Bucket List 2015

Photo: Lee Nutter

Not that I've really got any idea, but I think one aid towards both happiness and fulfillment is to never plateau—to never live off your past in a way that excuses you from investing in the present.

2014 was full of firsts. I visited Southeast Asia for the first time, had an idyllic first modeling tour in Australia [and made it to all but two of the states and internal territories], spent six months getting splinters and busting my balls to make a seven-story-playhouse-sculpture and learning a lot of new skills [and a few rough life lessons] along the way, got work remodeling houses on the side, and other things.

The year before that, I published my first writing pieces, worked as a masseuse at an upscale spa, learned to fabricate gigantic fire cannons, and climbed into a sixty-five foot bamboo tower in nothing but a hard hat and climbing harness in order to adjust heavy fuel lines, did farm work for the first time, etc.

In times of inertia or fatigue or self-doubt, it's easy for me to feel discouraged, even envious, of my past self. Like I can't live up to my former energy or willingness to take risks. Like I'd rather just watch documentaries.

Which is it's in my best interest to suck it up and keep chugging onward and upward—so that, a month, a year, five years from now, I'll have to outdo myself again. 

So! Goals for this 2015:

1. Successfully complete my East Coast Model/Bike Tour [at the very least, “successfully” means I’ll see the trip to its end, and that my body, mind, and modeling reputation will all still be intact when I do—though, of course, I’m hoping for much more]

2. Expand my modeling network:

• Not counting my East Coast trip, tour at least three US cities I’ve never been to before.
• Meet more badass traveling models. 
• Be open to planning a future tour with another model—something I’ve always been simultaneously attracted and averse to. [Can’t force it, but I want to be receptive to it.]

3. Improve my French throughout the year through daily practice [I've been good about this one so far]; move to northern France for the summer for a manor renovation project.

4. Debut modeling tour in Europe!

As for the winter and beyond…I’m not planning that far yet, but I’ve got several pipe dreams lined up that could all settle into the end of my year nicely if no other unforeseen opportunities arise:

Could do a Southern Tier road trip and model in the warmer states. Could go to Australia and New Zealand. Could teach another ski season. Could work a season in Antarctica. Could do my yoga teacher training. Could hide in South America or Southeast Asia. Could do a writing residency. Could join a yacht crew. Could very easily be enticed by something different from all of the above. Far too soon to know. 

To wax universal, if I may:

You are not your past accomplishments: prior successes do not validate your laziness, complacency, or self-coddling today. You are not your past failures: do not continually punish yourself for having tried and failed, nor even for having done wrong, provided that you did what you could to set things right and have put the lessons of your mistake into practice.

UPDATE: Continuing to go on longer rides on harder terrain and cross-train around the Bay. Soon going on my first multi-day ride; stay tuned. 8]

I'm starting to get it.

Visual proof, for you non-believers! As for my tour, picture this, but with a lot more luggage piled/strapped/jerryrigged on. And probably a lot more blood, sweat, and tears.

The appeal of cycling, I mean.

There's the obvious stuff that doesn't take being on a bike for long to work out: great exercise, not spending money on gas, reduced carbon footprint. Blah, blah, yes. That's not what I mean.

I mean the real appeal. What makes people go kind of crazy for it, and spend lots of money for it. Granted, I know there are a lot of different reasons people are drawn to the sport and my experience is not a universal one—but I've been discovering my reasons. And that the real magic of it is far more subtle.

Since it's subtle, I'll try to illustrate what I mean, rather than tell you outright.

I tried riding to the climbing gym/yoga studio instead of driving for the first time about a week ago [I've now ridden there several times since].

In that one ride, I passed homeless shanty towns in jungles of concrete underbrush and chain link overgrowth, nestled just out of view of roads and train tracks.

I saw some true feats of resourcefulness. There were sophisticated little villas made of tarps and reclaimed mattresses, with a makeshift shower system, common hangout areas, little sculpture gardens made of found junk. One residence had a decadent entrance constructed of felled trees and planks of wood that made an imposing stair set and tunnel. I saw structures that the average white collar employee, if he hit hard enough luck, would never dream up, let alone realize. As I zipped under a bridge, a group of traveling dirtbags with bikes [what I'll be soon, in other words] whooped supportively and yelled, "Get it, girl!"

I rode along a river [rampant with signs of a recent flood], through a park, passing one guy who was swaying to the sheet music he was reading, another guy baffled by his mountain of camping and cycling gear strewn over a picnic table, and an obese squirrel wrestling with an entire loaf of bread. I rode through an international airport, and behind a decadent hotel.

Then I turned on a random road because a sign was posted in front of it with my first name and an arrow, and I'm a pretty avid follower of arbitrary circumstances and coincidences [i.e., when in doubt, flip a coin]. That road led me to a bike shop, where I had some very helpful conversations, and to a good cheap dinner spot.

I got to the gym, having logged about seventeen relatively flat miles, warmed up and ready to keep moving.

The alternative, in a car, is about twenty-minutes on congested suburban main roads.

[PS: I've logged 135 cycling miles, six hours of yoga, seven hours of climbing, and a wee bit of jogging in the last four days! And somehow managed to keep mostly on top of my emails, promotion, and errands. Mostly. I'm doing stuff, I swear!]

Recent ride around a lake, which was teeming with turtles and birds, but conspicuously devoid of bipeds.

Crunch Time!

It’s begun. From now until the end of February, I can spend virtually all my time preparing for my trip. 

This sudden freedom-to-be-single-minded isn’t random; I’ve spent a year trying to get to this point. I’ve saved up and hustled skrilla over the last year to allow myself this cushion of time, and finagled the perfect situation: I’m house-sitting, so I get a comfortable private space with no rent, in a place with mild weather. There’s no WiFi, which has a silver lining in that it forces me to get out of the house to get online and makes me less likely to waste the time that I do spend online. Plus, I’m relatively close to two REI stores; several great grocery stores; and Planet Granite, my favorite climbing gym in the country, where I’ve just bought a one-month membership. All are within a seventeen-mile bike ride.

So, I’ve been getting emails pestering me for updates on what I’m doing, or interrogating me about my training methods, previous experience, packing list, etc. 

And I’m stoked on the interest [really, I am, that’s not just me being PC—the positive reception I’ve received so far was honestly pretty unexpected and has got me feeling ecstatic] but I honestly do not have time to answer all these emails [my time on the Internet’s already being spent studying the terrain and conditions of my route down to the mile, scheduling bookings, investigating camping and making arrangements with hosts, and learning about bikes from the ground up]. 

Here’s the full disclosure; hopefully it’ll satisfy everyone’s questions. 

Training

Last week and this week:

• 2+ long rides per week [increasing what “long” means each time; yesterday I did a thirty-mile ride, so my next ride will be thirty-five or forty]
• 2+ shorter rides per week done to my maximum capacity [anaerobic], ideally with a steep, sustained climb
• 2 rest days [meaning no long or hard bike rides], only bicycling for small, local commutes [i.e., errands like grocery runs or going to cafes to catch up on emails, or doing small loops around local trails and roads]
• Cross-train daily, but particularly on rest days. For cross-training, I’ve been climbing and doing yoga at PG, and doing NeilaRey.com workouts at home [a fantastic site, with something for everybody: some of the workouts are far too easy for me, but others completely demolish me].
• Incorporate weight loads in some of my rides, incrementally increasing the weight. 

Yesterday’s thirty-mile ride was my first with weight, and while I only packed ten pounds, it showed me just how crucial minimalist packing is going to be on this trip. If you ask me, riding with a loaded bike is worse than hiking with a heavy pack, and I know plenty about that: at the end of my season working for the Parks, I had to hike out our last twenty-five miles with seventy pounds on my back…and on top of that, had to drag a friend’s eighty-pound pack for the last couple miles when half our crew came down with some crazy flu. Now when I go backpacking, I’m obscenely minimal, so much so that I’d never suggest to anyone that they ought to pack as little as I do.

Some people have asked me about what computers or heart rate monitors or what have you I'm using; the answer is "none".

