Friday, July 29, 2005
Thailand (Bangkok): Off to Laos
Just a brief note to let folks know that I am catching the train out of Bankgok later tonight and heading north to Udon Thani (where my parents used to live before I was born) and then onwards to Nong Kai to make the border crossing over to Laos. Hope all is well with all of you out there reading. Will post again next time I'm able to find a place to connect.
Thursday, July 21, 2005
Thailand: Farang Pricing
In Thai, the word farang is something equivalent to the word gaijin in Japanese. Gaijin literally means "person from outside" while farang I believe originally was meant to refer to the French. In any case, both words, despite their literal meaning, are generally used to refer to Westerners...more specifically, caucasian Westerners, preferably with blonde hair and blue eyes.
Here in Krabi, I am finding that if I don't walk around carrying my camera or backpack and keep my mouth shut, I can 'pass' to some degree (people are darker here, there is a lot of mixing with ethnic Malays here and I guess folks in general are used to mixed folks comprising part of their population). People will speak to me in Thai and be puzzled for a few moments when they don't get a response from me...until of course, I open my mouth and say, "Beg pardon?"
Why try to pass? Well, here in tourist-flooded Krabi, the dual pricing system Ed and I ran into back at Lumpinee seems to be in full effect pretty much everywhere one goes...from internet cafes to restaurants to you name it. The assumption here is that if you are farang, you are loaded, and most people seem to see it as only natural that they charge us Westerners more.
Running into this initially caused me a great deal of irritation. This was before traveling to Ko Phi Phi. It seemed like everyone was out to gouge us for as much as they could...and indeed, many were. But on Ko Phi Phi, things were different.
In most of Thailand, I am of the understanding that good-natured bargaining is the norm, but Phi Phi was no place for bargaining. The prices were obviously inflated, but there was a reason for it that was understood by all - no guile was at work: People were struggling with what little they had to pick-up the pieces and get back on their feet. What kind of a person tries to haggle for a discount with someone who is operating a makeshift stall out of a gutted building? I noticed the locals charging lower prices to other locals and in restaurants providing larger portions to their fellow citizens, but realized that was just people looking out for their own. I also noticed that when people recognized me as a volunteer there to help out with the clean-up, they did what they could to extend that generosity to me as well, even though most probably had very little to share. This generosity, even in the wake of such tremendous loss, humbled me and helped to give me a much needed reality check.
Well, now that I'm back on the mainland here in the town of Krabi, dual pricing doesn't seem so nearly as benign...Yet, what helped to give me an additional reality check the other day was when I read the newspaper and saw that recently, there has been a movement to have the minimum wage raised to 255 baht a day from the current 175 baht a day. I had thought that I had been "roughing it" by trying to keep my daily budget somewhere between 300 and 500 baht a day (one US Dollar is worth approximately 40 baht).
So I get charged double...or triple...or sometimes quadruple what Thai are getting charged. But in most cases, that doesn't even amount to more than a few US cents, money that will be fairly insignificant to me once I return stateside. Small-scale and informal wealth redistribution at work, ladies and gentleman.
Still, it can be a bit grating to have someone next to me pay 30 baht for three hours of gaming on the internet while I am charged 120 baht for the same amount of time uploading photos and writing these blog entries - I mean, I could buy two plates of chicken rice with that difference.
But I guess at least I have the option of just keeping my mouth shut when I make my purchases, eh?
Here in Krabi, I am finding that if I don't walk around carrying my camera or backpack and keep my mouth shut, I can 'pass' to some degree (people are darker here, there is a lot of mixing with ethnic Malays here and I guess folks in general are used to mixed folks comprising part of their population). People will speak to me in Thai and be puzzled for a few moments when they don't get a response from me...until of course, I open my mouth and say, "Beg pardon?"
Why try to pass? Well, here in tourist-flooded Krabi, the dual pricing system Ed and I ran into back at Lumpinee seems to be in full effect pretty much everywhere one goes...from internet cafes to restaurants to you name it. The assumption here is that if you are farang, you are loaded, and most people seem to see it as only natural that they charge us Westerners more.
