FINAL INSTALLMENT!

LEAH LUGS CRAP AROUND THE WORLD

THE FINAL COUNTDOWN

Weeks 44- 52- Prehistoric Birds and Drunk Oy Gevolts in Australia; Gigantic Ice Cubes and Drunk Irish Paddling Pools in New Zealand; Howling Winds and George Dubya Bush Drunk on Kava in the remote Fijian Islands; and Dealing With Big Intrusive Jewish Families While Incredibly Jet Lagged aka Complete and Utter Disorientation in the USA.

Why hello there friends, compadres, amigos and friendidicos, and welcome to weeks 44-52 of LEAH LUGS CRAP AROUND THE WORLD: The FINAL installment. Yes, you read that correctly, more than a year has passed since I left our fair country’s oases of wheat fields, skipping, singing, smiling children, and dangerously incompetent presidents who shall go unnamed (but you know who you are ahem Mr. GWB ahem) for the first rainier and then drier and then rainier and then drier pastures of foreign lands. Indeed, bizarrely enough, I now sit at the dusty white desk in my bedroom, typing away on my powerbook and surrounded by the relics of my childhood- scruffy old stuffed animals; dusty figurines of puppies, bears and angels; old photos of me as a kid, my brother, my cousins, my beautiful and long gone border collie puppy; books that represent all my developmental stages, from Roald Dahl and Anne of Green Gables to the extensive Star Wars series to the depressing “One Last Wish” cancer series when I decided my childhood was too happy for that of a writer and I needed to learn of life’s harsh realities to Legs McNeil’s and Gillian McCain’s history of the punk movement, Please Kill Me, to Everything is Illuminated. It’s all there, and here I am, in the middle of it, observing my old, familiar environment as if it were a new country altogether, different from any other I’ve seen on this year in that everything here is familiar, attached to some distant landscape of individual memories so distant re-discovering them through different eyes is nearly like finding something new. New treasures in a vault that’s been open for years.

But hold on, we’ll get to all that yet. The last time I left off, I was somewhere in the middle of China, fighting the damn commies for my choice of hair conditioner and failing miserably. It was an uphill battle, this one was, fighting for my choice in hair products, but little did I know the war that loomed on the Australian horizon. Yes, the bizarre war that historians are already dubbing, The War of Re-Integration into Western Society. To use technical historian jargon- “Oh man, it was a doozie.” So let’s just jump into it, shall we?

Chapter 1- Australia: Night night, don’t let the hostels bite

After two and a half months of travel in the land mine of cultural differences that was the Far East, and a thirteen hour flight with a cute English guy passed out and drooling on my shoulder, my plane plunged through Australia’s non-existent cloud layer, skidded its wheels along the scorching runway, and BOOM! deposited me in the sunny outskirts of Sydney. Thus began my Australian travels, which, in the end, would be more about the rediscovery of my western identity than about chasing after pissed off kangaroos or beating crazed kookaburras away from my meals (though, that would happen too). Indeed, my time in Australia was a strange adventure of rediscovery, one that oddly seemed to mirror the various stages of my life that have already passed by- my childhood, my nervous pre-teens, my teenage angst years, my confused college years, and the “if you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em” study abroad years. Sounds odd, hm? Well, let’s put this in perspective. After two and a half months in Asia, in many ways I was the same Leah as always, and in many ways, I was irreversibly altered. The ways in which I had stayed the same and the ways in which I had changed were both innumerable and impossible to list. Sure, I could say all the obvious and cliché stuff:

1) Seeing real suffering and poverty made me appreciate what I had.
2) Witnessing survival and even happiness and enlightenment amongst so much destitution gave me perspective on my own life, on my own troubles, made me want to wear color and celebrate life (if they could do it in such adverse conditions, why couldn’t I?).
3) When every sense was bombarded with foreign stimuli, I was forced to open my mind, plunge eagerly into new things, into life in all its many difficulties, complexities and surprises, to let go of my fear of both life and death and start taking real risks.
4) Traveling on my own in such adverse conditions required organizational and communication skills, patience, a fair amount of strength, independence, the ability to let go of ruined plans and quickly adapt to a new situation.

Etc. The list goes on, but, as real and as important as these things are, they are of the nature of resumes and cover letters, pulled from my Top Ten List of What to Emphasize in a Job Interview. What I really learned in Asia, more than any of those four important but dry points, was a feeling. I just felt different, and in a very crucial way. I couldn’t tell you exactly what it was that had changed or how that would affect me as a person in the future. I had just changed, I had grown, I looked at life in an entirely different way, but not in a way that I could articulate. If I were some over-hyped celebrity and a crowd of story hungry reporters had been awaiting my arrival in the Sydney airport and they had accosted me, shoved ten mics in my face and shouted, “So, two and a half months in Asia! How does it feel?” the only answer I would have been able to give would have been,

“Well it’s kind of like… and you know then I, like…. But it also feels like…. You know?”

“Uh-huh!” the reporters would have smiled and then whispered to each other, “This girl’s meant to be a writer?”

In short, Asia had given me anything and everything, and I couldn’t tell you what any of those things were. I was new, I was changed, I was 100% My Asian Self. And now I had to take that new Asian Self and fuse it with my Western Self, a self that I had all but forgotten about. Near the end of my travels, people would ask me, “Will it be hard to readjust to American culture after so much time?” and all I could say was, yes, but I got most of that done in Australia. And it’s proved true. Of all the placed I traveled, Australia was the most like the States. If anything, it was somewhere in between the States and Britain, two cultures I had been well-acquainted with in another life. So adjusting should have been a breeze, right?

No. A big fat definite no. Australia was incredibly difficult for me. When people ask me, “Was there any part of your trip where you felt homesick?” I say Australia. When people ask me, “Was there any part of your trip when you felt lonely” I say Australia. When people ask me, “Was there any part of your trip where you wished you weren’t traveling alone?” I say Australia. This has everything to do with me, everything to do with the backpacking culture, and only partially to do with Australia. It all comes back to this whole rediscovery thing. After two and a half months of changing and reaching outside of myself, I had to step back in to both a lifestyle and a personality that I no longer identified with or recognized. And it was hard. Really, really, really hard. But it’s not something you can understand until I bring you through my adjustment stages, which, for whatever reason, mirrored the already passed stages of my life. So let’s go through them.

Stage One: Childhood (A whole lot of happiness and a whole lot of confusion)

I arrived at Sydney airport midday, and immediately began alternating between feelings of shell-shock and complete and utter elation. “Honey,” I wanted to say to the guy working border security. “I’m hooooooome.” I was back. Back in western culture. Back in my territory, a place where I didn’t have to learn the rules because I already knew them. I knew how to cross the street, how to pick the best bunk in a hostel, how to eat, how to cook, how to talk, and mostly, where to buy cheese. Oh, yes, the cheese! Just think of it! So abundant it nearly grew off trees! In supermarkets, in restaurants, in convenience stores! Cheese, cheese, on trees! Oh, the joy, the sheer joy of it! I had to get to a supermarket, and I had to get to one NOW!

I grabbed my bags, cleared both customs and the incredibly long quarantine queue (“Do you have wood? Have you been near wood? Have you looked at wood? Have you thought of wood? Quarantine her!”), and bounced straight up to the nearest Travelex to exchange some money. That’s when it hit me. Not only what I re-entering western culture, I was stepping into an environment filled with characters very similar to those at home. Why, oh why, did I feel this? Because the guy smiling pleasantly at me from behind the money exchange desk was sporting an interesting haircut we call in the backwaters of America, a “mullet”. And we’re not just talking about any sort of mullet here, not faux-stylish Spanish or half-assed rocker. We’re talking 1980s backwoods hick rat tail down to the ass mullet. The only difference between this semi-toothed Australian hick and an American redneck was the accent and the greeting. Rather than saying, “How y’all doin’ t’day?” like a proper Mississippian, this guy licked his lips, nodded his head slightly and grinned, “G’day.” Ah, Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore (nope, just the Australian version of it).

After making my exchange I stepped out into a pleasant “winter” sun (only about 35 degrees Celsius, some winter!) and was immediately blinded by the light. No, not the light from the sun itself, the light from the sun as it reflected off all the white skin of the people passing by. That’s right, all of a sudden, everybody was white. And speaking English. And when they weren’t white, they were Asian, but speaking in Australian accents. Australian accents, speaking English. As in, English English, not English as a second or third or fourth language English, not broken taxi driver how much money can I get out of the westerner English, but English English.

Where the hell was I?

I spent so much time wandering around blissfully in the airport that I missed my airport transfer. But did it matter? No. Of course not. This was “no worries” friendly Australia. Within minutes a guy who worked for the airport had arranged transport for me by running up to a transfer van that was just pulling out of the parking lot, explaining my situation and saying, “So would ten dollars do the trick?” The driver shrugged and said, “No worries,” and just like that I was sprawled in the very back seat of a huge van, speeding down a busy highway to Sydney city center.

And oh man, that feeling. I’ll never forget it, the sheer unadulterated joy as my first glimpses of Australia streamed past the window. The sun here was so different than that in Asia. Sure it was hot, but it wasn’t oppressive, it wasn’t filled with smog and it didn’t illuminate dirt and abject poverty. The sun here seemed clean, pure, as did the city itself. The cleanliness, more than anything, made my heart skip a beat. Look! Look at that! A building! Not covered in grime! Pollution! Dirt! Where are the beggars? Why aren’t there any street vendors calling out at us? Look! Look at how clean and orderly and well… familiar it all is! Familiar, in a very distant and remote way, familiar in a way looking at an old family photograph gives an amnesic a shot of déjà vu.

I was home. Or at least a step closer to it.

When I say I’ll never forget that moment, I don’t mean it in the way of a melodramatic romance or an overdramatic teen movie. Rather, I mean that the memory is permanently etched into the deepest folds of my brain, and I’m so confident of its depth that I’d bet you a fine sixpence that if you opened my brain and cut it in half, you’d see this memory right there in the center, staring you defiantly in the face, saying, “See?” The light, the scenery, but more than anything, the song that played from the radio. It wasn’t bad 80s pop butchered by overeager non-English speaking karaoke enthusiasts, nor was it a stupid melodramatic Asian pop song sung by teary eyed boy bands sunk to their knees with pain and anguish and crooning in a language I couldn’t even begin to understand. This was alternative rock. Sung in perfectly articulated voices. Nothing heavy, nothing ground shaking, nothing that was going to change the face of modern rock music. Just regular, decent, cheery, catchy pop.

I sat in the back of the transfer van, watching beautiful, western society Australia fly past my window, I felt the warm but gentle winter sun on my face, I let the music envelop me and I had myself a Moment. The type of Moment where my heart gave a little cry and elbowed my voice box over for some breathing room, where my eyes brimmed with happy tears, where my ears began to ring and my lips to moisten. Where time stood still for a brief moment, no more than a few seconds, and I lost my earthly attachment to gravity. I was floating, in the sun, in the music, in my own joy, the world streaming by, and all I could do was choke back my tears, all I could do was smile weakly.

Elation. Truly, madly, and you guessed it, deeply.

For my first week and a half in Australia, that’s truly what Australia was. First elation, then a simple sigh of relief.

The elation was complete and a feeling I fully welcomed, but it didn’t travel alone. Rather, the elation was paired with another feeling powerful in an entirely different way- shock. Along with shock came confusion. I loved this place, with all that was both new and familiar about it. But it also seemed that the more I thought I understood about it, the less I really did. I wandered the city streets in a daze. I mean, look at that place. Sydney literally sparkled. It was the cleanest city I’ve ever seen. When I looked down into the water, I could actually see the bottom. In what big cities in this world can you say the same thing? When I walked down the streets, most people looked like me. I was attracted to everyone. It just didn’t make any sense, and with every new seemingly normal every day task that I attempted, the more confused I got.

Take, for instance, my first entrance into a western store. It was a pharmacy, and I was just looking to buy some sunblock. I stepped into the store and was about to look around when I heard something strange- a cheery, female Australian accent:

“Can I help you with something today?” she chirped. I looked up. In front of me stood a well put together beautiful young Australian woman. Where had she come from? She certainly hadn’t been there when I entered. I hesitated for a moment, taken aback and unsure how to respond. Could she help me with something? Where had I heard these words before? Surely not anywhere in Europe, where the clerks either ignore or glare at you for daring to enter their premises and actually attemptin to hand them money (you fascist pig, you!). Certainly not in Asia, where thin, prim, proper Asian women hovered in masses around the door, giggling shyly at the prospect of having to speak English to a white person and preparing themselves for the long task of whining en mass until you, oh crazy westerner you, finally give in and buy the entire store (Pwweeeease? Only fifteen baht! Alright, if it’ll stop the whining!).

“Hi, can I help you with something today?” I couldn’t believe it. It truly was like being in America. Weird, very weird. After a few moments of awkwardness, I finally managed to call up my standard American response from somewhere deep within the most remote region of my memory and stammer, “No…. um… thanks. I’m uh… just looking.”

Her response was still American and eager, though distinctly Australian in formulation. “No worries!” she cooed, and just like that, she had breezed off, without me having to repeat myself like a broken record. “No, no, no, I don’t want it, no, no, no, I don’t need it no, no, no, it’s not gonna happen, no, no, no, it’s not you, it’s me, no, no, no NO NO NO!” She just left me without even pushing! How bizarre, how very, very bizarre.

That was just the pharmacy. I still had to go to the supermarket. My first real supermarket since London, a supermarket that truly was super. My god, it was phenomenal, just to go into that place and look. To breathe. To smell. To feel the superficial cold of mass freezers and environmentally un-friendly air conditioning units. Oh, the sheer beauty of it all! I stumbled around the supermarket, my little basket dangling from my arm, tottering into display shelves, making unnecessary and hick-ish comments to locals (“Capsicums? Why, shucks, back in ‘merica, we just call ‘em peppers!”). But by far the biggest shock of all came at the checkout line.

“How are you?” the checkout girl asked me.

“I’m fine, thanks, how are you?” I asked back. I was getting the hang of this already.

“I’m great!” Then she did something I just couldn’t handle. You ready for this? She began to bag my groceries. I didn’t even have to ask. She just swiped a product, swiveled her hips, opened a bag, and put the product in. I shit you not. I was overcome with emotion. I wanted to cry, but was too shocked to do so. Such a thing I hadn’t seen in what felt like a lifetime. Not in continental Europe, and most definitely not in the UK, where they let the groceries pile up while you frantically try to open up those stubborn plastic bags and customers shoot you dirty rays of hatred for holding up the queue. Not in Asia, where I once waited half an hour in the queue to buy a bag of apples, only to be told in broken English that I had to weigh them first, and doing so meant waiting in another half hour queue for someone to weigh them for me, thus causing me to throw the apples back on the pile from which I had scooped them and stomp angrily back to my group with frustrated tears in my eyes. That’s right, not since America. I wanted to hug her, my sweet, perfect little grocery bagging angel. Before I could restrain myself, I tilted my head and let loose an involuntary, “Awwwww!”

The checkout girl smiled and said, “Sorry?”

I smiled, beaming joy, choking back tears. “You’re bagging my groceries!”

She smiled, a little confused and laughed. “Yes, I am.” I clutched my hand to my heart.

“Thank you.”

This was only the beginning. As my time in Australia progressed, the number of similarities between our two cultures began to pile up. The political layout- a conservative in power that no one in any of the cities liked. The redneck hicks who somehow managed to vote that guy in. The expansive, beautiful and incredibly varied terrain. The sheer distance from place to place. The bigger is better and better is money mentality. And mostly, the used car commercials.

“That’s right Daryl, I traded mine for four thousand dollars!”
“FOUR THOUSAND DOLLARS?!?!?!?!?!?!
“FOUR THOUSAND DOLLARS!!!!!!!!!!!!
“Four THOUSAND dollars????!!!!”
“Four thousand DOLLARS!!!!!!
(Altogether now): “FOUR THOUSAND DOLLARS!!!!!!!!!!!”
“I’ve got to get myself down to Dave’s Car Warehouse TODAY!”
“FOUR THOUSAND DOLLARS!”

Indeed, it was all a shock, and a vaguely familiar shock at that, which in many ways made things more difficult. Fortunately, though, a friend of mine from the China trip, Sally, had kindly invited me to stay at her house, which gave me a nice and much needed grounding. For a week I took it all in from the comfort of a home- a real home!- including a big TV, a squishy couch, and a huge fluffy bed…. with PILLOWS! Oodles and oodles of PILLOWS! Soft, fluffy, clean, non-hostel-germed PILLOWS! Indeed, I quickly became the kind of house guest everyone dreads having. I slept eleven hours a day, I hogged their computer to write my blog, I tried not to eat their food but often did, and in a week, I think I left the house about twice (both times to replace the food I had eaten). But Sally, her partner Joel, and their two lovely pets were very accommodating and gave me just the rest I needed. (So thanks again, Sally and Joel, if you’re reading this!).

This, in essence, was the childhood of my time in Australia, a time when I was filled with joy at life’s smallest things, yet could always run back to Sally’s place for shelter when I needed it. Unfortunately, all childhoods must eventually come to an end, and after my lovely week it was time- time to move on and into the much dreaded teenage years. However, I could not fully move into my teenaged period without a proper pre-adolescence, that odd limbo period between ten and thirteen where your body starts sprouting weird growths (from hairs to pimples to these weird balloon-like things from your chest), where every night you twist and turn in your bed with growing bones and twisted muscles, where your brain begins the long process of teenaged reorganization and your hormones start to dip and spike in ways you never thought possible or humane. And where, more than anything, you are filled with an overwhelming sense of dread, the conviction that something is coming. Yes, it was truly here.

Stage Two: Pre-adolescence (The Great Fear)

My first (and real life, non-Australian) pre-adolescent period was one of conflicted allegiances. I wanted to stay a kid, to spend the rest of my life rolling around in the grass and playing with Barbies, yet I also wanted to move on to the next phase, to rid myself of constantly nagging and babying teachers. At the same time, I was filled with an overwhelming fear of things to come, of the way my body would change, of the ways I would change. Such concerns were only worsened when my mom took me to me to a strange Polish doctor for my first acne treatment. He took one look at me and declared in a harsh accent, “In one year she will have full breasts and start with the bleeding! Soon, THE GIRL SHALL BLEED!” I left the office in a fit of tears, my mother assuring me, “Oh Leah, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. You have several years before you’re going to bleed!” Thus my pre-adolescence existence was forever stalked by a cloud of fear.

During my final days at Sally’s house, the pre-adolescent period had already hit. Sure, like any well-adjusted kid, I wanted to be independent, go out into the world, see what life had to offer me, but, well, all that required so much energy. Couldn’t I just sleep fifteen hours a day and eat all the food in the house? After all, something was out there. I didn’t know what it was, but I was filled with the overwhelming and uncomfortable feeling that I wouldn’t like it.

Alas, the fateful day finally came. I bid Sally and the gang goodbye, snuck out of the house in the wee hours o’ the morn in a very pre-teen running away from home kind of way, and boarded the first of many Greyhound buses up the East coast of Australia.

So, the Greyhound bus. Yeah, I know what all you Americans are thinking: “Greyhound? But isn’t that only for old people, incredibly impoverished people and people who generally can’t keep from crapping in their pants?” To that I would say, “Yes, in America. But didn’t you read that part where I said, ‘Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore?’” The Greyhounds in America and the Greyhounds in Australia are two totally different things. Sure, they’re related, but one is the screwed up drug addicted sister who can’t make one run from New York to LA without stopping every hour to shoot up or birth yet another unwanted baby and dump it in the trash can, and the other is the overcompensating straight A student, who can’t make one run from Sydney to Cairns without stopping every hour to deliver a homemade basket of fresh Tim Tams to sick homeless limbless eyeless war vets. Two sisters, same family, nearly identical genes, same messed up parenting, two totally different outcomes. Let’s just say, if push comes to shove and American Greyhound steals Australian Greyhound’s TV for drug money, I’m siding with Australian Greyhound.

I’d like to say Australian Greyhound was a pleasant surprise, but while it was pleasant, it wasn’t much of a surprise. Keep in mind, I’d been traveling for more than ten months, and if there’s one nationality you’re likely to meet in Italy, Spain, France, the Netherlands, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, China, and generally every place in the world, it’s Australian. Whenever I met an Australian who had traveled through the states, the conversation always went the same way.

Me: “So how did you get around while you were there?”
Australian: “I used the Greyhounds.”
Me: “Oh? And how was that?”
Australian: “It was… Well…”
Me: “Honey, did the guy next to you pee all over his pants?”
Australian (through tears): “Greyhounds in the States aren’t like Greyhounds in Australia!”

True ‘dat, my Australian compadres, true ‘dat. Thus, my interaction with traveling Australians fully prepared me for the much improved conditions of the Australian Greyhounds (though, at the end of the day, bus travel will always be bus travel, no matter how well potty trained the populace becomes). The seats provided a bit more leg room, the buses were relatively clean, and the entire bus was filled with backpackers going up the East Coast. Indeed, the Greyhounds were something of a social event. The most popular and easiest section of Australia to explore is the East Coast, and as a result, the entire transport line is filled with zillions of young backpackers. Many, like me, buy cheap package deals for the various stops along the way, so everyone is essentially doing the same thing and on pretty similar schedules. You might separate from a group of people and not see them for awhile, only to see them several weeks later and find out you’ve been just a day behind each other the entire way up. As a result, every bus trip was a reunion of sorts. Who would you run into this time? That group of English guys who nearly drank themselves to death on the Whitsundays trip? Those girls from the hostel in Byron Bay? That weird cowboy from the Sydney to Coffs Harbor leg? Who would show up was always a guessing game, both wonderful and horrible, depending on who I wanted to see and who I hoped I’d left behind back in Noosa.

With all these backpackers on board, there was little room for non-backpacking weirdos (that doesn’t mean that everyone was potty trained, keep in mind how much backpackers drink). This is mostly because it’s actually become cheaper to fly in Australia than it has to take the buses, so for people who don’t want to see everything the East Coast has to offer, buses just don’t make any sense. For the most part, the droolers and weak-bladdered have moved to the air.

But the biggest difference between Greyhound Australia and Greyhound America has less to do with the size or cleanliness of the seats or the caliber of clientele than it does with something distinctly at the front of the bus- the bus drivers. In the States, Greyhound bus drivers (for that matter, any public transport operators) are just there to do the job. Get in, get out, and communicate as few words, and as little emotion as possible. Drive the bus and get this sucker done with.

Not so, in Australia. Rather, Australian bus drivers (or at least, the ones that drive the Greyhound buses) would like to welcome you, the guy next to you, the girl in front of you, the girl next to her, the guy across from her, the girl next to him, and generally, every single human soul onto the bus. Then, much like an old man from Mississippi, sitting on his porch, playing the harmonica and rambling about life’s finer mysteries, the Australian Greyhound drivers would like to have a very long, very one sided discussion with you about a large variety of many different things. About the seat belt safety laws, which you can choose to follow or not, just as long as you know that if an inspector unexpectedly boards the bus, it’s you who will be fined, not the driver, but, that said, the bus driver does not have eyes in the back of his head so you can feel free to do whatever you like, just as long as you can pay up; about the upcoming schedule, which should go pretty smoothly if all things go well, and there’s no reason why they shouldn’t, and hey, perhaps they’ll go faster than expected if no one is there for the airport pick up, why, the driver could radio base right now and see if anyone’s scheduled for that stop anyway, and if there isn’t anybody, then we can continue on to the next stop, and the next stop, and then the next, before our absurdly early lunch break at 11, which will be half an hour so make sure to get back to the bus on time and so on and so on until we’ve rambled up to Cairns at which point our fearless bus driver finally gets to go home!; about the workings of the toilet in the back of the bus, which generally operates quite smoothly, though sometimes the flusher can be a bit stubborn, so if you really drop the “heavy artillery” (yes a driver actually used this phrase), you’ve got to push that flusher in and really hold it; and about ten million other subjects, which varied from driver to driver.

Between (and often, within) subjects, the driver would pause and breathe heavily into the mic but not shut the system off, which at first I found very confusing. Was I free to go back to my music and commence my many moody hours of contemplative window staring or was he going to keep blabbing in militaristic bowel terms? Every time I’d think enough time of heavy breathing sans conversation had elapsed and pushed play on my iPod (Contemplative/Moody Mix), that would be the moment the driver would strike up the conversation again, going on anywhere from a minimum of ten to a maximum of thirty minutes longer. It took several more rides before I realized when the drivers really were finished, they’d turn off the mic completely and switch to blaring pop music or a stupid and inescapably loud DVD, and even then it might not be over, the threat of a sudden remembrance and an instantaneous switch back to the mic system was always a dark and very real possibility. It truly was never over until the fat guy stopped singing. Even the sign off took a very regular but unnecessarily long pattern.

“Well,” the bus drivers would muse. “I’ll let you all be for awhile now. But say, before I go, does anyone know how we get to Byron Bay? Because I’ve never done this before and don’t know where I’m going. Hey, did I tell you all, this is the first time I’ve driven a bus? Doing quite well don’t you think? ‘Cept I’m not so sure where the brake is… Young lady in the first seat, could you help me? Have you ever driven one of these things before?”

On and on they’d go in an admirable display of Lesson 1: the things that Australians find funny.

These were just few of the many differences between American and Australian Greyhounds, but one thing remained the same: techniques for hogging two seats. Everyone on Greyhound buses has the same goal: to obtain and maintain two seats, even though you only paid for one. This way you can stretch out, relax, and not have to make small talk with anyone. Over the years, many different people have tried out many different methods for seat hogging, but only one is consistently successful- the fake bag fall asleep. Everyone on buses does this, partly for its ease, partly for its simple effectiveness. To do this skill, all you need to do is put your bag on the free seat next to you and fall asleep on it. If you’re not tired, then pretend (most people are anyway). No one searching for a free seat will want to rouse you so unless the bus gets too full, that seat will be yours until trip’s end. There are only two problems with this technique:

1) Frequent stops. These are incredibly annoying because you have to pretend your asleep and fall over your bag, wait until all newcomers are seated, sit up, and then repeat the whole charade again at the next stop so that when stops are frequent, you can’t get a moment’s peace.

2) When you’re on the other side of it. I can’t even count the number of times when I’d board a bus full of backpackers in Australia and the entire bus would be full of people “collapsed” on their bags “sleeping.” C’mon, guys, I know you’re facking!

By the end of the trip, when I had lived through more hours on a bus than any human being should ever have to withstand, when I was lonely, sick of traveling and hated everyone around me, when I just wanted to be left alone to stare out the window and be miserable, I didn’t find the Greyhounds so amusing- not the drivers, not the people, not the seat hogging techniques. But when I boarded that first bus in Sydney, in the last fleeting moments of my pre-teen innocence, the bus driver was a comfort. “Hey,” I thought. “You may be tired, sick of traveling and just want mom and dad’s flat screen TV, but this is going to be alright.” So I sat back, relaxed, tried to tune out the bus driver’s half-hour monologue, and made my way up to my first stop on the Eastern Australian coast, Coffs Harbor: Give us your poor, your tired, and your squished bananas.

The ride itself was extremely beautiful and was, once again, extremely reminiscent of the States. In particular, this first section of Australia looked like the midwest- long flat green hills; big, fat, distinctly non-Asias cows chewing cud; big fluffy clouds traveling independently rather than in packs and visible from miles away; colors so beautiful sometimes I couldn’t believe I wasn’t looking at a painting. Ah, ‘twas a beautiful and familiar sigh of relief. The only big difference between this American and Australian road was the warning signs on the side of the road. In Australia, it’s not deer that are the major killer, it’s kamikaze kangaroos, leaping out in front of vehicles and causing major accidents. As a result, the roads were littered with warnings about kangaroo crossings. But for now, at least, the giant rodents were content to sit by the side of the road, calm, serene, and incongruously foreign in a scene so overwhelmingly familiar.

After the beautiful but long (nine hour) ride, I finally arrived in Coffs and was promptly greeted by a stocky, friendly Maori (for those of you who don’t know, Maoris are pseudo-native New Zealanders, meaning they were there before the Europeans, but they too are settlers) guy, who ushered me and several other Greyhounders into a van and began giving us a break down of activities available both through the hostel and in Coffs Harbor. Such activities included kayaking, petting dolphins, bike riding and most importantly, attending our first Australian “barbie” and learning how to drink the Australia way.

Okay, once again, I could handle this, right? Any young traveler would be hard pressed to backpack around Europe without acquiring a higher alcohol tolerance and developing a slight tendency towards over indulgence. I knew just what to do. I’d meet some people in the hostel, hop the van back into town, together we could go in on the cheapest, most horrible bottles of wine we could possibly find and a good, raucous night would be had by all. That’s how we did it in college, that’s how we did it backpacking in Europe, and I assumed that’s how we would do it in Australia. That, of course, was before I was introduced to the backpackers best friend, a little drink called “Goon”.

Never heard of it? Neither had I. “Goon” is an affectionate nickname for Australian boxed wine. Describing goon is like making a series of “yo mama” jokes. “Yo goon is so rank, it ain’t got grapes in it, it’s got fish, nuts, milk and egg!” (Yeah dawg, but it sure does taste good!). “Yo broke ass is so cheap, when you finished with your goon, you use the lining as a pillow!” (Beats paying for one!). Ah, goon. The penultimate backpacker drink. It’s so cheap, it has to be labeled with food allergy warnings because the ingredients barely include grapes and mostly include things that should never, ever be put with so-called “wine”. For broke backpackers, constantly trying to out-cheap one another (“I bought this ramen pack for a dollar fifty!” “Oh yeah? I bought a TWELVE PACK of ramen for a dollar fifty!”), goon is the perfect invention. When the goon is finished, the silver box lining can be blown back up and used as a pillow. One box, very little money, and a whole lot of value. Goon is so popular amongst backpackers and poor people, it even comes with its own saying. When one wants to indulge in a goon binge, one doesn’t drink the goon, nor does one pour the goon or otherwise consume the goon, one “slaps the goon”. “Are we slapping the goon tonight?” “What night don’t we slap it?”

Backpackers in Australia are very attached to their goon. By the time 10 o’clock hits, the kitchens, patios and rec rooms in all hostels across Australia are lined with drunk young people, cradling a box of goon underneath one arm and gripping a messy mug in the other. Goon isn’t a drink, it’s an entire culture.

My first night in this culture was a shock, to say the least. If I was a pre-teen, there were suddenly big bad rebellious teenagers all around me, and I didn’t know quite what to do. I thought I could just go about my business, drink my cheap (but not the cheapest) wine, get buzzed, chat to everyone in the room and be a part of it all, and for awhile, that was true. The English girls with whom I had split the wine were very sweet and the Canadian guys I started chatting to were a bunch of fun. I could keep up with these kids, I could have fun with this. But then, without any warning, the English and Irish guys arrived, red faced, staggering and clutching boxes of goon.

Now, to understand these characters, you have to know a little more about the tradition of the English/Irish gap year. Either before or after attending university (so, at either eighteen or twenty-two years old), many English and Irish kids buy the cheapest round the world ticket they can get and just go. The standard ticket starts somewhere in the UK, and then goes to Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Los Angeles, New York, and then back to the UK. For typical (most) backpackers, this means full moon party in Thailand (a party on the beach under the full moon with lots of trance music and plenty of ecstasy), working holiday visa Australia, the Kiwi Experience party bus in New Zealand, the Feejee Experience party bus in Fiji, shopping and spotting stars in LA and New York, and then home. Should the Pacific Ocean ever mysteriously dry up, the amount of alcohol consumed in these backpackers’ gap years could probably re-fill it, and sink California as well. For the eighteen year olds, the prevailing mentality is, “Woohooo! We’re away from hooooome! Partaaaaay!” For the twenty-two year olds, the prevailing mentality is, “Wooohoooo! Our last moments of freeeeedom before we get a job and settle down and our lives are ooooover! Partaaaaaay!” Everyone is motivated to drink as if the goon apocalypse is nigh, and so everyone drinks as if, well, the goon apocalypse is nigh.

Now, before the English and Irish get all out of sorts about me characterizing them as being booze hounds, let me make clear that I’m blaming this mentality on age, not nationality. It’s just that the English and the Irish comprise most of the backpackers on this route, so that’s what I saw. When there were Canadians, they did the same thing, and hell, the few times I actually managed to spot the rare and endangered species that is the traveling American, they, too, were all about the goon. In Australia, goon happened.

What I can say, though, is that when those drunk English and Irish guys came stumbling onto the hostel patio that first night in Coffs Harbor, man, were they a sight, and having just come from change your life cultural experience Asia, man, were they a shock. Within moments they spotted us girls and literally came sliding into us, producing a pack of cards and initiating the drinking games. And man. Man. Was it a sight! All the guys were pretty bad that night, but there was one guy in particular who was beyond all hope. His face was as red as a beet, he could barely hold his body up, and the only two things he could talk about were:

a) Playing more drinking games.
And
b) His sunglasses. When they were down, he looked sober. When they were up, he looked pissed. Do you see that amazing transformation? “Look!” he cried, utterly astounded by his genius. “Pissed! Not pissed! Pissed! Not pissed!”

Even the incredibly pissed friends were fed up with Incredibly Pissed English Guy. He was so far gone, he’d initiate drinking games, and then drink everyone else’s goon when it was their turn to drink. I watched him, the shocked pre-teen, and asked one of his less drunk and actually quite nice friends, “How long has this guy been drinking?” His friend shook his head and rolled his eyes. “Since Thailand, and I’ve had to take care of him the entire way.” I thought he was joking, but the next morning when I went into the kitchen in the morning to get breakfast, the Incredibly Pissed English Guy and his new Irish buddies came stumbling in, laughing and clearly still drunk off their asses.

“Hey guys,” I said, only mildly amused. “Still drunk from last night?”

Incredibly Pissed English Guy smiled lazily at me, his head tipped back and his body loose, clearly on the brink of hospitalization. One of the Irish guys shook his head and slurred, “Still drunk? We never stopped! Been up all night!”

Let me just make clear that he wasn’t telling me this at, oh, I don’t know, four or five in the morning, he was saying this at ten AM. They’d been drinking for over fourteen-hours, and from further discussion I learned that the rest of the day’s plan included:
1) Taking a nap
2) Waking up and…
3) Drinking until the bar opened

Hey, if you’re never sober, you’re never hungover, right? I suppose you have to give them credit for stamina. After all, Incredibly Pissed English Guy really had been drinking since Thailand. If that’s not staying in the game, I don’t know what is (ten bucks he’s dead by thirty, anybody in?).

But before I get too negative and disillusioned, let us recall that at that point, I was still in my pre-teen phase, fully cognizant of the storm that lay in the very near future, but still clinging to the happiness of my youth. Just because in Asia, every day had been a life changing and once in a lifetime experience, just because every day I saw something that blew my mind, that changed how I viewed both the world and my own role within it, just because every day I saw something that flooded me with emotion, whether it was sorrow or astonishment from beauty or death or poverty or wealth or FOOD, didn’t mean that backpacking in Australia with alcoholics couldn’t be a great experience too. All I had to do was keep a positive attitude, and realize that if I wanted to have amazing experiences, I’d have to go out and find them, that such experiences were no longer going to grab my arm on the street, beg me for money and make me cry. No, if I wanted great experiences, I’d have to be the one to find them and bring them to me.

So that first full day in Coffs Harbor, I decided to get proactive. A bunch of relatively sober guys in the hostel were going for a bike ride out to a banana farm and since that sounded kind of lame and uninteresting but like something to do, I grabbed a bike and went out with them. And you know what? It was a lot of fun. We chatted the whole way, took our pictures in front of a huge banana (the boys loved that, a huge yellow phallic symbol), gulped down delicious banana smoothies, and even learned how to design cute clothing out of garbage bags when a minor gale swept through the banana farm and left us soaked. For a moment, it seemed as if my carefree childhood could stay.

Then night hit, and all illusions were lost. Once again, everyone was trashed off their asses, sitting around talking about how trashed off their asses they really were. And about boobies. And clothing, depending on whether they were male or female. Yes, I had gone from a life changing experience to:

“Hey, Matt? Remember that time when you were so drunk you passed out in that random German guy’s bed and woke up without your pants on?”
“Oh man! I forgot about that!”
“Dude that was HILARIOUS! You were all like, where are my pants? And I was all like, I don’t know!”

Or, if they were English:
“Oi, Chris? Remember that night when you were so pissed you were sick all over that fit girl’s blouse? And then he still tried to pull her! A bloody good laugh that was, innit mate!”

Or, if they were any nationality of girls:
“OMG Sarah! I LOVE your shirt!”
“Do you really? It doesn’t make me look fat?”
“OMG are you kidding? If I were a guy, I’d toooootally make out with you tonight.”
“Awwww, Ashley! You are like my TOTAL best friend!”

Etc.

So I sat there, willfully sober, listening, watching, waiting for the least pathetic bedtime hour to arrive, and transitioned into my next developmental stage.

Stage Three: Teenaged Angst/Woe is Me/I hate everyone in this room so please keep me away from any available weapons

Ah, the wonderful, cheery teenaged years. A place where I am entirely uncomfortable in my own skin, where I don’t really like the people around me regardless of how nice they actually are, where my entire life is a quest to fill the emptiness, to find meaning in life, and where I don’t know fully what I want but I know it’s not this.

Now, don’t get the wrong idea about me. It’s not that I don’t drink, it’s not that I don’t party, it’s not that, from the relatively late age of nineteen to well, now, you couldn’t spot me stumbling drunkenly around town on a Friday or Saturday night screaming, “Wooooo! I LOVE THIS SONG!!!!!” That’s what any young person worth his or her salt does on a weekend, and let me tell ya, I’m definitely worth my salt. I just don’t do it every night of the week, twenty-four hours of the day. Because that’s alcoholism, and the last time I checked, I wasn’t an alcoholic.

Being immersed in this alcoholic backpacker culture after coming from Asia was like being a freshman in high school and thrown into the popular crowd, a clique that for some reason I couldn’t understand accepted me, but a clique that for many reasons I just couldn’t understand. It was bewildering, it was disorienting, and it was not where I wanted to be.

So I reacted in the only way I knew how: I became an elitist. My travel experiences and relative intelligence (it doesn’t take that much to feel intelligent when everyone around you is constantly drunk) became scapegoats. I curled my upper lip, I stuck up my nose, and I sneered.

Sure, I’ll sit here and have a beer with you, but just so you know, I’m soooooo much better than this.

Suddenly, the old topics of conversation that used to satisfy my desire for intellectual discussion were hackneyed. I needed something deeper. The war in Iraq wasn’t good enough anymore. I wanted Sartre, existentialism, a Kurosawa film, a detailed analysis of The Sound and the Fury. All other topics of conversation need not apply (you drunken plebian horde!).

Still, just like in high school, a part of me tried to keep optimistic, and for the most part, I kept on a face that was pleasant enough so that no one could really tell what I was going through. I left Coffs Harbor and moved up the coast to the absolutely gorgeous Byron Bay, where I rediscovered my love of running, or rather, my love of using running as a means of escape and release (Byron Bay made running incredibly easy, every turn revealed more beautiful ocean and beach, an amazing reward for hard work). I met four very fun and nice girls in the hostel, two Canadian and two Dutch, and together we discovered beautiful hikes and lay out in the sun.

But I was still miserable. Food became my only comfort, which is not to say that I ate a lot, just that I really, really, really looked forward to dinner, the only meal I was ever hungry for or could really afford. My life began to pathetically revolve around dinner, or even a mid-afternoon “linner”. I was starting to do that very annoying low confidence thing that happens every time I make a major adjustment in my life: freshman year of college, the first months of junior year study abroad, and now, traveling up the Eastern Australian coast. When this “low confidence thing” hits, I am nearly paralyzed by what I like to call my Three Major Lifetime Insecurities (lifetime, because I’ve realized they’ll always be with me whenever I have a low in my life, and there will always be lows):

1) I’m fat. Like a cow. A whale, on really low days.
2) I’m lonely. I’ll never be loved. I’m ugly and annoying, therefore no one will ever date me, let alone fall in love with me. Thus why I haven’t been in any sort of relationship in over two years, and I haven’t been in a good relationship since I was seventeen.
3) I really, really can’t write.

This is my triumvirate of low self-confidence. It didn’t matter that, after penniless backpacking in Europe and two and a half months in Asia, I was the skinniest I’d been since high school, nor that I hadn’t been in one place for more than six months in the past two years or that, let’s face it, 99% of guys at my college were idiots or gay, nor that I had just gotten into pretty much all the best creative writing and journalism schools in the nation. I was fat, I was ugly, I was entirely un-dateable, and I really, really couldn’t write.

Like I said, this wasn’t the first time the Triumvirate attacked, and it most definitely won’t be the last. I could be an anorexic ninety-pound Nobel Laureate with Pam Anderson boobs, and still, those Low Days would hit where I’d feel like the mom from What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? and as illiterate as our current president.

I should have known these feelings would hit, since they’ve called, “Present” at every single major adjustment since high school. I’ve certainly been around them enough. I’ve seen them in me, and I’ve seen them in the people around me, struggling with adjustment too. They’re very universal feelings. We step out of our comfort zone, into something new and foreign, and suddenly loneliness hits. I deal with that by feeling miserable, fat and alone, by developing a huge case of low self-confidence-itis and being jealous of all the beautiful, seemingly well-adjusted people around me. While I become more solitary, trying to find some way to hold myself up, most people desperately try to grab on to somebody else. Thus why freshman year of college so many people very quickly (often within a week) wind up in relationships that sort of work, but not really. We need someone, anyone, and that person down the dorm hall kind of fits the order. I’ve always watched this sudden hook up process with complete bewilderment, feeling alienated and out of the loop. There I am, just trying to deal with my own adjustment issues, and before I know it, everyone around me is in a relationship of sorts, or at least dressing up nicely and getting a lot of attention from guys. Then, in the catch-22 that is my Triumvirate, I see everyone else getting attention and think, “It’s because they’re skinnier, more beautiful, more loveable, and hell, I bet they can write better than me too.” (It wasn’t until my senior year of college that I realized if I wanted the same sort of attentions, all I had to do was wear a mini-skirt and straighten my hair).

So, if I had dealt with these issues before, and if I had grown since study abroad and traveling, I could sort myself in a much more mature manner this time around, right? Well, yes, but not quite yet. First, I had to recognize what I was going through, and I wasn’t quite there yet. In Byron Bay, all I really knew was that I was miserable, that, after two and a half months in Asia and not being attracted to anyone, I wanted every boy that walked own the street, and that I was alone. Completely and utterly aloooooone.

(See, did I tell you this was the teenaged angst period or what?)

No, in Byron Bay my relatively more mature side hadn’t yet come to the rescue, so I was relying on my other standard Quick Fix for Instant Absolution: projection. I took all my fears and insecurities, my exhaustion and my Triumvirate, and I channeled them into one very unfortunate sandwich. No, not a metaphorical sandwich, a real tuna fish sandwich.

Here’s what happened.

After a fun day hiking with the Canadian and Dutch girls, I had a hunkering for a good sandwich, and not just any sandwich, a big, fresh sub with lots of ingredients and lots of mayo. In China, this would have been (and was) a major problem, since outside of Beijing, gluten didn’t really exist. In Byron Bay, where the sandwich shops lined up like army troops up and down the small city streets, this sandwich and mayo goal would be very much achievable. I told the girls of my plans, got the Dutch girls to come along with me, ordered my sandwich- tuna with lettuce, tomatoes, black olives and mayo, oh the sweet mayo- sat down and conveniently neglected the fact that I had told the Canadian girls we would get the sandwiches to go and meet them across the street for our walk home. They could wait. The sandwich came first.

I took a bite and… and! And!.... complete and utter disappointment. Not only was the bread kind of stale, the mayo was, well, lacking. There just wasn’t enough of it, and what was there, wasn’t mixed into the tuna. Normally, I could deal with disappointment of this caliber. After all, it was only a sandwich, right? No. An emphatic no, not in this situation. This was not an ordinary sandwich. This was the first tuna sandwich I’d gotten to eat since Asia, the tuna sandwich that had to live up to two and a half months of sandwich daydreaming. This was a sandwich that, in a day full of self-induced misery and adjustment issues, I looked to for my only happiness.

This sandwich had big shoes to fill, and this sandwich didn’t fill them.

With much effort, I choked down my first bite and took a very pained sip of diet Coke.

“How’s the sandwich?” one of the Dutch girls asked. I nodded a bit too quickly and took another bite to prove my enthusiasm. I didn’t dare to speak lest I start sobbing.

“Mmmmhmmm! Mmmmm mmm mmmmm!” I moaned through my next dry, stale bite. I was extremely hungry so I gulped the rest of the sandwich down as quickly as I could and sulked the entire walk home.

(The sandwich bit doesn’t end here, so please keep it in mind for the next page).

That night we planned to go out to a bar called Cheeky Monkeys, where we could dance on tables. We’d look good, we’d dance, we’d drink too much, and we’d have a great time. Somehow I had managed not to drink for a couple of nights, and these girls had become friends, so I figured a night out on the town was definitely something I could handle. Back at the hostel, we scurried around doing our girl stuff, putting on makeup, trying on clothes, doing our hair. All of this was, once again, another sort of culture shock, since I hadn’t made myself pretty for the going out scene since London (in Europe I stopped caring within a week and went out in dirty backpacker jeans and a pony tail). At first, I was overcome with excitement. One of the girls had a hair straightener, meaning I could actually do my hair! I whizzed around the room in a state of euphoria, straightening a little here, straightening a little there and proclaiming, “A straightener! She has a straightener!”

But then I quickly felt alienated from the group again when I struggled to fit back into this very Western scene, a scene that I was still struggling to understand and to find (remember) my role in. One of the Dutch girls finished dressing and I told her she looked really good (because she did). She gave a little pout and said that she would look good if she wasn’t so fat. I had a moment of déjà vu. I had heard this before, many times before in fact, from myself and from every girl I’ve ever met in the moments before we go out. There was something good to say in response to this, something that few guys could ever think of to tell their girlfriends, something that I mastered back in middle school as a tool for survival. But what was it?

“Awww,” I cooed. “Guys like a girl with a little something on them!”

What? This was certainly not the right thing to say. I knew it before the words had even left my mouth, but I couldn’t do anything to stop them. I had been thinking earlier in that day about how beautiful this girl was (yes, in that very jealous, low self-confidence way that characterizes my adjustment period), not despite her minimal extra weight (this girl was definitely not fat, just not thin), but because of it. She certainly wasn’t skinny, but she was full-bodied, curvy, and absolutely beautiful. But how do you say that when most western girls just want to be thin?

The words left my mouth and for a moment the room stood still. The Dutch girl stopped adjusting her clothes and smiled thinly. The other three stopped talking and listened in.

“Um,” I said. “That sounded horrible. I didn’t mean that you have any extra meat, or um, whatever on you. I just meant that you look beautiful and that guys, well, they don’t all like thin girls and…” Dammit. I shut my mouth. The Dutch girl smiled kindly and said,

“I know what you mean.” She was a nice girl and was being generous, but it wasn’t the first time I had stepped into it around these girls, and it wouldn’t be the last (I would see the Canadian girls up and down the coast and constantly trip up with something I said and sound like a complete ass, it still makes me feel uncomfortable just to think about it).

The night was off to a bad start, and I could just feel that it wasn’t going to go well for me. I simply did not understand this young western culture going out thing, and how I was supposed to act in it. When I was finally all dolled up, I joined the girls on the patio where they were having a few pre-bar drinks with a cute Austrian guy who worked at the hostel. When I appeared at the table, he stopped, looked shocked and said, “Wow, you cleaned up well” and, in my low self-confidence, uncomfortable in my own body, sudden inability to interact with boys teenage mode, I responded with a role of my eyes and a sarcastic, “Yeah, well…”

(What did that even mean? God, I was SUCH a teenager!).

That “yeah, well” would characterize the rest of the night. In the complex way of an emotionally torn adolescent, I wanted everything and would only settle for nothing. Meaning that when we got to Cheeky Monkeys, I watched the masses of drunken young people gyrate on table tops, muttering, “Damned proletarian horde!”, yet all I wanted was for some drunk, cute asshole to grab my hand, pull me up onto the table and say, “Hey babe, you’re hot.” But… if that did happen, I’d hate the guy for being such a shallow ass, long for a deeper connection and promptly ruin the interaction by asking him if he’d ever read the book Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell and if so what did he think were its most important philosophical implications? (Which, by the way, is pretty close to what I ended up doing). I was lonely enough to throw myself down on the ground sobbing, “I just want someone! Anyone!”, but if just anyone came along, I’d say, “Go away, I’m looking for something deeper than this.”

And of course, when I was in such a state, the next feeling in the progression was jealousy. Pure, insane, unbridled, girly jealous. One by one, I watched my new friends getting hit on and think, “Why does she get hit on? I’m just as hot.” And then, “Why does she get to make out in the corner? I’m just as hot.” And then, “Why does she get to be puked on by that random obese guy in a clown suit? I’m just as hot.” It didn’t matter that I was being hit on, that when I walked across the bar, my ass was grabbed every five steps, because hey, that was just plain degrading and didn’t they know I was looking for a deeper connection?

I know, it doesn’t make any sense, but thus is the logic that goes through my crazy head when I’m dealing with my Triumvirate. Thus why I was thoroughly depressed for most of my teenaged years. It all goes back to that one thing- not fitting in. Wanting to fit in to my own skin, and thus by extension, the people around me. And also not wanting to fit in at all. In high school, it was because I didn’t really know who I was yet; in college, it was because I was still searching; and now, it was because only a couple of weeks ago I was totally found, and now, back in western society, I had no clue. It was a retro act, but without any of the good bands.

