As our tour continues, the pictures get more beautiful and we get more tanned a silent question is creeping, but is it really as nice as it looks on the pictures? Are they really enjoying themselves? Doesn't this 24/7 being together cause tension and fights? And all kinds of other doubts related to food, accommodation, people...
Well here is the naked truth!
It is NOT always as beautiful as it seems on the pictures, the streets are almost always dirty, there is garbage laying around and open sewage canals and some beaches are often littered with everything from lonely hiking boots and flip-flops to coke cans and diapers.
On the islands its ok, even when its hot, you remember that blue water, well THAT is always blue and cool, but the cities are a killer, traffic and noise add to the melting heat and you have nowhere to hide, expect in some smelly roadside cafe.
Hostels (my pain!) usually make me wonder "Why the hell did I leave my beautiful home?!". The shabbiness is of varying degree but it usually involves badly painted walls, holes in the mosquito nets (I will have a special section on mosquitoes below), bed sheets so thin you can barely make out Kermit and Miss Piggy, if the budget allows it we get an AC room, but those machines are usually so loud that you can barely sleep (and both Peter and I are famous for sound sleeping!), if the budget does not allow it, we go to a room "only fan" and sweat the night away. Electricity on the islands is usually provided by a generator which switches off on a regular basis so it actually makes no difference AC or not... Furniture, if you have been privileged enough to get something more than a bed in your room, it would be something well worth to be called vintage, however, no designer came even closer to the factories where these things are produced. And no, none of them has a story to tell! I forgot to add the special effects for extra homy-feeling, dampness and neon lights.
The toilet/bathroom drama! I will spare you that for my own sake, I am working on a technique to erase my mind before and after going into one of them to keep me from getting on the next flight to hygiene stronghold Europe.
Mosquitoes, bugs, dogs, monkeys and other species of varying cuteness and varying annoyance. The mosquitoes lead in the annoyance section, that's because we have not yet travelled to real Malaria places, then it gets dangerous... As I mentioned the wholes in the mosquito nets which miraculously appear during night time make it itchy and sleepless. Bugs, what would life be without them, "Variety is the spice of life" my English teacher once said and I hate her for it! Geckos, everybody keeps telling me they are my friends, and they look kind of cute with their big popped-out eyes, but I tell you one thing, I don't trust those creatures. Dogs are very friendly and they usually sleep in front of your door (sometimes up to five of them) guarding us. Monkeys are our new friends in Malaysia, and that friendship is most valuable when there is a street between us and the camera zoom is the only thing that brings us closer ( I still want to pet them thought, but Peter says they have rabies and Peter knows!).
Food, remember all those lovely plates of fresh seafood, vegetables and rice you see on all the advertisements, well me too! And I can tell you those pictures were NOT taken at any night market that we have been to so far in Asia. After almost two months we can more or less tell whether the dish is a soup or not. You can usually chose between chicken, beef, prawn, squid (some varieties appear due to the language transcription ;) and then comes the brief excitement before the waiter comes "What will I get this time!" Peter is leading in this discipline with the fish intestines specialty he ate in Nakon Si, although we suspect these elements secretly sneak into most other dishes. In other instances, if there are no fancy Polaroid pictures in the menu you get to chose between foods of different consistency with the main difference between them the colour of the washing basin they are kept in. And it is confirmed we did see some blue/purple rice meals!
Its usually hot and the locals seem genuinely not interested in showing you the right way, and the stupid Lonely Planet, alias Lonely Lairs you can forget about. Thank God Peter has his GPS with him, we always know where we are and how far we need to go, also pretty frustrating when it tells you you need to cross three major highway rings to get on the other side...
Meeting all kinds of interesting people - You do meet a lot of people but most of them you ask where they come from and where are they going, how much they paid for the bus and where are they staying (of course how much are they paying for that) in a bright moment you can bitch together about particular aspects of the local culture, but that's about it.
