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Leaving on a jet plane…

/ ckoukkos / 4 Comments

I’m excited and terrified to say that I’ve finally given in. I’m hitting the road. I’m going to live the range life, if you will.

On April 21, my dad and I will fly from Boston to St. Petersburg, Russia. He’s always wanted to visit the Hermitage, and I’ve always wanted to see Russia’s center of art, architecture and poetry.

A week later dad will fly back to Boston, and my nomadic experiment begins. The idea is simple – almost naive: to see the world. I won’t have a fixed itinerary. I’ll support myself by writing articles and whatnot, as a divemaster when I can, or, if necessary, by doing whatever odd jobs come my way.

<warning>
This seems like a good moment to announce that anyone who even mentions Eat Pray Love will be kicked off this blog. I mean it. I’ve had enough of people trying to foist that book on me. I am not trying to effing find myself. I’m being myself. Big, big difference.
</warning>

You might be asking: Am I insane? Well, this is the craziest thing I’ve done since Feb ’96,when I moved to Budapest on a whim. I managed to convince Mike Simon, an expat Ohioan I had met only once, to hire me for his kooky little Budapest-based internet startup. I had no real technical skills. Other than Mike, I knew no one in Hungary. I didn’t speak the language. I was so broke that I had to pay my first month’s rent on a credit card. I had no idea what would happen.

None of this mattered. To say that I “decided” to move to Budapest doesn’t capture the reality of the situation. It’s like saying I “decided” to obey the laws of gravity. Back in ’96 there was no question in my mind that Budapest was the only option for my life. It was inevitable and unavoidable. I feel the same way now.

(I can only hope that this new adventure turns out half as well. As many of you know, Budapest still feels like home to me – more than any other place I’ve been, including New York.)

Yes, I’m giving up my apartment in New York. I’ll sell, throw out or give away most stuff. Anything else’ll go into storage.

No, I don’t know when I’ll be back. Unless disaster strikes, it’ll be at least a year – probably much longer and possibly “forever.” It all depends on what happens.

Yes, I hope you will come visit me wherever I am – I’ll post my travel plans regularly. My initial plan after leaving St. Pete is to jump on the Trans-Siberian in Moscow and head east. I’ll to go to the Lake Baikal area in eastern Siberia, Vladivostok, Mongolia, and then China for the eclipse on July 22. After that…who knows? Probably Vietnam/Laos/Malaysia, but we’ll see.

Wish me luck!

PS – To answer the most-asked question about my plan: Yes, there will be a going-away party in New York. (Ahh, my dear friends – always looking for an excuse to party.)

I’ll head up to Boston around April 13, so the party’ll either be the weekend of the 4th or the 11th. Stay tuned.

This time it’s familiar

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Sitting in the Cooya Caribu cafe in Skala Eressos, Lesvos, Greece. Unlike anyplace else on earth I could ever go, this is very much home. Ten feet away from where I’m sitting – sipping a frozen coffee drink and gazing out to the glistening Mediterranean – is my maternal grandmother’s house, where I would spend summers sleeping to the sound of the waves lapping at the shore, and eating incomparably delicious homestyle Greek food. (After she died in ’03, my uncle inherited the house. Sigh.)

But the greatest connection I have the place, in terms of per-capita relatives, is through my father. He grew up here, as the second son of a relatively well-off farmer and sheep herder. His older brother inherited the business, so at the age of 25 he set off for America to study engineering at NYU. Every time I come here I meet a new relative. Five minutes ago I met the one for this trip – my father’s cousin’s wife. As it happens, my father’s cousin is also the godfather of my mother’s brother. Confused? Yeah.

OK, off to meet the gang from New York (Michele, Henry, Lissette, Andy and Scott).

