Momentos – Dec 2013

These are my Momentos, short personal diary entries I write daily – since 2013 – and publish monthly. Some links are affiliate links.

1

It’s all too apparent when Richard pulls up a chair. Good dude, I should be happy to break from the screen and chat for a bit. But my mind is elsewhere. I should never have taken this on. How fast I forgot my resolution. Now I’m stressed, distracted, and a little resentful. And feeling guilty for all that, because these are good people I’m helping. Oh well, gotta suck it up and do the work. Lesson hopefully relearned.

2

I have boundary issues. It’s becoming undeniable. The German dude I met at the Chinese Consulate this morning. Helping him stressed me out. I had my own shit to do, should have drawn a line. And then with herself this eve. I was angry but held back on the expression. I’ve always denied it, but perhaps a large part of the travel appeal is the running away, letting national boundaries do the work of the personal.

3

I was never much of a dirty talker before this girl. But now… she has a hard time shutting me up. I talk before, telling her what I’m about to do, and then all the way through. Talking dirty has shown me how much of our arousal is psychological. She peaks when my words reach a crescendo. It’s more about what I say than what I do. And yeah, you feel stupid at first, and some girls won’t like it. But wow, when you find one who does…

4

It’s a chilly night in Chiang Mai. On a whim I take her down a dirt road to Sudsanan. As per usual there’s a live band and a bar boy with a mane from Wayne’s World. We drink hot cocoa and reminisce about those first dates and the trips we took to Kanchan, Sichang, Khao Yai. We’ve packed a lot into the few months we’ve known each other, no shortage of fond memories. Tonight will be another.

5

Five years ago Ben traveled around Southeast Asia snapping pics of locals. He made friends with a bunch of teens in Northern Vietnam and later heard that one of them, May, was kidnapped and trafficked across the Chinese border. Now he’s retracing his steps, finding all the people he photographed and gifting them a portrait. He’s also on the hunt for May and doing his best to raise awareness about human trafficking.

6

Goodbye again, but this time less sting, more sweet. I ride away from the midnight bus with Bob Dylan whispering answers in the wind, thinking how Dane was right: you learn a lot about yourself in relationships. They will mess you up, and they will heal you. I’ve learned a lot from this one, and I’ll always be thankful for the time we had together. And unlike four months ago, I leave knowing she feels the same.

7

I awake dazed and feverish after four hours sleep, my last day in Thailand. I’ll soon be on a minibus speeding east, in Laos before nightfall, Korea by the new year, Peru by March. Now is the start of a new chapter, and truth be told, I’m glad to leave Asia. The gap between what people think and what they say is wider here than I’m comfortable with, truth harder to find. But for all that, this chunk of the rock has been good to me.

8

I chat with Kevin on the seven-hour slow boat to Luang Prabang, a big tattooed chap radiating warmth and sincerity. He was a social worker back in the UK and tells stories of his experiences counseling rapists, pedophiles and arsonists. I ask if he believes some people are genuinely evil. “Not from what I’ve seen,” he tells me. “The scariest people are usually the most scared.”

9

Pretty sure I came the wrong way. Dogs bark at me moving through the darkness and I have to slink a fence to keep going uphill. Any minute I expect a monk with a bo-staff to pounce on me from behind one of the golden buddhas along the path, more so after I pass by the shuttered ticket booth. But the only monk I encounter pays me no notice as I pass him sweeping steps. Forward five minutes and I’m atop Mount Phousi with a red dawn as my reward.

10

Key habit for today: piss somebody off. I feel I need to live at the other extreme for a while, actively seeking to upset people rather than please them. But doing it with sincerity, speaking my mind even when I suspect the words will make waves. No, especially then. And that I did this eve. The other person seemed suitably peeved, and I walked away quite happy with myself.

11

Here’s the unglamorous truth about working while you travel: sometimes you arrive in a cool town like Luang Prabang and have to spend most of your first three days in front of your laptop, catching up on work and emails and chasing your business dreams. That behind me, tonight I cut loose, catching a bit of a movie, wandering the streets talking to strangers, and ending up at a bowling alley on the outskirts of town at 1am.

12

On a friend’s recommendation I drop by Big Brother Mouse  and SMILE project to help local kids practice their English. Some novice monks are in attendance. One flips me the bird and asks for an explanation of the gesture, a scene I find delightful. Another, upon hearing that I’m a web designer, responds with a me-too and drops tech jargon like it’s no big deal. Later I explain the acronym LGBT to a trio of teens.

13

It’s illegal for foreign men to sleep with Laotian women. I know this, but curiosity gets the best of me when the girl at the bar persists in throwing smiles my way. I go over. Her name is Ping. I have no idea what she’s saying but I feel like all eyes are upon us. I need to be careful. And I am, until she suddenly lurches off the bar stool and starts rubbing my belly.

14

The 24h bus to Kunming is a nightmare. The road out of Laos is a winding mountain trail littered with potholes. The bus itself is a sleeper with all the fragrance of a wet dog. For a short stretch I have the back row of bunks to myself but my luck doesn’t hold. I spend the night squashed in a corner, waking frequently to the sound of a baby wailing and the dull throb of my lower back.

15

Kunming is cold, damp and devoid of color. No connecting bus so I taxi twenty minutes to the train station, walking the final stretch with a dripping backpack through a tunnel of broken dreams. Mercifully there’s a slab available on the next sleeper to Chongqing. I book it, scoff my only meal of the day (a shitty shrimp burger and fries), then park my ass in the frigid wait area and try to suppress the shivers.

16

The restaurant floor has become a trashcan. And an ashtray. Worse still, not only am I sitting here eating meat of unknown origin (and sometimes unknown animal), but I’m pretty sure my tablemates weren’t joking about that last mouthful being a bovine penis. Ah, fuck it. This is how they do in Chongqing, the famous hot pot feast, and I feel lucky to have been invited. I’ll leave my ethics aside for the evening and see what happens.

