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:recent posts:
- This is the End [London, UK, 17/08/2004]
- Relativity 101 [Kathmandu, Delhi, 22/07/04]
- My Love Lies Waiting Silently for Me [Laos/Thailan...
- Fly You Fools, Fly... [Bangkok, Thailand, 05/07/04]
- South by South-East [Guilin, China, 27/06/04]
- Grease is the Word [Beijing, China, 22/06/04]
- Zen and the Art of Being Japanese [Kyoto, Japan, 1...
- Tokyo pics online
- I Wish I Was Famous [LA, 23/05/04]
- Nothing Newsworthy [Berkeley, USA, 16/05/04]
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- October 2003
- November 2003
- December 2003
- January 2004
- February 2004
- March 2004
- April 2004
- May 2004
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- August 2004
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This is my blogchalk:
United Kingdom, London, English, German,
Male, 21-25, Travel, Writing.
Travel blog of a year-long round the world trip.
Currently in London, UK.
(the first leg of my trip in a nutshell -- route as originally planned).
Relativity 101 [Kathmandu, Delhi, 22/07/04]
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At that point I had only left Kathmandu 27 hours ago but it felt as though I had been in Delhi for much longer than that. On the other hand I also felt that I had been in Kathmandu for just a few, intense days but alternately it also hits me that I may have spent a lifetime there without knowing. Everything has stopped making sense to me and maybe I have lost the concept of time; I will attempt the unravelling.
Around 40 hours ago I was running late on my way to Kathmandu's airport. I had caught a taxi and was crawling out of the city slowly. Meanwhile the wild emotions the place had thrown at me where all blended together smoothly and undiscernibly: a continual background buzz. Maybe Kathmandu's been rather confusing to me.
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Still, it all didn't bother me too much, even when shopkeepers, drugdealers and hotelowners of Thamel (Delhi's Khao Sarn with a twist) had convinced me that there was an entrance fee to get into Freak Street (the shabbier alternative to Thamel: 30 years ago it was the playground of the hippies, now the place is quietly falling apart - but it's doing so with charm).
I assumed the lie was an effort to keep the few tourists in Thamel; business has hit rock bottom in Kathmandu, it is low season for trekking and the country is in the middle of a civil war which is discouraging even more visitors. From the stories I hear of the Kathmandu of only 10 years ago it is barely a shadow of its former self and some of its people have turned bitter.
And like always it's started from the top. The politicians are corrupt as are the institutions. The locals are hurried off the streets at 10pm by cops armed with whistles and AK-47s. Anyone out after that time is prone to be extorted by the police. The tourists on the other hand can walk through the empty streets completely impervious - the police have orders to leave tourists alone and I have the sneaking suspicion that anyone caught mugging a foreigner will be summarily executed or just disappear. Even the Maoists go out of their way to leave tourists unscathed: they courteously make sure all the foreigners have left a building before bombing it.
One night I overheard a traveller in a bar shouting, "Yeah, I really want one of those Maoist receipts. It'd make a great souvenir!"
Back in Thailand this would have undoubtedly reaffirmed my unjustified loathing for the world and humanity and have swiftly led to the onset of a minor depression. But I'm ok now. I have accepted humanity as essentially flawed, individuals as potentially good and tourism as inevitable. I even ate pizza in Kathmandu.
And I followed the advice of a guesthouse-owner as he took a pause from playing the guitar as the foreigners' conversation started getting too political: "You guys just come here and don't worry about a thing! Nepal is meant for chilling and enjoying yourself."
The dichotomy may be uncomfortable and the political system in shambles but worrying about them is a luxury most people on the streets can not afford.
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The Nepalis in general have to be some of the best people on the planet even though 95% were having identical conversations with me ("which country?", "how long you been in Nepal?", "how long will you stay in Nepal?", followed by "oh, what a shame" in response to my answer.) But they have good hearts and deserve to live in a happier place.
However, in my unfortunate way of travelling I have constantly been leaving places, their worries and their joys behind me. Just like I left behind the taxi driver who had put his meter into a special tourist-hyperactive mode for the last minute of the journey to the airport, doubling the fare. I was relieved that I had made it out of Kathmandu without getting too badly ripped off, losing my identity and/or dignity. And I was happy about the people I'd met and the smoothie of emotions that was still buzzing.
That is, until I exchanged my left-over Nepalese rupees into Indian rupees at the airport without counting them first: an invitation for getting the worst rate possible which I promptly did. No space for argument, the system had gotten its cut from me after all.
And that's about as much unravelling as I'll be able to do. Stuff still doesn't make sense, especially with my plane leaving Asia in a few hours but I will advance the following definitive theory of time in an effort to imbue some reason into my chaos: non-Einsteinian relativity of time is a symptom of being in places for too short a time and of sleeping in too many different beds every night (which sounds either far worse or far more glamorous than it actually is).
Yes, I am very confused at the moment. But at least I'm buzzing still.
[Maybe my confusion will clear up soon with a more constant bed and home: my flight leaves to Frankfurt tonight, followed by Amsterdam and then London. There'll be a final post coming up in a week or so (I write while wiping a tear from my eye).