I just crossed 14th Street

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I just crossed 14th Street, heading up 1st Ave and home. As climbed the stairs out of the L train station I had to hurry around a pregnant Hispanic woman and her husband, who was carrying their sleepy son, so I wouldn’t miss the light. (There was a Mr. Softee in the parking lane along Stuyvesant Town, and a cool but perceptibly summer breeze blowing down 1st Ave. Ahhh, summer.) I jaywalked west across 1st Ave and as I passed my local CVS I saw a young African-American employee standing outside, cheerfully singing out out to her middle-aged Indian colleague, “Take out the gaarrrbage! Take out the gaaarbage!” The Indian man smiled broadly and did a silly little dance in response. On the next block I passed the crappy local Chinese take-out place, where the distinctive yarmulke’d head of the man who owns the tasty but rather expensive falafel & grill place next door stood out among the people standing in line. I hurried past the two Korean delis but did stop to buy a pound of cherries from the Middle Eastern guy at the fruit stand outside Beth Israel.

In just three New York City blocks, I was reminded of the things that attracted and kept me here for so long. First, New York is where every kind of person from every country on earth lives and works in extremely close proximity….even along the fairly gentrified blocks of 1st Ave between 14th and 17th Streets. You can travel the world to meet people from every country, or you can walk down 1st Ave.

Second, after a few months living here you come to expect the incongruity of what you see on its streets. And realize that you’ve missed it, if you’ve been away.

Oops gotta run – the sushi I ordered for dinner is here. Gotta pay the inevitably Central American delivery dude at my door.

En Why See?

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So yeah, I’m back in New York. It’s so strange and familiar – my apartment, my local deli, baseball on tv, junk mail. Not sure how I feel about it all yet.

I’m just about finished uploading the giant backlog of photos from my trip.

Not sure what else to say. I’m trying to get over jet lag (stayed up til 7 last night, woke up at 3:30 am. not bad for the first day), sorting through a big pile of mail, and still deciding whether to unpack my bag.

Back in Bangkok, on my way home

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Greetings from Bangkok, my 24-hour stopover on my way home. I’ve decided to spend the day in the cool confines of the various shopping centers and internet cafes near my hotel, in Siam Square, rather than brave the ridiculous heat and dirt of normal Bangkok. On this, my third time in Bangkok during this trip, this city is starting to grow on me. But the noise! The heat! The pollution! The crowds! It’s too much to bear before a 23-hour trip home. (Environmental note: The proprietor of the internet cafe is eating his lunch, smacking his lips remarkably loudly and sort of glaring at me. Thailand: The Land of Smiles!)

Since I’m on my way home, naturally I’m sort of reviewing my trip in my mind. It’s only been two months, but my days in Chiang Mai during the watery Songkran festival now seems like a lifetime ago. Yes, I’ve seen many things, had some crazy and fun experiences, met hundreds of people, and generally had the normal travel experience. But my mindset has changed dramatically as well. When I left New York I was feeling oppressed by the fairly basic life choices that I face: Where should I live? What should I do? But two months later I feel like I’ve gained some clarity – or at least some much-needed perspective, outside of the four narrow walls of Manhattan.  In a day or so, when I’m sitting comfortably in a yellow cab heading towards the city…it’s going to be strange to see the Manhattan skyline again. Either I’ll feel nostalgia and that I’m coming home, or I’ll feel oncoming oppression of being back in my “old life.” We’ll see!

But enough navel-gazing. It occurs to me that I haven’t written much about my time on Gili Trawangan. There isn’t a tremendous amount to write about my activities there: Basically it was wake up, dive, eat lunch, dive, watch the sunset, shower, eat/drink, sleep, repeat. It’s the people I met who made it great.

As I said, I dove with Blue Marlin, a fairly well-run dive shop/guest house/restaurant owned by Simon, a Brit with a Napoleon complex. The place was managed by a middle-aged couple: Peter, a blandly cheerful American, and his wife (can’t recall her name), a loud Dutch woman with the thick athleticism of a Bulgarian Olympic gymnast.  My fellow Rescue Diver student was Ginni Golden, an American from DC. Ginni works for an internet advertising agency, of all things. We bonded over stupid clients, internet egos, and neurotic/psychotic people we’ve had to manage (Hi Mark! Heh heh just kiddin’). She’s on a 3-month leave of absence, the lucky thing. She stayed on and is doing her Divemaster training right now.

