legs. When I was thirteen, I was playing Donkey Kong. Seeing how the other half lives is sobering.
April 22 - Wednesday.
Off to Vietnam. I left on a flight from Chiang Rai to Bangkok noting that, strangely enough, I'd miss the place. I'd slept on a bench there, starved for three days, lived off my guitar, survived through a week of aqua-mayhem during the Songkran festival, and gotten a nasty stomach bug... not exactly a collection of Kodak moments. But I had overcome stacked odds and made it out alive, and for that alone I will remember it with a bit of fondness.
I landed in Bangkok, strategically wearing a neatral-colored shirt... the political tension in the region was far from over. In Chiang Mai I'd accidentally wandered into the middle of a political demonstration wearing a red shirt - the color of choice for the party trying to oust Thailand's current prime minister. My white collared shirt drew no interest, and I boarded my flight for Hanoi with no trouble at all.
Once landing in Vietnam, I got another strange feeling, similar to the one I'd gotten in Burma. Hanoi was plenty safe, having turned into a major tourism hub in the forty years since the end of America's involvment in the Vietnam Conflict. But to me it was a forbidden territory - all my knowledge of the region had previously come directly through the lense of the war. I'd studied texts, read books, watched films - I even completed my undergraduate thesis on the subject - and Hanoi was the home of the bad guys. No U.S. forces had made it that far north, and never would, unless they returned as noncombatants after 1973.
Walking through Hanoi's Old City district was particularly odd... gazing over it from my seventh-story hotel window yielded a view that was probably only slightly different from forty years ago. Even stranger was the fact that every guy over sixty walking around had almost certainly served during the war. It was oddly surreal. I was sad to have to leave the next day; the geek in my drooled at museums, historical sights, an old MiG fighter mounted on a display along the road. I knew I'd have to return one day.
April 23 - Thursday.
Familiarity is rare when traveling alone, but Malaysia afforded me a small bit of it... I'd been in the Kuala Lumpur International Airport almost exactly a month previously on my way from Australia to Thailand. I wandered the terminal, knowing where everything was, ate at the same Burger King, and relaxed. My flight to Manila didn't leave until the next morning, and I didn't have the money to head into town to stay the night (a special thanks to Visa here for not sending my credit card to me after I requested it, and a special thanks for my sister wiring me money to Manila so I'd be able to eat.) I crashed on an airport seat for the night, eagerly anticipating arriving in the Philippines.
April 24 - Friday.
Disaster greeted me with a big slobbery kiss. My flight had originated in Hanoi - Kuala Lumpur was just a connector - and nobody there told me there'd be a problem with my flight. They were so sure of this that they routed my bag to Manila, so I could pick it up there instead of having to find it in Malaysia and load it again. Such was not the case.
"Where's your ticket out of Philippines?" asked the check-in lady. My heart sank like a stone. Not again... I'd encountered the same problem heading into Thailand, but I didn't expect any problems. I explained that Hanoi had informed me everything was ok. Everything was not.
"You'll miss your flight. Sorry."
She didn't sound very sorry.
A four hundred dollar ticket was down the drain. If luck was a person I'd have broken both his arms. How freakin hard IS it to just have a normal trip? Desparate, I signed onto the internet at a kiosk in the terminal and started researching ticket prices. My original plan had been to make stops in Okinawa and Japan before heading home; the loss of my ticket effectively ended the duration of my trip at the Philippines. I'd have to head home.
Thanks to my sister's efforts in helping, I secured passage to Manila for the next day, as well as a ticket from Manila to Los Angeles. I'll return home on May 14.
April 25 - Saturday.
After hours of flight delays, I finally landed in Manila where, stupidly, there were no Western Union services. I had just enough Malasian Ringitt to exchange into enough Philippino Pisos for a ride to a guesthouse, where they allowed me to pay my bill when I picked up the money.
I have since picked up the money, paid my bill, and now I'm planning my last seventeen days abroad. If they're anything like the first eighty-four, I'm in for an adventure.