I've been using the free versions of Strava and Ride with GPS apps to plan/track my rides, that's all.

Research

• As of now, I’ve read most of The Complete Book of Long-Distance Cycling, and have been obsessively Googling articles and watching Youtube videos to answer my questions [and, before that, to figure out what the questions were that I should be asking, because I had no clue].
• I’ve been scouring sites like Adventure Cycling Association and East Coast Greenway and repeatedly, neurotically plugging my route into Google maps, one chunk at a time, to check miles and terrain and make modifications. Over and over. Revising and revising. I’m finally at a point where I’ve got the skeleton for my complete tour; there’s some wiggle-room and I’ll be making some changes, but I basically have my dates outlined, and it’s looking like the tour will take exactly [or close to exactly] four months from Key West, FL to Bar Harbor, ME.

Diet

Pretty simple. High protein. Aiming for about 125g a day [since I weigh between 120-125 lbs].

Otherwise, healthy/varied in general, low junk. [Though I’m a sucker for free food, and cave whenever the opportunity arises.]

Other

Since a few people have wanted to nerd out about gear, I’ll jabber on about that in a separate post.

Upcoming Agenda

• Planning a couple multi-day bike trips in February. As of now, I'm dreaming up one up the coast, and one down the coast; hopefully I'll have time to do a few more before I leave California
• Continuing cross-training 
• Continuing bookings. I don't expect to have everything finalized by the time I head out on my trip, but I want to at least be past the filtering/reference-checking/cold-calling/figuring-out-who's-actually-serious phase. [Psst: Got a serious interest in hiring me? Contact me ASAP! We don't have to schedule or confirm anything right away, but I need to get you on my list.]
• Looking into hosts and camping
• Buying the rest of the shit I need [I've got a little stack of REI vouchers for February, ka-ching!]

Hibernation

I've been perfecting the art of hiding from the clutches of the Digital Age. In this case, in a cave made of recycled Christmas trees in a snowy park in Nevada.

As of tonight, I've plopped down to set roots and get serious for a month-or-so. Sorry I've been so MIA, Internet. Actually, no. I'm not sorry. But I am acknowledging my MIA-ness to you now, nonetheless.

To those who've emailed me asking where the hell I am...I suppose I owe you some sort of an update. [Someday I'll manage to frolic off-grid for a full year, or ten, but as long as I'm still making a living largely thanks to the Internet, that day won't soon arrive].

I capriciously threw New Mexico out the window. For a few reasons. I wasn't fitting logistics together so perfectly [plus, the people I was corresponding with there were almost invariably telling me things along the lines of, "Dude, the weather we've had lately will make you vomit."] and, moreover, I was bludgeoned with a few opportunities in Nevada and California that were far too enticing to turn down [dammit, California and Nevada, you're both so clingy...you always do this to me right when I'm about to leave you for a while].

Not that I'm complaining. I mean. This is what my world has looked like for the last month:

Those are all ripped off my Instagram, but accurate and relevant.

My life has been a series of cheesy vignetted moments, in fact. Trudging through ice to a hot spring out in the desert. Sliding on hardwood floors in socks in a swank vacation rental. Eating dinner atop a cliff while surrounded by phenomenal bluegrass musicians jamming to the sunset. For crying out loud, I was woken up the other morning to a kitten chewing on my nose, in the loft I'd made a temporary nest in the previous night. That. That is my life right now.

I am extremely fucking lucky to know the amazing people I know, who are frequently luring me over with compelling opportunities, projects, odd jobs, and so on, and taking better care of me than they ought to. Even when I've been broke and on the verge of existential deterioration, I've gotten treated to some pretty fantastical adventures and learning opportunities.

So, okay. Enough hippie-jabber.

For the next month-or-so I'll be house-sitting an awesome spot in the Bay [one of the aforementioned California opportunities I decided was too good to pass up] with Alex for our last month of farting around together before our first prolonged separation in about a year [usually we make it a rule to spend ample time apart, but this last year sort of just dragged us around together], i.e., my trip.

Mild-weather bike rides, taking advantage of a one-month membership at the old climbing gym and yoga studio I used to haunt fanatically, continuing to research/plan/learn, geek out on juicing, continue studying French in preparation for what's yet to come [fingers crossed].

Far more perfect than my original plan. Sorry, New Mexico, but you can wait—winter's not your prettiest season, anyhow.

Red wine, blue cheese

From no angle am I "qualified" to write about food whatsoever.

But it's my bloggy and I'll write what I want to. 

One thing I've become passionate about lately is disseminating the idea that only wealthy "snobs" and "gourmands" can enjoy things like beer, wine, cheese, chocolate, or swanky tasting menus.

It's not practical, but practicality is sort of arbitrarily defined by what your needs and preferences are, isn't it? For some people, it's "practical" to rent an expensive apartment in order to be close to their job, and it's "practical" to buy a nice car and be forever updating one's wardrobe in order to appear presentable to superiors and peers. In order to improve the quality of their lives, these people may justify big TVs and seventy pairs of shoes, or racking up an exorbitant tab every weekend at a mediocre bar.

And that's their bag. That's fine.

Me? I'll skip the nice car and new dresses and go for some good food, booze, dessert. I'll even scrimp on my other meals for a few weeks in order to do so.

The last time I was in NYC I bought raw peanuts, carrots, and avocados from a street vendor for most of my trip, and then treated myself to an awesome steak dinner.

Every once in a while I'll buy some nice cheese and that'll be my dinner for two nights. Nice cheese never messes with my stomach the way the cheap stuff [artificially colored and containing ingredients like wood pulp] does. Cheese shops are great because you're not really restricted by price: you can generally ask for a $1-4 piece of any cheese no matter what it costs per pound. 

So, without further ado, I'm going to food-splooge on you. I am not an expert, but I am a raving fangirl.

I tried a bunch of things tonight, but these were my favorites:

Glug, glug:

2012 La Cartuja, Priorat 
70% Garnacha, 30% Cariñena
Spain

• Sweet, fresh, sort of floral nose 
• Pleasant tannins [high, but not aggressive]
• Soft, young-tasting, easy drinking [neither too astringent nor too nectary]
• Mineralic, but not as much as the label suggests

Nom, nom:

I wasn't a fan of penicillin mold until I tried St. Agur. 
Tonight, wanted to branch out to a couple new blue cheeses.

Bay Blue, Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese Co. 
California

• Whoa, I'm obsessed.
• Strong but bright and fresh; sharp but not too much of that tangy funk
• Fresh mineral cave quality, not musty but like clean rocks
• Makes me think of springtime...and of lemon cookies [there's this vague crisp sweetness, or maybe my taste buds are wonky]
• Great by itself on:
  • Dave's Killer Spelt Bread [toasted and cut into pieces]

Fourme d'Ambert l'Or des Dômes
France

• Style of cheese dates back to Roman times
• Got a slice from the end of the wheel, which is the strongest part
• Creamier, mushroomy/umami
• Buttery, buttery, buttery
• Earthy, kind of peaty
• Goes GREAT on Dave's Killer Spelt Bread with:
  • Saporina Balsamic Jelly [Malpighi], House of Balsamic, Italy [pricey, but orgasmically good, and a little goes a long, long way]

Tomorrow? Probably homemade miso and cheap produce. 

Winter is Coming

Cupertino, CA

The exhaustion this last year's imbued me with finally began petering out in late November. 

I've been working a lot—many seven-day weeks, many fourteen-hour days, many of those unpaid. I've been disillusioned—witnessed [and, occasionally, been the target of] misaimed explosions of entitlement, manipulation, and even abuse from individuals I'd formerly admired. My mind, body, sanity, and finances have all taken some gnarly blows. 

I'm not ready to dunk into those memories and convert my findings into a blog post yet, and it's possible I'll never feel inclined to do so. For now, suffice it to say that I've been learning, and relearning, and relearning.

The upsides of last spring-summer-fall have been great, too, albeit largely retrospective. I've been challenged in completely unfamiliar ways, tapped into new skills and interests, improved my communication skills, learned not suffer for my sense of "justice", and climbed out of some pretty ugly messes somehow better off than I'd been before falling into them. 