I’ve already written a bit about Luis, our instructor. He’s been on Gili T for 8 months and plans to stay for the season – until around October. For the like 2 of you who know who I’m talking about: he reminds me a lot of Brian Thistle. He’s quietly smart in that he almost tries to hide his intelligence> As a teacher he’s calm, serious and thoughtful. When he’s done with Gili T he’s going to travel a bit and hopes to end up in Brazil, where he plans to open a guest house/restaurant.

Then there’s Nicola, or Nico (“NOT Nick or Nicolas!” Did I mention he’s very French?). Nico is a heavily tattooed, charming character who defies categorization. He’s approachable yet reserved, social yet secretive, carefree yet serious. He’s been on Gili T about the same amount of time as Luis. He’s trying to save up enough money to move on to Australia: If he gets enough by the end of the season, he’ll leave. If not, he’ll stay another year. But he’s anxious to move on. “I’m a traveler who dives,” he says, “not a diver who travels.” I have to admit, when I left I had a tiny crush on him. (On a Frenchman, can you believe it?) The last thing he said to me (after hugging me goodbye) was, “You smell very nice.” 

Yipes gotta run to check out of my hotel (noon checkout!). Probably more later. After all, I have nothing much else to do!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Baaaalllii

/ ckoukkos / 1 Comment

I can’t bear to think that the reason I’m back in Bali is that I’m slowly making my way back up to Bangkok and then home.

Also, the internet connection on Gili T was so unbearable I haven’t even checked my mail in like 5 days.

In any event, I’m in Sanur (nicknamed “snore” ), Bali, diving with Crystal Divers. I left Gili Trawangan because I had done all the interesting dives at least twice. Time for something new! But the lovely people I met there were sure to send me off with a hangover and no sleep for my two last days. The first hangover started with a “snorkel test” – a Blue Marlin tradition. A newly certified divemaster is dressed in some absurd costume (in this case, a guy in pink panties and a green cloth mask and cape) and made to drink half a liter of whatever booze, etc., the instructors feel like mixing together through a (you guessed it) snorkel. Then everyone goes to a bar and gets drunk. I joined in, got to sleep around 5, then was up at 8 to go on the 9 am dive.

The second hangover started with a lovely dinner with Ginny (my buddy during my rescue diver course), Luis (my instructor), Lauren (a divemaster tranee that I bonded with during some ridiculous dives we did together), Lauren’s boyfriend and fellow diver Simon (who is in charge of diving & sailing safety at the University of Tasmania – how cool). After two bottles of wine with dinner we moved to Sama Sama, a great bar with love reggae music every night. We met up with Nico, a delightfully French dive instructor who I also got to know very well (he’s good friends with Luis). Nico is hilarious when he’s had a few Bintang: He and Luis were talking about how instructors aren’t allowed to hook up with their students…at least until *after* the course is over. “No penetration without certification!” cried Nico. Heh heh. Which turned into the diving version of the casting couch: “It should be, ‘No certification without penetration!'” I tried to get him to dance on the bar, but he wasn’t drunk enough.

The following morning (after 8 hours of sleep in 2 days of diving and drinking) at 8 am I began the epic 12-hour journey (boat, mini-van, ferry, mini-van) to make the 100 or so km from Gili T to Sanur. Thank goodness I managed a nap on the ferry, or I would have been wrecked. Today my alarm went off at 6:15 am, and I was on the bus to the dive spot by 7. We did two lovely dives near the village of Candidasa. Tomorrow we go to Manta Point (where I’m 85% assured to see at least one manta) and then a dive off the nearby island of Nusa Pendia. And then that’s it! Sniff. Tuesday it’s off to Bangkok via Kuala Lumpur, one night in BKK, and the <gasp> back to NYC. Christ amighty.

And then…who knows? I know many of you don’t want to hear this, but after this trip I think it’s pretty unlikely that I’m staying in New York. There’s this whole other world and life beyond the myopic, ego-driven worlds of New York and the “internet industry.” I find this other world a lot more interesting, and I think *it* likes *me* better, too.

But let’s not think too hard about that until at least Friday, shall we?

A strange sight indeed…

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Yesterday evening I witnessed the strangest sight of my trip so far: Pat Guiney drinking beer and eating steak at Scallywag’s restaurant here on Gili T.