While there has been no small amount of adversity over my last two weeks of travel, the entirety of my Thailand experience hasn't been so bad. Far from it. Here's a few things which I've not yet written about that've happened during my stay in Southeast Asia:
1) The snake farm in Bangkok. Seemingly antithetical in name (it was called The Red Cross Snake Farm... haha) the complex housed scores of snakes, most of them poisonous. Given my long-standing affinity for snakes, not going was not an option. The two hundred Baht entry fee was worth every ...er, Baht, and featured a duo of fearless (brainless?) snake handlers doing their best to piss off a myriad of cobras and kraits. Quite a spectacle.
Afterwards I wandered the various terrarium exhibits, which housed the rest of the snakes... again, most of them poisonous. If I'd seen something like this as a seven-year-old, I would've peed my pants in excitement.
2) Thai boxing in Chiang Mai. It was absolutely epic... ten fights total, and nine of them were won by knockout. The one that wasn't was an eight-round slugfust, a classic matchup - the big, arrogant heavyweight guy versus the smaller, faster underdog. They beat the crap out of each other, and finally the judges called it for the smaller guy, his opponent stalking off angrily. It was highly entertaining, and left me with a sudden desire to get back into the tournament circuit when I get back home. Maybe I will.
3) A Chiang Mai rendezvous. About a month before I left for my journey, my good buddy Tim left for a year-long missions trip that'll span several continents. It turned out his team was leaving Cambodia and headed for Chiang Mai around the beginning of April - it worked perfectly with my schedule. It was very surreal... a day spent with conversations we'd have back home, but in a completely different context. The last hour before parting ways was spent over a pool table with Heinekens and Thai cigars... it stands as one of my favorite days of the trip thus far, and a memory that'll stick with me for a long time. (We also discussed the status of our pre-journey throwing-of-the-gauntlet... I'll write about it later. Suffice it to say, I am losing.)
4) Celebration of the Thai New Year, or Songkran Festival. It's little more than a waterfest... for an entire week, people drive around in pickup trucks with buckets of water drenching everyone in sight. No truck? No problem - run around the streets with a watergun, use the hose from a storefront... you name it, it happened, for an entire week. Nobody was exempt - children, foreigners, police officers, motorcyclists...
me...
I had a difficult time staying dry that entire week, but it was all in good fun, and in a way I'm glad I got stuck in Chiang Rai... if I hadn't I'd have been in Laos and would've missed it. Funny how that sort of thing works out.
That's all for now... tomorrow I'm headed for Vietnam, then Malaysia, then the Philippine Islands where I'll probably be for two weeks. After that... well... you'll know when I do.
There's nothing like a little unexpected adversity to spice up a trip.
By now, I'd have expected to be somewhere in Cambodia, having traveled throughout Laos over the past couple days; I'd be on my way to Vietnam afterwards without a care. Pretty straightforward.
Then fate coughed, or tripped, or flatulated, or something equally negatively-toned, undermining my carefully-laid plans; arrival in a small town in northern Thailand was followed by a sudden realization that my VISA credit card was missing. Houston, we have a problem.
Houston had plenty of resources to fix their problems. Me, I had about sixty Baht (a little under two U.S. dollars) in my wallet, and absolutely no clue what to do. I'd met an Aussie guy on the way over, and he graciously let me use his phone, with which I informed VISA of the situation. They promised to send an emergency replacement card, which, I was told, would arrive Monday. It was Thursday night when I made the call; I'd have to spend three days surviving on 60 Baht if I was gonna pull it off. With little choice, I agreed.
The next several days were nothing short of miserable, with events transpiring to confound my every move. My last real meal had been a breakfast on Thursday morning, before leaving Chiang Mai; I wandered through Chiang Rai without a map or a clue, trying to figure out what I was going to do. The money would disappear quickly, I knew, and I'd have to plan wisely. My first thought was a wire transfer through a Western Union bank. With this in mind, I headed for the bank. There, I was informed of the process, but by the time I'd gotten on the internet and gotten the ball rolling, the bank had closed. The hours on the door were listed as 8:30 am to 4 pm. I decided to find a place to sleep and come back first thing in the morning.