And so on. 

Suddenly, my time is open again, my lifestyle lacking any sort of built-in structure or routine—how my days are spent and how I judge whether I'm spending them well is up entirely to my own whims, values, and self-discipline. But right now I have no close deadlines and no one I'm reporting to.

It's freeing, but also dangerous, especially when I'm recovering from a year's worth of wounds, subservience, and sleep debt, all of which might conspire to render me functionally inert.

Bee-lining from Arcata to the Nevada border, I originally intended to spend about five days in Reno, then about five more in the Bay Area, give or take, to tie up loose ends and decompress in two of the places that have vied for the title "Home" on my heart's compass. I hadn't saved nearly as much money as I'd hoped to over a year of radical frugality, so I was in a hurry to get to New Mexico.

Well, that didn't exactly happen. My car decided to freak out and sit pouting in an auto-shop lot for almost two weeks in Reno. Meanwhile, I grew more attached than ever to the idiosyncrasies of one of the most underrated cities in America and of my favorite people in it. 

Of course, that's what makes it a trap. My car broke down and took two weeks [and almost two grand that I didn't have] to fix. Meanwhile, I ran around amidst desert hot springs and trees full of horned owl chicks, got treated to all-you-can-eat sushi [which, at $15-25 a head, is fresher and better than any mid-range-to-expensive sushi I've ever had in the Bay—no one ever believes this, including myself from a couple years ago, until they come to Reno and are taken to precisely the right sushi spots by a local, but it's true], had a fantastic goodbye party thrown together at the last second, which got such a good turn-out that I started feeling a bit too ooey-gooey to want to leave.

Similarly, the Bay found me entangling with all the local goings-on. Visited my family and helped them decommoditize [i.e., threw away years and years of crap accumulated in the name of nostalgia—a habit that runs in my family that I've painfully had to break out of, because a nomadic lifestyle does not support hoarding memorabilia], and further prepared for my bike trip by learning some basic repairs at home from my dad, who's a cycling enthusiast. Meanwhile I was paid in chocolate milk for late-night rescue missions; was adopted by gaggles of gregarious gay men in bars on the Castro who stole me from the friends I'd come with; went on my biggest bike ride yet, with a climb that was brutally humbling [the better to kickstart my motivation for the coming months]; ate a giant penis macaroon courtesy of Hot Cookie SF; got free front-row tickets to "Margaret", a concert by Jason Webley and a bunch of amazing musicians revolving around a scrapbook one of them had found in a dumpster; underground warehouse venues; watched nature documentaries; studied French; had unexpected and delightful run-ins with out-of-town friends. 

I have no regrets, but my leeway to decompress is narrowing fast.

Hitting the road for one more detour: Christmas in Gerlach [missed peak season, and there's no sense in trying to move or get a job on Christmas or Christmas Eve], and then beelining it to Santa Fe, now eager to buckle down and get to work after a few extra weeks of family, friends, getting my life in order, and some good old debauchery. 

It'll be later than I'd originally planned—but perhaps not later than I was really meant to arrive. Fingers crossed!

Do what scares you.

With Cam Attree at Broken Head, QLD, Australia. Thankfully there was no literal breaking of heads during my cartwheelling frolic.

Reno, NV

The idea for this bike trip first made its entrance in the loft of an industrial artists' warehouse in Melbourne. Like the rogue raindrops sogging the floor, it had probably leaked into the room through one of the broken windows. Meanwhile, Alex and I were asphyxiating ourselves in the vortex of scummy blankets we'd built as a stronghold against the cold.

Our discussion turned to things we'd never done before and wanted to do, and Alex mentioned long-distance biking, particularly from the States through South America. 

I cringed. My mind glued together a collage of disasters: being hit by a car, stranded in the middle of nowhere, assaulted, etc. I admitted that I'd be terrified about doing anything of the kind.

He laughed. "Don't you say that's usually when you should do something?"

"Yeah, but I don't know anything about bikes. I went on little bike rides with my dad when I was a kid, but it's not like I know about anything, not even specs and sizing and all that."

"Well, yeah....Exactly. You could even do it alone. I couldn't afford it."

"And I could?"

"Well, there's modeling. Bike somewhere you've always wanted to visit, with cities you've always wanted to shoot in."

"That's completely insane. A logistical nightmare, just for starters."

Mockingly: "Yeah, you're right....You won't."

Of course, once the idea infected my head, I knew I had to try. And, of course, once I had the conviction to try, Alex began battling his own fears of what might happen to me on the trip [which, after all, were similar to mine—that I might get hit by a car, or assaulted, or stranded, et al]. But he also knows what I need in order to be happy; he knows that I need a bit of self-validating chaos in order to maintain emotional stasis and well-being. That I have to show myself what I can do, in the face of my doubts.

I'm not a stranger to chasing the unfamiliar. Two days ago, we'd found our way to that chilly loft like aimless drivers in the night, headed faithfully along unfamiliar roads in spite of never seeing farther than a few feet ahead.

In fact, one reason I live the way I do is precisely because it's a release valve to the anxiety and fear I'd otherwise harbor. An inclination to skip winter for a year brought us to Southeast Asia, because we didn't have the overhead to visit our friends in New Zealand, and because the idea made me anxious in a visceral way.

Months later, we'd just begun to feel like Baan Mae Haad, a village on the tropical island of Koh Tao, was as much like home as any town we'd lived in, when a sudden whiff of dirt-cheap tickets to Australia compelled us to leave our idyllic beach-wandering existence and hop on a ferry, then on a wagon, then on a train, then spend a night fraternizing with stray cats in the station before our next train arrived after a six hour delay, haggling for a cab, sleeping at the airport, and finally boarding our flight, three days after initially leaving Koh Tao. 

On the plane we met a man who offered us a ride from the airport and dropped us off, after our repeated assurances that he'd taken us to the right place [and, even then, only after we'd agreed to take his business card just in case we wound up in a jam], in front of a dilapidated warehouse, dressed modestly in barbed wire and a broken chain-link fence, at 2:00am local time.

The upstairs loft belonged to a guy Alex had befriended in the States years ago who was off working the mines. He'd left us a "Welcome to 'Straya!" type of note that indicated a gift under the desk, which turned out to be weed and rolling papers; even though neither of us smoke, the gesture had me giddy over its adorableness. In our seven weeks home-basing in Melbourne, during which I'd take short solo trips around the east coast, I never met our host.

The morning after our arrival, we walked through a maze of industrial buildings feeling a dazed mixture of culture-shock and reverse-culture-shock after our months in Asia. It was pure warehouseland, without a residence or business within twenty blocks, and consequently it was a dead silent neighborhood [if you can call it a neighborhood] except around 3am, when teenagers would show up to loudly drift and sometimes wreck their fancy new cars without fear of interruption. Eventually we emerged onto a main road, spotted a tram stop and waddled up to it. In our pockets were Thai baht, Lao kip, Malaysian ringgit, and a few US dollars. The operator shrugged and beckoned us aboard, anyway. Without local currency, electronic devices, local contacts in town, or any idea where we were going or how we'd find our way back, we hopped on without hesitation.

We were home again.

It's how you go.

On a songtaew in Chiang Mai, Thailand

Reno, NV

The beginning of this year saw me joining the ranks of millions before me. You've heard this story before.

I disembarked at Suvarnabhumi, one of Bangkok's two international airports. I'd flown in on a one-way ticket and a single sparsely-packed backpack and no plan, bringing only the clothes I'd worn on the plane and the desiccated crumbs of expired daydreams.

Early on, I was inundated with tall tales of the cliched "life-changing personal experiences" one can replicate when they've earned money, even barely any money, within a first-world economy. These must-do's read almost like a curriculum off some deluded syllabus for the privileged-but-"conscious". As usual when confronted with surroundings completely alien to me, I felt blissed out, delirious, and expansive, which chased away my cynicism for a time.