OK, so maybe it wasn’t him. But all the signs were there: blinding white skin, heavily thinning, buzz-cut red hair, greenish khaki t-shirt, dark shorts, and (this was the kicker) dark socks and dark leather shoes. On an 85-degree evening in a place where the few people who *are* wearing shoes don aged flip-flops. The guy stuck out like…well, like Pat Guiney at the beach. I was very tempted to say hello and ask him if he was a long lost Guiney, but I decided not to disturb him. I’ll just wait a few weeks and say hello to the real PG.

(You probably have to know PG to think any of this is at all amusing. And even then…)

Anyway, I’m sitting in the internet cafe trying to catch up on my photo-uploading. I’m barely through the first few days of Myanmar – two countries and about a month ago! I’m hoping to get caught up in the next few days….

The Rescue Diver course is a lot of work but tons of fun. There’s a lot of silly role-playing for my classmate and me. For instance, I play “distressed diver” and she saves me, and then she plays “unresponsive/nonbreathing diver” and I save her. I drowned her a few times in the pool yesterday (oops), and all our shouting (“help! help!” or “diver diver! inflate your BCD! grab on to the buoy!” etc.) provided entertainment for the divemaster trainees and other Blue Marlin customers nearby. I can now assure you that it is extremely hard to give rescue breaths (think CPR) in deep water with all your gear on, while towing the diver to safety *and* trying to remove her and your gear so you can exit the water when you get to the boat/shore. All while making sure you give a rescue breath every 5 seconds. We’ll see how I do tomorrow, when we do it “live” in the open water for my final exam.

Yipes gotta run meet Ginni (my classmate) for dinner. L8r.

Huh? What day is it?

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Uh…what? When did I last post? What day is it?

Yes, it’s official. I’m on beach-holiday time. I’m chilling on Gili Trawagan, doing my Rescue Diver course with Blue Marlin dive shop, and enjoying the white sand beach, crystal clear water, and general lack of shoes.

I flew from Siem Reap to Bali what seems like ages ago. As soon as I stepped off the plane I realized that I was in a different place: The staff of one of the airlines was singing a welcome song, playing guitars and banging bongos and generally having fun at their jobs. (“Gee,” she thinks to herself. “Remember what that’s like? To have fun at your job instead of creating and presenting Powerpoint after fucking Powerpoint presentation on the tedious details of your day-to-day decisions?”)

I spent one quiet night in Kuta, the party town on Bali, and then took a bus to Padang Bai on the east coast. There was a Balinese cultural festival on in the town, which was fun to see. I also did two dives at the wreck of the USS Liberty near the town of Tulamben. It’s a cool wreck dive, because it’s so shallow. It’s actually a shore dive – you walk right in from the beach, swim like 10 meters, and there it is. It was a US ship that was disabled by a Japanese sub during WWII. It was beached and abandoned. But then in 1963 the local volcano erupted, and the resulting tremors caused the ship to slide into the sea.

I was tempted to stay in Padang Bai and do more diving, but I was eager to get to a place with no cars, no motorbikes…nothing to jump out of the way of as you walk down the street. I had been planning to go to Gili Air, but on my last night in Padang Bai I met a Colombian guy who said that Gili T was much more easygoing than its party reputation. So I changed my plan at the last minute, and I’m glad I did. There’s enough social life here to be interesting, but it’s not the Kuta-like all-night rave that I was expecting.

I arrived on…um, a few days ago more or less. I’ve been pretty busy with my dives and my course work (studying and tests! on the beach! sipping fresh lemonade! the sea breeze carrying away the answer sheet to my test, only to have a smiling Indonesian boy chase it down and return it to me!).

So yeah, my plan is to pretty much stay here until the end of my trip. I’m paying more than the usual $8/night to stay in a decent bungalow with hot water & a/c & a lovely breakfast and no struggling. I completely unpacked my bag for the first time. And I don’t plan to pack again until I shake the last granules of fine white sand from my clothes and pack them away on June 9. Then it’s back to Bali for a night, back to Bangkok for a night, and then all the way back to NYC.

It’s going to be extremely strange to be back in the US again, faced with the need to figure out my next move. But I’m trying not to think about that too hard.

Let’s see what stories can I tell?

