Back to the Future

I’m jumping forward to the future again to let you in on some big news on the travel front. Before we headed off to adventures in Southern Laos without internet, we bought our return ticket home.

Because I’m all about sharing the reality of travel – the good and the bad – let me explain how that came to be. It took us a while to admit it, but somewhere in the last few months of endless buses, boats, lukewarm showers, hard beds, temples and cafes, we both started feeling a little burnt out and bored.  I know it is a hard thing to imagine – how could someone feel anything but ecstatic on a “trip of a lifetime” – but it is true.  And it happens to the best of them.

I can think of many possible explanations. Maybe it was because we got waylaid involuntarily in several towns in a row. It is one thing to decide to stay put and relax; it is another to be ready to move on but being stymied for one reason or another.

Maybe it was because one or the other of us was sick off and on for weeks.

Maybe it was post-India let down. India was invigorating precisely because it was challenging. Anything Southeast Asia could throw at us paled in comparison and seemed like a nagging bother instead of a cultural challenge.

Maybe it was because until recently, we’ve been mostly moving along Southeast Asia’s tourist trail. It is all too easy to go through the motions of travel and end up in the same places, surrounded by other Westerners doing the same things and eating the same comfort foods.

Maybe it is because getting off the tourist trail seemed like more work than we felt like exerting by this point in the trip.

Maybe it was because on some level, we are homesick and some part of us wants to be eating the comfort foods instead of more noodles and rice.

Maybe it was because the trip was rapidly winding down, and neither of us is any closer to figuring out what we want to do with the rest of our lives.

Maybe it was because we let the extraordinary become ordinary.

Maybe it was just because we’d been away from home for nine whole months.

In reality, I suspect that it was some combination of all of these things.

So, naturally, we did what any burnt-out traveler would do…we decided to extend the trip. Makes perfect sense, right?

As we waited for me to recover from a stomach ailment in Vientiane, we found ourselves scheming. One great part about Laos was traveling for a bit with our new German friends. Hearing about their upcoming plans to head to New Zealand, we found ourselves searching for flights and researching costs of campervans. We realized part of the reason we were feeling a little blah was the thought that Southeast Asia could be it for our trip. Our dwindling funds and time meant that we easily could finish out our time in Southeast Asia, in countries that may be unique but that are more alike than they are different.

So, one day – kinda like how this whole trip started in the first place – we just did it. We bought a ticket from Malaysia to New Zealand. Sure, there was much deliberation first. Sure, we probably are just procrastinating returning to the real world. Sure, we’re going to dip into our savings to finance the extension. But, you know what? Suddenly, we’re excited again. About everything. About spending more time in Southeast Asia to see most of what we want to see at a slow pace. About going to New Zealand. About getting our own wheels again. About having a firm return date home.

The truth is, I think the open-endedness of the end of the trip was making us flail around a bit. There are tons of lifestyle redesign proponents out there advocating traveling without time restraints or plans. I’m continually fascinated by the growing chorus of interesting people designing ways to travel indefinitely and encouraging others to do so. I think that’s great, and if there is one thing I learned from our travels is that I need to create the lifestyle I want rather than just do what I’m supposed to do. But the thing is, creating the lifestyle I want involves going home. We’re both too big of homebodies to travel forever. I like Pittsburgh. I like having a home. I know that I want travel to be part of my life, but I don’t want travel to be my life.

So while I haven’t had any grand epiphanies about what I want to do with my life – just small revelations that I haven’t quite worked into a coherent whole – as of May 13, 2011, 408 days after leaving Pittsburgh, I’ll have to work on creating the life I want at home. And I’m okay with that. Especially since between now and then, I have a lot to look forward to. Instead of only spending a week or so in Laos as we originally planned, we only had days to go on our 30 day visa when we crossed the border to Cambodia yesterday. We’ll spend a couple of weeks in Cambodia (famous last words!), including watching the Steelers play in the AFC championship game at the crack of dawn on Monday, then cross over into Vietnam to be in Saigon in time for the Steelers to win their seventh Super Bowl. : ) We plan to be in Vietnam for three to four weeks in total, and we’ll fly from Hanoi back to Bangkok in late February/very early March. We hopefully will be meeting up for a little bit with a friend of mine from high school who has been working on her own travel plans. We’ll head south through the Thai islands, and do a quick jaunt in Malaysia as we make our way to Kuala Lumpur for our April 3 flight to Christchurch. We’ll tour New Zealand by campervan for a month in April (when the flights and campervans are cheaper as it turns to the shoulder season), and then head home – but not before making a week-long stop in Hawaii first. As it turns out, flying from Auckland to Honolulu and from Kauai to Pittsburgh was slightly cheaper than just flying straight home from New Zealand. Which is awesome, especially since we missed Kauai on our honeymoon. As opposed to our big pimping honeymoon splurges, we’ll attempt frugality in Hawaii this time (unless the Hotel Hana-Maui wants to put us up for free, of course. Love that place). As far as re-entries to the United States go, I can’t think of a better way than to visit state number 50. I can taste the pineapple already.