As if Southeast Asia were merely Disneyland for spiritual capitalists and would-be anthropologists, other English-speaking travelers I met on the way would share their reviews, with a tone implying that they'd benevolently condescended to some quainter rhythm of life. 

Bright-eyed gap-year kids obsessively hewing together some sort of "rite of passage" ritual had become the new face of white imperialism. 

"Oh, it's so touching, the natives here, they have so little, and yet they give so much."

And, even more absurdly: "Yeah, we paid to go on this guided trekking tour to visit one of the indigenous hill tribes, but the experience...I don't know, it was just so inauthentic. So commercial, you know, like they just wanted our money."

My allergic reaction to these conversations quickly propelled me into an infinite spiral of self-questioning. 

Sure. I could criticize the hypocrisy of paying for an "authentic" experience, but how exempt was I, really, from similar criticisms? Was I merely making social observations, or were these people reflecting something uncomfortable in myself? Was I just like them? Was that why they annoyed me so much?

You've heard this before, too: I'd meet travelers along the way who'd had similar revelations. They'd scoff at the "tourists" [differentiated from "travelers" in their minds] who would stay at nice hotels, hire chauffeurs, and delight in how cheap prostitutes were. Meanwhile, these "travelers" would loaf around in hostels run by ex-pats from their home country, stocked with kids who were so like-minded that they could discuss worldly matters for hours without anyone's perspective being challenged, investigate the cheapest ways to get high, and consult their smartphones or guidebooks every time they needed to make a decision on where to go, what to eat, which "life-changing" experiences to pay chump change for.

Well...I'm not doing any of those things. Lonely Planet never factored into the equation for me. I'm not going on elephant rides or staying in youth hostels run by foreigners. I didn't even bring my laptop!...But now am I doing the exact same thing as these "travelers"? Creating a separation and looking down on them because my own protocols and motives are somehow more "pure"? What's the motivation behind that? First-world guilt or self-loathing? What's the point? Should I not even be here?

And so on, ad infinitum.

Here's what I did realize, though.

Southeast Asia doesn't exist for middle-class westerners who want to visit countries where they can pretend they're rich. It doesn't exist to proffer salvation for privileged millennials desperate to find enlightenment, or at least desperate to transcend their dark fate to a life of relative ease by constructing arbitrary "challenges" and adventures for themselves, all the while maintaining the safety net granted to them at birth.

It also doesn't exist as a serviceable substitute for having actual self-esteem. Criticizing the practices of "tourists" while exalting your own does not fundamentally separate you from them. Coming home and shoving your supposed worldliness in the face of your less-traveled friends, while dismissing the richness and depth of their own lives [perhaps levels of depth your own life is lacking, if you only took an honest look], does not make you worldly.

Call yourself a globetrotter, vagabond, pilgrim, or gypsy all you want, but going to another country, or twenty, does not define you. You are not where you've been, what you've seen, or even what you've been a part of. You're in the how: how you've chosen to see your experiences, how closely you've looked, and at what.

It doesn't exist for us at all. It's a place, existing in and of itself. Where people live, existing in and of themselves. They weren't put there in order to teach us lessons about consumerism or compassion or inspire us towards Eastern thought. They've got their own thoughts and their own shit to do, and none of it has to do with us [well, except for those who are using our tourism to make their living]. 

With the right attitude, this realization extends both liberated detachment and connection.

And, most importantly, I learned that none of the lessons I learned have anything to do with Southeast Asia, though going there acted as a catalyst for me. As far as the traveler-vs-tourist division is concerned, I've seen the same behavior in ski town transplants and college frats: deep down, you're not sure if you belong there, and so you haze everyone who appears to belong there even less than you do. 

But really, the questions were mine to ponder, the lessons mine to learn. Southeast Asia didn't exist for the sake of my personal development [though I couldn't have asked for a more enchanting backdrop].

Perhaps people like me don't belong in places like Lao: Westerners, perhaps wearing brand-name backpacks and wielding cameras that each cost more than a college-educated Laotian makes in a year. 

Or, perhaps, all of us are fundamentally world citizens who can belong anywhere, if we only figure out how.

The agitated silt in my head is not going to settle into answers any time soon, if it ever does, but while I'm floating in spirals I just hope I'll remember how to keep asking. 

Tamer Pursuits

Melbourne, Victoria

I've been having really good luck with airplane seating arrangements.

From Kuala Lumpur to Melbourne, Alex and I were seated next to Stephen, an energetic man of about fifty who owned a decorating company in Victoria. I'd had the audacity to ask Stephen a lot of frivolous, covetous questions about how he managed to get a brownie from the flight attendant even though they weren't on the menu; this had proven to be a good move on my part, as he was awesome, and we spent the rest of our flight rambling at each other about the cultural and political absurdities of our respective countries.

He offered us a ride--which was fantastically lucky for us, since we'd arrived at around 2:00 a.m. and were thinking our only option would be to hire a cab--then, after a rather amusing series of trivial setbacks, handed us a card saying to let him know if we wanted to get a coffee or wound up needing an alternative place to stay, and warily left us in front of a dark and unassuming warehouse facade in Coburg as per our request [and repeated assurances that, yes, we were at the right place, and yes, we knew the people who lived there].

Since then, I've gone on one other flight, from Adelaide to Melbourne [having previously taken the train from Melbourne to Adelaide--aboard which I was probably the only passenger under sixty, and wound up making a throng of very sweet and inquisitive octogenarian friends who were completely intrigued by this girl dressed in fluorescent clothes she found in Thailand, and was subsequently offered well-wishes and blown kisses and vague grandma-esque insistences that I ought to visit their town by about fifteen of them upon disembarkation], during which a flight attendant handed me a flirtatious the-seat-next-to-me-is-empty-if-you-want-to-come-take-it note from a spiffy admirer about whom I knew nothing except that he was tall, dark, and from Texas, but regrettably didn't wind up rewarding this admittedly charming gesture [sorry, bro] because by that point I was already enmeshed in a fantastic conversation with a one of the most interesting guys I've met in a while. We talked about Burning Man [a given when you both realize you've both been], travelling adventures [including his experience playing music and doing a peyote ceremony up in the foothills near a remote Mexican village, and being working with locals to open up a restaurant in Indonesia], a new wave of surreal, transcendently immersive "performance art", and so on. The one-hour flight suffered a two-hour delay; the two of us drank airplane wine and carried on, not minding a bit, and once again I was spared the necessity of transit fares and offered a ride home.

Anyway, back to that dark warehouse in Coburg.

Getting in required stepping gingerly through a hole in one fence, ducking under a hole in another, and heading up some stairs sprinkled liberally in broken glass, which had recently occupied the now-broken pane in the door of the loft we'd get to stay in. I was delighted--something about having to sneak in in the dead of night just pumped my nads.

Inside was a large bed [which, after the cheap-as-shit-but-consequently-shittily-uncomfortable three-day journey from Ko Tao, rendered me almost psychotically excited even in my exhaustion] with a cheery note from Alex's friend Tim, pointing out where we could find a clean towel and sheets hanging to dry, and that there was a particular surprise for us hidden in the room [which we found--and which I'm keeping a secret]. The room was strewn with boxing gear and an assortment of books that demonstrated [in my opinion] very good taste on part of their owner. On one wall hung a large, aquatic-patterned sheet to encourage privacy and insulation. It was perfect.

Funnily enough, that was two weeks ago, and I still haven't met this guy whose bed we're staying in.

As for the place, Reclamation Artists Warehouse is still in its infancy--mostly an empty space, though intended to become something of an industrial arts workshop/party venue [not unlike the Generator near Reno, which I also got to see--and help fix up--during its bare-bones infancy and which is now one of the coolest places in America, if you ask me].

Ever since reading Down Under I've been on a mission to overload myself with information and see how much I can manage to remember. Combine this with how expensive Melbourne is [particularly compared to Thailand], and with its saving grace of free museums, and you can easily guess where I've been spending a sizeable chunk of my free time. I visited the NGV International alone on three different days before deciding I'd had enough of looking at really old things.