In Padang Bai, I spent my last night in a bar called the Sunshine. A local 30-ish man just opened it a few days ago. As he fed me glasses of a dangerous local spirit called Arak, he told me about his life and his bar. Again, his story followed the theme of wanting a simple life rather than ambitiously seeking fame and fortune. He had worked in Kuta clubs for a number of years, saving up money. He helped put his sister through typing school, and put a new roof on his mother’s house. “Once I take care of my family, I could do my dream, my bar. I just want to make a happy place where people can come and be comfortable. I don’t need to be a rich man. I just want to enjoy my life and my bar, and not have to do what a boss says. I just want my small place to be good.” So if you find yourself in Padang Bai, please go have a drink at the Sunshine. It’s a small place right on the main square, decorated with posters of the Rolling Stones, Guns-n-Roses, Kurt Cobain and (of course) Bob Marley. The smiling man behind the bar is the proprietor.

Here on Gili T, there are no motorized vehicles. The main road around the island is unpaved, though a portion of it is made up of a broken, uneven attempt at cobblestones. You can walk around the island in about 3 hours. There are no banks or ATMs, and only dive shops take credit cards. The days of the week are marked by whether it’s a party night – Mondays at Blue Marlin, Wednesdays at the Irish Bar, and Fridays at Rudy’s Bar. A few eating places advertise the relative freshness and strength of their “fucking great magic mushrooms,” and occasionally someone will call out softly, “Smoke? Smoke?” from dark spots along the beachside road. But I haven’t really witnessed any drug-taking. I suppose the people I’ve been meeting are too focused on diving, which doesn’t lend itself to staying up all night ‘shrooming.

Simon, the British owner of Blue Marlin Diving, has acute Napoleon Complex. He’s about 5’5″, muscle-bound, tanned, and will tell you up front about how he pioneered diving in the Gilis. “Oh yeah, I was the first westerner on the Gilis (about 19 years ago). I mapped out all the dives. I taught all the other dive shops how to do it. And I taught all the divemasters.” Then he’ll go on to tell you about the land he owns, how he’s turning it into villas and selling them off, and how *his* villas are bigger and better than the *other guy’s* villas right next to his, etc. etc. Oy freakin vey. But his arrogance aside, everyone at Blue Marlin is very friendly and loves to dive. Luis, my Portuguese dive instructor (who just came in to the internet cafe and says “hello”), doesn’t own shoes. “People kept stealing my sandals, so I stopped buying them,” he says. Right now he’s wearing a shirt, which is out of the ordinary for him. You get the picture.

OK, gotta run. This is the most sitting in a chair staring at a screen I’ve done in a while and it’s time for a delicious cold Bintang beer under millions of stars.

(OK, I’m deliberately boasting now.)

I’ll probably post again in a few days, after I’ve finished my course.

A foot massage and three beers later…

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OK, so I was kinda cranky when I posted before. This place had really gotten to me, and I suppose it didn’t help that I was tired and hot and sore and that a tuk-tuk *hit* me (and ran over my foot!), leaving a nasty bruise on my leg. So today, instead of spending my last day at the temples, I opted to wander in town a bit, have an hour-long foot massage (ahhhhhh) and then have a few beers with a late lunch. I’m much more cheerful now.

I’m back into the mode of traveling alone, and I have to say that in many ways I prefer it. I’ve met and chatted with dozens of other travelers and locals since Marjan and I parted ways just 5 days ago. I suspect that part of my current relief is that Marjan wasn’t my perfect match in terms of travel companion, though we got on just fine. I’m just happy to be doing my own thing again.

For example, in Phnom Penh I met a Dutch man who’s teaching English for a year in the Cambodian countryside as part of a volunteer program with an NGO. He said he doesn’t know that he or NGOs in general are doing much good here. There’s terrible poverty in rural areas, and families can’t afford to send their children to school – let alone feed them well enough to pay attention to their studies. But when an NGO comes in to help (he says) Cabmodians view it as an opportunity to get a swankier school rather than to increase the number of children who go to school. People live for appearances *right now* rather than investing in the future of the country via education. “It’s an interesting problem,” he said. “In Honduras, for example, there was no NGO help [because of a general boycott] and they did a great job of helping themselves.” He also said that it’s different in Vietnam, where people have national pride “because they defeated the Americans.”