So I stood around, felt alienated, moped, and felt sorry for myself. I watched my peers, wheeling about drunkenly, making out with one another. I downed shot after shot, hoping that if I had enough, I’d lose my inhibitions and act like them. Soon enough, the inevitable drama hour came about, that wonderful time of night where half the group has disappeared to make out with a stranger, when old jealousies mix with drunken drama, the sidewalks morph into an amateur Jerry Springer set and the cops roll along saying, “You better watch your mouth, tough guy.”

I was drunk and decided I had had enough. I pulled one of the Dutch girls outside with me and sent one of the Canadian girls off to gather the rest of the group, should they want to leave. We stood outside of the bar, talking candidly in the way of drunks, and the full weight of my present situation hit me. The culture shock, the adjustment Triumvirate, my misery. I tried to keep it together, to not make a scene, but then two stereotypical Aussie blokes stepped up to us and grinned, “How are you fine ladies tonight?” In my drunken state, I wondered, god, how do I answer this question? How can I explain how miserable I am in a short and concise manner? I thought hard, and this is what came me.

“Well,” I said, shaking my head. “Today I had a really bad sandwich.”

“Oh yeah?” the guy said, not really getting it. “That’s too bad.”

“I KNOW!” I shouted, so happy that he understood. “It was just like hey, you know what, I want a tuna sandwich with MAYO, I mean really how hard is that to fucking make, right? Not very hard, right? But then I get the sandwich, and ohmygod it was SO BAD! There was barely ANY mayo and what was there wasn’t even properly mixed in!”

“What’s going on?” the other Dutch girl asked as she and the Canadians spilled out of the club.

“Her sandwich, apparently she didn’t like it,” the first Dutch girl asked.

“OH MY GOD IT WAS SOOOOO BAD!” I shouted again, unable to control the VOLUME OF MY VOICE. “See, all I wanted was mayo, right?” And so I went on, repeating the story three or four times as we walked home, stopping whoever cat called us to let them know about this current tragedy. I took my emotions, and I put them in a bad tuna sandwich. Projection, all the way.

In the end, the only gift that keeps on giving that I contracted in Byron was bed bugs. Lots and lots of bed bugs. Bed bugs that would bite and bite and bite until I finally left Australia. Yes, bed bugs. I honestly thought that bed bugs were something that existed only in that ancient saying and not in real life, kind of like how “ashes, ashes we all fall down” refers to the plague, but even though we still sing it, it’s no longer relevant. I had no idea that “night night, don’t let the bed bugs bite” actually referred to a creature that was still alive, well, and biting the hell out of innocent backpackers. But it is and they do. Oh how they do. And oh how they would continue to. Bite and bite and bite until I found myself on the brink of buying hand grenades to blow up hostel beds before sleeping in the tattered remains (and even then, I’m sure one wily bug would have survived and bitten me).

Bed bug bites intact, I left Byron Bay and moved on up into Queensland, stopping first at Surfers Paradise, a clean modern city that sprawls right up onto an astounding beach that stretches for as far as the eye can see. It reminded me of Oz, ironically enough. Oz in Oz. I wandered down the beach as far as my legs could take me, still feeling teenaged, miserable and hating my existence. The only real happiness in the day came when I used the public toilet at the side of the beach, which was a very high tech fancy schmancy new fangled public toilet, styled in a very Down Under sort of way. To enter the toilet, I had to push a button on the outside to make a silver space age door slide open. Once inside, a friendly pre-recorded Australian male voice greeted me over an incredibly loud speaker system. This man first welcomed me to the public toilet and hoped that I’d have a pleasant stay while I was there. Then he explained to me the various inner workings of the toilet, where all the necessary tools for a pleasant bathroom stay were located, and mostly how to go about flushing the toilet. (I was beginning to wonder if the Greyhound bus drivers also recorded bathroom greetings). Lastly, the nice man explained to me how the locking of the toilet would work. He’d go ahead and lock the toilet for me and I could leave the toilet whenever I so chose just as soon as I pushed the proper button. However, if I were to take more than my allotted time in facilities, at the ten minute mark he would go ahead and open the door, whether or not I was ready for it to be opened. (Can you imagine that scene? “I’m opening the door now.” “But I’m not ready!!!!” And then there you are in full view crapping on a very public Australian street. How very Indian). When he had finally finished with his speech and wished me, once again, a pleasant stay in the toilet, he politely turned on elevator music so I might properly enjoy my pee (though I didn’t get to hear much of it, since I was nearly done peeing by the time he finished his entire speech).

Unfortunately, even the chipper Australian pre-recorded toilet man wasn’t enough to move me out of my teenage years, so I moped around Paradise for the rest of the day, fell asleep early and moved on to Brisbane the next day. By this point my bed bug wounds had begun to fester, making me wonder if perhaps I had contracted leprosy or gonorrhea of the leg.

In Brisbane I stayed a cute little hostel over a pub, full of charm, fun drunk backpackers, and of course, lovely wonderful bed bugs. My first day in good old Brizzy I decided to proactive about my teenaged funk and really throw myself back into the tourist experience. I looked up Brisbane in my trusty Lonely Planet and then spent the day looking at crap I really didn’t care about, namely a museum of Brisbane that showed what it was like to live in the city during the 1950s. Apparently, fifty years ago they had drive in movies and people wearing skirts just barely ABOVE the knees!!!! Yeah yeah, I didn’t give a crap. I spent the entire day walking around in the hot sun and sunk further and further into a bigger, broader, all-inclusive teenaged funk. What I really wanted now more than anything was my own room, my own personal space so I could mope around and bathe myself in beautiful, wonderful self-pity, but designated Depression Rooms tend to be few and far between in most hostels.

The dorm room smelled like rotting dead animals, so my only option was to move my sulk into the common room. Of course, there was nowhere to sit alone and mope, so grabbed a chair in a random group of people and said, “Hi!” pretending I felt much better than I really did. And just like that, with one plop of the butt into one chair, I moved into…

Stage Four: Leah the Pseudo-Punk in the Early College Years

Yeah, I know, I don’t really seem like a punk, mostly because I’m not one, I just like the music and the shows. I’ve never been a very good punk. I don’t do any of the stereotypical “punk” things- I don’t dye my hair, I don’t wear chains or combat boots, and I don’t even have my ears pierced. I didn’t want to be punk, and I certainly wasn’t about to try. Then I went to college and fell in with a group of people who were obsessed with punk and ska and because of them I started attending local concerts. All it took was one concert and I was hooked (well, for the next couple of years). There was just something in the music that I really connected with. At a good punk or ska show, the lead singer screams and wails and laughs and sings and dances and drinks and dives into the crowd, and the guitarists and bassists leap in sync and the drummer beats the life out of his drums and the crowd pushes and shoves and beats and tramples and moshes and the stage becomes the audience and the musicians become the kids and together everyone beats the crap out of one another and SCREAMS.

When I was in my late teens, punk shows sounded like I felt, from the screams to the chords to those frenetic, out of control drums. Punk and ska were (and are) teenaged angst in musical form. It was my hormones, my emotional issues, my frustration, my depression, and my bottled up, repressed joy for life, sung right back at me from a main stage. For two years at college, I couldn’t live without my punk and ska shows. It didn’t matter how freezing cold the upstate winters were, if there was a concert, we were lined up outside in our t-shirts, waiting to sweat. It didn’t matter that one of our favorite bands, The Blackouts, often played at teen centers in the middle of the sticks, we’d drive there and mosh with the twelve year olds.

Finally- finally- I had a release. For the two years that I religiously attended punk and ska shows, they weren’t just a part of life, they were something I relied on as a matter of psychological therapy. I needed these shows, even if they didn’t need me. In Australia, where I was reliving all my former life stages, I needed to have my therapy back. From Sydney up to Brisbane, it was all I could think about. I’d be walking down the street, eating dinner, reading a book and it would just hit me.

“God,” I would think. “I need a show.”

It was a good thing I invoked God, because in Brisbane, He/She came to my rescue with a wonderfully divine ploy. When I plopped down in that chair in the common room, I somehow serendipitously sat next to two guys, one Australian and one Canadian, who loved punk. And who knew where the shows were.

Okay, God, I’ll believe in you for the duration of my visit to Australia.

We instantly bonded over music and I nearly cried when one of the guys, Dave, took off the crap hip hop that was playing at the time, plugged in his iPod and filled the room with the classics from my early college years. The next evening Dave and I roamed the streets in search of a good show, and while we only managed to find a space-aged experimental teenaged bands, my craving was temporarily satisfied and my position in the Early College Years was firmly cemented.

Now, along with this position came several changes in personality traits, the most important of which included the willingness to go with the flow and try new things out. Life was an adventure, and I might as well treat it as such. Once I went to a live show, I began to feel more comfortable with myself and once my confidence began to return, I could do things that didn’t necessarily feel 100% like me, just because they’d result in some sort of hilarious adventure. Once I’m confident in myself, it doesn’t matter that everyone around me is doing things that are not me. I can watch them and even participate without feeling like I’m violating who I am.

So, the next night in Brisbane, when I met a bunch of girls in my hostel room who wanted to go out and very much get hammered, I thought, why not? It may not be a life changing, deep experience, but hell, I’m in a good mood, for once I’m feeling okay about myself, and hey, I could use a little adventure! So I promised myself I’d go out and have fun, no matter what. Tonight, I would step fully back into western culture, and I’d be happy to do so. I’d do whatever it was there was to do, even if it wasn’t 100% Me, and I’d loosen the hell up.

But before we head out for what would indeed be a very adventurous night, let me introduce you to the cast of characters. First we have…

1) Amanda. Amanda was an extremely skinny girl with big glasses, a Michigan accent, and an obsession with zoo animals. Amanda also had a tendency to go to bed at 7:30 PM. That was the kind of girl Amanda was. But along with innocence comes many surprises. “Yah,” Amanda proclaimed after discussing a young man she had a crush on back home. “He was so cute, I just wanted to butter him up and eat him for dinner!” I absolutely loved both her, and her illuminating explanations of what it’s like to grow up Roman Catholic in Michigan. “I’m Roman Catholic,” she explained. “So we’re all now no sex now, ya hear? No sex no sex no sex no sex- oh you’re married now? IT IS YOUR CATHOLIC DUTY TO HAVE AS MUCH SEX AS POSSIBLY CAN!” Amanda’s insights into her family were just as hilarious. She repeated one conversation with her mother after arriving back from her freshman year of college and it sounded kind of like this:

“Yah donchyaknow Amanda,” her mother intoned. “Gran just wanted me to check that ya still liked boys donchyaknow.” Amanda groaned in humiliation and disbelief.

“Grandma thinks I’m a lesbian?”

“Now donchya overreact now Amanda donchyaknow. Gran just had half a mind to check in on ya since it’s been so long since the last boyfriend donchyaknow Amanda now.”

“I like boys, mom, they just don’t like me.”

2) Laura. Oh, Laura. Laura was the Vicky Pollard of the group. Now, if you don’t know who Vicky Pollard is, you’re missing out. Vicky Pollard is a bit character on the show Little Britain and is what’s called a “chav” in England-speak. Chavs are a thing all of their own. They’re basically the equivalent of American white-trash, but they also throw in their own touches, mostly clothing stolen from American rappers mixed with track suits. Female chavs are also stereotypically teenaged mums, are relatively uneducated and constantly get into scraps. Vicky Pollard is the ultimate chav and starts many of her sentences likes, “Yeah but no but yeah but no but yeah but no.” In one classic episode, Vicky speaks to a class of teenagers about her life experiences, rocking a stroller back and forth as she talks. When the teacher dismisses her, she leaves the baby behind. The teacher calls after her and says, “You left your baby!” and Vicky responds, “It’s awright I’ve got plenty more at home.” That’s a chav. I didn’t know it at first since she was relatively quiet in the hostel room, but Laura was not just a chav, but a Vicky Pollard. You’ll see why in just a moment.

3) Danielle. I have nothing bad or funny to say about Danielle. She was perfect, and had we not been traveling, I definitely could have seen her being a close friend. (Same for Amanda, it was only Vicky Pollard who drove me nuts).

With this cast of characters, I made my way to the pub downstairs, grabbed myself a drink and chatted with the girls. The pub was reminiscent of my days and England, and I immediately felt cheered. Plus, the girls were a stitch, and a great cover band played classic rock hits from the sixties to about a year ago, so I was very much in my happy place.

As the night went on, the pub filled up and we moved to the front to watch the band. As we stood around the edge I noticed a group of fat biker guys in leather jackets rocking out to the music, which I found amusing since it didn’t really seem like their kind of stuff. As I watched them, I accidentally made eye contact with one of their friends, a tall, goofy looking guy with red hair who was clearly having his way with a bottle of liquor. I tried to shift my gaze away before he thought I was making “come over here big papa” eye contact (“eye sex”, if you will), but he was already so drunk, he didn’t notice my aversion. Before I could do anything more to stop it, he stumbled over and started shouting at me over the music. When I still couldn’t hear him, he arched his back and leaned down, placing his mouth about a centimeter from my ear and began spraying spit all over my face as he started up a very one-sided shouting conversation.

Hi, his name was Red Dog. Not surprisingly because of his red hair. Actually, here’s the thing with the name. When he was a kid, he had been quite fat and had the misfortune of being a “ginger kid”, so he was really picked on all the time but now he reacted with positivity when people made fun of his features. Now when people call him Red Dog, he’s not insulted, he likes it because at the end of the day, a lot of other people have it so much worse. After all, there are kids born with heads too large for their body in Africa and hey, was I doing something tonight? Did I want to hang out with him and his tough guy biker friends?

(Yes, yes I was busy. No, no I couldn’t hang out.)

The more he talked, the more spit he sprayed down my face and neck and the further and further I leaned away, until my pony tail was nearly touching the floor. I nodded and put my polite phrases on repeat, “Yeah, mhm. That’s right. Be proud of who you are. Mhm. Good on ya! That’s right. Good for you!”

Somehow I eventually managed to peel away from good old Red Dog, and he occupied himself instead by being That One Guy who stands in front of the cover band and enthusiastically shouts lyrics and pumps his fist in the air, fully “feeling” the music while all the while the musicians stand there with perplexed and slightly bewildered expressions.

Meanwhile, a group of fat drunk Canadian girls stumbled around the miniature dance floor, whirling about and shouting, “WOOOO! WOOOOO!” and then stomping on our feet or otherwise crashing into us and cooing, “Oooh, I’m sorey! I’m sooo soooooorey!”

With this amusing group of ruffians the night passed quickly and before I knew it, the bar was closing. Danielle and Amanda decided to head up to bed, but good old Vicky Pollard was up for a proper night out and in my renewed spirit of adventure, I decided to join her (that, and I figured any night with a Vicky Pollard would be one to remember).

Vicky Pollard and I made our way up Brisbane’s one nightlife street (I walked, Vicky stumbled) and looked for a good bar. I heard one with music playing and was just about to ask Vicky if she wanted to go in when she rushed by me in a chavish streak, pushed past the huge bouncer without showing ID, rushed up to a group of unsuspecting Aussie Blokes and shouted, “Wooooooo buy us ladies driiiiinks!”

“What?” the poor assaulted young Aussie asked.

“We’re laaaaaaaaaaadies buys drrrrinks! WOOOOO! WOOOOOOOOO!”

Oh god, I was really in for it tonight.

Within a matter of seconds a proper Aussie Bloke spotted me from across the table and exclaimed, “Croikey!” He grinned, sidled over and introduced himself. His name was Dave but everyone called him Two B. Two B? I asked. Why Two B? Well, apparently it was pretty logical. When he was a toddler, Dave had been hit in the head with a two by four and the name had just stuck. Ah, I had picked a winner.

“Where ya from?” my brain-dented suitor asked.

“New York.”

“Croikey!” he exclaimed for a second time.

“No, not New York City, New State.”

“Croikey!”

I stopped, studied him and asked, “Do you really say that?”

“No.”

When all is said and done, Two B was actually one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met in a bar, meaning that he actually took the time to talk to me, which I find rather rare. When he asked me about my travels, he really wanted to know details because he was thinking of traveling to Europe for his big Australian right of passage trip. He wanted to see just about everywhere, but before he went, there was one question he needed to have answered. What language do they speak in Switzerland?

“Ah,” I said, eager to talk about the subject since I love how multi-lingual the Swiss are. “I’ll give you a hint. They speak the languages of their neighboring countries.”

“Spanish?” Two B. asked.

“No,” I said.

“German?”

“Yes, they speak Swiss German and people in the region bordering Italy speak Italian. And what’s the other one?”

“English?” he guessed.

“Well, many Swiss people do know English, but it’s not an official language.”

“I don’t know,” he said, defeated.

“Think about a romance language.”

“Italian?”

“Yeah, we got that one, but think of a former colonial power who settled lots of places around the world.”

“America?”

“Well yeah, but… Okay think about a colonial power who settled French Canada.”

“The English?”

“No, French Canada. Who settled French Canada?”

“The Italians?”

“FRENCH Canada.”

“I give up.”

“THE FRENCH! The FRENCH settled FRENCH Canada! In Switzerland they speak German, Italian and FRENCH!”

“Oh,” Two B. said, slightly embarrassed. “That was a trick question.”

Two B.’s friends weren’t much better though, and if I was in it for a laugh, I certainly got it. Later on we were all hanging out on the street and Vicky was flirting with one of Two B.’s larger friends whose outfit was really quite entertaining. His shirt was just a normal polo shirt, but his pants were about ten sizes too small for him, meaning his fly was completely unzipped and his fat, hairy, disgusting belly hung out over the top. I asked Two B. why his pants were so small, and it was apparently because earlier in that very drunken night he had lost his own pair of pants (how you lose your pants in the middle of the night, I’ll never know) and had to borrow a pair of his much smaller friend. Thus the revolting sight. While I asked, the Chubby Guy tried in vain to tug the zipper upwards and Vicky watched with a look of disgust on her face.

“Eeeeew you’re gaaaa-ross!” Vicky proclaimed. At that, the Chubby guy grinned, pulled his shirt over his head to reveal his hairy, revolting chest, shook his mighty stomach in Vicky’s direction and ran after her calling, “You know you like it! YeeeeeaaaAAAHHH!”

(Ah yes, and Australians like to think they’re different from Americans. If that isn’t a painted chest college football scene, I don’t know what is).

Eventually, though, the jokes grew thin and it was time for bed, so I politely declined Two B.’s advances, grabbed Vicky and made my way back to the hostel, hearing all about Vicky’s many lost loves along the way.

Hello, Leah Anne Levine Kaminsky, and welcome back to western culture.

The next day I took my severe hangover and hopped the bus up to Noosa Heads, a beautiful area right on the water with mile after mile of gorgeous everglades. I was meant to go on a canoeing trip while I was there, but I had messed up the dates and had to skip it. I didn’t much mind because a beautiful national park was located just outside of town, and I spent the day walking along more beautiful beaches and looking out at the ever expansive, aqua blue Pacific ocean. It was an idyllic and yacht-clubby sort of place and, though I was still caught up in my discontent early college years, I reveled in the beauty. Around dinner time that night, I sat at a picnic table reading and overheard two Irish guys who were friends from back home coincidentally run into each other at the hostel reception. What they said to each other adequately summed up Noosa’s general feel. One of the guys still had yet to put down his bags but wanted to join up with his friend later, so he asked (in an Irish accent, of course), “ Are ya in a hurry then?” His friend smiled contentedly and gave him a hearty slap on the shoulder.

“I was in a hurry once, lad,” he said. “About five years ago.”

When I finished reading, I logged onto the internet and checked my email. Before long a tall skinny, blond, awkward looking white guy and an Israeli plopped down at the kiosk next to me. I instantly knew the awkward guy’s friend was Israeli because he looked exactly like all those ex-army Israelis I saw in Pushkar, searching for spiritual salvation. His hair was poofed into a giant Jew-fro and he wore flip-flops, baggy shorts and of course, a Che Guevera t-shirt. Yup, he was Israeli, and his speech instantly confirmed my hunch. Over the next forty-five minutes, the Israeli and the Awkward Guy sat at the computer and sorted through sweet surfing videos and pictures of Awkward Guy’s incredibly non-awkward ex-girlfriends on myspace. Whether they were watching surfing or analyzing girls, the Israeli Guy had something to say about each of them, and where it might have been offensive or annoying coming out of a native English speaking guy, Israeli Guy’s Hebrew-tinged comments had me gagging on my own repressed laughter.

“Wow wooooowowow!” the Che Guevera wearing Jew-froed Israeli Guy proclaimed in an old Yiddish grandfather accent. “That babe is bee-a-utiful! Sexy! Very, very sexy!” A new girlfriend appeared on the screen. “Vhat? How come you get such sexy goylfriends? Such a thing is not exactly vhat I would call fair! Oy! Look at the tuchas on that one!” Awkward Guy pushed next and a new girl wagged her cute little tushy at the screen. Israeli Guy nodded his head vigorously and shrugged his shoulders once again, in a very old Jewish grandfather way. “Again, very, very nice, buuuut…. Enough with the blondes already! Is it so much to go for a nice brunette every once in awhile?”

When I had tired of eavesdropping, I went to bed and headed out the next morning to Hervey Bay. Hervey Bay itself isn’t much, it just serves as a base for heading out to Fraser Island, which is precisely what I used it for. That night I met a group of people with whom I would explore the largest sand island in the world (yep, that’s a whole lot of sand). That evening, the thirty people who had signed up for the trip gathered in the hostel TV room and were lectured on various safety hazards on the island. Then we were made to sign a bunch of papers containing boring legal mumbo jumbo, and were split up into three groups to fill the 4x4 vehicles we would use to bounce across the island. Because most people were traveling with friends, that meant that two of the groups were filled with large cliques of people who knew each other, and one of the groups was filled with random characters that you would never, ever expect to find in one room together. Naturally, that last group was my group, and I’d never have it any other way. Every single person in our group was a character in his or her own right, and I loved them all for it. So before I go on, let me once again introduce you to our random and completely awesome cast of characters:

1) Caspar. Oh, Caspar. Caspar wasn’t the kind of guy I would normally have the opportunity to interact with. He had been in jail for ten years during his youth and now had about five children by three different women (I think). Now, though, he had cleaned up his act, worked a regular job, and was dating an eighteen year old. For a guy in his late thirties, Caspar found dating an eighteen year old very frustrating. While his friends constantly made “she’s so young” nappy jokes, his girlfriend constantly made “you’re so old” nappy jokes, and with the amount of kids he already had hanging around, nappies were already a sore subject. Caspar was from Coventry, though he sounded like he was Cockney, and every other word out of his mouth was feckin’ this and feckin’ that. On his way to Australia, Caspar had a stopover in Dubai and still hadn’t gotten over hearing all those feckin’ calls to prayer and all that feckin’ Arab praying shi’ite y’knowhatImean? But for all these things (which really made him the fantastic character he was), Caspar had a hard life and now he was trying to make things better. Traveling is about many things, but one of its purposes is change. Change your life, change who you are, change how you behave. In one way or another, everyone on the road is changing and because of that, I (and most people I met) developed a non-judgmental attitude (unless you really didn’t like someone, and then all bets were off). It didn’t matter what you used to do or the person that you were back home. For now, for traveling, who you are in this moment is okay. For the many things that could have made me not want to associate with Caspar (“You have five young kids back home and you’re traveling Australia for three months?”), I was happy to observe and interact with such a different character and listen to his feckin’ rants. After all, this guy was hilarious.

2) Debs. Debs and Caspar would good friends from back home. Debs needed a change in her life and was currently driving a caravan across Australia to find it. She had invited Caspar out to Australia and they’d been traveling together ever since. I first thought that they were a couple, but our first night camping, Debs insisted that she share a tent with me, and Jess and Lee (who had met Debs earlier in their travels and joined up) insisted that Caspar not come near their tent. Apparently Caspar had been keeping them all up in the caravan for weeks with his snoring. Thus, while everyone else shared a tent with one or two people, Caspar was relegated to a single tent for the duration of the trip. All part of his secret plan, I suppose.

3) Jess. Jess was a down to earth English girl with a fabulous fashion sense (even on a sand island) and the ability and willingness to take care of anyone and everyone. Her accent was incredibly endearing, especially when we’d settle down in camp for the night and she’d fiddle around with the pots, saying, “Awright, let’s get tea on then.” Jess felt like home, even though no one at home ever says stuff like that.

4) Lee was very similar to his girlfriend, Jess. Just a down to earth, great English guy.

5) The Italians. The Italian contingent consisted of Stephania, a hard working single mother, Christian, her son, and Jean-Luca, her brother. Christian was the cutest little boy and only spoke Italian (though he understood more English than he let on). His three favorite hobbies were digging holes all over our camp so that when we’d wake up in the morning, we’d all unzip our tents and step out into an ankle-breaking hole; running around with a cape around his neck crying, “Superman-a! Spiderman-a! Bat-a-man-a!”; and mostly, lying on top of his mother while she tried to sunbathe and blowing raspberries in her butt cheeks. His mother, Stephania, was a kind and friendly woman who spoke minimal English and was obsessed with dingoes, the local Australian dog, famous on Fraser Island for attacking children. Every time we spotted a dingo she would cry, “Dingo! Dingo!” and we’d have to stop the car, pile out and take photos. (After about the fifth time doing this, Caspar complained, “It’s a lot of feckin’ trouble for a feckin’ dog, innit? Well that’s all it bloody feckin’ is, innit? Never taken so many feckin’ pictures of a bloody feckin’ dog.”). If Stephania was obsessed with dingoes, her brother Jean-Luca was obsessed with his video camera. When it was his turn to drive, we couldn’t get more than a hundred feet without him stopping and getting Lee to jump out and film him doing some hardcore all-terrain sand driving.

“Get one of me driving over this freshwater stream!” he’d cry, rev the engine and jolt us all forward. “That one was no good!” he’d decided when he had finished. “Let me do it again!”

(In a gesture of good will, Caspar tried his best to converse with the Italians, but started to speak in that slow, over-enunciated manner that many people use when speaking to non-native speaking peoples as if they are complete idiots. Debs gave him the nickname, “Continental Steve” and whenever he would slip into this voice again, our truck full of English people, North Americans, a German guy and the Italians would shout out, “Continental Steeeeeve”).

6) Skeeter. Skeeter was an incredibly tall and skinny Canadian former McDonald’s manager and semi-retired drag queen, so he alternated between phrases like, “Oh honey, I am such a princess” and “You know, you’re gonna have to cook those sausages before you eat them. Here just let me do it.” Skeeter was caravanning up the coast with the next two guys…

7) Niels and Dan. Niels was from Germany and Dan was from man-chesta. They were young, fun to talk to, and like Jess and Lee, good, down to earth normative characters.

And lastly but not least, there was,

8) Me. A skinny super model Nobel Laureate. Just kidding. You know enough about me. At that point, I was still a pseudo-punk in my early college years.

You’ve all taken disastrous family vacations, right? The kind of vacations where dad won’t pull over to ask for directions, where mom’s lost somewhere beneath ten maps and your five year old brother won’t stop screaming the Power Ranger theme song. They’re the stuff of legends. Now, imagine doing that kind of vacation with seven complete strangers, when the vacation isn’t just any sort of ordinary road trip in any sort of ordinary location, but a four wheel drive camp out on a remote sand island with drivers who are only at the wheel because no one else wanted to drive stick on a remote sand island.

If you think that sounds bad, well, then you’re wrong. Something miraculous happens in semi-stressful situations when everyone is a stranger- you can’t yell at each other (or if you do yell, it has to be subdued). Keeping that in mind, imagine what it was like to bounce across this sand island with not only a bunch of strangers, but a bunch of these strangers, these great, strange characters. Most of it was just plain fun. Fraser Island was one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. The beaches are untouched, the night sky bursts with stars and the moon, the ocean is an impossible aqua blue, and when the sun comes up in the morning, it’s as if it’s rising just for you.

Other parts- the navigating, the driving, the rush to set up camp before dark- were just plain stressful. Observing the manifestations of this stress in a group like this was entertaining, to say the least. One night we were late getting to camp because the Italians were busy enjoying life and couldn’t be rushed to get back in the truck. Normally, this might not have been an issue, but on Fraser Island, the only light comes from the moon and your headlights, so driving after dark is very dangerous because you can’t see the sudden rock formations and you can’t tell how high the tide has come up onto the beach (so before you know it, you could puncture a tire or drive straight into the ocean). Thus, getting to camp before dark was very important. Maybe it was the language barrier, maybe it was the cultural barrier, but we just couldn’t get this through the Italians’ heads. To make matters worse, Jean-Luca was driving that day and kept stopping so Stephania could take photos of dingoes and, as the sun dipped lower and lower, to take movies of him driving over streams.

Everyone tried to be polite, but the tension was palpable. Skeeter shouted orders from the back, and I nodded in agreement, glad that someone was taking control. But of course, no one listened to him, and Lee, overwhelmed with the sound of everyone yelling at him, snapped at Jess, who immediately drew back, looked hurt and said, “Awright then, there’s no need to yell.” Poor Caspar couldn’t handle the stress and kept shouting out contradictory orders until finally he lost it and jabbered at a million words per minute, “I don’t know about you mate but I’d like to get to the bloody feckin’ camp before feckin’ pitch dark. I don’t wanna be rude mate but enough with the bloody feckin’ photos it’s getting dark and I don’t wanna be stranded on the feckin’ beach awright mate? Enough bloody feckin’ foolin’ around awright mate? Straight! Go straight! Bloody feckin’ hell!”

Niels, Dan and I sat there silent, bewildered and helpless, and even Christian stopped talking about superman-a. Finally through some divine intervention, we finally found the camp and set up our tents. We fell asleep early (partly because there was no artificial lighting, partly because we were so exhausted from the yelling) and were only awakened when the neighboring Israeli camp started teaching their fellow camp mates Hebrew army drinking songs.

All in all, Fraser Island was a great trip. I forgot my various mood swings and fully enjoyed the people around me. That’s not to say that by the time we left the island, I wasn’t ready for a hot shower, and a warm bed, only one of which I would get that night. Yes, for some stupid (stupid STUPID) reason, I decided that after three nights sleeping on sand and dreaming that a dingo had eaten me alive, I should take the thirteen hour night bus from Hervey Bay to Airlie Beach. Thirteen hours. On a bus. At night.

At this point in my travels, I’d taken plenty of night vehicles- night flights, night trains. You name a distance that takes seven to eighteen hours to cross, and I’ve probably slept through or above it. Discussing night vehicles is like playing one of those “which would you rather” games. Would you rather drown or burn alive? Would you rather fight a bunny with a light saber or an unarmed T-rex? Would you rather ride thirteen hours on a train, a plane, or a bus?

I’ll give you one hint: the answer won’t be bus. Night trains and night flights are bad, but for distinctly different reasons. On night trains, you’re stuck in a smelly, airless berth so small that you can’t even sit and if you get a bad driver, every time you pull into a station, he slams the brakes and you go flying, but at least you get a sheet, can lie down and get to step out into the aisle to stretch your legs. Night flights are awful because you have just as little space as in a tight night train berth, but you have to sit up the whole time. There’s no way to comfortably rest your head so every time you nod off your neck contorts itself into odd positions, the people next to you fall asleep on your shoulder and drool (or, you fall asleep on their shoulders and drool), the person in front of you inevitably immediately pushes their chair all the way back so you have to sit with their head in your lap the entire flight and mostly, there is absolutely no leg room. But, unlike on night trains, the staff serve you adequate meals and if it’s a good airline, the inflight entertainment system is something you definitely want to stay awake for.

Where, then, do night buses rank amongst these two? Far, far, far, far below. Think of all the horrible things I’ve listed about night trains and flights. Now think about all the nice things I’ve said about night trains and flights. Now think about night buses. Night buses have none of the good things and all of the bad. On the night bus, the seats barely reclinethey blare stupid movies and bad music too loudly over the speaker system, everyone smells, there’s no room for your legs in the seat, in the aisle, nor anywhere near you. On the night bus, everyone hates everyone because everyone hates the night bus.

In other words, you’re on a bus. For thirteen hours.

Thirteen hours!

In the hours before boarding the bus, I tried to keep positive. Maybe the bus company would be kind to us and only half book the bus so that we could all get two seats each. After all, it wasn’t like buses were as expensive to run as planes, a bus company could afford to send out half full buses. But of course, the bus was bursting. There wasn’t one empty seat. Worst yet, it was assigned seating and I was not only put in an aisle seat, but also placed right next to an obese woman, so throughout the night I awoke either to her head collapsed and drooling on mine, or my head, wedged inside her stomach, likely drooling as well. As luck would have, the driver was incredibly late, so hour thirteen hit and the bus ride just kept going, and going and going. The thirteen-hour bus ride from hell became the fourteen-hour bus ride from hell, and it was just at the moment where I nearly began throwing things that Airlie Beach finally arrived.

Throughout the entire ride, the only thing that sustained me was the hope of things to come. I’d arrive in Airlie Beach, check into the hostel and go for a long, blissful, cathartic run. Then I’d shower. Then I’d do a laundry. And it’d be amazing. After three nights camping on a dirty sand island, and one long, therapeutic run and shower, it’d be the best laundry I’d ever done.

When the bus finally pulled into Airlie Beach (after fourteen-hours, Julie!), the images of myself running and doing laundry wavered in the near future. I could see them, just out of my reach. I could almost grasp them before they dissipated, a taunting but ever more vivid mirage. The only thing standing in the way between me and my laundry/run were, well, people standing in my way. Oh, how sluggishly people move after a fourteen-hour night bus ride! How long does it really take to find one’s bag, sling it on one’s back and move the hell out? Chip chop, troops! Chip chop! Oh, the incompetence! Everywhere I looked there were backpackers chatting amiably. After a fourteen-hour bus ride. Chat, chat, chat, chat chatchatchatCHATCHAT! How could they CHAT in a world or fourteen-hour bus rides? How could they laugh, and smile and play, in a world where bus rides lasting more than an entire night are allowed to exist without any sort of legislative action? What was WRONG with these people?

After five unnecessary minutes of slothfulness, I couldn’t take it anymore, shoved past a group of idle backpacking vagrants, tossed backpacks off the pile and finally, joyfully (oh, the sweet joy of it!) found my own. I slung my big bag on back, clipped my small bag to my front, and out came good ol’ Big Mama, shoving her way through the crowd and knocking anorexic lightweight Barbie backpackers to the ground (served them right for being so skinny in the first place). Just when I emerged from the crowd I noticed the Canadian girls I had hung out with in Byron Bay. I froze and thought, “Oh crap,” not because I didn’t want to see them, not because I didn’t want to hang out with them at some point, but because I had just endured a FOURTEEN-HOUR NIGHT BUS RIDE. They, too, looked exhausted, but their traveling companions were chipper and wanted to arrange for all of us to stay in a hostel together. Like I said, I couldn’t have given a crap since I had just finished with a FOURTEEN-HOUR NIGHT BUS RIDE, but the friends hemmed and hawed for ages, until finally I snapped and said, “This is the hostel I’m going to, I have to collapse, hope I see you there later, goodbye!” Thus began the theme of me running into the Canadian girls at the most inopportune of moments and sounding like a complete jackass.

But what can I say, I had two simple goals, and I’d knock anyone and everyone out of the way if that meant I was any closer to achieving them. I left the nice Canadian girls in my wake and marched off to Airlie Beach town center, and when I say marched, I mean every single time I lay a foot on the ground, it was with anger, frustration, and fourteen-hours on a bus. I found the hostel in record time, but since it had taken so long for me to gain access to my bag, reception was already packed with backpackers off the bus waiting to check in and since these stupid, stupid, STUPID hostels only ever have one person working at check-in at a time, this meant I had to stand there and wait. And wait. And wait. With all my bags on (there was no space to put them down). After a fourteen-hour night bus ride.

So I did the only thing I could do, the only thing in that moment that could possibly give me any form of comfort. I stood there and I systematically hated everyone I saw. When cute, giggly sorority girls walked by arm in arm, I thought, “Oooooh look at meeee. I’m a giiiiirl, a laughy giiiiirl. I like to laugh. I’m like so happy. Giggle! Giggle giggle! Giggle giggle giggle GIGGLE GIGGLE STUFF IT UP YOUR ASSES GIGGLE BRIGADE! We’re giggly.”

When a fat guy walked by eating an ice cream, I thought, “Ooooh look at me, I’m fat, I like to eeeeeat. I’m so happy eating. I’m the type of guy that would board a night bus, sit behind you and MUNCH IN YOUR EAR. I’m fat.”

When an old guy hobbled by, I thought, “Ooooh look at me, I’m old. I’m going to sit right next to you on a night bus and breathe in your face and smell like an old person. Ooooh I’m old.”

Such was the state of my deteriorated psyche. How could so many people be so happy when we lived in a world of fourteen-hour night bus rides? The bloody fools!

After what seemed like hours of waiting, I finally reached the desk, only to be told I couldn’t check in until later, though I could leave my stuff in storage and wander around until then. Fine, I said, and rushed to the bathroom to change into my running clothes. I changed, dropped my bags off and headed out. I had only meant to go for a jog, but I was so full of pent-up, repressed rage and energy and frustration that all I could do was sprint and sprint and sprint. I sprinted and sprinted until I couldn’t breathe. I walked until I could breathe again and then I sprinted. And sprinted and sprinted and sprinted until I couldn’t breathe. I did this for an hour, all in shoes that aren’t really made for running. By the time I headed back to the hostel for check in, I had thoroughly injured my left ankle, but I didn’t care. Every second of that sprint had been entirely worth it.

The run out of the way, I could now focus on my next two cathartic events- the shower and the laundry. I grabbed my heavy bags, limped back to reception, checked in, limped to my room, slipped the key in the door and (and!)… the handle wouldn’t budge. I tried turning the key first this way, then that way, then every which way, but that sucker wasn’t going to be moving any time soon. So I slung my heavy bags back onto my shoulders, limped back into reception, got a new key, limped back, still couldn’t open the door, limped back to reception and moaned, “I just want to get into my room!” Finally, the reception girl managed to get the door open and I took my wonderful, cathartic shower and let me tell ya, if you’ve never know the joy of a post-fourteen-hour bus ride shower, you’ve never known joy. Oh, the heat, the steam, the water, the soap. It was beautiful. With the shower out of the way, I was free to start my laundry, which I did, only to find that when I returned to my room, the key was once again not working. With all my fresh laundry in my arms, I called for maintenance and waited outside my door for the repairman to show up. And I waited. And I waited. And I goddamn waited, passing the time by absentmindedly itching my festering bed bug wounds. All I wanted now was to fold the laundry and go to sleep. That was it. Not such a lofty dream, right? Not a dream that should take five hours to achieve thanks to a handyman’s annoyance at being interrupted during his late lunch, right?

I snapped. Right then and there in that stinking, filthy, bed bug-infested hostel, something in me broke loose. I threw my laundry bag on the ground, jammed the key back in the lock and twisted. When the lock didn’t budge, I twisted the key the other way. When it still didn’t move, I twisted it back. Then the other way. Then the other way again. I jiggled and forced and I pushed and shoved that lock back and forth and every which way it could go until I was so crazed with desire and longing (oh, that bed! That sweet, wonderful, non-bus seat bed!) that I let loose an Amazonian cry and karate chipped the handle.

The door creaked open. Next to my warlike cries, the room was eerily silent, mocking of my absurd over-exertions. I fell into bed, read, and fell asleep around 9PM.

If you’ve read this blog religiously (thank you again for your loyalty, oh one of you) you know that me falling asleep at an early hour after a sleepless night journey is an extremely dangerous prospect. Every single time I do this, I fall so far into unconsciousness that I’m nearly dead. Then, inevitably, something in my body recognizes midway through the night that I have submerged too low, and thrusts me up from the bottommost layer of unconsciousness, up and up past all the stages that precede it and BOOM! Into the light of consciousness. After traveling such a long distance in such a short amount of time, I am completely disoriented, pumping adrenaline and holding a kung fu stance. (Think of it this way. If you fell into a deep sleep at home and were suddenly awoken by strangers, chances are, you’re probably on the brink of a robbery or a murder. When you’re traveling and have no idea where you are, this assumption only deepens).

Of course, this is indeed what happened. Around 12:30, something startled me awake and I leapt to my knees and drew my body into a defensive kung fu position. My movements startled the German girl on the parallel top bunk across from me so much that she shifted in bed and fixed me with a concerned stare. There were huge spider webs above my bunk that I must have spotted before falling asleep, because my dream had combined nightmares of huge, horrible Australian spiders descending from the ceilings and onto my face (to eat out my BRAINS), while I slept fitfully on Fraser Island. I tried to explain this to the girl across from me, but my brain was still half-unconscious. “THEY’RE COMING!” I whispered urgently, referring to the spiders.

“Who’s coming?” she asked, as disoriented as me. I thought hard about this, but couldn’t come up with an answer. Instead I turned to the subject of Fraser Island.

“IT’S ALL MADE OF SAND!” I whispered again, still urgently. The girl was now more in control of her mental faculties than I was and answered back.

“No, no it’s not.” She rolled over and went back to sleep. I fell back down onto my bed, face first, and slept for ten more hours.

That, my friends, is what happens after fourteen-hours on a bus.

The next morning I woke up late and around midday made my way down to the pier where I met the group of people with whom I would sail on the Whitsundays, a group of islands just off the coast of Queensland. It was mostly grey and rainy for most of the time we sailed but the stunning beauty of the islands shone through the clouds. And over the drunken revelry.

Yeah, that’s right. I’d walked into another drunken claptrap. Another young, backpacker episode of Girls Gone Wild. STD Central. (This is why you should never buy a cheap package deal. The only people that buy them are party minded alcohol-obsessed young backpackers and me. Through that deal, I was placed on this boat, which I found out later was known widely in the tourism community as the crappy party boat. Great.).

Within minutes, It had begun. It with a capital I. The drinking, the flirting, the fast spiral down into young, drunken, backpacker orgies. Uuuuuuuuuungh this was getting so… predictable!

We boarded the boat, were greeted by the crew and right on cue, the goon was opened and the drinking began. So not even out of port yet and at two in the afternoon, we sailed and we drank and we drank and we sailed and somewhere amongst all that sailing and drinking I moved on to my next phase.

Stage Five: Study Abroad to Present Leah: “Oh just pass me that goddamn beer!”

Of all the stages that have passed in my life so far, stage five was (and is) the most comfortable. This is my “fuck it” stage, my “if you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em… but only if you want to” stage. In this stage, I could sit amongst my peers on that boat in the Whitsundays, have a few beers and join in on the drunken fun, or I could leave the group, stone cold sober, and go for a long walk by myself on the beach, and that, too, would be okay. God knows how or why, but somewhere along the East Coast of Australia I had rediscovered my western self and once again become comfortable in that identity. Once I was at that point, I could relax, listen to my own needs and desires and go where they lead me, no matter what the rest of the herd was doing.

On this trip, that meant most of the time I sat on the sidelines with a single (just ONE!) beer in my hand, and watching. And oh, the silly things kids do. With every mug of goon downed, yet another boy and girl had begun flirting and/or openly making out. I’d be sitting there, having a perfectly nice conversation with a perfectly nice boy, and then he’d make eye contact with a drunk girl and they were off. It was that easy, and that predictable. I should’ve taken down bets, not as to who would be drunk and slutty (that was a given), but who would hook up with whom. I could’ve made a lot of money.

“What do you think the odds are on that blond Irish girl, Leah?”
“Well, she’s been eyeing that brown haired English guy for some time, but that bald Scottish guy is looking eager, and she looks like the kind of girl that would go for the first guy to pay her any real attention.”
“So if he made a move, he’d be in?”
“That’s right, Bob. Question is- is he drunk enough to slide down that bench and into the drunken love history books? I’m not convinced. I make it make ten to one on the Scottish guy and three to one on Browny over there.”

When I grew tired of watching the orgies, I made friends with the European kids (the Swiss, the Germans, the French), who seemed just as bewildered by our drunken boatmates.

“I like to drink,” the Swiss guy observed. “But not all the time. They start at eight in the morning and they just don’t stop!” Welcome to life on the East coast backpacking route.

Every morning there’d be another ridiculous story about the things that had happened the night before. Drunken hook-ups in absurd places, who puked on whom, bar fights. One night, the Scottish Guy drunkenly stumbled out into the water, jumped into the tiny dinghy and prepared to conquer the high seas, alone, drunk, and with no light source. The bar man heard the engine, raced outside and beat the Scottish Guy until he left the boat. In the morning, the Scottish Guy couldn’t believe how pissed off the barman had gotten. After all, it wasn’t like he was doing anything dangerous (!!!!).

That’s not even the worst story I heard from the Whitsundays. On another backpacker boat out that weekend, two young drunk guys dove off their boat at two in the morning for a quick drunken swim. In the morning they told their captain about their adventure, and the captain stared at them with wide eyes. He said, “You were swimming in a shark breeding ground that also happens to be infested with stingers. I don’t know why you’re not dead.” With all these drunk backpackers around, how more accidents don’t happen, I’ll never know either.

Though most of the time in the Whitsundays was centered around alcohol, there was one activity that was purely about nature (and thus, I dreaded it even more than the alcohol). On the second day into our adventure, the captain stopped the boat a little ways off a coral beach and we were ferried to shore in the infamous dinghy. That’s right, it was now time. Time for that huge, thing I’d been fearing my entire time in Australia up to this very point- the scuba dive.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I like the concept of scuba diving. I like viewing beautiful plants and fish and weird coral formations. I like the idea of witnessing one of the world’s greatest natural wonders (the Great Barrier Reef) before global warming completely destroys it. I just don’t like the idea of swimming amongst sharks. And stingrays. And marine life in general. And being trapped under water. And not being able to breathe out of my nose. And well… diving.

I had been worrying about this scuba dive since the moment I booked my packaged deal back in Sydney. I knew I had to do it (who comes to the East coast of Australia and doesn’t see the Great Barrier Reef?), I just didn’t really want to do it. Back on the boat, the dive instructor, a weird and unnerving Finnish lady, had made us fill out medical forms and on mine I had listed “sinus surgery” under past surgeries.

“Leah,” she said, when I sat down with her to go over my form. “I am a little concerned with the changing water pressure about your sinus surgery. When was this surgery?”

“Eighth grade,” I said, hoping that my medical history at age thirteen could still get me out of gym class exercises I didn’t want to do. “So, uh, ten years ago.”

“Oh,” she said, nodding seriously. “Then I have good news for you. You will be fine to dive!”

Dammit.

Thankfully, on the beach I ran into my friends from Fraser Island, Jess and Lee, who were sailing on another boat. They were certified divers and gave me tips, mostly to go snorkeling first so that I could get used to the breathing. I took their advice and strapped on a snorkel and some flippers and attempted to settle my nerves.

I was instantly surprised. Hey, I liked snorkeling. I liked swimming amongst beautiful, fluorescent fish and floating in the sea, and once I got used to it, the breathing wasn’t so bad. The sheer beauty of the dreaded marine life was calming. Maybe I could actually do this! Maybe I could… Then I thought I saw a great white shark swim between a break in the coral (it was probably shifting light over coral patch) and I turned around and swam very, very quickly back to shore.

I sat awkwardly on the painful coral beach and waited until my group’s number was called. Like a woman on her way to the gallows, I pulled myself up and solemnly hobbled backwards towards the beach (backwards because that’s the easiest way to walk in flippers, and hobbling because my ankle was still sprained. Why I didn’t use that as an excuse to get out of diving, I’ll never know). The Weird Finnish Lady greeted us solemnly and began to kit us out. As she strapped the heavy oxygen tanks onto my back, I lifted my arms nervously and tittered, “Just so you know, I’m a LITTLE NERVOUS.”

“You’ll be fine,” Weird Finnish Lady said grimly.

“Okay but um… how high are the chances of getting eaten by a shark?”

“You won’t be eaten by a shark.”

“Ha! Ha! I was just kidding anyway! Eaten by a shark! That’d be ridiculous! HA!” As we sat down in the water to practice some skills, I choked back tears and a lot of salt water. Since I had been snorkeling the wind had picked up and the water had gotten very murky. I instantly felt claustrophobic. I tried to calm myself down by breathing deeply out of the breathing tube, but then I realized I was breathing out of a fucking tube. And I was trapped under water.

The further we descended (the deepest we ever went was about five feet), the more I panicked and the harder I tried to concentrate on my Darth Vader-like breathing.

“Just be calm, Leah,” I told myself. “You’re going to be alright as long as you don’t FREAK OUT! RELAX, LEAH! RELAX! FUCKING RELAX YOU GODDAMN FUCKING FUCKER WHO GETS HER FUCKING GODDAMN SELF INTO ALL THESE FUCKING GODDAMN STUPID ASS SITUATIONS YOU FUCKING MOTHER FUCKER MOTHER FUCKING BITCH!”

Hypnotism would not be a very good career move for me.

With more pressure, my sinuses really, really began to hurt and a ray of hope filled my body. Perhaps I could be taken up early! I tugged on Weird Finnish Lady and pointed to my sinuses, but she unfortunately had some good exercises to relieve the pressure, so my escape plan was knocked down just as soon as it was hatched. There was no escaping it now. I was down there, and I would finish the task I had started.

So I did the only thing I could do. I took a deep, Darth Vader breath, squinted my eyes and concentrated on Weird Finnish Lady’s fluorescent pink flipper. Whatever happened, I wasn’t going to lose sight of that flipper. When other divers pushed past me to look at coral, I jostled to reestablish my position at the front of the pack. That flipper was my flipper, and I would be damned if I lost sight of it. I concentrated so hard on that damn fluorescent pink flipper that I completely lost my peripheral vision and kept accidentally swimming into the coral. Then my suit would get caught and I’d have to wriggle desperately until it came loose, fearing the entire time that a shark would chomp off my leg while I did so. Then I had to swim frantically and knock more people out of the way until I reclaimed front row view of the flipper. From time to time, Weird Finnish Lady would stop and point out something interesting in the murky water, like a Nemo fish or big clam. Every time she gestured, I’d stop, nod grimly, dutifully snap a crappy photo on my underwater camera, and nod for her to continue (for the love of God let’s get this over with).