After the internet cost and purchasing a slice of banana bread to sustain me for the day, I found shelter under a small pavilion on the outskirts of town, stretched out on the wooden bench, and went to sleep. It was surprisingly comfortable.
I showed up at the Bank the next morning, only to find it closed - the bank hours, I realized, were Monday through Friday. I was wandering in the scorching heat trying to figure out what to do, when a much graver thought occurred to me: Monday was the first day of the Thai New Year. The Songkran Festival, an annual tradition, would last three full days, during which everything would be closed - most notably, banks and post office systems. My heart sank at the realization. Hunger was tearing at my stomach; I reflected on the fact that I'd planned on being in Chiang Rai for one night, and I'd probably end up staying for at least a week.
I sat down on a bench outside a small bookstore and pulled out a small packet of EasyMac, left over from grocery shopping in Australia. I soaked the noodles in a canteen, poured cheese on top, and ate them cold, with the foil package as a bowl and the empty cheese container as a spoon. It was cold and disgusting, but to my empty stomach it was a steak dinner. I walked away feeling greatly refreshed.
By Saturday night I was in a hopeless spot. My last Baht had gone towards more internet, to follow up on the money wiring situation, and to a bottle of water (I was severely dehydrated.) I observed weekend-market stalls being assembled along the road; crowds were starting to show up. And at that moment, sitting on the steps of Bangkok Bank of Chiang Rai, I had one of the better ideas of my life.
I tuned up my guitar, which had been sitting idly next to me, regarded as an annoying piece of luggage to haul through the heat on an empty stomach, and situated myself on an empty portion of curb. I flipped my hat upside down and started playing and singing. (Those who know me know I can't sing at all, which goes to show just how desperate I really was.) Either I'm a much better singer than I thought I was, or God was answering my many prayers (I suspect that latter) because within a half an hour of playing, I had collected over 400 Baht in my hat. I was absolutely stunned. I packed everything up and ten minutes later, I'd located a cheap guesthouse for only 90 Baht a night. And the owner graciously offered to let me just run up a tab there - meals included - and pay it off when I had the money. No more sleeping in the street, which was a huge relief.
Moreover, the hotel was across the street from a Christian church, so I was able to attend Easter services. That was awesome. I didn't understand a word of the message, as it was in Thai, but the pastor seated me next to a guy who spoke enough English to make himself understood, and I was, through him, given enough information to follow what was going on. (In a strange twist of fate, it came out in conversation that his daughter attends UNC Chapel Hill. When he told me, I said "Tarheels National Champions" and he nodded vigorously, smiling broadly and giving me a thumbs-up.)
So the last five days have been massively stressful, and I'm still not out of the woods. I have to procure a visa to Vietnam, which costs about one hundred U.S. dollars, and takes several days to process. Moreover, I've got to schedule a flight to Hanoi, the city from which my plane to the Philippines departs - another one hundred dollars. I don't know if my credit card is actually going to arrive ( I had to send it to a post office, for lack of permanent address) and I'll need enough cash from getting wire transfers to last me the next two weeks, until I can get a more permanent place in Manila. Just thinking about it is giving me a headache.
But there's good news! I decided to give a shot at more guitar-playing, and set up last night in Chiang Rai's night bazaar. I used the same method, overturning my hat, tuning up, and belting out as many tunes as I knew. Cat Stevens, Green Day, Coldplay, Switchfoot, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Weezer, The Eagles, Smashmouth... you name it. I also played some catchy chord combinations and made up words to sing along, knowing nobody would know the difference:
Won't you goooooooooooooooo With meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee If you don't you'll never know Why there's a pineapple tree
Other such nonsense came out, but it turned out to be a good idea. It saved my from repeating myself ad nauseum and kept a steady flow of cash. At one point a missionary visiting from Miami to work in an orphanage showed up and talked to me for a while, which was immensely encouraging. He prayed over me as well, an effort which was not without significant effect; when I returned to my room three hours later, fingers worn to the bone, I counted my earnings.
Just short of 2000 Baht.