So that’s our plans in a nutshell. Hope you’ll join us for the rest of the ride, as well the rest of the highlights and lowlights from our travels in Thailand, round one, and Laos. Teasers of what’s to come: elephants, elephants and more elephants; the slooooooooow boat to Laos; why foreign massages aren’t always what they’re cracked up to be; and Sean and Amy do Laos on two wheels. Thanks for reading along!

Howdy.

Just a quick note to let you know that you may not be seeing too much activity around here for the next week.  We’re headed to Southern Laos.  I hear the internet is spotty at best and nonexistent at worst, and some places only have electricity for several hours a day.  (The biggest problem with this, of course, is that we probably will have absolutely no way to watch the Steelers whip the Dirty Birds this weekend.  Ack!)  But rest assured we’ll be back posting when we can.

Thailand is Awesome: Day One

To say we were eager to get to Thailand would be an understatement.  Finally, a country where our champagne tastes matches our beer budget.  It is, without question, the mecca for budget travelers.  I have never seen a round-the-world itinerary that didn’t include Thailand.  When I’d read about Thailand in other people’s travel blogs, I was sure it had to be too good to be true.  There had to be embellishment to the stories of cheap prices.  The rooms really couldn’t be that nice.  The street food had to be sketchy.  The people couldn’t be that friendly.  The sun couldn’t shine that much.  It didn’t take long for us to realize that everything we had heard was true.  There’s a reason Thailand is on everyone’s list and it is because it is awesome.

I knew it was going to be awesome right from the start. Our day started with watching the most amazing sunrise over Thailand on our overnight flight. Although I couldn’t accurately capture the colors of the sunrise in a picture, I will always remember the way the sun created bands of light in order of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, and blue. I stared at the colors until they were out of sight.

When we landed in Bangkok, the sun was shining and everything looked clean, bright, and modern. Our taxi driver took us straight to our chosen hotel (Roof View Place) without any detours or trouble. We spent some time just marveling at how clean and bright our room was. While this particular room at $26 was the most expensive we’d have in Thailand (not counting Santa’s upgrade on Christmas), it had anything we could want – free wifi, a big, filling free breakfast, free water, and free information about travelling around. As we’d come to learn, you get a lot for your money in Thailand. Nice rooms can be had even for less than $10, and spending just another $5 or $10 can really up the ante.

By the end of our first day in Thailand, we’d discovered our favorite hole in the wall pad thai place serving the tastiest pad thai we’ve had to date for under a dollar (yes, it is true – dinner for under a dollar!), ate fresh tropical fruit, also under a dollar (cut right before you under sanitary conditions!), and had a neck and shoulder massage for $4 each. Yep, Thailand had us at day one, and still has us. We exhausted our 30 day visa and plan to return later in our trip – we suspect as good as it was so far, the best may be to come.  There’s still beaches to sit on, after all. The only knock on Thailand is that it can lull you into a routine* and you have to share the country with all those other tourists and ex-pats who love it too.

*(I know, I know.  Isn’t that what we wanted after India?  During our travels, it seems when things are uncomfortable, they are usually more exciting.  When things are comfortable, boredom can creep up – albeit a different type of boredom from the work/eat/sleep/lather/rinse/repeat routine at home.  Just goes to show – no place is perfect, whether you are home or away, and you have to enjoy and appreciate the good parts no matter where you are.  Luckily, in Thailand, there are a lot of good parts.)

Relaxing in our room at Roof View Place, basking in the clean sheets and sunshine

Despite eating it multiple times, I didn't get a great photo of our favorite pad thai. Don't worry, if our travels route us through Bangkok again as I suspect they will, we'll be back. This is a similar glass noodle version by the same lady.

Not us, but you get the point: cheap massages are everywhere. We preferred to not get ours right in public though.

India: The End.

