TheDromomaniac.com

Fear and loathing at the LA travel show with Rick Steves

The Dromomaniac — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 04:02:00 +0000

LA's mother must have been pretty promiscuous to have so many sisters and some of these are illegitimate. Makati? Giza? Those are mere suburbs. Ischia? That's not even a city! And would it kill you to spell-check 'Eilat' before you threw it up there? Embarrassing.

     I impulsively got up at 3am on Sunday and drove five hours to Los Angeles to see the LA Travel Show. I’d never been to a travel convention and wanted to see what goes on, plus, it’s southern California. 80F (27C) in late January! It’s paradise, you need to know.
     Well, not for everyone. It’s odd that you can be downtown in America’s second biggest city on a Sunday morning and hear a pin drop, and that’s because it feels like the only people around are the homeless.
     Foreign visitors to America are always surprised to see how many fat people and how many homeless there are (and the longer I stay here, the more likely I will become both). The irony is that Americans often ask me how I can cope with the intense poverty in, say, India, but it’s in San Francisco and LA where you are confronted with more beggars. Times are tough nowadays, but it has always been that way.
     I digress.

Since the Japanese booth gave away a Yakult probiotic yogurt drink, I forgot all my antipathy.

I got a tic as soon as I saw that the Japan National Tourist Organization was here in full force. I’ve always thought that Japan should be paying me to be their full time ambassador. I know how to sell that country to tourists. I thought of broaching the subject with someone, but I also don’t want to go to Japan anytime soon. Nevertheless, I anticipated picking a fight with the whole booth. It would start with an argument about their tourism promotion strategy, voices would rise, tensions would escalate, and three—no, fifteen—security guards would be needed to hold me back as I frothed at the mouth, “Let’s take this outside!”

The show is mainly lots of boring tour companies mixed in with national tourism boards making a pitch for themselves. It was telling that Taiwan tried very hard to get noticed, that the Koreans felt uncomfortable trying to get noticed, and that Azerbaijan gave away tourist literature that was hundreds of pages thick and very heavy. I love stuff like that.
I became tired and hoped to find the Swedish Tourism Board ensconced in a corner. I was sure they’d have hammocks because Sweden is primarily for sleeping. I get drowsy just typing the word “Sweden”.

The Fijians seemed chagrined that they chose to go for the authentic look.

I realized that I should have gone to the Friday session which was only for people in the travel industry, but am I in the industry? I didn’t want to make a scene, you know, “I’M NOT IN THE INDUSTRY?! I’M NOT IN THE INDUSTRY?! MY 26 GOOGLE+ ACQUAINTANCES BEG TO DIFFER!”
As it was, Sunday’s program had spellbinding offers such as a 45 minute talk called “Navigating LA’s Airports”. Seriously? Did I miss “Knowing your Greyhound Station’s Toilets?”

Oh yeah? You want to go tete-a-tete avec moi, mon frere? I so badly wanted go and heckle, but I went to see Rick Steves instead.

     The Big Kahuna of speakers was Rick Steves, he of the guidebooks, TV and radio shows, and who must have been steamed that Lisa Ling had top billing. (Lisa who? Exactly.) He was a great inspiration to me when I began traveling with his emphasis on getting off the beaten track. I always wondered why he bothers doing tours, which can’t be fun, but he said that’s where the money is. The books do make a profit, but it goes back into the research for the next edition.
     I know some people regard Rick Steves’ folksy Mr. Rogers voice as akin to fingernails on a chalkboard, but they would be surprised to hear him speak in public. They’d also be surprised by what he talks about.
     It’s fun to see someone so at ease with himself, who speaks like he doesn’t care what people think, and I knew he was going to go off on non-travel topics, particularly marijuana. The crowd seemed to not expect it, but the crowd skewed old, the type that asked questions in the following Q & A about what rental car company in Spain to use or what part of southern France they should see in five days, but Rick Steves wanted to talk about the legalization of marijuana. He spoke for a few minutes and then stopped himself, saying that if we want to know more about it to “just google, ‘Rick Steves marijuana’”.

Rick Steves still packs them in. Next year in this room I will be giving a talk titled, 'Effective Hitchhiking Techniques for Northern Thailand' and there will be three people, two of them homeless.

The only thing in my wheelhouse was this talk given by the guy above, Leon Logothetis, He wrote the book every traveler wants to write, “Amazing Adventures of a Nobody”, and was discussing the Mongol Rally that I blogged about last week and The Kindness Cab, which is driving from NY to LA in a British taxi and giving everyone free rides, an inspired idea.