Meanwhile click here for fuzzy pictures in Album Nepal 1 - Kathmandu and Album India 1 - Delhi.]
My Love Lies Waiting Silently for Me [Laos/Thailand, 13/07/04]
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An hour earlier at a river-side restaurant I was flicking through my pictures from Laos as a Dutch package-tour group arrived in other ultra-light long-boats powered by screaming engines from hell. In fact it was the same jovially jabbering group that I had waited behind a week earlier at the Thai-Lao 'friendship-border' visa office and because of whom I had missed my Bangkok-organised sheep transport to Vientiane. I looked at their surreally tinted and flickering week-old picture on my camera's humidity damaged LCD and it felt like I was looking at a different world as though through an intense opium dream. I imagined that they must have seen a hundred times as many temples, hilltribes and waterfalls as I had in the same time but I wasn't jealous, I had no regrets. Laos had been worth it; I had seen enough even though I had seen nothing and hadn't budged an inch from the beaten track.
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Instead I picked up a book at a guesthouse, Graham Greene's The Quiet American, and found that this world of fiction was so much more exciting, fascinating and wild to me than anything I could be seeing in Laos with my own two eyes. In all honesty what was I expecting to do in my limited time there? Ride up to some 'primitive hilltribe people' and gawk at them as though they were Jawas from Tatooine? Did I expect being welcomed by them with open arms, opium pipes and just before leaving back to town being offered (but politely refusing) the chief's beautiful daughter in marriage with a dowry of fifty mountain-goats and one small, white elephant? What could I ever offer them that could possibly enrich their lives? They didn't ask for me to visit them just like they never asked for the wars about communism and drugs that have ravaged their countries and lives for years; Greene's fictional character Fowler had this to say: "they don't want to be shot at, they want one day to be much the same as any other and they don't want our white skins around telling them what they want."
The morning after I finished the book I just lay in bed. The roosters were crowing like crazy, it was raining outside and I crawled happily back into the loving arms of sleep and dreams that tasted like softly rolling flowers.
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[Click here for Album Laos 1 with the photos - nothing of touristic value or otherwise to be found.
Tomorrow morning I'm catching a flight to Kathmandu. It's been nice knowing you South-East Asia, until next time.]
Fly You Fools, Fly... [Bangkok, Thailand, 05/07/04]
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These are the new kings of Thailand and all I could do was wonder who in fucking hell gave them passports.
But when the near full moon outlines the palmtrees in a pale glow and you see the thousands of people on the beach having fun it can seem incredibly beautiful. Nice from far, far from nice for just as suddenly the image is prone to slide into an infestation that has claimed ownership of this island with bright lights and Western music.
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I too felt special for the first day or so on that beach but then I suddenly couldn't take it all anymore: the sterility, the lack of stimulation and the scattered sunbathers who were flipping themselves scientifically like overcooked omelettes in frying pans striving for the perfect tan. And so I fled the beach for the Full Moon Party and my encounters with an army of pissed Europeans encouraged by buckets (literally) filled with medicinal-grade Red Bull, Whiskey and Coke, hordes of Israelis doing what they do best and a couple of cats who were digging the music and the mushroom shakes. I closed my eyes to all the broken eggs that had gone into making so many omelettes and started digging too until the next morning.
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In South America there were times when I used to be excited to bump into people who spoke English; here I have started despising them and they are everywhere. This country ain't big enough for all of us so my only option is flight yet again, facilitated by ultra-light travel made possible by great luggage storage facilities here.
Thailand is not the place for me. It is too difficult for me to see the country and the, I suspect, amazingly rich culture which runs almost invisibly alongside the backpackerism. I am tired of being shuttled from door to door by A/C'd 'V.I.P.' buses like lazy sheep with 50 other backpackers; I don't want to eat any more overpriced tourist food and I can't deal with seeing locals who are jaded and filled with impotent aggression after dealing with the scum of our societies.
A traveller should be invisible and float through places leaving behind no demands for anything that's not already there. Instead we have systematically made Thailand our whore for life: this is the colonialism of the 21st century that will make other countries slaves to our economies and values. And the sad thing is that we were the only ones who could have changed it by behaving differently and not wanting the world to become our circus. But it is all already too late: there is too much money to be made and too many livelihoods that are intertwined with ours now; no one is interested in change. In a few years time even the backpackers will probably start disappearing to be replaced with the reliable income of package tourists and after Thailand is full it will be time to export Khao Sarn Road to Laos, Myanmar and everywhere else in the region - although in all likelihood this has already happened.
Goodbye sweet world; goodbye sweet dream.
[Disclaimer: The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of God, your uncle or anyone in particular. Any reference to people living or dead is purely coincidental, etc...
That should cover my back from Thai-o-philes. And to clarify for the purists - Thailand is a beautiful country with beautiful people and I probably only have myself to blame for sticking to the beaten track. It's just that the beaten track is so bloody wide here and I have no time, as always.
At any rate piccies from Thailand can be found here. My camera is going to the dogs to from humidity in China so the photos kinda suck.
I am heading to Laos on a V.I.P. bus in an hour. There I will look like a monkey with a 'utility-belt' that contains all I will take but at least I'll be able to flee a place with only 2 seconds notice if required.]