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Holy Rats and Camel Humps

Posted: November 10, 2004

DAY 384:  While Bikaner is home to the beautiful Junagarh Fort, it wasn’t the architecture that brought me there.  No, I had come for something much smaller in size than a big impenetrable fortress, and that little something was covered in dark fur and sported a long tail.  Thirty kilometers south of Bikaner lies the Karni Mata Temple, known by many simply as the “Rat Temple” for its thousands of sacred rats that run rampantly through the building.  According to Hindu lore, a rat was the reincarnation of the nephew of Karni Mata, Bikaner’s patron goddess, and all the male descendants thereafter were also born as rats.

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Remembering Bond

Posted: November 11, 2004

DAY 385:  Udaipur, the former capital of the Mewar Kingdom, named after its founder Maharaja Udai Singh II, gets plenty of tourism, as it is arguably Rajasthan’s most romantic destination with its scenic palaces — palaces perched on mountaintops overlooking palaces that look like they are floating in the middle of a lake.  Even for a “palaced out” guy like me, the “City of Sunrise” was a great feast for the eyes, a place Let’s Go says has “somehow managed to retain a number of fairy-tale qualities” — it’s no wonder it served as the perfect exotic locale for Roger Moore as James Bond in 1983’s Octopussy, a proud fact that the city of Udaipur proudly clings onto.  I remember seeing the movie 21 years before, but upon my arrival, nothing looked familiar or was coming back to me.  (Then again Octopussy wasn’t on my repertoire of 80s movies I’d seen over and over and over again, like Ghostbusters.)

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Trinidad. Erik Trinidad.

Posted: November 14, 2004

DAY 386:  The centerpiece of Udaipur is the famous Jag Niwas, more commonly known as the Lake Palace, the one-time summer residence of the royal family when simply being crammed in a boat on Lake Pichhola wasn’t good enough.  “I think I want a palace built in the middle of the lake,” the maharaja probably said.  And so it was made.  “It’s good to be the maharaja.”

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My New Beat

Posted: November 14, 2004

DAY 387:  Mumbai is India’s showcase modern and cosmopolitan city, or as Let’s Go puts it, “India’s largest city, in attitude if not in population…[uniting] all the country’s languages, religions, ethnicities, castes, and classes in one heaving, seething sizzler of a metropolis.”  It is the gateway of India’s international business, its fashion capital and India’s main source of entertainment, with the second largest film industry in the world after Hollywood (hence its nickname “Bollywood”), and it’s Indian pop music scene.  In fact, in the Indian Idol reality show (the Indian version of American Idol), people who try out in the first round and impress the judges get overjoyed when they hear the phrase, “You’re going to Mumbai.”

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Sacred Stones and A New Home

Posted: November 16, 2004

DAY 388:  Within the confines of Mumbai Harbor is an island known as Elephanta Island, named by the Portuguese when they “discovered” it and found a big elephant statue on it.  Elephanta Island, regardless of its lack of actual live elephants, is a popular day trip from the Gateway of India, as it is just one-hour away via one of the ferries that leave every half an hour.

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Holiday For Pyros

Posted: November 16, 2004

DAY 389:  The Let’s Go: India & Nepal guidebook just has one sentence to describe the Hindu holiday of Diwali in all of its 891 pages:

“The autumn holiday of Diwali is an especially auspicious time of year when Hindus look to Lakshmi [goddess of wealth, fertility, and general well-being] to bring prosperity during the new year.”

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Hindu For A Day

Posted: November 17, 2004

DAY 390:  Despite the mass commercialization of the Christian holiday of Christmas, with its holiday songs, plastic lawn ornaments (that look absolutely awful if there’s no snow on the ground), and disgruntled mall Santas with sore thighs from the constant kids on their laps asking for things they probably don’t deserve, a small minority still remembers that at its core, Christmas is a religious affair, celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ.  Churches around the world get a surge in attendance on December 25th more than on any other day of the year.