I was completely stunned; I hadn't expected a haul anywhere near that large. And though the next several days are rather tentative in terms of timing, I plan to milk the street performances for all they're worth, hopefully earning enough to pay for my visa to Vietnam by tomorrow.
More info coming, as it comes to me.
Left to right: Chiang Rai Night Bazaar where I played my guitar sets; the hotel room I stayed in for two weeks.
The first part of this story has absolutely nothing to do with the title, but sit tight. I'll get there.
I arrived in Chiang Mai sometime last week (I've almost completely lost track of what day of the week it is at any given time; it usually takes me a minute of thinking about it to recall. Such is the nature of my journey... idyllic, zephyrous, free of the constraints of time. The only date I need to know is April 23, which is when I have to leave SouthEast Asia.) A vast difference from the noise and bustle of Bangkok, Chiang Mai - about six hundred miles to the north, near the Burma/Laos border - is a large city by Thai standards, but clean, peaceful, friendly, and fun.
I'd met a guy in Bangkok who recommended Spicy Thai Backpackers, a hostel on the west end of town. With no idea where else to go, I took his advice, and after the overnight trainride up, took a tuk-tuk across town. It was only 250 Baht a night (U.S. $7.50) so I signed up.
The greatest thing about backpacking as a method of travel is its relaxed, lackidaisical atmosphere. Take a German, a Swede, an American, a couple Australians and a Canadian who might never otherwise talk to each other, stuff them in a hostel dorm room and suddenly everyone's best mates. My experience has been no exception. I had barely settled into my bunk when a girl from Baltimore and a guy from New Zealand showed up within minutes of each other. Introductions past, the three of us headed for a burger joint on the corner (Western food becomes a craving after a while) and by the time we returned, we'd decided to sign up for a jungle trek together. Completely random, and - as it turned out - completely awesome.
We left on Sunday (at least I think it was a Sunday) and met up with a few of our fellow trekkers, two girls from Malaysia. We rode in the back of a truck about an hour into the mountains, stopped at a small village smack in the middle of nowhere... it was like something out of Rambo (minus the explosions and Stallone sneaking through the rice patties with a hunting knife.) The only evidence of modernity was blue plastic pipes assisting in the irrigation; everything else indicated technology and traditions a thousand years old. Every building was bamboo with thatched roofs, a dirt road winding through the middle and up a slight incline; idle chatter mixed with the spordic barking of dogs. Walking around felt almost sacreligious, as though we were treading through someplace we weren't meant to be.
The villagers were friendly, and had booths out with locally-produced items for sale, a reminder that trekkers frequented the place. I bought some Thai cigars, and after an hour or so of exploration we headed back for the truck.
Our next stop was a small marketplace, where we bought water for the upcoming hike and met the rest of our trekking group. It was a jovial crew, as diverse in nationalities as ours: two girls from France, one from Scotland, a guy from Mexico and a Spaniard. Like us, most of them had just met a day or two previously.
Next was elephant riding. After a massive Thai lunch (I've discovered, with some surprise, that I'm an enormous fan of Thai food [I don't like Chinese or Japanese food]) we clambered atop the beasts and plodded down a trail. While it was a disappointingly mundane experience (imagine sitting on a smelly rock at .0003 MPH) the aesthetic value of it outweighed any problems. Most of my friends were snoring through lectures or imagining quitting their jobs. I was riding an elephant through steamy Asian jungles.
The rest of the day's itinerary was hiking through the jungle. It reminded me of humping Da Nang hill in Quantico during USMC OCS... in other words, absolutely horrendous. We came to a waterfall that cascaded down a thirty-foot rock face; it'd worn a groove into the rock, which happened to make a perfect natural slide. Pouring sweat, we dropped the bags, lined up at the top of the incline and shot down into the pool below. It was one of the more fun things I've ever experienced, and it cooled me down. We left for our destination with high spirits.