Running into this initially caused me a great deal of irritation. This was before traveling to Ko Phi Phi. It seemed like everyone was out to gouge us for as much as they could...and indeed, many were. But on Ko Phi Phi, things were different.
In most of Thailand, I am of the understanding that good-natured bargaining is the norm, but Phi Phi was no place for bargaining. The prices were obviously inflated, but there was a reason for it that was understood by all - no guile was at work: People were struggling with what little they had to pick-up the pieces and get back on their feet. What kind of a person tries to haggle for a discount with someone who is operating a makeshift stall out of a gutted building? I noticed the locals charging lower prices to other locals and in restaurants providing larger portions to their fellow citizens, but realized that was just people looking out for their own. I also noticed that when people recognized me as a volunteer there to help out with the clean-up, they did what they could to extend that generosity to me as well, even though most probably had very little to share. This generosity, even in the wake of such tremendous loss, humbled me and helped to give me a much needed reality check.
Well, now that I'm back on the mainland here in the town of Krabi, dual pricing doesn't seem so nearly as benign...Yet, what helped to give me an additional reality check the other day was when I read the newspaper and saw that recently, there has been a movement to have the minimum wage raised to 255 baht a day from the current 175 baht a day. I had thought that I had been "roughing it" by trying to keep my daily budget somewhere between 300 and 500 baht a day (one US Dollar is worth approximately 40 baht).
So I get charged double...or triple...or sometimes quadruple what Thai are getting charged. But in most cases, that doesn't even amount to more than a few US cents, money that will be fairly insignificant to me once I return stateside. Small-scale and informal wealth redistribution at work, ladies and gentleman.
Still, it can be a bit grating to have someone next to me pay 30 baht for three hours of gaming on the internet while I am charged 120 baht for the same amount of time uploading photos and writing these blog entries - I mean, I could buy two plates of chicken rice with that difference.
But I guess at least I have the option of just keeping my mouth shut when I make my purchases, eh?
Thailand: A Visit to Krabi Elementary School
On the taxi ride into the town of Krabi, Luce pointed out the local elementary school to me. I guess all those years of teaching really did something to me because the pull was irresistable.
The next day, I was up at the school, armed with the few documents I brought along proving my background as a teacher, speaking with the staff to see if it would be possible to arrange a tour of the school in exchange for perhaps a guest teaching appearance by me.
Much to my surprise (as security is particularly tight in Japanese schools these days following several horrific incidents of random people walking in from off of the street and killing/injuring students and staff), nobody seemed to need to see any documentation and they seemed perfectly willing to take me at my word that I was indeed a teacher. As luck would have it, I had come on the day before the school's big Sports Festival, so there were no normal classes to visit as all the students were busy practicing and preparing for the next day. One of the teachers, however, was kind enough to give up her time and take me on a grand tour of the school right there and then.
The school that I visited happens to be somewhat unique in that half of it is a standard government run public school and the other a semi-private charter-like English/Thai bilingual pilot school.
The bilingual school is quite fascinating in that the bulk of instruction (and student guidance!) for the students appears to be provided by homeroom teachers hired from Western countries. All classes (except for Thai) are taught in English. Many of the foreign national teachers do not speak much Thai and have little to no knowledge of how things are done in the Thai school system. Therefore, as might be expected, they bring to their classrooms Western assumptions about class management and are allowed to act on these assumptions with virtually no interference from native Thai teachers. The two foreign national teachers who sat down to speak with me that day seemed to see it all as a Thai experiment in importing Western schooling methods wholesale into Thailand and seeing how kids turn out.
The bilingual school has maximum class size of 30 while the standard government school has up to 50 crammed into one class. Yet, according to the two teachers (based upon their experience doing periodic teaching visits over to the government school side), the government school students are much more disciplined and respectful.