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Family to Family

Posted: November 17, 2004

DAY 391:  Because of the hole in my leg from the pus drainage operation of the abscess I developed in Nepal, I wasn’t exactly the most beach-worthy traveler in India.  While salt water might have aided in the healing of the skin, the conditions of the beaches of southern India, as scenic as they were, probably weren’t the most sanitary, what with all the foreigners peeing in the ocean and all.  (You know who you are.)  The usual place to go to after Mumbai was the former Portuguese colonial beach city-turned-hippie haven of Goa about twelve hours directly south by bus, and as much as I wanted to see it, I knew I’d just feel like a dunce being at the beach town, not being at the beach.  I wouldn’t be able to even just stroll on the beach in shorts for fear that sand would blow into the hole somehow, or even worse, the eggs of sandworms.  Eww.

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Return Of The Touts

Posted: November 19, 2004

DAY 392:  It was Sunday, the one day weekend for Chrissy at the NGO she worked for since they expected her to work with the reset of them on Saturdays.  (This she would complain about because she was already working ten-hour days, and voluntarily for free, too.)  Taking advantage of the one day off, we decided to venture outside the city limits with Koco to the main tourist sites.  Translation:  we decided to leave the security of Kenneth and Geeta’s Chennai guesthouse to be open prey for scammers and touts.

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Female Condomania

Posted: November 19, 2004

DAY 393:  Monday.  For most people, the day to go back to work, a day when business reopened after a one- or two-day weekend.  My only goal of the day was to go to the open airline offices and figure out my itinerary after Chennai — but before breakfast was over, I had an additional mission:  to track down a female condom.

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Martyrs and Magicians

Posted: November 21, 2004

DAY 394:  Chennai, India’s fourth largest city formerly known as Madras, isn’t exactly on a backpacker’s must-see list.  Cuckoo in Mumbai warned me there wasn’t much to see there in terms of tourist sites.  Geeta said it’s primarily a place where people travel to for business.  Some Indian girls at the guesthouse said that in terms of nightlife, Chennai was “a sleepy town.”

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The French Connection

Posted: November 21, 2004

DAY 395:  Pondicherry, the one-time capital of French-occupied India, remains a city with a French influence, a place where curry meets crêpes.  Pondicherry, which is of course English for Pondichéry, was founded in 1673 when France took over the area as a base of their trading routes, so that they may have an advantage over the English and the Dutch — it wasn’t until 1954 that the French gave the land back to India.  Readers of Yann Martel’s popular contemporary fable Life of Pi will recognize the city’s name as the first part of the story takes place there, the part when the hero, Pi Patel, sneaks behind people’s backs to be a Christian, a Hindu and Muslim all at the same time.  (No, that doesn’t spoil the plot in case you were going to read it.)

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Mothers

Posted: November 21, 2004

DAY 396:  Pondicherry isn’t just known for its France meets India vibe; it was in Pondicherry that a worldwide New Age movement was born in the 1960s based on the “integral yoga” teachings of Sri Aurobindo Ghose, which combined yoga with modern science.  To the uninformed person, the movement appears like some sort of a futuristic science fiction cult, especially since followers of it meditated around a big crystal ball that focused the energy of the sun and the fact that the movement’s primary organizer was a woman whom is only referred to as “The Mother.”

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All Roads Lead To Bangkok

Posted: November 22, 2004

DAY 397 (42 days since last Thailand entry):  In India, I had a somewhat unique experience unlike the average backpacking Brit on “gap year” between high school and “uni,” what with my “press credentialsopening doors for me, and my invitations to stay with modern Indian families instead of backpacker haunts.  However, it was inevitable for me to put on my hiking boots and get back on the Backpacker Trail since I was headed back to southeast Asia.  When you’re on the budget travel circuit in southeast Asia, all roads inevitably lead to Bangkok, a place that one t-shirt I saw proudly proclaimed is the “mecca of backpackers.”