For the most part, the Follow the Flipper plan worked well, but then something unexpected happened. One of the guys nearly puked underwater and frantically insisted that he be brought up. Weird Finnish Lady told us through signals to wait for her while she took him up, and so we sat there. Alone, on the bottom of the ocean floor (okay, so it was only five feet under the water, but still). As she ascended, I watched her flipper. And I watched it. And I watched it. And I kept watching it until that beautiful pink flipper descended back down and guided us through the rest of our tour.

We emerged fifteen minutes later about twenty feet from where we had started. That was it, that was as far as we had gone, yet it felt like another planet, an alien world where the creatures were different, the social hierarchies were different, and even the sounds were different. I happily breathed in the fresh, salt-water air and listened to the lapping of the waves. Ah, I was back.

And I’d be damned if I ever did that again! The moment I got back to the mainland I canceled my other dive off of Cairns. I’d done it once, I’d proven myself, and that was as far as I was going!

Once the dive was behind me, I finally relaxed on the boat and enjoyed the rest of our time on the high seas. That said, by the time we had docked back at Airlie Beach, I was fully ready to be back on dry land and connected to the internet. After one last night partying with the sailing group, I woke up the next morning and took the bus and ferry out to Magnetic Island, a beautiful little isle right outside of Townsville. My ankle was still sprained so I couldn’t do any of the island’s many hikes, but I was more than happy to relax by the pool and read a book. I also managed to hobble around the surrounding area, observe the intriguing local animals, and the even more entertaining local people. Much like a small village in the states, Magnetic Island had a charming, quaint feel about it, combined with the laid back air of a small holiday town.

On one of my days there, I hobbled down to the beach and took in the vista from a bench in the shade of a palm tree. While I sat there, an older woman with pruned legs and a turkey jowl waddled briskly past me, stopped short, brought one hand to her flabby, old person love handles and the other to her forehead and squinted back out at the road.

“Roy!” she called in a crackly voice to her husband, a potbellied old man, bumbling along obliviously only a few meters away but clearly in need of a hearing aid. “ROY!” she called again, shaking her head. “ROY! ROOOOOY! ROOOOOOOOOOY!” He continued to be oblivious. She shook her head, locked eyes with me and muttered, “Deaf as, that one is.” This is a very Australia and New Zealand thing to do- finish off all statements with “as”. “He’s broke as.” “She’s keen as.” “That’s sweet as.” Sweet as what, might I ask?

“ROOOOOOY!” she tried one last time. Finally, she threw her hands up in the air and muttered, “Oh sod ‘im!” If he found her, then he found her, and if he didn’t, well, they’d spent fifty years together anyway, what was one day apart at the beach?

Ironically enough, I felt this atmosphere of charm most strongly when I was preparing to leave the island. To get to the ferry, I had to take a bus from the hostel to the town. A bunch of us were waiting at the bus stop, and when we arrived we quickly piled on because we were all trying to catch the same ferry and the bus times didn’t leave very much room for mess-ups. The bus was loaded up and just about to pull off when all these big boobed, middle-aged Australian women, who must have been on the island for some sort of friends’ retreat, came bouncing frantically around the corner shouting at the bus to wait. The amused bus driver opened the door and leapt out to help the women with their bags. The women were out of breath but still giggling all the while, slamming their bags into the luggage compartment and rocking the bus from to side as they tried to fully fit them in. When all of the bags wouldn’t fit, they took ages dragging them up into the bus, step by step, laughing all the while. They eventually somehow all managed to squeeze into the bus and the driver pulled out, driving for only about a minute more to the next stop.

A couple hopped on, greeting the driver cheerily. While the man leaned over and muttered something to the driver, one of the women from the group of friends stuck her head around her seat, and said with a big grin on her face, “Hey, take a picture of us, would ya?” The man looked back and grinned.

“Rose?” he said and all the women burst out laughing. Apparently they all knew each other. The group chatted loudly until the bus had driven a full two minutes and then pulled over again by the side of the road.

“This isn’t a stop!” one of the ladies cried.

“What’s going on?” another lady echoed.

“Engine problems!” the driver called with a mischievous grin on his face. “Won’t be a moment!’

At that, the guy from the couple leapt off the bus and sprinted off down the road.

“Engine trouble,” one of the women muttered. “Well that doesn’t sound good.” I didn’t know what the hell was going on, whether this was a joke or for real, but either way the boat’s departure time was drawing nearer, and I wasn’t too pleased to be stopped. A couple of minutes passed without the guy’s return and people were starting to get antsy.

“What is going on exactly?” one of the ladies asked again.

“Engine trouble!” the bus driver called again, that same mischievous look on his face. “Won’t be a minute.”

“Are you doing something about it?” one of the women asked.

“We’ve got into under control, Sarah. Don’t you worry”

At that, the man sprinted back down the street and leapt onto the bus.

“How’d it go?” the bus driver asked, turning the engine back on and closing the door.

“Just fine,” the man panted. “John was there and I returned the hair dryer.”

“Okay, folks!” the bus driver chirped. “Looks like the engine’s miraculously working again. Here we go!”

Ah, that’s small town charm for you- stopping the bus so some guy can return a hair dryer. Fortunately we made the boat just in the nick of time (I bet it would have waited for us anyway) and made our way to the top deck. The amusing group of women friends continued to chat and laugh throughout the trip, though one of the women broke free from the group and stood at the railing, the wind blowing streamers she had attached to her pony tail band freely behind her.

As seemed to be the theme of the day, I watched beautiful Magnetic Island recede into the distance and eavesdropped on more conversation, this time that of a group of elderly American tourists. I had just finished adjusting to Australia, but listening to them reminded me of the next Big Process- adjusting to home. I still had more than a month before I would be home, but just hearing their accents sent forth a rush of distant memories. Mostly, I was reminded of how Americans love to sit around stating the obvious.

“Jeez,” the American woman mused. “The weather sure is nice today.”

“Nice and sunny,” her husband agreed.

“Not as cold as that other day.”

“Definitely not as cold as the other day. That sure was one cold day!”

“Though it’s not quite as warm as the first day.”

“Oh no, not as warm as that.”

“It’s a nice temperature, don’t you think?”

“It certainly is a nice temperature.”

“Hey John?” she called to the man sitting across from her.

“Yes, Dorothy?”

“John, don’t you think today’s temperature is a nice temperature?”

“Oh yes, it’s a nice temperature today.”

In this manner, they discussed every topic under the warm but not too warm sun.

“Remember that hostel we saw on that hike we took, Dan?”

“Yeah.”

“Jeez, five dollars a night for something that nice! Back in my day, five dollars a day wouldn’t have gotten me something like that!”

“It would have gotten you fleas, that’s what it would have gotten you!”

“No, I did not get fleas. At least, none that I know of!”

I sat next to this group and marveled. One day, a day that was very quickly approaching, I’d have to get used to that again. I sat there and held that thought in my mind, trying to predict how I would feel, but I couldn’t so eventually I just let it go and enjoyed the sun. Before long we arrived in Townsville and I met an acquaintance from my Thailand trip, and he gave me a tour of the area. After that I continued on to Mission Beach, where I got to stay in a lovely, distinctly bed-bug free hostel that gave you FREE duvets. Finally I moved on to Cairns, which was yet another clean, big Australian city, and then flew back to Sydney, where I promptly ate all of the ice cream in Sally’s freezer (sorry again about that Sally) and psyched myself up for my trip to New Zealand.

What, then, was my ultimate verdict on Australia: Land o’ Bed Bugs and drunken backpackers? Not surprisingly, I had mixed feelings, though most of my negativity stemmed from my own struggle to adjust back to western culture. After such a deep and moving experience in Asia, it was difficult to regress back to drunken young backpacker culture (which is not necessarily anything to do with Australian culture). In the end, after much soul searching, I finally re-found myself within western society and relearned the survival tactics that help me survive in young western culture. I left Australia feeling positive about my experience, and fully ready to move into my next adventure, promising myself that no matter how young and drunk the backpackers were in New Zealand, I’d fully engage in the experience and have fun. If my budget was going to limit me to the backpacking lifestyle, then I’d have a ball doing it. Starting now…

Chapter Two: New Zealand: Sweet As, Bro

Oh New Zealand. Beautiful, chilled out New Zealand. New Zealand is a very difficult place to hate, no matter how jaded an exhausted a traveler you are. It’s just too beautiful and too chilled out. Hating New Zealand would be like hating cake. Sure, you could do it, but why would you? Enjoy life, you bitter jaded ass!

Part of New Zealand’s lure is that it looks like the most beautiful sections of every part of the world. Sometimes the coastline will look like the Irish cliffs, and then you’ll drive ten minutes and it’ll look like Norway’s mountains and fjiords, in ten minutes more in England’s green pastures and in ten minutes more it’s Australia’s tropical fauna. It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that when I explored Christchurch on my first day on the South Island, my overwhelming impression was that in felt like upstate New York in the autumn. It smelled like autumn, it tasted like autumn, it was autumn. A real autumn, in a climate where seasons are more expansive and expressive than light warm rain and slightly heavier cold rain. Autumn that smells of fresh rain and dead leaves and wood stoves.

As I wandered the streets of Christchurch, I breathed in the smells of autumn and opened myself up to the charm of the city. An elderly woman on the street stopped me and offered me fudge (okay, she was trying to get me to go to her store, but so what? It was still quaint). I passed by Christ’s College (man, that must have been a long commute just for Jesus to attend a music school) and boys in Harry Potter uniforms ran and screamed and laughed and tackled and skipped out of the ivied building. I walked through an expansive stretch of botanical gardens behind the college and along a slowly moving creek. Young, pretty, yuppy mothers dressed like Lands End models pushed infants in strollers along the path, greeting one another cheerily and calling out warnings to their sprinting toddlers (“Thomas, don’t put that in your mouth!”).

A little ways on I passed a stocky teenaged boy, his pants hitched just a smidgen too high for him to be one of the cool kids. Across the river, a girl his age giggled and suddenly stopped short. He smiled and shopped too. She giggled again, took three more giant steps and stood still. He mirrored her steps, shook his head and laughed. Ah, love in its infancy. Further down, another teenaged boy sat on a bench underneath a tree, his head hung low and deep into his lap. He looks up suddenly, catches me watching him and glares back defensively. “Fuck off,” his eyes say. I smile eagerly, give him a friendly wave and move on.

I followed the stream for a few more minutes, before turning my back to it and snaking back into the park. The path lead me to a bridge that crosses another branch of the stream. When I was in the middle of the bridge, I stopped and watched a middle-aged woman further upstream feeding the ducks. The ducks had gone mad. They climbed over one another, fighting over pathetic crumbs of bread, beating each other with their wings and quacking aggressively when things didn’t go their way. Before long, the duck lady ran out of bread, showed the ducks her empty plastic bag, shrugged apologetically and wandered back onto the main path. A few of the more clever ducks climbed onto the bank and waddled to where the had been sitting, munching away at the tiny crumbs she had left behind. The remaining ducks slowly began to disperse, some heading downstream, some heading upstream. The quacks became softer and less insistent, and soon it was my turn to move on as well.

After a month of drunken backpacking in Australia, and before what was sure to be three more weeks of drunken backpacking in New Zealand, I took this day in Christchurch to revel in all things that had nothing to do with alcohol. Quacks included. That night, I treated myself to a distinctly non-backpackery relatively expensive Japanese meal (expensive in backpacker terms, so about ten dollars), found a nice couch in the hostel and spent the night reading, writing, and enjoying an independent and solitary silence that I knew would be short lived.

Indeed, it was, but my Leah Indulgence night got me to a point where I was peaceful and content enough to happily dive into the next, drunk backpacker adventure. Which brings me to the next morning. I woke up early, gathered my stuff and waited for the Kiwi Experience bus to pick me up from the hostel. The Kiwi Experience (and to some extent, its former sister company in Australia, the Oz Experience) is a hop on hop off bus tour throughout New Zealand. In theory, this gives you more flexibility than a regular tour. You get a pass that’s valid for a number of months and can make your way around the islands on your schedule. The buses are filled with young backpackers and the drivers are themselves also young and fun, and stop along the routes to let you go for a walk or show you some touristy site. On top of that, the drivers really do look out for you. They book your beds, your extra activities, and at the end of the day, they come out to pub and have a drink with you.

The negative side of the Kiwi Experience is that theory and practice don’t quite line up. The buses are so sometimes crowded that it’s not actually a hop on hop off service because sometimes if you hop off, the following buses are often too full to take you on, and you can be stranded in one place for a number of days. Also, the pass is so cheap because very few things are included, but when you’re traveling with a bunch of gung-ho kids, you’re going to want to do everything, and despite the minor discounts the Kiwi Experience can get for you, you still end up dropping a whole lot of cash. New Zealand is also the kind of place where car travel really opens up the country. In a car, you can stop and explore all these beautiful hikes and trails that on the bus we passed right by.

The positive side? The Kiwi Experience is a whole lot of fun. Even for a jaded, long-term traveler like me. The drivers are a ton of fun, the travelers are out for a good time and the things that you do are simply a blast. All in the beautiful backdrop of New Zealand. If you’re a budget backpacker and can’t afford a car and/or also want company, the Kiwi Experience is always a safe, and fun, bet.

Before I boarded the bus in Christchurch that morning, I didn’t know any of that. When leaving Australia, I had made that vow to myself to have fun no matter, but I was still wary of things to come. I knew that I was probably joining yet another young, drunk backpacking network, that the buses would be packed with people really looking to get hammered, just like in Australia. What I didn’t know is that while sure, everyone was going to imbibe, the pressure the drivers would exert on us to get out there and participate in New Zealand’s countless amazing activities would actually be effective. In the end, the Kiwi Experience would be about young drunken, backpackery fun, but it’d also be about one astounding activity after another, and about the beauty of perhaps one of the most visually stunning countries I’ve ever seen.

I had made the commitment to reengaging with my peers, to letting loose and doing all that stupid stuff that young kids do, but I was hoping it’d all be within limits. I could join in, but if everyone on the bus was like some of those incredibly hardcore backpackers that started drinking at eight in the morning that I had met in Australia, I just wasn’t going to have a good time. I could indulge, but my god I had my limits.

When I boarded first a small bus in Christchurch and then a larger bus later that morning, I did so with excitement, but also with nervousness, mostly because I lacked the superhero power of foresight. The big bus was crowded, so none of the Australian Greyhound rules could apply. I sat down next to a nice English guy, chatted with him for a bit, and looked around, trying to anticipate how things would go. At first, I was disappointed. Other people had been traveling together in New Zealand for longer, so they had already made friends and I felt alienated. Plus, the bus felt like a bad version of some awful MTV request show.

“Okaaaay, guys!” the driver blared over the loudspeaker. “Hellooooo to all you new people and wELcome to the KIWI EXPERIENCE! Suuuuhweet as, bro! Alright, Kiwi Experience kids, let’s hear it for the Kiwi Experience, woot! Woot woot! Woot woot woot woot wooooot!”

Oh god. I should kill myself right now, before it’s too late.

“Ooookay guys! Now, as far as I can tell, it seems like we have some NEEEWcomers on the bus and these poor kids don’t know just how sweet the Kiwi Experience can be! Poor things! Well let’s give them all one giant Kiwi Experience weeeeEEEElcome! C’mon guys! Woot! Woot woot! Woot woot woot woot woooooooot!”

Jesus fucking Christ, what have I done?

God, the driver was like one of those chipper, annoying MTV VJs, standing around looking beautiful, making non-funny jokes and proclaiming, “Yardy yar! I should be a comedian!” No, no you shouldn’t.

From there, the driver briefly explained the town (Westport) to which we were driving that day, gave a brief description of the natural layout of the area, and then took about ten minutes to detail the two most important things for backpackers:

1) Where to find the cheap food.
2) Where to find the cheap alcohol.

She really, really, really encouraged us to go out that night, because after all, we should all meet and talk and socialize and generally get to know each other. I mean we could sulk in our hostel rooms if we wanted but then we really wouldn’t be much fun.

Forced interaction. Great. I’m tying a noose around my neck right now, can you see me? Here I go, I’m kicking the stool out…

When the driver was finishing yacking, she switched to music so loud, you couldn’t hear yourself well enough to talk, let alone think. And it was really crap music. First hip-hop, then reggae. New Zealand is obsessed with reggae. I didn’t know that I hated reggae until I got to New Zealand and was forced to sit through five-hour bus rides of constant reggae. Reggae. The same tunes. The same words. Over and over and over again:

“We’re singing hope for a generation, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeeeeeah hope for a gen-er-ation, yeah, yeah, yeah. Ooooooh hope for a gen-er-AAtion! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Oooooooh hope for a generation yeeeeeeah! Yeah! Yeah!”

Look, I promise I’ll win the lottery and give you all the money from my winnings to lift you out of your oppression just as long as you stop singing about your goddamn hope.

Altogether, it felt like MTV: SPRING BREAK!!!! and for the duration of that first bus ride out to Westport, all I could think was, “What have I gotten myself into?”

Things started to change once we got off the bus and signed up for cool activities. On the first bus that had transported us to the big Kiwi bus I had made friends with a wonderful Brazilian guy called Carlos and together we decided to embark on our first New Zealand adventure: the jet boat. Oh the jet boat. At the time, it sounded like a good idea. Years ago, some Kiwi farmer invented a new type of boat that could ride on shallow waters so that he could transport his sheep quickly when the rivers were low. In 2007, this meant eager tourists could hop into a jet boat and sail smoothly down the river, absorbing the water’s beauty and breathing in the fresh New Zealand air. It’d be peaceful and idyllic, right?

Not so, my friends. Didn’t you see “jet” in the boat’s title? What kind of IDIOT would miss a thing like that? I didn’t so much as “miss” the jet as I “ignored” it. But I wouldn’t be able to ignore the jet for long. We got ourselves all kitted out in waterproof trousers, jackets, sunglasses, gloves, and hats, waddled into the boat, and headed out. And by headed out, I really mean flew out. My god could that thing accelerate quickly.

From the beginning, my stomach was a little queasy, but if the driver continued straight forward without making any little squigglies, I’d be fine.

“Hey!” the driver called over the whirring motor. “Who’s ready for some doooooughtnuts?”

“YEAH!” the eager American family in front of me called. Oh no. Doughnuts? That didn’t sound good.

“Hold on!” the driver shouted with a mischievous grin. I did not like that grin. He pulled out quickly from our resting stop, switched the engines up another gear and off we shot.

VrrrrrrRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!

As the boat gathered more and more speed, my stomach sat my throat down for a chat.

“Throat,” my stomach said. “Pardon me if I’m ‘jumping the gun’, here, but I’m not entirely sure I like the direction this cheeky wee boat trip seems to be headed in.”

“Indeed,” my throat agreed, closing up a little tighter.

“Well,” my stomach continued. “I just thought I’d lay a preemptive strike by discussing the matter with you. You know, to politely inform you that within a moment’s time (any moment now, really) I may be joining you up there in the higher gastrointestinal region for a brief visit. But I’ll try to empty my contents just as quickly as possible and then re-settle back into my normal cavity.”

“Alright, Stomach,” my throat agreed after a brief period of contemplation. “But do try to keep it together if you can.”

I choked on the air rushing past my face, quickly wiped water off of my glasses, and gripped the bar tightly.

“WAHOOOOO!!” the boat driver called and hit the brakes.

“WOOOOOOO!” the American family cried as the boat swung in a violent circle.

“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” I screamed in anticipation of puke.

My stomach went one way. My guts went the other way. My throat stayed in place and thought, “Crap.” But by some stroke of God, I didn’t puke. The boat stopped spinning and I swallowed with great difficulty.

“That was great!” Carlos proclaimed to me and Alex, another girl from the Kiwi Bus. “Did you like it?”

I choked back puke and tears and tried to flash a convincing smile. “Mmmm hm! Mmmmm mmm mmmmmmm!”

“Hey guys!” the INSANE driver called back out to us. “How about SOME MORE!”

“WOOOOOOOOO!” cried the eager American family.

“YEAH!” shouted life-loving Brazilian Carlos.

“UUUUUUUUUUNNNNGGGGGGGGHHHHHH!” groaned the Jew from New York.

And so the driver accelerated, and decelerated, and spun. And when he had finished with that he accelerated. And decelerated. And spun. And accelerated. And decelerated. And spun. Rinse, wash and repeat about twenty more times and there we had the adventure of the jet boat, adrenaline pumping for some people, miserable for me.

Somewhere between the near puking and the overwhelming misery, I realized something about myself. I hate extreme sports. By extreme sports, I mean anything that causes your adrenaline to pump, your stomach to spasm and your heart to palpitate as a means that is an end, rather than a means that gets you something truly awesome, like meeting your favorite rock star or reaching the top of a mountain. Following this definition, the thrill of extreme sports is in dangling upside down, free-falling, or moving far more quickly than any human body should ever go, not to reach some mind-blowing goal at the end of the ride, but to be immersed in that moment of pumping bodily reactions.

People who love extreme sports, get a thrill out of the body’s reactions. They love inviting death on in for tea and then serving it scones before flicking it off and saying, “Ha! I blatantly defy you!” To them, extreme sports are a sort of high. There’s an addiction lurking in the throbbing hearts and widened eyes.

Over the years, I’ve tried to understand this thrill. Time and time again, I’ve pushed myself to do something physical that makes me uncomfortable, and every time I have to be rolled away from the experience in a wheelchair because I’ve collapsed into a rocking, fetal ball. Every time I think, “This time will be different. This time I’ll have fun.” But I never do.

Just a couple of years ago, when I was twenty-one, I followed my friends to an amusement park, thinking my fear of roller coasters was done with, that I was older now and could handle rises and drops like any normal adult. I loaded onto the roller coaster and proceeded to scream as if I were being bludgeoned to death from the moment the car pulled out until well after the ride had ended. I spent the rest of the day playing with a koosh ball I bought from a souvenir shop while my friends played on the rides. The pansy. The girl who couldn’t even handle the kiddie roller coaster.

I thought back to that incident while I was jetboating. Why did I keep doing this to myself? Why did I keep “challenging” myself when, unlike other people, I was miserable and fearing I was on the brink of death the entire time? Why did I keep going back for my when I found absolutely no pleasure in it, if an hour ride on a jetboat felt like waiting for someone to stop jabbing spoons into my eyes?

Well, that was it. The final straw. I didn’t care if New Zealand was the adventure capital of the world, I wasn’t doing anything extreme. Hell, I crossed a street in Delhi. Didn’t that count for something?

Once I had made my unapologetic resolution, my outlook on life grew cheerier. The driver pulled us back to the jetboat’s offices where we ripped off our ten million layers of waterproof clothing and warmed ourselves by the fire. In this brighter mood I met two hilarious Irish girls, Aine and Elizabeth. Between these girls and two ab fab English girls, Emma and Suzy (who, mother, were JEWISH!!!!) and two Canadian sisters, Ashley and Sam, that I had met earlier on the bus, I formed a friend base of fun, down to earth, hilarious and like-minded people with whom I could brave the MTV SPRING BREAK!!!! storm. Thus how my mentality works: when I am drinking and partying with people I don’t like, I find both the people and the activity shallow and meaningless. When I am drinking and partying with people I do like, I have a ton of fun and am convinced that we are doing something for the greater good. If we can bond over not liking drinking and partying all the time, then we can happily go out and drink and party. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but seriously, you’re this far in the blog by now, do you really expect me to start making sense at this point?

With my new friends by my side, I could fully embrace that resolve I had made make back in Australia: if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. On our second night as a group the bus driver informed us that, okaaaaay guys, tonight’s excuse for drunken revelry would come in the form of a “p” party, the only requirement of which was dressing as (you guessed it) something that started with the letter “p”. As with most fancy dress parties, my first reaction was to groan. Thinking of a creative costume took so much work. But, as is my usual second reaction, I soon thought of idea after idea and began to quiver with excitement. The driver dropped us off in a tiny, middle of nowhere town that just so happened to have a costume store, a thrift shop and the New Zealand equivalent of Wal Mart, and so I raced around with the manic energy of a chicken discovering a patch of kernel it had previously missed.

When we had all bought our costumes, Lauren, our driver/tour guide drove us to a very small hostel situated next to a lake and a place affectionately nicknamed the “Poo” pub and… well that was about it. The entire draw to this very rural area was an old man in his eighty something called Les. Les is a minor New Zealand legend, having appeared in classic New Zealand cheese commercials in the 1990s (I believe). Les has run the Poo Pub and its attached hostel for several decades now, and if his long, Santa Claus beard isn’t enough of a reason to visit, his calm demeanor should count for something. At an age when most people sit in front of a TV with their pants off thinking their fully dressed and grumbling about how they ordered the cake with prunes in it, thank you very much, Les spends his nights doing the same thing he’s done every night for as long as any of us young backpacker have been alive. He stands behind the bar, a slightly vacant expression on his face, stroking his long grey beard, and waiting for the next drink order.

“Yes?” he asks when a customer approaches the bar, leaning forward to hear better over the pounding rap music. “That’s three dollars twenty-five.” When he’s finished serving a customer, he steps back, leans against the back wall, resumes his slightly vacant expression and strokes his beard.

Meanwhile, drunken young backpackers in ridiculous costumes totter about him, slurring their words, making out in some random corners, puking in others. Yet still, his calm remains. Our bus driver told us a story where one of her hungover passengers once sprinted off the bus and started puking in the driveway. Again. And again. And again. Upon hearing the commotion, Les hobbled down the pavement, knelt halfway down over the puking girl and said, “You keep puking dear. I’ll go get the hose.”

It was in his bar that we would hold our P Party. In the hour before the party began, we all ran around our rooms, sliding on oddly cut costumes and pinning random appendages to our clothes. My costume was “Polite Phrases”, so my costume didn’t take much preparation. All I had to do was write polite phrases on some paper and pin them to me. On my front I pinned among may phrases:

“Why, thank you!”
“Cheers!”
“Ladies first.”
“Hi, and WELCOME TO DENNY’S! How many of you are there today?”

On my back I attached a giant “FUCK YOU!”, which wasn’t so polite, but gave the costume a punk rock air.

I was rooming with Emma and Suzy that night and watching them put their outfit together was better than watching a TV show. They had decided to go as peas in a pod. Suzy frantically rushed around the room, pinning things here, cutting things there, while Emma pulled on her tights and top and then sat on her bed looking bewildered.

“Why aren’t you helping? I always have to do everything!” Suzy snapped.

“But I don’t know what to do!” Emma moaned. Suzy thrust a handful of green balloons at her to blow up. While Emma struggled with the balloons, Suzy pulled several green trash bags and began cutting them up as part of their coverings. I asked Suzy where she had managed to find green trash bags, to which she answered distractedly that her mom had given them to her before she started traveling “just in case”.

“Just in case of what?” I asked. “Trash happens?”

No, apparently Jewish Suzy’s Jewish mother was afraid that somewhere in her travels Suzy might get stuck somewhere during a rainstorm and not have a jacket. If she had trash bags, she could fashion a primitive raincoat and subsequently not catch cold and then pneumonia and then die.

“Wouldn’t it be as just as easy to carry around a rain slicker as it would to carry around trash bags?”

Suzy rolled her eyes. What was I asking? Of course it would be, but she was dealing with a Jewish mother here (also in Suzy’s “just in case” kit? A rape alarm. An actual rape alarm.). I laughed at her story and felt comforted. After so long being away from my big Jewish family, it was good to be around people who knew where I was coming from. In the end, Suzy’s mother really did save the day because those trash bags really made the outfit. Everyone really went out, especially Aine, who went as a pensioner and her friend who went as a paddling pool. Many girls came as either prostitutes or playboy bunnies, upholding my conviction that most western girls are looking for any excuse to dress up skankily, and many, many English guys dressed as poofs, upholding my conviction that most English guys love dressing in drag (and don’t you even DARE get mad at me, Brits, show me one British comedy show where a guy hasn’t once dressed in drag and I’ll show you a LIE). One poor, misguided Asian girl thought the “p” party was a “b” party and sat at the bar dressed in a diaper and sucking on a passephire, perplexed as to why everyone was dressed so strangely.

And so, in this rural bar on an island thousands of miles from home, an eighty-nine year old man stroked his beard and looked out over this crowd of ridiculous British, Irish and North American backpackers dressed as fluorescent pink paddling pools, Peter Pan, the Phantom of the Opera, a pensioner whose smeared lipstick spread slowly across her face as the night carried on, and wondered when it was time for bed.

(Soon enough, Les Soon enough.).

The next morning I woke up early and stumbled outside only to find a fresh hole in the wall of the porch outside our room. I peered through the hole and came nose to snout with a very perplexed cow. The cow blinked, slowly, as if he couldn’t quite understand what all these weird, oddly dressed people were doing near his pastures. I stared back for several seconds, blinking in unison before my bladder finally overcame me.

“What a world!” I declared to the cow and marched off to find the bathroom, which was of course covered in puke and entirely unusable.

Several hungover hours later, we all piled back into the bus and sped off towards Franz Josef, a HUGE glacier in the middle of a rainforest (and no, I didn’t know that was possible either). The further south we drove the more spectacular the scenery became. I didn’t think it could get any prettier but then we arrived at the glacier and New Zealand proclaimed, “Idiot! How thou continues to underestimate me, I shan’t begin to fathom!”

So. Franz Josef. Wow. There’s not much to say about Franz Josef except that it was fantastic. Climbing a glacier was exactly the type of outdoorsy, beautiful, fit adventure I had wanted New Zealand to be. We lucked out with an absolutely stunning day (which is rare in the middle of a rainforest) and trekked along behind our intrepid guides, icy step by icy step, climbing higher and higher in altitude until we had climbed as far as we could go. We sat for awhile and ate our lunches, looking out over the tinkling, blindingly white snow and I thought this profound thought, “Ahhhhh.” If I ever go back to New Zealand and have actual money to spend, I’m going to hire a guide and friends (if I don’t have any, I hear they’re relatively cheap anyway) and spend my time biking from magnificent hike to magnificent hike and breathing in the world from one magnificent view to another.

Soon enough it was time to stop quietly reveling in New Zealand’s glory so we gathered up our stuff and headed out. Things were going well and I was chatting along merrily with a few members of the group when something went whizzing past my head. What was that? It began as just a trickle- a shot here, a shot there. Then all of a sudden flying objects were whizzing past us from all directions. Oh no.

SNOW BALL FIGHT!

At first, I was exhilarated. I didn’t know I had missed upstate New York and huge winter snow falls, but now that snow was here, I realized what had been missing in my life: fun with snow. Together with the rest of the group I frantically stockpiled snowballs and threw them with all my might at the group in front of us, screaming, “Don’t mess with a girl who used to play softball!”

Soon, though, things turned nasty, most notably when the group behind us caught up and started zinging their own bombs at us too. We were being attacked from both directions, and we weren’t winning the battle. I soon grew tired of the snowball wars and huddled behind an ice wall to keep out of the line of fire, but now the team behind us was higher up and could launch missiles down into our territory without us even seeing them coming. I was right in the middle of a conversation when ZING! I received a direct hit. An ice ball, right to my mouth and nose. Man did that sting. I stood there, stunned, biting back tears.

“Are you okay?” someone asked. “That one looked like it hurt.”

I swallowed with difficulty and seethed, “It did.”

And then it happened. Few of you have witnessed this, the transition of laid back, funny Leah into raging, pissed off, Amazonian psycho, but if the stimulus hurts enough (and believe me, this one did), the transformation takes only a few milliseconds. I swallowed deeply and marched angrily out from behind the ice wall, war drums beating loudly behind me (hey, who invited Mel Gibson?).

“WHO threw that?” I shouted. No response. The opposing team was using their height as a defensive shield, hiding behind snow banks and launching snowballs without ever exposing themselves to enemy fire.

“WHO threw that?” I repeated, licking my cracked and bleeding lips. “WHO hit me in the face with an ice ball? A girl in the face?” My only answer was bombardment of snowballs. That. Was. It.

“GRRAAAAAAAAAAAAWR!” I screamed, grabbing up all the available snowballs and shooting them upwards. Of course none of them hit their mark because those pansies were all hiding.

“Why don’t you show yourselves!” I shouted. “How manly are you, hiding behind snow banks while you hit a girl in the face with an ice ball!”

At this, their general stood up and grinned a cheeky smiley. So that was the bastard. He waved and danced about, mocking me. I growled again, gathered up my own ice ball and hit him in the head. He ducked down again and launched another offensive. It was as if they had an infinite amount of snowballs and they were all being launched at me.

“You are a pansy!” I shouted, still thoroughly enraged, snowballs whistling past my ears. “A pussy! What kind of man hides behind a snowbank and then hits girls in the face with iceballs!” More iceballs. In my face. No, pansy and pussy wouldn’t do, they simply weren’t strong enough. I was going to have to get creative if I wanted to label this guy correctly. “You, sir,” I cried as I dodged another bomb. “Are a vagina! Captain of the vaginas! I hope you’re proud!”

The bombardment suddenly halted. The general poked his head over the snow bank, looked to one of his friends and asked, “What did she just call me?”

“That’s right!” I screamed. “You are CAPTAIN of the VAGINAS! Your name is CAPTAIN VAGINA! You hit a girl in the face with an iceball. And now she’s bleeding!”

The general shrugged, amused, and said, “Oh.” And then another bombardment came. I stomped back to my ineffective shelter growling and waited for the trek to move on. Later I was so embarrassed by my outbreak that I went up to the General and apologized. “I don’t really think you’re captain of the vaginas,” I said.

“I know,” he said, smiling that same, self-confident smile (that smug bastard). “I know.”

Iceballs to the face or not, our five hours on Franz Josef were spectacular, hands down the best thing I did in New Zealand.

After Franz Josef we moved on to beautiful Lake Wanaka where I went on a beautiful run through the woods and around the lake. Running in New Zealand was one of my favorite activities because the routes were so insanely beautiful. It’s easy to find the motivation to run when you’ll be rewarded with a gorgeous waters, stunning mountains and a colorful sun, setting over it all. Oh, ‘tis a beautiful thing.

After Wanaka we moved on out to Queenstown, adventure capital of the world. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. “Adventure capital of the world”? For the girl who has officially sworn off any extreme activity? How in the world could she handle such a place? Did she face adversity and finally overcome her many “EXXXTREME” fears?

Um, no. Who do you think I am? I’m the girl who balks at roller coasters. When other girls would come to me right before sky diving or bungee jumping, wanting me to comfort them and say everything would be fine, I said, “What are you fucking crazy? Don’t do it!”

From the moment I started on the Kiwi Experience, the pressure to sky dive and bungee jump was high. Two questions were on everyone’s mind: “So, are you going to sky dive? Are you going to bungee jump?”

“No!” I answered unabashedly, unlike the many hesitant people who wavered under peer pressure and eventually just gave in. “No fucking way.”

To this I would always get the same answer, the very response that all the experts at the bungee jumping and sky diving places gave while trying to pressure us into doing it: “It’s all about overcoming your fears.”

The fear of what, exactly? Of jumping off high things that I shouldn’t? My fear of dying? They all seem pretty natural to me.

“The thing about skydiving,” a bungee jumping expert explained to us just outside of Queenstown. “Is that whether you like it or not, once you’re up there, someone else is pushing you off. With bungee jumping, it’s all from the shoulders up. It’s all in your mind. You jump off, it’s your choice, it’s your mental barrier.”

And that was supposed to be… a good thing?

Have you ever heard of a little guy called Darwin? Well, several years ago now he came up with this little theory called evolution. According to this theory, only the fittest creatures survive and pass on their genes. Thus, surviving until reproduction is a key trait of any successful species. To get to Leah Kaminsky, my genes have undergone millions and millions of years of evolution. Most (not all, since we’re not perfect beings) of my genes are geared towards my survival. Things like, oh I don’t know, say, jumping 10,000 feet out of a plane or launching myself off a bridge are not normally conducive to survival. So, if I’m standing at the edge of an airplane and every one of my senses- sight, touch, smell, hearing and uh, you know, the other ones- are saying, “Um, dude, this isn’t a very good idea,” why would I ignore them? Who am I to turn my back on millions of years of evolution?

Everyone says, it’s all about “overcoming your fears”, but why would I ever want to overcome my fear of jumping out of an airplane? Is it so that the next time I ride in an airplane, I can open the emergency door, shout jubilantly to the stewardess, “I’ve overcome my fear!” and step out into the thin air? That certainly doesn’t seem very adaptive to me.

Why would we ever- ever- want to overcome this fear? For the adrenaline rush? There are easier ways to get adrenaline rushes. Go to a doctor, fake an allergic reaction, they’ll shoot you with adrenaline mighty quick. If overcoming the fear of something instinctual and sparking the release of adrenaline are what it’s all about, why don’t they have classes for women to overcome the fear of rape and murder while walking alone at night? Being scared of that situation and taking a cab as a result is as instinctual as not jumping off high things you really shouldn’t be jumping off of, but you don’t see many women out on the streets, tempting rape for the adrenaline rush.

“Oh, but it’ll be fun!” person after person proclaimed. “You’ll never forget it!” No shit I won’t forget it. Every time I got a step closer to even considering a sky dive, I’d take a plane ride and think, “I’d have to jump from this height?”

The people who do these things (so, the entire Kiwi Experience) are psychotic, plain and simple. I talked to one Irish guy who had done a jump the day before and he told me it was absolutely exhilarating. Apparently, moments before he dove, the instructor he was strapped to held up a broken clip, pointed to it, and mouthed over the roar of the engines, “Oh my god!” He was joking, and the Irish guy’s only reaction was to laugh. I would have shit my pants. And when we landed, I would have beaten the instructor to death. How could you laugh at something like that?

I suppose I just have a different mentality. If I jumped out of a plane, I’d scream for ten minutes before we jumped, during the entire dive, and for hours after we landed. There I’d be, sprawled on the ground, still attached to my parachute, screaming at the top of my lungs. The instructor would ask me, “So, how did it go?” and I would shout between sobs, “I just jumped out of a fucking plane, what do you fucking think?”

So no, in case you’re wondering. I did not jump out of any planes and I did not walk off any bridges while I was in Queenstown, O! you adventurous little village you. But I did go for a very nice run and it was highly rewarding.

For me, the highlight of Queenstown was another thing altogether: karaoke. Queenstown was the last stop where all the friends we had made on this first leg of our trip would be together, so our entire bus got together for a karaoke night, and man was it good. For several years now, I’ve had a dream, and that dream is to sing Bohemian Rhapsody with a bunch of my friends on stage. It’s a simple dream, but for years, its realization has remained just outside of my grasp. I’ve sung it on car trips, in a school bus on a wine tour with all my college friends, and even to a taxi cab driver in London on our way to a club in the East End. But never- never- on stage at a karaoke night.

Tonight was the night. If I wasn’t going to sky dive or bungee jump or prove myself in any other way, this would be extreme challenge. I was going to gather my newfound and friends and we were going to sing that Queen like we’d never sung that Queen before.

I was on a mission. I shoved my way around the crowded bar, harassing person after person on my bus in a twisted version of the story book, “Are you my mother?” “Will you sing Bohemian Rhapsody with me?” “Will you sing Bohemian Rhapsody with me?” Finally, Elizabeth came up with the grand idea of simply writing, “Lauren’s Bus” on the request sheet and turning it in.

So I waited for our names to be called. And I waited. And I waited. And I waited. Until finally the beautiful time had come.

“Okaaaaaay,” the DJ said, the words sliding out of his mouth in that universal slimy DJ tone. “Next up with have Lauren’s Bus singing Bohemian Rhapsody. Come on up, guys!”

“AHHHHH!” I screamed, using my arms as a scythe and sweeping anyone and everyone I knew towards the stage. “That’s us! That’s US! We’re singing BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY!”

The music started.

Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality. Open your eyes, look up to the skies and seeeeeee.

I’m just a poor boy (pooooor boy), I need no sympathy. Because I’m easy come, easy go, little high, little low. Any way the wind blows, doesn’t really matter to me.

Tooooo me.

Bum bumbum bum bum. Bum bumbum bum.

Mamaaaaa!

Oh, it was a beautiful thing. A bus full of sixty young backpackers, crooning, swooning, weeping, and rocking to the greatness that is just one of Queen’s many masterpieces. It was anything and everything I could have ever hoped, dreamed and longed for, and when we were finished, I went around the bar telling everyone, “That was everything I could have ever hoped, dreamed and longed for.” Truly, a high point in my life (so thanks again, guys. Lauren’s bus! Lauren’s bus! Lauren’s bus!).

The next day I woke up in a great mood, hoped a bus and boat to view the jaw-dropping fjords in Milford Sound and, after a bus break down and a switch to a replacement bus right out of 1970s America or modern Asia, made my way back to Queenstown for a much needed quiet night The next day I sadly had to say goodbye to the may awesome friends I had made who were staying longer in Queenstown for further EXXXTREME adventures (thankfully they all survived) and headed back up to Christchurch for my final jaunt in the South Island. (Seems like it went fast? Well, it did, and it left me wanting desperately to return one day for a more extensive visit).

Thankfully Suzy and Emma were as chicken as me about the extreme sports, though I think that might simply be a female Jewish trait. “She’s a Jewish woman,” a Jewish guy I met on Franz Josef explained to the Irish guy who had told me that story about the broke clip. “Every gene in her body is programmed for worrying.” Sadly, Emma and Suzy were leaving New Zealand after Christchurch so we decided to treat ourselves to a nice Thai meal out on the town. As always, we had a lovely time, chatting and exchanging stories, but it wasn’t until we were heading back to the hostel that the true adventure began.

Just a few feet from the back of the hostel, we passed a bus and heard first moaning and then a plea.

“Help!” a guy called from somewhere above us. None of us were in the habit of stopping for strange conversations with disembodied voices in the pitch black, so we continued walking forward, but as we did, we looked up. Lion, tigers and bears- oh, my! What a sight we saw. There, on top of the bus, was a lion. Or at least, a guy dressed as a lion. “I’m stuck on top of a bus!” the lion cried. At this, Emma and Suzy scurried forward, but I slowed my pace. I could sense a good story coming and wasn’t about to pass it up.

“Awwww don’t just keep walking like you don’t even see me!” the lion bawled. I stopped, searched between his ears and whiskers for his eyes and said,

“What’s going on?” I didn’t know quite else what to say.

“I’m stuck on top of a bus!” the lion, who, from his accent I could tell was clearly South African, repeated, hope beginning to fill his voice.

“I can see that, buddy,” I said in a motherly upstate New York voice.

“Leah!” Emma and Suzy called after me. In yet another display of neurotic Judaism, the girls were clearly convinced that the Saffa lion would leap down from the bus and directly into rape position (I like to think that Suzy fondled her rape whistle at this moment, but I’ll never know for sure). “What are you doing?”

“It’s okay,” I answered, waving them off. “This guy’s just stuck on a bus.”

“I’m stuck on a bus!” the Saffa Lion repeated, trying desperately to make Emma and Suzy understand the situation.

“Yeah, we can see that!” I said again. “Now how exactly did you get up there, honey?”

“I don’t knooooooow,” the Saffa Lion wailed. “We were having a fancy dress party in the hostel and my ‘friends’ threw my shoe down from the kitchen onto the bus. I thought the bus would leave and I’d have to run all over New Zealand to get it back!” Imagine how the night would have turned out then!

“Well thank god that didn’t happen!” I called back. The Saffa Lion smiled. We were clearly someone he could trust now.

“So,” he said. “Where are you from?” Oh boy, we were going to have a get to know you conversation with a Saffa Lion currently marooned on top of a bus.

“England,” answered Emma and Suzy who had joined me and who were now getting just as much enjoyment out of the situation as I was.

“You’re English?” the Saffa Lion scoffed. “They’re English- the ones who threw my shoe on top of this bus!”

“Well we didn’t do it,” Suzy pointed out. The Saffa Lion thought about this.

“That’s true, you’re very nice girls” he said after a moment. He thought about that some more, and then suddenly the reality of the situation hit him all over again. “How am I going to get down?” he groaned.

“Just jump,” we said, agreeing unanimously. But he couldn’t jump. He had a sprained ankle and he had to rest it up for skiing tomorrow. He’d been looking forward to this ski trip his entire time in New Zealand.

“Look,” I said, trying to hurry him along. “If it’s already sprained, how much more can you really sprain it?”

“Just jump,” agreed Emma and Suzy.

No luck. My logic didn’t really convince me, and didn’t really convince him either.

“If I jump, would you catch me?” he asked. I looked at him, a lion, at least six feet in height, full of testosterone and hair. I looked at me, 5’4” and, at that point in my travels, lacking anything resembling muscle. I looked back up at the Saffa Lion.

“Sure,” I said, clearly lying. “I’ll catch you.”

“No you won’t!” he cried, instantly seeing through my plan. “You’ll move!”

“I toooootally won’t move,” I lied. “Just jump.” The lion narrowed his eyes.

“Catch this first,” he said, throwing down the shoe that had started it all. I ducked and the shoe fell to the ground. “Ha!” he said triumphantly. “I’m not jumping!”

After several minutes of debate, we finally decided the only solution was for him to leap onto a nearby “No Parking” sign and shimmy down from there. The Saffa Lion considered this. It was a fair leap. Could he make it?

“Can you make it?” I asked incredulously. “You know what you are? You’re the cowardly lion from the Wizard of Oz. You can’t even leap onto a No Parking sign from the top of a bus. Some lion you are!” Ah, reverse psychology, does the trick every time.

“No!” cried the Saffa Lion angrily, letting loose a fearsome roar. “I am the might African lion! Hear me ROOOOOAAAAAR!” Yet still, he didn’t jump.

“Well,” I said, entirely unimpressed. “If you’re so mighty, then hurry up and shimmy down the pole already. It’s cold out here.”

“Like a fireman,” Suzy added.

The Saffa Lion took one deep breath, then another, then one more. “Alright,” he said and with a loud clang, bang and shebang, he had slid down halfway down the pole where he stopped to thrust his liony chest into the air, shake the pole as if it were a beast of prey, and roar like the mighty king of the jungle he had proved himself to be.

“That’s very nice,” I said in my Long Island Jewish mother voice. “Now come down from there so we can go warm up.” The Saffa Lion gave one last final roar and then finally shimmied to the ground, eagerly accepting congratulations from Emma, Suzy and me and offering his name. Meet Roland, the Might South African Lion.

“Roland,” I said in my best Queen of England voice, bowing and presenting him with his shoe. “Your shoe.”

We were intrigued by our mighty South African Lion friend (who wouldn’t be?) so when he invited us up to the fancy dress party to meet his evil, shoe-throwing friends, we eagerly accepted. I had to stop in the room to grab my camera (I knew this was going to be One of Those Nights), so the girls waited in the hall with Roland while I ducked into the room. I opened the door to find a girl I had met in the room earlier sitting on the top bunk reading. When I came in, she immediately put down her book and rushed to tell me the news.

“Did you see the lion on top of the bus?” she asked. “And then there were these girls trying to help him!” Yes. Yes I had.

I rejoined the girls and the lion in the hall, where we chatted for awhile until we heard thumping on the stairs and a tall, skinny English guy with a porn star handlebar mustache, a green zip up and bright blue track pants came rushing around the corner. He stopped short when he saw us, and hesitated for a moment before expertly lifting his mustache, tilting beer into his mouth, nodding his head and saying smoothly, “Ladies.”

Here was Roland’s friend, the very one who had thrown that infamous shoe on top of the bus. Before long, their friend, dressed in a kilt like Mel Gibson in Braveheart and wielding a dangerous Styrofoam sword, entered the hall in a similar fashion as his 1970s porno/gym teacher friend, posed, for a picture and then rushed off to conquer the kitchen. We decided to follow after him up to the party, so we headed up to the kitchen and into bizarre-o land. Everyone in the room was painted one color or another. What we thought was a giant bunny had his back to us, doing the dishes, but when Suzy asked him where he had gotten his bunny outfit, it turned out he was actually a polar bear and was so enraged that he leaned close and roared in our faces. When he had finished beating his chest, we calmly informed him that his polar bear suit fly was unzipped.

“How embarrassing!” the giant “polar bear” squealed and hurried to right himself. However, the distraction was only brief and he continued to roar at us intermittently throughout the night, just to show us how much the “bunny” comment had hurt him. Later on we headed down to the bar in the hostel, where a Spanish matador leaned dramatically on the bar, sipping a beer.

“You’re a matador?” I asked.

“Si!” he proclaimed, swirling his cape.

“Como estas?” I asked, not even sure if I knew what I was asking.

“Um…” he said, clearly not sure what I was asking either. “Ole!” He swirled his cape again and dramatically stalked away. Throughout the night he continued to pop up from unexpected places while we were talking to other people, proclaim either, “Si!” or “Ole!” and then dance away. Between him and the roaring polar bear, conversation was a difficult task.

All in all, it was a night to go down in the history books. So, Roland the South African Lion who Suzy, Emma and I helped down from a bus and then friended on Facebook without ever talking to again, this roar is for you:

ROOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRR!