Why is this so? The two speculated that part of it could be related to the relative-affluence of the households students were coming from. The bilingual school determines admission based on some type of aptitude entrance examination administered in kindergarten and requires that parents bear part of the financial burden for the tuition. Students therefore tend to come from wealthier families that can afford both to provide the tuition and the support necessary to pass the entrance examination in the first place. My two new teacher friends (Let's call them Mr. A and Ms. S) reason that this accounts somewhat for the higher incidence of "bratty" unruliness within their classes (when placed into comparison with what they've observed in the government classes).
This said though, the parents of the bilingual school students are for the most supportive of the Westerner teachers and willing to go along with pretty much whatever methods they choose to employ in their classrooms.
As students in the bilingual classrooms come in speaking virtually no English, I suspect that probably another reason for the unruliness is just the plain frustration at not being able to understand what is being said to them that I think probably happens anytime you immerse a child in a language not their own.
Yet, despite the difficulties the teachers spoke of, the English the students speak by their 5th year (as deduced from looking at short stories they had written which were posted on one of the walls of their classroom) looked pretty impressive to me. Ms. S however seemed to be somewhat concerned that their relative skill and comprehension levels in subjects such as science, math and social studies were not on par with their peers who had received their instruction in Thai.
The next day, I was up at the school, armed with the few documents I brought along proving my background as a teacher, speaking with the staff to see if it would be possible to arrange a tour of the school in exchange for perhaps a guest teaching appearance by me.
Much to my surprise (as security is particularly tight in Japanese schools these days following several horrific incidents of random people walking in from off of the street and killing/injuring students and staff), nobody seemed to need to see any documentation and they seemed perfectly willing to take me at my word that I was indeed a teacher. As luck would have it, I had come on the day before the school's big Sports Festival, so there were no normal classes to visit as all the students were busy practicing and preparing for the next day. One of the teachers, however, was kind enough to give up her time and take me on a grand tour of the school right there and then.
The school that I visited happens to be somewhat unique in that half of it is a standard government run public school and the other a semi-private charter-like English/Thai bilingual pilot school.
The bilingual school is quite fascinating in that the bulk of instruction (and student guidance!) for the students appears to be provided by homeroom teachers hired from Western countries. All classes (except for Thai) are taught in English. Many of the foreign national teachers do not speak much Thai and have little to no knowledge of how things are done in the Thai school system. Therefore, as might be expected, they bring to their classrooms Western assumptions about class management and are allowed to act on these assumptions with virtually no interference from native Thai teachers. The two foreign national teachers who sat down to speak with me that day seemed to see it all as a Thai experiment in importing Western schooling methods wholesale into Thailand and seeing how kids turn out.
The bilingual school has maximum class size of 30 while the standard government school has up to 50 crammed into one class. Yet, according to the two teachers (based upon their experience doing periodic teaching visits over to the government school side), the government school students are much more disciplined and respectful.
Why is this so? The two speculated that part of it could be related to the relative-affluence of the households students were coming from. The bilingual school determines admission based on some type of aptitude entrance examination administered in kindergarten and requires that parents bear part of the financial burden for the tuition. Students therefore tend to come from wealthier families that can afford both to provide the tuition and the support necessary to pass the entrance examination in the first place. My two new teacher friends (Let's call them Mr. A and Ms. S) reason that this accounts somewhat for the higher incidence of "bratty" unruliness within their classes (when placed into comparison with what they've observed in the government classes).
This said though, the parents of the bilingual school students are for the most supportive of the Westerner teachers and willing to go along with pretty much whatever methods they choose to employ in their classrooms.
As students in the bilingual classrooms come in speaking virtually no English, I suspect that probably another reason for the unruliness is just the plain frustration at not being able to understand what is being said to them that I think probably happens anytime you immerse a child in a language not their own.
Yet, despite the difficulties the teachers spoke of, the English the students speak by their 5th year (as deduced from looking at short stories they had written which were posted on one of the walls of their classroom) looked pretty impressive to me. Ms. S however seemed to be somewhat concerned that their relative skill and comprehension levels in subjects such as science, math and social studies were not on par with their peers who had received their instruction in Thai.