Otherwise, there's nothing too crazy for me to report just yet, as I've spent much of my time here focused on freelancing and haven't been able to cut loose and go on a real adventure [outside the bounds of conventional wandering, academic tourism, gastronomical overindulgence].

There've been some good nights with new friends.

On one of our first nights we were invited out by Adrian, the first photographer I've shot with in Australia, and treated to drinks on a rooftop bar rife with some really personable, easygoing people exhibiting varying degrees of artsy-fartsiness [I went home with an illustrator's drawing of a fish that had been inspired by a face I'd made], Alex and I left with a couple of art models, for a free Cat Empire show at Federation Square, and eventually we wound up drinking wine under a bridge by the river amidst several hippie types, all seeking refuge from the sudden rain [and all being barked at by rather unimposing cops as soon as the rain cleared].

Adrian Carmody: Melbourne, VIC, Australia, 2014

Similarly, last night we successfully located what is undoubtedly the best ice cream place in Melbourne, followed by a contender for best cocktail bars I've been to in my life [which we only sought out because its name is also my Chinese name--we didn't even know it was a bar], followed by the swank apartment balcony of a lovely and hilarious Kiwi couple whom Alex had met a couple years prior in New Zealand, and who kept giving us wine and shots and making us laugh. The next day we nursed our consequent hangovers by seeking out the best pies in Melbourne.

In case you haven't gathered by now, Melbourne's full of good things to put in one's mouth.

And so on. Presently I'm not inspired to play storytime-dress-up and give some of my nights here the fully quixotic narratives they truly warrant...but I'm okay with that.

Taken by Theresa Manchester at the NGV Australia

With Theresa Manchester on some rooftop bar

Recap from the Land of Oz

Melbourne, Victoria

So, I'm in Australia now. Surprise! Will stave off going into why for now. Assuredly it's a good and happy thing, though.

I'm going to try an exercise in brevity [which is clearly not my strong suit] by summarizing the rest of my journey up using one sentence per change-of-sleeping-space [rather than change-of-place, as Koh Tao deserves more coverage seeing as how I spent weeks there], probably cheating a bit via the use of em-dashes, parenthetical clauses that've I arbitrarily refused to put in actual (parentheses) since someone told me I had to—and possibly also cheating thoroughly and unambiguously through the use of semicolons—in usual sloppy-overkill fashion.

Vang Vieng, Lao PDR >—bus—> Vientiane, Lao PDR

Everyone who claims this city is in any way particularly worth visiting is either being paid to do so or has no semblance of taste [or was lucky enough to stumble into experiences uncommonly serendipitous for the area—granted, I've got a soft spot for places like Fargo, ND for such reasons], and at any rate is likely engaging in some twisted form of anti-libel, as Lao's capital is essentially just as soulless and culture-less as any American capital city, only Asian—in the vein of Albany or Sacramento [though, again, I have reasons to visit both places, those reasons mainly being friends who can't or befuddlingly won't relocate to greener pastures]--rife with palpable tones of universal resentment and mistrust, as illustrated by guesthouses' flamboyantly paranoid policies, and an excess of devoutly ethnocentric fellow travellers who beg the question, "What are you doing so far from home?" or otherwise travellers irritatedly biding their time until the next available flight/bus/train/wheelbarrow could deliver them from this trap that their usually-handy guidebook or Google search results betrayed them into thinking was worth a stop.

Instead of putting up a photo from Vientiane [because I didn't bother taking any], here's a random back street in Luang Prabang, a place that doesn't know how to be ugly anywhere.

Vientiane, Lao PDR >—train—> Nong Khai, Thailand >—train—> Bangkok, Thailand

In a surreal homecoming that showed me just how much I'd adapted and learned in a few weeks, this same city that a month ago completely overtaxed my senses suddenly feels comfortable, laden with ass-corrodingly clean bathrooms [particularly in Terminal 21, which, despite being a mall, is definitely a place worth a poke-around if you're holed up in the city during a long break between trains], and almost ludicrous in its ease of navigation.

Bangkok, Thailand >—train—> Chumphon, Thailand >—bus—boat—> Koh Tao, Thailand

A. The Campsite

After a first night of socially-oversaturated partying, [which involved a lot of incredulous laughing and belligerence on my part: "Where ARE we? That's not really the ocean right over there—it's just a hokey backdrop. Fucking two hundredbaht for one goddamn ripoff balloonful of hippie crack?!...ehh, I'll take three,"] spent my many days high above the populated corners of the island, hanging out at a campground-slash-bar-slash-festival-ground in the making [or would-be-in-the-making if not for interpersonal politics] wandering aimlessly and endlessly around the island, snorkelling through what was likely pulverized human excrement [the better to see benign-albeit-still-intimidating sharks--a fair trade-off in my opinion], reading, examining critters [most notably giant geckos, ant lions, and whip scorpions], and having psychologically-arduous-but-not-entirely-unproductive conversations with Alex about our morphing goals and dreams and consciences and self-concepts and all that shit.

Home up on a hill. Incidentally, the girl in the photo is not me [she's a Swede named Sandra] but serves as an apt placeholder [as I own an identical-looking shirt], anyway.

B. Baan Suan Ta

Opted to get my Advanced Open Water scuba cert on the cheap and found that, in this instance, you definitely get what you pay for: i.e., an instructor who waves you off when you let him know you're almost out of air because he's too busy tinkering with his GoPro and not getting paid enough to give a fuck, then being made the butt of sexual jokes by all the other instructors on the boat who assume that just because they're speaking in Portugese or French that you can't understand mimed hanky-panky—granted, it's hard to stay grumpy after days of diving around reefs rife with schools of great barracuda, pufferfish, fluorescent parrotfish, butterfly fish, wonky-looking trigger fish, blue-spotted rays, and bioluminescent plankton at night.

C. Save Bungalows

My last, and best, leg of island life—funky and consummate and dense, but strangely wholesome—staying in an odd tile-lined basement room across from the beach in Ban Mae Haad owned by a guy who makes reusable condoms, full of chance run-ins with Europeans who instantly felt like long-time friends [and some less-relatable-but-unaffectedly-hilarious characters who seemed almost to have come into my life purely for my amusement], getting ravaged by territorial fish while snorkelling incognito-nude around a huge shipwreck, my one and only traipse around the infamous Sairee [Mae Haad wins, in my book], vignettes of absurdity [e.g., being heckled late at night by taxi drivers using three-foot traffic cones as megaphones] and kitschy reminders of home-or-somewhere [e.g., watching Kill Bill 2 projected on the wall of a cafe while scarfing after dinner waffles and getting chewed on by a beagle puppy], culminating in a last night on the beach playing ukelele, spinning poi [and taking obligatory long-exposure photos] and speaking in broken-English-turned-broken-Thai-turned-animal-noisemaking-contests with a couple enthusiastic and snarky Thais.

Koh Tao, Thailand >—boat—bus—train—taxi—plane—[an irresistible aside: found begbugs in the waiting lounge seats of Kuala Lumpur's airport, in broad daylight no less, scout's fucking honor]—plane—> Melbourne, Victoria 

Will go into more detail later, but for now: modelling, enjoying very serendipitous airplane seating arrangements, holding koalas, feeding kangaroos, opining and feeling alternately awed and indignant at free art galleries squashed into loudly modern buildings from here to Adelaide, South Australia, and back.

Proof.

Post-Euphoria Uncomfortable Truths

Vang Vieng, Lao PDR

It's now been a month since Alex and I first set off from San Francisco for Bangkok though, predictably enough, it feels like it's been ages. This morning I woke up from a vivid dream of being back in my hometown, driving my own tuk-tuk through a blizzard [though in reality my hometown rarely gets colder than 70° F] to enroll in an intensive curriculum at a Hogwarts-esque school with the most incredible bookstore I'd ever seen, where I met an awesome girl who was an equestrian stuntwoman, hitchhiker, and organic chemist and we quickly fell into an enthused conversation about traveling, self-sufficiency versus [or in conjunction with?] love...Life, the Universe, and Everything.

