Seven Month Anniversary

It's been seven months since I left my mother country. Seven months since I've driven my car on the right side of the road. Seven months since I sold that car, my climbing equipment, my CDs and gave Delilah, my 13 foot long Burmese python away. It's been just as long since I've seen snow, eaten my mom's cooking or shook my dad's hand Sunday morning at church. I reflected on this last week and thought about where I've been and what I've done over those seven months. Here's a sample of what I discovered.

approximately 8,000 US dollars have been spent
over 2,000 pictures taken
212 days passed

57 boat rides

28 postcards sent

25 books read

23 new scars earned

17 SCUBA dives logged

14 homes stayed in

10 flights taken

9 mountains climbed, including 3 crater lakes and 2 active volcanoes

8 churches attended

7 countries visited

5 calls to the USA
4 bouts of sickness endured

3 seas swam in

2 oceans swam in

2 cellphones bought (and subsequently broken)

and 1 wedding witnessed.

I have realized a few things during my seven months. In terms of travel, I'd rather not travel alone anymore-wait. Allow me to rephrase. I would like to travel with my friends. I used to be a hard-core advocate for going it alone. After all, it is easier to meet people when you're alone, it is easier to do what you want, when you want and all that. However, it's harder to wake up when you know sleeping another hour isn't going to disturb anyone. Restaurants and movie theaters aren't very enjoyable when you're alone either. Good travel companions also distribute and help eliminate stress. You can take turns listening to the know-it-all backpacker, the down-and-out peasant farmer or turning away the sunglass hawker, masseuse, taxi driver, hotel owner, tour operator and prostitute.

It would be nice to have a progressive conversation every once in awhile and not have to ask strangers to take my picture (and then another stranger to take another one since the first can't compose the shot how I want,) to share the price of a hotel room or to not have to organize anything for a day, to do something someone else wants to do. Sounds strange doesn't it? I travel halfway around the world because it's what I want to do, and then have feelings of doing what someone else wants to do! Traveling with a friend can extend the experience well after you get home. Just imagine sitting around with said travel friend months or years after you both have returned home when he/she says, "Remember that time in Morocco when my camel ate your turban!" That's classic!

For awhile I thought I was homesick. Sometimes I want to go home, but it's usually just to eat at a restaurant in my hometown, to spend the afternoon with a friend or to sleep in my own bed for a night. The next morning I want to magically wake up on the other side of the world again and continue the journey. I'd like to go home for an afternoon or a day. So maybe I want to be home for awhile but I really don't want to go home right now.

I didn't know how much I enjoy books until this week when I devoured one on the bus ride to El Nido, another the next day with my toes in the sand and a third, quite by accident, at a cafe. I literally didn't move from my spot until I had finished the book. I'm constantly surprised at how few people read for enjoyment. They don't know what they're missing. It's difficult to find good titles on the road. Usually hostels, home stays and some cafes will have a small selection of books left by travelers you can exchange or buy. An average collection includes no less then five romance novels, an outdated guidebook, the lone classic like Romeo and Juliet or Great Expectations, a few fantasy novels and at least one shelf of German books. I'm not the only one who curiously asks fellow travelers what they're reading and if I could have their book when they're finished. It's a common custom among backpackers.

The pictures in this thread are of the Philippines, most of them around the town of El Nido on the island of Palawan. The weather had a big impact on my travel plans around the country and things didn't turn out exactly how I'd planned them. I did finish my advanced diving course while I was here and I got to make some friends through a pro-hospitality group I'm part of called couchsurfing. Without them, I know I would have left the Philippines already. When I look towards the future, I'm overwhelmed with uncertainty, but if it's anything like this tour's past it's gonna be great!

Traditionally seventh anniversary gifts are wool or copper. Mine is paper. I have a ticket to Thailand on Thursday! The journey continues...

I ran across this poem last week and think it sums up the battle that goes on in my head and in a lot of people’s minds between staying where it’s safe and chasing the horizon. I wanted to share it with you and I hope you enjoy it.

The Double Life
By Don Blanding

How very simple life would be
If only there were two of me
A Restless Me to drift and roam
A Quiet Me to stay at home.
A Searching One to find his fill
Of varied skies and newfound thrill
While sane and homely things are done
By the domestic Other One.

And that's just where the trouble lies;
There is a Restless Me that cries
For chancy risks and changing scene,
For arctic blue and tropic green,
For deserts with their mystic spell,
For lusty fun and raising Hell

But shackled to that Restless Me
My Other Self rebelliously
Resists the frantic urge to move.
It seeks the old familiar groove
That habits make. It finds content

With hearth and home dear prisonment,
With candlelight and well loved books
And treasured loot in dusty nooks,
With puttering and garden things
And dreaming while a cricket sings
And all the while the Restless One
Insists on more exciting fun
It wants to go with every tide,
No matter where just for the ride.
Like yowling cats the two selves brawl
Until I have no peace at all.