The end of the road; back home in California

The Dromomaniac — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 06:09:14 +0000

I think this was my 8th or 9th time around the world. It’s hard to sound humble when saying that, doesn’t it, especially when I don’t know? I should declare it, chin up, with a hint of an accent while throwing my scarf, stylishly hitting someone in the face. Then again, these days any idiot with a credit card can buy plane tickets, so there’s not much intrinsic skill in it, is there?
I have no idea how much I spent on this trip. I’m not one of those people who buys a stick of gum and then pulls out a memo pad to jot down every expenditure. On the other hand, I have gone through my ATM receipts and see how much I spent cumulatively, but I’m such a high roller nowadays, I don’t bother. For a long time I used to average $10-15 a day on my trips. Back then I was proud of that, but now I’m embarrassed as it implies not travelling more fully just so I could travel longer.

My sandals, R.I.P. Mar 2011, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia - Jan 2012, Bangkok Thailand (sniff). Yes, it got a little emotional at the airport.

     I was away almost five months. I could tell it was getting near the end when the zippers on my backpack were beginning to go and my sandals needed repairing for the umpteenth time, the last by a guy who kept holding his finger in a flame to show how caked it was of resin. Nice party trick, thanks. My sandals were so toxic I ended up abandoning them at Bangkok airport in a private ceremony.
     My last day in Thailand I woke up early and trudged off to look for a TV where I could watch the Giants/49ers football game, eventually landing at a place called Bradman’s Sports Bistro, breaking one of my rules about staying away from any establishment with the words “bistro” or “reggae” in the title. In Thailand, among the graceful and lithe Thais, I feel like a clumsy oaf, but in the sports bar with my fellow corn-fed Americans, I felt almost waif-like.
     I spent my last night in Bangkok airport since my flight was early the next morning. (See? Total high roller.) Too many people know about sleepinginairports.net, because all the good spots to sleep were occupied, and my favorite place was taken away. I had a fitful couple of hours of dozing on a bench and was a zombie the whole way back home, and now I have awful jet lag partly because I don’t do anything about it. I sleep from 12-4am and 12-4pm.

A couple last things about Thailand: there’s a new flea market near Chatuchak market on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights, though Friday isn’t as well-attended. It’s called simply “train market” and is just west of Chatuchak about five minutes walk from the Kampaeng Phet metro station. It’s very popular and deservedly so:

Major, major score at the Bangkok flea market, an inexplicable Japanese baseball jersey. $5

There’s also another quasi-flea market on the top floor of the Pantip Plaza in Nonthaburi–not to be confused with the the Bangkok Pantip Plaza. And, just to put every single last person to sleep who could care less about flea markets, there is a small one in front of the Chiang Mai train station Monday to Friday.

Apropos of nothing, someone should make a photo collage or a documentary of all the injured tourists in Thailand. One sees countless people limping along in bandages, on crutches, waiting in clinics, etc. Must be some great stories for a budding journalist.

Fourth flight of the day, semi-delirious

Cal-i-forn-i-a! It's the best

The best of Bangkok, Thailand

The Dromomaniac — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 04:57:45 +0000

This is from a Bangkok taxi. If you think about it, it is quite reasonable to take a taxi 1400km from Bangkok to Singapore: 11,760 baht, divided by four people, that's 2940 baht, or only $95 each. Road trip!

I didn't REALLY want to attend this, but I thought I should be a patron of the arts, you know, provide some support. Actually, this was on the street in front of the MBK mall in downtown Bangkok. The better picture was if I had turned around and took a photo of all the other men taking photos.

What can be said about Thailand? I go on and on about Malaysia being one of my faves, but there’s something I can’t explain easily about Thailand that makes me always want to return. Only if I am away from it for a long time do I have dumb thoughts that it isn’t fun anymore because too many people are here ruining it, but if that were true, this wouldn’t be my 15th or 20th visit or whatever it is.
My only real frustration with Thailand is that it is hard to communicate. Very few people speak English well and on the streets I have so many impulsive questions about how life works here that remain mysteries. I can sorta/kinda speak Thai–but not really. Hardly at all. I speak better Malay, but both are at a painful “My hovercraft is full of eels” level of proficiency.

Part of the security precautions for the subway are prostate checks, but can it not be done in front of everyone?

Ice cream with young coconut in Chinatown for Chinese New Year, another fun Couchsurfing 'meeting' of 25 people snaking their way through the crowds.

