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

How Bizarre

How bizarre became my favorite phrase upon arrival to Asia. I didn’t even notice how often I was using it until our friend Kevin made fun of me while we were in South Korea. But there is just no other way to describe Asia, especially Japan. On the one hand, it is just like home, except the people are Japanese. On the other hand, it is nothing like home. Consider the following oddities I noted throughout our month in Japan:

• For the first week in Japan, it was impossible to get Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto out of my head, resulting in a constant soundtrack to our travels through Fukuoka and Hiroshima. Once, a Japanese man caught me singing, domo, domo under my breath and gave me a really strange look.  Okay, this probably makes me bizarre, not Japan.  Moving on…

• The buses in Fukuoka and Hiroshima shut off at every intersection, leaving an eerie silence every couple of minutes (except for the sounds of Styx running through my head).

• We were given 10 minutes of instructions about how to watch a parade, but were able to roam freely with monkeys with no instructions other than to not look them in the eye.

• Japan has tons of no-smoking zones in outdoor places like parks and public streets, but most of its restaurants and hotels are full of smoke.

• It was always a crap shoot upon entering a bathroom stall whether you’d find a super modern toilet with buttons for fake flushing noises to cover embarrassing sounds, buttons for sprays of water at different angles, a heated toilet seat, and in some cases, a seat that automatically lifts, or a primitive squat toilet that was essentially a hole in the ground with a flushing mechanism. I would have settled for a consistent happy medium of regular, non-electronic toilets, but when it comes to Japanese toilets, it is all or nothing.

• Speaking of bathrooms, there were never any paper towels, leaving me to wipe my hands on my pants while the Japanese women daintily wiped their hands on their personal washcloths they carried around in their purses.

• People line up in orderly queues and wait to board the metro until everyone has gotten off.

• Ice cream comes in green tea matcha and wasabi, not vanilla and chocolate.

• The Japanese women are obsessed with their skin, but I couldn’t find a face moisturizer or lotion to save my life. There’s whitening creams galore, and even something known as face milk, but anything marked as a lotion actually was straight liquid.

• Kids either go to school on Saturdays, or like wearing their uniforms on the weekends. (I’m guessing the former).  I’ve never seen so many school kids in uniforms in my whole life. Young school children are forced to wear matching hats (which is adorable, by the way). Japanese school girls wear super short skirts, knee socks and penny loafers (which I’m told, by a friend of my mom’s living in Japan, is only because they hike them up after school).



• The Japanese like things to be at the ready with just a flick of some yen, should the need arise. Need rice? Japan’s got you covered. Milk or eggs? No problem. Batteries? Sure. Want something to read? Buy a book! Drinks? Of course.



• But don’t think about carrying that drink with you, or you’ll be carrying it around all day. Everyone who visits Japan notices the glaring absence of trash cans, but also litter. This is because the Japanese do not walk and drink; they consume their beverage next to the vending machine then throw it away.



• You can name a drink Pocari Sweat and people actually drink it, including us. (Tastes like grapefruit gatarade).



• The Japanese have an obsession with the floor and shoe removal that I just do not share. They sleep on the floor, eat on the floor, and insist upon removing their shoes at every entrance. This resulted in smelly shoe racks at the entrance to every hostel. Plus it also begs the question: is it more disgusting to walk without shoes in a bathroom, or wear the shared bathroom slippers? We saw just how deeply entrenched these customs are in Japanese society. At the end of our trip, when the weather grew cooler, homeless people moved into cardboard box “houses” inside the subway stations. Outside each box was a pair of shoes, lined up and tidy.

• In our month in Japan, I felt like I was in the middle of a giant Nintendo game. There are beeps and boops all over the place, and all signs feature cutesy characters, even if they are trying to tell you what to do.


The most adorable public bus I've ever seen.



Even their nudie bars have cutesy signs (that are bizarre in of themselves - I'm not sure what is going on with this bra-wearing, nose-pierced, patriotic fish/cow).



Even when being stern, they're still cute.

• I think I’m turning Japanese, I think I’m turning Japanese, I really think so.  In India, way out of context, I found myself bowing my head ever so slightly in gratitude and politeness.

It is discovering the little, random observations, like these, that I love the most about traveling.

This picture pretty much epitomizes Japan for me.

Saturday in the Park

Saturday in the park/I think it was the Fourth of July/Saturday in the park/I think it was the Fourth of July/People dancing, people laughing/A man selling ice cream/Singing Italian songs/Eicay vare, eise narde/Can you dig it (yes, I can)/And I’ve been waiting such a long time/For Saturday

– Saturday in the Park, Chicago

On a sunny autumn Saturday in Tokyo, we wandered our way through Ueno Park.  We weren’t expecting to be entertained any more than our usual casual people watching, but it turns out there is a sideshow to just strolling through urban green space.