Learning about the local culture - With the local wildlife on the other hand, although most are genuinely friendly communication is limited to bargaining about the price, desperately trying to get directions, and enjoying their confusion when I tell them I come from Bulgaria :)
The relationship thing - it is clear that you spend approximately 23 hours together (the one hour is usually free toilet time for the day ;). You have to agree on basically everything from which is the next island/city/country you are going to where you shop?, very painfully for What you shop?, which temple you go to?, do you take a taxi or the local bus after walking for 20 min? (Please lets take a taxi!) do you eat Asian or Western?, which restaurant you go to?, at which table do you sit?, do you order a salad together? and in that case, which salad? I tell you when everything is new, everything has to be renegotiated, old habits really don't help here. And the worst thing, I cannot go to Jenny and Cecilia in the morning and tell them what Peter did or did not do the day before...
But although so far we did not get any revelation about the meaning of life, the universe and everything else, we actually figured out how unimportant some things are, like job and management and that there are a thousand other ways to spend the day (the concept of weekend has almost totally vanished) than sitting in front of the computer. We realised that traveling is a lot about yourself, discovering again what you want, like, dislike, since everything you see and experience is inevitably broken through the prism of your own cultural background. And it is a lot about judgments that we are somehow always too quick to pass on people, cultures, habits that seem strange to us. It provokes the senses on many levels and leaves you standing in the middle of the road looking for the zebra crossing (which usually appears in the form of a shopping mall, sweeping you back to what you know and call civilisation, although you were always ready to criticise the mall-culture at home).
The scenery IS often breath taking and the litter just reminds you how small and fragile the Earth is. The fish you get from the fishermen is what they caught today and not what came with the plane from lake Victoria. Whatever you get you are usually served extremely quickly and with a smile. The accommodation is something you just have to get used to and there are usually more expensive options around. You do meet interesting people that you would have probably never met before and have all the time you want for long conversations. Locals can be very sweet and charming, even if they don't speak English, especially a bus load of school kids! Kids are everywhere, in restaurants, in shops, on the streets, all around you fully integrated into the social life, not some weird creatures shouting "I want ice cream" but cute little dark eyed and dark skinned faces looking curiously at you or entertaining everyone around with their games, ready to take what is theirs one day very soon when they grow up. And the best thing of all is you are doing this with the person you love!
p.s. I always had a thing for Hollywood endings
Well here is the naked truth!
It is NOT always as beautiful as it seems on the pictures, the streets are almost always dirty, there is garbage laying around and open sewage canals and some beaches are often littered with everything from lonely hiking boots and flip-flops to coke cans and diapers.
On the islands its ok, even when its hot, you remember that blue water, well THAT is always blue and cool, but the cities are a killer, traffic and noise add to the melting heat and you have nowhere to hide, expect in some smelly roadside cafe.
Hostels (my pain!) usually make me wonder "Why the hell did I leave my beautiful home?!". The shabbiness is of varying degree but it usually involves badly painted walls, holes in the mosquito nets (I will have a special section on mosquitoes below), bed sheets so thin you can barely make out Kermit and Miss Piggy, if the budget allows it we get an AC room, but those machines are usually so loud that you can barely sleep (and both Peter and I are famous for sound sleeping!), if the budget does not allow it, we go to a room "only fan" and sweat the night away. Electricity on the islands is usually provided by a generator which switches off on a regular basis so it actually makes no difference AC or not... Furniture, if you have been privileged enough to get something more than a bed in your room, it would be something well worth to be called vintage, however, no designer came even closer to the factories where these things are produced. And no, none of them has a story to tell! I forgot to add the special effects for extra homy-feeling, dampness and neon lights.
The toilet/bathroom drama! I will spare you that for my own sake, I am working on a technique to erase my mind before and after going into one of them to keep me from getting on the next flight to hygiene stronghold Europe.
Mosquitoes, bugs, dogs, monkeys and other species of varying cuteness and varying annoyance. The mosquitoes lead in the annoyance section, that's because we have not yet travelled to real Malaria places, then it gets dangerous... As I mentioned the wholes in the mosquito nets which miraculously appear during night time make it itchy and sleepless. Bugs, what would life be without them, "Variety is the spice of life" my English teacher once said and I hate her for it! Geckos, everybody keeps telling me they are my friends, and they look kind of cute with their big popped-out eyes, but I tell you one thing, I don't trust those creatures. Dogs are very friendly and they usually sleep in front of your door (sometimes up to five of them) guarding us. Monkeys are our new friends in Malaysia, and that friendship is most valuable when there is a street between us and the camera zoom is the only thing that brings us closer ( I still want to pet them thought, but Peter says they have rabies and Peter knows!).