Friday, July 15, 2005
THAILAND: The Beach
Just spent a couple of days out on the peninsula/almost island of Hat Railay where I took my first trip out rock climbing (and discovered I have the gripping strength of a little girl). Rock-climbing was great and the beach on the nice side of Railay was beautiful and virtually deserted as it is low season.
I have now made my way out on longtail boat to the famous tropical paradise of Ko Phi Phi (the paradise island used as the filming site of that DiCaprio classic from a few years back, "The Beach.")
Ko Phi Phi, as opposed to Railay, is relatively teeming with people (though it is low season here as well)...the big difference though is that this is one of the places that the tsunami hit...and hit bad. Evidence of the terrible destruction that was wrought here by the waves is evident from the moment you step off the boat - a gutted 7-11 store now occupied by cats and a makeshift street hawker stall. Behind the 7-11 are stray palm trees with no tops and behind them, the opposite side of the island. Apparently, before the wave, the various trees, plants and buildings were so thick nothing of the other side could be seen.
(click on photos for more detailed explanations)
The place we found to stay is surrounded by buildings devastated by the tsunami. To see pictures is one thing, but to see the twisted metal, rooms with walls taken away, the rubble all around, and then turn around to see the sea dancing around behind you is something entirely different.
After dropping off our stuff at the guesthouse, we quickly changed into swimwear to head out into the water for a bit before nightfall. A storm was blowing in and the waters of the bay were frothy and tinged an odd sickly green color. It was perhaps just my overactive imagination, but walking out into the water I could feel something, as if the terror, confusion, anguish and suffering of those who had been here when the tsunami hit had left their residue in the water. For a few moments I felt almost ill.
People are working hard to rebuild and get things back to normal. Walking around through it all, one sees groups of foreigners working with Thai people, hammering, sawing, helping to rebuild. There is apparently an ongoing volunteer movement here to help with the reconstruction. Two young women from Britain we stopped to ask about good places to stay turned out to be survivors of the tsunami. One had been quite seriously injured and was only recently released from the hospital. She came straight back here to help with the rebuilding and invited myself and my two travel buddies to a meeting tonight at Carlito's bar if we are interested in doing some volunteer work.
Anyway, I've already spent enough time on the net now that I owe two meals worth of money in fees. This will be my last entry until I get back to Bangkok (and cheaper internet rates) in a couple of weeks.
Thursday, July 07, 2005
Thailand: Bangkok Bum
So I've been here in Bangkok now since Sunday night and have basically done a whole lot of nothing...or at least, that's what it feels like.
An inordinate amount of my time here thus far has been spent in this internet center, catching up on old e-mails, uploading photos and chatting with various folks when they come on MSN Messenger. Somebody come kick my butt, please.
The positive side of this sitting in this internet center (which is located downstairs in the hostel where I am staying) is that I've become friends with Reang, the woman who runs the center (as well as does travel agent stuff)...or rather, she was kind enough to add me to her circle of friends which includes a constantly shifting set of random travelers like me who pass through her office.
Through Reang, I've met an interesting set of folks - a chiropractor from the Kyoto area down here studying Thai massage; a young film-maker who is putting together a documentary on the terrible conflict in southern Thailand; a ski instructor from Colorado and then of course a number of Reang's friends from her university days whom I met last night when I was unfortunately a bit too "happy" off of the spirits they kept pouring for me to really keep track of who was who. I felt kind of bad because Reang and her other Thai friends wouldn't allow us to pay for anything, though we watched them dishing out quite a bit of money for drinks at the club last night.
**Khao San: Trust in Others, But Watch Your Back**
Here near the traveler's ghetto of the infamous Khao San Road, you can barely walk a few feet without a taxi driver or tuk tuk driver or somebody coming up and saying "My friend, my friend, where you going? Where you from?" as they attempt to hook you and sell some service or product to you at inflated "farang" (foreigner) prices. It is easy to get irritated and maybe even angry (especially if you've already gone through being scammed out of some dough), but I figure that these folks are just trying to make a living. As long as you know that somebody is trying to scam or sell you something, it doesn't hurt to reciprocate "friendliness" in kind with a proper greeting and if you're not in a hurry, a bit of conversation. Some of these local "entrepeneurs" I find myself passing on a regular basis and the "My friend. My friend"s have been replaced by pleasant greetings and well wishes for the day.
