Long way to go

I just confirmed a flight to Singapore next weekend! I'm going there for a few days to visit my friends from NYC, Eric and Camille, the ones I met up with in Koh Lanta. They've been working there for the second winter in a row, painting roller coasters (they're scenic artists). I never had a huge desire to go to Singapore and they particularly enjoy living there, but I figure why not? It's a free place to stay and friends to show me around, and when else am I going to go?

With that confirmed, I just booked two more tickets: the bus to Vientiene (Laos), and the train to Bangkok (where I'm flying to Singapore from). And now, holy shit, no more travel bookings (since my flight to Hong Kong is booked and I don't plan on doing much travelling around there)! No more logistical figuring, travel agent hassles, timetable juggling, and decision-making: I'm done booking!! So strange.

The standard thing to do when leaving Luang Prabang (which I have been loving for the last four days) is to head to Vang Vieng before going on to Vientiene. Van Vieng is where all the backpackers go tubing down the river, floating from one bar to the next; no one can believe that I'd dream of skipping it. But I'm taking a pass for the same reason that I didn't go to Pai in Thailand: I'm kind of tired of the early-20's backpacker scene. It's not something I really noticed in India, but then again you generally get a different type of traveller there. In Southeast Asia the hoards of young backpackers seem intent on partying hard and moving on to the next place, and frankly that makes me feel a bit old.

So I'm taking a pass on the whole tubing thing in favor of a more extended stay in Luang Prabang. I've been hanging out with a woman I met on the two-day slow boat down the Mekong. She's a year older than I (34), just finished teaching in Thailand, and also exhausted of the party-harders. We've been lazily exploring the town: went to a waterfall, took a boat to some caves full of Buddha statues, stopped at a whiskey-making and weaving village, climbed the big hill in town to explore the temple compound there (it has a Buddha's footprint imprint that I'm not kidding, I could curl up and take a nap in). Tomorrow we're renting bicycles and riding around the countryside. Ahh, the slow life!

Posted by j3s at 01:35 PM | Permalink

I started travelling Monday evening, and I won't get to my destination until Thursday afternoon. This is definitely the longest stretch I've ever had (previous record was coming back from Ghana, something like 34 hours door-to-door).

The sleep deprivation isn't helping much; I got four rough hours on the upper berth of Monday's overnight train that arrived in Delhi at 6am. Then the hotel that I was considering in Bombay didn't work out, so I waited that 7-hour layover at the airport. However, they don't let you into the international terminal until three hours before your flight so I watched a movie on my laptop in the shockingly not terrible waiting room, where I met a couple other backpackers who helped pass the time. Grabbed a couple hours of sleep on my flight to Bangkok, I love it when the plane is empty enough to snag a whole 4-person row.

Now I'm waiting out my 9-hour layover at BKK to HKT where I have an actual hotel room for the night(!!) before taking the 4-hour ferry to Koh Lanta tomorrow morning. I had considered heading into Bangkok to get a crappy room for the day just to rest but decided against it. I have so much waiting-in-airports momentum built right now, and a hard drive full of movies. Plus two months in India has um, really improved my patience and capacity to just wait...and wait. And wait.

I did make the most of my day in Delhi: rode the metro (subway) to the old market and to the Lotus temple, which was beautiful. The metro was great, much more clean and efficient than NYC. I had just enough time to meet a couple friends for lunch, one from the Bhagsu Cake Crew and another that I met at the Chakki Bank train station, before heading to the airport. Of course there are pictures, but I'm a bit too bleary-eyed to post them right now.

I still kind of can't believe that I left India. It'll sink in more when I finally leave an airport, but still. As frustrating as it can be sometimes (but also so beautiful in so many small and huge ways), I have gotten used to the quirks of India, at least some of them. Now I have a whole new set of behaviors to adapt to. I just have to finish getting there first...

Posted by j3s at 12:15 PM | Permalink

I'm somewhere in the middle of a 16-hour layover in Doha, Qatar. Got in from Paris at 5am and my flight to India's not till 9pm, whoops. I tried to arrange a day tour of the city before I came, but everything I found required a minimum of two people. In retrospect I probably should have booked a hotel and gotten an exit visa, but at least I have a lot of movies on my new netbook.

I did manage to grab maybe three hours of sleep in one of the quiet lounges before being woken up by a call to prayer; the mosque is right next to the sleeping lounge. Now I'm catching up on emails and photos and drinking too much coffee and bottled water purchased with my credit card because I don't want to change dollars to riyals.

The euro segment of this trip was definitely fun, but I'm ready to get along to India. I kinda want to park it for a bit in Arambol (Goa), where my only responsibility is a 2.5-hour Ashtanga class at 9am, and maybe some writing and beach time in the afternoon. How many hours are left in this layover...?

Posted by j3s at 01:48 PM | Permalink

Over the years I've jokingly referred to this site as my "Hey, I'm not dead!" blog, which made me feel just the tiniest bit bad when I let the domain name lapse right before leaving the country for almost four months. Whoops.

It's all fixed now though, so I can tell you that I have made it safely to Paris, the third leg of my RTW (round the world) trip. The itinerary is as follows:

-- London, to visit my sister, who is studying abroad. I was supposed to have two days there, but because my initial flight got cancelled, I only had one.

-- Rome for for four days. The only other place I've been in Italy was Venice in 2001 (pictures from that trip), so this was a giant CHECK. I'll post a lot more on Rome in the next day or two.

-- Paris for almost a week. My original RTW ticket had me going to Cairo , where I was to stay with my (Egyptian) roommate's brother, but I cancelled that leg of the trip last week due to the civil unrest. If I were ten years younger and more reckless I'd really want to go to experience the uprising, but I have too many people that I love worrying about me already.

-- Possible stop: Doha, Qatar, for a day. I have a 16-hour layover on my way to Goa, so I might get a vis on arrival and check out the city. We'll see.

-- India for two months. I spent three weeks there a year ago and loved it! My first stop is Goa, specifically Arambol, to study with a yoga teacher I really liked, and then who knows, maybe Rajasthan and Dharmasala? I'm meeting up with a friend who is coincidentally travelling there as well, so it'll be nice to have some company.

-- Thailand and Vietnam (and maybe Cambodia) for a month. I have a couple friends who go there in the spring when they're done working in Singapore, so hopefully I'll get to travel with them for a bit, too.

-- Hong Kong for four days, where I plan to stay with an old rave buddy from Wisconsin who's been living there for some years.

That's it for now. I'm staying in a really cute neighborhood in Paris with Atomly, who is here for work. Last time I was here (2006) was also with him, funny how that works. The neighborhood is really cute, 3rd arrondissement near Parmentier, but I'm a bit exhausted from all the travel and walking 8 hours a day in Rome, so I'm taking it easy today.

It's starting to sink in a bit that I quit my job, and my time belongs to me again. Last time I did that was the year I lived in Berlin, and I really miss being able to spend whole afternoons writing, sitting in cafes, exploring the city. Here we go!

Posted by j3s at 02:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)