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Thai By Night

Posted: November 22, 2004

DAY 398:  From what I’ve gathered, it seems that what the Thai hotel and restaurant managers do to keep out Thai touts and Thai whores away from their legitimate Westerner-catering establishments is to assume that all Thai people off the street are unfavorable.  A big sign at the front desk of the Sawasdee House where I was staying read:

NO Thai people permitted in the hotels rooms.

“That’s a bit harsh,” Paul commented.

Every time I went up to my room I anticipated getting stopped and questioned of my nationality, but fortunately it never happened.

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Mallkings

Posted: November 23, 2004

DAY 399:  “I hate it when [travelers] say you can’t get a real [Thai] experience in a big city,” I said to Paul as we rode in a souped-up air-conditioned taxi across town.  “What, like fake Thai people live here?” 

Paul agreed with me and said that there’s nothing out there that says a little village can’t evolve into something bigger.

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Moderation

Posted: November 24, 2004

DAY 400:  Paul and I met in the Sawasdee House’s trendy-looking ground floor restaurant that morning, the same way we did every morning in Bangkok thus far.  It had become our Central Perk (from Friends), our Monk’s Cafe (from Seinfeld).  He nursed his bottle of water while I sipped on a Thai iced coffee.  Cold coffee, for Paul, wasn’t a concept he could grasp — but to each his own taste.

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So An Englishman, A Scotsman and An American Don’t Walk Into A Bar…

Posted: November 26, 2004

DAY 401:  “Sometimes I have to stop and think of what you’re saying,” Paul told me as we walked Ratchadamnoen Road, a main thoroughfare in Bangkok with elephant-shaped shrubs, archways that honored the king, and the United Nations building.  I had used the word “block” (as in “down the…” and “New Kids On The…”) and Paul had to think about what I was saying; he told me the British used “street” or “road” instead, and gave directions in a town or city not in “blocks” but in meters.

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Kicking Ass

Posted: November 27, 2004

DAY 402:  Muay Thai, also known as Thai Boxing, is a free-for-all martial art invented in the 15th century by the Siamese military as a way to keep the troops fit in hand-to-hand combat.  Nowadays the style of fighting is seen in stadiums, movies and even in fighter video games.  With punches, kicks, grabs, holds — anything but headbutting — it is boxing meets karate meets wrestling.  When the bell rings in Muay Thai, you can literally kick your opponent’s ass.

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Giving Thanks

Posted: November 27, 2004

DAY 403:  Thanksgiving Day.  The American holiday that celebrates the first harvest produced by the first European settlers (who wore big funny hats so big they needed belt buckles of their own) with the help of the indigenous people (wearing big funny hats with lots of feathers).  Today the holiday often skips over the part in American history when the European settlers murdered off the indigenous people almost to the point of extinction, and goes right up to the point in history when big inflated balloons parade down New York’s Broadway.  This is followed by the traditional Thanksgiving dinner, a gathering of family and friends over a meal, usually with a turkey, whose meat is often so sleep-inducing, most people pass out before the Sears Family Movie gets underway on TV that night.

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Sunshine On A Rainy Day

Posted: November 30, 2004

DAY 404:  The overnight express from Bangkok to Chiang Mai continued on its way through the northern Thai countryside when I woke up that morning.  It was a casual morning of reading, writing and eating the breakfast served to me by the train attendants, one of which was a cross-dressing “ladyboy,” a common personality-type in the Kingdom of Thailand.  The morning was just like any other morning I’d had in recent history but with one difference:  for the first time in about two months, it was raining.

Rain, as I usually say to people who see it as a hindrance to their day’s plans, is “just water” and I knew that even with precipitation falling from the sky, I could find a little figurative sunshine.

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Recipes

Posted: November 30, 2004

DAY 405:  I grew up with a love of cooking.  I remember using a Sesame Street cookbook and making banana bread one day that pleased the family and since then I’ve like to cook since, up through my young adulthood when I got my own apartment.  When I got a Showtime Rotisserie as a housewarming gift, I swear I made a whole chicken every other day; it’s so easy when you can “set it and forget it.”