The next day I bid my Suzy and Emma a final goodbye and headed out on the next Kiwi Ex bus up to Kaikoura, where I went on a beautiful whale watch and nearly puked, and then on to first Wellington and then Taupo. Everyone says the South Island of New Zealand is the most beautiful, and while it certainly is astounding, the North Island can definitely give it a run for its money. In Taupo I embarked on yet another astonishingly beautiful run around the lake. On my way out I headed towards Mount Doom from Lord of the Rings. On the way back, the light painted the water an impossible golden hue, a full rainbow stretched the entire length of a nearby mountain, and I nearly collapsed from the overwhelming beauty of it all. My run the next day as the sun rose over the lake in Rotorua was equally astounding and made me wonder if I could fly back to New Zealand every morning for my runs.

Rotorua itself was a natural phenomenon in other non-running related ways, most notably for its geothermal pools (one of which we got to swim in), geysers and bubbling mud, all of which were intriguing and incredibly smelly. Rotorua also boasts a large Maori population, so we visited a great Maori village where they stick their tongues at us and beat their chests in the traditional manner (“Enemies, soon you’ll be in my belly!” is what this ritual means) and where we got to chow down on a HUGE feast basked in a traditional oven in the ground. As backpackers, this meant our plates were so full of food we needed walls to keep everything on our plate. When they called us out for a cooking demonstrations, we all emerged still clutching our plates, afraid someone would take all that meat that was too expensive for us to buy away from us.

By far, though, one of the biggest highlights of both Rotorua and my entire trip to New Zealand was the blackwater rafting. Never heard of it? Neither had I, but man I’m glad I did. The first task in blackwater is to get geared up, which means inching and wriggling and twisting into freezing cold wetsuits. Then the guides take you out to a course where they give you a safety talk and teach you how to abseil. After that, you’re essentially dropped down a massive hole, abseil your way down (very nervously in my case), and then walk through a large complex of underground caves. The caves in themselves are an absolute wonder full of stalagmites and stalactmites and filled with streams and waterfalls. When we had walked a fair distance in, we splashed into the water, climbed into big rubber innertubes and floated through the caves, tilting our heads back so we could see ceilings lit up by glow worms. It was absolutely breathtaking. After that, the guide taught us how to climb up waterfalls and back up out of the cave. Now, I know that may sound a bit too EXXXTREME!!! for me, but when it comes to things like this, things where I have control, where there’s a hardship I must overcome for a greater reward, I am happy to overcome my nerves and go for it. And man, was it worth it. If you ever go to New Zealand, you MUST blackwater raft.

Later that night I hung out with my new blackwater rafting friends in the hostel and had one of my very last bizarre but wonderful how many nationalities can you fit in one room moments. An Irish guy sat amongst his English and North American friends in the common room, playing punk songs and pop songs on request, and we all joined in for a pseudo-karaoke session. A Japanese opera singer sat on the floor playing with drum sticks and between songs, standing in the center of the room and offering us the best of what modern Japanese opera has to offer. So we went back and forth, dueling loudly between western pop and Japanese opera until a huge Maori security guard, both tall and wide enough to fill the entire door frame, gracefully stepped into the room and towered above us.

“YOU MUST BE QUIETER” the Maori security guard boomed in the voice of God himself. “IS THIS UNDERSTOOD?” We all gulped in unison and nodded our heads quickly. “THANK YOU.” And just like that, the Maori god stepped backwards and disappeared. The room remained silent for one, two, breathless moments. Then the opera singer stood up and began projecting as if nothing had happened.

It was about that time that I realized I desperately needed to pee, so I pushed out of the room and towards the bathroom where I met a skinny Indian guy called Raj exiting the bathroom and closing the door behind him.

“Oh, Leah,” he said in his thick Bangalore accent. “You might want to wait a moment before going in.”

“Oh yeah, why’s that?” I asked Raj, amused and wanting to make him squirm. At this, Raj suddenly broke into a smile.

“Just kidding! I was only making the pee!”

Jeez, if it wasn’t South African lions, Braveheart wannabes, matadors that only know the words “Si!” and “Ole!” and polar bears that look like bunnies, it was Irish punk rockers, Japanese opera singers, god-like Maori men and Indian guys joking about poop. Ah, I was going to miss travel!

Alas, my time both in New Zealand and traveling was nearly done. From Rotorua I headed first up to Auckland, where I bid ado to my final friends from Kiwi Ex, and then down to beautiful New Plymouth, where I stayed with Donna, a friend I had met on my India trip, in her beautiful house on the beach. Donna greeted me at the bus stop with slippers and ushered me into her warm car, instantly making me feel at home. Every day and night at Donna’s was therapeutic, from our beautiful walks to her phenomenal home cooked meals to that cozy bed with big fluffy pillows. If Australia was my reintroduction into western culture, Donna’s house was my reintroduction into home life.

It was then that it really began to hit me- this year and all that I had done in it. There I was, lying in a bed. In my own room. In a home. I remembered this from some past life. I had done this before, a very long time ago. So this was what was missing from my life. A home. In my entire time traveling, I had adjusted very well. I never got homesick once. I took every challenge and I rolled with it, so much so that challenging myself just seemed like a natural part of every day.

Somewhere along the line, likely in Australia, these challenges weren’t enough anymore. They didn’t hold enough meaning. While I had fun partying, making new, fun friends and ripping it up, I began to feel un-centered, like something key was missing in my life. It wasn’t until I found Donna’s house that I finally realized that thing I was missing was a home, a place where, after a day a tough day out in the real world, I could throw down all my crap and truly relax, not have to chat or analyze or discuss. I hadn’t had that since, well, leaving London, really, and suddenly I realized I needed it back. And I needed it back soon.

Fortunately, the end was coming soon. I just had one more destination to get through- a tiny, remote tropical Fijian isle where I had booked my own personal bure (hut) on the beach. Okay, so I wanted to get home and I wanted to get home quite badly. But a remote beautiful tropical isle in the South Pacific? I could definitely handle that.

I left Donna’s house feeling refreshed, pampered, and ready for home, thoroughly thankful for both her and her family’s kindness (thanks again, guys!) and ready to get the ball rolling. Relax on Fiji and then- and then!- home. What a bizarre concept. I headed back up to Auckland, said my goodbyes to fun and astoundingly beautiful New Zealand, and boarded a plane to Nadi. Which brings me to…

Chapter Three: Last Blast in Fiji

It’s funny that I should use the term “last blast” in this title, because even though Fiji was my last stop, its third world charm reminded me in many ways of a stop I’d taken a couple of months before in Asia (though that said, Fiji is distinctly and wonderfully Fijian).

But I’m getting ahead of myself, both now and on my flight from Auckland to Nadi. This was my last destination and my mind was already in “wrapping it up” mode, but it ain’t over until the baby aisle forty-seven stops screaming (she never did). You’d think the further I traveled the higher my tolerance for small travel annoyances would become, but in truth, the opposite happened. The longer I traveled, the more entitled I felt. “Hey,” I thought. “I’ve traveled three-quarters of the way around the world. I want a window seat goddammit.” But of course the travel gods paid no attention to my protestations and sat me next to an annoying middle-aged English lady who spent the entire flight smacking on sucking candies, making those awful mouth noises that I absolutely despise (when they’re not coming out of me). I prayed she wouldn’t have a large enough supply to keep on smacking the entire flight, but every time she’d finish one, her sister who was sitting next to her offered up the open bag and said, “Sweetie?” as if having a sweetie was a brand new and entirely original idea.

“Why thank you!” her sister smiled, eagerly unwrapping another saccharine flavored annoyance. I turned up my iPod as loud as I possibly could but I couldn’t escape the sound of her smacking.

SmacksmacksmackSMACKSMACKSMACK!!!!

It was all I could do not to smack that damn smacker out of her mouth and shout, “WOULD YOU STOP MASTICATING ALREADY?”

The screaming baby in aisle forty-seven didn’t help things. By the time I arrived in Nadi I was in an entirely foul mood and was only mildly calmed by the singing, Fijian men in Hawaiian shirts who greeted us. The Fijians pride themselves on their friendly manners and welcoming hospitality, which in most cases was both helpful and endearing, but not when I arrived at the airport and was greeted by a mass of smiling Fijians trying to welcome me into their hotels.

I was so distracted by the friendly offers that I somehow managed to walk directly past my airport transfer and had to walk from person to person asking if anyone knew how I could get to my resort, a place called Oarsman’s Bay. Of course in my American accent the locals kept thinking I was saying, “Awesome”, short for “Awesome Adventures,” a very popular tour company in Fiji for young backpackers like myself.

“No, Oarsman’s Bay,” I would repeat, trying to enunciate my syllables as well as possible.

“Yes, Awesome Adventures is over there.”

“No, Oarsman’s.”

“Yes, Awesome.”

Finally I had to go into Awesome Adventures and say look, everyone keeps sending me hear because they think I’m saying awesome when I’m really saying Oarsman’s. The woman smiled and pointed me in the right direction. I finally found my transfer and piled into a van that took me to my beachside resort for the night. I had traveled at dirt cheap prices around the world, so I decided Fiji would be last stop splash out destination. This meant that when I arrived at the resort, I got to avoid the backpacker scene altogether and check into a beautiful room overlooking the ocean. As I checked in, a bunch of young backpackers argued with the manager over mysteriously lost reservations that they had clearly paid for. I smiled to myself. Ha! My backpacking days were over with! No more of dealing with bullshit like that! At least, not for now.

I rushed out and frantically snapped photos of my first beautiful Fijian sunset. And a beauty it truly was.

The next morning I hopped on a boat called the Yasawa Flier and set out for my remote paradise island, nearly five hours off the coast of Nadi. The boat ride was long but serene and beautiful, giving me a taste of things to come. Friendly locals waved eagerly at us from tiny boats. Each island was more beautiful then the next, and the further we traveled the more impossibly blue the water became. Finally, we arrived at the final stop, a chain of beautiful and remote Yasawan islands, tantalizing and refreshing in the near distance. The Flier couldn’t dock at the islands, so we had to load our bags into tiny fishing boats and then bounce across the ocean, seawater spraying our clothes and faces and giving us our first taste of the Pacific ocean. As we approached the island, staff waiting on the beach began playing ukuleles and singing a beautiful song of welcome.

“Bula!” they greeted us at the end of their song with the traditional Fijian greeting.

“Bula!” we cheerily called back in return. I turned to face the green and blue ocean, kissed with sun and bursting with paradise charm.

Ah, I had finally arrived.

After a long debate over where to stay in Fiji, I had picked Oarsman’s for several reasons. First, I wanted it to be remote and mostly untouched so that I could get a real authentic Fijian feel. Secondly, I wanted to splash out with my own personal bure without losing the social element of a hostel, so the resort had to have not just private accommodation but a hostel as well. In this way, I wanted my resort to be a sort of halfway house where I could take only the parts of the backpacker scene that I liked (the socializing) and combine them with my splash out dream (privacy). Oarsman’s had all of these things. It was beautiful, it was friendly, it was social, it was isolated, it was all I had ever hoped for and perhaps a little bit more.

I checked in with reception, handed over my credit card details and let one of the staff lug my crap over to my bure. I pushed open the door, pushed my bag into a corner and checked out my home for the next five days. For a long-term backpacker, this place was impossibly posh. It had a queen sized bed, a full closet, a sink, a mirror, a shower, and a toilet. All for me.

And hey, what else did it have? What did I see back over there on the sink?

Ants. Lots and lots of ants. To decorate and welcome me to my new bure, the staff had strewn flowers all over the room. Flowers on the bed, flowers on the sink, flowers on the chair, flowers on the toilet. With those flowers had come ants, lots and lots of very eager ants. Ants on the bed, ants on the sink, ants on the chair, ants on the toilet. Ants in places where the flowers hadn’t even been. Ants in the drawers, ants on the mirror, ants on the floor, ants in the closet. Ants, ants, ants, for as far as the eye could see.

After a year crap-packing, this was not the kind of indulgence I had imagined. But oh well, I was still in paradise and to not make the best of the situation would be the actions of a silly, stupid, spoiled brat. I’d have to fight these ants the only way I knew how- with optimism and a whole lot of bug poison. First, I hit at the source of the problem. I collected the lovely, beautiful, sweet smelling flowers and dumped them on the ground outside. Then I rolled up a wad of toilet paper and leapt around the room, squishing and hitting and rubbing ants first into the floor and then into the garbage basket. Then I attacked the entire room with ant poison, spraying anything that crawled until the fumes were so strong, even I almost collapsed on my back, my legs kicking frantically in the air.

There. Done. Complete. Finito.

That is, of course, until the next day, when the cleaning lady threw new flowers and fresh ants around the room again. Thus began the first of many battles between Leah, the Cleaning Lady and The Ants of Doom.

Fortunately, the ants were the only negative of my stay at Oarsman’s. Every day I did something different, and every day I did something I did on every other day. The resort ran various activities, so I snorkeled amongst the coral and the fishes, I climbed through ancient caves, I bought local craftwork, and I explored an idyllic village on the other side of the islands, where hefty Fijian women lay idle in the shade, their big bellies shaking with laughter, where the men smiled with the same innocence as those villagers in faraway India, and where the children laughed and played tag while they were supposed to be studying quietly at their desks. The rest of my time I spent floating in the aqua sea, lying reading on the beach and in a hammock slung between two palm trees, greeting, “Bula!” to every friendly worker and local that walked by, and watching the sun set pure and orange over my own personal paradise. At night I joined up with my fellow backpackers for dinner, socialized until it was too dark to tell what time it was (usually around 9:30) and strolled off to bed in my private ant-infested bure (in paradise).

In many ways, Oarsman’s truly was my halfway house paradise. This wasn’t just any old beach vacation, nor was it some far off destination in the middle of my extensive trip. This was the last place I’d visit before I went home after a year of being away, after a year of work, of friends, of different cultures, different sounds, different tastes, different sights. Of beauty, of ugliness, of death, of life. Of this planet as it went about its busy task of whirling round, day after day, night after night, place after place.

As I lay in my hammock, as I floated in the aqua blue paradise waters, as I dug my toes into the perfect sand, I thought both of home and of my life over the past year with anxiety, relief, astonishment, shock, joy, and, well, basically every other emotion you could think of.

Then I thought of home, and how I would adjust. I missed my family, my friends, my bed, that every elusive sense of normalcy, the act of not lugging crap around the world. But I would miss many things about the road, things that reached beyond the many lessons I had learned and the beautiful sights I had seen. I would truly miss meeting travelers from all walks of life and regions of the world. I’d miss the stories they told, the adventures they took me on, the arguments we had on world politics. I wasn’t sure how I would react to being home. Would it be a shock? Would I like it?

The last time I returned to the States after an extensive period abroad, my family took me to a fancy restaurant to celebrate. As I sat at our table, eating my meal, I heard the many loud American accents around me and thought, “Wow, there sure are a lot of Americans at this restaurant.” Would returning home this time provide a similar shock, especially now that I had finally let go of my undying attachment to London, now that I realized I could be happy living in many different regions of the world, America included?

I thought about adjusting back to the States so constantly, that the issue even seeped into my dreams. One night after perhaps a bit too much kava, I dreamt that George W. Bush was stalking me. Everywhere I went, there he was, waiting to attack me. Finally, I decided to turn the tables and start stalking him. Like a good stalker, I snuck from behind one big building to the shade of another, until finally I pounced on him, as if to stab or shoot him. But I did neither. Instead, I gathered myself up and stated through hysterical tears, “I don’t think you’ve been a very good president!”

I was clearly grappling with the daunting prospect of coming home and adjusting back into the American lifestyle, both at home in Ithaca and in Seattle when I started school in the fall. I’d have to go back to life, real life, life with work and deadlines and people and commitments. I could travel the entire world on my own, but could I do this? Could I go home? With every American I met, I unfairly tried to predict how my adjustment would go. Well, that girl seemed nice. If people in America are like that, I’ll be just fine. Well, that guy was a dufus. If people in America are like that, I should shoot myself right now.

Thus, my time in Fiji was essentially a limbo in paradise, split between a strong pull to get home already (enough with this traveling crap!), between a fear of reintegration, and between a frantic desire to soak up my last minutes of travel in this absurdly heavenly place.

On top of that, I kept losing my place in time and reminiscing over the impossible year that had just passed. One night I was drawn out of my bure (or boooo-ray as Tom, the innocent eyed boy behind the drinks counter called it) by the sound of the staff singing traditional Fijian songs and strumming ukuleles and guitars. I wandered out of my bure and found the staff dressed in straw hula skirts, Hawaiian shirts and leis, performing in front of the resort guests. I quietly took my seat in the back and watched them perform.

I was instantly transfixed. Their voices were both beautiful and humanly imperfect. As I sat there, watching them project those voices with a power and joy that’s virtually unknown in any first world country, I was nearly overcome with emotion. Suddenly I was suspended in time, lifted up on the notes of their voices into the stars, watching a video of my life over the past year play on a screen thousands of miles below me, somewhere on an impossibly blue ocean far away from home. In these powerful, real Fijian voices, I saw Indian village elders, smoking tobacco and sipping cups of burning hot masala tea; I heard frantic Vietnamese children, chasing after bikes and calling, “Hallo! Hallo! Hallo!”; I saw an old man in Italy, farting and hobbling down cobblestoned Roman streets; I heard old Chinese country folk, laughing at large western noses and exclaiming to each other in shocked Mandarin tones; I saw a man begging for salvation with his last dying breaths in the streets of Pushkar; and I saw way back in the years, to that first big life changing study abroad experience in London in 2005, to gleeful American students, drunk on British pints, on travel, on pleasure, on laughter, on life, leaping from a fountain in Piccadilly Circus, encapsulating their fleeing youth in one frozen snapshot they could look back on in the years to come and say, “That’s when it started. That’s when I started living.”





As I sat there on that remote beach in the Fijian islands, choking back tears and thinking over the past year, the wind whipped the sand into dramatic gusts and howled through the trees that surrounded us. My mind followed the wind and became a cyclone of sounds, of smells, of sights, of tastes, of life in the world as I’d never before seen it. Those beautiful Fijian voices sang and sang and sang, and I relived my memories with a sense of urgency.

Remember us, Leah. Remember us now, remember us when you return to normalcy, remember us as you grow old, as you marry, as you have kids, as those kids have kids, as you write, as you live, as you travel, and as you lay on your deathbed, gripping the few remaining straws of your beautiful life on this earth. Remember us. The taste of Kashmiri na’an, warm and fresh out of the oven; the smell of cold pure air on top of a crystal blue glacier; the beauty of elegant brown-skinned women in colorful robes, disappearing inside dusty, beaten hovels; the feel of authentic Chinese silk smooth and cool on your skin. The knowledge that as you drive to work each morning, as you make dinner and wash the dishes, as you look over your bank accounts and sigh with worry, that a place exists where broad Fijian men and women with innocent eyes and friendly smiles greet each other with warm bulas and sing songs of love on achingly beautiful sand islands in the aqua blue of the world’s largest, most intimidating ocean.

Live, Leah. And remember.

I sat in my uncomfortable plastic chair, so absorbed in thinking, remembering, living, fully transported into my own emotions, thoughts and adventures that I didn’t hear the staff’s first call to the audience.

“Get up!” they cried, smiling broadly at their guests. “Dance! Dance with us!”

So I took all those emotions, all those memories, and I did the one thing I never used to be able to do before I started taking risks with my life, before I eagerly embraced adventure and adversity, before I truly started living.

I got up. And I danced.

The ukulele strummed and I danced. The voices sang and I danced. The wind howled and I danced. The sand stung and I danced. The guests laughed and I danced. I may not have been good, I may not have been graceful, I may not have known the steps, and I definitely, definitely did not look sexy. But I danced for joy, I danced for travel, I danced for life. I danced for all the many people I had met, the places I had seen, the food I had tasted, the smells I had smelt. I danced for the sake of remembrance. And for those things, I danced well.

When the music stopped, my trance slowly lifted. I sat down at dinner and listened to the idle conversation of the people around me.

I would do this. I would go home.

But before I would go home, I would have one last, distinctly Fijian adventure. I would go to church. Now, everyone knows I’m a pretty Jewish Jewy Jew girl, but I was so enraptured with Fiji that I wanted to see more of their culture, especially if it involved those lovely local singing voices. So, on July first, 2007, both the day I would leave Fiji and the longest day of my life so far, I woke up early, dressed in a huge, Hawaiian-printed sack provided by the resort, and boarded a small boat to the other side of the island with another innocent eyed young Fijian man and two women from the resort.

Even the smallest Fijian islands usually have more than one church. I attribute this to the Fijians’ relaxed attitudes. “Presbyterian?” they said, roasting a chicken over a spit. “Sure, why not? Bula!” “Anglican?” they said, lying on the sand and chewing a reed. “Sure, why not? Bula!” Thus, the Fijian villages consist of small huts and parallel dueling churches, though they don’t really duel because they’re not really into violence or any sort of antagonism.

To get to our church, we had to walk past another outdoor church, where the people sang with fervent hope and joy, and a small village where chickens frantically chased one another, clearly on distinct and important missions, colorful sheets, shirts, and gigantic bras and panties blew freely from clothes lines, young women in their twenties lay beneath the shade of a tin front porch telling stories, puppies and dogs chased each other in circles, and little kids played inventive games with sticks.

“Bula!” the men, women and children called eagerly as we passed. “Bula!”

We were fairly early so we waited in the boatman’s small home for the church drum to be beaten. The home consisted of one bedroom, hidden behind a colorful cloth doorway and a slightly larger living room, decorated with two small couches and two even smaller chairs. The boatman was fairly elderly and clearly had gained enough standing in their communal society to boast such furnishings, which either he or his young wife had decorated with bright, Hawaiian prints. We sat on their couches and made small talk until the boatman’s eight year old son rushed in from outside, sweating slightly from his exertions but clearly clean, dapper and ready for church. Upon his entrance, the boatman burst into a broad smile.

“This is my son,” he proclaimed softly, modestly, but full of pride. This is my son. Can we take him back to our first world country so full of divorces and absentee parents? Can we? Please?

Before too long the church drum beat, calling for us to gather. We made our way into the church, where a fair amount of the villagers had already gathered into distinct sections. The smiling, incredibly adorable kids sat on the left side, right near the front, while a chorus full of young, heavy women in pristine white dresses and old, wrinkled men with kind smiles sat perpendicular to the kids, ready to sing towards the pastor. Before, during, and after the services, the kids fidgeted in their seats and poked each other mischievously and dogs wandered through the pews to check out what was going on. We guests were welcomed to the service, told we could take as many pictures as we liked, and the choir began to sing. A few minutes in, a middle-aged man slipped into the back pew of the choir with his young daughter, a tiny and wide-eyed little girl who sucked her thumb and peered out shyly around her father for the duration of the service. Together, the women sang in high-pitched silver voices and the men sang in deep baritone projections.

The priest spoke for awhile and then invited up a group of elderly women, who stood in the middle of the pews, hunched with old age and wrinkled like raisins, singing in one unitary, croaky but solid voice. A miscreant dog growled viciously in the middle of their song and was universally shooed away by the congregation. An adorable little girl gnawed on the pew behind me until finally it was time for us to return to our resort to catch our boat back to Nadi.

Church wasn’t over, so we snuck out and the very relaxed Fijian congregation pretended not to notice. We made our way back to the beach and had nearly loaded into the boat when the sound of a woman’s feet beating across the sand quickly approached us. A young woman carrying a baby in a sling emerged from the woods and panted towards us holding a plastic bag of bracelets out to us.

“These are from the villagers!” she cried. “Thank you for visiting us.”

Oh, Fiji. The perfect last blast, limbo in paradise destination.

We gratefully accepted the woman’s gifts, climbed back into the boat, and headed back to the resort. At 1PM the Yasawa Flier docked out at sea and I bid my perfect Fijian getaway (and the ants, don’t forget the ants) a sweet and thankful adieu.

July 1st, 2007. 1PM. Three-hundred fifty-nine days of traveling and now I was going home.

Well, let’s not get carried away. I was starting my trip home. I still had yet to travel five hours on a boat to return to Nadi, wait in the airport for three hours, sit through a thirteen hour flight to LA, sit in the airport for two hours, fly for five hours to New York, and drive for forty-five minutes from JFK airport to my grandmother’s house in Connecticut.

Still, I was on my way.

Chapter Four: Finding My Way Home (The Final Countdown)

July 1st, 2007. I’m not sure what time it was, but I arrived in LA before I had left Oarsman’s Bay. From a tiny, remote island in the middle of the vast Pacific Ocean, to the LA airport. Upon arriving in LA, I alternated between giddiness and exhaustion. At the end of my flight I struck up a conversation with the couple beside me who had visited a very posh resort in Fiji to celebrate their wedding anniversary. They were very excited about my trip and wanted to hear all about my travels. As we stood in the customs line together, I confided in them that all I wanted was a friendly welcome back to U.S. soil. The last time I passed through customs after being abroad in London for seven months, I had received an endearing but not so friendly New York welcome.

“London,” the customs officer said in a thick Brooklyn accent, flipping through my passport. “Whaddya do there for so long?”

“I worked at Ben & Jerry’s,” I said, hoping he’d think I was a cool, independent, sophisticated, world-traveling, out of this world babe.

“Ben & Jerry’s!” he exclaimed, stamping my passport and sliding it back across the counter. “Whaddya do all day, eat ice cream?”

This time around, I was gunning for a nice, cheery hello. After all, I’d been traveling for just under a year and I’d been to all sorts of crazy places with all sorts of random people. The least I could get was a small pat on the back, or even just a nice smile. But how was I supposed to elicit such a response from a terse, pissed of customs worker?

“All I want,” I told my new airplane friends in hushed tones. “Is for the customs officer to say, ‘Welcome home.’” Just as I said that, the voice of a stocky, male customs officer projected over the hum and buzz of LAX’s busy border.

“I’m only gonna ask you one more time, sir. What was your business in Iraq?” The man to which the question was addressed was old and clearly couldn’t hear well. He fumbled in his pockets for his necessary documents and asked if the officer could repeat himself as these old ears weren’t doing so well these days.

“Iraq, sir,” the customs officer repeated, rolling his eyes. “WHAT WAS YOUR BUSINESS IN IRAQ?”

My new airplane friends watched this scene with me and whispered, “I suggest you don’t go for that guy.”

Fortunately, I did not get that guy, and was instead sent to a pretty young woman in a booth just behind my new airplane friends. The officer asked me the various standard border questions, and I waited nervously to see how our interaction would end. Would she say it? Would she not? Would I get any sort of welcome?

As I stood at the booth, wondering and waiting, my airplane friends chatted merrily to their officer. “Hey,” the said to the officer, repeating this conversation to me later at the baggage claim belt. “See that girl over there? She’s just come back from a year of traveling all around the world, and all she wants is for a customs office to say, ‘Welcome home.’ Would you say it to her?”

Their customs officer looked towards my booth and asked, “That one, over there?” My airplane friends nodded. The officer grinned. “This is America,” he joked. “We don’t do that kind of thing!”

Well, that officer wouldn’t give me the greeting I wanted, but my airplane friends had still done me an immeasurable favor. My customs officer must have overheard them joking around because when she finished officiously stamping my passport, she closed the cover solemnly, slid it towards me, looked straight into my eyes and burst into a warm, full smile. “Welcome home, Leah.”

I grinned, ecstatic. “Thanks!” I chirped cheerily, flashing her a grin of my own. I grabbed my passport and skipped towards the baggage claim, pumping one fist triumphantly into the air.

I was home! Home, home, home, home! I was ecstatic! I was euphoric! I was…. still waiting for baggage after forty-five minutes. And in the flight lounge for my plane for two hours. And then an hour after that while they fixed the plane’s “mechanical difficulties”. And still, it was July 1st, 2007. Welcome home, and welcome back to America’s incredibly impaired airlines. Over fifteen flights around the world and only one of them was delayed. Do you know which one that was? The one in the States, of course. Grrrrrr so close to home yet so, so far away.

Finally, the plane’s problems were fixed. We boarded the plane and took off. I was on my way, so close I could nearly feel it.

Maybe it was the exhaustion, maybe it was the exhilaration, or maybe it was simple delusion, but in the half hour before we finally (finally!) landed in New York, I once again became unstuck in time, though in a way distinctly different than on that beach in Fiji. This is not the first time I have become unglued in such a manner. Sometimes when I think about both time and our place within it, I wonder if we exist in multiple times at once- Leah at five, Leah at twenty-five, Leah at thirty-five, all living life in their own separate presents. To each of these Leahs, the present is a whirlwind of activity, emotion, self-centeredness, egotism, love, doubt, conviction, laughter, and tears, and each present is equally powerful, deafening and blinding.

Every once in awhile, we are granted a brief reprieve from our present selves. We are unstuck from time and given a quiet moment where the cyclone pauses for a moment of unprecedented clarity. In these moments, the scene around us- the trees, the wall, the floor, the grass, the airplane window- trembles ever so slightly and a tear appears in our surrounding visual scene, revealing the world to be a mere set for our present dramas. When the set tears- the trees buckle, the walls crumble- you can peer through the hole that remains, into your own eyes in another time and another space. Your eyes in the future and your eyes in the past, multiple versions of you existing in multiple times, released from the shackles of their present and ready to join forces.

In these moments when I become unstuck from time, I see my former and future selves and I walk towards them slowly. I see Leah at five years old, cute, pig-tailed, full of childlike joy and innocence, rubbing her eyes as if awoken from another fitful dream starring Cookie Monster and the cast of Sesame Street. I see Leah at seventeen, young, pretty, depressed and shattered, reeling from her first experiences with young love and with young love lost. I see Leah at twenty, awakened from her depressed slumber, her hair tied back in tiny pigtails, happy but still full of teenaged angst, still ready to dive into a mosh pit and elbow her way to stage front. I see Leah at thirty-five, slightly thicker around the belly, happy but stressed, chasing after an unruly toddler and scheduling her next never-ending work meeting. I see Leah at sixty-seven, wrinkled, fat, and goading her arthritic husband into a trek to Mount Everest base camp. I see Leah at ninety-eight, withered, rotting, lying under a golden sun on a soft beach in a remote Fijian isle, remembering a promise she made to herself when she was young, adventurous and full of energy, full of life, full of many future Leahs to exist happily in many future presents.

And I see me now at twenty-three, young. Adventurous. Strong. Independent. Happy. Full of hope and promise. The same Leah as all those others Leahs that have passed and those that are to come. But different.

As I fly over New York State, returning home from a year so wonderful it can only be mocked with a title like, “LEAH LUGS CRAP AROUND THE WORLD”, I am unstuck from time along with all the Leahs from my past and all the Leahs from my future. The walls of our respective presents tear in two and we slowly walk towards one another, steady step after steady step, until finally we’re standing together in one, impenetrable circle. We join hands, young to old, and sit down on top of a beautiful green hill, basked in golden sunlight. We don’t say anything, not even sleepy five year old Leah who thinks she might be dreaming, but wonders if she is, when the heck is Cookie Monster going to show up?

Together, we’ll be okay. Together, we’ll remember.

I hear a thud. Midnight, July 2nd, 2007, EST. The plane skids across the runway in John F. Kennedy Airport, New York City. I turn to the Irish backpacker sitting next to me and I grin, holding back tears.

“Hey,” I say, stuck suddenly and firmly back into the present. “I just lugged crap all the way around the world.”

And it’s true. Because I have.

Second to last picture round

Hellooooo all. Well it looks like my travels are almost winding up. I'm finishing my time up here in New Zealand, then it's off to Fiji, then home, at long last! Of course I'll be writing an extensive blog on my antipodean adventures soon enough, but until then, here are the links to my Australia and New Zealand pics. There's a zillion and they're not sorted because it took me long enough to load them, but such is the state of things. Enjoy!

Australia:
http://travel.webshots.com/album/559532025dKuggt?vhost=travel

New Zealand:
http://travel.webshots.com/album/559534721MhRrzP

Weeks 33-43: The Apocalypse in the Form of a Blog Post

Okay. So. After having safely arrived back in Western culture, I've spent my first five days in Australia trapped inside typing my stupid blog. It took forever and now that all is said and done, has come in at just under 60,000 words. That's about 125 single spaced pages. It's not just ridiculous, it's embarrassing. As such, I honestly don't expect anyone to read it. Seriously. I wouldn't if I were you. I would take one look at this thing and say, what is wrong with this woman and how does she have so much to say about everything under the sun? I'm not doing the female, "no really, it's fine" thing when it's really not. If you don't want to read it, I completely understand.

That is, of course, unless you're mom and dad in which case chop chop!

Okay, either enjoy or delete and I'll see you on the other side!

Cheerio.



Weeks 33-43 (I think, math was never my strong point): The Pope and his stinginess re: toilet paper, life in the land of cows and yes madams, pathetic western men and supermodel Thai women, my poor tuchas in Vietnam, depressing things and tomb raiding in Cambodia, and a land of infinite mucous.

Alright, folks, I know you thought you got rid of me, but fact is, during this two and a half month period sans LEAH LUGS CRAP AROUND THE WORLD I have been sneaking across country borders and surreptitiously taking notes about many clandestine matters, real 00S7 stuff, from traffic laws re: the holy cow to the not so subtle spitting habits of an entire continent. Yes, I’ve been busy, and unfortunately for you poor, misguided souls who once upon time naively said, “Yes, Leah, put me on my your email list!”, you’re about to hear far more about Asia than you ever wanted to know. So much, in fact, that in this addition of CRAP I have removed the bulleted summary list, because as it stands now in my rough preliminary outline, the list rambles for about six pages. Instead, let us jump right into the adventure. That is if you are ready for LEAH LUGS CRAP AROUND THE WORLD: THE ASIA FILES (and um, parts of Europe as well).

You are? Okay, well then let’s go. We last left our gorgeous, skinny, supermodel protagonist (ha! That never gets old!) in Italy, fighting to find her way to an ost-ell-o, and, just for literary justice, we shall resume still deep in the heart of grand olde Italia, where Leah lugged crap to Milan in what is now infamously titled:

Chapter One: Italy Part 2: Operatic Mimes, Communal Showers and Jews Do Christ

After my, shall we say, “interesting” time hanging out in Verona with a Cali Cog sci major, an Aussie girl, an Italian music producer (“music is my liiiife man!”) and an operatic mime, I lugged my crap (which seemed to be getting heavier and heavier at each destination, despite the fact that I was actually losing possessions, not gaining) to the train station and, after much difficulty, secured a highly valued window seat for the train journey from Verona to Milan. Now, I am not a very finicky person, but when it comes to window seats, especially those on trains speeding through beautiful countryside in a land I may never again be able to visit, I am particularly vocal about my needs and was therefore more than willing to slog through various communication difficulties to ensure that a window seat (o! sweet window seat!) would be mine. At this point, having had more than my share of arguments over seats on trains throughout Europe, I knew that if I wanted my prized seat, I would need to be equipped with a ticket that very clearly stated LEAH KAMINSKY and WINDOW seat, albeit in Italian, in order to claim my prize. Once this had been obtained, I began to breathe easy and ream of the idyllic journey to come.

Alas, despite what many people may believe, Italy is full of Italians, and, for better or worse, Italians never fail to make life more complicated than it really should be. When they train arrived, I pulled myself onto the train in a severely deluded state, shoving my way past legions of old Italians who wouldn’t move out of the way, before finally arriving at my designated cabin, only to find an old man and a young girl sitting at the two window seats. Great. If I wanted my seat, I either had to forcibly remove the weak or the innocent. Goddammit. Well I did what any self respecting selfish American would do and feigned idiocy, showing my ticket to every passenger in the car and trying to communicate that I just couldn’t figure out where my seat was, could someone please help me figure it out? Little did I know the absolute pandemonium my tactical strategy would produce. The two people in the middle seats shrugged at me in confusion, while the woman across from me took my ticket, pointed at the old man and said to me in perfect English, “The old man took your seat.” Together we both glared at the old man, who, under the pressure of the woman’s accusatory pointed finger, began gesturing wildly and exclaimed something in Italian, which the woman promptly translated as being, “The girl took your seat.”

Somehow, I managed to refrain from glaring at the chubby little six year old BITCH who had stolen my precious seat, subjected myself to an internal lecture on maturity, said pleasantly, “Oh that’s fine! I was just confused!”, plopped down dejectedly into my seat, and held myself back from sticking my tongue out at the stupid chubby little six year old BITCH. I think, however, that she could sense my animosity, because whenever her grandmother stopped shoving food in her mouth, that BITCH proceeded to pull all sorts of funny faces in my direction. WHATever.

BITCH!

Beyond the six year old chubby BITCH, the ride was indeed another “interesting” one, and by “interesting” I mean loud. Throughout the course of the ride, I quickly developed a theory for trains in Italy that I labeled “The Social Train Car”, which is less of a theory and more, well, exactly what it says: train cars in Italy are intensely social. In traveling throughout Europe I have found the layout of seats inside various modes of transportation to be quite telling of norms regarding social interaction. For instance, in cultures where socializing is not a top priority, seats are arranged strictly in ordered aisles, whereas in cultures where social interaction is more important, a higher percentage of seats face one another. According to both stereotypes and well, reality, Italians are about as social as you can get, and as a result, not only do seats face each other, they are separated into six seat cabins where, in a culture where constant talking (shouting) is just par for the course, it’s nearly impossible to board a social train car in Italy and ride the rail quietly, listening to one’s iPod and contemplating life as the Italian countryside streams by.

Oh no, my friends, as I’ve stated before, if Italians want you to pay attention (and they all really do), you can’t escape, and the social train cars, with their isolated six person cabins and their closing doors, are a prison of forced social interaction. Indeed, one would be hard-pressed to leave a social train car without having met and learned the entire life stories (albeit, in Italian) of five other passengers AND their families AND their pets AND their lovers AND god knows what else. It doesn’t matter how long the journey is, every person has something to say and eat throughout the entire ride, from beginning to end. It doesn’t matter if you’re not hungry and it surely doesn’t matter if you don’t speak Italian. Once you’re in the social train car, you can’t escape the socializing, and that’s just a fact of life.

This train ride from Verona to Milan was, of course, no different. The Italians talked and shouted and talked and SHOUTED and ate and ate and shouted and ate, all at the same time. By the time we finally arrived in Milan, I had neither an appetite nor an ear left and was relieved to be wandering around the noisy streets of a big city, which seemed to be amazingly quiet in comparison to the social train car.

The next few days were a blur of motion in which I saw many beautiful but not very amusing things, so I’ll just skim through them: I wandered around Milan, I admired Italian architecture, I boarded another social train to Florence,I admired more architecture and food and art and culture, I fell in love with Florence despite the tourists, I enter the blissful tourist state and vow to one day show Florence to my family, I eat spaghetti and watch the tourists on the Ponte Vecchio and then I once again board a social train to Salerno, the crappiest place in Italy aside from Naples.

Which reminds me, say, have I ever told you about Salerno, the crappiest place in Italy aside from Naples? Never heard of it? Welp, that’s because it’s the crappiest place in Italy aside from Naples. To be fair to the Lonely Planet that guided me there, I was forewarned that Salerno was a place of Italian “passion”, which, after nearly two months of using the good old “LP” as my guide to Europe, I knew meant “anger”. Indeed I had only really picked Salerno to serve as a cheap base from which I could visit the much more beautiful and much more expensive Amalfi coast, and really, if I wasn’t such a snob, it would have served that purpose beautifully. But I am a snob, and so from the moment I stepped out of the train and into the blistering heat (or so I thought before I visited Southeast Asia and learned what the term “blistering heat” really meant), took one look at the crappy run down high rises, I knew I might be in a bit over my head. This realization immediately pissed off the determined optimist inside me, who patiently protested the conviction that my real self knew was true by playing my mother’s voice in my head, repeating, “Now Leah, when we have lemons, what can we make?”

Uuuuuungh lemonade, mother, lemonade.

And so I begrudgingly attempted to make the best of the situation, attempting to find true Italian “passion” (and not the Lonely Planet kind) in a hidden gem between two buildings or mixed into a threatening pile of dog shit. Instead, all I found was, well, let’s call it, “dog shit lacking both gems AND lemonade,” or, in other words, balding Italian men with potbellies screaming from the sidewalk up at weathered Italian women on the fifth floor of a high rise, who, in turn, were throwing various household possessions down at the men. This seemed to be the general scene up and down the first street I sweatily lugged my crap down, and only seemed to be broken by a similar looking Italian man screamed up not at a woman, but at a menacing man in a suit, who hadn’t yet responded (I scurried on before he could).

“Okay,” I thought. “This is crappy, but don’t give up hope Leah, by golly, the hostel could be friggin’ sweet!” Ha! This was a very short-lived delusion, about as full of conviction as my mother’s aforementioned lemonade was with sugar. If the south of Italy held any lemonade, it certainly wasn’t going to be in Salerno. After (as always) a great deal of difficulty in trying to find the hostel, I pushed between its doors (if they can be called that) dripping with sweat, smiled and said “hi” to the random people milling around in the lounge, thinking that perhaps one of them might check me into the hostel or, you know, acknowledge my existence. But of course, fate was not on my side and not one single person responded to my greeting with much more than a very perplexed smile (“What is this? A backpacker? Trying to check into a hostel? We do not understand such things!”).

I somehow managed to repress the urge to roll my eyes and made my way to the reception desk, which of course no one was manning. With my bags digging deeper and deeper into my shoulders and the sweat now so thick I could taste the salt accumulating on my upper lip, I waited and I waited and I waited until finally a griseled old balding man sauntered slowly as close to me as he could possibly get before we would naturally have to start making out, exhaled a deep, bitter breath filled with fifty years of excess alcohol consumption and said with not a little bit of condescension in his voice, “Si?”

“Uh, yes,” I responded. “I have a reservation.”

I watched the words settle in on the old man and the cogs slowly turn in his obviously rusted over mind and prayed that soon he would withdraw from some such a close distance so I could return to normal, non-alcoholic breathing. Finally, after what seemed like hours, he shook his head as if disappointed with something I had said and shuffled off to find someone who could indeed complete the nasty task of checking me in to a hostel of which I was becoming more and more wary. Fortunately before long a young but sleazy looking young Italian man came bounding up and screeched to a halt right in front of me, once again at a similar unbearably close position as the old alcoholic.

“Si?” he said, echoing the older man, though this time with that very machismo, I like women and how convenient you happen to be one Italian smile I had come to dread.

“Hi…” I said with trepidation. “I have a reservation and I’d like to check in.” (Ha! The latter part was such a lie!).

“Ah, si, of course,” he responded as if such a task was self-evident and didn’t need to be stated (that’s what I had thought too, but this hostel seemed to have its own rules). The younger man was actually wonderfully efficient at his job, and before long I had moved my belongings into my personal padlocked closet, greeted a chipper “Hey folks!” to the Russian couple in my room having sex under the covers to the tune of some extremely passionate Eastern European crooners, and I was off to explore the wonderful cesspool that is Salerno, Italy. After about fifteen minutes of wandering the city streets trying to find something interesting or pretty, I became resigned to the fact that the most interesting things to do in Salerno were probably housed inside the grocery store, and so I made my way inside a relatively large supermarket to gather what had become my standard classic backpacker dinner of bread and cheese. Within a few exciting supermarket minutes, I managed to scoop various items into my basket, get yelled at by a severely pissed off worker who was mopping every section of floor within the supermarket and apparently didn’t want me to walk on any of it, and slam into an old Italian woman who was peering over my shoulder while I picked out bread (“Uh… mi scuzi!”).

Having helped the old Italian woman off the ground and paid for my groceries, I dragged myself back to the HOSTEL OF DOOM, made my way past a lounge filled with creepy old non-English speaking men and headed down the long corridor to my room, where the young guy who had checked me in leaned provocatively against the wall until, upon spotting me, he began a highly sexual saunter past me, complete with a very suggestive wink (this was a walk he would repeat constantly throughout my time at the hostel, so much so that I quickly became convinced he spent his days leaning against walls and waiting for young women to enter his view line so that he could saunter past them and wink).

I was starved so I ate my dinner immediately, despite the fact that it was only four o’clock, and then sat in an isolated corner of the lounge, praying to sweet Jehova that some nice English speaking people would wander into the hostel and make my night. Alas, a pair of hilarious Australian girls, who felt very much the same as me about the hostel, would arrive later in the evening, singing out to the receptionist in sweet voices that rang throughout the hostel announcing, “Leah, here are people you can understand!”, but it took several long hours of patience and awkward interactions before the girls would save me from my Salerno hell. In the meantime, I picked out several guides to the surrounding region and began to sort through them, concentrating as hard as I could on the printed words so that I could avoid eye contact with the creepy older men who were filing in and out of the lounge (in for a cigarette, out for a breath of fresh Salerno shit-filled air). Unfortunately, though, with these men neither eye contact nor a common language seemed to matter much. Within a few minutes of dreadfully boring reading, a balding man from Martinique slid into the seat beside me and started speaking to me in Italian.

“Ah,” I said, shaking my head apologetically and offering up my standard pathetic answer. “Mi scuzi, no parlano Italiano.”

“Ah,” he said, nodding as if he understood. “Parlez-vous francais?”

I should have said no, I don’t speak any French, but for whatever reason I responded hesitantly with, “Seulment un petit peu” (only a little bit), and he was off, babbling away at me in French and gesticulating wildly. “Um…” I stammered when he finally reached a break in his breathless babble. “Je ne comprend pas. Je suis desole.” (I don’t understand. I’m sorry.). This, of course, didn’t stop his long narratives, both in French and in Italian, so I sat there nodding and occasionally interrupting with a pathetic, “Um… je ne comprend pas” until finally he studied me with great sadness (ah, perhaps a romance wasn’t in the stars after all!), said, “Okay, okay” and skulked off to a chair in the corner. From here, he proceeded to sing what sounded like Islamic calls to prayer into a tape recorder, eyeing me while he sang and playing the songs back to me with an eager grin when he had finished, as if I hadn’t just lived through the past five minutes of strained vocal acrobatics. After replaying me each song, he would look to me for approval and nod vigorously, to which I was expected to respond with an equally vigorous nod and a statement of, “Tres bien monsieur! Tres bien!” I wanted desperately to escape to some place where I could quietly read a book, but the only places were my room (where the Russian couple was again going at it), and a bathroom where the toilets lacked seats and were covered in shit, where women walked around naked through the long line of communal showers, and men entered at will to collect their laundry from the machines in the very back of the bathroom. It was, how shall we say, not a very good situation.

At 6PM I was on the brink of calling it a night when finally (finally!) the sweet angelic voices of two Australian girls reverberated through the narrow hostel walls…. Speaking in ENGLISH! Oh, I was so excited, I was nearly forced to sprint to the seat-less toilets and puke from overexcitement!

Thank GOD the Aussie girls and I instantly clicked, lord knows I needed them! Within minutes we were swapping complaints about the toilets, about Salerno in general, and wondering why oh why for the love of GOD we had decided to stay in such a horrible place of HORRORS. Amongst other things, we wondered how (oh how?) we would manage to clean ourselves in the communal showers without the entire hostel seeing us, a question we had no problem answering after enduring a night of loud Bollywood music, girls running up and down the corridor screaming in Russian, more sex in our room, an oppressive, inescapable heat, and the omnipresence of smoke, seeping through every available crack and fissure. Let’s just say, by the time the sun rose, the Australian girls and I were scrubbing our skin as vigorously as possible, nodding grimly to all the peeping toms, and generally ensuring that any clinging germ that could possibly remind us of the awful night before had been completely eradicated. (Can someone out there tell me who, oh who, came up with the concept of communal showers? Who in God’s name thought it would be a good idea to force strangers to see each other naked? “Hi, nice to meet you. Are those real?” It’s just ridiculous!)

After our very revealing morning shower, the day was miraculously redeemed by the absolutely amazing Amalfi coast (only photos, not writing, will do it justice) and returned to our horrible place of horrors with a resolution to move on the next day. The girls went on to Naples (not much of an improvement in my mind), and I moved to St. Agnello, where I stayed in a beautiful abbey in a room with a view of a lemon grove, Sorrento and the beautiful Bay of Naples. Italy quickly redeemed itself in my mind as I spent several blissful days exploring the coast and the astoundingly beautiful Isle of Capri (upon which the only Salerno-like event was when a drunk asked me to pick his lotto numbers and grew incredibly angry with me when he didn’t win) and fully recovered from the hellish adventure that was Craperno.

Indeed, the bliss that was the Amalfi coast, St. Agnello and Capri put me into a much more peaceful state of mind so that by the time I embarked on my trip up to Rome to meet my parents, I was far better able to view endearing Italian idiosyncracies as precisely that- endearing Italian idiosyncracies- rather than things that made me want to shoot people. This was a very good thing, as my new relaxed state was severely threatened by the hour long ride from St. Agnello to Naples on a train with hard seats and window so choked with graffiti that I couldn’t even see through them. It didn’t help that the Italian mob loomed omnipresent on my mind as I zoomed closer and closer to their central city (Naples). It seemed that at every stop, yet another Italian man in a suit (young, old, everything in between) would board the train, greet the many other men in suits sitting in nearly every row, and initiate clandestine meetings somewhere in the back of a car. Accordingly, every time a new suited member boarded the train, the men reacted like the patrons of “Cheers” when Norm walked through the door and the train would erupt in hearty laughter and echo with manly back slaps. However, the noise emanating from the suited men certainly did not go unrivaled. At every stop, more and more screaming uniformed school boys piled onto the seats and initiated strange hand or card games, and at every other stop a new busker playing an instrument or simply singing at the top of his/her lungs would add to the cacophony as well. (My personal favorite was a saxophone player boasting a tone quality good enough to rival John Coltraine with a song repertoire that included merely, “Happy Birthday”). I viewed the scene through a headache but with mild amusement and thought happily about the hot shower in the nice hotel I’d surely be checked into in Rome, where I was meeting my parents, brother and grandmother for a Rick Steve’s tour.