**Travel Buddies and a Night at Muay Thai Matches**
When you are traveling alone on the backpacking circuit, you are constantly meeting up with new people. Sometimes, if you find you are headed in the same direction and hit it off reasonably well, you become temporary travel partners. For instance, in KK I became travel partners with an older Japanese woman I met in Kota Kinabalu (KK) who ended up traveling with me to climb Mt. Kinabalu, then onwards to the Orang-utan Rehabilitation Center in Sepilok, out to Uncle Tan's jungle camp on the Kinabatangan River and finally back to KK where we parted ways.
On the plane ride from Kota Kinabalu to Bangkok, I ended up making friends with a guy from England, Ed, who was also visiting Thailand for the first time. We both quickly got the sense that the other could be trusted (must have been the mixed Asian heritage thing we both had going) and agreed to go in together with two other folks from the plane ride on a cab from the airport to the Khao San Area and to split the cost on a twin room in a hostel.
On our first full day in Bangkok, Ed proposed we go out and check out the nearby Grand Imperial Palace and Wat Pho (which houses the famous reclining Buddha). Instead, I ended up sending Ed off on his own as spent the day sleeping off exhaustion I had accumulated in Borneo.
Our joint sight-seeing ventures ended up being limited to a trip out to Lumpinee Stadium for a night of Muay Thai kickboxing matches. I've been looking forward to seeing Muay Thai live ever since watching that off-the-hook crazy action movie Ong-Bak. Getting in turned out to be rather expensive --- there was a special foreigner price that was four times the rate for locals (1000bb (cheapest seats) as opposed to 250bb...for perspective, I am paying 150bb a night for my single room right now and an average meal costs about 35 to 50bb; US$1 is roughly 40bb) -- but Ed and I reasoned that we may not get the chance to do this again.
We sat in the cheap seats which turned out to be cool. We were close enough to the ring that we could still hear the smack of flesh hitting flesh quite clearly and see sweat and spittle flying when blows connected. The cheapseats were also where all the hardcore local regulars were, standing and shouting and waving to arrange bets with each other...and man were they into the action. Each solid blow that connected (especially knees) were accompanied by collective "Oooo!"s (as in "Oooo! That's gotta hurt!") from everyone in the stands.
There were all in all 10 matches with the main event being a match with the 135 division champion defending his belt. The speed, grace and above all, resilience of the fighters was incredible. I'm pretty sure that if any of their kicks, punches, knees or elbows were to land on me, I would be on my back foaming at the mouth and in convulsions. Actually, there were a couple of knockouts in the night. Both of them happened so quickly, I didn't actually see what blows led to them, but I did see the results. Hearing that crack and watching a man suddenly crumple to the ground a slickened limp bundle of meat wasn't quite my cup of tea.
**Japanese Eeyore**
To reach Lumpinee, Ed and I hopped on the number 47 bus and grabbed seats towards the back. I ended up sitting next to a man and woman visiting from Japan. I struck up a conversation with the two of them and figured out that they were also temporary travel buddies. There was a brightness in the woman's eyes and the way that she smiled that told me she was living life with joy and an eagerness to know the world. Her partner, on the other hand, was an odd contrast...dark, closed and pessimistic. At first I figured it was because maybe he thought I was out to con them or something. But after conversing with them for awhile, I figured out it was probably just the way he was. He was at the tail-end of backpacking through SE Asia and seemed gloomy about prospects for himself upon returning to Japan.
"Backpacking is all fine and good while you're doing it, but then you have to return to the harshness of reality," he said gravely as I inquired about his travels.
"Surely it won't be that bad. You'll find something," I offered.
"Maybe things work out for you Americans and Europeans, but we Japanese can't just go running off and doing things like this. We ruin all our prospects for the future," he responded. Indeed, I agree that it is probably significantly more difficult for people in Japan to "drop out" of society to wander the world and then slip back in. But this guy's pessimism made me wonder why in the heck he had come out on the road in the first place.