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Facing Fears On The Non-Tourist Trek

Posted: December 02, 2004

DAY 406:  The standard tour that everyone seems to do out of Chiang Mai is a three-day excursion of trekking, elephant riding and rafting, offered by every tour agency, hotel and guesthouse in town.  The funny thing about this three-day tour is that most places advertise it as the “non-tourist trek” to attract the independent traveler set from doing the cardinal sing of doing something “touristy.”  Of course a tour agency offering a “non-tourist trek” is a bit of an oxymoron.

I say, doing something “touristy” isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and so began Day One of the three-day trek through the jungles of northern Thailand.

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Pineapples and Four-Legged Friends

Posted: December 04, 2004

DAY 407:  I have faint but fond memories of my parents taking me to New York’s Bronx Zoo as a kid, about twenty-five years ago.  Not only was it one of America’s more decent zoological preserves where I got to pet animals in the petting zoo section, but it was the place where I had ridden an elephant my first and only time — until Day Two of my “non-tourist trek” through the jungles of northern Thailand.

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Whingeing Down The River

Posted: December 05, 2004

DAY 408:  Of the many uses of bamboo — panda food, decoration and crafts, scaffolding for Hong Kong skyscrapers — one of the most fun is raft making.  When I originally heard that Day Three of my northern Thai jungle trek would be spent mostly in a raft, I imagined it being the inflatable rubber kind.  I was mistaken when I saw the bamboo rafts at the river on the edge of the village, which Boon and Sawit prepped up that morning by adding on extra bamboo to support our group’s weight.

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Chiang Mai In The News

Posted: December 05, 2004

DAY 409:  Everyone in my little Chiang Mai clique decided to “take a day off” to rest and recuperate in the city after being in the jungle for three days.  Despite the beautiful weather outside, I spent most of the day indoors at the desk in my room writing and sorting out photos, all while listening to my eclectic music collection:  the Linkin Park Live in Texas CD, Stevie Wonder’s greatest hits and an assortment of MP3s like the underground hip-hop classic, Akinyele’s “Put It In Your Mouth.”

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The Occidental Tourist

Posted: December 05, 2004

DAY 410:  In independent travel culture, some would argue that booking any sort of a tour is a cardinal sin (right next to eating at McDonald’s), as it is counter-productive to experiencing the real reality of a foreign culture.  Lot, Claire, Hans and I were interested in seeing the Karen hill tribes of the north, near the Thai/Myanmar/Lao border, known for its long-necked women with bronze rings around their collars.  We explored the different options of seeing them independently but in the end, the most cost-effective way to see them was just to book the standard one-day tour with an agency, which not only included the hill tribes but all the tourist traps on the way to break up what would otherwise be a boring four-hour drive.

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The Power of Geography

Posted: December 06, 2004

DAY 411:  My family has a history of geography contests.  When I was in the seventh grade, I was chosen to represent my middle school in the statewide Geography Bee, proudly run by New York Knick-turned New Jersey senator Bill Bradley.  I made it to the semi-finals, a written test with a bubble sheet answer form, but didn’t advance because, from what I suspect, I used a No. 3 pencil instead of the required No. 2.  Either that, or my Power of Geography simply ran out of steam.

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The Wrath of Khan

Posted: December 07, 2004

DAY 412:  Perhaps the most popular Laotian, at least in American pop culture, is the animated character Khan from the animated series King of the Hill, created by Mike Judge of Beavis and Butthead and Office Space fame.  Khan and his family live in Texas surrounded by a quirky group of stereotypical Texans, and don’t often see eye to eye.  Laotian immigrant + Texas redneck = hilarity.  In one of the first episodes, when Khan is introduced to main character Hank Hill and his beer-drinking friends, the dialogue goes like this:

Hank:  So, are you Chinese or Japanese?
Khan (in thick Laotian accent):  I live in California last twenty year, but first come from Laos.
Hank:  Huh?
Khan:  Laos.  We Laotian.
Bill (Hank’s friend):  The ocean?  What ocean?
Khan:  We are Laotian.  From Laos, stupid.  It’s a landlocked country in southeast Asia.  It’s between Vietnam and Thailand, okay?  Population 4.7 million.
(Blank stares from Hank and company.)
Hank:  So… are you Chinese or Japanese?
(Khan screams in a fit of anger and frustration.)