Which brings me to: Rome, Rick Steve’s, and La Familla (the final European chapter). Ah yes, here I was, after five months living in London and two months traveling through the Continent of Culture/Sophistication/And No Laws Regarding Picking Up One’s Dog Shit, about to triumphantly meet my family as a new, independent, sophisticated, strong, worldly young woman. Oh, who am I kidding? I just wanted to see people I loved, people around whom I wouldn’t have to engage in that boring hostelling get to know you conversation (“Heyhowareyouwhat’syournamewhereareyoufrom DRILLING MY EYES OUT IN BOREDOM). And mooooostly I wanted my mom to comment on how much skinnier I looked (“Oh honey, you look like you’ve lost some weight.” *cue mother’s ultra-serious, head-rolling nod*. Who me? Get out! That’s what bread and cheese will do for you!).

I arrived in Rome and raced around the city, desperately trying to finish the many tasks I had yet to complete before heading off to Asia, and smiled to myself at the thought of my wonderful family and of my newly skinny butt. And then, with one knock on the door, it happened- dum dum DUUUUUM! The Kaminsky/Levines had arrived.

We greeted each other just as families should after months of not seeing one another. We hugged, we laughed, my fifteen year old brother, Dave, cried like a total pansy (not really, I just made that up to embarrass him like the mature 23 year old sister I am. Davey is a poophead!), and best of all, mom said I looked skinnier. Who, me? GET OUT!

Thus began JEWS IN CHRISTENDOM, otherwise known as, “Oy gevolt, enough with the Christ stuff already!”

After our greeting, I was quickly filled in on what had already been an exciting, dangerous adventure in the airport. The family had arrived without event and quickly found their airport transfer. They put their bags down on the ground and attempted to process the chaotic Italian scenery as it frantically rushed about them (on scooters) and were standing in that same position when a very odd looking man came up to them and mumbled something. They all leaned forward to hear what he was trying to say before he gave up, and that’s when they noticed something was up, or should I say gone. Yup, Grammy’s purse had completely disappeared, along with a major credit card and her digital camera. Within their first hour of being in Rome, the family had already been the victim of a crime.

“Oh,” mom said while relating the story, biting her lip and shaking her head adamantly, as she always does when she’s convinced of something, whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing. “I couldn’t believe it. It was just so fast. One moment the bag was there and the next minute- it wasn’t. I was just so fast- I just could not believe it!”

Yes, everyone agreed, it was just so fast, and really, no one could believe it.

Well, bag or not, we had to rush off to the orientation meeting for our Rick Steve’s: Rome tour and, while our guide Donato briefed the group on the many glorious adventures and food products that were to come, the old family dynamics fell right back in place. With a glass of fine Italian wine in hand, Grammy scribbled down notes about the week’s itinerary; like a good teenager, Dave snickered at mom and dad; mom regaled the group with the story of Grammy’s bag (“It was just so fast! I just could not believe it!”); and dad took a giant gulp of wine, held the glass up to the light, studied the liquid suspiciously and whispered to me, “That sure is some strong apple juice.” “That’s because it’s wine,” I whispered back, the new sophisticated worldly European who Knew Things, like, the difference between apple juice and wine. “Ooooh,” dad said. “I thought it was apple juice!”

Close, dad, but no cigar. After Donato lectured us about Roman history and safety in a big city (It was just so fast! I could just not believe it!), we came to the task of introducing ourselves to the group. The big question of the day was, “Why did you decide to visit Rome?” Everyone had different an interesting reasons, from, “I’m fascinated with Roman history” to “I’d never been to Europe before and really wanted to visit Italy” to “Well my gorgeous and amazing and SKINNY daughter who has NO BUTT anymore by the way is going around the world and we wanted to meet her before she went off to INDIA which is amazing but makes us VERY NERVOUS”. My brother, however, managed to come up with the best answer. “And why did you decide to come to Rome, young man?” Donato asked Dave with a benevolent smile on his face.

Dave shrugged, slid down in his chair and came out with his best Napoleon Dynamite voice, “Because they brought me here.” Nice, Dave, nice.

Oh, it was good to be around the family again!

And, despite what my brother seemed to think, Rome was really the perfect choice, if only because Italians understand the importance of eating too much at a very constant rate, and well, Jews eat too much at a very constant rate. It was a match made in heaven. Before we knew it, we had been whisked away to a great little mom n’ pop restaurant, where they design a different menu for every night and lay out a magnificent banquet for people who like to eat far too much. To make it even better, Italians seem to be very proud of their culture, and those that work in tourism definitely like to ham it up, so the old granny who ran the restaurant came out at the end and thanked us profusely, calling, “Prego, prego!” to our thank yous and well wishes (I don’t know why, I would think she would prefer Ragu).

The very next day, we began our wonderful week-long tour of Rome. I had seen Rome on a previous trip, but I had been a backpacker then, which meant I had been on a budget, which meant I did far more peering into window museum windows, balanced precariously on the back of a friend, than I did actually learning about Roman and Italian history. This trip set that right, and quickly at that. Apparently, Rome is bursting with history and culture, one created by a mighty empire of people called the Romans. Who knew!

For the most part, the family did an excellent job of embracing a new culture, of listening with interest to the phenomenal local guides, and discussing the various intellectual issues that were raised along the way. That’s not to say, however, that we didn’t occasionally give in to immaturity and let the family dynamics once again dominate our behavior. I am thinking in particular of a visit to Ostia Antica, an ancient ruined city that differs from Pompeii only in location, size (it’s much smaller) and for its lack of restoration. After a walk around the city with Donato, the group split up and our family made our way into a museum housing statues filled with all kinds of ancient mythological art. And well… it just deteriorated from there. While Grammy and dad became engrossed in a very circular discussion about just who that guy with the naked wee wee was (Apollo, if memory serves me right), mom laughed about naked he was and Dave and I escaped to a back corner to take Dave’s picture with a statue’s naked butt. Sophistication? Ha, what a lie!

Before long, Grammy grew tired of our antics (I assume) and so Dave, Grammy and I tromped back off into the ancient city to try and find its only synagogue, which we had heard was off in a field somewhere. Well, apparently, finding a thousands of years old synagogue in an ancient city near the capital of Christendom is not the easiest of tasks, and soon Dave had left us to wander back through the ruins to find my mom and likely complain about how hungry he was. Grammy and I pushed on for a few minutes, but all we found was more ruins and a field that stretched on until it hit a fence and then a road.

“Well there must be someone to ask,” Grammy, the eternal determined optimist remarked as I scoured the ground for a good pine cone for her to take home and add to her collection. I looked at Grammy; I looked back at the ruins; I looked at the expansive field. The place was completely deserted, so no, I couldn’t agree that there must be someone to ask. Except, of course, if you counted that balding pot-bellied sweaty Italian men off in the distance, busily cutting back weeds with a weedwacker that appeared to have a great deal of relation to some sort of primitive medieval torture device.

“Ah,” Grammy said, putting on her “let’s get things moving” face and stomping off in the direction of the man. “We’ll ask him.”

“Um, Grammy?” I called. “He looks a bit… busy.”

No answer, when Grammy is off on a mission, there’s no interrupting her, and so I quickly sprinted after her, wondering if this would pan out well, or if I would be carrying Grammy’s weed-wacked body back in tatters to my family and having to explain, “She needed directions to the synagogue.” Grammy soon arrived at the edge of a small but steep mini-hill that lead to the weedwacker and waved her hands at the worker. He, however, had on large, sound-deadening ear muffs and was busily sweating away at his job.

“Scuzi!” Grammy called again, waving harder. “Scuzi! Mi scuzi!”

Still, the man didn’t seem to notice, so Grammy began to slide her way down the hill, into the thick weeds and grasses, with a recklessness rarely seen in a woman bordering eighty. Finally, as she reached the bottom, the man finally the noticed the woman stumbling towards him, did a doubletake and went back to his weeding, unable to believe that a random non-Italian looking grandmother would be treading through a minor marsh just to talk to the likes of him. But Grammy persevered, waving even harder and calling out, “Ciao! Mi scuzi!”, until he removed his ear muffs, turned off the weedwacker, and said with a very bewildered look on his face, “Si?”

“Synagogue!” Grammy cried, ever the good Jew. “Dove synagogue?”

“Synagogue?” he said, a bit perplexed and then pointed in the direction from which we had just come. “Synagogue!” He smiled triumphantly. He was helping! Grammy followed the direction of his finger.

“But we’ve just come from there.” He continued to smile and point, not understanding.

“Synagogue,” he repeated. Grammy nodded and flashed a resigned smile.

“Grazie,” she said.

“Prego.” He turned the weedwacker back on and Grammy struggled back up the slope, muttering,

“There is not a synagogue over there.”

Thus, we finally had to admit defeat, but not without vowing to visit the Jewish quarter back in Rome as soon as we possibly could. The Jews needed an antidote to Christendom, and the Jews needed it fast.

However, we wouldn’t be able to grasp that antidote until fighting through one last obstacle- St. Paul’s cathedral the size of which rivaled St. Peter’s. Now, despite how this blog is making me sound, I don’t actually have a problem of Christianity. What I have a problem with is Christianity in how it appears in Rome. Here you have churches accumulating wealth, some from the wealthy but a vast amount from the poor, and sticking that wealth right up on ceilings which literally drip with gold. Walking around the vast, golden expanse that was St. Paul’s, I couldn’t help but wonder, is this really what Christ would want? To me, when I see these enormous churches, filled with riches, I can’t help but wonder what Christ would say if he saw them. Where, in all this gold, is Christ’s message of giving to the poor, of love for mankind? When I step inside these churches, I am only momentarily awed by the genius structural achievements and by the masterful art that decorates the walls and floors and ceilings. After that awe passes, all I see is greed, selfishness, and misused power. Indeed, it is because I have the utmost respect for Christ and his message that I find these churches to be downright offensive, as yet another example of the message of a good man with good ideas being completely distorted into something he would never have supported. Don’t get me wrong, I think there are many churches around the world who do get it right, who do follow Christ’s true message, but I have yet to see a gigantic Roman cathedral that has given me that impression.

As I was feeling all this inside St. Paul’s, I sought out my Grammy, who I knew would feel similarly, and we discussed our thoughts in hushed tones at a corner of the church. We wondered, as well, where my dad had disappeared to as he hadn’t been within view for quite a few minutes. Just as we were wondering this, dad emerged from a different entrance, spotted us and walked briskly in our direction, his face tight with anger. He was, clearly, not in a good mood. Grammy and I continued to discuss our disgust with the sheer amount of gold on the ceilings when dad arrived, and jumped right into the conversation.

“I know,” dad said. “It’s just disgusting! Disgusting!” His tone was uncomfortably loud for a church and I looked around nervously to make sure no one could hear us disparaging the church whilst still inside it.

“Yeah,” I said, and began to repeat what I had just said to Grammy. I hadn’t gotten very far before dad interrupted.

“I know!” he agreed, rolling his eyes and shaking his head. “And you would not believe what happened to me in the bathroom!” Uh-oh. I wasn’t sure if I liked where this was going, especially not at the volume level at which my dad’s voice was set.

“What happened?” I asked with a great deal of trepidation.

“Well I really had to go,” Dad said, needing little encouragement. “And so I rushed in, and it wasn’t until after I finished that I realized there was no toilet paper. I looked all around, but no toilet paper, I didn’t know what to do.” I nodded. I too had encountered this problem all throughout Europe and as so, made sure that no matter what the time of night or day, I always had a stockpile of tissues nearby. I started to say this when dad interrupted. “It wasn’t until I went to wash my hands that I saw a woman standing there with a roll of toilet paper. Apparently,” dad continued, his breathing quickening and a vein on his neck rising out in anger. “You have to pay for toilet paper. Pay! For toilet paper!”

“Oh,” I said, imagining my dad scurrying around a disgusting bathroom stall, desperately searching for TP. “That sucks.”

“I know!” he said, his voice now nearly at conversational level, which, in a big church like St. Paul’s, carries the threat of echoes. “Just ridiculous! I look up at these ceilings” (he looked up to the ceilings, his voice rising a notch with each word uttered) “And I see them dripping with gold, and I think, Jesus fucking Christ, Pope!” (omigod omigod my dad just said “fuck” in church! My dad just took the lord’s name in vain… in church!). “Pope, you have all this gold dripping from the ceilings, and yet you don’t have the money to wipe the asses of the people who pay for you to be pope?” (Omigod omigod my dad just insulted the pope in church). He shook his head again, that short little shake and eye roll he does when his head is just about to detach from his body and blast off towards space. “I think to myself: Pope,” (his voice raised yet another decibel) “HAVEN’T YOU GOT A GODDAMN SQUARE TO SPARE! I mean… don’t you agree, Leah?”

I stared wide-eyed at my dad, traumatized. He was certainly right, there was no denying that. But… certainly saying all this at one of the holiest sites in all of Christendom would result in immediate death by lightening bolt, wouldn’t it?

“Yeah, I know, I know,” I said. “It’s ridiculous.”

“I KNOW!” dad said shaking his head and rolling his eyes for the millionth times. “Fucking church!”

Aaaaand he just said fuck AGAIN in a church. I decided it would probably be best if we got out of the church, so dad and I made our way back to the bus where mom and Dave were waiting and dad was able to repeat his rant to every family member individually.

Indeed, by the time we all arrived back to our hotel near the Vatican, most everybody was craving a Jewish influence and so Grammy arranged a trip for us to the old Roman Jewish quarter. However, I had to change some airline tickets and dad wanted to go for a long walk, so we headed off in the direction of the Colloseum in search of the travel place. Of course, as always happens when one ventures out on one’s own, the walk wasn’t nearly as straightforward as I had thought and I ended up dragging dad along for what seemed like several hours in the hot sun in what turned out to be a giant circle around exactly the same place, a place that in end couldn’t even help me. That’s not to say, however, that the walk wasn’t full of adventure. Indeed, one would be hard pressed to wander the streets of Rome and not find adventure at every corner, mostly in the form of weird homeless people, beggars and old people. In just this one walk, I took more mental notes on potential bit characters for stories than I could fit on my mental notepad (which can only hold about 1 megabyte anyway). Ah yes, along our walk we saw the millionth waddling old Italian men, gesturing wildly to a female companion and letting loose a long stream of farts every time his left leg steeped forward; an old woman sitting daintily in the middle of the sidewalk, peering anxiously into a compact mirror and very studiously applied what must have been the ninety millionth stroke of blush to her forehead. These characters were interesting, but not that out of the ordinary when it comes to weird people on the streets of an Italian city.

Oh no, someone else was to steal the show. After far too long walking in circles, I got incredibly frustrated, stepped to the side of the street and concentrated hard on the map’s tiny roads. As I was squinting my eyes and scratching my head, I suddenly heard the sound of change hitting the wall of a can shaking in my ear. Okay, not so out of the ordinary for Rome, right? Just another aggressive beggar getting up close and personal to demand money. But then I turned and looked. Sure, there was certainly a can of coins held directly to my ear, but, as I studied the can, I realized that it wasn’t just any ordinary sort of can and what I was facing was not just an ordinary beggar. Rather, I was facing a donkey (or rather, a beggar dressed as a donkey), holding the can with an ingenious string contraption laced into his costume. And believe me, this wasn’t just an ordinary costume, this was pretty inventive stuff. The beggar had slung a piece of cloth over what appeared to be a bicycle seat, glued eyes and a mouth onto the face, cut two circular eyeholes in the cloth that he could peer through, and held the bicycle seat up above his head. Altogether, this meant that when I turned around, I saw not just a regular beggar, but dark, pleading eyes of a bicycle seat donkey, showering guilt upon me from high above. I studied the costume in a slight state of disbelief and then followed the fabric down until I found the beggar’s real eyes. We stared at each other and for a moment, we were the only two people in the world- me and a donkey beggar. The beggar soon broke the spell by giving one last pathetic shake of his cans. I opened my mouth to speak and then scurried away, back to my dad and to our continued search, during which I kicked myself repeatedly for not giving his change. If one should give any money to beggars, it should certainly be one like that one. Inventiveness must be rewarded! Or perhaps it’s not inventiveness, it’s the sheer amount of insanity it takes to wake up one day, hold up a bike seat, hold up a cloth, and think to oneself, “Eureka!”

So yeah, that was Rome.. We finished off with several more amazing Italian feasts, hugged each other goodbye, and were off. My family flew back to the states and I flew back to London for the night, which felt like, wow. There I was, back in a country where people spoke English! And look at all those double decker buses, and all the many people from all over the world shouting at one another! Oh, London! I missed you so!

Accordingly, in the few hours I was there, I got hammered with some friends, fell asleep, woke up, crawled completely hungover to Bond Street Station where they sell like, THE BEST dried mangos, boarded a plane and went to India.

Which brings us to….


Chapter Two- India: What it’s like to be reborn and what happens when you’re on a tiger safari and REALLY have to pee

So, India. After months upon months of planning, of haggling with the Indian embassy, after arranging flights and attempting to prepare myself mentally for the experience of lifetime (O! poor naive soul! As if one can actually be prepared for India!), I was on my way. As I sat on the plane, all I could do was wonder what, for the love of god, I was about to get myself into. I mean, if Indian strongholds within Western culture are as crazy as they are, what in the world could an entire country of them look like? How would it operate?

Well, I was soon to find out. Oh, yes I was.

After a long flight, I finally landed in Delhi in what can truly be called the wee hours of the morning (around 4AM), walked through the gate and just like that, I was on Indian soil.

Delhi.

Are you ready for me?

(Ha! Am I ready for you?).

First things first. After standing in the enormous queue for foreign passports, I made my way to the baggage claim, a feeling of dread dancing against the walls of my stomach. If JFK could lose my bags, I was absolutely certain India could. Oh, my poor non-Penis bag (which I have now named Bergie, short for its brand name, Berghaus). Will you make it through all the obstacles that international travel will surely place in your path? The sketchy baggage handlers? The different compartments? Immigration? What will I do if my bag is lost and I’m in the middle of India with no worldly possessions to my name?

I waited at the belt for my bag, the heat seeping in through the cracks in the airport walls, thinking these nervous thoughts and hoping (praying!) my bag would come through. And so I waited. And I waited. And I waited. And as I waited, the more and more people collected their bags and the more and more I became convinced my bag wasn’t coming. I soon fell into the ranks of the pathetic unwanted passengers whose bags had rejected them, skipping down a more interesting baggage belt in a much more beautiful region of the world (“India, man? Fuck that shit, I’m going to Hawaii.”). I stood dejectedly by the belt as the space between the bags became greater and greater, longing to join the ranks of those more popular passengers whose bags had proved far more loyal than my traitorous Bergie. My feelings of uselessness only increased as my position blocked those haughty passengers whose bags were arriving, and found myself knocked aside by skinny young Indian men, unable to handle their large suitcases, ancient aunties in saris who knocked their husbands aside as well, knowing they were essentially useless, and a feisty old Indian man with owl glasses, who managed nearly to knock me over as he haphazardly clung to the handles of his thick suitcase and threw all of his body weight backward in a nearly failed attempt to extricate his bag from behind a large box marked “fragile”. How come he deserved his bag, and I didn’t?

I was just about to utter this remark in a loud and indignant voice when then! It happened! There was my bag! Unmarked and unharmed! Yes yes yessssss!

I slung good old, faithful, trusty Bergie onto my back, clipped on my daypack and made my way to the arrivals hall, hoping against hope that my airport transfer was still waiting despite the fact that it taken me nearly an hour and a half to clear customs and find my bag. Thankfully, the transfer was indeed waiting along with two other passengers and we lugged our bags out of the terminal and into the parking lot where we were promptly greeted by a holy cow, standing dejectedly in the middle of the road. The cow studied us as we walked through the doors and into the early morning Delhi sun, blinking its eyes slowly as if she really would have liked not to have been forced to look at white people at such an early hour of the morning. When the cow had finally come to her judgment, she let out one long bellow.

MoooOOOOOOooooOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Welcome to India.

We loaded our bags into a crappy Honda Accord (this was our “transfer”?), rolled down the window, pulled out into traffic and there it was. Delhi. Delhi Delhi Delhi. I gazed out the window, squished between one of the other passengers and the car door, watched India awake. It was around then that my jaw first hit the floor. It’s a wonder I didn’t catch any airborne diseases in India, because once that jaw was down, I never quite managed to bring it back up. The air was warm and sticky, drenched with humidity, and the sun peaked timidly over a low cloud of dense pollution. We sped a million miles an hour down a torn and bump-filled road, our heads banging against the roof when we hit an obstacle to quickly. With my face glued to the window (literally, I had to scrape it off when we arrived, I no longer have a nose), we passed women in saris and track suits power walking across busy roundabouts. Cars jammed on their brakes within inches of the next car’s bumpers. Foolish teenagers dashed across highway lanes between speeding cars, barely avoiding death. Street vendors sold everything from bananas to water to fried pequoras (no idea how to spell that). When we turned around one corner, a man with only a towel wrapped around his waist finished brushing his teeth, spat the remnants of his toothpaste into the gutter and began to wash himself with water from a bucket.. He caught me watching him and flashed a cheeky grin. I looked away to see, a mangy dog eyeing up a roving cow. As we got closer to the city center, the roads became narrower and worse. Some roads weren’t even paved, mere dirt roads in the middle of a major city. I was convinced they were just taking a short cut or something. Surely a big travel company could afford to put us in a nice hotel, right? Surely a nice hotel wouldn’t be located in the slums? Little did I realized that this was just what the entire city looked like. Dogs roving the street aimlessly. Cows, pigs and chickens picking through rubbish strewn across alleyways (barnyard animals in a city!). Men bathed themselves in public. Little boys squatted at the side of the road and embarked on their morning crap. Women slowly began to prepare the morning meal. All of it, right there, on the streets.

When we finally reached the hotel, I was astounded to find that while the building matched its surroundings, the lobby was sparkling and looked quite wealthy. I was soon to learn that this style held true throughout India- always beauty in ugliness, women in elegant colorful saris walking down brown, dust-filled streets, over enormous piles of cow dung and through the collapsed doorway of a one room hovel; an open door in a backwards, poverty filled alley, lending a view into an ornately decorated palace, overflowing with beads, fountain and food.

Ugliness in beauty, beauty in ugliness. Such is India, or so was I soon to learn.

I checked in and was told that I could either wait for my room to be ready in five hours or pay another night’s rate to check in now. I considered my options. Well, I could wander around Delhi and… okay stop right there. The ride into Delhi had been astounding and incredibly eye-opening, and because of that, I was absolutely petrified. There was no way I was stepping out that door on my own, and I certainly wasn’t going to stay in the lobby all day. Suddenly, I felt completely helpless. Here I was in a place where I knew absolutely nothing, not even the most basic of things. I didn’t know how to walk down the street and withdraw money from a cash machine, or pop out to the store and buy water. It wasn’t only that I didn’t know how to identify I store from the masses of shacks, it was also that I didn’t know how one could possibly walk to get there when the only sidewalks that existed were covered in rubbish, farm animals or the spillages of various shops, or reduced to such a state of disrepair that all that remained of them was a few shattered slivers of cement. What was I supposed to do, walk in the street with the bike rickshaws and the auto rickshaws and the cars and the trucks and cows and the bikes? Suddenly, I felt that if I ever regained my appetite, someone better be there to spoon feed me. For the first time in my life since, well, infancy, I didn’t have a clue how to take care of myself. I paid for another night, moved into a dirty, small windowless room, collapsed in bed, fell into a deep sleep and woke up four hours later entirely disoriented. Where the hell was I? And where was that infernal honking coming from? I didn’t even have a window!

I slowly came to my senses, and as often happens when I wake up disoriented after having slept during an irregular period of the day in a strange foreign country (let alone India), I nearly began to cry.

“Pull it together, Leah, pull it together,” I told myself from underneath the blankets of a mildewed bed. “Take a shower, get something to eat, and just calm down.” Ha! Just where I would get something to eat? For God’s sake, I was too afraid to step outside the front door of the hotel, let alone wander the unlabeled streets of Delhi. What was I going to do?

Fortunately, when I stepped out of the shower, my roommate had arrived and I suddenly had someone to tell me what to do (which, at the moment, I needed). Together we made our way to the bank, withdrew money, and grabbed a bite to eat at the local fast-food restaurant, the equivalent of McDonald’s for Indian food. I gulped down a greasy paratha and marveled at a news report in a local paper that detailed a recent music event in Delhi. The article looked like this:

Kailosh Kder Ballanas Draws Weekend Crowd to Central Park

(First paragraph gave a brief description about the singer)

Commencing with the title track of Mangal Pandey- “Mangal Mangal”- he struck a chord with the audience and the chief guest Sheila Dikshit., who enjoyed all his performances immensely. He then moved on to sing “Teri Deewari,” and “Tauba Tauba” which were more soulful ballads.

Mangal Mangal, eh? Where the hell was I?

When we had finished eating we headed up to our first group meeting. With the ever present honking traffic in the distance, we met the rest of the group, which consisted of several Australians, two Brits, a Canadian, and two Dutch women (mother and daughter). I was greatly pleased to see that everyone seemed nice, and was further relieved that our guide was a lovely Indian woman named Aarti, which is the equivalent of Arthi, who is one of my closest friends and partners in crime, and who, like a proper Indian, can do an excellent imitation of a cow bellowing. I was immediately put at ease. I’d be exploring India with another Aarti! How perfect!

After the group meeting, we went together for what would be only the first of many amazing meals, and called it a night early. Tomorrow we would conquer Delhi. Did that mean I’d have to leave my room?

Apparently so. The next morning I awoke, took a shower, took one of my many malaria pills, and met the group for our adventure. From that first step outside the door, I began to think of something our guide in Rome, Donato had said about overstimulation. The story had gone something like this. Some famous important intellectual guy had gone to Florence and frantically raced around trying to take in as much of the culture as possible. There was art, music, architecture, beauty beauty beauty, and he had to see it all. He ran around the city in a panic until he was so overstimulated that he collapsed to the ground and began frothing at the mouth. According to Donato (I have no idea if this is actually true), if all of our senses are too bombarded with stimulation, that can cause some people to start seizing.

At the time, I didn’t think much of Donato’s story. At that point I had seen a large part of Europe and had quickly adjusted to its new customs and eagerly took in all that it had to offer without becoming overwhelmed. Really, I had become a bit jaded. “Ha!” I thought. “As if Italy could cause me to froth at the mouth!”, really meaning, “I’m so well-traveled, nowhere could make me froth at the mouth now.”

I was right, but only partially so. Sure, Italy couldn’t give me seizures, but India certainly could. It may sound cheesy, but the only way to accurately describe what it feels like to be in India for the first time is that you feel like a newborn. Nothing about India (especially Delhi) was familiar to me. Every single sense was bombarded with alien stimulations. New sights, new smells, new sounds, new tastes. Even some of the things I touched felt different. There was not one thing that I could look at and say, “Okay, it’s like that at home.” I couldn’t look at a sign and say okay, that’s Spanish, but I recognize the letter “a”. I don’t know how, for the love of god, any westerner makes it through India on his or her own. Nothing is labeled, and when it is, it’s in Hindi, so what do you do?

“Okay, so it says on these directions that we have to go left on squiggly dashy thing hat-like character and the thing that looks like a mini-computer… avenue. Does anyone see that?”

That’s what it would be like, if, of course, one could formulate sentences, something I had difficulty in doing throughout my entire time in India. Gone was the witty Leah, the Leah who always had a quick snotty answer and an opinion on every matter under the sun. I could barely say, “Hi”, let alone engage in conversation. Indeed, in every sense, I was reduced to a infantile state.

And it was in this infantile state that I tottered out the door and onto the streets of Delhi, eyes and mouth as wide open as they could be. I clung to the group (specifically, I grabbed onto the young Canadian, Kate, who had already been in India for two weeks, wrapped my arms around her leg and refused to let go) and together we went down to the bus stop, which, Delhi being Delhi, wasn’t just a matter of walking down to the bus stop. The “bus stop”, if it can be called that, lay on the other side of a large roundabout, four lanes of rickshaws, cars, buses, trucks, cows etc. (it was technically a two lane road, but did that matter? No.), past the first of many people trying to sell us crap, and underneath a minor highway. Having successfully navigated the life and death videogame that is crossing a street in Delhi, we waited for the bus and I tried my best to make “get to know you” conversation over the honking vehicles, but it was like trying to talk with an engrossing television show on AND a jackhammer drilling the sidewalk RIGHT next to you. It was distracting, to say the least, and I struggled with words, often trailing off despite myself to stare at yet another intriguing street scene. My god, I had never seen such a high density of Indians on one street. I was so distracted by the street that I didn’t even notice the bus pull up and the conductor shouting at us in Hindi.

“This is our bus!” Aarti called..

There it was, a long, bus with a single stripe down its side, probably silver at one point but now caked in dirt. It was just like one of the ancient buses from a film about India or in a display at a local fair about how Americans used to live in the 1950s. I smiled and shook my head in disbelief. I’d never seen anything like it in real life.

“Quickly, quickly!” Aarti hummed. I waited in line, was knocked aside by several old aunties, grabbed onto the side of the bus and pulled myself up the stairs. The moment I was safely on board, the bus pulled away and joined in on the honking. I stumbled up the bus, past a tiny Indian man seated on what was, in comparison to his small size, a high thrown, his arms sprawled across the enormous steering wheel.

“Okay,” I thought. “How different can this be than the London buses? It’s just another crowded form of transport. Push your way past that dying maharajah and find a seat.”

I began to push into the bus, past the skinniest old man I had ever seen, past several men who appeared to have stepped right out of the 1970s (I was soon to learn that all males in India dress this way, brown high-fastening bell-bottom pants and ugly patterned fake-silk shirts) and attempted to move past an auntie, but she anticipated my move and dug her fingernails into my arm, using me as leverage to claw her way into a precious seat. Before long, a young man offered me his seat (ah, I do love a chauvinist male culture when it comes to public transport) and just like that, I had landed myself a prime window seat.

The bus tumbled along. A young man sat in the front seat of the bus, calling out the window in sing-song Hindi for people to board the bus, repeating his song over and over at each stop until the driver pulled away. When that technique didn’t work, he jumped off the bus, his bundled paper tickets clenched securely in his hand, and tried to coerce people into the bus, an effective technique until the bus driver took off without him and he had to sprint along the bus, banging at its side, shouting in protest to the driver, who, in the several times this happened, never seemed to notice the ticket man’s absence. In the end, the ticket taker had to sprint forward, leap upwards, grab a hold of the door, cling on for dear life and then pull himself back into the bus, at which point he would berate the bus driver, who only occasionally gave a small shrug in acknowledgement.

I watched this sight with both amusement and bewilderment and then went back to studying the scenes streaming past my window. Delhi, waking up. Had it ever really slept? Carts overloaded with all sorts of goods- from grains to flowers to dyes- hauled by impossibly skinny men; more thin and old men balancing sacks of goods on their heads; old weathered women shuffling along, clearly on a mission but unsure themselves about just what that mission could be; kids in school uniforms, dancing about and calling out to any white faces, “Hullo! Hullo!” It was stimulus-overload, like some sort of wonderful drug that gave stimulation to every one of my senses. There was life in every one of its many forms, good, bad, and everything in between. Life, knocking you over the head and saying, “HEY! I want your seat!” There were absolutely no illusions, nothing hidden from view. People crapped, people ate, animals fought, vendors sold, everything happened, right outside my window. Life, in all its form. It was so ugly, it was so real, it was so beautiful. Sitting there on that bus, watching Delhi go by, I nearly began to cry, not from frustration or exhaustion or fear or bewilderment, but for this feeling of pure, unadulterated joy. Day one in India, and I was hooked.

So hooked, in fact, I didn’t want to get off the bus. I wanted to ride around the city all day, watching Delhi, smelling Delhi, hearing Delhi. But alas, the bus arrived and before I knew it, the machinery of clawing and pushing Indian hands had shoved me out of the bus and onto the dusty, fly infested and shit-filled street. People crowded around a primitive newsstand, which was really just a fold-up table selling Hindi and Islamic newspapers. Morning commuters stopped for a boiling cup of tea or a quick bite to eat. Cycle rickshaws ambled past us, calling, “Rickshaw, madame? Rickshaw, sir? Rickshaw?” Uniformed children skipped by us and yelled, “Hullo! Hullo! One photo, one photo!” We stopped to snap a few pictures, and of course were then bombarded with, “One dolla! One dolla!”, to which we had to say no, no, no, I’m sorry, no. We slowly made our way down the street (ten feet in India can take about ten minutes what with all the obstacles you have to work through) and towards a beautiful mosque hidden behind a thick security fence. As we walked closer, I noticed a young boy with a backpack scale the wall leading up to the security fence and squeeze his thin body through a small crack. So much for a fence!

Before entering the mosque, we were asked to remove our shoes and so we walked barefoot through a beautiful open courtyard, enveloped in a sudden and jarring silence completely countering the chaos outside. The silence, however, was pierced when local children saw our white faces and came rushing over asking for money. Ah, it had begun. We escaped to the mosque’s tower and balanced precariously over a thinly covered stairway, clinging to the caged-in turret and snapping photos of a very smoggy Delhi. There it was, all laid out before us. My god, were we going to have to go back out into that?

Yup.

When we had finished at the mosque, we began to make our way into the maze that was Old Delhi and once again, I was bombarded with sights, sounds and smells. I cursed myself for not taking a tape recorder just to capture all of the sounds. In a way, the alleys of Old Delhi were like the winding backstreets of the gothic quarters in Europe, except that these were distinctly Indian: motorbikes honked their way through areas that could barely hold two humans walking in single file; fifty uncovered electrical wires emerged in bunches from narrow windows and crawled along the sides of houses, bare and threatening; chipping plaster clung to the sides of dilapidated buildings; fifteen men sat huddled on the floors of tiny shops, sewing and baking and eating soldering, pricking themselves, dumping food into their mouths and spraying streams of sparks into the streets and onto any daydreaming passerby. Most intriguing, however, were the sudden bursts of wealth, springing from the most unlikely of areas. A dirty, rusted door would pull open onto a narrow, fly-infested alley and for that moment before the door closed we would catch a glimpse of an ornate, sparkling palatial residence, a gem hidden amongst filth. I remember having several discussions with fellow travelers while backpacking through Europe surmising about what it would have been like in the middle ages when there was such a sharp divide between the poor and the rich, and when death was an ever-present constant, so inescapable that one must look directly in its eyes with every jaunt taken down the street.

Well, now I knew. And oh, how beautiful it was. When the gem is lost in the dirt, the dirt becomes the gem. (Does that make any sense? I’m not just trying to play with words. There’s truth in that, and you’ll only get it if you go to India).

About half an hour winding our way through the maze that is Old Delhi, Aarti stopped us by an old metal tea cart and introduced us to masala tea, perhaps the only street drink our poor western stomachs could handle. We watched the vendor embark on the complicated process of making this tea, transferring it from boiler to boiler, boiling it nine times altogether. Over the tea cart was a canopy designed specifically to catch plaster peeling from the house above it, a sight that was common all throughout India and which reminded me of, well, how I go about fixing my own things. Sure, they could just go ahead and re-plaster the wall, but why would they do that when the could just put a canopy over the cart to catch the falling debris?

After the long boiling process, the tea was finally ready and oh man, it just hit the spot right on. There’s nothing like a boiling hot masala tea, imbibed while clinging to the wall of a backstreet Old Delhi alley and watching bellowing vendors shout in Hindi as they wheel by with carts of goods. When the tea restored a tiny bit of our sanity, we wound our way through more tightly packed streets, down the famous wedding street, adorned with gold, saris, and other such colorful garments, jewelry and gadgets that any good Indian wedding requires, and finally arrived at the spice market, a further maze of stalls, sights and yes, you guessed it smells smells smells SMELLS!

The market was tucked just off a busy main road, but naturally, it was just as busy as the road itself. Men hurriedly pushed their way past us with large sacks of spices on their heads; carts shouted at us to move out of the way; men sat perched on more sacks, idly passing the time. Amidst all these, sacks up on sacks of spices lined the narrow streets, often obstructing the paths of the very people who wished to buy or smell them. Before long, we all felt a tickle in our throats from too many smells, too quickly and we had to escape back to the fresh air of the streets (ha!), where the air still stank, but not of medicinal properties.

And then it was time. Time for our first bicycle rickshaw ride through Delhi. Would it be scary? Would it be fun? Would it be stimulating? The only thing that I was absolutely sure of is that yes, I would indeed come very close to death, and yes, I would crap my pants. Aarti caught us rickshaws, negotiated the price, and ushered every two people into their own vehicle. Kate and I climbed into one of our own and before we knew it, the driver was pulling out into the constant flow of Delhi traffic. It was right about then that I became far more intimately acquainted both with Indian traffic laws and with Indian driving customs. See, in Western cultures, there’s a reason we have rear and side view mirrors. According to our silly outdated beliefs, we feel that before you pull out into traffic, it’d probably be best to make sure no one is coming from behind or to the side of you. Indians don’t agree. When vehicles do actually have mirrors (a rare event in itself), they’re often tilted haphazardly towards the ceiling or floor, rendering them entirely unusable. Thus, in India, no matter what type of vehicle you’re driving in, whether it’s powered by a motor or some impossibly skinny guy’s legs, pulling to traffic involves only two things: A bit of muscle and a lot of prayer. Sure, I may not believe in God, but throughout my time in Asia, I definitely pretended I did.

So there we were, amongst trucks and cars and rickshaws and people and cows and pigs and goats and chickens, slowly making our way through Delhi. Once again, I marveled at the sights and sounds, though this time I wasn’t high above it in a bouncing bus, I was right in amongst it, a part of the fray. As we wound our way through the streets, I wondered at how it all worked. There you have life, right there in all its forms, right there in front of you, and it seems as if you’re looking straight into a tornado. There’s life racing this way, life racing that way, death panting along behind it, trying to keep up. It was like watching a baby emerge from the womb or the planes crashing on 9/11 or a flower blooming right there in front of your eyes or seeing an animal struck by car and gasping its last dying breaths. People eating people shitting people talking people shouting people living people dying people dancing people crying. A million different creatures, each of them doing a million different things. It was anything and everything, it was life life life, and the more you try to fathom it, the less you can see, the less you can understand of it all. The only thing you can grasp, the only thing that makes the least bit of sense, is that nothing about it makes sense. I don’t know how it works, I don’t know how India operates, I don’t know how so many people manage to survive in such a whirlwind of activity, but they do, and somehow it all works. You watch it all go by and it all seems so unfathomable and so ugly and so overwhelming, and then you see a little girl in a beautiful green outfit and she smiles at you and suddenly the world bursts into colors and it’s all beautiful again. It’s all one giant unbelievable mess, but for whatever reason, it works. There’s no logic to the chaos, but the chaos is the system and the system somehow keeps anarchy at bay. There are a million one holes and a million one difficulties, it’s entirely different to how we do things, but for them, the chaos works, if only marginally so.

That said, as we picked our way through the streets of Delhi, I had a vision of the whole city erupting in a sea of flames. If the whole city simply exploded and was instantly reduced to rubble and dust, I wouldn’t be surprised. It’s as if the entire existence is balancing like a beautiful ballerina on the edge of a cliff, and while the pose is somehow beautiful, everyone can see what she’s doing is dangerous, and no one would be surprised if a gust of wind pushed her right over. Indeed, watching Delhi stream by I couldn’t help but marvel at how long Indian culture had existed, for how many thousands of years had people lived like this, and for how many thousands of years had it continued to work like this? Watching India is like watching beautiful colorful silk scarves dance gracefully in a wind of a giant turbine, sucking them ever closer to their shredding. It’s there, it’s beautiful, but it gives you the distinct impression that it’s headed inevitably towards destruction, and if Indian culture is to end, it won’t simply fade slowly into the red earth, it will explode spectacularly and the flames will be ugly and the flames will be beautiful. That is how India will die, for that that is how India lives.

I understand how that might not make any sense. Go to India. It will.

At the end of our bike ride, we visited a Sikh temple which was beautiful but simple in comparison to the ornate, Las Vegas-esque Hindi temples, which have colorful posters of complicated gods and (I swear to God I’m not lying) tripped out spinning spiral wheels (no wonder hippies love India). In the Sikh temples, everyone is treated as equals, so even the richest men help out making chapattis or boiling food. We got down on the floor and helped out too, though my chapatti flipping was quickly deemed inefficient and the woman by the stoves took the flipper from me with quite a great deal of disdain and Indian tongue clicking.

When we finished in the temple, Aarti informed us that we would be taking the metro to Connaught Place, a major shopping center in New Delhi. Great, the metro. If the streets were so disorderly and full of crap, I could only imagine what the underground would be like, piles of feces upon piles of feces, the smell trapped below the ground. It was one thing to brave the streets of Delhi and another thing altogether to willingly step underground and place my life into the disorganized hands of the Indian government.

With much trepidation, we headed beneath a temple and into the metro station. I turned the corner and bam, the breath was knocked out of me. Where the hell was I? The station was bustling but clean, modern and efficient, with screens indicating train times and directions as well as estimated arrival times. I couldn’t believe it. This place was far better than the London tube. It was like stepping out of one universe and into an entirely different one, millions of light years away. I’d been so many places, seen so many things in just one day, enough cow shit to last me a lifetime, enough beggars molesting my arm to likely have caught leprosy, but a modern, clean metro? Now that was weird.

Connaught Place was bizarre as well, though not as strange as the metro. The stores were ultra-modern, but placed in a very Indian atmosphere. It was as if a Gap store had been ripped from its foundations somewhere in Illinois and slammed down in the middle of frantic Indian streets, crushing a few holy cows and plebian chickens along the way. We walked through a few stores and then headed over to the market, where I bargained for the first time and promptly got screwed over on several shirts, pants and a pair of sunglasses, but I still thought the equivalent of $20 wasn’t so bad, so I was happy (that is, until the next day while I was eating lunch and my sunglasses, which were sitting next to me and were entirely untouched by any adjoining objects, spontaneously combusted, spewing screws all over my meal and snapping at the bridge). When we had finished, Kate and I hopped in our first autorickshaw back to the hotel where we met the group, ate dinner and went to bed, .

I had survived my first day in India, and already I felt changed. I had promised myself that I wouldn’t be one of those annoying people who comes back from India proclaiming, “India will like, change your life man”, but already, India was like, changing my life, man.

Fuck. I was becoming a hippie.

The next morning we woke up, piled our belongings into tiny autorickshaws and pulled out into the ever hectic morning Delhi traffic. I was immediately introduced to yet another Indian driving law. Riddle me this. At home, if there is a barrier in the middle of the road and we want to go the opposite direction of the lane we’re pulling out in, what would we do? Right, we’d pull out and drive in the same direction as the traffic until we came to a break in the barrier, at which point we could make a u-turn and go in the correct direction. Here’s the riddle: What would an Indian do in this situation? If you guessed, “Pull out in the direction he wanted to go and subsequently drive the wrong way up a one-way street until there’s a break in the barrier and he could cross over”, then congratulations, you hit the head on the nail. See, in India, u-turns don’t exist, and neither do safety laws. The only law on the road is that everyone does whatever they want to do. Thus, why I faced death every time I entered any manner of vehicle in India, thus why I thank the sweet lord I’m still alive today.

So, with only the first of many maniac drivers at the wheel, we rode our way to the train station where we were to board a train bound for Agra, home of the Taj Mahal. As we pulled into the station, the driver suddenly stopped short, within inches of a man carrying a large suitcase on his head. The man didn’t even blink, he didn’t even turn his head to fix us with a nasty glare. We piled through the metal detectors, which beeped for every single one of us, but the guards couldn’t have cared less and just waved us through. Now that’s security.

Once again, I was bombarded with stimuli. It was like driving through the streets of Delhi all over again. New things to see, smell, taste, touch, hear. Legions of people walked by with all of their worldly possessions balanced on their heads, stuffed into linen bags, sacks, metal suitcases. It didn’t matter what they used to carry their things, whether the load was small or enormous, the only proper way to carry it was on their heads. Streams of women filed back in what amounted to linen sacks (Angelheart clothes, if any Ithacans are reading this). Old aunties, bound in saris and short tops cut short to reveal their sagging old bellies, once again clawing me out of their way so that they could stand two inches in front of me. A man sleeping on a high pile of boxes. Men piling sacks and sacks of goods upon sacks and sacks of goods. An old, shaky, skin and bones man, his hair swaddled up into a turban, gripping a huge cane, shuffling by shaking a cap for change. A slick, oily young man, looking like he stepped right out of an old racist Disney movie, flipping open his jackets to reveal watches lined up and down his arms and several other fancy devices clipped into the inner lining of his jacket, singing an enthralling chant all the while.

I watched it all go by and gripped my bag tightly (too many horror stories of bag abduction in Indian train stations). When the train finally pulled up, just like the bus, it looked as if its last stop had been in Leave It to Beaver’s Mayfield. Inside, the trains were filled with wide, bright blue plastic seats. I slung my things in the overhead rack, grabbed my notepad and, as the train pulled away, frantically tried to write down all that I saw. I could barely keep up. Too many new things all at once, but thus is the story of my time in India.

Oh, the things I saw! Cows grazing freely between the trains; people lighting fires for cooking at the side of the tracks; shanty towns at the bottom of the slopes that lead up to the trains; decrepid, collapsing houses; lines of kids in smart school uniforms following the tracks to school; billboards plastered with ads reminiscent once again of the 1950s (A smiling mother holding up a cleaning product, “Say, since I’ve been using Cleaner Plus WOW! my life has been fantastic!”); an aged tractor and dozens of women in saris, waiting patiently at a road that crossed the tracks to be let through; old women brushing dust out of their shanties; a man huddled underneath a thatched roof without any walls in sight; women in beautiful saris chatting idly on flash mobiles; a train so jammed with people they were forced to hang out the door frames or cling to the top of the train; a highway bypass, either midway through construction or completely collapsed, going nowhere and supporting only several men, eating their morning meal at its edge, dangling their feet over the large drop to the ground; a cow standing beside the tracks, its nose held regally in the air as if above India’s worldly chaos; a man in a turban smoking a hookah; monkeys terrorizing through stations; signs asking people not to spit; women bent over in the fields, picking crops in the heat; And mostly, bum after bum after bum after bum, a million brown bums pointed resolutely at the ground and a million faces scrunched with concentration. Ah, leave it to India to answer that age old question- does everyone take a morning dump or is it just me? Yeah, everyone does.

At every stop, a different boy would come racing onto the train with boxes of food slung around his neck, trying desperately to make a sale before the train moved on. An ancient old man walked down the aisle calling, “Times of India. Times of India. Times of India.” The man behind me slurped his tea loudly and then began to snore. The man in front of me hummed and eventually began singing in a high-pitched tone. The man next to me brought out a portable radio and turned the volume up to match the man in front of me. Somewhere in the car a young child made loud assertions in Hindi. Through it all, I somehow managed to doze off.

When I awoke, we were in Agra, home of the Taj Mahal. We had to leap off the train while it was still moving slowly. We piled our things into another autorickshaw, ate breakfast on a rooftop with the Taj Mahal in the distance and headed to a red fort, where we followed the sweetest Indian grandpa around and learned all about the fort’s integration of many different religions. When he was finished, he wiggled his head in that half-nod half-shake that only Indian people can seem to accomplish, said namaste, and we went off in bike rickshaws to find lunch. It was a good thing because we were well in need of a meal. We were all looking forward to having a quiet lunch, but in India, that just wasn’t in the cards. Mid-way through the meal, local Indian men filed en masse into the restaurant, spotted white faces, and all at once, all thirty of them turned to stare at us. And when I say stare, I mean really stare. They didn’t miss a single thing. If Kate chewed a piece of naan, they noticed; if Tom laughed, they heard; if I spilled food on my pants (inevitable), they caught it. It made for, shall we say, an uncomfortable meal. We finished quickly and hurried on to the Taj Mahal.

So, the Taj Mahal.

Pray tell, what can be said that can give justice to the Taj Mahal? Before arriving, all you hear is praise for its structural ingenuity, for its astounding symmetry. You hear this again and again and again until it reaches a point where you’re like, alright! Enough with the structural ingenuity and symmetry, we get it! But then you arrive at the Taj Mahal, you survive the boob and butt pat-down from the female security guard, you wander through a couple of arches and oh my god, there’s the Taj Mahal and it’s just like, so structurally ingenious and like, so astoundingly symmetrical that all you can think is, wow, it’s so like, structurally ingenious and so like, astoundingly symmetrical. The Taj Mahal is so jaw-dropping that when you view it from that iconic angle that appears in so many millions of photos snapped by millions of people worldwide, it doesn’t seem real. It seems as if you’re still looking at a photo and that if you amble down the long walkways of ponds and fountains and reach your hand out to touch it, the whole structure will simply disappear as if it is some sort of mirage. Thus is the beauty of the Taj, regal and majestic, sitting above the pollution and the stinking poverty and desperation lurking outside its gates. We wandered around the complex for several hours, snapping photos at an unheard of rate, and watched the white stone change colors as the sun crested the horizon and the sky exploded with color. Now only a few days into the trip, I realized that every day would hold a moment where I was so overwhelmed with either ugliness or beauty that I would find myself on the brink of tears. That day, it was the sunset at the Taj.