One eye turns to the forward track,
The other eye looks sadly back,
I'm getting wall-eyed from the strain,
(It's tough to have an idle brain)
But One says "Stay" and One says "Go"
And One says "Yes," and One says "no,"
And One Self wants a home and wife
And One Self craves the drifter's life.

The Restless Fellow always wins
I wish my folks had made me twins.

The Fellowship of Friends

After arriving again in Bali and meeting up with Olivier we both began to get itchy feet. We needed an adventure and both of us had wanted to go to Java and see the sights around Yogyakarta, or Jogja as it's called locally. Less than 48 hours later we were on a plane bound for Java and it's temples and mountains harboring volcanoes and crater lakes. What would follow over the course of the next several days was one of the best trips I've taken so far and a personal highlight.

In order to save on accommodation costs and meet some people we decided to couchsurf in Jogja. Couchsurfing.com is a website of hosts who open their doors and unfold their couches to travelers passing through the area. As it turned out, there was a gathering of couchsurfers in Jogja that weekend from neighboring towns and some came all the way from Sumatra and Jakarta. Not only did we make friends this way but Tami, a friend of ours in Bali, used to attend school in Jogja and gave us the number of some of her friends. She couldn't stand to be away from the fun though, so that weekend after some begging, pleading and convincing, we got her to fly out for the weekend. Her group of friends are all part of an adventure club at the university who regularly go rock climbing, trekking and rafting. Within the first day of meeting, we had plans to go camping and climbing at the beach and then rafting the river the next day! It was great!

We camped out under some beautiful limestone crags within earshot of the crashing surf. The following day, Tami arrived and we climbed as much as we could before going back to Jogja that evening. The next day we left early to make it to the river in time. We had a great time rafting and joking with other rafters who passed us. I loved the spontaneity of it all, we hadn't planned any of this and yet it was better than anything we could have arranged ourselves. Unfortunately, Tami had to fly back to Bali that night to be at work the next morning.

Olivier and I caught the early train to Surabaya the next morning in order to see Mt. Bromo. Everyone talks about visiting Mt. Bromo during the sunrise. It sounded great and peaceful so we decided not to miss it. I had a picture in my mind of hiking to the top and sharing a spectacular sunrise with a few other tourists. The reality was a little bit different. The sunrise was still great, but I shared it with around four hundred other tourists! Most were Indonesians taking advantage of the weekend holiday from Surabaya and Jakarta. We still were able to capture some great pictures overlooking Mt. Bromo and the volcano behind it.

We had one more stop on the way to Bali. Kawa Ijen crater is... well, it's a crater. But it's unique in that the lake in it's center is about one hundred degrees and there is a sulfur mine in it's crater where local men collect the sulfur and port it out on their backs. Again we woke up before dawn to begin our hike up the mountain. It's around 2 km up a steep trail to the crater rim, and another kilometer down to the lake. It really is a sight to see, as men chip away blocks of the acidic rock and pack it in baskets to be carried out. Sulfurous smoke rose up from pipes and burnt our eyes and lungs. It's not exactly a pleasant place to sit and gaze out at the lake but I wouldn't have missed it. The men carry around 80 kilos on their backs at a time, the going rate being 500 rupiah per kilo making their 6 km, 5 hour journey worth about 4 US dollars. The men were very nice to talk to and regularly asked if they could bum a cigarette and wanted to know where we were from. When the wind shifted and we were unable to move, see or breath they took us by the arm and ushered us to fresh air with smiles on their faces. We hiked down and began the long bus journey back to Denpasar.

I'm happy to say my final days in Indonesia were spent with friends. That's what makes this trip stand out against the others. I've made friends nearly everywhere I've gone but the closeness that I shared with those in Jogja and in Bali surpasses all the rest that I've met in Indonesia. There were several requests that I stay longer, and I entertained the notion for awhile. Repeated compliments about my Indonesian language skills really made me want to stay longer, but in the end I had a plane to catch and I decided to board it. I won't soon forget my friends in Indonesia. Olivier was very generous in allowing me to stay with him while I was in Bali and I truly enjoyed traveling with him. We have plans to meet again in France later this year and I feel like I will be back in Indonesia someday also.

It's amazing to think that my Indonesian experience has been shaped by a chance meeting with two fellow travelers after I had been feeling sorry for myself. I'll never forget when I met Olivier and Handa. And I thank God that it was raining that day.