Today I met a man from New York – he lives right down the street from me, in Stuy-town – who’s here fro three weeks. He and his travel buddy were sitting next to me at lunch. He was drinking a diet Coke out of a can, and there was a small homeless boy hanging around, gesticulating at him and his drink and making a drinking motion. He boy wanted the guy to hurry up and drink the Coke so that he could have the can. He absolutely refused to leave until the guy finally finished.

The whole situation was annoying for us, as you might imagine, because we couldn’t have an uninterrupted conversation (and I had to pay half my attention to the boy’s proximity to my backpack). But forget us – what about the boy (and the dozens of others around town)? On the one hand, collecting cans is definitely more productive than simply panhandling or out-and-out stealing. (An education would be even better, of course.) On the other hand, he’s learning a lesson early that all Siem Reap area citizens seem to know: If you whine and pester and annoy tourists long enough, eventually they’ll give you the can (or buy your postcard or bottle of water or guide book) just to make you go away. Speaking of going away: I can’t wait to get out of here, and I’m completely disinclined to buy any souvenirs at all because I’m sick of being harassed about them.

This whole question about tourism and developing economies is an interesting one. It comes up a lot when scuba diving. If there is a beautiful, untouched reef somewhere, scuba shops open up to bring tourists there. The tourists come in greater and greater numbers, requiring more hotels (and resulting in more deforestation and then runoff when it rains, which kills the reef). At least one person (and often many more) in every dive group touches the coral either accidentally or because they’re a poor or stupid diver. When you touch coral it dies, and it takes weeks for that little bit to grow back. The regrowth can’t keep up with the tourist volume, the reef suffers, it can’t support aquatic life, the diving starts to suck…and we divers move on to the next “untouched” spot. Replace “touch the reef” with “brush against ancient carvings on Angkor Wat” or “trod on Mayan ruins” or “trek through virgin rain forest” and the whole thing gets depressing quite quickly. Makes you think you should just stay home and watch the Discovery Channel – let the professionals do it!

————

Oy vey – what’s with the doom and gloom today? I better shut the eff up.

And what of Cambodia?

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Oh yeah. The country I’m in. I suppose I should say a bit about it.

Well, to be honest I’m not a huge fan. I think the problem is that I’m only visiting the two tourist areas: Phnom Penh and the ridiculous tourist mecca of Siem Reap. Every 3 steps some guy steps in front of you and says, “hello lady need tuk-tuk? need moto? where you going?” If you’re walking along it’s as if the motorcycle drivers swerve to come as close to you as possible, for no real reason except (I suspect) to fuck with you. Evidently this village has undergone a gold rush-like tourist boom in the last few years, so perhaps the locals are taking out latent frustrations on tourists. I can’t blame them, but it makes this place quite uninviting.

In any event, on Tuesday and Wednesday I rented a bike to tour the incredible Temples of Angkor. The bike ride itself was an adventure – cars and motos deliberately try to cut you off and the drivers laugh in your face if you have to stop short and fall off the seat. But I’m still glad I did it by bike. First, I got a ton of excercise – I did around 35 km the first day and around 20 the second, not including climbing up and down and around the temples. Plus I was able to go at my own pace, without a tuk-tuk driver bugging me. And it was cheap $1.50/day instead of the $20 charged by tuk-tuk drivers. That, at least, offset the outrageous $40 that the Cambodians charge for a 3-day pass ($20 for one day). Yes, the money that doesn’t get siphoned into government pockets goes toward the upkeep and renovation of the temples, but it’s a pretty steep charge, IMHO.

Anyway, the temples themselves are quite impressive – the architecture, the wall carvings. I’d describe the temples as a whole in a state of atmospheric decay – trees, moss, animals and rain are slowly reclaming the sandstone structures and the ground they’re built on. I won’t bother trying to explain. Wait for the photos…though the internet is so slow in this cafe that I’m going to give up and try to upload more pics later.

Anyway, I’m glad to be leaving tomorrow morning. Finally….to Bali, beach and scuba!