Coconut and taro pancakes. These are hard to walk past when I see them. Ten for 20 baht, or 64 US cents.

Thais are clever, I'm telling you. I like this sense of humor.

Thais are clever, part 2

     An only-in-Thailand moment for me occurred when I took a van to go to a trade show north of Bangkok. The van acted as a public bus and had about 12-14 passengers. To collect fares, the driver merely passed a plastic cup around. The implications of that seemingly insignificant gesture are enormous, I say. The reason I have never seen it anywhere else in the developing world is that there’s not the same level of trust nor maybe of collective will. Someone would try to get away with not putting in the right amount and then there would be arguments and recriminations. I am making a direct link from this van to why Thailand is a cohesive society.
     Then again, right now, politically, this country couldn’t be more divided, so maybe I have no idea what I am talking about, as usual.
     Wait, one more small thing about Thais that I will blow out of proportion: in Bangkok they will let others get off the metro before boarding, very unlike what goes on in my beloved Malaysia, and they will give up their seats to women. This isn’t common in the region. I was surprised to see one delinquent-looking young punk get out of his seat for a pregnant woman, though I had to pull rank and shove her aside so I could sit. I had a long morning of blogging! I was beat!

Not everyone loves tourism

This isn't a good example, but it is one of the few ads where Thais don't have a deathly white skin color. It maddening to see so many fair-skinned Thais on TV, all the skin-whitening creams, etc. Black is beautiful, peoples!

Bangkok train station

The stellar night markets and glorious food of Thailand

The Dromomaniac — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 04:16:26 +0000

Man vs. Fish. No contest.

     My favorite thing about Thailand might be how the streets undergo a massive transformation in the night with food stalls springing up everywhere. The night markets in northern Thailand that I went to (Chiang Mai has two different Saturday and Sunday markets—avoid the daily night market!—Chiang Rai has one and even slumbery Lampang has a fun Friday market) improve on the concept with more innovative food choices combined with artisan crafts and live music.
     The scale of everything is pleasantly small so one can sample half a dozen cool little foods. Certain North Americans reportedly might have pushed it closer to a dozen. The handmade crafts, too, are small, cute, clever and inexpensive, making it hard to justify not buying something.
     And then, this being Thailand, you always see something you don’t expect. Have a look at the videos below.

The Sunday Chiang Mai night market. It is still this busy past 10pm.

This is a funny video of an acrobatic tea pourer who doesn’t seem to spill much, less than two minutes long. This is popular in Malaysia, but it’s hard to find guys who do it with this much flair.

Some video of the blind band I mentioned in an earlier post that played, “It Never Rains in Southern California”, also less than two minutes long.

Policeman on guitar. In how many other countries would you see this?

A hospital band in Chiang Rai playing a John Denver song. Very surreal.

How is this for being versatile and creative? A street artist using a tablet to sketch people.

Panda and pig-shaped Chinese-style balls

I would normally never try this---Sushi? Outside in the tropics?---but it was only 5 baht (16 cents) a piece and the eel was pretty good.

Fried insects as a snack for sale. The sushi was looking better all the time.

Black rice and sesame snack rolled up with brown sugar inside, about 32 US cents

A man showing old French home movies of a trip to Egypt. Sure, why not?

Couchsurfing in Bangkok, Thailand sans Golshifteh Farahani

The Dromomaniac — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 08:05:21 +0000

I went there. It reeked of cat urine, just like me.

     Could I have hitchhiked down from Chiang Mai to Bangkok? I did it twice already in northern Thailand, once from the edge of a mall parking lot in Chiang Mai and once back from a temple in Lampang, both very easily.
     A while ago I wrote about a young, handsome, blond German guy who tried to hitchhike in Thailand with no luck, which gave me pause for thought, but maybe he simply wasn’t doing it right. There is a correct way to hitchhike, and I’m a pro. I may not have any other life skills, but I know what I am doing when I hitchhike. Even if a guy was Young Kent Foster handsome—pretty powerful stuff—it doesn’t guarantee success. In the end, alas, the pro buckled and took an 11-hour, $12 bus to go down.
     Before boarding I remembered the simple survival formula: long distance bus + Southeast Asia = cold. I brought my jacket. I haven’t worn shoes since I left Nepal over six weeks ago and I wouldn’t need a jacket either if not for the buses and trains, which are brain-freezingly frigid.
     At every stop I begged the driver to turn down the a/c, and at every stop he mocked me for being cold. Meanwhile, everyone on the bus is dressed like they are ready to go sledding, though I am the only one who says anything. They must know the futility of asking.
     Once in Bangkok I went straight to a Couchsurfing meeting. I love the euphemism, “meeting”, which sounds like there’s an agenda and urgent matters to discuss, but it’s purely a party. I arrived at about 8:30pm with the faint hope that someone could host me for the night. It may have been a naive hope, and imagine arriving in an overpopular, huge, crowded city at night and not having a reservation? I like the unexpected sometimes and went for it.