I suppose to the uninformed person, all Asians look the same and blend in with each other, and I suspected that with my Filipino skin and face I’d be able to blend into Laos when I arrived.

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Accents On The Mekong

Posted: December 08, 2004

DAY 413:  Sue, the woman of the Phonethip Guesthouse in Pak Beng, was making the sandwiches we pre-ordered the night before, so that we could bring them on our long slow boat ride down the Mekong to Luang Prabang.  “You want banana?  Buy from me!  Ha ha!” she said in her thick Laotian accent with perhaps a bit too much energy for 7:30 in the morning.

“No, that’s okay.”

“You want pineapple?  Very good.  Buy from me, buy from me!  Cheap cheap, ha ha!”

Her daughter (I assumed) Ponti wasn’t nearly as high energy as Sue that morning as she sat nearby to see the latest round of nightly guests.  “You look very handsome,” she said.

“Thank you,” I said.

Meanwhile, Markus was buying a piece of cake from Sue since he’d been around the block and saw the same things elsewhere.  “Same same.  Very good!  You buy from me!  Ha ha!”

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Pousi Galore

Posted: December 11, 2004

DAY 414:  I’ve been going through southeast Asia thus far with a sort of sardonic attitude; as nice as it is, “southeast Asia” has become a sort of cliché in my mind, although I have no right to be a cynic, it being my first time traveling through (the continental southeast Asia anyway).  My attitude comes from the fact that in the traveler circles I’m a part of, almost everyone talks about their “big trip” through southeast Asia, how they’re going to go, or have come back already. 

“I’m going to backpack through southeast Asia!” 
“So this one time, when I was traveling through southeast Asia…”

I swear, from the amount of times I heard people talk about “backpacking through southeast Asia,” I expect to look up “beaten path” in the dictionary and see a map of the region.

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More Misconceptions

Posted: December 11, 2004

DAY 415:  My name is Erik, with a “K” for the fourth letter, which is the uncommon spelling in North America.  I was never a fan of pre-made personalized key chains and mugs growing up; most of the time they only had “Eric.”  “Erik” is the Dutch/Danish/Scandinavian spelling of the name, the name of a Viking (i.e. Leif Eriksson, Erik the Red), and my father says he chose it for that reason — although my suspicion is that I was simply named after Erik Estrada when my dad was watching an episode of CHiPs in the 1970s. 

Yes ladies, I may quite possibly be named after the heartthrob that played Ponch.

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Life Is Like A Box Of Chocolates

Posted: December 11, 2004

DAY 416:  I am going to parallel this entry to scenes and quotes from the movie Forrest Gump, a movie I will assume most of you have seen (perhaps not as often as I have), since certain elements of the day set itself up for it.  (Besides, I can’t think of another angle for the day.)  It started the night before when I saw an unexpected familiar face.

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Journalists In The Minefields

Posted: December 12, 2004

DAY 417:  The infamous Ho Chi Minh Trail, the secret route that ultimately led Communist North Vietnam to victory in the Vietnam War, crossed through a portion of northern Laos.  Because of this, the US military dropped over two billion kilograms of bombs on Laos between 1964 and 1972, making it the most heavily bombed country in world history.  Reminders of this turbulent era in Laos’ past is still seen today, from the bomb craters in the landscape to the active land mines still present in the ground, a danger for both Laotians and the tourists the Lao government only recently let into the country.

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Platoon

Posted: December 12, 2004

DAY 418:  “I really feel guilty being here,” said fellow American Dara at the border crossing into Vietnam.  “I gave my form [to the customs officer] and he read it and said, ‘American’ and just gave me this look.”

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The War Between Tourists And Touts

Posted: December 17, 2004

DAY 419:  “Did you ever see the movie Speed?” I asked Brit Lisa in the back row of the bus gunning us from Vinh to Hanoi that morning.  Unlike the rest of the bus, the back row was elevated in a way so one could see the oncoming traffic ahead.