Spirits were high, but the mountain was higher, and the heat took its toll. The group split up into several differently-paced sections, bound for the mountain village. Hours later we reached the summit, drenched in sweat, calves screaming, completely exhausted. Our hotel was a very spare bamboo hut perched on the edge of a steep drop, the balcony facing a massive valley. Beds were straw mats on the floor with the obligatory mosquito nets hanging above. They weren't comfortable at all, but once again I reflected on the fact that I didn't have an 8 o' clock class in the morning or a clock-in time at work. Instead I was going rafting.
Thailand is currently in dry season, so the water levels were significantly lower... we were warned that the rafting wouldn't be quite as spectacular as in June or July, in the middle of monsoon season. After the long hike down the mountain punctuated only by a stop at another waterfall, the river was welcoming, high or low. We headed downstream in the rafts, hitting a couple of rapids but were never in danger of overturning, which is the fun part. Miles downstream we switched to flat bamboo rafts, which sat about a foot underwater... propulsion was by bamboo (are you noticing a trend here) pole. At one point we passed a group of elephants on the shore, drifting no more then several yards away. Two seconds after we were downstream they decided the river was a commode, and proceeded accordingly. Suddenly we were going a lot faster. The trip ended shortly thereafter; we clambered ashore and showered off, ate a lunch and headed back for Chiang Mai.
In May of 1998 I was playing street hockey in suburban Cincinatti and caught the back end of a slapshot right in the face. Blood was spilt, and half my tooth was gone. The dentist made a crown and glued it in place. That crown lasted almost exactly ten years.
Sometime on the ride back I noticed my left front tooth was slightly loose.
Three hours later I wondered why there was a piece of bone in my steak... it wasn't a bone. Suddenly I looked like a Neanderthal and had no way of NOT looking like one. And I was 12,000 miles from home. Big, big problem. Fix-o-dent held it in place for about six hours at a time, thankfully, but the biggest problem would be getting it permanently in place. I didn't feel like removing it to eat three times daily.
I found a dentist on the east side of Chiang Mai, and after about two hours of walking, found myself in a sparsely decorated waiting room. I rediscovered the impromptu nature of Thai business: I filled out a brief medical history form, walked into the room and sat on the chair, and the dentist asked what I needed done. The price was negotiated for 1000 Baht to glue it back in place permanently - less than thirty U.S. dollars. Without insurance.
Very quickly I wondered if I was getting exactly what I was paying for. After stabbing my gums with an pick to clear the base of the crown, the dentist placed a towel over my head. Clearly blindfolding me, I thought, so I couldn't see the Thai Tooth Machete when she pulled it out. Several near molar decapitations later, the area was clean and the tooth in place. I walked out no more than twenty minutes after having checked in as a first-time patient... rather efficient compared to U.S. standards.
So it's not December 25, but I'll raft the Mekong River into Laos tomorrow with my One Front Tooth. Merry Christmas, me.
we set out for the worksite. We were divided into two basic workgroups: the first was construction, assigned to adding the second story of the new school building. The second was essentially a cleanup detail in charge of cleaning up the collapsed chap
el. Some 15,000 palm fronds composed the bulk of the roof - they were thatched over a rickety two-by-four frame - and had to be removed to a storage location a few hundred yards through the jungle. I spent the first five hours on construction duty before being transferred to clean-up... apparently they needed an extra hand and there was one too many clambering across the walls.
at the most effective way to get the job done was to have several people removing the fronds from the frame and tossing them in enormous piles while several more of us loaded them onto a ramshackle cart and hauled them to the storage hut. The trail wound down a steep hill, across a stream (there was a footbridge, thankfully) and into a picturesque clearing. We rotated the pulling duties, switching during every load.
Spirits were high, but the mountain was higher, and the heat took its toll. The group split up into several differently-paced sections, bound for the mountain village. Hours later we reached the summit, drenched in sweat, calves screaming, completely exhausted. Our hotel was a very spare bamboo hut perched on the edge of a steep drop, the balcony facing a massive valley. Beds were straw mats on the floor with the obligatory mosquito nets hanging above. They weren't comfortable at all, but once again I reflected on the fact that I didn't have an 8 o' clock class in the morning or a clock-in time at work. Instead I was going rafting.