Food, remember all those lovely plates of fresh seafood, vegetables and rice you see on all the advertisements, well me too! And I can tell you those pictures were NOT taken at any night market that we have been to so far in Asia. After almost two months we can more or less tell whether the dish is a soup or not. You can usually chose between chicken, beef, prawn, squid (some varieties appear due to the language transcription ;) and then comes the brief excitement before the waiter comes "What will I get this time!" Peter is leading in this discipline with the fish intestines specialty he ate in Nakon Si, although we suspect these elements secretly sneak into most other dishes. In other instances, if there are no fancy Polaroid pictures in the menu you get to chose between foods of different consistency with the main difference between them the colour of the washing basin they are kept in. And it is confirmed we did see some blue/purple rice meals!
Its usually hot and the locals seem genuinely not interested in showing you the right way, and the stupid Lonely Planet, alias Lonely Lairs you can forget about. Thank God Peter has his GPS with him, we always know where we are and how far we need to go, also pretty frustrating when it tells you you need to cross three major highway rings to get on the other side...
Meeting all kinds of interesting people - You do meet a lot of people but most of them you ask where they come from and where are they going, how much they paid for the bus and where are they staying (of course how much are they paying for that) in a bright moment you can bitch together about particular aspects of the local culture, but that's about it.
Learning about the local culture - With the local wildlife on the other hand, although most are genuinely friendly communication is limited to bargaining about the price, desperately trying to get directions, and enjoying their confusion when I tell them I come from Bulgaria :)
The relationship thing - it is clear that you spend approximately 23 hours together (the one hour is usually free toilet time for the day ;). You have to agree on basically everything from which is the next island/city/country you are going to where you shop?, very painfully for What you shop?, which temple you go to?, do you take a taxi or the local bus after walking for 20 min? (Please lets take a taxi!) do you eat Asian or Western?, which restaurant you go to?, at which table do you sit?, do you order a salad together? and in that case, which salad? I tell you when everything is new, everything has to be renegotiated, old habits really don't help here. And the worst thing, I cannot go to Jenny and Cecilia in the morning and tell them what Peter did or did not do the day before...
But although so far we did not get any revelation about the meaning of life, the universe and everything else, we actually figured out how unimportant some things are, like job and management and that there are a thousand other ways to spend the day (the concept of weekend has almost totally vanished) than sitting in front of the computer. We realised that traveling is a lot about yourself, discovering again what you want, like, dislike, since everything you see and experience is inevitably broken through the prism of your own cultural background. And it is a lot about judgments that we are somehow always too quick to pass on people, cultures, habits that seem strange to us. It provokes the senses on many levels and leaves you standing in the middle of the road looking for the zebra crossing (which usually appears in the form of a shopping mall, sweeping you back to what you know and call civilisation, although you were always ready to criticise the mall-culture at home).
The scenery IS often breath taking and the litter just reminds you how small and fragile the Earth is. The fish you get from the fishermen is what they caught today and not what came with the plane from lake Victoria. Whatever you get you are usually served extremely quickly and with a smile. The accommodation is something you just have to get used to and there are usually more expensive options around. You do meet interesting people that you would have probably never met before and have all the time you want for long conversations. Locals can be very sweet and charming, even if they don't speak English, especially a bus load of school kids! Kids are everywhere, in restaurants, in shops, on the streets, all around you fully integrated into the social life, not some weird creatures shouting "I want ice cream" but cute little dark eyed and dark skinned faces looking curiously at you or entertaining everyone around with their games, ready to take what is theirs one day very soon when they grow up. And the best thing of all is you are doing this with the person you love!
p.s. I always had a thing for Hollywood endings
3 comments:
I can't wait to get out on the road!!!!
And though I didn't mention it in the e-mails, I miss you both!!! And remember, if you can't stand it anymore, America has pretty decent sanitation, too!! :-)
Yva says: we miss you too!!!!
cheers from Chiang Mai - the real Thailand.
baby you are not called for NOTHING Pink Lady :o)you and your hollywood endings...miss your optimism around here...the clouds in vienna got thicker and darker since you left...yeah, i know, you can call me Drama Queen ;o) have fun sweets!!!
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