The inspiration for me to go on this backpacking journey actually came in part from a very close friend of mine who backpacked through SE Asia and India for about 9 months. He happens to be Japanese. When he quit his job, he set off to travel with no solid plans as to what "sensible" thing he would do on his return. And when he returned to Japan, there were many who worried (including myself) whether he would be to find anything in Japanese working society above hopping from one temp job to another. But he remained outwardly positive and just recently had a great job which will utilize his travel experiences almost drop into his lap.
I'd like to think that his example shows that if you follow your heart and stay positive, you will eventually run into a number of opportunities. From there, it is only a matter of noticing and seizing them. You can be comfortable and do what is "sensible." But if the "sensible" thing you are doing isn't in alignment with what your heart is telling you to do, then you are cutting yourself off from life presenting you with those opportunities that are both "sensible" and what you want to do.
An inordinate amount of my time here thus far has been spent in this internet center, catching up on old e-mails, uploading photos and chatting with various folks when they come on MSN Messenger. Somebody come kick my butt, please.
The positive side of this sitting in this internet center (which is located downstairs in the hostel where I am staying) is that I've become friends with Reang, the woman who runs the center (as well as does travel agent stuff)...or rather, she was kind enough to add me to her circle of friends which includes a constantly shifting set of random travelers like me who pass through her office.
Through Reang, I've met an interesting set of folks - a chiropractor from the Kyoto area down here studying Thai massage; a young film-maker who is putting together a documentary on the terrible conflict in southern Thailand; a ski instructor from Colorado and then of course a number of Reang's friends from her university days whom I met last night when I was unfortunately a bit too "happy" off of the spirits they kept pouring for me to really keep track of who was who. I felt kind of bad because Reang and her other Thai friends wouldn't allow us to pay for anything, though we watched them dishing out quite a bit of money for drinks at the club last night.
**Khao San: Trust in Others, But Watch Your Back**
Here near the traveler's ghetto of the infamous Khao San Road, you can barely walk a few feet without a taxi driver or tuk tuk driver or somebody coming up and saying "My friend, my friend, where you going? Where you from?" as they attempt to hook you and sell some service or product to you at inflated "farang" (foreigner) prices. It is easy to get irritated and maybe even angry (especially if you've already gone through being scammed out of some dough), but I figure that these folks are just trying to make a living. As long as you know that somebody is trying to scam or sell you something, it doesn't hurt to reciprocate "friendliness" in kind with a proper greeting and if you're not in a hurry, a bit of conversation. Some of these local "entrepeneurs" I find myself passing on a regular basis and the "My friend. My friend"s have been replaced by pleasant greetings and well wishes for the day.
**Travel Buddies and a Night at Muay Thai Matches**
When you are traveling alone on the backpacking circuit, you are constantly meeting up with new people. Sometimes, if you find you are headed in the same direction and hit it off reasonably well, you become temporary travel partners. For instance, in KK I became travel partners with an older Japanese woman I met in Kota Kinabalu (KK) who ended up traveling with me to climb Mt. Kinabalu, then onwards to the Orang-utan Rehabilitation Center in Sepilok, out to Uncle Tan's jungle camp on the Kinabatangan River and finally back to KK where we parted ways.
On the plane ride from Kota Kinabalu to Bangkok, I ended up making friends with a guy from England, Ed, who was also visiting Thailand for the first time. We both quickly got the sense that the other could be trusted (must have been the mixed Asian heritage thing we both had going) and agreed to go in together with two other folks from the plane ride on a cab from the airport to the Khao San Area and to split the cost on a twin room in a hostel.
On our first full day in Bangkok, Ed proposed we go out and check out the nearby Grand Imperial Palace and Wat Pho (which houses the famous reclining Buddha). Instead, I ended up sending Ed off on his own as spent the day sleeping off exhaustion I had accumulated in Borneo.