At its apex maybe 50 people were there. I was forced to take the minutes of this meeting in longhand.

     At Couchsurfing meetings it’s easy to feel like a wallflower in the midst of the young and the beautiful and I momentarily wished I had instead gone to the Thailand vs. Norway soccer friendly nearby, but if you simply go sit next to anybody, they’ll introduce themselves and make you feel welcome.
     In fact, I was talking with a British/Mongolian couple, the Brit had driven from Manchester to Mongolia in the Mongol Rally (check out the website; I love the spirit of it.) when the girl saw a well-dressed black Italian guy and said, “He looks interesting” and invited him over to join us. I am sure her interest had nothing to do with my epic stories of baseball card collecting in the 1970s.
     I met two Iranians (In USA I’ve never heard Iranians call themselves Iranians, rather they are “Persians”. I’m going to start calling myself Prussian or maybe Mesopotamian—I wonder if I can get a Mesopotamian passport on Khao San Road?) and we started talking about Iranian cinema. I said I had met an Iranian actress named Golshifteh Farahani when I saw “Boutique” at the Tbilisi International Film Festival in the Republic of Georgia in 2005. That’s where I go to meet Persians.
     I was informed that she went on to be in a Leonardo Dicaprio film, “Body of Lies”, and just this month, after doing a sexy photo shoot for a French magazine, she and her husband are exiles in Paris, unable to go home. I even saw a bit about it on Thai TV. She’s famous now. When I met her, she was like a bubbly, energetic kid. Here are a couple of photos:

     Toom was my Couchsurfing savior. He very graciously asked if I needed a place to stay and accepted me despite having seven(!) other guests staying that night, plus he was the organizer of the meeting. He lives in the northern suburb of Nonthaburi, which I was keen to explore, but the new Couchsurfing search tool makes it difficult to find him. It is a rant I will save for another time. Thank me later.
     One day before I die I will have a place of my own and will open my home up Toom-style to accept anyone and everyone. I can see that to have so much traffic, even the most well-intentioned and considerate guests make a mess over time and it’s a lot of work to keep a place clean, but it doesn’t matter, I’m doing it, hopefully in a place where people want to come, like Mesopotamia.

Is it a hostel? No, it's Toom's place!

No lonely planet in crowded Thailand

The Dromomaniac — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 10:50:00 +0000

     I don’t remember the circumstances of how I wound up in Chiang Mai’s red light district. I believe I was searching for a new soy drink I’d heard about (that’s my story and I’m sticking with it!) when a beautiful Thai girl in a tight dress came up to me and cooed in my ear seductively, “I’ll do anything for 100 dollars.”
     I’d been waiting so long for such an offer! I said, “Go redesign my website. Keep the clean look, make it scalable, SEO-friendly, and Facebook ready. Can you send me an outline by tomorrow morning?”
     For some reason she didn’t appear enthusiastic. Flaky Thais…”

Cabbages and Condoms is a restaurant from a former Thai Health Minister.

     I’ve made a circle of Chiang Mai-Chiang Rai-Lampang-Chiang Mai in northern Thailand. It’s incredible how many travelers are here, but Thailand is always crowded. It has been the place to go in Asia for a long time now. Coups, natural disasters, more restrictive visa policies—nothing stops the tourists from coming. Yesterday I heard a new alert from the U.S. government that there is a foreign terrorist threat for Bangkok and to not congregate where tourists go. Right. Good luck finding that place. There are dozens of locations where a terrorist could waste 100 travelers starting with Khao San Road (and does anyone have objections to that?) It was a typically vague announcement with no details just so the government can say, “Told you so!” if anything happens in the next few years.
     In big Chiang Mai I’m not phased by all the foreign bars, the burrito restaurants or American college football games on TV, but Chiang Rai? It’s a small town of 61,000 people with not much to see, yet it’s crowded with travelers, too. I wasn’t prepared to see the skanky street of bar girls with old white guys eating hamburgers.
     And then how can you explain Lampang? It’s a still smaller town with even fewer tourist attractions and hardly on the way to anywhere, two hostels were already full by early afternoon. I met one girl who was running around Thailand trying to find a mellow place to lay in a hammock, but she gave up and was off to Laos to look for it.