I woke up, completely disoriented. Why am I in a small, dark wooden box?

...Oh yeah. I'm in a bungalow. Somewhere in Asia...Lao. That's right. What the fuck.

 It's unsusprising that I'd be in such a funk. I've just gotten over about twenty-four hours of what I suppose must have been my first bout of really vicious food poisoning [though Alex and I have been sharing all our food, and he was unaffected, so who knows where I got it from]. For about eighteen hours Alex said I was barely human, just kind of a feverish, cramping zombie; in moments of coherence I suspected somewhat dramatically that I might be dying.

Anyway, in all honesty, Vang Vieng sort of creeps me out, but over the last couple days being here has led us unexpectedly to our first major revelations on this trip. Of course, our brains have been working this whole time, trying to make sense of where we are and why, and what impacts we're contributing to by being here. Being in this city has crystalized a lot of those incubating thoughts and questions.

In stark contrast with the shiny and etheral Utopia of Luang Prabang--full of happy, healthy, and educated locals, philanthropist-conservationist-entrepreneurial ex-pats, volunteer opportunities that required very little time or money from well-meaning passers-through, and so much natural and manmade beauty it almost hurt to look at [not to mention the fucking food, which I already gushed over in my last post]--Vang Vieng appears to have become a sort of wasteland since the time when most articles we've read about it were published.

Coming here, it's easy to see that this place was once an innocuous little village, set right by the river against a beautiful backdrop of sheer green cliffs, huge natural caves, but otherwise not too different from any of the other small towns in this country.

Then with the onset of tubing it sprung up a facade of debauchery and the sort of tourism that would appeal mainly to that particular class of sheltered, spoiled spring-break-gap-year kids who feel "invincible" and ever-deserving of whatever they want--a rather ugly facade considering how poor of a town it still obviously is.

Then, when enough tourists started dying of drinking-drug-or-recreational-thrill-seeking-related mishaps, a whole shitton of the bars and rides were shut down by the powers that be, leaving a sparse sprinkling of bars that had us thinking, after a handful of crazy nights in Thailand and Luang Prabang, "So...where's the supposed nightlife in town?" Going tubing and seeing about five operating bars the whole way [and tens of shut-down establishments that obviously used to be bars, slides, and rides that were shut down for being unsafe] was similarly disillusioning. And now the locals who made their living off tourism are now still having to deal with its ill effects [arguably even more ill effects than other, similar places, considering the crowd Vang Vieng seems to attract] but are hard-pressed to find nearly as much business. While a few ex-pat bars thrive each night, the adjacent locally-staffed bars are pathetically vacant, even the ones offering free drinks for ladies before 10pm and other such no-strings specials.

It feels like a dwindling amusement park I visited as a kid, with floundering business due to a few freak accidents [and the resulting bad press, shut-downs, and lawsuits], now devoid of families or young things and primarily full of sheisty thirty-year-old trashbags who'd wander aimlessly and hit on eleven year old girls [such as myself, at the time]. Or, as Alex put it, "it feels like Burning Man on Monday, after the temple's burned down...all the theme camps are still up, or partially up, but almost everyone's left."

Before I pontificate any more, I might as well back-track to the route we took to our present dis-ease.

Disneyworld Veneer

The bus ride into town was a charming but strange look at the countryside which brought back the feelings I had on our last, much longer, much more uncomfortable ride into Luang Prabang. Natural beauty, lots of domesticated animals and savagely happy kids running around and waving, but weird icons of darkness: on a food stand at one of our stops was a water jug full of clear liquid and several dismembered bear paws, with a tap at the bottom [what could that possibly be for?], and every so often we'd see older people broken to the point of deformation or paralysis due to working every day of their lives, walking around on their arms, their atrophied legs shriveled up into their bodies, or hunchbacked to the point of being folded entirely over, looking jaded [possibly doped up on opium, which islegal for older citizens, broken by a lifetime of work, to smoke in order to ease their pain]. Even the knowledge that the gorgeous, perfectly-preserved mountainous countryside all around us was probably in such pristine condition largely due to the fact that the undeveloped parts of the country are literal minefields made its beauty feel a bit sinister.

Upon arriving, our first few couple days consisted mainly of vignettes of "paradise" that effectively distracted us from our deep-down feelings that there was something wrong with this place [and made us reluctant to admit these feelings to ourselves and one another].

We arrived, and almost instantly found a lovely bungalow, much nicer and more accommodating than any room we'd stayed in so far, for half the price we'd been paying anywhere else.

On our first night, we ran into about eight different people we'd seen before previously on our travels, and an unintelligibly drunk Londoner insisted upon buying us tequila shots before we slithered on our way. Several bars hand out free drink vouchers and have free Ladies Night specials every night where I can just walk in, order a mixer, and walk back out, and several bars will proffer free shots oflao lao if you ask. However, what little nightlife there was along the main drag seemed pretty fucking trashy and sad and full of overdrunk douchetools, so we'd mainly just go hang out back at our guest house, which was complete with a garden hammock hang-out spot where we had several nights of long conversations with other passers-through from New Zealand, Germany, England, and an unlikely eighteen-year-old Sacramento stoner who worked for two years in order to leave the country for the first time and travel solo around the world for a year and a half [or longer, depending on the work he could find abroad].

The next day, we walked right through a massive herd of cows and a couple miles out of town into rice paddies and virtually empty countryside, scrambled up Pha Poak [small but rather steep, with no clear route except for some jenky-ass wooden ladders--we only saw one other tourist headed up on our way down, and he looked like he was halfway dead from exhaustion] for an incredible view of the town, the fields, small villages on the other side, and the towering cliffs nearby.

A mile or so more of walking through lush jungley forest past water buffalo took us to Lusi Cave, the largest and prettiest natural cave I've been in so far, which has a lagoon you can swim in in the pitch-dark about an hour's walk in from the entrance [though it's currently dried up, so we didn't wander in that far].

Several dogs roam about freely [as they seem to all around Thailand and Lao], but here they seem especially friendly despite having no obvious owners. A group of four puppies followed a few Germans back to our guesthouse and wound up frolicking around the garden all night. On one evening we encountered a random, unsupervised cage with two monkeys on the street; the smaller of the two made grabs at my fingers and skirt [eventually he nabbed a bit of my hair, examined it, and put it in his mouth before getting bored of it and tossing it aside] and we couldn't quite figure out why they were in there, nor how we felt about it--amused but sympathetic and a bit disgusted.

Of all days to bring our camera with us, our first couple here easily would've yielded better photos than any we've taken so far...but we decided not to bother, and figured we'd rather just remain present, as we've done throughout most of our stay in Lao. Something about lugging around and pulling out a camera here feels kind of cheap.

Then we decided to go tubing, since that's sort of the obligatory "thing to do in Vang Vieng", which is where we really started noticing how much of a wasteland this place seems to have become. We made a point to head out early enough so that it wouldn't be too crowded...on the contrary, almost no one else was around. About five bars were in operation [with fit Lao boys throwing ropes out to fish for tubers, which we'd then grab in order to be pulled into shore--a procedure I found hilarious], several abandoned buildings nearby indicated where other bars once were, and several ladders and ropes indicated rides or jumps that had been shut down as safety hazards. The river was so slow that we spent most of the time paddling ourselves in order to move at all, and despite getting started before noon, we struggled to make it back by the 6p.m. deadline in order to avoid a fee from the tube rental shop. Additionally, it suddenly became freezing fucking cold [granted, the river being cold, slow, and deserted may have had more to do with the time of year--despite this being high season].

The one more-than-redeeming highlight of the day [the highlight of being in Vang Vieng, in general] was when we stopped over at one deserted bar and wandered further back when we saw a steep set of stairs and ladders leading up a cliff to a platform about a hundred or so feet up. We walked past a see-saw [which we were terrible at, since I'm half Alex's size], a bunch of tame baby bunnies that didn't seem to mind being pet, and several domesticated birds [geese, ducks, turkeys, chickens, huge tanks of hatchlings...and one of the weirdest, ugliest birds I've ever seen in my life, which I could only describe as a Durkey], clambered up the ladders and stairs to the platform, which yielded an incredible view, and then noticed a small cave entrance that would've been all too easy to miss. We clambered in and it was gorgeous, with natural bridges we could clamber across and a lower pit we could get to down a ladder, sunlight filtering through in such a way, illuminating shimmering mineral deposits and lush green mosses, that it looked like a fucking Dwarf Palace.