Once the sun had set, we stepped back into Agra, back into the reality of every day Indian life, back to that uglier side, and were immediately bombarded by crap sellers. At this point, I was really starting to get sick of the crap sellers. The streets were lined with store after store after store, all of them selling pretty much the same thing. At each store, there are legions upon legions of males, waiting to pounce. The scenario goes something like this: young boys, from the ages of only five to perhaps 14, play innocently outside the store, until, of course, they see a westerner, at which point the boys drop whatever they’re doing and run sprinting after the westerner screaming, “Madame! Madame! Very good shoes! You like shoes! Nice t-shirt! You like t-shirt! 100 rupees madame! 100 rupees!” Sometimes they don’t even bother to say what it is they’re selling, they just scream the price. “100 rupees, madame! Only 100 rupees!” Oh yeah? 100 rupees for what? If, by any chance, you happen to see something that remotely catches your interest and stop to take a look, you immediately move up to another level. The boy keeps you distracted with sweet promises of only 100 rupees until the next man in the pecking order emerges from somewhere within the hovel a.k.a. shop and begins piling item after item on the display case, perhaps showing you the item you were looking for, but mostly displaying millions of items you don’t want and probably wouldn’t even know how to use.

“100 rupees madam! Only 100 rupees!”

“But, I don’t need a tripped-out twirling Ganesha with spinning jangles on the end. I’m not a Hindu and if I was I certainly wouldn’t buy that.”

“Okaaay Madame 75. 75 rupees only!”

“I… I just wanted a t-shirt.”

“Okaaay madam we give you t-shirt for fifty and you take Ganesha for 125.”

“I don’t want the Ganesha, and you can’t raise the price that’s not bargaining!”

It’s around this point that the teenager calls over the next man on the totem pole, the middle-aged father, who says,

“Okay madam final price, 100 for Ganesha t-shirt for free!”

A resigned sigh. “Fine. But keep the Ganesha!”

And that’s how, if you’re as inexperienced as we all were in those first couple of days, the crap sellers get you to buy a ton of crap you don’t need. If you resist longer than that, you just might even get the sole proprietor, the grandfather himself, to make an appearance, but that’s only if you really put your foot down.

By the time we hit Agra, I was perfecting my bargaining techniques. Every country is different, but bargaining in India requires you to be both aggressive and stubborn, paired with the age old trick of just walking away as if you’re not interested (which also shoots you in the foot for those times when you’re really not interested and they won’t take “no” for an answer). If I truly wasn’t interested in something, I found the only way to handle the sellers was to completely ignore them. They would bombard you like kamikaze flies for several minutes, but if you acted like a regal queen and stopped looking at them at all, they eventually moved on to the next person. They key was to be polite at first by saying, “No thank you, I’m not interested”, and then move down to a simple, “no”, before finally not responding. Once I even mustered a snobby, “Je ne parle pas anglais,” but that only worked on one guy. The rest of the crap sellers knew French as well as English. And they knew Spanish. And they knew German. And they knew Mandarin. They really like making sales.

Thus, as we walked down the streets of Agra, I managed to successfully ignore the crap sellers, but Tom, Laura and Kate needed to do some shopping and soon got sucked into the shops. I ignored and I ignored, even one innocent looking little boy who tried to make conversation with me by asking me where I was from, what was my job, etc. I wanted desperately to talk with him, but every time I had done so, it always turned out they wanted to sell me some other piece of crap. At this point, I felt like I was dressed as a walking, talking ATM. Everyone wanted money, whether they were deformed beggars or armies of crap sellers. I hated that, and I still do. It creates an antagonism between the locals and the tourists. I wanted to talk to locals, hear about their lives, engage in an actual meaningful conversation, but every time I tried, I was hassled into buying something. Alternatively, how did they see us? Who was I to ask people living amongst so much disease and poverty to have a chat with me over a cup of tea when what they really need is something I can’t give them? Who was I to get annoyed at them for asking me to help them make a living? I suppose, though, that’s what happens when poverty abounds- antagonism between the haves and have-nots- and surely bridging that gap is a long and arduous task that can’t be accomplished in a whirlwind visit of a very small region of a very large country.

So, I brushed the boy off and he moved on to Kate, who had a very different style for handling the crap sellers. While I was more assertive and stubborn, Kate somehow managed to engage them in a fun conversation and exchange information until she had manipulated them into incredibly low prices, not the other way around. When she saw this boy, she treated him in the same way, and before I knew it, they were having an actual conversation about his life. He ended up being an absolute sweetheart, and so we went with him down the street to his cousin’s store and we all had masala tea together.

He told us about his life. He was fifteen, the same age as my brother, though he looked about 10. Like most boys in the town, he went to school during the day, sold crap at his uncle’s shop after school let out, and worked on his homework into the early hours of the morning. There wasn’t enough food, but he said he was happy, and he did seem to be. I don’t know though, how can you ever tell? He wanted to know all about America, and mostly, he wanted his picture taken. They all do, and not just of them, they want it with you. They hope that you’ll send them the picture and then they can say that they have an American/British/Australian etc. friend. I’m not sure if it’s innocence or if it’s a part of that “older sister” mentality the colonized develop for the mother country, but that’s what they want. All in all it was a good conversation. When we had finished, we filed onto the street, feeling good, as if we’d really done something tonight, really connected with another human being.

We walked down the street and felt peaceful. Then three dogs mauled a puppy. When they were finished it dripped blood and moaned in pain, barely alive. The puppy cried and cried. The dogs turned on one another and then ran off into the night. The puppy’s moans softened. I held back tears and we walked back to the hotel.

That’s India.

I tried to put the puppy out of my mind. We piled into another rickshaw and pulled up at a restaurant. A little boy decked out in a beautiful red outfit sang and danced out front while his father played an instrument. He grabbed Kate’s hands and they danced together before we ate. After they were done we went inside and we all had a much needed drink (I’m not sure if I could have made it through India without at least a beer a night). The meal arrived and it was astonishing, as always. Indian meals tastes like Delhi looks. A million different spices leading to a million different tastes, chaos on the palate, but somehow it works. Hell, it doesn’t just work, it’s amazing. With good food in my belly and the beer making my legs tingle, I was beginning to forget the day and made way outside to go to the toilet. When I finished, I washed my hands in an outdoor sink, studying my face in the mirror and thinking about the mauled puppy. I sighed and then I saw something move in the corner of my mind, something sliding back and forth. I followed the movement in the mirror and indeed, something was sliding. It was the head of the little boy, sliding back and forth on his loose neck and singing a song with a familiar tune but with unfamiliar words. That’s when I realized he was singing an incredibly butchered version of “Frere Jacque”. He sang,

“Mere daque, mere daque, dorme moo! Dorme moo!”

I smiled at him in the mirror and slipped him a ten rupee note.

When the meal was finished, we piled back into a rickshaw and snuck home via the backstreets, attempting to avoid the rowdy and somewhat dangerous celebrations for a spring festival. In our hurry, we ran over a cow’s foot. The cow protested with a loud bellow and then rose slowly to glare at us. We apologized and zoomed off towards our hotel.

India.

The next day, the sun rose hot and promising new adventure. We bounced down the broken road and visited yet another fort (forts were quickly becoming like castles in Europe… oy, not another fort!). After that, we climbed into yet another cycle rickshaw and cycled our way through a bird sanctuary. It was around this point that my normal sarcastic personality started to emerge from the depths of its hibernation. Our very eager driver/tour guide stopped about every five feet to point out new birds in the trees. Whenever one driver would pull over, all the rest would stop as well, gesturing excitedly to what to me appeared to be a pile of leaves. I was tired. All I wanted to do was sit in the rickshaw and politely pretend I was paying attention, but noooooo every guide pretended to be overexcited so that he might get a good tip at the end and wouldn’t rest until we had piled out of our rickshaws and into the woods. Problem is, birds are incredibly boring and I really couldn’t have given less of a crap (we’re talking like 1/10 of a crap, that’s how much I cared), not to mention the fact that I just couldn’t see the damn things.

“Look, up there!” the guide would whisper with unbridled enthusiasm. An equally unenthusiastic Kate and I would follow his gaze politely and see, you guessed it, a bunch of leaves. Eventually, Kate would spot the bird before me and try to direct me towards the bird.

“See it? It’s like… the brown one. You know, next to the leaves.” It was true, the bird would inevitably be brown and would indeed inevitably be sitting next to a bunch of leaves, but in a bird sanctuary filled with, well, brown birds and leaves, that didn’t help much. After far too much squinting and feigned interest, I would eventually lie and say, “Ooooh, I see it!”, looking completely in the wrong direction. Then I would rush back to the rickshaw before anyone could call my bluff.

The only truly interesting birds were these GINORMOUS pink things (no, not flamingoes) sending up mating calls from the opposite end of a pond. The call went something like this: the male would open his beak up to the sky as if preparing to collect rain water and call, “MwwwaaHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! mmmmmmmwaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Environmentalists always say we could learn a lot from nature. Who knew they were actually right about something? The rest of the sanctuary may have been useless, but in a ten minute span, these huge pink birds had given me a new technique for attracting the menfolk. Apparently the secret was simply walking into a bar, tilting back one’s head and calling, “AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!” A useful trip after all!

Finally, after far too much more pointing at leaves, we headed back through the sanctuary. The skies opened up over us and a minor monsoon ensued. Large bolts of lightening cracked above us and our clothes filled with water. Huddled in a rickety metal object, I once again saw death.

The next day we loaded into crappy version of a Honda Odyssey and bumped our way towards a tiny village in the country (“Isn’t this lovely?” Aarti marveled. Sure, if lovely means bumping your head so hard against a car roof you’re permanently brain damaged).

After a long day of “lovely” travel we transferred to a jeep, clung to our possessions, and were exposed to an entirely different type of Indian culture- the countryside. Our jeep bumped down an dusty road, passing women in bright saris, bright inside the dry fields. Men on motorbikes (the “wealthy” ones) grinned and called “hullo!” We made our way through a the small village of Madhogarh and then up a large hill to a fort overlooking the village. We gathered our bags and entered through a large gateway where a doorman dressed in white placed a wreath of flowers around our necks, a man played us music, and a boy danced.

When people say you can travel through India and live like royalty, they’re not exaggerating. In the past couple of centuries, the maharajahs have lost more and more money. As a solution, they’ve opened up their forts as hotels, meaning that spoiled westerners can live like royalty for a night or two.

Sucks for the maharajahs, friggin’ sweet for me.

Tonight, we would be royalty. Men in red turbans swarmed around our bags, slung them over their shoulders two at a time (they received a nasty shock when they picked up mine, not realizing it’s much heavier than it looks) and lead us the second level of the fort. Our porter dropped our bags at our door, pulled out a huge golden key, the likes of which I’ve only ever seen in historical film, fiddled with the lock and flung open two heavy narrow doors to reveal our palatial residence. We ran frantically around our room, unable to believe our luck. At long last, I was truly going to be a princess! For how many years had I dreamed of being precisely that!

After I finished exploring my room, I ran around the top level of the fort, comparing our room to the others’ and discovering the residence’s many hidden nooks and crannies (a place filled with nooks and crannies! I LOVE nooks and crannies!). I wandered out on one of the ramparts and gasped with delight. There, beneath me, was the cramped, ancient town of Madhogarh. Tiny people scurried like ants between buildings and across flat roofs, hanging clothes for drying, playing games of the imagination, mending tools. The sounds of the bustling town rose up to the fort, the clank of metal hitting metal, of a tractor put-put-putting through a field, but mostly, of children calling to one another and giggling at private jokes.

Like I said, friggin’ sweet.

After a long process of comparing all of our rooms and jealously remarking about how much better everyone else’s palatial suite was, we scurried down from our mighty height and plunged into the fray. The two hours that would ensue would be not only some of my best two hours in India, but also two of the best hours of my entire life (and I haven’t even lived that much life yet). It was just phenomenal. Remember what I was saying before about wanting to meet local people, about wanting to talk to them and hear about their lives and not just be viewed as a walking, talking ATM? Well, here was my chance. Aarti took us around the village, introducing us to villagers, translating conversations and bringing us closer to the villagers. Our first stop was a house was a house with a family of little kids and a mother with a newborn. Aarti greeted her warmly and gave her pictures that the last group had taken. The mother took the photos, the first pictures she had of her and her children, and thanked Aarti.

We continued on down the road and stopped when a man in a red turban halted his motorbike and insisted we take a photo of him and his granddaughter, who sat in the front of the bike and pretended to drive. We thanked the grandfather, his daughter and his granddaughter and continued on into the village. When they saw us coming, the kids flew into a frenzy. They had seen westerners before, and they knew that the only reason they came was to buy goods and take pictures. They probably couldn’t have cared less about the purchases, but they certainly cared about the photos.

“One photo! One photo!” the screamed. At first, we eagerly whipped out our cameras and snapped away. Early on we noticed a pattern developing. The kids would smile and dance and demand a photo, but the moment we turned the camera on, they would pose with dark, serious faces, looking as if they were totally miserable, as if we had coerced them into taking the photos. It made me wonder about all those video reels showing poor, miserable Indians and asking you to donate money. Are they really miserable, or do they just pull a miserable face at the last moment? Don’t get me wrong, I know they’re incredibly poor, but as we walked through the village, all I saw was happiness. The children laughed and played, the women worked busily at their crafts, the grandfathers napped with their grandchildren on flat beds made of hammock-material. All in all, a simple existence, but one that seemed happy. I know, they probably just bring us to a good village so we don’t get depressed, but still, it seemed like a happy place.

When we had finished snapping photos, the kids swarmed around us, demanding to see their photos, thrusting dirty fingers at fragile screens and laughing at their images. Then they began their battle cry again.

“One photo! One photo!” (That would be two photos, if my math was correct). We struggled to keep up with the demands, but eventually we had to ignore the shouting voices and move on. But of course, as we walked down a dusty lane, more voices emerged from distant houses shouting, “One photo! One photo!” Teenaged boys seemed to realized that we were more interested in the cute little kids and so they would grab a cute toddler, hold them up to the camera, smile sweetly and say, “Take one of the little girl” and then flash their most handsome picture face. I hurriedly tried to snap more photos and keep up with the group, but before I knew the group had moved on and out of view. Right about then, a large piece of dust flew directly into my eye and I was temporarily blinded and separated from the group, snapping photos left and right in the direction of calling of voices, unsure if I was actually capturing them, and finally rushing on in the direction I thought my group had gone off in. That would be just great, wouldn’t it? Lost in the middle of a backwoods Indian town and blind in one eye?

Soon enough I caught up with Aarti who was handing an old man a photo of him and his grandson. I snapped my own picture as this old man studied the picture with a benevolent expression on his sweet, wrinkled face. We moved on to say hello to some girls making jewelry and more people along the road. The more photos I snapped, the more and more I fell in love with the village and the people. With the exception of a few cheeky teenagers (they’re the same everywhere in the world, aren’t they?), all the people had the most innocent, beautiful faces, faces that seemed untouched with the pressures of our modern life. Don’t get me wrong, I would never trade my life for theirs, but it did make me stop and think. All these people had was in that village- their family, their friends, their livelihoods. It was a truly place where a village raises a child, where the adults took pride in their community, in its structure, and in their beautiful children. I wondered, as well, if part of what made them seem so light (though not carefree) was the fact that they had too few choices. From their birth, their destinies are decided from them. They’ll grow up and they’ll do what their parents did. They’ll work in the fields, they’ll make jewelry, they’ll sew clothing. Fewer choices means fewer worries, and perhaps it’s because of this that the people appeared content, and perhaps even happy.

I think the worst thing you could possibly do would be to take a child out of that community, like that child experience the plethora of choices our culture offers, and then place that child back in their original community. Once we know there’s more we desire more and forever spoilt. If we can’t dream of more, we can’t desire more, and so a weight is lifted from our backs.

I’m not saying it’s better, I’m saying it’s different, and I’m saying for them, it works, and for you, think about that when you absolutely must have that new flat screen TV. I was simply astounded by the kids in this village. These kids like…. Played with each other. They didn’t sit in front of computers pushing buttons that make people explode, they didn’t lie lazily in front of a TV making comments about pop culture. They played. They made soccer balls out of string and kicked them around; they rolled marbles in the dirt; they pushed tires with a stick; they did things that kids in our culture used to do several decades ago, and they looked happy. They looked innocent. And it wasn’t just the kids. Everyone, young and old alike, looked innocent, even the wise old men. Viewing that innocence, I felt like a protective parent, wanting to erect a fence around the village so that no one could ever come through and show them our terrifying fast-paced world.

While you sit in a country where the president warns of terror and horrific death, while you sit in your car and curse the engineers who designed roads that clog so easily, while you look at your watch and wonder how much longer the work day will last and if you’ll actually make it, while you wander down the street listening to your iPod and wonder if you’re making the right choices, if you’re taking the right path, if you’ve just royally screwed your life over, can you imagine this place? Can you believe this place exists not just in the same universe but on the same planet? Can you fathom it?

I wandered the town in a daze, drunk with the idea of it, and followed my group to an outdoor café (um, yeah, let’s call it that), which was really just a roof to block out the sun and more metal cans for boiling masala tea. Aarti urged us to sit down in plastic chairs and before I knew it, we were drinking tea with the elders of the village Madhoghar, a far away town in a far away land with far away values and a distant way of living. As the tea was boiling, local boys gathered behind us and watched our every move. I studied the village elder, particularly intrigued by the sweet, pruned faces of the old men, each one with a face distinct and individual. There was the bewildered face of the man with brown owl glasses, the hairy, benevolent face of the eldest elder (I believe he was around 90 years old), and the scrunched face of the village clown, a man who frequently squat down on the ground, waved his finger at the mocking village boys and scolded them for their insolence. The boys found the clown particularly amusing (and not in a respectful way), partly because of what he said (We were told later he had said, “you’re being disrespectful to these strangers! With all your pushing and shoving! What will these people think of us!”) and partly because he was (apparently) high on opium, which seems to be quite common amongst villagers, given the high availability of opium just about everywhere in the Rajasthani region.

While we sipped our tea, the eldest elder unwrapped his turban and showed us its astounding length. Roy, a big manly man Australian, found this particularly amusing and before long the elders showing Roy had to wrap his own turban. This made the teenaged erupt in hysterics and they soon had to be chased off by the elder who was high on opium. With the turban now set, the men rolled tiny cigarettes made from tobacco grown in their own fields and passed them round the circle. Several people who were supposed to have given up smoking years ago indulged in a puff, so the conversation revolved around generous offerings and guilty proclamations. “It’s just one!” It was truly a meeting of the cultures.

And so we sat there, eating and drinking and smoking and wrapping until finally it was time for us to move on. We wandered further into the village and stepped into a tiny shop set into a village house. A man and woman crafted jewelry in the doorway. Behind them was a wall crammed with the most beautiful bracelets I had ever seen. I took my wallet out and quickly parted with a fair amount of money. I emerged happy with my purchases and beamed at a man about my age perched at a motorbike. He came over and sat down next to me and as we talked, the local kids gathered round us to learn more English and to see just what the strange foreigner was all about. The guy was really nice, though at the end he of course asked if he could be my boyfriend, I lied and said I was already dating a guy named Stan who was a computer engineer and very wealthy and very strong. Otherwise…

I asked him how he had gotten enough money for his motorbike and he said he worked at a shop in a bigger village nearby. Every day he drove across the dry landscape to work and every day he drove back to a hometown he hoped he never left. People were happy here, he said. They didn’t have much, but they all helped each other out. It was a good place to grow up, a good place to live.

The fifteen or so kids who had gathered around adamantly agreed, though I’m not sure how much they understood. I told the man I felt bad not knowing any Hindi and asked if he would teach me some. He said something to one of the kids and suddenly all the of the children were eagerly producing their school workbooks, which, much like our reading workbooks at home, taught the kids how to write simple Hindi. He scrambled for a piece of paper and flipped through the notebook, teaching me how to say and write both basic Hindi words and my own name. I took the pen from him and attempted to copy what appeared to me to be random squiggles. The kids studied my efforts and giggled uncontrollably. To them, I was the most hilarious being in the world. Imagine, someone my age, not being able to write Hindi! Unfathomable.

I gazed up at the smiling faces and had my brink of tears moment for the day.

Brown, dusty surroundings, tiny houses and extreme poverty.

Beautiful smiling faces.

Beauty in ugliness. Beauty in India.

Aarti’s voice softly lilted into my thoughts. The sun was on its way down, it was time to go. I hugged the kids goodbye, shook my suitors hand and rejoined the group. We climbed the rocky hill back up to the fort, the sun setting over the distant hills, the villages humming din fading into a dim chatter, and one last penetrating, panicked and insistent child’s voice, calling, “One photo! One photo! ONE PHOTO!”

It was a pretty full day and I was ready to call it quits, but Aarti would have none of that.

“Okay children,” she called as we entered the large courtyard in the center of the fort. “Go get cleaned up and then come down for dinner. I have a special surprise!”

Ooh, special surprise. Well that certainly sounded good. We did just as she said and gathered in the sitting room to find out what was in store. Aarti grinned mischievously and toyed with us a bit.

“Oh, yes, you want to find out the surprise?”

“Yes!”

“Oh I’m not sure if I should tell you yet.”

“Is it presents? I hope it’s presents!” (Guess who said that).

“Okay, okay,” Aarti said soothingly. “The surprise is… tonight you will all be dressing as Rajasthani royalty!”

My eyes widened. Whaaaaaaat? I got to dress as like… an Indian PRINCESS?! Omigod omigod omigod. I really WAS becoming royalty. Kick ASS!

I waited patiently as Kate and Laura got dressed behind closed doors, barely able to contain myself. When was my turn were they almost done what was taking them so long I WANTED MY PRINCESS OUTFIT! Alas! The doors opened, revealing two beautiful Rajasthani damsels. I admired their beautiful outfits and then pushed them out of the way. It was princess time! Specifically, my princess time!

I waltzed into the room. Aarti and a tiny old Indian woman stood by two couches strewn with gorgeous outfits in many different shapes, sizes and colors. All with the potential to make me look like a princess!!!!!!

A PRINCESS!!!!!

After a very long process of wrapping and pinning and pinning and wrapping, I was ready. I rushed out of the room, looking for a mirror and when I didn’t find one, insisting someone take a picture of me. I studied the picture. Friggin’ SWEET! I was a princess!

As the rest of the group got dressed, I wandered out into the courtyard, sipping a beer and nodding my head to a lulling tune. Two men sat at the end of the courtyard playing Rajasthani music, and I resisted the urge to dance. Soon enough, though, I had consumed my fair amount of beer and the rest of the group had emerged from the dressing rooms. I looked around the courtyard and beamed. We looked fantastic. Just like real royals!

The musicians picked up the beat. A young porter who had been watching us all night stepped up onto the dance floor and we all began to move. Yes, me, the girl who has repeatedly sworn off dancing. The music grew louder, the beer made my limbs loose and warm, the royals swirled about me, and I the music throbbed inside my body. For the first (and probably last) time of my life, I needed to dance, I needed to throw my body around to fast-paced Indian drums and shake my hair out and twirl and dance like the Rajasthani princess I now was. Maybe it was the costume, maybe it was the alcohol, but soon I was the only one on the dance floor, matching the porter move for move. Whatever he did, I did, and every time I correctly copied him, he moved faster. The group surrounded us and clapped and cheered. My face began to bead with sweat, my heart pounded with exertion, but we danced joyfully on beneath a sky lit by large, nearly full moon.

When the music ended, everyone applauded the porter actually told me I danced well (who, me?!), and we settled down to another amazing dinner.

“Can we take these off now?” Kate asked Aarti of her costume.

“We’re cold!” Laura agreed.

I gaped at Kate and Laura in horror, suddenly feeling alone and distanced from my two companions. How could they possibly think like that? What was wrong with them? Panicked, I turned to Aarti. “Can I please keep mine on?!” No way was I taking this off! While the other girls changed, I clung to my costume, and it took great amounts of will-power on my part to finally peel it from my body and wrap myself instead in my sweatpants and fleece jacket.

We finished the night with more drinks on the ramparts, the moon lighting the sky above us and the town sleeping peacefully below. I fell blissfully asleep in my palatial quarters and was awoken by the humming of the village and pure sunlight streaming through my windows. Poor Kate, however, was startled awake when one of the porters announced the arrival of the hot water for her morning shower by thrusting open her doors and shouting, “HOT WATER! HOT WATER!” Not quite as peaceful.

We all gathered for breakfast on the ramparts, listening to the village begin its day and watching the fog roll off a countryside dotted with green trees. After breakfast, the girls had our hands painted with henna, we wished the innocent, sweet-faced porters goodbye, and drove back through the village, waving like royalty and leaving behind a magical place whose existence I still can’t quite believe in. When I think of Madhoghar, my mind produces the face of the girl who did our henna. She was a young, beautiful girl, no more than fifteen, with a slight gap in one of her teeth. She was shy, but when she smiled, her face lit with happiness and her kind eyes revealed a warm heart beneath it. There it was- innocence, pure and unadulterated innocence. When that girl smiled, I wanted so badly to hug her and tell her never to leave. I will never forget that face, nor will I soon forget Madhoghar (okay, maybe I’ll forget the name because it’s kind of complicated to spell, but I certainly will never forget the place itself!).

We sped back up the dirt road and pointed our cars towards Jaipur, the pink city, so called because all the buildings are, well pink. I had good things about Jaipur and was exciting to be heading there. The excitement was short-lived. Perhaps if I had landed in Jaipur and not Delhi, I would have enjoyed the city more, but going from this idyllic, quiet little village to a bustling, pollution city was not something I eagerly embraced. Mostly, I was beginning to tire of the constant noise, of the constant overstimulation, of the Herculean amount of energy required to rebuff the crap-sellers. When it came to crap-sellers, Jaipur was amongst the worst place I had been. They simply wouldn’t leave you alone, no matter what excuse you gave. “100 rupees madam! 100 rupees! ONE HUNDRED RUPEES!”

I don’t want it I don’t want it I DON’T WANT IT I’m hot I’m tired I’m quickly losing my patience MUST YOU PEOPLE CONSTANTLY HONK YOUR CAR HORNS I miss Madhoghar WON’T YOU LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE!

One younger man saw how frustrated I was and went for the “get her to say she’ll come back later” tactic, which I of course went for, hoping I’d never see him again. Of course, I did see him about an hour later, at which point I was on the brink of insanity. He said to me with a pout, “You’re leaving? But you said you’d come to my store!”

I whirled around to face him, a crazed look in my eye. My words came in puffs through gritted teeth. “I don’t… want… any… silver… Please… understand this.”

He studied my face for a moment, quickly realizing he was about to be bludgeoned. “Okay madam,” he said softly. “I apologize.” That melted me.

“Thank you, thank you!” Before I knew it, I letting out all of my frustrations at a million words a minute. “It’s just…. EveryonehasbeenharassingmetobuythingsandIreallydon’twantthemIdon’t haveatonofmoneyI’mjustabackpackerandIfeelbadbutIreallydon’twantmystuff I’M SO GLAD YOU UNDERSTAND!”

He nodded gravely and said something in Hindi to other crap sellers. I think I really unnerved him because after that, no one harassed me. Wow, all I had to do was consider murdering them, and finally they’d leave me alone. Suhweet!

Fortunately, Jaipur wasn’t a total loss. After we finished at the markets we piled in rickshaws and road to a local orphanage for girls who had been abused, mostly sexually, as young girls. Some were so traumatized they had gone mute or been beaten so severely they had been partially paralyzed. However, the orphanage, which was sponsored by my tour group, Intrepid, took the girls in and gave them a happy place to grow as well as teaching them how to make handicrafts and eventually (hopefully) support themselves. All the girls seemed really happy and they were so excited to see us. Our visit coincided with the beginning of Holi, the festival of color. For this festival, flour colored with vegetable dye is sold in packets on the street. You can purchase them for next to nothing and then throw them on passerby, or streak a stranger’s face with color and proclaim, “Happy Holi!” I love the idea of this festival and love India’s obsession with color. There you have a sub-continent filled with pollution and poverty and dirt, yet the people celebrate color. This particularly struck me when watching poor women in beautiful, vibrant colors walking down drab dusty streets. They were like a beacon of hope within destitution. How overdramatic of me, a wealthy westerner, to fill my wardrobe with browns and blacks when I could celebrate my existence when any color in the world. These women would never dream of dressing in such dark colors. My clothes celebrated darkness amongst light, and theirs celebrated light amongst darkness. What was wrong with me?

I felt similarly about the festival Holi. There was so much darkness in this country, yet still they took a week every year to celebrate color. I couldn’t think of anything more wonderful. And so, in this orphanage filled with abused girls, we threw color on one another, wished each other a loud, “Happy Holi!” and celebrated life. I became particularly attached to a girl named Radha and ended up buying several of her bracelets (though one of the other tour members, Simon, rightly pointed out the manipulation in this scheme. How can one possibly not buy bracelets off of a sexually abused orphan?). When we had made our purchases, we played and danced with the girls, who skipped around the orphanage happily. As we got ready to leave, Radha suddenly looked at me seriously, put a hand on my arm and said, “You will come back?” Oh god. A boa constrictor wrapped around my heart, the snake in a vice, two ton trucks barreling into the vice.

“Um,” I hemmed and then subsequently hawed. “No promises Radha, but I’ll try!” She frowned disappointed.

“Try,” she said, smiled one more time and then dashed out between the gates. Even now, I feel guilty about it. How the hell am I going to get back to Jaipur?

Not to sound like an infomercial, but the orphanage was really a wonderful place and if you’re interested in donating to the orphanage I visited or any number of organizations that Intrepid sponsors as part of its “responsible travel” policy, you can do so through the Intrepid foundation at this address http://www.intrepidtravel.com/foundation. Doooo it, they really do some amazing thing.

Okay, back to our regularly scheduled program.

After visiting the orphanage, we totally changed gears and went to- you guessed it- an elephant festival, which is really just like it sounds- a festival full of elephants. Aarti raved about the festival and was really excited about it having not attended it since she was a little girl. A love elephants and Aarti’s enthusiasm was contagious (“They dress the elephants in the regal style of the royal marches!), so I was properly amped for the event. We pushed our way through a thick crowd of westerners and into what looked like some sort of football stadium. It was about as hot as it could be, so we sat roasting in the sun, our energy quickly draining. Just like at our sporting events, vendors circled the stadiums with food and drink, except rather than selling hot dogs and popcorn, they carried high stacks of popodoms, blessed by eager flies. Uuuum I’ll pass, thanks.

After a long wait (we were on what Aarti likes to call IST- Indian Standard Time), the first elephant finally marched out. I immediately had a flashback to more than a decade and a half ago, when I was just a kid, studying a menagerie of animals that had been unwillingly dragged to our local mall. I had been exciting about the zoo for weeks, but when it arrived, it was just a few ragged animals, avoiding eye contact and sighing discontentedly, less than thrilled to be stuck in a cage in the middle of some mall. The elephants seemed to share these views. They were decorated in ridiculous fluorescent paint and adorned with fake gold and dangling jewelry. An out of tune marching band tromped along behind the elephants, every player tooting at their own personal rhythm (I would soon learn that this was the style for all Indian marching bands. India just doesn’t do brass well. The only accepted style is, “everyone do whatever the hell they want”). With every out of tune noisy honk of a trumpet, the elephants seemed to roll their eyes and let out a huge sigh.

“Fucking trumpets man, I swear to god,” the elephants groaned to one another. “And would someone get this ridiculous beanie off my head? I look ridiculous.”

Before long, excited tourists, both westerners and Indians alike, flooded the field, caring little whether or not they angered the elephants caused a stampede. What would it matter if they had their perfect shot? The several dozen security guards seemed to agree and stood around chatting idly, ignoring the chaos at their backs.

So far, no one had really shown a negative or complainy side, so I languished in my own silenced sarcasm until Donna turned to me and said, “That is the single worst brass band I have ever heard.” I was laughing deliriously before she even finished. We really needed to get out of here, and fast. We told Aarti of our plans, gathered a few more people and escaped in an autorickshaw When we arrived back at our hotel, we had to dodge a bonfire in the middle of the road, a fire lit for the festival of Holi. A fire, just burning in the middle of a major city, just one of many burning throughout the city during this major festival season. Men and women marched right up to the fire and used it to lit candles. They carried the fire home and used it to light their own fires- holy fires to bless their homes.

We should have taken it as a warning side. How were we to know India was on the brink of death by color and we would be at its very center? It was time for Holi.

Actually, I’m not exaggerating as much as it would seem. Aarti was concerned about our trip for the next day from Jaipur out into the countryside for a tiger safari because it meant we’d have to drive through small Indian towns where festivals like Holi provide the people with a much needed break from their incredibly difficult lives. They go absolutely insane, imbibing hemp lassies and slamming people with fistfuls of colorful dyes. What’s more, sometimes they erect roadblocks and stop tourist vehicles, not letting them pass until they give up all their money. Thus, Aarti was justifiably concerned and, like the good tour guide she was, decided we better make our escape before the villages woke up, and since villagers wake up around 5:30 to start work in the fields, that meant our wake up call came around 4AM. (Well, it was SUPPOSED to come at 4AM but instead it came at 3:45. I was NOT pleased. When it’s that ungodly of an hour, fifteen minutes is a BIG difference!).

We stood around groggy eyed and incredibly grumpy (well, I was) waiting for our stupid car to arrive, another STUPID Honda Odyssey STUPIDLY lacking seatbelts (as ALWAYS!) and with seats STUPIDLY covered in STUPID grungy old towels that STUPIDLY POOPILY SMELLED. I grumbled loudly and stuffed myself into the back where, of course, my head slammed against the ceiling for the entire ride. We sped deeper into the heart of the countryside, the sun rising red and large over fields of Rajasthani crops. I dozed on and off, woken about every five minutes when my head once again slammed against the roof, until we finally arrived at a tiger park called Rathambhore, exhausted and less than pleased to find the entire hotel infested with mosquitoes (or “Mozzies”, as the Aussies called them, though for several days I thought they were doing some horrible ethnic slur for Muslims).

We were, understandably, incredibly exhausted and not in the best of moods. All I wanted to do was sleep, but the hotel had arranged “special welcome drinks” for us in the name of Holi, so we stumbled over to a small bar by the pool. To our delight, when we found not just welcome drinks, but pots of Holi dye as well! Us younger folks had really- really- wanted to participate in Holi but we been told not to wander into the towns during the festival because it really wasn’t safe for us. But we really wanted to plaaaaaay, so to see those large pots of dye sitting by the pool, humming a siren song of indulgence, we couldn’t have been happier. Before they were even done explaining the festival of Holi, we had grabbed fistfuls of dye and spread it across each other’s faces, caking each other with layer upon layer of dye.

“Happy Holi!” someone would scream and streak a face in red.

“Happy Holi!” the next person would cry, and suddenly that same face was green. That day, our faces changed from tan to green to purple to red to orange and back again, rotating through all the many colors. We Happy Holi-ed one another, we Happy Holi-ed the drivers waiting around for their clients, we Happy Holi-ed guests we didn’t know. Even a puppy ended up being Happy Holi-ed! By the time we were done, we were absolutely caked with color and the lawn was a bright rainbow of many different dyes. We dutifully filed back to our rooms and climbed into the showers, scrubbing our bodies and heads as vigorously as we could, but most of us emerged still sporting a pinkish tint that clung to our bodies for several days more (I don’t think the vegetable dye is meant for white skin). Poor dread-locked Kate was left with some permanently dyed dreadlocks, and in fact, STILL found dye in her hair some two months later when she had to cut off her dreadlocks for some untold mysterious reason. Two months later and she was still Happy Holi-ing!

We floated in the pool for an hour, dyeing the water slightly pink, and then piled into a monstrous sixteen-seater open-air truck and rolled off towards the tiger park for our tiger “safari”. I was quickly learning that safaris aren’t nearly as exciting as they sound. When I think of the word “safari” I think of danger, of excitement, of hunters crawling on their belly through African brush and stalking deadly animals (all things I wanted the street cred for doing without actually having to do it). Well, it turns out that safaris are much like rickshaw rides through a bird park- they’re incredibly boring. Okay, maybe I just don’t find nature that interesting, aside from, of course, tribes of monkeys, but who couldn’t like those cheeky little buggers? Everyone else seemed excited, though, and so I feigned interest as we repeated the ridiculous charade that was “showing Leah a brown animal amongst brown surroundings that she can’t actually see and wouldn’t care about if she COULD see”. In her many years of leading tours, Aarti had yet to see a tiger and thought that perhaps this would be the time, so she scrunched her face into a concentrated ball and scanned the park eagerly for her ever elusive tiger. I, however, seriously doubted that we would actually see a tiger, given that our mode of transportation was as large as a semi and could be heard miles before it arrived anywhere, bouncing across the road, crunching leaves and crushing trees. The ride was pretty and even though I couldn’t give a crap about more boring birds singing in a tree, I was happy to sit back, relax, enjoy the surroundings and breathe in the fresh air.

That is, until I realized only an hour into our excursion that I really, really had to pee. I looked at my watched. Two hours to go. Perhaps I could make it? The truck bumped down a minor ravine, jostling us back and forth and up and down and mostly, all around. Yeah, I definitely wasn’t going to make it.

“Um… Aarti?” I called to the front, my face already beginning to flush.

“Yes?” Aarti answered, still immersed in the search for her tiger. I gestured for her to come closer so that I might discuss my um, rather delicate matter. With a concerned look on her face, Aarti leaned closer and I shouted over the din of the bouncing truck,

“I really have to pee. NOW.”

“Oh!” Aarti said, about as unnerved as me. Just where was I supposed to pee in the middle of a tiger park? Aarti whispered to the local guide in hushed tones and they ensued in a deep discussion over toilet stops.

“Okay,” Aarti finally called as the truck stopped and idled in the middle of the road. “Go behind that bush!” I looked at the bush. It wasn’t so much as a bush as much as a tiny shrub that didn’t keep much out of view. It wasn’t that that I minded, after all, it was behind the truck and I really, really had to pee. I was more concerned about the tigers. What if I popped a squat and the tiger decided to make its appearance right about then? Were tigers attracted to human pee? Well, I’d soon find out. I hopped out of the truck, thanking everyone for waiting, sprinted to the bush, dropped trou and let loose.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I don’t know if you’ve ever peed in a tiger park, but oh man, does it feel good. I peed and I peed and I peed until I heard the sound of another tourist vehicle bouncing toward us. Before I could pull up my pants, there behind me was a truck full of tourists and a fifteen binoculars pointed straight at my butt. I’m sure everyone visits a tiger park for different reasons. Surely, every tourist has a different animal they count as their favorite and therefore many different people are pleased to see many different sights. I’m not sure, however, that the sickly pale white butt of a New York Jew is really on anyone’s list, nor am I sure that the tour guide would have even been prepared to describe the sight before them.

“And here we see something very rare for this region of India, the blindingly white ass of the endangered species, the whiny New York Jew. Hey! Do you want some lox with that bagel?”

I sighed dejectedly. This wasn’t the first time I had mooned a bunch of foreigners in a different country. The last time something like this had happened I was marooned on a far away isle, mooning an entire honking highway of Grecian men, so frustrated by the horrible day that had just passed that I continued to pee and raised my middle finger in protest.

This time, however, less aggression was coursing through my veins, so I sighed (I wasn’t finished, thank you very much), pulled up my pants, waved to the tourists and climbed back in our vehicle, waving and bowing at my fellow passengers. “Thank you, thank you very much. Thank you!”

I didn’t receive the expected applause, but I didn’t care, my bladder had been successfully emptied, if only half of the way. We continued on through the boring park and when the sun and the horizon began to make out, we headed back to our hotel, ate dinner, and fell into a deep and greatly needed sleep.

The next morning we bundled back into jeeps and made our way through more of the beautiful Rajasthani countryside, passing more women in beautiful saris carrying huge bundles of hay and large pots of water, plain jagged dusty hills, and temples perched precariously at cliff-edges. We headed towards Bundi, a place that Aarti called a lovely, very “medieval” place. Uh, medieval? Wasn’t all of India medieval? Well, apparently Bundi was more medieval than the rest of India, but I couldn’t really tell the difference.

When we arrived in Bundi, we switched to autorickshaws and flew through the “medieval” streets at a reckless pace, stopping suddenly at a block in the road. The obstruction was a structure made entirely of perhaps fifty different silver speakers stacked one upon another. This was a common sight during this time of year, which just so happened to be India’s wedding season (Indians visit a fortune teller when they get engaged and the fortune teller predicts that the lucky time of year for them to be married is surprisingly during the dry season), so the entire country of India gets married within the same month). The speaker vehicle was stuck in a rut at a narrow junction bordered with tilting houses. Our rickshaw was caught in front of it, a motorbike and another rickshaw were caught on the other side, and a cow lay sprawled in the only small gap. Our driver leapt out of the car and immediately began shouting, as did the boys pushing the speaker cart, the other rickshaw driver, the man on the motorbike, and several dozen town’s people who had gathered to watch the action. In India, everyone has an opinion, even the cow who helpfully bellowed but refused to move out of the way. Of course, no one thought to move the cow. Holy creatures can’t really be beaten with a stick until they move, can they? So, ten minutes passed of shouting and arguing before finally the other rickshaw driver agreed to pull his vehicle back so we could all adjust our positions. We pulled past the speakers, narrowly avoided the cow and sped off towards Bundi Garh Palace, which was really one of the coolest places I’ve been. The photos will do more justice than my words, but it’s the kind of place travelers lustily dream of at night, a completely abandoned palace, its only occupants bats and monkeys, guarding their territory from high up ledges. The palace itself sat high above the city, which sparkled white and blue from its painted buildings. In the distance, large trucks blew horns that sound like elephants. Inside the complex, the many rooms were painted with beautiful and amazingly preserved mosaics depicting ancient battles, love stories, and even battles between drunken elephants. A civilization lost, sitting high above a mere figment of its former greatness. It was magical.

When we had finished at the palace, we wandered back through the city of Bundi, stopping for a brief moment to listen to more wedding music. We walked by one store filled with brass instruments and when the proprietor saw us pass, he eagerly prodded his employees into picking up their instruments, and they played a fast-paced American jazz song. We danced in the middle of a medieval Indian city, slapping our thighs and stamping our feet, laughing at the man’s audacity and slipping him a few rupees at the end. We continued on through the town quickly darkening town until we came to a beautiful Hindu temple with large bells outside. Some members of the group wanted to take a look inside but I didn’t feel like removing my shoes, so I stood outside and watched the scene around the temple. For the town of Bundi, this would be my brink of tears moment. The temple sat as a beautiful, colorful oasis in the middle of a dusty, dirt-filled street where the houses stockpiled cement blocks in front and hid dingy backrooms through ragged door holes covered only by a flea-ridden, dirt-soaked piece of cloth. In front of the temple lay a cow, chewing slowly and looking out over a tiny, dirty, skinny puppy who was immersed in what appeared to be a painful sleep, barely breathing and on the brink of death. In front of the puppy was a crowd of teenaged boys, laughing and playing on a motorbike. To their right, an old man had approached Kate and was counting off numbers in English but not explaining why he was doing so (One! Two! Three! Four! Five! Six! One! Two!). Us tourists stood nearby, watching and perhaps exploiting it all, denying the little children who approached us asking for chocolates. A motorbike sped past me, nearly knocking me down. The cow stood up slowly and meandered off down a street. A laughing boy bounded over to the puppy and gave it one giant kick. The puppy yelped in pain, leapt to its feet and raced around in a circle, whining and moaning. The tears caught in my throat. Once again, here was India. Beauty and ugliness and life and death. Color and brown. Dust and chocolate. Tears and laughter. Survival of the fittest in its truest form.

At this point, you’d think I’d be used to it, you’d think the words would have returned to my lips, that I would have grown used to India and its many foibles, but that would take years. I still found the country fascinating in its complexity. It was, at its core, a complicated place, one of moral conflict and only seemed to exist on two polar planes. The rich, the poor; the clean the dirty; the healthy the sick; the haves the have nots. Technicolor contrasts from opposite ends of a spectrum.

The next day we waited at the station for a train bound for a tiny place that not even the locals seemed to know, an area called Bijaipur. As we waited in the morning sun, I watched two dogs chase after one another and a young mother in a sari climb down to the tracks with her toddler son, position him at the side of the tracks, pull down his pants, and squat down with him, holding his hands and urging him to relieve himself. The train arrived and once again we clawed our way on board. The train was packed so we had to pick separate seats amongst compartments structured much like the social train cars of Italy but lacking doors so the noise from one end of the car drifted up to the opposite end. Once again I was inspired and took out my notebook to take notes on what I saw. Don’t read this if you’re sick of hearing these descriptions because this one really will take awhile.

Rather than having windows, the train were simply covered with bars. The air from outside the train swirled in between the bars and circled around the train. The seats were covered in blue plastic and while one side consisted of seats facing one another, the other was made entirely of sleeping berths, blue-covered slaps of wood anchored to the wall with ancient rusted chains. Old fans were hung from the ceilings, some of which turned slowly, some of which had long ago given themselves up to death. The train lacked lights so every time we plunged into a tunnel the car was thrust into darkness.

Just like in Italy, everyone seemed to know each other and to have a high need for constant interaction. Three berths down and across from me sat a girl in colorful green and yellow clothes, only slightly masked by a tight jean jacket. In the next berth forward, a man lay in the top berth sleeping wrapped in that white blanket I’d seen everywhere in India, one that covers the entire body including the head like a corpse on a hospital bed. In the berth below sat an old man with huge brown glasses and matching brown shirt and slacks that fit in well with India’s reverence for 1970s fashion. His legs were stretched out on the seat and he chewed snacks, occasionally popping into someone else’s conversation to vociferously enter his opinion into a debate. In the berth across from me was a man in his fifties with kind eyes, dressed in similar clothing as the last man but with green slacks and a grey zip-up. He had hung a bag on a blue hook that matched the seat and stood between the two rusted blue-barred windows. The bag had two brown handles but itself was maroon and the designs on it were very 1950s retro, complete with writing that proclaimed from beneath a lightening bolt, “Crane: Switches and Accessories”. Beneath the writing were pictures of light switches and a words in Hindi, “Hum Banaye Sab Se Behtar.” Next to his man sat another man in glasses and also wearing an outfit from the seventies, a thick moustache adorning his upper lip, his nose sharp and point and his chin voluptuous and doubled. He swung his legs and tapped his feed against the ground, fixing me with a stare and clearly wanting to interact.

Next to me there was an orange bag hanging from a hook and a blue suitcase. From a few compartments down a group of Jain women began to sing and walked around the car offering food (Jains can give food but never accept it). A guard in a green uniform walked up and down the train, making sure all was right (and likely doing nothing if it wasn’t). A few minutes into the ride the old man next to me decided to lie across the seat and prop his feet up right near my nose. He soon started snoring, his big pot belly rising up and down with each snort. A constant stream of Indians stopped by our compartment and took possessions out of a bag beneath one of the seats (space was communal).

After about forty-five minutes, some fellow travelers, Simon and Brenda, and I struck up a conversation with a teacher and her husband, who was either an engineer or an opium guard (his accent was quite thick). They were on a two day train journey from their native home back up to Delhi. While we spoke, the Jains continued to sing and offer us food. When we finally reached our destination, we said goodbye to our new friends and I strapped on my backpack, much to the fascination of the old Indian men, who watched with great interest as I clipped and strapped and pulled and jostled.

At that point, we knew little about the area to which we were heading. With a mischievous smile, Aarti had told us only that we were staying on a lake in tents and that we would have to be understanding about the “toilets,” which were more “holes in the ground” than toilets, but after all, what did we expect while staying at the side of a lake? We treated Aarti’s with a fair amount of suspicion. She could be a cheeky one, and there was no way the travel company would put us up in a place where we had to crap in a hole, right? Oh god. We were going to have to like…. camp? I certainly hoped not. The last time I camped was at sleep away camp when I was thirteen and, having spotted a porcupine earlier in the evening, I spent the whole night convinced that a giant porcupine would emerge from the woods and sit on my face. When I woke up, I learned that my grandpa had died. It wasn’t a very good experience.

But of course, Aarti was indeed “taking the piss” and we arrived at our “campsite” to find beautiful, white, airy tents sitting at the side of a beautiful man-made lake, afloat with leaping creatures and birds I actually found interesting! Even better than that, in a mini-tent attached to our main residences, was, like, the best toilet I had seen since I left the states. It was AMAZING! I threw my bag down on the bed, hurriedly raced around the tent taking photos and then stepped out onto our stone front porch to take in the views of the lake. It was simply gorgeous. Green lilies floating idly on the pond; a man in a dug-out boat paddled along the water, searching for fish; large white birds with yellow beaks searching for food; the humming sounds of people at work drifted over from a nearby village at the edge of the lake; cows mooed in from somewhere between a mound of large rocks and small forest of trees. Ecstatic that no local people with conservative values could see me, I pulled on a pair of polar bear boxer shorts (which I later lost somewhere in a hilltribe village in Thailand) and reveled in the blinding sight of my white legs, free at last!

Ah, I could stay here for awhile.

I sat out on the porch reading a book until I saw a girl in a dug out boat paddling her way over from the village. Kate and Laura went down to the lake to greet her. The girl had obviously encountered western tourists before and knew how to be a ham. She beckoned for her shy sister to join us and before long they had scooped lilies out of the lake and were wearing them as hats, welcoming us to the community by placing a lily each on Kate and Laura’s heads too. The girls were sweet as could be (though apparently later on they started screaming and throwing the lilies at Kate and Laura, which kind of ruined our image of them) and the scene only added to the idyllic feel that surrounded the lake.

I left the girls behind and joined up with Donna, Simon and Brenda for a walk up to a former fort up on a hill overlooking the lake. To get there, we walked over dry red rocks, past a herd of goats urgently preparing for the mating season, past women in colorful saris minding their heard of crapping cows, and up a rocky path, littered with ruins from the fort. The fort was yet another one of those traveler’s dreams, a place of former glory now crumbling to the ground, covered in overgrown shrubs, and turned to grazing land for local farmers, a state that somehow better fits India than golden palaces repaired to their former glory. What is India but a memory of a fallen empire, of a nation still recovering from the far-reaching legacies of fallen empires and lost colonialism? In a fort like this, there are no illusions about what India could be, just a reminder of what it is. Donna and I watched the sun set over the hill and together we shared our near tears moment.