     Even though Thailand is the beaten path, I love that there are still quirks you can readily see, like a five-piece band in cowboy hats performing, “Country Roads” in a hospital. I was in the hospital to see about getting a Hepatitis B vaccination which costs 680 baht, or about $22. (I will post a photo next week. I don’t trust inserting my pen drive or my camera cable into a very public computer and can’t figure a way around it.)
     Speaking of quirks, in my first three days in Chiang Mai I heard the old 1970′s chestnut, “It Never Rains in Southern California” no less than four different times, twice blasted out from speakers in parking lots and twice by two different sets of blind musicians(!) playing in the same night market. It’s the weirdest thing. I had almost forgotten about it when in Lampang’s night market I heard it a fifth time in karaoke form from this guy below. He made a beeline to me, microphone in hand. We performed a duet to the horror of onlookers.

     The night markets are a blast. There’s a regular night market in Chiang Mai that’s of only mild interest, but it’s the weekly markets that are far more interesting than I would have guessed. It’s also got weird bits, like a guy projecting Super 8 1950′s French home movies of a trip to Egypt. The fun comes from the inventive crafts and creative food, both inexpensive and very impressive. Again, photos soon.

     My second time back in Chiang Mai I pledged not to stay at Supreme Guest House again. In my first visit the dragon lady owner took my passport to check me in and asked me with venomous eyes, “Are you Jewish?”
     I told her no. I thought she was going to rant against Israelis, instead she went off about American Jews causing problems, being selfish, etc. I suddenly felt a kinship with Israelis being unfairly painted with a wide brush.
     Even though I’m not Jewish, It upset me, but what to do? If I took every slight I receive on the road personally, I’d be an angry, bitter traveler, but how long do you stay a punching bag?

Here’s why Malaysia is kind of a big deal

The Dromomaniac — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 14:17:35 +0000

     Malaysia has long been one of my top five favorite countries in the world. (The others are solidly Japan, Brazil, Hungary and then shakily either Russia or Zimbabwe.) It’s main selling point is its diversity because Malaysia is an amalgamation of three very different cultures: Malay, Chinese and Indian. That’s a heady brew. What other country is comprised of such a disparate threesome? Just Chinese and Indians alone, to mix to the extent they do, is unseen anywhere else on the world that I am aware of. I grew up in Silicon Valley near San Francisco and there are big communities of both, but they don’t blend together like they do here.
     I’m always ready to defend Malaysia against the hordes of Thailand lovers. Thailand has better beaches and a party culture, a tough draw to overcome, but Malaysia also has some nice beaches, excellent nature, best food in the world, a rich history, plus good hitchhiking, which is an inference about the people even if you don’t hitchhike.
     When I’m asked what the main sights are in Penang, Melaka and Kuala Lumpur, I get glassy-eyed and enigmatically say that it’s less a list of must-sees than a feeling and mood to soak in. Then I am asked if I just got out of an ashram or if I am from Marin County.
     On a practical level, in Malaysia people speak English infinitely better than in Thailand, you can drink the tap water, and it’s easy to arrange anything with its superior infrastructure. Some travelers would like less infrastructure, more rough edges, and cheaper beer, lamenting that Malaysia’s going the way of Singapore. There’s always Malaysian Borneo to get away from it all, but high beer prices can’t be solved.
     It’s not all harmonious good feelings and bonhomie. When Malaysians ask how I get along in their country, sometimes I want to answer that I wish Malaysians would treat each other as well as they treat me. (In Japan I have this feeling the strongest.) Politics cause rifts. On top of this, everything has to fit in with the fact that it is an Islamic country.

A fuzzy photo of stir-fried venison and cashews from my friend, Melissa. Viruses practically drip off internet cafe computers. I don't want to risk ruining my photo memory card or pen drive, so what to do?