As it turned out, the end to our Indian travels was rather anti-climatic.  Other than a rickshaw driver taking us to a guesthouse run by his buddy rather than our intended destination (funny how he miraculously remembered English only when we threatened non-payment), nothing happened in Varkala, our last destination.  And by nothing, I mean NOTHING.  Once we found a sea facing hotel room with a balcony, that was the end of that.

It is no surprise that Varkala was uneventful.  It barely felt like India.  Walking along Varkala’s cliffside walkway, the only Indians you would see are the ones trying to get you to come into restaurants or shops.  Our mornings started at any number of cafes playing Jack Johnson, serving banana pancakes and fruit shakes, and our evenings ended with a Kingfisher and some average Indian meals.  Varkala was perfectly enjoyable, but it could have been anywhere.

Backwaters

And when I wake up in the morning to feel the daybreak on my face.  There’s a blood that’s flowin’ through the feeling, with a knife to open up the sky’s veins.  Some things will never change.  They stand there looking backwards half unconscious from the pain.  They may seem rearranged.  In the backwater swirling, there is something that will never change.
– Backwater, Meat Puppets

Old black water, keep on rollin’
Mississippi moon, won’t you keep on shinin’ on me
Old black water, keep on rollin’
Mississippi moon, won’t you keep on shinin’ on me
Old black water, keep on rollin’
Mississippi moon, won’t you keep on shinin’ on me
Yeah, keep on shinin’ your light
Gonna make everything, pretty mama
Gonna make everything all right
And I ain’t got no worries
‘Cause I ain’t in no hurry at all
– Black Water, Doobie Brothers

The real jewel of God’s Country is undoubtedly Kerala’s backwaters.  (Hence the busting out of an old 90s tune; the running soundtrack in my brain while we were in this part of Kerala was either this Meat Puppets song or Black Water.  The waters weren’t black, but close enough.)  Laying parallel to the Arabian Sea, the Keralan backwaters are a network of interconnected canals, rivers, lakes and inlets stretching for over 900 km. The canals are like roads; many people’s houses can only be accessed by boat and road signs give the distance to the next village. Similar to the Ganges, people who live along the backwaters very much live their lives in public, using the backwaters to bathe, wash dishes, and launder clothes. We did as many visitors to the backwaters do: rent an overnight houseboat to explore the labyrinth of canals and lakes. The houseboat comes with a two man boat crew, and you get three Keralean meals cooked aboard by one of the crew.  Our experience on the backwaters was mixed: seeing life on the backwaters was fascinating, the scenery divine, but taking a tour by day probably would have accomplished the same thing for less money and maybe even allowed us to have seen more side canals.  On the other hand, we did get to kick back and relax, and see the sun set over the backwaters.  I took the picture above as we docked for the night next to one of the crew member’s canal side house.

Our biggest concern turned out to be our drinking water. When you read in the guidebook to always check to make sure your water bottles in India are sealed, do it. During negotiations for the boat ride, the owner promised us that the price included lots of bottles of water for us to drink. After getting out on the backwaters, Sean asked the crew for some water. One of them took a water bottle from the cooler, opened it, and handed it to Sean. After we finished the first bottle, we asked for a second one. This time, I happened to open the bottle myself, and noticed the cap wasn’t attached. I asked the other crew member for a different bottle. The new bottle also had a cap that wasn’t attached, and I inquired him why. Eventually, through a conversation in halting English, we established that all of the bottles weren’t factory sealed, they refill bottles of water themselves, and Sean and I weren’t happy about this situation, especially since we unknowingly drank one bottle already. If there’s one thing you don’t want to do in India, it is to drink the water. It was never clear to us whether this was a practice directed by the owner or whether the crew did it themselves. It appeared that the owner gave the crew money to purchase food and supplies for the trip, and we suspected that the crew may have been refilling water bottles themselves to try to save a few rupees. As it turns out, the crew picked us up a case of factory-sealed drinking water (which may not have been much of an improvement, as it was some sketchy brand we hadn’t seen elsewhere called Pizza Water with tons of misspellings on the container), and we never got sick from drinking whatever type of water with which they had refilled the original bottles. It is this type of thing that frustrates you again and again in India. No one means any harm, but you can never let your guard down.

View from the train on the way from Fort Cochin to Alleppey

Houseboat on the backwaters - not ours, but similar

Sean kicked back on the houseboat

Washing dishes in the backwaters

No cars needed

Bath time

Shortly before sunset