That night, the moon loomed bright and large over the lake, its reflection glimmering in the water and illuminating the many night time animals and green lilies. We ate another beautiful dinner around a campfire, the sound of soothing Indian drumming in the background, and retired to our palatial tents, lulled into sleep by chirping crickets, croaking frogs and humming insects.

Throughout the night, the sounds of the lake seeped into my sleep. I was part of the lake, an Indian mermaid. Kate, too, must have had fanciful dreams because in the middle of the night she stretched her arms out and smiled in sheer joy, proclaiming from her sleeping state, “Look at all of the colors! The colors!”

We awoke to the sound of the night animals signing off of their shifts, passing on their duties to the day animals, whose noises were louder, less lulling, and soared from their throats to the skies. The village awoke around the same time, clinking their tools, preparing their meals and ushering their children out into the streets to laugh and play clapping games. I stepped out of the tent and watched the sun rise over the lake.

Ah, life was good.

After breakfast we haggled with the staff for our bills, overcharged as always for things we didn’t buy, and then told that the staff “didn’t have any change”, which is their way of getting of giving you money, unless the whole of India is constantly out of change. We loaded back into cars and made our way closer to Bijaipur, visiting some agricultural fields and a village along the way. By the time we arrived we were hot and eager to relax in the pool. We drove through the gates of the hotel, saluted by a skinny old Indian man whose sole purpose seemed to be saluting people as they drove through the gates. Once again we were staying in a fort, complete with palatial suites with billowing purple curtains.

That night I was in a contemplative mood and could think of nothing I would like more than sitting out on the balcony of my palatial quarters reading a book and writing woe is me poetry, so I dragged a fluffy satin pillow onto the hard stone balcony, leaned against the railing and began to write. However, India wasn’t ready to cooperate. If India wants you to pay attention to it, you better bet it will knock on your door until you have no choice but to fling it open and usher it into your most private quarters. This being the wedding season, that night there was a loud celebration in the nearby village, and by celebration, I mean some random Indian guy had hooked him up to what must have several loud speakers and paired that to what sounded like an electronic organ hooked to at least a dozen amplifiers. The man sang at random into the microphone, sounding much like my brother, Dave, at three years old, sitting in his car seat on endless car trips, making up his own words and tunes to Power Ranger and Ninja Turtle songs.

“Teenagemutantninja tuuuuuUUUUuuuuUurrrrrtTTLLLLLEEEEEESsssss! Power raaaaAAAAAAaaaaaAAAAaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAnggggggers!”

The only difference was that this man sang in Hindi and, with his electronic organ, he had one step up on Dave. His organ playing style was much like that of his singing. He sounded like an eager child (me) sitting down at a piano and banging at different notes simply to revel in the many different strange noises it made, pounding away until her aunt seethed from a nearby room, “WOULD YOU STOP THAT INFERNAL PIANO-BANGING!”, followed by a more diplomatic mother coming into the room and saying, “Now, Leah, perhaps that’s enough piano for now? Maybe you can play more later when the grown-up don’t have such bad headaches?” Headaches? Why did they have headaches? Were they sick?

The only difference between this man and both my brother and myself was that when he was finished the entire village would erupt in rapturous applause. I couldn’t believe it. They were encouraging him. Didn’t he realize the grown-ups had headaches? Every once in awhile the singer would run his hands from the highest note to the lowest in a dramatic finish and I would think, “Thank God! He’s finished!” But fate was not me with that night. After a brief pause he was right back at it, banging and toning and experimenting on speakers loud enough to fill the rooms of a hotel two villages away. I soon gave up on the reading and moody writing and attempted to fall asleep, but, needless to say, the sleep was fitful and I awoke in the morning not in the best of moods.

The mood was only worsened when upon check out I once again had to haggle over my bill. I was quickly growing tired with the male service male in India, mostly because they don’t listen. It seemed I would inevitably be in the middle of a sentence explaining the problem when they would interrupt me and, without having listened to a word I said, affirm that whatever I needed was being taken care of. But how did they know, they hadn’t heard a word I said! Conversations looked much like this:

“Hi, on my bill it says…”

“Yes madam, one moment madam.” The worker begins to ring up my bill.

“No no, before you ring it up, there was just something…”

“No problem madam, one moment madam.” The worker punches more numbers into the register.

“But see this drink on the bill here? I didn’t…”

“The drink is 150 rupees madam.”

“Right, I got that, but I didn’t have the drink so…”

“The bill is three hundred rupee madam.”

“I can see that but if you’d look at this bill.”

“Yes madam the drink is 150 rupees madam.”

“I DID NOT HAVE THE DRINK! TAKE THE DRINK OFF OF MY BILL!”

“Yes madam I see madam.”

This is how conversations typically seemed to go, both in India and in greater Asia, though every country had a different form of circular conversation. Just imagine, the amount of time and the levels of blood pressure that could be saved if, for just one moment, they stopped to actually listen to what I was saying, to refrain from arguing until I had actually defined the problem.

WHATever.

After nearly every person in the group was finished fighting over their bill, we crammed back into the uncomfortable Honda Odysseys and sped down surprisingly good roads towards to Pushkar. So. Pushkar.

We arrived after a five hour drive in the heat exhausted and slightly disgruntled, only somewhat cheered by our luxurious accommodation. After a much needed shower, we followed Aarti back out onto the streets and began to explore a city whose name triggered vague images of news anchors fighting against crowds of brown-skinned people in turbans in a crowded street of jostling people. Pushkar, the holiest city in India, a full ten on the holy scale. The streets of Pushkar were lined with shops, filled with “priests” waiting to pounce on you, tie a string around your wrist and demand an exorbitant fee for their holy blessing, ex-army Israeli’s with dreadlocks, flashing peace signs and grooving unheard rhythms, a beggar in sky goggles and a pink loin cloth clawing his way around the city on a skateboard, and mostly, hippies upon hippies upon hippies. Even the Indian crap-sellers seemed like hippies to me. In fact, they seemed like Indians imitating hippies who were imitating Indians. Accordingly, the products in the shop seemed like what westerners want India to be- a place of infinite spiritual paths and any number of benevolent gurus eager to take you to enlightenment. That said, Pushkar was also like a breath of fresh western air, a brief glimpse of our own culture, somehow mixed into distinctly Indian streets.

The next morning, I shopped around the city a bit, rejoined the group and wandered outside where our camels were waiting for our two hour camel trek.

Kick ASS.

At first, I was a little nervous about the camel ride, mostly because it sounded like mounting the camel was a little tricky. Apparently, the camel would put its back legs up first, at which point you had to lean backwards to avoid flipping over the front; the opposite held true when the camel lifted its front legs. It all sounded fine but um… what if I leaned the wrong way, flipped over the camel and died in a stampede of desert hoofs? It didn’t seem like a pleasant way to die.

Fortunately, the camel picked itself up off the ground without much event and before I knew it, we were marching through the streets of Pushkar and out to the litter-strewn desert surrounding the city. I very quickly adjusted to the movements of the camel, swaying and back forth with the camel’s own movements, bouncing in the seat of the camel and smiling at passerby, absolutely amazed at the fact that I was like, in Pushkar and I was like… riding a camel. It was amazing.

As we rode further into the desert, we passed several small camps of nomads, huddled in tattered and torn tents. When they saw us, the kids sprinted towards us, holding out their hands shouting, “Money! Money!” We rode past them and further into the desert, the clouds in the skies thickening. I wondered if there was going to be a sandstorm and then quickly pushed that thought out of my mind. After about forty-five minutes of riding through the desert, we pulled our camels over to a flat section in the dunes near large water troughs. The camels bent down so we could slide off and then tromped over to the troughs to slurp up some water. I hurriedly rushed off to the single remaining wall of a collapsed building and dashed behind it to take (of course) take a pee. Within seconds one of the camel men came tromping around the wall with a buckets of water in his hand in what had become the pretty regular event of me peeing in front of an audience, but this time I didn’t even flinch.

“Whaaaaatever,” I said, peeing on and reveling in the feelings of relief, blocking out the other tromping camel drivers as I continued on.

When I was finished, I rejoined the group on a blanket laid out on the sand and eagerly took a steaming cup of masala tea. I had long ago stopped being suspicious of the liquids that were offered to us (as long as they were boiled), and sipped my tea without a thought. It wasn’t until later that Donna told me she had seen the porters gather the water out of the camel troughs. But hey, no one got sick so maybe camel spit is sterile.

As we lounged about, drinking our tea and eating biscuits, a group of nomads gathered around us and strummed an instrument that looked much like a guitar, even gesturing for us to give it a try, likely in the hopes to gather more money. Three ragged nomad children sat a few feet off from the nomad men, watching us hungrily as we ate our snacks. I didn’t notice them until Donna pointed them out, and the moment I saw them I lost my appetite. How could I sit there and eat biscuits I didn’t even need when children were starving right in front of my eyes? I asked Aarti if we could give them our leftover biscuits, but at the end they had all been gobbled up and there was nothing to give. For the millionth time in India, I felt consumed by that distinctly western guilt that seems to follow around any good hearted person visiting a third world country. Where is the line between helping and exploitation? When does visiting a country like India help bring commerce into the region and when do such visits do little more than taunt poor people with glimpses at riches they’ll never have?

Obviously, India is a complicated country with many different strata of society. There is the old aristocracy who lost the vast majority of their wealth to colonial powers yet still look up at western culture with stars in their eyes, as if admiring a cooler older sisters; there is the newly wealthy middle class, raising their standard of living in the IT boom; there are the corrupt, wealthy government officials who have slowed India’s development to feed only their own greed; there are the crap sellers, begging desperately for you to buy their products yet relatively well of compared to most people living in India; there are the poor farmers in tight knit village communities who are happy in their small lives, but often close-minded when it comes to women’s rights or any sort of liberalism; there are the nomads, wandering the country in search of food and a better life; there are the destitute, the beggars, the street children, the abused, barely eeking out a disease-filled existence, constantly on the look out for money or food; through all that, there are hundreds upon hundreds of different ethnicities, different cultures, different languages, different people, as well as guilt-filled western tourists, wondering where they fit into it all and searching for desperately for absolution.

No one describes this complex culture better than the author Kiran Desai in the novel, The Inheritance of Loss. In this book, Desai beautifully captures India’s complexity with thick, rich prose that lilts off the page in deep Indian colors. Perhaps her best description is of an old village woman forced for many years to carry large rocks by her abusive husband. After many years the weight of the stones permanently mars her back so that she can no longer stand upright and instead must wander the earth bent at a 45 degree angle. One day, as she is walking up a dusty hill, bent so severely she’s almost kissing the ground, she longs desperately for a drink of water, for someone to reach out, touch her arm and tell her gently that it’s okay now, that her husband is dead that she can stop hauling her stones. Hope approaches in the form of two American tourists, speeding up the road in an open-top jeep. As they approach the woman, the American woman calls to her husband, “Jack, where’s the camera?” Jack already has his camera out and ready and as they speed past the woman, he snaps a perfect photo.

“Got it, babe,” Jack says and tucks the camera back into his bag.

That, to me, captures the dilemma of tourism in India, or really in any third world country. How dare we breeze through a small part of their country in a mere few weeks only to leave it, show our friends and family our photos and tell them what “it’s like” to be in India? How dare we not do this, how dare we keep our funds to ourselves and invest in iPods and computers and fancy houses when all we need do is fly to India and by some of their crap? Thus is the tourist’s dilemma in India, and these were the thoughts that stung my brain as we sat on that blanket in the desert and ate sweets we didn’t need.

And then, when we were finished, I did something I had guiltily become accustomed to. I blocked the faces of the children out of my mind, climbed back onto my camel and concentrated on the here and now, concentrated on celebrating life, as unfair as it could be. We slowly made our way back through the desert, the clouds growing ever threatening, and I urged my camel on. I wanted to be as far away from the nomad children as possible. When my camel leader started to joke around with the other leaders by prodding my camel on faster than the others, I embraced the opportunity.

“Let’s gallop!” I cried. “I want to beat this other camels!”

The leader grinned back up at me and nodded once. He prodded the camel on to a trot and off we went into the horizon, the sun beginning to set behind us, a lone crap lugger perched upon a camel, breathless with both joy and exertion, riding towards Pushkar and another sort of happiness.

That night, Donna and I bought Snickers bars from a local vendor, curled up in our suite and watched Under the Tuscan Sun on TV. We fell asleep in a chocolate bliss. When we awoke, the two Donnas, Simon, Brenda and I slogged through the filthy muddy streets and climbed our way past monkeys up to a holy temple, peering out over the city of Pushkar and breathing it all in. I didn’t understand this place and I never would. That was the way I liked it. It was beautiful this way. After we had come back down and eaten a beautiful western breakfast, I separated from Donna and went off to check my email. Good news! I had gotten into one of my top choice creative writing programs, the University of Washington! Kick ASS! I was absolutely thrilled and left the internet café with a grin on my face, skipping down the streets of Pushkar. I DID have a future after all! Suddenly I loved anybody and everyone, even the crap sellers and cart drivers! I beamed at a skinny young man who looked to be about twelve years old pulling a cart, the main mode of public transport in Pushkar, which he took as an invitation. Before I knew it, I was haggling over a cart ride.

“Ten rupee for ride madam, only ten rupee.”

“No, thanks,” I said, rolling my eyes and quickening my pace.

“Okay, for you- only five rupee!”

“I’ll use my legs, they walk just fine, thanks.”

“Why you say you have legs when I have cart?”

“Because… I have legs and I’ll use them, thanks.”

“Have boyfriend madam?” Great. Now I was about to go from haggling for a cart ride I didn’t want to haggling for a boyfriend didn’t want. I called up one of the many fake boyfriends I keep stockpiled in my stash of fake characters I keep just for this occasion.”

“Yes,” I said. “His name is Dirk.”

“He is strong?” the boy inquired.

“Oh yes, very strong.”

“Stronger than me?”

“Oh yes, he’s massive.” I held up my hands to demonstrate just how massive he really was.

“But madam, I may look small but right now my cart is empty, I can pull up to six people when I need to. Six people!”

My answer was quick. This was just too easy. “Dirk can pull twelve.”

“Twelve?” he marveled, clearly unable to fathom such a sight. “Alright alright, I give you ride for free and you be my girlfriend.”

“No thanks, I don’t think Dirk would like that.”

“Okay, okay,” he send gently, clearly about to make the compromise of a man who understood a woman’s needs. “You come back tomorrow and I give you ride for free and you be my girlfriend.”

I continued walking and looked the boy square in the eye. I let loose a dramatic sigh and said, “Alright, fine. But Dirk will be mad!”

That seemed to satisfy the boy because he stopped following me and instead called after me, “See you tomorrow!”

I waved goodbye and walked on towards the hotel. A few feet on from where the cart puller left me, I passed a man I had seen several times before. The man was collapsed by the side of the road, his leg swollen, raw, infected and clearly in need of amputation. In the first day I passed him, he called out like any beggar, asking for money, calling me sister and begging for me to help. I just ignored him in the manner to which I had become accustomed. But I couldn’t ignore him now. It had been three days since I first saw him and he was still lying in the same position, baking in the scorching Indian sun, his body covered in sweat and his face pale with exhaustion. He had clearly reached a stage of delirium. He called out to me, please, help me, please, sister, I’m dying! Still, after three, no one paid him any attention. Men only about ten feet away slid under a bus and tinkered with its motors; tourists passed him by without a glance; a cow briefly gave him a look and then turned back to its cud chewing; vendor sellers shut him out of their minds. I was the only person who paid him any attention. But what could I do? If the police didn’t take the man away to the hospital, what could I possibly do stop this man’s pain? Only a culture where death presents itself with every step could people step around this man and not do a thing.

India. A land where you can center spiritually on a hilltop in the morning sun, where you can learn you have a future mid-morning, where you rebut proposals on your walk home, where you can watch a man die on the street and an entire city of people refuse to pay the slightest bit of attention.

Please, sister, I am in pain. I am dying, sister. I am dying!

I needed a night swim.

I trudged back to the hotel, marched up the stairs and onto our balcony where I had been drying my black bikini and matching boycut shorts when I stopped and gasped in horror. My boycut shorts were sprawled on the floor of the balcony, top nowhere in sight. Omigod omigod omigod my favorite bathing suit, ruined by a gust of wind! I had kept that bathing suit for more than eight years! It was my single favorite bathing suit in the world! What was I going to do! I scanned the ground below the balcony frantically, but there was no bathing suit in sight. Where could it be? At that point, the sky had grown dark and I could barely see the balcony below ours, let alone inside the trees on the ground far below. I rushed out of the room, panicked, and borrowed a flashlight from reception, enlisting a passing Canadian couple to help me in my search. We picked through the garden, rubbed our hands over ledges, flashed the light on broken branches, but alas, to no avail. It seemed as if my poor bathing suit top was lost forever, or at least until the sun came up in the morning. I thanked the Canadian couple and went back into my room, quickly falling into a depressed sleep.

That night heavy rains battered our windows, the winds howling against protesting roofs and rafters. I tossed and turned in my bed, thinking only of my poor lost bathing suit top, stuck in the branches below, clinging on for dear life as the rain battered it stitches and the wind scraped it against rough branches. Hang on little guy, I silently urged the top. Hang in there!

The next morning I raced to the balcony and in the light of day were the workings of the divine. The sound of angels sang down from the heavens. There it was! My bathing suit top! Safe and sound, clinging to the branches of a tree! I raced down to reception and told them of my story. Reception sent me away with a porter, who knocked on the door of the room below ours in the hopes that he could walk out on their balcony and grab the top. There was no answer. The porter told me he was sorry but I would have to wait until the people in this room checked out. But I couldn’t wait until then, our group was leaving soon. Was there anything he could do? The porter studied my grief-stricken face and considered his options.

“Okay,” he said. “Follow me.” We bounded up the stairs to the room next to ours and three other porters gathered round to contribute their opinions. The first porter described the situation in Hindi, and suddenly there were three pairs of disbelieving Indian male eyes fixed on me.

“What is the object, madam?” one porter asked with disbelief.

“It’s a black bathing suit top,” I said, hoping they’d understand. They did not.

“Bathing suit…” one of them muttered, not understanding. “It is black bra, madam?”

No, I wanted to say, it was not something as embarrassing as a black bra. But would they understand that? No.

“Yes,” I said with a sigh. “It is black bra.” The porters erupted in giggles. I was suddenly the most hilarious person in the world.

“Black bra!” one of them said with much wonderment through a fitful of giggles. “Black bra!”

I rolled my eyes. “Yes,” I said. “Black bra. Can we stop laughing now and get the black bra back?”

“Black bra!” another porter giggled. They continued to giggle together while one of them unlocked the door to the room and we made our way to the balcony where we quickly spotted the bathing suit top clinging to a tree branch.

“That is black bra?” one of them asked me, suppressing another giggle.

“Yes,” I said. “That is the bathing suit top.”

The porter nodded grimly and in a blink of an eye had left me side and was leaping across the balconies, clinging to a railing, generally defying death, grabbing my top and triumphantly leaping back on our balcony, holding the top across his head.

“Black bra, madam,” he said with a smile.

“Thank you, THANK YOU!” I cried, ecstatic at the prospect of reunification. The porter suppressed another smile and eagerly took the ten rupee note I handed him. I thanked them all again and went skipping off to my room, a volcano of laughter erupting behind me along with a stream of Hindi and the occasional exclamation of, “Black bra! Black bra!”

So immature.

With my bathing suit top safely back in my possession, I gathered up my bags and rejoined the group. We boarded a night train to Delhi, laughed together about our various adventures, sat upright in the narrow bunks playing card games, and prepared ourselves for our triumphant return.

Delhi, take two.

We arrived early in the morning to a Delhi that was already very much awake. With our bags strapped securely to our bodies, we pushed through the crowd of jostling me, attempting to grab our bags and lead us to their taxis (and nearly driving off in the wrong one!) and finally fought our way into our private cars. We dropped our things off at the hotel and went out for our last group breakfast, marveling at the many places we had been, recounting the things we had learned, and feeling forever bonded to a group of people who had shared something truly unique and special in our lives.

When we had finished our breakfast, Donna and I wandered the streets of Delhi looking for a Sari for Donna to take home. As we milled out about, I couldn’t help but notice a change in Delhi, a change that was far more likely inside me rather than inside the city itself. Delhi looked different to me than it had two weeks earlier. The streets seemed wider and less claustrophobic; the people were calmer and the salesmen were less aggressive; the heat seemed more bearable and less oppressive. Somewhere along the line, I had been accustomed to India and to its strange (INSANE) ways, enough so that I could once again formulate sentences. More telling, I was no longer numb to India’s many annoyances and found myself entering my more normal state of being annoyed at all life’s little things.

“Alright already!” I said with a roll of my eyes. “Enough with the honking!”

That night, Kate was the first to go. We loaded her into a taxi and watched her car pull out into busy Delhi traffic. Something big was ending, and we all felt it. Not long after we said goodbye to Kate, I hugged Tom and Laura and prepared for my early flight. About five hours later, I left my room at 4AM, hugging Donna goodbye, piled into my airport transfer and drove back to the airport. They were the same roads that had taken me to Delhi so many weeks ago, but just like the streets of inner Delhi, these ones looked different as well. They were calmer, friendlier, somehow more manageable. I had truly become one of Those Hippies. India had like, changed my life, man, and there was no looking back.

I thought fondly over my travels as I watched Delhi roll by my window and began to nostalgize my experience. I was soon to learn, however, that one cannot truly finish with India until one is fully out of the country. Indeed, the chaos only continued at the airport. When we pulled up at the airport, the driver asked me something I couldn’t understand.

“I’m sorry?” I asked politely.

“SAlkjwerouvlwkfjwoeiuwevoi,” he said, becoming more adamant.

“Sorry?” I asked again.

“AljfoweufoiWOWOEIEIWOlisdjfoiwefouw!” he repeated.

“Um,” I said, mentally sorting through the many things he could be asking me in the current situation. “What airline am I?”

”welfjwoefuoewfjwe;fjweLWEJOWEIF!!!!”

“Um, it leaves at 8:10, Qantas, operated by Jet Airways. Is that what you….”

“Wwoviuwo;vjweogjwogjbkehboeroieiiEEIOFWIFJOWEFJWEOFIWOEJF!!!!”

“Ooooh,” I said, finally understanding. “Yes, I have paid.”

“wfioue.”

“Okay, thank you! Bye!”

I unloaded my bags at the back and headed towards the airport where yet another incredibly skinny old man sat guarding the entrance, a guard with a machine gun watching behind him. Passengers presented him with their boarding passes and pushed through the doors. Well, crap, this could be a problem. The airline had changed my flight time only a few days ago, so while my paper ticket said 1515, my new printed itinerary said 8:10. I knew before I even reached the doors that this was going to be a problem, mostly because he would being yes madam-ing me before I could finish explaining the situation.

“Ticket madam,” he said, taking my ticket and examining it. “This is not valid ticket.”

“Yes it is, sir. The ticket says 1515 but the flight is actually at 810.

“Madam this says 1515.

“Yes, I know that, but they printed the wrong time on these tickets and then changed my flight time. The flight is at 810. That’s why I’m here.

“Not valid ticket madam. Step outside.”

“But it is a valid ticket, the airline just messed up.”

“Not valid ticket madam, step outside!” I glanced up at the man holding the machine gun and stepped barely outside the dor.

“It is a valid ticket, one I paid a lot of money for. Here, let me show you my itinerary, look, it has the correct time right there.”

“Other ticket, show other ticket.”

“Yes, fine,” I said, showing him itinerary.

“Not valid,” he said immediately. “Time says 16:20.”

“That’s the arrival time.” He studied the ticket once more.

“Thank you madam,” he said and handed me back my paper. I hesitated. What did that mean?

“Does that mean… I can go in?” I asked.

“Thank you madam,” he repeated. I assumed that meant yes, so I pushed past him and thankfully, no guard chased after me with a machine gun.

I marched up to the check-in desk which was manned by a handsome young Indian man and proclaimed, “There’s been some confusion over my ticket!” He flashed a handsome smile and said,

“Then I will rid you of your confusion.”

India, land of contrasts. I made my way past customs, was fully patted down by an Indian woman behind a screen, and after surprisingly few delays, I was on my way to Singapore.

I couldn’t believe it. I had survived India. I had loved India. I already missed India. Who would have guessed? India, land of contrasts, of polar opposition, of rich of poor of darkness of color of ugliness and beauty I was ready to leave, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep myself away. An addiction had begun and I didn’t plan on attending rehab any time soon.



Chapter Three- The Singapore Airport- Intermission in a land of skinny butts

Several years ago when I was at the height of my collegiate gum habit, I was once again making fun of how much gum I chewed when someone issued me a warning.

“Be careful if you go to Singapore,” they said. “They cane people for gum chewing.”

“Really?” I asked, wide-eyed. The person nodded solemnly. “Well then,” I quipped. “Good thing I’m never going to Singapore!”

Flash forward several years and there I was, exhausted and nervous in the Singapore airport. Before boarding the plane in Delhi I had frantically sorted through my bag and disposed of any and all pieces of gum in the nearby trash can, but I was still worried I had missed one. What if they x-rayed my bag and found one missed stick of incriminating evidence? I didn’t want to be caned!

Well, given that I was only in Singapore on a layover, I would hopefully manage to avoid the x-rays. The layover was a long one so I had no choice but to wander around the Singapore airport, which actually turned out to be one of the most beautiful, clean, modern and efficient airports through which I have ever passed. Coming from India, it was a total shock. Indeed, after India, everything about the Singapore airport was a shock. Gucci stores lining the terminals, western and Japanese food stores dotted between the gates, and mostly, women in shockingly tight jeans and scandalously low-cut tank tops. My lord, I hadn’t seen so much skin since I had left London! It was downright offensive!

Ooh, those jeans were cute! I could use a pair of jeans like those (if only because I had stubbornly clung to my last, clearly disintegrating pair for so long that the crotch eventually detached from the legs). I shot eagerly into a local store and held up a pair of jeans. Oh god. They were tiny. I fished for the next pair. Tiny too. I held up the next pair. Tiny. Finally I had sorted through the entire stack until finally found the largest pair they had. I rushed into the stall and fought with the jeans until they buttoned. Sure, they were the largest pair available, but they still were skin tight.

Goddammit, I muttered to myself. I hate Asia.

Why must all the women in Asia be so damn small? I’m not THAT big, I should be able to fit into a pair of jeans!

Well that ruined my mood, so I stomped out of the store and stuffed my face with greasy Chinese food and artificially flavored candy. That’d teach them!

When I was finished on the candy, my body exploded with energy, just like when I was a little kid and we would come back from the candy store, running around the house and screaming, “SUGAR HIGH! SUGAR HIGH! SUGAR HIGH!” Except now I was 23 and there was no house in sight, so instead I put on my iPod and raced around the airport, suppressing the urge to sing along. After an hour, the sugar low hit, and it all began to hit me, everything I had just been through, everything I had just seen and smelled and heard and tasted, every woman that had passed me in a colorful sari, every beggar collapsed by the side of the road, every bull chasing a cow in a very excited state. That man with the swollen leg in the Indian heat, dying by the side of the road.

I thought about where I had been and where I was going and mostly, I watched the people whiz by and wondered where they had been and where they were going. I was the eye of a hurricane, still and calm as the people moved in frenetic waves. The more I watched, the more I recognized, the more I saw that was familiar, those staple characters who are a key part of every airport worldwide: the terminally late family of five, the parents dashing ahead of their very frightened sprinting children, trying their best to keep up or dragging behind a very hassled mother grasping a long child’s leash and paying no regard to her bouncing, improperly bound breasts, jostling painfully side to side and occasionally knocking down a few gaping workers who, in themselves, were just beginning a long day of sitting around and laughing at annoyed travelers who actually had the audacity to ask them to do their jobs; broke and smelly backpackers lying flat on the ground, snoring open-mouthed on the floor of an abandoned sector of the airport, waiting for some recently awakened security to kick them awake so they could become enraged and then rehash the details of the story in a cheap hostel in a dangerous area of an Asian city; prim and gorgeous stewardesses giggling secret jokes to one another while rolling midget suitcases behind them, looking entirely put together and thrilled to be alive despite having just flown 800 million hours to a nearby solar system and back; the businessmen in their suits who are boring and require little explanation; and of course, who can forget my absolute favorite, the exhausted woman rolling a luggage cart diagonally across the walk way, glaring right back at everyone that glares right back at her (ahem ME) for cutting off just about every passing person with her empty cart, as if we’re playing a game of chicken and she will DIE before she let’s anyone else win, a sentiment which is screamed adamantly by her hunched determined body posture and fixed stare.

These were the people of the Singapore airport, these were the people of airports worldwide. I watched them pass until it was time to board my plane. The plan took off and before long I landed in Bangkok.

So.


Chapter Four- Thailand: Lady Boys, Sin, Disobedient Elephants, Noisy Roosters and Food Food FOOD!

By the time I landed in Thailand it was midnight. I had nearly been traveling 24 hours and was exhausted. I found my driver, stepped out of the cool, air conditioned airport and into the oppressive oven that is Thailand, climbed into the car, pressed my nose to the car window and tried to get a handle on what I was seeing. This was certainly not India. The highways were wide and modern, filled with matching cars, slick vehicles of black and red. The taxis were brand new and painted in colorful pastel colors. Posters of the king all dressed in yellow hung from billboards, proclaiming, “Long live the king!” We passed modern skyscraper after modern skyscraper, and I scratched my head in disbelief. I felt like a country girl visiting the big city for the first time.

“Shucks, paw! Look all ‘dem tall bildins! I’m like to get a crick in my nick!”

After India, it was an astounding and welcome sight. I was certainly still in Asia, but I was in New York as well. In other words, I was speeding deep into the heart of an Asian metropolis. I finally dropped into bed around one in the morning, set my alarm for seven and met my group at eight. If you think it sounds like a bit much, you’d be right on. Packing in trips like this was an incredibly stupid idea. I should have taken at least one day to recover, but I didn’t, and as a result, I was exhausted and somewhat miserable throughout most of my time in Thailand. All I wanted to do was lie around and watch TV.

But alas, such an activity was not in the cards so I awoke to my alarm, scarfed down some breakfast and met my group. We loaded our bags into taxis and made our to the bus station As we drove along, I chatted with my new group members and took in Thailand. Women walked down the streets in broad straw hats; pastel taxis sat bumper to bumper; school kids in uniforms sped down the street on motorbikes, four kids piled onto each bike; adults and kids wore yellow shirts in support of the king, piling into one of many 7/11s to purchase a morning treat (one day of the week is designated as the king’s day and every Thai wears yellow in solidarity. Those who are extra-loyal to the king wear yellow all week long. It’s actually a beautiful sight, a tribute to a great and generous man who has given away most of his wealth to improving Thailand). I was in an entirely different world.

When we arrived at the station, I met more of my fellow group members and we discussed our impressions of Thailand. Their observations shocked me. The other group members were visiting Thailand on a brief two or four week vacation. As so, they had all just come from their various first-world countries. Thus, to them, Thailand was a culture shock. They remarked on how poor it looked, on how backwards the people were, on how freely they disregarded safety laws. I stared at them in shock, utterly unable to fathom their viewpoints. I had just been about to remark on how clean Thailand was, on how orderly all the streets were. Poor? Backwards? For God’s sake, this country had sidewalks! That surely had to be good for something!

To me, everything about Thailand was tame in comparison to India. While the food was phenomenal, nothing in Thailand seemed to move me like India did. In some ways, India reminded me a bit of our family dog Kippy. When Kippy wants your attention, you better bet he’ll do whatever he can to get it. He will bark, he will moan, and goddammit, if you still don’t pay attention to him he’ll climb up on all the furniture and leap onto your chest. If Kippy wants attention, Kippy will get his damn attention. Thailand was more subdued and it took a large amount of adjustment on my part to understand the rules of this new place. Crap sellers in Thailand wouldn’t bombard you with, “100 rupees madam! ONLY 100 RUPEES MADAM!” Instead, they would hold up a dejected t-shirt, stick out their lower lip and form a pathetic puppy face, and whine, “Fiiiiiiie baaaaht pwweeeease? Beautiful eyes! Fiiiiiie baaaht.” When haggling with them, you didn’t shout or storm away or insult their products, you calmly and politely stated a lower price and shook your calmly when their price was still too high.

It was, as I’ve said, a totally different world, and I can’t say I didn’t struggle into this new, sudden adjustment, or with the views of my other group members, to whom, after India, I had far more trouble relating. We spent a day wandering around a boring town and skimming along a long river in long boats, ate dinner in a floating restaurant, and then fell asleep to the disharmonious croning of an overeager Asian karaoke participant.

The next morning we dove into beautiful waterfalls where fish nibbled our feet, zoomed around in tuk tuks spray painted with colorful graffiti, explored the ruins of a local temple, and banged a gongy thing at Buddhist spiritual center. That night we boarded what was for me the millionth night train of my life and once again, I found everything I believed in challenged by another culture. I sat in my the bed reading a book when I noticed the kiwi guy, Mark, on my trip pull out a Kit Kat bar. I eyed it hungrily and when he noticed me staring, he laughed.

“What are you eating?” I asked, knowing full well what it was.

“A Kit Kat,” he said. “Do you have those in America?” I stared at him in disbelief. Was he kidding?

“I think they are American,” I said, properly indignant.

“No they’re not,” Mark said.

“Yes they are.”

“No they’re not.”

I flashed him a pouty look, narrowed my eyes and turned my back to him.

“Yes they are,” I said to my book and then promptly fell asleep.

I did not, however, sleep very long. See, this is how the sleeper trains in Thailand are structured. They’re really just one long car, one lower bunk and one higher bunk on each side. A long row of lights stretches the entire length of the car and remains switched on the entire night. Each bunk has their own curtain that they can pull across the length of their bunk to block out the light. Problem is, the curtain on the top bunk doesn’t quite reach the ceiling, meaning that it’s entirely useless, that the top bunk is flooded with light, and that by the time the train waitresses walked briskly down the rows with pails of food shouting, “Bleakfast! Bleakfast!” I hadn’t caught one wink of sleep.

Nevermind, we had awoken in one of the coolest cities I was ever to see in Southeast Asia, a buzzing, touristy city called Chiang Mai, and I was soon prodded out of my fatigue and into the hum of the city. During the day we toured my temples and yada yada yada, but the real highlight came out night. We piled into tuk tuks and followed our guide to a dingy boxing ring, grabbing ourselves a few beers along the way and settling into plastic chairs to watch the action- muy thai boxing. Basically, muy thai boxing consists of skinny young guys kicking the crap out of each other and man, did they kick the crap out of each other. The guys really got into it and shouted and bet and then bet and shouted some more. All in all it was a good time and we left the event feeling as if we had been the ones kicking the crap out skinny boxers.

I went to bed particularly excited for the next day, when we would temporarily leave Chiang Mai behind and trek out into the woods to meet the Karen hilltribe. In the Gecko tour company trip notes, they had written an extensive description of the various different hilltribes and their strange customs. I had grown particularly excited when I read about one tribe and their giant swing festival. Apparently, the people of the hilltribes really like to swing. Unfortunately, swings in southeast Asia are few and far between, so that the swings that do exist are treated as holy objects. The swings can be used once a year, and then only by the elders, the most important elders first. What if we arrived at the hilltribe during the swing festival? I could just picture the scene: the people of the hilltribe, gathered eagerly round the swing, two elders bashing each other with sticks in their separate bids to obtain the swing before the others.

“Hey, duuuuude! I’m the eldest elder! Mom says I get to swing first!”

“Nuh-uh! I was born two minutes and nine seconds before you, I get to swing first!”

“Liar liar pants on fire!”

“Peter Peter pumpkin eater!”

“He who smelt it dealt it!”

“He who denied it supplied it!”

“I know you are but what am I!”

“Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me!”

“YOU ARE A STUPID POOPYHEAD GIGANTIC TURD!”

“Whatever you say bounces of me and sticks to you like glue!”

I was psyched, despite the fact that our guide said the tribe we were visiting didn’t participate in the swing festival, and besides that, it wasn’t the right time of year. Who knew, maybe they’d find a swing for their honored guests and I could have a push on the swing! A girl could dream.

Early the next morning, we began our trek out to the hilltribes and really, it was a disaster from the beginning. I don’t know if you’ve ever trekked in the backwoods of Thailand, but to quote the eloquent boys of South Park, that place is hot as balls. We had to hike three and a half hours in the blistering heat, half of which was uphill, before we finally arrived in the village only to bebombarded by people sellng the same crap we’d seen all throughout Thailand, screaming at us, “Hallo! Hallo! Halllloooooo? Fie baht! Just fie baaaaaaaht! Pweeeeease? Bootiful eeeeyes!” They were everywhere. Sure, it might sound cool: “Yeah, see ya later, I’m headed off to meet and greet the hilltribes”, but do you know what the hilltribes are? A bunch of people holed up in crappy stalls trying to coerce you into giving them money. It was crap. The only thing that redeemed the whole night was watching Stuart, yet another big Australian manly man, playing soccer with the some local tribe kids and dancing around with the local school girls who sang traditional songs for us around a campfire. That was cool. That, however, was the only thing was cool.

That night, we spent the night on the hard floor of a thatched hut. That’s right, we slept on the hard floor of a thatched hut, the village farm animals scurrying around beneath the stilts of the house and picking at the floorboards. At first, it was admittedly intriguingly exotic, and I didn’t even really mind the hardness of our beds. After all, it was just one night of my life.

Then the roosters started. Now, I’d always heard that roosters crowed to announce the arrival of the sun, but if that’s a bi-law in the guide for global rooster conduct, the roosters of Southeast Asia stand in clear violation. Not only did these roosters begin crowing somewhere in the middle of the night, but they also engaged one another in extensive, meaningful conversation.

Rooster 1: COckledooodledooooOoOOOOOoOoOOO!
[Translation: Man, my ass itches!]

Rooster 2: CockledoodledoocockldeoodlledooCOCKLEDOODLEDOOOOOO!!!! [Duuuude TMI! TMI!]

Rooster 1: Cockldedoodledoodledoodledoodledooooo!
[What if it’s a worm?]

Rooster 2: CockledoodledooooooooOoooooooooooOoooooOOOO!
[Oh man my sister had one of those and it blew, dude! She had to go on antibiotics! I hate that shit! Totally unnatural man, it upset her digestion for weeks. She only shit out corn! Doctors are such a joke dude, I wouldn’t trust them with one claw.]

Rooster 1: CockledodoodododododododDODOOOOOOO!!!!
[Oh I totally know what you mean. That’s why I turned to scientology. Christ saves, man, I’m totally serious. I had this boil on my ass last year and then like I found this cross just sitting on the ground and I rubbed my boil against it- it was gone in a week!]

Rooster 2: CocklecocklecockledoodlDOO!
[No shit man! Get out of town! I’ve been rubbing the boil on my butt against a menorah for weeks and it only seems to get bigger!]

Rooster 1: CockledoodledoodledoodleDOO!
[That’s what I’m saying, Christ is where it’s at, dawg!]

Rooster 2: Cockledoogldeooooo!
[Idiot, I’m a rooster not a dog, dude.]

Rooster 1: Cockdledooooooodledoo!
[You are so uncool.]

Etc.

Every time I thought the goddamn roosters might be finished, oh no, there they go with another song about, I don’t know, a wart or something, and off they’d go, cockling and doooing and doodling until I lay there in bed, on the brink of insanity and seriously contemplating running outside to cockledoodledoo in the rooster’s ear and, just as it responded with its own cockledoodledoo, chopping its head off with an ax. Then I would dance in its blood and scream, “HOW DO YOU LIKE ME NOW, TOUGH GUY? How! Do! You! Like! Me! Now! And by the way you should get that itchy ass checked out, it could be an infection.”

Needless to say, I didn’t sleep much. Naturally, when the sun actually did begin to rise, the roosters had all fallen asleep. I slipped on my shoes and scurried through the morning mist to the shed that housed the holes in the ground that were the village’s pathetic excuse for squat toilets. I took a giant piss and emerged from the shed both happier and ten pounds lighter and began to skip back to the hut when I suddenly stopped short, having almost run smack dab into an extremely large and extremely hairy elephant butt.

Our morning rides had arrived.

Yessssss. All my life I had wanted to feed and ride an elephant (and by all my life, I mean since I saw someone riding an elephant in India), and now the chance had literally shown up on our doorstep. I eagerly bought a bunch of bananas and shoved them towards the elephant. Their trunks extended like powerful worms, and I giggled nervously as they sucked the bananas, peel and all, from between my fingers and into their digestive systems. It felt so weird!

When the rest of the group had awoken, I scrambled up the mounting stage onto an elephant with Stuart and just like that, we embarked on our elephant adventure!

About thirty seconds in, I realized that, like the hilltribe people, the elephants were bound to disappoint me. Okay, sure, it was cool actually getting to ride the elephant, and sitting high amidst the trees, a true part of the jungle. But then, the elephants started acting like, well, elephants, and all hell broke loose. Our elephant was amongst the more dutiful of the tribe and continually trudged forward, leaving a constant trail of shit behind him. Some of the other elephants, however were not so tame, and the elephant that was the most unruly happened to be marching right in front of us. This elephant seemed to constantly be hungry and, well, because he was a huge elephant, he could do whatever he wanted, which meant that about every five feet he stopped to pull down an entire tree onto its passengers heads. When he was finished munching, he promptly shit the entire snack out onto our elephant’s foot. Our elephant wasn’t the alpha male so he couldn’t do much about it except for occasionally “accidentally” spray about fifty gallons of pee in the direction of the alpha male elephant, but directing one’s urine stream when one lacks hands can be a trying task, and only a few lucky drops successfully reached their target. By the time we arrived at the landing stage, we smelled of elephant pee and feces and our backs ached from clinging to our awkward seats. The elephant ride, like the hilltribe people, had not lived up to expectation.

Thailand was definitely not India.

In an attempt to recover our spirits after the disastrous hilltribe visit (okay, only I thought it was disastrous, but I’d rather use “we”), several of us decided to attend one of the Thailand’s famed “Lady Boy” shows. Now, I’m not sure if you’ve ever heard of these things, but really, they’re basically pretty much like they sound. Boys who look very much like ladies prance about on stage in ornate costumes to booming “world” music and all you can really say is, “Yup, dem boys sure looks a lot like ladies.” And it’s true, they really do. First the lady boys emerge with a swirl of colors, dressed in Las Vegas showgirl-esque costumes. Then they proceed to attempt poor imitations and stereotypes of every worldwide culture you can possibly fathom. I’ve never seen Asians stereotyping other Asians, but the Thai lady boys sure gave it to the Chinese, sending out their two ugliest, fattest dancer with eyes painted in squinty lines to gyrate gaudily on male audience members to a Chinese tune. After that, the show moved on to Cuba, with the lady boys emerging in flared skirts, snapping their fingers elegantly and proclaiming softly, “Welcome to Havana.” Then we moved to 1950s America, where a sassy lady boy pranced around the stage, shook his/her booty and nodded her head back and forth elegantly.

What the hell was wrong with Thailand?

The only thing about Thailand that I really loved was the food. It was simply phenomenal and I seriously considered hiring a Thai chef to follow me around for the duration of my travels. It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that when our guide suggested we take a cooking class, I jumped at the opportunity. Before long, I was stuffing my face with food and not long after that. I toddled out of the class full and fifty pounds heavier. It was fantastic.

That night, we boarded a night train back to Bangkok and waited patiently inside the car for the trip to begin. The car was absolutely roasting, so I asked our guide if perhaps we could turn on either the air conditioning or the fan. He shook his head apologetically and said that he was sorry and but they couldn’t do that.

“Why not?” I asked in response.

“Because to use the fans we need the engine.”

“Right….” I said. “Can we not use the engine?”

“No, it is broken.” I stared at him, trying to discern some humor in his statement. There was none.

“Are they like… going to fix it?” I asked. The guide shrugged.

“They will try.”

Right. A good start to fantastic fourteen hour trip.

Fortunately the train did indeed start and we were soon well on our way, playing cards on the seats and even bopping down to the bizarre bar train car, where pumping western music played to the flashing of fluorescent disco lights. We guzzled beer and watched Thailand stream past our windows.

Once we had finished our beers, we began to hash out who got what beds, and by that I mean that all the girlfriends, who had endured sleepless nights on the top bunks of the first train, pandered to their boyfriends and once again took the top bunk. That shouldn’t effect me since I wasn’t on this tour with a boyfriend (well, beside all the imaginary ones I invented to ward off unwanted sexual attention), right? Wrong. The only other single on the trip was Stuart, who, as I said, was a big manly man Australian and who was less than excited at the prospect of cramming himself into the much smaller top bunk (thus the reason why I took the top bunk the first time). But I really didn’t want to sleep on the top bunk again.

“So,” Stuart said with a mischievous smile. “Who’s going to get the bottom bunk?”

My eyes darted around nervously, avoiding eye contact. “Uuuuuum I don’t know, Stuart,” I said politely. “Perhaps we shall see later?”

“Okay,” he said, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. “Gee, that top bunk sure looks narrow, wouldn’t you say Leah?”

“Why yes, Stuart,” I readily agreed. “It sure does!”

We nodded at each other politely, both of us wanting the same thing but neither of us prepared to come out and say it. Little did Stuart know that I wasn’t about to give up the bottom bunk. He wasn’t my boyfriend, and even if he was, I still wouldn’t have given it up to him. Hell, the only person I would give that bunk up to would perhaps be my crippled measle-ridden son who was so mentally and physically paralyzed he wouldn’t have even been able to claw his way up that goddamn ladder and into the top bunk. And even then, I’d bitch about it.

Stuart didn’t know what he was up against. When he turned his back, I slipped into the bed and closed the curtain. Mature, I know, but when push came to shove, I took the bottom bunk.

We sat quietly on the train for awhile, listening to the rhythmic turning of the train wheels until our guide looked up suddenly from the passenger sheet he was reading and fixed me with a nervous stare.

“The French are coming!” he exclaimed with great trepidation. Apparently, an enormous group of French tourists had booked out five train cars, and our just happened to be one of them. At first I tried to defend the French from the bombardment of criticism that spewed from my fellow group members’ mouths. The French were loud, the French were rude. But then the French piled en masse onto the train and what did they go and do? Be loud and rude. They filed onto the train, one by one, tourist after tourist all in the 45 to 75 age range. And MAN were they drunk. And MAN were they loud. And MAN were they rude. Before the train even pulled away, they sat around maing loud jokes and laughing smokers laughs- HUH HUH HUH HUHHHHH!

From time to time a 65 year old would down a shot, teeter past us making rude comments about our various appendages, and then engage his Frenchie pals in drinking songs. When ten o’clock finally rolled around, the train conductor walked around the train shushing the Frenchies, who would subsequently shut their traps until the conductor turned away, at which point they erupted with laughter like reprimanded school children. They were ridiculous. In the end, it didn’t even matter that I had the bottom bunk. I had French people instead. Great.

Anyway, the next day I bid my group goodbye and wandered around Bangkok on my own, enraptured with the idea of a true Asian metropolis. It was basically a mix of NYC and Delhi. Like NYC, it has towering sky scrapers, speeding honking cars and homeless people shooting heroin on the street, but like Delhi there are poor people everywhere, distinctly Asian markets crowding the streets, and out of control rickshaws calling out for passengers. Even more bizarre was the large mall outside of my hotel. On the outside it looks like a modern American mall, but on the inside it was packed and crammed like an Asian market, a million different products in a very small amount of space. A fusion of East and West.

For the next few days I holed up in my room, ate Thai food, watched HBO and even went for a very illuminating, limb-bending Thai massage (you wouldn’t think putting your limbs in those directions and having a Thai women stick her knees into your back would feel good, but it sure does!). It was fantastic.

After a few days indulgence, I checked out of the hotel, dragged my bags to the street corner, and opened the door of a taxi.

“Will you use the meter?” I screamed, the sweat dripping down the brow.

“Yes! Yes!” he screamed back eagerly. I threw my bags into the back and we pulled out into the thick Bangkok traffic. It was the most talkative taxi ride I would ever have. I seemed to have chosen the friendliest Thai man to have ever existed. Between my non-existent knowledge of Thai and his broken English, conversation was a chore, but he didn’t seem to mind. I politely asked him how he had learned English, and he reacted by jamming a tape into the player.

“I listen to tape every day!” he said and turned up the volume so I could better hear. I had heard English to foreign language tapes before, but this wasn’t any translation tape, this was Thai to “dodgy taxi driver English.” It went something like this.

[Thai words followed by an insistent female English voice]: This is the wrong way. Let me out.

[Thai words and a stern British male]: Turn the taxi around now.

[Thai and an old American woman]: That is not the fare we agreed upon. Turn the meter on.

And finally: Let me out of the vehicle NOW!

The man let out a hearty laugh at each translation and nodded to me.

“Good?” he wanted to know. “Good? The English is good?”

“Um, yes,” I said and wondered how close we were to the airport. It was, to say the least, disconcerting.

When we finally reached the airport, I waved Bangkok goodbye. Don’t get me wrong. Thailand was fun, the food was amazing, the night markets were a blast and the Thai people were incredibly kind (if a bit scary when it came to taxi cabs). But I was ready to move on, and I’m sure you are too after all this reading. So let’s go.