Our joint sight-seeing ventures ended up being limited to a trip out to Lumpinee Stadium for a night of Muay Thai kickboxing matches. I've been looking forward to seeing Muay Thai live ever since watching that off-the-hook crazy action movie Ong-Bak. Getting in turned out to be rather expensive --- there was a special foreigner price that was four times the rate for locals (1000bb (cheapest seats) as opposed to 250bb...for perspective, I am paying 150bb a night for my single room right now and an average meal costs about 35 to 50bb; US$1 is roughly 40bb) -- but Ed and I reasoned that we may not get the chance to do this again.
We sat in the cheap seats which turned out to be cool. We were close enough to the ring that we could still hear the smack of flesh hitting flesh quite clearly and see sweat and spittle flying when blows connected. The cheapseats were also where all the hardcore local regulars were, standing and shouting and waving to arrange bets with each other...and man were they into the action. Each solid blow that connected (especially knees) were accompanied by collective "Oooo!"s (as in "Oooo! That's gotta hurt!") from everyone in the stands.
There were all in all 10 matches with the main event being a match with the 135 division champion defending his belt. The speed, grace and above all, resilience of the fighters was incredible. I'm pretty sure that if any of their kicks, punches, knees or elbows were to land on me, I would be on my back foaming at the mouth and in convulsions. Actually, there were a couple of knockouts in the night. Both of them happened so quickly, I didn't actually see what blows led to them, but I did see the results. Hearing that crack and watching a man suddenly crumple to the ground a slickened limp bundle of meat wasn't quite my cup of tea.
**Japanese Eeyore**
To reach Lumpinee, Ed and I hopped on the number 47 bus and grabbed seats towards the back. I ended up sitting next to a man and woman visiting from Japan. I struck up a conversation with the two of them and figured out that they were also temporary travel buddies. There was a brightness in the woman's eyes and the way that she smiled that told me she was living life with joy and an eagerness to know the world. Her partner, on the other hand, was an odd contrast...dark, closed and pessimistic. At first I figured it was because maybe he thought I was out to con them or something. But after conversing with them for awhile, I figured out it was probably just the way he was. He was at the tail-end of backpacking through SE Asia and seemed gloomy about prospects for himself upon returning to Japan.
"Backpacking is all fine and good while you're doing it, but then you have to return to the harshness of reality," he said gravely as I inquired about his travels.
"Surely it won't be that bad. You'll find something," I offered.
"Maybe things work out for you Americans and Europeans, but we Japanese can't just go running off and doing things like this. We ruin all our prospects for the future," he responded. Indeed, I agree that it is probably significantly more difficult for people in Japan to "drop out" of society to wander the world and then slip back in. But this guy's pessimism made me wonder why in the heck he had come out on the road in the first place.
The inspiration for me to go on this backpacking journey actually came in part from a very close friend of mine who backpacked through SE Asia and India for about 9 months. He happens to be Japanese. When he quit his job, he set off to travel with no solid plans as to what "sensible" thing he would do on his return. And when he returned to Japan, there were many who worried (including myself) whether he would be to find anything in Japanese working society above hopping from one temp job to another. But he remained outwardly positive and just recently had a great job which will utilize his travel experiences almost drop into his lap.
I'd like to think that his example shows that if you follow your heart and stay positive, you will eventually run into a number of opportunities. From there, it is only a matter of noticing and seizing them. You can be comfortable and do what is "sensible." But if the "sensible" thing you are doing isn't in alignment with what your heart is telling you to do, then you are cutting yourself off from life presenting you with those opportunities that are both "sensible" and what you want to do.
Sunday, July 03, 2005
Malaysia (Borneo): From Cloud Shrouded Mountaintops to Monkey-filled Jungles
South Peak and Me (Mt. Kinabalu Summit Plateau)
Originally uploaded by monkeymagictatsu.
Well, I really have a lot of updating to do here, but internet access has not been what I had hoped it to be. In any case, I've uploaded photos from the past few weeks to my flickr account (access by clicking on the photo) and added comments that should provide a bit of an idea of how I've spent my time here in Borneo. Hope all is well with everyone. I leave in less than an hour for Bangkok so I'll sign off here and write again from somewhere in Thailand.
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