“Yeah,” she said.  “You’d think it’s like that.”  Our bus was almost out of control, weaving in and out of traffic like it’d explode if it went below 50 miles per hour.  Often it’d speed down the opposite side of the road towards oncoming vehicles, and at one point, it swerved in and out of a closing railroad barricade.

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Rebel Without A Clue

Posted: December 17, 2004

DAY 420:  If there’s one distinct memory of Hanoi that Western tourists will bring home, it’s the image of Hanoi’s crazy traffic, a majority of which is comprised of motorbikes.  Hanoiites (Hanoiers? Hanoians?) zip around the streets, sans helmets, to get to where they have to go in any way possible with only a few intersections with regulatory traffic signals.  Most Westerners I met found the madness of it all sort of terrifying, and thought it crazy to ride on the back of a motorcycle taxi, let alone drive one.

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A Plan To Be Spontaneous

Posted: December 17, 2004

DAY 421:  My “platoon” that I had arrived with in Vietnam two days before was on a much more relaxed schedule than me; they were after all in Vietnam with vacation/holiday-mentality, not that there’s anything wrong with that.  I on the other hand was merely rushing to cover the only-in-Vietnam sights before heading to the Philippines for Christmas.  The night before, I bid my platoon farewell for I would be transferred to a new unit in the morning.

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Good Morning, Vietnam; Bad Evening, Vietnam

Posted: December 18, 2004

DAY 422:  There was a peaceful, quiet darkness in my cabin near the engine room on the boat in Ha Long Bay, just before the break of dawn.  My German cabinmate Andy and I were snug under our covers in our respective beds.  Then, just a little passed 6 a.m., the motor kicked in to move the boat farther along and provide electricity to the ship.  The loud rumbling was incessant and inescapable.

“Oh yeah, I like that sound,” Andy said with the sarcasm one has after such a rude awakening.

“Good morning, Vietnam,” I added, also with the same kind of sarcasm.

“Yeah, ha ha!  Goooooood morning, Vietnam!”

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Temporary Ceasefire

Posted: December 19, 2004

DAY 423:  When historians think of Vietnam, chances are they immediately think of The American War from 1965 to 1973 — well, that’s what I think of at least.  In each entry I’ve written about Vietnam so far, I’ve eluded to The War with subtle literary devices, but for a change of pace, let’s turn to another part in Vietnam’s history.  Call this a temporary ceasefire if you will.

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The Vietnamese Version

Posted: December 19, 2004

DAY 424:  When I was fifteen, one year short of being able to get a legal work permit, friend and Blogreader wheat and I made some cash to buy music cassettes (yes, I said “cassettes”) by working off the books at a local family-run chicken take-out place that, because of its crappy location, didn’t get much business.  To suffice for the lack of customers, the Filipino-American owners of the place made a living by setting up food vending stalls at just about every summer street fair in the metropolitan New York City area.  Wheat and I went from fair to fair every weekend that summer of 1990, to grill up chicken parts and pork shish-kabobs under questionably sanitary conditions that would make Upton Sinclair turn in his grave. 

The job paid us though, so I could get that latest tape from Information Society (yes, I said “Information Society”), which is why we dealt with it:  riding in cargo vans on top of grills, booth equipment and spoiling pork pieces, and dealing with pushy bosses.  It was especially an experience when we’d work the New York Gay Pride Parade and get approached by male customers flirting, “Hey boy, you sure have a lot of meat on that stick!”

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The Dow Jones Industrial Average Is Down A Quarter Of A Point

Posted: December 20, 2004

DAY 425:  It has been brought to my attention that there are people out there who use travel Blogs (such as this one) as a informational resource for making their own travel plans.  Can you believe that?  People actually read this thing other than for its stories of misadventure and self-effacing poop humor.  Ha!