Looking Backstage

After a few hours of paddling our arms frantically through frigid stillwater and increasing winds so as to make it back by 6 p.m. we realized aloud: there's nothing to do here except the standard "adventure tour" drag [mainly treks, or trips up to caves, most of which charge an entrance fee and some of which, that we'd previously read could be explored alone, require going with a guide--probably after enough tourists fucked up and died, as the trend here seems to be] or get wasted, and neither of those things aren't all that worth the trip compared to other places where they're better. The town at least isn't so much a real place where one can justbe, relax, learn about, and appreciate; it's a broken-down Adventuretime facade. The natural geography here is really magnificent [which is probably how all the tourism cropped up here in the first place] but it's being exploited for cheap thrills.

We walked back home where we were intending to just get changed out of our wet clothes before heading out into the night, but both inadvertently passed out, exhausted. A few hours later I woke up at the onset of a fever, severe cramps, and delirium. Yay, food poisoning [or whatever].

A little over twenty-four hours later, as I was lying still and becoming a human again, Alex began a monologue that I've transcribed below. A bit later, when I felt well enough to speak fluently, turned into an extended conversation we've been ironing out ever since.

You know, when we first got here I just thought, 'Wow, this place is so much more wild and 'authentic' and rugged, I'm really enjoying this, blah, blah, blah.' But after a while, after the egocentric thoughts kind of dwindled, I'm realizing what I really think of this place.

We got here, hating on Thailand's full moon parties and easy access and shit, but now I feel like...that's kind of where we belong. On some developed island, drinking cocktails rather than trying to fool ourselves into thinking we're doing something more "dignified" and "earnest".

At least in Vang Vieng, the locals look at us with this ugly mixture of hope, bitterness. Especially some of the older ladies here who've obviously worked hard their entire lives, too old now to figure out a way to adapt to our presence here. We walk by, I'll smile and offer a 'sa-bai-dee,' and they'll just stare with this...indifference. But not just a fly-by not-noticing, but more a profound, conscious dismissal.

Even those who benefit, the tuk-tuk drivers and the vendors who smile and call out next to all the competing stands next to them that look exactly the same, beseeching us, "Please give us your money, you have so much of it and we need it," are basically bottom-feeders--here they're too desperate to brush off the tourists who decide to be assholes, or who insist on haggling harder than is fair, when it's inappropriate. They're not prospering off tourism. Here they still kiss all our asses no matter what bullshit we put them through or how dehumanizing we are...they may be benefiting more, but they still seem like slaves, just 'house niggas'.

Other tourists have been making me mad, and embarrassed, even for small transgressions. Ignorant jokes. Making cracks about hooking up with the prettier local women, like that's all they exist for. Getting angry when an impoverished Laotian--who might be illiterate in their native language--doesn't speak English, French, or whatever. Cultural insensitivity--even with signs in English asking them politely to wear shirts while they're in town. Throwing their cigarette butts and trash in beautiful places just because they're above keeping the place nice. Getting indignant when the cheap-ass comercial tour they paid for--that might cost the equivalent of a Lao person's wages in two months of working seven-day weeks--isn't "authentic" enough, or when everyone seems to be "trying to sell them things". Feeling entitled to 'local prices' and then not even realizing when they're already being offered those 'local prices'.

It's all pandered to them, too. Like the narco-tourism. It wasn't shut down because it was harming the locals...it was shut down when enough tourists died that it was making people hesitant to visit.

This facade's been created. Other tourists here are so detached. We were detached, too, when we first got here. No one comes to Vang Vieng to learn about the history or culture of this place. What history or culture? All you can see here are the detrimental effects of a failing tourist industry on a small third-world town that had the misfortune of being located in a beautiful place. And we were originally going to look into volunteering here...but volunteering around this town is SO much more expensive than being a tourist, even a somewhat extravagant one. 

And here we are, falling asleep in this cozy tourist bungalow designed to look like the real thing while actually being much more comfortable, in a country built on fields of opium poppies, land mines, skeletons of war, and a nebulous government that everyone's too scared to even talk about.

We're invincible, coming here with our money, even if we're middle-class back home. Even across the world, if we get sick or get hurt, we'll be taken care of. For a pittance we can get private rooms, clean water, showers, and stuff ourselves with food. 

People come here and pay to ride abused elephants or dehumanize and gawk at the hilltribes, who are some of the last strongholds of cultural isolation in a globalizing world. Then they complain that it's not "authentic". You don't need to hire a guide and go take photos of them to realize what's happening or to sympathize with them for being exploited and rendered as impoverished by outside forces. Even though we're not participating in those things, to a lesser degree, we're not exempt from that either. Even with less money than most people bring here, even by making an effort to learn and do no harm, we're still living it up, we've still got nice backpacks, and are still monetary miles above the standard here. I think it's important to understand this.

If you want an "authentic" experience, fucking go home and buy a sandwich at Subway. For the people here, it's just life, and it's harder than just about anyone comes with would ever want to subject themselves to--or would know how to handle. Some of the volunteering costs so much money because even the well-intentioned people who come to volunteer don't have the grit to do it without some of their first-world creature comforts, and don't have the skills to actually be all that useful. They come with philanthropic ideals molded more around their egos than around a true ability or willingness to be helpful. 

Now I remember why I do this: to try and make a bit more sense of what's happening in the world. It'd be delusional to think I could get some simple, clean, final answer--that'd be impossible without knowing the history, goings-on, secrets, and interactions within and between everywhere in the world, which in itself is impossible knowledge.

But we just come into the world--poof!--as another consciousness. Here we are. Why? Why do I have what I have? What does someone over there have? What's going on? Over here, over there? Are we all puppets, is there Free Will, is it beneficial to think there is even if there isn't, blah, blah, blah...?

And I don't know what to do, what I can or should do--if I should do anything. But I can travel, and learn. I don't know what else to spend a lifetime doing. Or at least this part of my lifetime, while I might have so much time and still know so damn little. 

He voiced my own solidifying thoughts and feelings at least as well as I could have, so there they are.

And, duh. Luang Prabang and the major hubs of Thailand we've visited so far are, of course, also touristy as fuck--but there seems to be more of a symbiosis there between the locals and tourists. It doesn't seem so toxic.

In most places we've been there's some semblance of mutual respect and appreciation, and even a lot of social crossover--we spent a good portion of a night in Luang Prabang playing music on the street with some Laotians, one of whom unwittingly led me to my gnarliest hangover ever when he kept offering me shots oflao lao and ignoring my laughing pleas of, "No more!" Similarly, the nightlife and partying and narco-tourism is rampant there, but it doesn't feel dark or thoughtless, rife with stories of overdose or exploitation--it feels more like what partying should be.

And Thailand, while overrun with a different sort of ex-pat [i.e., perverted old men with young Thai girls, or people who just wanted to retire somewhere cheap, irrespective of where it was] and some other unpleasant variables, seems less tainted in that it decidedly isn't a third-world country the way Lao is, the people there aren't so desperate and taken for granted by entitled tourists flaunting their wealth here in a third-world country by wearing impractically decadent designer clothes, trying to haggle for set-price wet market items for the sake of saving an extra twenty-five cents because they're fucking idiots and don't know better and mistakenly think that no items are above haggling or that everything is dishonestly priced, knowing that sooner or later one of the reluctant food merchants will relent because, after all, beggars can't be choosers. In Thailand, when someone tries to do that, the vendors just laugh them off, and rightly so.