17

Not your typical Chinese girl. She’s traveled around India and the Middle East. Once in Kerala she was groped at a festival (as is common) and turned to find the offender grinning like a leech (as is not; usually the pervs don’t stick around). Not thinking twice, she shoved him to the ground and punched him twice in the mouth. Crowds gave her a wide berth the rest of the day.

18

Chongqing metro, destination unknown. Everyone looks but few hold a gaze. I close my eyes to leave them all behind, with Thom Yorke in my left ear: I can’t face the evening straight and you can’t offer me escape... I wonder if she’s listening and taking these words to heart. Seven hours from now I’ll have my answer, when she whispers that she loves me.

19

I’ve blanked two beggars this week, turned my back on them until they went away. One I shouldn’t have, could have easily bought the lady something to eat. I need a better system for handling those situations. I don’t feel bad refusing to give money, as it’s impossible to know if it will be spent in the person’s best interest. But if they’re asking for food and I can easily provide, that should be a go. Unless I’m in India. That place needs its own special rulebook.

20

Chinese guy, wants to move to Paris. I don’t see what the big deal is. Get a teaching job and move there. “But I don’t speak the language.” So spend six months learning, then go. Why is he making a mountain of this? On the walk home, I get it though. Paris to him is the software business to me. Everything is scary and difficult until you do it. Then you look back and wonder what all the fuss was about.

21

Popping sounds outside the window of this moving train. I look up from my book and see sparks lighting the sky. There were more fireworks further back. I take a moment to appreciate and wonder. Until a uniformed lady walks in alongside my bunk and pulls a curtain across the spectacle. She turns and walks briskly away without so much as a glance, and I can only sigh a laugh of disbelief. Fucking China.

22

I’ll be in Qingdao by morning, my last stop in China. People will ask why I didn’t go see this or that while I was here. The Great Wall. The Avatar Mountains. Whatever else. Truth is such sights do little for me solo. I’d be going just to take a few deep breaths and snap a selfie for Facebook. Which is why I was stoked last week when a friend suggested we hike Machu Picchu together in March. Hell yeah!

23

Can’t say I’m a big fan of China, haven’t been enjoying my time here. The weather isn’t helping. I don’t think I’ve seen a scrap of blue sky since I crossed the border from Laos. A cold grey fog has followed me everywhere. On top of that everything’s more expensive than expected, the Internet sucks, veggie food is hard to come by, and I find many of the locals to be lacking empathy. I’ll take the ferry to South Korea two days earlier than planned.

24

Christmas Eve and I’m sitting in a smokey Qingdao noodle shop, Francisco from Argentina across the table. We talk about travel, drugs, girls and, of course, the impending economic meltdown. I’m arguing that the dollar is destined to crash, and he’s disagreeing. At some point I realize that I don’t really know what the hell I’m talking about, just repeating what I’ve heard elsewhere. Admitting such is probably the smartest thing out of my mouth all evening.

25

I stand on deck as we pull away from the wharf, memories of Cochin fourteen months ago, except this time there’s more fog and the sound of loogies being relentlessly hocked (fucking China). Later I take a plush seat in the lobby and practice memorization techniques while ignoring frequent blank stares. In my mind there’s a passport in an oversized jar with pins punching holes in the lid.

26

An old man on the metro calls me “gentleman” then flashes a thumbs up. And with that I’ve arrived in Busan, my final stop in Asia. It’s been the most intense month of my life, travel-wise. From Chiang Mai to Luang Prabang to Chongqing to Qingdao to my new home in South Korea. Something in the vicinity of 6,000 kilometers by bus, boat, train, taxi, tuk-tuk and metro. If only there was some kind of flying machine to make this travel lark easier…

27

I’m getting better at speaking my mind. Walked into a phone shop on a street full of phone shops today and the guy barely glances my direction, tells me he has no idea where I can buy a SIM card. I got appropriately shitty with him. Then the Chinese girl staying at the hostel who asked what I thought of her country. She didn’t much like my response. “You can’t say that. I’m right here!” Just being honest. Would you rather I lie?

28

I’m in a random restaurant asking for directions, but nobody here speaks English, and the name Mr. Kim doesn’t seem to ring any bells. I have his phone number but no SIM card, so I’m trying to communicate to the bloody-gloved cook that I need him to call this number on his phone and tell whoever answers that a strange waegukin is in a restaurant somewhere near his office and would he be so kind as to come find me?

29

Ten dollars for a punnet of strawberries. Three dollars for a can of kidney beans. They don’t have oatmeal but I’m sure if they did the price would be outrageous. Busan’s far more expensive than expected, reminding me of Hong Kong. And I hate this counting pennies shit. Running a tight budget is a massive energy drain, leaves me exhausted. Still no regrets about giving up the passive income stream though. I’m painting myself into a corner I need to be in.

30

Language barrier again, this time at another phone store, still trying to secure a Korean SIM. The guy helping me seems indifferent until he sees Ireland on my passport. “John O’Shea! Shea Given! Wobbie Keane! I know, I know! I like soccer ver much!” His excitement almost becomes orgasm when I tell him John O’Shea is from my hometown and point out the street he grew up on via a sat map. “Wow,” he gasps. “I so happy to meet you.”

31

Nobody lined up to hang out and no desire to go do the cold approach thing, I decided to stay in tonight. Must admit, I was feeling a little sad and lonely about the situation, stuck in a small apartment in a strange town with nare a friend. Then came a call from himself. We hadn’t talked in nine months, but fell right back into the depths of it. A beautiful, life-affirming way to end 2013. Love ya, Cuz.