     I’ll get to test my Malaysian allegiance vis-a-vis Thailand because I just flew into Chiang Mai after a very long absence in the north. I’m also trying to be careful not to fall under the delusion that I know the two countries well because I’ve been to both about 15 times each, but they change so fast and so much is probably under the surface that I simply don’t recognize and make sense of what I see.
     OK, I see I am boring everyone to tears so I’ll stop and get cracking on the script of my next snuff film. Quick note about my flight: paid $137 including baggage check-in fee on AirAsia for the nearly three-hour flight, not my greatest achievement. I’m AirAsia’s number one fan and their founder, Tony Fernandes, is to be revered for overcoming so many obstacles to get the airline where it is today, but the lame sexism in their advertising and the cynical fee-hiding on the website is shameful and challenges anyone’s affection. When you try and buy a ticket they throw bombard you with an endless slew of add-ons, which is fine, but it’s all opt-out, not opt-in, and if you don’t want something, it doesn’t go away with a single click. Frustrating. Their hubris is approaching Ryanair levels.
     I also bought a ticket to go home in three weeks. Not “buy” really, but I used miles since airfares are insane right now. 32,500 United Airlines miles and $64 in fees. The cheapest one-way flight from any big hub in Asia I saw was about $775. This is why I’m always hot to recommend signing up for every frequent flier program and not letting the miles expire.
     The good news is I won’t blog so much from Thailand. HA!

Four months away (every year); the State of the Road address

The Dromomaniac — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 12:07:43 +0000

     I’m pretty sure I left home four months ago today. I’m also pretty sure I’ve traveled at least four months of each year for the past 25 years with an average of six months a year. That’s pretty amazing, if you weren’t sure. In fact, I challenge you to think of anyone who has ever done that—while backpacking, I should add. Anyone. Go ahead, take your time.
     If you do know someone, I don’t want to meet them. They’re probably unsmiling, insular freaks messed up in the head while I am still an outgoing, vital, genuinely nice guy. I’m not one of these ossified dudes I see molding away on Penang’s backstreets I mentioned a few posts ago. And I’m out there doing stuff while all the young punks are still on their third McFlurry. (Oh, I’m in a mood today, all right.)
     I’m not convinced that you’re convinced that I’m a nice guy. If I see someone looking at a map, I go up to them and ask if they need help finding something. (Yes, I am that annoying guy.) I’m the kind of person who never throws away maps because other travelers might be able to use them. I once walked back to a hostel fifty meters in the rain to tell a guy that the soccer game he wanted to watch was on.
     Know what I did Christmas Eve? I sat for half an hour and tried to help a guy get back his hijacked email account. Then I helped an Iranian woman by proofreading her CV and cover letter for a job application.
     I’m still not 100% sure everyone realizes that I’m a nice boy from a nice country, but I’ll let it rest.
     Anyway, back to the original point: if it’s such a good idea to travel so much for so long, why isn’t anybody doing it?

Kickapoo Joy Juice! Gonna miss you, Malaysia.

     I couldn’t pass up the chance to house-sit for a couple of days, so I went back to Kuala Lumpur to Melissa and Manvir. If anyone out there needs a house-sitter, keep me in mind. I may be able to fit it into my very, very busy schedule.
     Melissa really brings home the bacon when it comes to getting her friends to check out my site and “like” me on Facebook. I got six or seven likes in one night. Why do I care about Facebook likes? Because I am thinking of doing something with this site, either to use it as a platform for something else or to get advertisers. I haven’t thought it all through, but in either case it’s good to have certifiable eyeballs. If it all goes for naught, I may just turn it into a snuff film site, my true passion.
     2012 isn’t starting well. It looks like my laptop has died. The beast wasn’t yet two years old, but it appears that the motherboard is toast. It’s more crushing than I would have guessed; I feel unproductive without it. It also grinds me that it is too costly to repair. In Malaysia you see greasy repair shops all the time filled with old fans or toasters or TVs. Everything can be repaired, but my laptop has to be sent somewhere and they’ll get back to me in a week, $150 minimum.
     I won’t be a prolific blogger for a while. I fear mass suicides. (Excellent material for a snuff film, but not my first choice.) Stay strong, people!

Remember Irish Philip from the last post? 2012 is starting worse for him. He went back up to Penang to his friends and spent the first few minutes of the new year keeled over from food poisoning, the worst he has ever felt, he said. Three nights in the hospital, five IV drips, and a solid New Year’s Eve memory of Malaysia that will be hard to shake, as will the 600 euro bill.

Introducing the world’s lightest backpacker

The Dromomaniac — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 11:03:24 +0000

     Talk about inimitable style. Look at the size of Philip’s bag. He says he is “only traveling for three weeks”, but who does this? The most substantive part consists of two pants, two shirts, one swimming shorts, a sarong, a toothbrush, and two books. Two books!
     I look at my own stuffed bag and feel almost ashamed to be so overladen, though there are specific reasons my backpack is half full of cat tranquilizer and ammunition.