Chapter Five: Vietnam: The Land of a Billion Motorbikes and My Poor Worn-Out Tuchas

Hanoi. I landed in Hanoi sometime after dark, loaded into my transfer and made my way to the city center. What was to ensue was like a tame version of my first Delhi moment. Once again, I was surrounded by poverty, but in a form that differed from both Delhi and Bangkok. The poverty and Bangkok was like an Asian version of poverty home. Drug addicts and home people dotted the streets, but to me, Bangkok was more about sin. Despite Thailand’s extreme punishments for only mid-level crimes (e.g. automatic death penalty for drug smuggling), if you want engage in a sinful activity in Bangkok, you only need walk two steps down the street and an opportunity is prostrating itself to you. Everything in Bangkok is for sale, from drugs to strippers to really, anything you could imagine. As a result, both Bangkok and a fair amount of Thailand are filled with ugly, pathetic, pale white western men strutting down the street with gorgeous giggling Thai women. These are men who just couldn’t cut it with western women so they traveled to Thailand and bought desperate Thai women to act as their girlfriend or wife either permanently for a weekend. Like I said, everything in Thailand is for sale, capitalism at its sickest. Thus, the poverty in Thailand was more like corruption within vast amounts of wealth, and survival of the fittest in a distinctly capitalistic style.

Hanoi was entirely different. The poverty in Hanoi was much more like poverty in Delhi. It’s hard to communicate why this poverty made me less uncomfortable, but it did. The poverty both in India and in Vietnam seemed more real. There weren’t any tall buildings towering over the poverty below it as a painful reminder of who were the haves and who were the have nots. Rather, there was just dirt and dust and activity. For whatever reason, it felt better to me, even though the people were probably worse off. As a result, my reaction was filled less with disgust than with compassion.

In that way, Hanoi was like a Vietnamese version of Delhi. It reminded me of Delhi in so many ways, yet it looked and felt distinctly southeast Asian. Thanks to the French colonists, the streets stretch long and wide through the city, crisscrossed with narrow Asian streets crammed between buildings and bursting with products placed on blankets spread on the ground- lights, toys, tools, books, vegetables, fruits, meat, bread, the flies and dirt mixing with it all. The same products are sold on the broader boulevards but are instead separated into tiny shops all selling separate single products. One shop sells oranges, one shop sells apples, one shop sells lanterns and so on. Motorbikes speed through the streets, women in conical straw hats with baskets balanced on the either end of a stick (the baskets filled with everything from produce to fans to an old TV) push their way haphazardly through the crowd, and gorgeous women in tight jeans and stilettos screech their motorbikes to a halt a teeter their way into a shop. Every corner holds something new, whether it’s a new shop or an old decaying French villa.

That’s just the side of the streets. The streets themselves are jam packed with motorbike upon motorbike upon motorbike, both in Hanoi and throughout Vietnam (Saigon is called the City of a Million Motorbikes, though the number is really more like three million). Thus, crossing the street takes a great deal of faith. There’s rarely a break in traffic, so one must do as the locals do: look both ways, ignore what you see, step out into the street and very slowly make your way across, whether or not fifty bikes are speeding directly at you. When you do this, something amazing happens. All the motorbikes deftly maneuver around you. Not once did I see someone hit. As long as you walk slowly enough not to surprise them but constantly enough for them to predict where your next step will be, they’ll go around. It’s a pretty amazing thing to watch, if heart attack inducing for the pedestrian.

Because the main mode of transport for locals is motorbike, there are few cars and no rickshaws for a tourist to hop into and speed around the city. Rather, the main mode of public transport seemed to be the back of some guy’s motorbike. Every time I ever stopped moving, a guy on a motorbike would appear from nowhere, smile broadly and call, “Motorbike? Motorbike?” (Eventually got so fed up with saying, “No, no thank you, no, no” that I started pretending we were playing a naming game and responded with, “Very good! See that? Electrical wire. House. Road. Person. Pole! Watch out! Pole! Oooooh, that’s gotta sting!).

I spent my first free day in Hanoi wandering around and taking it all in., stopping for some coffee at a local café with a random Vietnamese man, which was no small feat (or perhaps, a very small feat) given the size of the chairs at the “cafes” in most of Southeast Asia. From afar, these chairs look much like those tiny plastic chairs designed for kindergartners that used to dominate our young school lives. From close up, they looked exactly the same, because that’s exactly what they were. Indeed, most local restaurants throughout southeast Asia had chair and tables built for three year olds. It didn’t matter whether you were large or small, whether you were out buying a quick eat or were taking the family out for a special celebratory dinner, these were the chairs you would get. Thus, yet another obstacle was added to the sidewalks, tiny plastic chairs and tables filled with steaming hot food.

When I had finished chatting with Vietnamese locals from my tiny thrown, I attempted to read a book by the beautiful mini man made lake at the center of Hanoi. Such a task proved impossible given the large amount of attention I seemed to attract from local friendly Vietnamese men who didn’t care much for stories of Dirk, so I left my reading behind and headed towards a local pho shop for a quick bite (pho is vermicelli noodles in soup). I settled down on my uncomfortable stool and flipped through the menu. I had decided before coming to Asia that I would try to keep vegetarian since, well, do you remember my description of those “markets” by the side of the road where the meat sat on the ground and mixed with the dirt and the flies? For whatever reason, I just didn’t trust the meat. In India, keeping vegetarian had been a breeze since many Indians are vegetarian themselves. In Thailand, tofu was readily available as a replacement. As I opened the menu, I wondered if Vietnam would be the same. I scanned the menu and instantly knew my newfound vegetarianism would face a great threat in Vietnam. Every dish seemed to start with, “Beef with ___” and end in “with beef.” The closest thing to a vegetarian dish was “Chicken with ____ with chicken.” I called the waiter over and attempted to order the chicken pho with like… no chicken. Could I do that?

The waiter nodded vigorously and smiled. “Wegetarian?” he asked, knowingly.

“Yes,” I said. “Wegetarian.”

“No problem,” he said, and so of course when my dish arrived, it was stuffed with mounds of un-skinned chicken. Well, so much for vegetarianism.

Indeed, I was soon to learn that when one bikes a million miles a day through Vietnam and is subsequently racked with hunger pains about twenty four hours a day, one cannot be choosey. Within days I’d be scarfing down chicken, beef, and yes, even pork (though I felt guilty about it! I did! Just not so guilty that I didn’t eat it…).

After my meal I wandered some more through Hanoi and visited the very bizarre Hanoi Hilton (where John McCain was held as a POW). What, pray tell, was bizarre about the Hanoi Hilton (besides, of course, that the current socialist Vietnamese government continues to call it the Hanoi Hilton, despite the fact that it was given that name by sarcastic tortured American POWs in a fit of irony)? Mostly, it was the “historical” notes describing the different displays, notes that were for me a very eye-opening experience. You know that old adage, “history is written by the victors”? America is the most powerful country in the world and we have a lot of victories to fill our history books. Thus, when you grow up in America, you learn mostly about these victories and little about the defeats. Even though the Vietnam War was anything but an American victory, everything I learned was from the American perspective, whether it was Nixon’s propaganda or the testimony of a POW or memories of my parents, marching on Washington in protest and staging die-ins at local town meetings (ahem DAD ahem).

Walking through the Hanoi Hilton, I saw not just the Vietnamese perspective, but the perspective of the Vietnamese victors. In short, it was propaganda at its worst. According to the Vietnamese government, they really wished they hadn’t had to imprison American soldiers, but they really did their best to make them comfortable.

“Okay guys,” the Vietnamese government claimed to have said. “We like toooootally don’t want to imprison you but like, that’s what we have to do to protect ourselves, y’know? So like, we’re going to make this as comfortable as possible.”

I’m barely exaggerating. One poster sticks out in my mind, a poster that adorned the walls of camp and was shown to new POWs when admitted. The poster was written in English and painted the camps as a happy place where they could play games, eat the best food the Vietnamese government could provide and send home as many letters or parcels as they wanted. At the end of the poster it stated (I swear to God): “It may not be home, but it’s the best we can do!”

Right next to that poster was a picture of John McCain visiting the camps and looking grim with a caption simply stating that McCain had come back to visit the camps, stating nothing about his view of them. I looked at the propaganda poster, I looked at John McCain, and all I could think was, “Seriously? Seriously?” Ask John McCain if he really had all the food he wanted when Vietnam was starving, or if he was free to play games, or if he escaped torture. Somehow, I think he might disagree.

The experience, as I’ve said, was bizarre, the opportunity to see the other side’s propaganda. As an American liberal, I’ve become accustomed to criticizing both our government and our country but goddamn a lot of other places have it much worse.

That night I met my group and in some ways it was an instant click and in some ways they petrified me. On the one hand, the people were incredibly friendly, intelligent and equipped with good senses of humor. On the other hand, they were all in really good shape and, given that we were about to embark on a bike trip through Vietnam and that I hadn’t exercised since December, that made me nervous. Three members of the group (Deidre, Glen and Julie) had been training for several months; Peter was twelve feet tall and all muscle; and Clare was a triathlete.

And me, what was I? I was a silly out of shape backpacker who had thought “bike trip” meant “perhaps we’ll bike a few kilometers here and there just to appear like we’re doing some small form of physical activity”, not “let’s bike anywhere from fifty to one hundred five kilometers a day in the baking hot Vietnamese sun”.

Fuck.

Fortunately, though, we didn’t have to bike the first day, so I breathed a sigh of relief and further explored Hanoi with my fellow group members, trying to wrap my mind around this strange, socialist place. Our first stop for the day was Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum. Never had I seen so much security designed to protect a dead person. Before entering the museum, our bags were scanned and not only were our cameras confiscated, but so were our cell phones on the off chance that they contained a camera inside of them. Then we had to walk single file down the long expanse of sidewalk that lead up to the mausoleum, and if we opened our mouths or stepped out of line, one of several dozen guards would jostle us back into place and reprimand us in harsh Vietnamese tones. The line moved in a constant shuffle, the waiting people urged on by even more pissed off guards. When we finally arrived at the tomb, we were pushed through the entrance up the stairs, stopped about every five feet to have our bags searched, even though they’d already been x-rayed and searched about fifty times. We reached the tomb and there was Ho Chi Minh, lying like a plate of French fries underneath an oven light, waiting for a harried waitress to scoop him up and dump him on some sarcastic teenager’s table. Being Jewish and thus of a closed-casket tradition, seeing dead people lying cross-armed in a casket always kind of weirds me out (they’re so like… dead), but Ho Chi Minh was just ridiculous. How can one venerate a man when he looks like he’s about to be served for dinner?

Well, the Vietnamese guards certainly did respect their leader and continued to be very strict as we walked around the tombs. People who were walking to slowly were shoved onwards and then told by the next guard that they were walking too fast. One man in front of us had his hands in his pockets and an angry guard pulled them out and thrust them neatly to his side; the next guard angrily took hold of his hands and stuffed them back into his pockets. I felt like I was on a mausoleum conveyor belt, shoved onto one side and kicked out the other.

When we finished in the tomb, we embarked on a similar jaunt through Ho Chi Minh’s stilt house, a sight which all the school children of Vietnam (in their fast food restaurant hats and white uniforms) were currently sprinting through in a state of great excitement. By the time we reached the Buddhist pagoda at which Ho Chi Minh used to worship, Clare was parched so she purchased a bottle of water at a nearby stand. She gave the vendor her money and the vendor smiled and handed her two bananas. Clare and I looked at each other. Sweet, free food! That’s what happens when you’re as gorgeous as us! It was our lucky day!

Like proper greedy westerners, we shoved the bananas down our hatches and remarked on how perfectly ripe they were. Little did we notice a monk glaring at us. Jeez, what was his problem, hadn’t he ever seen white people eat before? Then I looked around and noticed something strange. Every vendor was handing out bananas to every customer, and each customer was then placing the fruit in a bowl by the Buddha.

“Oh crap,” I said to Clare. “I think those bananas are meant to be offerings for the great Buddha.”

Clare followed the direction of my stare and then looked back to me. We burst out laughing. Indeed, the bananas had been meant for a holy religious purpose, not for our stomachs. This is essentially the same as walking into a church, grabbing a fistful of holy wafers, stuffing them into your mouth, chewing loudly and proclaiming, “Gee, these Christ Crackers or somethin’ else!” We had seriously messed up.

We related the story to Deidre, feeling like horrible people. Deidre clicked her tongue.

“Aw,” she said. “You just fed your inner Buddhas, that’s all!”

Indeed, it was true. That night I fell asleep feeling guilty and dreading the next day. The biking was about to begin. What was I about to get myself into? Who was this crazy, in shape Leah who had booked an extensive bike tour so many months ago? What was wrong with her? I didn’t know, and I didn’t want to find out, but I didn’t have much of a choice.

And so, the next day we bused out of Hanoi and into the Vietnamese countryside where we mounted our bikes and headed out.

“Let’s hit the road, Yack!” our adorable chubby-cheeked tour guide, Phuoc, quipped cheerily.

At first, I was pleasantly surprised. It felt good both to be using my muscles again and to riding through such a beautiful, foreign setting, so good, in fact, that I had another one of those India moments, where time stood still and I was immobilized with emotion. I simply could not believe what I was doing, what I was seeing, what I was hearing. A deep thought dawned upon me.

“Whoa, I’m like biking through Vietnam… like… on a bike.”

And it was really true, I really was. From the rolling green hills and valleys of upstate New York to the jagged green mist-kissed hills of Vietnam. We rode past motorbikes, past tiny huts and women hanging washing, past farmers pushing ploughs strapped to water buffaloes, past a man cranking up his truck so that it would run again, past decaying French churches languishing in the Southeast Asian fog.

When we passed through villages, smiling excited children sprinted up dirt paths and over small streams to shout, “Hallo! Hallo!” and give us high fives (according to one of our local guides one of the first thing the children learn in schools is to say “hello” to all foreigners so that they think Vietnam is a friendly and welcoming place). Sometimes we would pass a driveway too quickly and a panicked child would come sprinting after us in a state of panic, desperate not to miss their chance, screaming in shrill voices,

“Hello? HULLO! HULLO! HUUUUUULLLOOOOO!!!!”

Men slowed their motorbikes to match our pace and gaped at every one of us, then turned back to the road, then back at us, then back to the road, then back to us, sometimes even pulling out flash digital cameras and snapping our pictures.

If we were amazed by Vietnam, Vietnam was amazed by us. Who were these crazy white people in strange outfits with the oddly shaped things on their heads, voluntarily biking on incredibly fancy bikes through their broken roads when they could easily afford to hire an air conditioned van and not peddle a single foot? If most of us caused wide-eyed fascination, Peter, the Giant Australian, induced first shock and then pandemonium. He would begin to pass several school girls riding bikes. They would look back at him quickly, thinking he was just another biker, and then do a double take, their mouths dropping open and their eyes widening. Peter would just grin, call, “Hullo” and bike on, leaving the wide eyed girls to giggle uncontrollably and point at his back, discussing the otherworldly sight that had just cycled past them in rapid and insistent tones. Peter didn’t help matters when he stood on his petals and stretched his arms outwards to stretch his back and rest his bum, speeding down a steep hill into the village. There he was, a Jolly Green Giant Jesus, greeting the poor Vietnamese masses. Give us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses. He was truly a sight to behold.

Before long, we all had to go to the bathroom, so we pulled into a gas station for a rest.

“Hey, Phuoc?” I called. “Bathroom!”

“Nooo!” Phuoc called with a mischievous grin and pointed to a shack with a hole in the floor. “Happy House!” This was our first introduction to happy houses. In Vietnam, euphemisms reign king, and so bathrooms are not called “shitty holes in the ground,” they’re called “happy houses.” At first I found this endearing. Then I saw the happy houses, and let me tell you, they’re not very happy places. Little did I know that in Vietnam, anything could be a happy area. In the following days we would relieve ourselves on happy bushes, happy trees, happy rice paddies, happy hay stacks, happy rocks, happy dirt piles and happy disintegrating home without a roof that may or may not still contain occupants. Hydration was a necessity in the oppressive Vietnamese heat, so at every possible stop, we found ourselves sprinting to the side of the road and eagerly happy-ing ourselves, all shame having flown right out the window. In that way, it was a very “happy” trip.

After that first happy pee in the gas station, we ate some fruit marveled both at Vietnam and at my own endurance. Even though I hadn’t exercised in months, I was holding up quite well. Perhaps I could hold up just fine!

The diagnosis was, shall we say, “premature”. So far the weather had been relatively cool and the road had been nice and flat. By the time we pulled out of the station, the sun had moved higher in the sky and we began to bike up the first of many “10% grade” hills, learning quickly that “10% grade” could mean either “barely an incline” or “Mt. Everest” (mostly the ladder). As the sun began to burn my skin and huffed and puffed my way up the largest mountain in the entire world, I started to feel like one of those soldiers in a Vietnam war movie, drenched in sweat, dying in the oppressive Vietnamese heat and humidity.

Within minutes, the entire group had pulled away. “Lovely!” proclaimed the English athlete as she sprinted past me. “Byoootiful!” cried the twelve-foot tall muscle man Australian. “Jesus. Fucking. Christ,” panted the out of shape American.

This was a new situation for me. For as long as I can remember, I’ve done sports, I’ve been in shape, I’ve jogged mile after countless mile. But not anymore. Travel had effectively killed what little remained of my former fit glory. For the first time I could ever recall, I was the last in the pack and felt like a tub of panting, out of shape lard. It was not a pleasant feeling.

By the time we hit lunch, I was shaking with hunger.

“Should we order another bowl of rice?” Phuoc wondered.

“YES!” I cried and stuffed a hunk of pork in my mouth, barely noticing as I nearly cracked a toothtooth on a bone. “YES!”

After lunch, I wanted nothing more than to throw my bike off one of those green jagged cliffs but alas, I didn’t feel like biking that far to get to one.

“Okay, Leah,” I tried to soothe myself. “You’re riding against an English tri-athlete and an Australian giant. You’re not going to keep up, so just go at your own pace and do as dad always said- ‘Slow and steady, young one. Slow and steady. You can do this.”

Indeed, that was the first moment in all of my travels that I felt home sick. Biking at home was always a father-daughter event. Dad and I would load onto our bikes early in the summer morning and head out into the beautiful upstate countryside. Together we would climb the hills, discuss world events and our personal lives, sing every Beatle song we could remember, and play, “Who can spot the most roadkill”. I wasn’t always happy to be puffing up a steep hill leading out of the valley, but I always had dad to encourage and distract me.

Now I was all alone, deadly tired, drenched in sweat and within minutes of collapsing from heat exhaustion, puffing my way through a mosquito-infested hell hole. I hated Vietnam and everything about it.

“How much longer, Phuoc?” I called after our leader as he sprinted past me.

“Oh,” he called back. “Just about hap an hour.”

Right. I was well versed in the Asian sense of time, and I knew that hap an hour would be far more like two and a hap. Uuunnngnnnnnnnghgghhgghhghh!

“Okay, Leah,” I said again, trying to soothe myself as I rounded a corner and faced yet another hill. “Dad’s not here, so you’re just going to have to pull yourself together.” Okay, okay, I could do that. Dad might be thousands of miles away, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t play spot the roadkill and sing Beatles songs on my own. Okay, okay, Beatles songs, what should I sing, what should I sing. Aha! I had it.

“Help! I need somebody. Help! Not just anybody. Heeeeeeeelp!”

Alright, maybe that wasn’t the best choice. What else could I sing?

“It’s been a haaaaard days night, and I been workiiing like a doooog. It’s been a haard days night. I should be sleeeeping like a loooog.”

Goddammit, that was no good either. These songs certainly weren’t helping me feel any better. Now I was not only along on a backwoods broken mosquito-infested Vietnamese road drenched in sweat and on the verge of a heart attack, I was singing to myself like a crazy person.

Come on, Leah, don’t give up. Push through, don’t be a pansy pull yourself together take one for the team man up don’t be a baby. No pain no gain! I would do this! I would pull through! I would… Then I saw the sag van.

Fuck this shit

I threw my bike at the driver and climbed into the bus. I was done for the day. All I wanted was a gigantic meal and a nice cool shower. That wouldn’t be so hard to find, right? Well, yes, perhaps if we hadn’t been staying in some crap ass guest house whose taps spewed out brown water and whose workers laid out buckets of still water for malaria infested mosquitoes to swarm around, then that dream might have been achievable. We were and it was not. I glared at the mosquito net strung over my bed, riddled with holes.

What the hell had I gotten myself into?

While everyone else laughed about the conditions and chatted about the days events, I stomped around the guesthouse in a vile mood. I was sick of biking I was sick of mosquitoes I was sick of the heat I was sick of the humidity I was sick of the road of traveling of strangers of bumpy roads of disgusting food of constantly being on guard and I WANTED A GODDAMN HOT SHOWER!

Well, maybe dinner would redeem the day. I glanced at the menu and eagerly order a bowl of noodles. It just so happens that I eat Vietnamese noodles all the time at home and that they’re one of my favorite foods. What could be better than a steaming hot bowl of vermicelli noodles? I waited for the food impatiently, my stomach growling angrily when it finally arrived. I looked down into my bowl and nearly began to cry. These were most definitely not vermicelli noodles. These were Ramen noodles. I hate Ramen.

We do not have a good history, Ramen and I. The last time I attempted to eat Ramen was when I was about seven years old and was home from school with a stomach bug. I listened to my dad boiling the noodles in the kitchen and examined a holographic bookmark on his desk, twisting it back and forth, my eyes blurring in confusion and my lower intestine threatening to thrust itself permanently upwards. I could smell the Ramen approaching completion and felt the bile rising in the throat.

“Leah, lunch,” Dad said in that gentle way you talk to a sick kid and placed the noodles in front of me. I examined the bowl in horror. Brains, yellow stringy shredded brains sitting in yellow steaming pee. I puked on the floor.

I was not having a very good day. I pushed the noodles aside, stole food from other people’s plates and moodily dismissed myself from the table. I soaked my body in 80% DEET, crawled underneath my tangled mosquito net and fell into an angry sleep.

I awoke to Kylie Minogue’s pounding disco beats blaring from a white van parked beneath our window. That’s right, Kylie Minogue, a white van, and the thick Vietnamese jungle. I didn’t understand it either.

My vile mood had not lifted. In fact, the mood seemed to worsen the moment I climbed on the bike and realized that my tush was so tender, I could barely sit on the seat. As I bumped along the first ten feet of broken road, I came to the conclusion that I had seriously damaged my tail bone. With every pedal turned, my butt cried out in pain, “Oy gevolt!”

“How ya doin’?” Peter asked, noticing my grimace.

“Oh, not bad,” I quipped. “Except for the fact that my butt feels as if its been jackhammered.” I continued on to tell Peter how seriously I was considering having my entire butt removed and replaced with gel implants. Peter grinned and answered,

“That could probably be said a little more delicately.”

I shook my head adamantly and explained, “I’m not kidding, and I’m not exaggerating. I want someone to peel back my entire buttocks, chop it right off and replace it with gel implants.” Imagine that! Gel cushion butt! Then when my bike slammed against a road of countless bumps, my glorious newfound invincible butt would shout triumphantly, “How do ya like me now, ill-maintained roads that can be accredited to a crumbling impoverished communist third would infrastructure? HOW DO YOU LIKEMENOW?”

The only way I would enjoy today would be if the heat lifted and if the entire ride was downhill.

Fortunately, it was. Suddenly, like was good again and Vietnam had gone back to being an intriguing place, one I was eager to explore. Before long, I felt my attitudes changing. Okay, I could do this. I’d go my own speed, I’d do my own thing, I’d make this work for me. My mood was lifting and my mind was re-opening. I pushed on and much to my surprise, I was able to keep up. In just one day, my body had started to adjust, truly a testament to a young body. I soon earned the appropriate nickname, “Young Legs”, and it would stick me throughout the remainder of the trip.

That’s not to say, however, that the task wasn’t still a trying one. By the time we reached our lunch spot, I was desperate for food and could feel the blood rushing from my head.

“Phuoc,” I said sternly, realizing I was on the brink of collapse. “I need sugar now.”

“Okay, Leah,” Phuoc said with a smile. “We will see the temple first and then lunch is in an hour.”

“No,” I said, taking one step closer to unconsciousness. “I need it now.’

“But truck is far away,” Phuoc explained.

“I need sugar now.” Phuoc finally understood what was going on and bought me bananas from the side of the road. Satisfied, I quickly forgot my panic, went off to explore the temple and rejoined the group as they sat gathered around a table in a local restaurant chewing stalks of a strange plant.

“What’s that?” I asked, and just as I did, Phuoc shot around what he would call the “lep” corner of the restaurant with an entire plant for me.

“Sugar cane!” he cried and shoved the plant in my direction. “I got you sugar!” In his other hand Phuoc held up a bag of sugar packets. “And some for the road!” Phuoc was officially my favorite tour leader.

When we had finished lunch, we cycled off to another town, ate dinner, and headed to the train station where we would board a night train to Hue. I sat in the train lobby eating biscuits, watching both little Vietnamese boys play soccer with a makeshift ball of rubbish and beautiful contestants battle try to out do each other’s vocal performances on Vietnam idol. When the train arrived, we climbed into our beds and drifted into a very light sleep on dirty sheets.

What happened in the morning requires a backstory.

When I was in eighth grade, we were allowed to choose a popular modern song to sing for our choir concert, which in reality meant that the popular kids chose a song and then hocked us lower caste beings until we agreed to the song. After all, what choice did we have? We could pander to the popular kids or face weeks of relegation to the nerd table at lunch time. The song the popular kids picked was a rousing version of R. Kelley’s “I Believe I Can Fly”. The choir master, a constantly stressed out woman named Mrs. Belknap, approved of its positive message and inspirational tone (this was long before R. Kelley would alter his target venue from middle school dances where awkward twelve year olds left sweaty handprints on bony adolescent shoulders and avoided eye contact with the pimpled owners of those shoulders, to perverted old men who like to urinate on such aforementioned children, whom I dare say Mrs. Belknap wouldn’t have given her “Soprano Star of Approval”).

The outcome was a halfhearted version of the song, with the popular kids singing with all their fast crowd might and the rest of us singing as if we weren’t quite sure we really did believe we could fly after all. Little did I know at that young, naïve age, when life didn’t seem to extend further than the claustrophobic social walls of Boynton Middle School, that in exactly one decade I was to be thrust from a semi-sleeping state on a train barreling through the Vietnamese countryside to the soulful croon of R. Kelley and his beliefs on flying.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. The Vietnamese government believes that every person across the country should show their solidarity with the farmers by waking with them. Subsequently, the streets and train cars of Vietnam our littered with large hanging loudspeakers, which begin blaring the farming news around five AM and then moves into modern Asian and Western music around 5:30. This morning, the repertoire included R. Kelley, Faith Hill’s “How Do I Breathe Without You (I Want to Know), and who can forget Celine Dion’s classic, “Near! Far! Whereeeeeeever you are!” We attempted to turn the loudspeakers off, but the only switch turned the noise louder.

Sometimes I wish we’d won the war.

The next few days were a blur of sleepless activity. We climbed on the Citadel in Hue, walked through the bustling markets of the idyllic beach town Hoi An, fitted ourselves were cheaply made clothes at the Hoi An tailors, and learned how to cook Vietnamese food in a roofless restaurant, the full moon illuminating our table and tiny geckos scurrying around the yellow walls. These few days of rest were most definitely a travel high. What was to follow would be yet another travel low.

Our last day in Hoi we visited an orphanage for children severely disfigured by the legacy of agent orange. The orphanage was overflowing with kids missing limbs, twins who were conjoined, toddlers with heads that were either far too large or far too small, kids who were severely mentally handicapped, and toddlers whose bones were so malformed, they jugged out of their bodies at weird angles, making it impossible for them to do much more than squirm and cry out in pain. Here these kids were, three generations on from the war, yet still the genetic mutations were being passed on. Unlike the orphanage in India, the kids were too disabled for us to play with them. While we did bring them rice, I felt like I was being exploitative, like we had paid our fifty cents and now could view the freak show. I left the orphanage with that western guilt pressing down on my heart and trudged back to the hotel.

As we cycled on the next day, my guilt only worsened. The further we head towards the regions where the war was fought, the less dense the trees became. Apparently, the government has had to ban tree growth because once trees reach their full height, they produce fruit which the locals will pick and eat, and the agent orange will spread even further. Worst of all was when we cycled past the road that lead to My Lai and were retold the story of the massacre.

That, combined with the oppressive heat and my complete exhaustion, made for some very depressing moments and real travel lows and naturally re-sparked my anger about the Iraq War. I wasn’t around for the Vietnam War, so seeing these things didn’t reopen a healed wound, it only put salt in the current gash that is the violence in Iraq. As I cycled through down the roads of a war torn country, I knew that thousands of miles away the same atrocities were happening all over again, such is the nature of war. And why? What for? I had always been angry about the Iraq War, but cycling through Vietnam and sorting through the remnants of a scarred history only enraged me.

On top of that, I still wasn’t feeling great about my performance on the bike. Sure, I could marginally keep up, but I still felt like a Homer Simpson. I needed a chance to prove to myself that I could put my mind over my body, that I could set myself a physical challenge, push through and attain it. I needed a venue, an opportunity to prove myself.

Finally, that chance came. My muscles felt good after a rest day in Hoi An, so as we biked away from the city, I happily whistled tunes and watched the Vietnamese countryside whiz past me. Everyone biked happily until lunch time, at which point Clare came down with heat exhaustion and was relegated to the bus. At that point, we only had 25 k left and though it was hot, I was still feeling good and I determined that today would be my day. We shot down the first hill and as always, the group shot far ahead me (I take hills slowly, both up and down). At the bottom of the hill, the road climbed straight back up again and so I once again channeled my father’s Yoda-like voice and told myself, “Slow and steady young grasshopper, slow and steady.” As the hills increased in number, more riders dropped out, but I pumped on. Since I was the last biker in the group the sag truck followed me closely, and with every loud tug of its engine, I thought, “Ha! I’m NOT going in YOU!”

When I came to the bottom of one of the many hills, Peter, Glenn and our local guide, a guy nicknamed “Tiger” waited for me.

“We’re stopping,” Peter said. “That’s enough for us.”

I frowned. This was supposed to be my chance! “Do I have to stop?” I asked, clearly disappointed. Peter grinned.

“Leah,” he said. “It’s all yours.”

And so with that, Tiger and I pushed off, the lone riders. What was to follow would be the toughest 10K I would ride on the entire tour. Hills up, hills down, inescapable heat. But I cycled on, determined to prove to myself that I could do this. In a way, for me it was a moment of life affirmation. Vietnam might be overflowing with poverty, disfigured children and the legacies of pointless war, and I might be out of shape and miserable in the Vietnamese heat, but today, I would climb these hills, I would push through the heat and conquer that 10K, I would prove something to myself and overcome one small adversity.

I would do this.

I cycled on and was brilliantly rewarded for my efforts. The road wound through dusty little villages, where kids ran down dirt roads just to bid me hallo and slap outstretched hand. These villages, however, were just brief oases within a thick jungle. Blankets of green stretched along steep hills rolling outward in every direction for miles to come. The only sounds were that of our bike gears turning, the pumping of my heart, the steady rubbing of bike tires against chipped pavement, and the siren calls of the jungle cicadas, screeching some secret but urgent message out over the thick tree tops. With each hill I urged myself on. One more hill, one more hill, slow and steady, slow and steady, and so I took each hill just like that, one stroke at a time. Every time I reached a hill crest, I had triumphed.

Finally, I reached the last 2K and was rewarded with a steep downhill. As I sped down the hill, gulping down water, I came round a twist in the road and was suddenly bathed in the most beautiful golden red sunlight, cast down from a thick sun, dipping down over the green, lush hills. There was my India moment, packaged together in a thrilling combination of sense. The green trees, the red and yellow sun, the black road baked golden; the all-encompassing sounds of the jungle, of the cicadas, the monkeys, the whirring flying insects; the rhythm of my heart, the intake and exhale of my breath; the sound of my bike, speeding down a country road.

Oh for god’s sake, the pure and simple fact that I was speeding through the Vietnamese jungle at sunset with a man named Tiger by my side! It was ecstasy, pure and simple, and as I looked up at the sun, dipping lower over the jagged hills, I choked back tears.

This is why I travel.

When I finally reached the end of my trek, Peter shouted, “Young legs wins the race!” and the others congratulated me on my efforts. I wasn’t sure what that last 10K had accomplished but to me, it was the world. I climbed onto the bus, gulped down an apple and smiled at the few remaining rays of the setting sun.

Ecstasy.

That night, all I wanted to do was collapse in a nice clean bed and sleep until the end of time, but luck wasn’t on my side. Before we arrived in the town we were to sleep in, Phuoc warned us that it was “strange”. How so, he couldn’t say, but from the moment we pulled into the hotel, the atmosphere immediately seemed a bit off. We took our nightly showers in our mosquito-filled rooms and then rode the elevator in an adjoining hotel to a rooftop restaurant blaring karaoke. Great, yet another stronghold of Vietnamese people obsessed with karaoke. We settled into our chairs and flipped through our menus.

“Can I have the steak and chips?” Deidre asked.

“We no have, sorry,” the waiter said apologetically.

“Okay, can I have the spaghetti?” she tried again.

“We no have, we sorry,” the waiter said apologetically.

“Fine,” Diedre said through gritted teeth. “I’ll have the chicken fried rice and a glass of Sprite. Do you have that?”

The water shook his head. “No Sprite.”

“Just… bring me orange juice.” The waiter nodded and marched to the kitchen to put in our orders. As we waited for our food, the staff turned the volume up on the loudspeakers, likely thinking, “Hey, westerners! They’ll like crappy pop western music!” We tried to make conversation over the crooning din of Celine Dion’s mourning, but alas, such a feat was nearly impossible. The meal took ages to arrive and while I’m happy to report mine was fantastic, poor Deidre’s was rather strange. There, sitting in front of her, was a gigantic mound of plain white rice and on top of it was perched an entire fried chicken. I kid you not.

I asked Deidre what she had ordered.

“Chicken fried rice,” she said, a bit perplexed. Well, she certainly had gotten a meal that fit all those words- fried, chicken and rice- they were just arranged in the wrong order. Whoops. I asked Diedre if at least the orange juice was good. It was not. It was heated. They had served orange juice as if it was tea. This was a very odd restaurant indeed.

After what was for me a delicious meal but for everyone else a very strange night, we all retired to our rooms. I was particularly exhausted after the long triumphant bike ride and desired nothing more than a long sleep in a comfortable clean bed. First, though, Clare and I would have to rid our room of mosquitoes. We leapt around the room in a frenzy, slapping and clapping, and soon our room was decorated with smears of blood and dead mosquitoes.

Ah, finally, I could relax.

I slipped into bed, turned on my side, closed my eyes, and then twitched about in fright. Something had just scurried over my leg. Omigod omigod what had just SCURRIED OVER MY LEG?

That’s when I noticed a freakish spider clinging to my thigh.

AHHHHHHH!

I leapt about the room, trying to rid myself of the spider and eventually managed to crush the life out of it with a magazine. I was, however, scarred by the incident and had much difficulty falling asleep, convinced that spidery creatures were crawling all over me and twitching about in my bed to get ride of them.

I finally slipped into a deep sleep, only to be rudely awakened by the ringing of the phone. Those of you who have lived with me that when I am startled awake from sleep, I lose all semblance of protocol and manners and basically reduce to the nastiest person in the world. This time was no exception. I emitted a monstrous groan.

UuuuuUUUUUUuuUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNNNNNGGgggggghhhhh!

I scooped up the phone and screamed into it,

“HELLO!”

No answer. Goddamn kids and their goddamn prank calls. I slammed the phone back into the cradle and rolled over. The phone rang again.

UUUuuuuuuuUUUUnnnnNNNnnnnnNNNGGGGGGGGGGGggggHHHH!!!!

I flipped over angrily, thrust the receiver somewhere in the general direction of my ear and repeated,

“HELLO!”

No answer. GODDAMMIT! That was the final straw! I hung up the phone, picked it back up and dialed what I thought was zero, though, given that my eyes were barely open, it really could have been any number. A timid polite woman answered in Vietnamese.

“Is this reception?” I seethed. The woman fumbled for an answer in English and I lost it. “IS THIS RECEPTION?!” I screamed into the mouthpiece.

“I…um… I don’t know… understand,” she answered, sounding as if she was on the brink of tears. I sighed loudly.

“RE. CEPT. TION! IS THIS RECEPTION?” No answer, just the jostling of the phone as she handed the phone to a man.

“Hello?” he said.

“HELLO!” I shouted back, unable to control the volume of my voice. “IS THIS RECEPTION?”

The man’s answer was as timid and bewildered as the woman’s. “I don’t… understand.”

My mind raced for an answer. How could they not realize they were receptionists? Goddamn Vietnamese! This was pointless. I needed to end this conversation and I needed to end it fast.

“THANK YOU!” I shouted into the phone and slammed it back into the cradle. I flipped over and fell immediately back into a deep sleep. We didn’t receive anymore calls after that.

The next day we cycled away from that horrible place of horrors and out to a tribal village. After the experience in Vietnam, I was absolutely dreading the visit and wondered if bicycle tools could be used as mini rooster guillotines. Fortunately, the village was a pleasant surprise. Unlike the village in Vietnam, the people in this one completely ignored you. As a result, we were able to peer into stilt longhouses and wander quietly around the village. After a beer at the local general store, I walked down to the lake at the end of the village’s one road. A local woman unloaded goods from a recently docked long boat; a nursing female dog waded through the water, searching for fish; a young boy awkwardly maneuvered a rusty old bike that was ten sizes to big for him across the dirt path that ran along the lake and a flock of young kids dug sticks into the ground until they managed a crude imitation of a soccer goal.

Once again, the town reminded me of India- a place filled with a million different creatures doing a million different things, though in this village the numbers were closer to the dozens rather than the millions. Watching the animals added a whole other layer of life to the scene. Cows chewed grass and contemplated life from underneath the floorboards of stilt houses; one group of puppies wrestled on the hard dusty ground; a piglet prostrated itself in front of another group of puppies and offered himself up for ear cleaning; more piglets scrounged through piles of rubbish and chased after their annoyed mother for a suck of milk. And of course, when it all got out of control, an angry rooster chased after various groups of animals and restored order with his overpowering cockledoodledoos.

At this point, I was an expert in tribal village life, so I slept quite well on my hard bed. The others were not so lucky and awoke with expressions that very much echoed mine after the hilltribe visit in Thailand. We sipped warm cups of tea, watching an elephant march down the street and off to the fields, gathered up our belongings and once again, hit the road, Yack

Over the course of the next few days, I would seriously scrape up my leg when falling off my bike in a roundabout, float on the beautiful blue oceans near the French Riviera of Southeast Asia (Nha Trang), consume massive quantities of food, explore “Little Paris”, a city called Dalat and bursting with French influence (it even had a mini-Eiffel Tower), and explore a strange but interesting tree house.

After a day exploring Dalat, Phuoc ushered us into an extremely fancy restaurant. Tonight, we would eat like kings! Now, it must be said, in my travels throughout Asia, I had begun to notice something about rich Asians- they truly liked to be treated like kings. In places filled with such dire poverty, the rich truly want to be shown the royal treatment and when relatively “rich” westerners like us visit these regions, we are treated in the same manner as the region’s wealthiest people. As a result, when we stepped into stores, we would immediately found ourselves tailed by an overeager Asian woman, following us from distance of about two inches and knocking our hands away whenever we tried to pick up objects of interests so that she could show it to us.

This does not sit well with westerns, especially not strong independent western women who can do things for themselves, thank you very much. If there were ever a clashing of western and eastern service ideals, it was in this fancy restaurant. First, we attempted to sit at our table but were made to sit one by one so that three busy waitresses could pull back our chairs for us. Then, when we attempted to place our ornately folded napkins in our laps, the waitresses knocked our hands out of our way and folded our napkins elaborately into position. Every two people was assigned a waitress, who nervously jotted down our orders and served us our food, and when I say served us our food, I mean that when I reached my hand out to scoop rice from my rice bowl onto my plate, the waitress leapt from the corner, knocked my hand out of the way and insisted on scooping my rice for me.

It was in this manner, we ate the entire meal with the breathing of overeager waitresses in our ears as they hovered about two inches behind us. When we had finally and uncomfortably scarfed down our meals, the waitresses folded the napkins back down on our laps, beginning at the far end of the table and working down. This so angered Clare and Deidre (they could fold their own napkins, thank you very much!) that Diedre frantically folded her own napkin in her lap in the exact same manner as the waitresses, and Clare balled her napkin tightly between her legs so that the waitress wouldn’t be able to find it. When the waitresses reached the rebellious duo, they hesitated around Deidre, examined her work and straightened a few creases. Clare, on the other hand, sent them into a panic. Where had her napkin gone? Was it underneath her chair, hidden below a plate? This was an absolute service disaster! After a few nerve wracked seconds searching, the disgraced waitress hurried off to tell the manager about the incident. The manager walked calmly but stiffly back over to Clare, inspected the situation and looked to Clare for an answer. Clare shrugged innocently. The manager frowned and walked off.

It was, to say the least, a very tense dinner.

The next day it was time to move on to our final city, Saigon (I’m sorry, but I refuse to call it Ho Chi Minh City, Saigon is so much more romantic!). On the way into the city, we pulled over at the side of the road for our last group happy stop. We were now a finely oiled machine. The women dashed off to our own private section in the happy rice paddy, squatted into position and began to pee in sync. I immediately cracked up and called,

“I’m going to miss you guys!”

It was a real coombaya, hand-holding, bonding moments.

When we arrived in Saigon, Clare and I wandered around the city looking for a bar and were astounded by what we saw. I thought Hanoi had been busy with motorbikes, but Saigon was absolutely insane, so insane that, in navigating around the city, I tried not to go anywhere that would require me crossing the streets. That night, Clare, Peter and I went out for drinks at a bar filled primarily with rich Asian people. We ate peanuts, drank beer and chatted about the trip, a soulful Asian women singing the Cranberries song, “Zombie” in the background. I fell asleep that night to the late night practicing of an out of tune brass band (Asia really doesn’t do brass bands well) and reveled in the warm thought of not having to bike again for several weeks.

The next morning I hugged the group goodbye, wandered some more around Saigon and met my next group. Vietnam was nearly through. It was time to explore Cambodia.



Chapter Six- Cambodia: Floating Villages, Ancient Temples and A Continually Sore Tuchas

The day after meeting my new group, we loaded into a bus and drove towards the small Vietnamese village of Cau Duc. Cycling through Vietnam had tired me out, so I got to know my new group members by promptly falling asleep, my head tilted back and my mouth wide open. When we arrived, I just wanted to class, but our tourguide had other ideas. We hopped on the back of hired motorbikes, clinging to our guides, and rolled through the bustling city at dusk. Once again, an India moment. I had wanted to ride on the back of a motorbike since I first saw people doing it in Hanoi, but I never had enough courage (or wasn’t stupid enough) to do it on my own. Here, the entire group rolled along together. As we drove, we passed houses on stilts emerging from rivers filled with lilies; tin-roofed shacks providing fleeting glimpses of ragged families huddling around incongruous flat screen TVs blaring Vietnam Idol (one shack even hid a fancy BMW in its living room!); children played in the street, waving and calling to us as we passed; women prodded meat on flat barbeques; skinny men crawled beneath motorbikes, gripping tools in their hands and a lit cigarette between their lips; an young man welded metal instruments together, the sparks flying freely into the street; woman arranged vegetables on spread blankets, calling into the late-afternoon air for customers to purchase their goods. We left the town behind us and sped around the narrow curves of a small mountain road, stopping at the peak to watch the sun set over the hills. I giggled with glee.

The next morning, we ate breakfast on our hotel’s floating restaurant and watched the Mekong river awake in what was yet again, another blissful travel moment. As the sun streaked the river pink, a woman pushed a long boat back and forth across the river with a long stick, carrying commuters to either side of the river; a man squatted on the back of a house boat, scrubbing a shirt clean; boats crammed with people raced down the river to god knows where; a large overloaded ferry boat listed to one side, practically puking out crowded commuters and struggling back and forth across the river; a boat carrying sand docked at the river bank and men began unloading bucketfuls of their product; fishing and house boats sped past the commuters vehicles, rushing out to the more clear sections of the river to spread their nets.

And that was only the beginning. We soon jumped on board a boat of our own and began our three hour trip from Vietnam to the Phnomh Penh. Here is a bit more of what we saw along the way: a long, skinny wooden bridge with weak spindly legs, spanning the length of a river branch; birds diving into the water, searching for a scrumptious fishy snack; a man bucketing water out of his boat; a man rowing while a little girl around four or five sat at the very front of the long boat, the wind blowing through her hair, her smile soaking up the morning sun; two women hoisting the sails of a flat boat; more houses on stilts and floating houses beneath them; a woman ona docked boat, washing clothes; a man sleeping in a hammock hung from the back of his house boat; rubbish littering the slopes leading up to the stilt houses; a man drawing his full fishing net into his boat; loud, puffing and smoking boat motors; long laders leading from the stilt houses into the rivers, slapped on crookedly and haphazardly; a girl in a white school uniform riding an ancient rusted bike on her way to school; cows grazing around a tree; lines supporting colorful clothes strung between two houses.

After an hour or so, we reached Cambodian border, which was an adventure unto itself. Our boat was immediately swarmed with children pleading with us to buy water or snacks, and women with wads of US dollars (unbelievably, this is the preferred currency in Cambodia) and Cambodian riel, begging us to exchange our Vietnamese dong for their currency (which, by the way, I did through our boat window). As per usual, the kids screamed, “One dollar! One dollar!” and answered, “For what?” (Ah just like India, they don’t even show you the product, they just scream an amount).

The kids milled out about while we were processed by Vietnam customs and were ready to pounce when we piled back into the boat and when I use the word “pounce” I really mean it. We were moments from pulling away when a girl clutching a stick of pineapples leapt onto our boat and flung it in our window. We shouted at the driver not to pull off, but he didn’t hear us, and all of a sudden, the girl was stuck on board. All of a sudden she dropped her aggressive adult business-like area and became an embarrassed giggling little girl, frantically running up an down the outside of the boat and trying to find a way off. We dropped her off at Cambodian customs, made our way through, and bam, just like that we were in Cambodia. Two hours later we arrived in Phnom Penh and stepped into a very strange land.

From the beginning, something about Phnom Penh unnerved. In many ways, it was as if Pol Pot’s legacy still loomed over the city. Everything about it felt desperate and war-torn. Horribly disfigured beggars crawled around the streets- a man whose face was sliding off, a man with no face, countless people missing limbs. Street children never seem to attend school. Instead, they wander the streets, drawers of goods strapped around their necks, selling various knick knacks and books they’ll never be able to read. All this, and yet the streets are filled with BMWs and Lexus cars, the rich getting richer and the poor getting poor. Rickshaw drivers roam the streets looking for passengers, calling out the names of various nearby tourist destination which mostly consist of horrible remnants of the war- “Genocide Museum? Killing Fields? Genocide? Killing? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?”

The whole thing made me wonder, once again, what it means to be a tourist as well as a member of the world community. When are you helping a third-world economy by visiting, and when are you simply an exploitative voyeur? When should your intervene in halting genocide, and when do you say, “our people first”?

These feelings only intensified when we visited the genocide museum, the killing fields, and the land mine museum, a blur of mass graves, skulls, torture, death and destruction. The poverty in Cambodia was more unbearable than in India, worse than Thailand and worse than Vietnam because it was paired with extensive and ongoing violence. To this day, children all over Cambodia are maimed by landmines. Can you imagine living in such a world? The more and more I viewed the horrors that remained in Cambodia, the more and more I became convinced that the tragedy in Cambodia was just another legacy of the Vietnam War. We should have been in Cambodia stopping a mass murderer, not fighting through the quagmire of a war we’d never win in a land of people who didn’t want us there. The moment we committed ourselves to Vietnam was the same moment we effectively left the Cambodian people to Pol Pot. Once the war in Vietnam was finally finished, there was absolutely no way the American public would have allowed troops to be sent into Cambodia, into the place that really needed them, and after the disaster that was Vietnam, such attitudes were fully understandable.

But who suffered the consequences? Was it Pol Pot and his cronies, whose actions are still mysterious and impenetrable to historical analysis? Was it the war-mongering American presidents, who committed our troops to the wrong region and sacrificed our soldiers for no discernible reason?

No, and we can point our fingers at whomever we liked, but at the end of the day, it was the Cambodian people who died then and who suffer now. They’re still paying the price. I never hated the Vietnam War more than when I examined its scars in Cambodia.

The only part of Cambodia that wasn’t depressing were the things that were designed for tourists, which of course made them inherently depressing. The very touristy street was stayed on Phnom Penh was relatively clean, wide and bustling with pleasant activity, but all you had to do was follow a truck full of rough teenagers in bandanas as it turned down a side street, and there you were in the slums of Delhi. There we have the problem all over again. Cambodia desperately needs tourism to help it rise out of the gutter, but how we can visit such a place and not be exploitative?

When we left Phnom Penh for Siem Reap, the new city only etched these feelings more firmly into my psyche. As far as Cambodia went, Siem Reap was as clean and wealthy as it could get, just so that it could serve as a base for the wondrous Angkor Complex situation just ten minutes outside of town. Just like India, Cambodia was high and lows, extreme wealth and extreme poverty, but paired with a long legacy of violence.

As tourists, we were treated to the “highs”. I lugged my bags up to my room and was about to put my key in the door when a porter emerged from nowhere, grabbed the key from my hand and unlocked it for me. I gritted my teeth. I could unlock my own door, thank you very much. But he didn’t stop there. In an overzealous panic, the porter scrambled to take my bags, set them down and turn on all of the lights for me (I didn’t want all off the lights on, thank you!). Then he spent about ten minutes setting the air conditioner to the perf