I know this bit of trivia about travel Blogs as informational resources because I was interviewed by a reporter from The Wall Street Journal who was doing a feature about the business of travel Blogs.  The interview with New York-based journalist happened over a series of back-and-forth e-mails that started way back when I was traveling through Morocco with a Canadian named Sebastian.  If you recall the comment I posted from Tokyo about the outcome of that interview, in the end, the article failed to mention me or The Blog at all.  I sighed and moved on.  (This wasn’t the first time this had happened to me; a CNN reporter once interviewed me for a feature about my on-line New Jersey Turnpike-inspired t-shirt store, but that too went nowhere.)

I understood completely, figuring that my Blog wasn’t exactly WSJ material — until this entry, that is.

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The Touts Are A’Changin’

Posted: December 21, 2004

DAY 426:  In 1973, the Paris Peace Accords put an end to The American War in Vietnam.  The US conceded to North Vietnam and eventually pulled out its troops so that Vietnam could begin the road to recovery.  Two years later, on April 30, 1975, North Vietnam hammered the proverbial “nail in the coffin” into the south when, using a big military tank, they stormed the presidential palace gates in the former South Vietnam capital of Saigon.  Vietnam was reunified under Communist rule and after that day, the official name of the southern city was renamed after the Communist leader and became Ho Chi Minh City, often abbreviated in print as “HCMC” to save space and decrease writer’s cramp.  Verbally, “Ho Chi Minh City,” is a mouthful in itself, which is probably why people still just call it Saigon.  “Saigon” just rolls off the tongue.

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Blame America

Posted: December 21, 2004

DAY 427:  Allow me to reiterate a statement from a previous entry:  “History is written by the winners.”  In Vietnam, “history” has painted US Troops of The American War in Vietnam as heartless, imperial scumbag bad guys, the same way the Germans are painted as in Hollywood World War II films, and aliens are painted as in the movie Independence Day.  To be fair, the Vietnamese can say whatever they want in Vietnam; it is their country after all.  As a visitor, I wanted to be respectful of it; besides, it’s always nice to hear the other side of the tale.

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Mekong Enterprises

Posted: December 23, 2004

DAY 428:  The Mekong, one the world’s great rivers, touches six countries — Tibetan China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam — and has provided prosperity for those places in terms of trade and agriculture for centuries, as most rivers do.  If you recall from your geography classes in grammar school, rivers usually spill out into a larger body of water, and the place where they meet is called a delta.  Deltas provide a wealth of opportunity for business; they are “showcases” if you will, of the labor and services of the river within.  Such is the case with the Mekong Delta at the South China Sea.

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M.M.B.B. (the Many Meetings Back in Bangkok)

Posted: December 23, 2004

DAY 429 (18 days since last Thailand entry):  It kind of feels like I’m going to my second home, I thought as I flew over Cambodia on my way back to Bangkok.  It was to be my third landing in Thailand’s capital city, one of the region’s major transportation hubs.  As I stated once before, on the independent travel circuit in southeast Asia, “all roads lead to Bangkok.”

Each previous experience was different.  The first time I simply caught up on writing during a one-day layover en route to Kathmandu.  On my second time, I did the “backpacker thing” of beers and banana pancakes with Manchester backpacker Paul.  This third time would bring another kind of experience, one I was really looking forward to.  As the saying goes, “The third time’s the charm.”

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Excess Baggage

Posted: December 23, 2004

DAY 430:  To the uninformed, the Philippines may seem like “just another southeast Asian country,” with people that look like the people of other nearby countries.  This is a complete falsity, of course.  As my Let’s Go guidebook perfectly puts it, “the Philippines has been permanently thrown out of sync with the rest of Southeast Asia.”  The Pacific archipelago nation has a history unlike any of the others around, as it was a former Spanish colony eventually sold to the United States.  Catholicism is the dominant religion, not Buddhism, and traditionally, no one uses chopsticks.  Let’s Go continues: 

Described as a hodgepodge of “Malay, Madrid, and Madison Avenue,” Filipino culture fosters a range of ethnicities, languages, and lifestyles among which natives have found unity and an unparalleled love for life.  Their willingness to drop everything for a basketball game or a cockfighting match reflects the national philosophy of bahala na, roughly translated as “whatever will be, will be.”  At the heart of the Filipino tradition is a strong sense of community; Filipinos can’t bear doing things by themselves and, above all, value family, friendliness, and personal loyalty.  This cheerful attitude, along with convenient transportation, numerous English speakers, and inexpensive locales, makes the Philippines a budget traveler’s paradise.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.  Welcome to the Philippines.

