Quarter Year

I’ve gotten a great sleep every night.

We fall asleep gently and wake slowly as the sun rises. We keep our blinds open so we get as much early light as possible. Early morning is rad, I’d always wanted to be in the habit of waking earlier, but fuck alarm clocks. Now we wake up around 6 or 6:30, without an alarm, totally refreshed. The morning is no longer pinched between sleep and work, it’s now a lazy couple hours that I can read or meditate or talk with Azure or satisfy my internet addiction, ordering too many books on Amazon before I’ve even earned the money to pay for them.

My internet addiction frustrates me, and this is a good way to hobble it. TV, the internet and phones (especially as they’re used now) separate people from presence, almost always unnecessarily, so I’m glad to be rid of them for the night. In fact, I’d dramatically smash my phone with a wine bottle, shirtless in the rain, at night, by candlelight, with long hair, if my clients didn’t need it (the phone) to contact me, but that’s another story.

Do we cheat? Occasionally, but don’t worry, we feel really guilty about it.
What does this have to do with travel? Deprogramming.

What we get from the new rhythm:
- Blog content.
- Better sleep.
- More quiet, focused time.
- Early mornings.
- A sense of superiority.
- A predictable nightly rhythm.

The negatives of not using electricity at night:
- We miss out on media-based cultural narratives (news, Lost, internet memes, the Mariners)… which isn’t itself so much a loss as the fact that these narratives connect people.
- Internet withdrawl.
- We aren’t physically able to stay up late with friends, though they seem to be falling asleep earlier too, because they’re old now.
- Sometimes it’s hard to cook by candlelight.

1 – Use no electricity after sundown.
We found that we adjusted quickly to the rhythm of the day when we used candles for our light. The only exception we really made was when we had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, as it’s kinda important to see what you’re peeing on. (It’s hard for me to enjoy the day’s rhythm when I see how sad it makes Azure to clean up my pee.) We’d also make an exception if we cooked on an electric stove.

No electricity means no phone, no computer, no tv, no recorded music, no light bulbs. Let the night close your eyes, let the sun open them.

2 – Stop paying attention to the news.
The primary function of the news is to reinforce cultural myths, one of which is that we have something to fear. The news is a distraction from what’s real. It is an unnecessary injection of fear and mistrust into lives that are – in reality – pretty darn peaceful almost all of the time. Have you noticed how peaceful your life is? Any news worth knowing will come from another person’s mouth. Forget the news, except maybe tomorrow’s weather.

3 – Decide what you’re going to eat tomorrow night based on what you have today.
Look in your garden and build your meal around the ripe veggies that are begging to be eaten. Use tonight’s leftovers (and trimmings) as tomorrow’s flavor. Take out of the freezer what you’ve been saving and give it 24 hours to think about what it can become. Make a slow meal your day-long theme, and include your loved ones in its preparation.

(OK, since everyone is going to ask, that last picture is “Cassoulet,” a traditional dish in southwest France, as prepared by Didier. Duck meat is salted all night, then the next morning it’s cooked in its own fat. In the mean time they’re cooking white beans with carrots, onions, sage, laurel, sausage, bacon and sea salt. Then serve with brown rice and place the duck on top. Voila!)

Lesson learned: NEVER ASK SOMEONE FOR PERMISSION TO TAKE THEIR PHOTO. Mike’s tips to becoming a travel photographer, rule #1. Expect an e-book.

So… were you a sailor?

He was particularly proud of a tattoo of a ship, so I snapped away at that one. I tried to ask if he was a sailor by doing a wavy thing with my arm (indicating the sea) but he didn’t understand.

Miming didn’t do much good in Bangkok – our cultures are just too different for a lot of those things to work. For example, what sound do you make to get a cat to come to you? Some ladies with that particular dilemma baited the cat with a falsetto “mamamamama.”

Anyway, after I took the pictures I turned the camera around to show him the result and he seemed genuinely disinterested. And we parted ways.

Both the days I was at this Wat he was sitting there on the platform, smoking. I don’t know if he fell on hard times and took refuge there, if he was a worker, just a friend of someone or what. It seemed that his platform was set up for sleeping, but why hang out in a temple without joining in the fun?

In a place where you speak NONE of the language this is about as deep as the interactions go, and it can be frustrating. I’m left guessing their story and they’re confused by my miming.

“Wait – do that wavy arm thing again.”

I hailed a cab to the train station and we immediately hit gridlock and it looked like I’d miss the train. Instead of stressing about it, I resigned myself to waiting in the station foyer for the next departure – I regretted having taken such a long walk up the side streets in the morning. But surprise! we got to the station in plenty of time. The best approach to the ordeal would have been harboring neither expectation nor regret, but just sitting in the cab watching.

On the train a young man sat across from me and stared out the window – his feet were very dirty, his hair hadn’t been cleaned in a long time, and he was unhealthily thin. He had a damaged blue backpack that was very simple, and through a tear a checkered blanket poked out. He was one of the city’s very poor. He looked at me and we smiled at each other. I realized that if I had chosen to be stoic, you know, to show I wasn’t taking their culture for granted, I would have robbed us both of a nice fleeting moment.

A man selling boiled peanuts walked by and I indicated I wanted a bag. He quoted me 20 Baht (60 cents) and a fellow seller threw him a look. I paid it, but I knew the price should have been 5 Baht. In years past I would have been upset getting cheated like that – “it’s the principle of the thing!” – but not so much anymore. First of all, I kinda consider it equalizing the monetary imbalance between our world and their world, like a tax on those who have won the birth place lottery. Second, I need to separate my money from my pride anyway. Finally, that guy is not intending to cause me any personal harm. He’s only trying to make his situation better in a way that’s relatively painless to me. I should be glad it’s so easy to help. (Of course it might be a different story if it ever happens in Norway.)