Every time we turned the corner, we came across a crowd watching someone perform.  Like this flamboyant yo-yo performer, dazzling the crowd with his high-energy yo-yoing:

Or this hunchbacked geisha, grinning and smiling for photos:

Or an acrobat, climbing higher and higher on a stack of chairs:

This three were just a sampling of the many street performers we saw that day.  The one that really took the cake, though, was this guy.  I really don’t know if I have the words to convey how utterly strange this performance was.  Perhaps I need my art spoon fed to me, but I just didn’t get it.  And judging by the faces of the others in the crowd, either did anyone else.  In an attempt to convey the bizarreness, I will show you a series of pictures of his performance.  It is one of the few times I wish I had a video camera.  If you’d really like to experience the bizarreness, you will need to pretend that dramatic songs such as Ave Maria and How a Man Loves a Woman are playing in the background.  And no I am not kidding.

Injecting confetti into a giant balloon:

Injecting himself into the giant balloon:

Walking over to bystanders while inside the giant balloon.  Note the man shielding his daughter’s eyes from this hot mess.

Trying to give his heart away:

Breaking his heart and bouncing around in a mad state, still inside giant balloon:

Busting out of giant balloon:

Completely losing it now:

Bursting giant balloon in a cloud of confetti:

Blowing up a dog balloon:

And, my personal favorite, laying on ground with dog balloon, scooping up confetti with a dust pan, and throwing it on himself.

Say it all together now: How Bizarre!

Riding Down King’s Highway

I’ll admit it; the main reason I wanted to take the long way from Madaba to Wadi Musa down the King’s Highway was because King’s Highway is one of my most favorite songs.  I’m pretty sure one has nothing to do with another, officially, but unofficially, they are linked in my mind.  This was a song I listened to quite frequently when daydreaming about the trip, long before I even knew there was a King’s Highway in Jordan or that I’d someday ride down it.

When the time gets right
I’m gonna pick you up
And take you far way from trouble my love
Under a big ol’ sky
Out in a field of green
There’s gotta be something left for us to believe

Oh, I await the day
Good fortune comes our way
And we ride down the Kings Highway

No you can’t hide out
In a six gun town
We wanna hold our heads up, but we gotta stay down
I don’t wanna end up
In a room all alone
Don’t wanna end up someone that I don’t even know

Lover, I await the day
Good fortune comes our way
And we ride down the Kings Highway

– King’s Highway, Tom Petty

Going Up the Country

I’m going up the country, baby, don’t you wanna go
I’m going up the country, baby, don’t you wanna go
I’m going to some place where I’ve never been before
I’m going, I’m going where the water tastes like wine
I’m going where the water tastes like wine
We can jump in the water, stay drunk all the time
I’m gonna leave this city, got to get away
I’m gonna leave this city, got to get away
All this fussing and fighting, man, you know I sure can’t stay
Now, Baby, pack your leaving trunk, you know we got to leave today
Just exactly where we going I can not say
But we might even leave the U.S.A.
‘Cause it’s a brand new game, and I want to play
No use of you running or screaming and crying
‘Cause you got a home as long as I’ve got mine

– Going Up the Country, Canned Heat

Due to my sheep obsession, I talked Sean into spending two nights on a working beef and sheep farm in County Armaugh in Northern Ireland after leaving Belfast.  The actual quality time with sheep was not what I was expecting. We only met two lambs and sadly, their days were numbered.

It turns out visiting the farm was interesting for other reasons.  Had we not gone into the country, I would have continued to assume that the Troubles only touched upon people living in the cities.  That was far from the case.  Bombings took place in the country, as well.  Some took place long ago, in the seventies: the pub up the road from the B&B had been bombed, and there was  remains of a car bomb on the farm where we stayed.  More troubling was the more recent activity.  We ate dinner and had a few pints in the neighboring town, Keady.  I never would have suspected any problems there, but several bombs had been planted in the previous few months. Much of the activity is aimed at police. When we were standing on the road, chatting with the owner of the B&B, he waved at a passing car. That was the local police, he told us. They wear armored vests and drive in unmarked cars because too many people try to shoot at them. He said this matter-of-factly, like this was normal, whereas Sean and I were surprised, once again, how the problems in Northern Ireland are not dormant.

On a lighter note, we also saw and did some things that only happen in the country.

Went to the combination general store/post office/public phone/gas station:

Saw road bowling, something Sean had saw previously on the Travel Channel:

Made farm friends:

Saw a new, gangly, awkward, adorable baby mare:

Held a chicken:

Got up close and personal with hungry cows before moving them to a new pasture:

And saw beautiful rural scenery:

Sometimes you just gotta go where the water tastes like wine.