     I made the move to Melaka on Christmas day, partly because Penang’s mosquitoes were killing me. (Malaria is almost eradicated country-wide in Malaysia, but there’s plenty of dengue fever.) There was never a question of how to go the 500km south; Christmas is the perfect day to hitchhike. Who can refuse you?
     By the way, did you know that if you google the word “hitchhiking”, my site shows up as the ninth result? First page on Google! That’s pretty cool. Thank you, Lulu Al Alamir (could be a nom de plume!), for letting me know.
     I started from the same bad place in Butterworth near the Penang island ferry, but soon enough a group of four young Chinese kids stopped because they thought standing on the road with my thumb out meant that I needed help. Since they weren’t going out to the highway I didn’t explain it all and instead politely thanked them for stopping. They drove off, but two minutes later their curiosity got the better of them and they reappeared, wanting clarification (“You want to go to the bus station?”) When I laid it all out to them, that I want a ride to just before the highway where I will stand there with my thumb out again and try to get another person to stop, they said they wanted to help me go to this magic place. I forgot there was a 1.30 ringgit (40 cents) toll involved, but they said it was my Christmas present. The subsequent photo session took longer than the ride.

Let's see, where am I in this photo? On the left, yes, that's me. I am often asked if there is any fallout from hitchhiking with an American flag on my backpack as my country hasn’t been high on anyone’s list lately. For one, most people don’t even associate the flag with me being American. I'll have my backpack on my lap, flag facing the driver, and when they will ask where I am from, they're surprised. Once they see I am American, they still don't have a problem with me. Very, very few people aren't able to separate me from my government, and if they want to talk politics or anything else, I'm game. How many people get to meet normal Americans in this relaxed setting? Few Americans travel to Malaysia, nearly none hitchhike, and drivers get quality one-on-one time to talk with me. Is there such a thing as a non-governmental ambassador for my country? That's me all over the world. I should be getting paid by someone.

     Supercreep stopped for me after that, a guy who couldn’t hide his bad intentions, whatever they were, and I turned him down flatly. It very, very rarely happens, but when it does, you just know.
     I’ve hitchhiked in Malaysia many times over the years, and only twice were there weird situations, both involving gay guys who picked me up. In the first case when the guy was rebuffed, he became ill, stopped, opened the door and threw up. In the other case, the guy waited for the rain to come before trying to feel my knee, thinking I wouldn’t get out of the car in the rain, but he thought wrong. (Wrongly?)
     It obviously didn’t deter me from hitchhiking again in the region. I had thoughts of hitching all the way up to Bangkok or to do the reverse if I had flown there first. However, I met a young, blond normal-looking German guy who wanted to hitch from Bangkok to Malaysia and did what I would have done: take the train from Bangkok to Hua Hin, the first town on the main road south, and he got stuck. He had his thumb out all day, tried a Thai sign—nothing. That gave me pause for thought.
     The rest of the rides were uneventful and easy to come by. I was faster than the bus and the entire journey, door to door, cost me 1 ringgit (32 cents), which was the local bus to downtown Melaka.

OK, I get that Malaysian is an easy language for its phonetic simplifications, but sometimes they cross the line

     I met Philip again in Melaka and the poor guy had to watch me try and get reacquainted with a town that becomes more like a carnival every time I come. Why is the fabulously weird Museum of Enduring Beauty gutted? Can traffic and city planning become any worse? Is anyone in Singapore since the whole country appears to be here? Will I ever have muscles?

     This is a closeup of the picture above. My sandal broke. New tan lines imminent.
     Who wants a postcard from Malaysia? If you haven’t won this fantastic prize before, the first person to respond below who also follows me on Facebook gets one. (If you have a reason for hating Facebook I completely understand and will send it to you anyway.)

Creating a hitchhiking monster out of innocent Chinese

The Dromomaniac — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 04:38:29 +0000

     I see a trickle of white people in my beloved Ee Beng Vegetarian Restaurant, which is the beginning of the end. Nothing good results when white people start horning in. My Irish friend, Philip, counsels me indirectly that I shouldn’t try and keep Ee Beng as my secret and hope it resists all external forces. Enjoy it, sing its praises, and then set it free.
     What a dolt.
     Actually, Philip is one of the most memorable people I have ever met. I stayed wth him as a couchsurfer for a week in Mombasa, Kenya earlier this year and now he’s on a short trip around Asia. Philip’s an amazing guy, but you’ll have to trudge through my Mombasa archives if you want details about him.

Philip is in the black shirt in the middle, the Chinese girl is the Chinese-looking one.