I was still thinking about the quality of smiling at the very poor young man across from me, and I decided I should start searching for things to smile about more often, which is very unnatural for me. So the train passed a bird sitting on the nose of a cow, and I pushed out a smile. There was a row of abandoned railway cars that had been turned into consecutive rooms of a person’s home (kitchen in one car, living area in another, bedroom in another), and I smiled.

When I got to Petchburi I looked for people to smile at. There was an old lady who stared at me as I picked my way down the street, and when I got to her I threw a big smile and her face exploded into a smile itself, the wrinkled map of her face being dramatically redrawn. It’s so different than mutual stoicism! So I tried it with everyone I passed, and it was a really nice way to walk through town.

I used to think that smiling at strangers was the last thing a person did before getting sucker-punched outside a bar, but now I’m reconsidering.

When reading the comments on various websites (like The Seattle Times, for example) I wish everyone who was about to post would take a second to ask themselves the following question: “What am I trying to make other people feel?” Many of them try to make other people feel bad intentionally, whether through direct insult, sarcasm or a subtle slight. If they asked themselves that question, hopefully they might pull back the comment and cleanse it of venom.

Point is that the flip side of that whole “What am I trying to make people feel?” thing would be the command, “Find something to smile about.”

God this sounds vacuous.

His office was in his apartment. He had no receptionist, no assistants, just a chair and his tools in a room adjacent to the kitchen. I hadn’t asked how much it would cost, so as he worked on me I worried that I’d get ripped off.

When he finished, about 30 minutes later, he asked for “50 francs and a pint of Guinness.” That calculates to about seven dollars and a pint of Guinness. A few weeks later he came into the bar and I gave him his drink as the second half of my payment.

General badness of the body area, India 2004
For $2 the local doctor saw me right away and, after consulting, told me I should go to the private hospital. I went to the hospital and checked in with dehydration & a fever. They were going to inject me with a fever reducer, but then noticed that I was sweating. They asked if I’d taken paracetamol, and I had. That’s what they had in the syringe.

To treat the dehydration they were going to put me on an IV and rehydrate me right into the arm, but not wanting to be injected in India, I asked if there was another option. They said I could get some electrolyte packets and mix with water (Gatorade, essentially). They didn’t ask me to pay since they ended up not treating me (in the US the price of a consultation like this is enough to dissuade someone from seeking treatment).

Here in the US, when we go to the doctor we want SOME kind of evidence that we’re being heard & treated, so they’ll prescribe us some pills. Apparently in India their preferred consolation is an injection – that’s why they were going to give me two injections of treatments I could take orally.

Ear infection, France 2005
I waited in the doctor’s office in Chateau Neuf de Pape for about 2 hours before finally being seen as a drop-in. The doctor spoke to me in English even though I tried to speak in French – he wanted to make me more comfortable. He prescribed me a $10 course of antibiotics and charged me $10 for the visit. Cured like pork.

Broken teeth, Thailand 2006
It’s a crazy story, but the long & short of it is that I chipped a tooth (the picture above) and the dentist saw me the same day. I had the tooth fixed and three cavities filled, then a teeth cleaning. It was around $30. The side-note to this story is that, once again, I didn’t want to get an injection, so I underwent all this tooth fixing without any Novocain, only Azure’s hand to squeeze.

Fake rabies, Thailand 2006
Azure thought she might have rabies because a friendly dog licked her on the elbow, so we went to this stunningly beautiful hospital in Bangkok. It looked like what I imagine a 5-star hotel looks like. After an hour wait (again as drop-ins) we were taken back to a specialist for this type of fake disease. She was a great doctor – understanding and patient. Azure would be ok and we payed $15 for the peace of mind.

To me, a successful trip means _____.
(visiting museums, relaxing, talking to a lot of people, getting drunk and sleeping on benches, renting an apartment, getting a job, finding a spouse, I’m not sure yet).

Travel Partner

Is there anything else you would include, five loyal readers?

1) Travel slowly. Sacrifice geographic breadth for social depth — the world is unmanageably enormous as it is, so you couldn’t possibly spend quality time every place that deserves it. It’s better to spend quality time in the places that excite you at the moment and to remember that you can always go back to a town you might pass this time around.

Traveling from place to place is the best way to waste your precious time. We like to make a base and explore out from there, like tracing a flower – stay in one spot then make day-trip loops in each direction, or just stay in town for the afternoon. Come back to the same bed as many nights as possible.

2) Get off the beaten path. Get away from people who work in the tourist industry. Every time we leave the backpackers’ circuit we wonder why we were on it in the first place. (That is, unless you’re a single college student. In that case you should go flirt with all the other youths.)

3) Learn the language of the place you’re visiting. Know at least the following: I, you, please, thank you, need, want, searching for, 1-10, how much is it, where is…. These are the absolute basics for day-to-day stuff, but the better you know the language the more rewarding your experience will be. If you’re going to one country (or linguistic region), make language a priority. With all the great websites out on the internet, there’s no excuse.

4) Make learning a central theme in your activities. Otherwise you’re just a tourist.

5) Pack light. No, even lighter. You don’t need that many shirts. Things are an extension of home and the more crutches you bring from home the less exposed you will be.

6) Give yourself a purpose. Even if it’s as simple as keeping a blog or learning to surf, it will give you direction and a reason to interact. When Azure decided we needed to learn to make brocciu, we immediately came in contact with a community of interesting characters. Get involved in something – a social group or a job or hobby. Find something that excites you and start asking questions. Be curious, be brash.