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Learning Tagalog

Posted: December 25, 2004

DAY 431:  Tagalog (pronounced ta-GA-log) is the official language of the Philippines, along with English.  It is unlike any language in the world; at its roots it is a tribal tongue which some have described as “like Malay,” except certain concepts and nouns are taken from Spanish to fill a void.  When Ferdinand Magellan landed in the Philippines during his attempted circumnavigation around the globe — The Global Trip 1520 — soon came the Spanish colonialists who ultimately took over in their need for a trading port in southeast Asia.  Magellan however, did not reap the rewards of such imperialism, nor did he celebrate a triumphant return back in Spain for he died in the Philippines, ending his Global Trip early.

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Delusions Of Grandma

Posted: December 28, 2004

DAY 432:  You Star Wars geeks out there are probably reading the title of this entry thinking I am playing off the famous Han Solo quote from Return of the Jedi after he is released from being imprisoned in carbonite.  Well, as much of a Star Wars geek I am myself, I am not playing off of Han’s line because it has already been done before; “Delusions of Grandma” is the title of a novel by Carrie Fisher, which the actress-turned-writer used in her post-Star Wars career when she was trying to distance herself away from her persona as Princess Leia while still trying to bank on it.  I’m afraid it hasn’t worked though, for I will always remember Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia — more specifically, I will always remember Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia in the gold bikini from Return of the Jedi, as most guys of my generation will. 

Yowza, Leia!  No, that’s not a light saber in my pocket, I’m just happy to see you!

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A Lump Of Coal For Christmas

Posted: December 28, 2004

DAY 433:  In the New Jersey suburbs just outside of New York City, my mother and half of her siblings had relocated and recreated the family communal feel of the Bulacan farm over three houses in the same neighborhood.  It is Rivera Clan West, or R.C.W., an acronym I made up just now.

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SIXTEEN MONTHS AROUND THE WORLD (in chronological order):

PROLOGUE:

SOUTH AMERICA:

AFRICA:

EUROPE & RUSSIA:

ASIA:

NORTH AMERICA:

EPILOGUE:



PRAISE FOR THE GLOBAL TRIP BLOG

Praised and recommended by USA Today, RickSteves.com, and readers of BootsnAll and Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree, The Global Trip blog was selected by the editors of PC Magazine for the “Top 100 Sites You Didn’t Know You Couldn’t Live Without” (in the travel category) in 2005.

“Warning: If this site doesn’t give someone the travel bug, nothing will.”

- Colleen Clark and Megg Mueller Schulte, USATODAY.com

“We’ve scoured the web for helpful tips, travelogues and photographs and it is safe to say that your combination of humor, attention to detail, and artistry have made your page by far the most interesting and informative.  You really manufactured a tremendous web page.  As we have read more and more of your entries we have come to trust your perspective.”

- letter to Erik R. Trinidad from Roger M. Brown, Senior Legislative Assistant, Office of U.S. Senator Wayne Allard

“Seeing your no holds barred, real life, real person take on the countries you traveled to, and getting genuine information on the whos, whats, wheres, and whys, somehow made everything seem more accessible… I just [want] to say, with all sincerity, thanks.”

- Luke Kesterton, UK

“[Other travel blogs don’t] even come close to being as good as Erik Trinidad’s The Global Trip… It really is the best travel blog out there.”

- Jen Leo, travel writer (Condé Nast Traveler, L.A. Times) and editor of travel anthologies Sand In My Bra, Whose Panties Are These? and The Thong Also Rises.





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