     The Irish, in fact, I find to be inspiring. I met Philip with his Irish friends here and realized I don’t spend enough time with Irish people. Maybe the notion that they are solid, salt-of-the-earth types is something that has been so true for so long that it becomes a cliche and then, therefore, ultimately, must be untrue.
     I once lived with a teenage Irish girl a few months in San Francisco. (Wait, that sounds so scandalous; let me rephrase it) I mean, one of my housemates whom we chained to the kitchen to cook for us and fed table scraps once a week (OK, that’s better) was a teenage Irish girl, and she was impressively mature for her age.
     However, if you ask one Irish person about another, there is a reflexive cavalcade of derogatory obscenities, which is their perverse way of showing affection.
     Since I know only a few Irish, there is a strong chance that I might not know what I am talking about. Let’s move on.

Secluded beach in Penang's national park

     I was at my regular morning transient soy milk guy when I met a Chinese-Welsh(!) girl named Emma. After some small talk and noodles, we decided to go to the national park together. That is a funny thing about traveling. If I were in Wales and proposed we go anywhere or do anything together, she would have made like a bank teller about to get robbed, which is smile sweetly while surreptitiously calling the cops, as I am 20 years older and need a hot shower desperately. But here, at this particular moment, we are a part of the same brotherhood of semi-clean travelers.
     It was cantankerous from the start when she said the food in Penang wasn’t good. I was apoplectic. I cut her some slack since she was Chinese, but in the process of checking her food bona fides, I discovered that despite being from a family that has owned a restaurant all her life, she can hardly use chopsticks. Shocking.
     The bus to the national park is cheap but takes too long so I proposed we hitchhike back to town. I feel responsible for any girl who hitchhikes with me, though I forgot to give Emma the speech about her being last in, first out of the car. We got a ride easily all the way back to our hostels.
     The next day we went for a walk up Penang Hill, avoiding the funicular on health and cost grounds. (If there are cheap travelers reading this, you don’t need to pay 30 ringgit ($10) to take the funicular up Penang Hill. You can hitchhike on the access road next to the botanical garden.) Halfway up, we got caught in a storm and huddled under a small shelter off to the side of the road, but the rain wouldn’t stop and it felt like the end of “The Grapes of Wrath” where the water rises inexorably, and we decided to hitchhike in any direction. I made Emma put her long hair down—was that wrong?—and when we heard a car, we ran out to the street.
     One of the first cars stopped, a Malay guy who said he was going to his house and that we could dry off and have some tea there before we continued. I wanted to be anywhere but here so we sat in the back of his truck getting soaked for an uncomfortably long distance. Where was he taking us? I’m responsible for this girl and we are suddenly going down Batcave paths where I have no idea how we’d get out. But the magic of travel shined on me again and we were led to paradise.

Emma and our generous ride. Emma's the one on the left.

This house was built in 1920 and had twenty acres, much of it durian orchards. It's a famous house, but I was too delirious to recall the details of its history.

Definitely in my Top 5 favorite fruits, mangosteen, and these were some of the best ever.

     Our savior offered us tea, beer, mangosteens and rambutans from his garden, a nice shirt, an umbrella, and couldn’t have been more generous. I spent half the time politely refusing everything, but the fruit I couldn’t pass up.
     He lives in Uzbekistan(!) and trades minerals for a living, it seemed, but my curiosity didn’t overcome me since I didn’t want Anatoly and Sergei to show up and break my legs. He has houses in Provence, Bali, Kuala Lumpur, two in Penang, Uzbekistan and who knows where else. I did say for him to keep me in mind if he needs someone to watch over one of these properties.
     With this luck I unexpectedly created a hitchhiking monster with Emma. She wants to hitchhike to everywhere from anywhere. We’d be standing in the middle of Georgetown on a busy street and ask, “Why can’t we hitchhike from here?” While very eager to try it again, she knows it’s a different game for a woman on her own, no matter how strong and independent.
     I used up all my praise on Philip, but I have to commend Emma that, without much prodding, she is spreading the word about The Dromomaniac like my friend, Melissa, did the week before in Kuala Lumpur. I will shamelessly extol the virtues of anyone who gets the word out while I figure out how to do it myself. Emma has been active on her Facebook by liking links, emailing friends, mentioning it on something called whatsapp.com and even telling random strangers about it. I very much appreciate that, and before the gossip starts, there is nothing going on between us. Her boyfriend is flying in next week. With such promotion I almost expect him to arrive decked out in Dromomaniac accessories.
     Hmmmm, that’s an idea…Dromomaniac merchandise, something for Christmas 2012!