I didn't feel dirty for being in most of the places we've been so far [though coming to terms with "being a tourist", not deluding myself into thinking I could be something more dignified by trying to "avoid the tourist stuff" or "rough it" more, and embracing my role as an inescapable fact took me a second], whereas coming here has wrought us with an uncomfortable sort of guilt...a feeling that we really don'tbelong here, that our presence is doing a lot more harm than good.

Anyway. Time will tell what we might actually do with our evolving thoughts and attitudes, but for now we're still learning, trying to stay humble, to "see with eyes unclouded" and not delude ourselves into thinking we're "above" all the bullshit...while also not being too hard on ourselves.

For now, I'm excited to get the fuck out of here tomorrow: the general plan is Vientiene, hop over the border to Nong Khai, then on to Southern Thailand via Bangkok in order to visit a few people and get scuba certs.

Of course, as usual we've been playing by ear a lot and our "plans" have been changing every two days or so, so fuck if I know whether that's actually what we'll end up doing [or, if so, how long it'll end up taking us--two weeks or six].

One side effect of all the Bangkok protests we've just found out about that's proved very serendipitous for us is that Americans entering Thailand by land can now stay visa-free for thirty days. A week or two ago, it was fourteen days--we would've had to fly in in order to stay the full thirty for free, so we'd resigned ourselves to hunting for as cheap a flight as possible from Vientiene into Bangkok and skipping Nong Khai, which would've been a shame since it's right there from Vientiene and was recommended by a "credible stranger" who didn't really tell us anything about it except that we should go there. I tend to prefer following random and vague suggestions than well-defended ones, which is probably why we didn't bother going to Pai when we were in the neighborhood-ish--too much hype from too many backpackers either yammering about how amazing it was, or about how overrated and overrun it was.

More Schoolgirl Rambling

Luang Prabang, Lao PDR

Baby chicks and goats. Bamboo scaffolding. Happy kids eating shit on bikes. Women gathering river weed from the Khan and Mekong to sell at the market. Leaves bigger than I am. Families cooking their dinner in quiet back alleys. A dissolving of status and borders impossible to find in Thailand.

Leaving this place tomorrow morning. Our guts today said, "Move", and so we must obey.

I'm sad to leave. This place is more magical than I could ever bother trying to convey in words or photographs. The best, most ridiculous, most enriching experiences are—as usual, when life's at its best—the ones I can't even begin to write about, that'll have to be on reserve only for my closest friends, and only in person in the right setting: over a beer or a long drive or food on a subdued night in.

So...I'll talk about the food.

Gastronomical Nirvana

The food. Holy shit. Here, you can experience some of the best and most interesting fine dining for the same price you'd spend on a meal at In'N'Out at home.

For one thing, there's Tamarind, our favorite restaurant [definitely here, and possibly everywhere].

We got dinner there, seated outside, right over the Khan River. Friendly waitstaff excitedly explained all the food to us. Water was served in glass bottles to reduce waste [there is a lot of plastic waste from packaging all over the place here--especially since everyone buys bottled water] and drinks came with bamboo straws that could be washed and reused.

Anyway, we'd gotten a fixed-price meal, which had included:

• Chilean wine and a ginger/lemongrass drink
• A soup with bamboo shoots, pumpkin, mushroom, basil, green onion, aubergines...
• A platter of dishes including local river weed [my new favorite thing], tomato dip, eggplant dip, chili and buffalo skin dip, the best pork sausage I've ever had, buffalo jerky and, of course, a thing of khao niaw [sticky rice]
• Chicken wrapped in lemongrass, local Mekong fish grilled in a banana leaf, served with a tart/herby peanut sauce
• Stir-fried pumpkin with onions, spices, and mint
• Purple sticky rice with coconut meat, amazing Lao cookies that sort of taste like a cross between rice crackers and french toast [colloquially known by Laotians as "cat poo" because that's what they look like], and sweet/sour tamarind sauce
• Local coffee with condensed milk and ground tamarind seed, and smoked green tea

ALL of that...for two people...for a TOTAL of about $30. [Also, it was some of the best food we've had, ever.]

We went back for the "Adventurous Lao" set menu, which you have to book a day in advance and put down a deposit for [because they shop for ingredients at the local market, just for you, that same morning, based on your preferences, allergies, and "how adventurous" you are, and then create a custom menu for your dinner]. They warned us that sometimes the menu might contain bat, or pig blood, or whatever--it all depended on the morning markets. We told them to go nuts.

This was our dinner:

• Bael fruit cinnamon drink and tamarind cooler
• Platter of eleven dishes: sour unripened red plum mash, barbequed plum with chili, rice powder with ginger and sugar, pig skin pork crackers, steamed local bitter greens and mushrooms in herbs and fermented fish sauce, oyster mushrooms in coconut milk, barbecued water bugs with chile [the bug dishes actually wound up being among my favorites, and this one was really fucking spicy], pumpkin leaves, baby jackfruit with long beans, grilled and seasoned river leaves at the banks [this was one of the only things I had trouble with—it tasted more like mud than food], river weed paste with chilis [one of the strangest textures of any food I've had—almost like pudding, but a lot slimier...basically, it's fresh green sludge from the bottom of the river].
• Platter of ten more dishes: fermented fish sauce with chili/lemongrass/eggplant/bamboo [this was the only thing we couldn't stomach], fresh river weed powder with garlic, raw baby ant eggs with herbs [sort of like spicy ceviche?], bamboo worms fried in garlic and kaffir lime, snails with oyster sauce, buffalo and pork meatball, pickled raw fish, a sweet dried pork thing I recognized as one of my favorite Chinese foods when I was a kid [called ro sung in Chinese], barbecued pig brains, pickled raw pork in a banana leaf.
• Grilled pork stuffed in zucchini flowers, and two soups: sour local fish tomato soup [where you ate the whole fish--bones, head, and all], spicy frog soup with chunks of pepper wood [you'd chew the wood without eating it to get the pepper flavor, and the thing basically contained a whole frog, skin and all, in frog broth].
• Six desserts: more purple sticky rice with coconut, more cat poo cookies, these incredible sesame/palm sugar/peanut wedges, pumpkin custard, grilled rice powder and coconut sugar things, and sticky rice banana balls.
• Also, they gave us shots of their own honey lime lao lao, on the house.

We couldn't even come close to finishing, though we tried [minus the fermented fish sauce, everything was actually good as well as interesting]. For BOTH of us, the meal ran $32 total. A custom fucking meal.

Anyway. We'd be there tonight, but they're closed on Sundays.

As is Saffron Cafe on the Mekong side of town, also worth a mention, and also a place we'd be today if it were open: easily some of the best coffee I've ever had. I'm not really into mochas but their Luang Prabang Malt Mocha 

The founder, David, an American ex-pat, worked out a deal with some of the local hilltribes who'd been reduced to slash-and-burn agriculture [which is both highly inefficient for those practicing it, and detrimental and unsustainable for the land upon which it's practiced] after their former livelihoods of opium production became outlawed. Since then, the hilltribes have become extremely impoverished [not to mention that they're made a spectacle of by "treks" to their villages so that tourists can photograph them and basically act like they're at a human zoo]. These hilltribes live in areas ideal for coffee production, so basically, David gives them coffee trees, which they cultivate and hand-harvest, and then he buys the beans back from them. The resulting coffee is fantastic. 

The street food here is noteworthy, too. Surprising, delicious...and healthy [the only possible criticism I could make against Thai street food is that it left me feeling sick after chronic indulgence]. For instance, today I got a tomato and lemon shake. Gross as it sounds, it was fucking incredible. Lao style sandwiches on baguettes have also become a favorite thing--they're big enough to split between two people, fucking delicious, healthy, and round out at about 10,000 kip [$1.25].

Some of the street vendors are hilarious. The other night, a lady who sold us some noodles kept offering us sips of Beerlao [even before we'd agreed to buy anything] then cleared a space for us to sit down on a foam mat behind her booth. A lot of others make sassy jokes at our expense rather than brownnosing. It feels much less classist here, much more laid back.

Also, the best donuts I've ever had. And they're not at the famous French bakeries in town [we've tried them there, too]—they're on the street, for a fraction of the price. 

Huuurrg.