back and coming
Current mood: anxious

back.

A time capsule in the form of the suitcase I brought with me nearly a year ago but left at my brother's in Jakarta was waiting for me when I arrived here a few days ago, and it was SO weird to open it and see things I forgot I owned and read things I forgot I wrote. They even smelled like I smelled a year ago, and I remembered instantly things I had forgotten, things that seemed important then. I'm leaving in 2 days to come back to the US and I have lots of mixed feelings about this. I'm excited, can't wait to see friends and family, but nervous for some reason? Nervous that either I haven't changed at all and everyone else has or vice versa when the reality is probably a little bit of both. I feel relieved to be holding a ticket back to Australia but also unsure about what I will do after that, and when (if?) I will come back to America. The longer I stay away, the harder it seems to go back. Not to mention the economy and all the shit that is going down there now, and add to that the ceaseless slagging off of America that I get on a regular basis. Most of it I discount if they have never been to america, but it's also making me very curious to see the country with a new pair of eyes that have been gone for a year. For all my homesickness at times, I still can't quite imagine being told I had to stay there, not yet. I said I wanted to try to find a way to not want to wander all the time when I left, sometimes I think this has just made it worse. I've just disconnected more, severed more ties, and am more and more okay with just wandering around. Surely this will stop... right? At some point I will want to settle down... ? I've also finally gotten ahold of my brother's music library, after having all my music erased... I sat in his little music oasis of something ridiculous like 60 gigs of music (no idea, but he has a lot) and glowed as I dragged files over, giddy and greedy with so much music in front of me, some of it music i haven't heard since I left. Still bringing me back full circle.

Can't wait to get home to see people, drink some sweet tea, and watch Mo get hitched.

12:37 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

less

stress. i don't know.

if my life.

has ever been this easy.


my best friend gets here sunday. we are going skydiving. scuba diving. overnight on the reef. to the rainforest. the beach.

sorry to glow. or gloat. it is just.

that i realized. that at this one moment in time. life is pretty flippin simple and easy.

i'm sure. that will change.

2:29 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

A Little Life in Cairns

I have been gone so long.
I have worn the same pair of flip flops every single day for the last 4 months. Until they broke, and I borrowed a boy's, who stole them from a friend who found them somewhere along the east coast and are at least 2 sizes too big. Reluctantly, I bought another pair.

My house is on stilts and there are two massive palm trees right outside my window. We sneak into movies or wait for Cheap Tuesdays. We sit around a big wooden table and someone plays DJ while we drink boxes of goon, 5 liters for $11.00. I design in millmeters and centimeters now, and have finally started to know what 28 degrees Celcius feels like and say the temperature in this, not in F. I sometimes just go barefoot and own only one long sleeved shirt now. I go running almost every day along the esplanade and do situps on the grass under palm trees.

I've started to shorten things and no longer flinch when they say "arvo" or "breaky." No, I haven't taken on the accent, but I get it now, and don't laugh when they say "no worries" "too easy" "no dramas" "mate." And they say mate. A lot. Sometimes I get the crossworld puzzles wrong because i forget that they want "colour" and "organise." I have to change spellcheck to UK settings otherwise i still default and spell things like an American.

Life is about 80 times slower here than it ever was in America. I've spent more time sleeping/laying/reading in hammocks than all of it combined at home.

Sometimes I have dreams (nightmares? ) that it's all over and that I am back at home, back in my life. I panic in these dreams and wonder why it's over, why I am back in my car, back on those roads, back at that job. A lot of people seem to have these dreams, so I know at least in that way I'm not wierd or alone. When there is a lull in things, or a day without sun, or i hear a certain song, smell something, I feel attacked by a strong wave of homesick and i want to click my heels and magically BAM be at 'home'. But then I have these dreams, and realize I am not ready to come home yet. And as Joel says, "but where is home for you?"
I feel like I have been gone for years and am really curious what it will feel like to come back for a few weeks.

2:48 PM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

waterfalls

finally, i swam underneath one. stood there, water pelting down on me, it actually hurt, until the current took me. We climbed slippery rocks for hours, chilled to the bone when the sun didn't shine on us. I didn't want to admit to Natalia how scared I was at one point, too close to the edge, the edge I imagined was the reason for the "ACHTUNG! DANGER! Do not proceed past this point!" sign, the edge I pictured myself tumbling over, being tossed against rocks. Getting any footing was nearly impossible, but the shaking was worth the sliding down.

josephine falls = yes.

11:30 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Dwindling

The van is gone, he is gone. He left behind a once-clean shirt, once washed. I throw it in Cecilia's face and I can see her salivate with sick. The other one is gone as well, the bare-chested, curly haired wild boy and his permanent fixture of a white truck. The Italian's in mourning, his idols have disappeared, and taken their "radical" with them. The music's changed. Without his oppressive stance near the Ipod and the speakers, there's no one to prohibit this euro pop trash, or to mock the sudden warble of german being spoken around the table. The pretty ones seem boring, the others I can't understand. The dark haired fidgety girl is gone, taking with her the welsh wit and banter that can be so hard to come by. The cupboards seem empty. Packing is tedious, watching someone else pack is almost worse. Leaving isn't hard, sometimes staying is.

8:04 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Stilll l l l l l l in Australia

I don't write enough, because I'm afraid I don't have much new to say. Compared to traveling around Asia, there has been a definite lull in things here... everything closes at 5. Everything. I tried to go out for dinner last night, a friday night, at 8:30 pm, a very standard time to go out for dinner on a friday night. We tried 3 different places. (out of a possible 6. okay i exxagerate, but this is a small town) All were closed or closing. We settled on an indian place, who was only staying open because a party of ten must also have had the same dilemna and were keeping them open 'late'. The children of the owners ate next to us, expertly spooning spicy rice into their little brown mouths with their little brown fingers, and I felt rude, like we were intruding in family dinnertime. I feared from the sticky, non-covered table that the food wouldn't be up to snuff. Had it been a big city, it could've gotten away with maybe a hip hole-in-the-wall thing, if the food had exceeded expectations, you'd walk out beaming, suprised that they could deliver. But in my sleepy little seaside town, the indian owners managed to mispell a few of the indian dishes. Laziness and no attention to detail on their menu, reflected in their food. See. I told you I had nothing interesting to say.
Even in Perth, which is a cool city, the shops close at 5. The bars are open late. But unless you're out to get hammered, there's not a plethura of things to do at night. Or at least I haven't found them. (aside from during the day, when you can go to any one of the beaches, or do something outdoorsy)
So I'm ready to leave, to get over to the east coast, where I've been told more is going on. Off from this little coccoon of my 3 english roomates, where we cook dinner every night after the gym, where I read myself to sleep 5 out of 7 nights, since we're trying to save money by not drinking, which is really the only thing to do here at night.

But. I did go down to Margaret River last weekend, which was beautiful. Wine region, with beaches. We went on wine tastings and went kayaking and ate bush food... and I ate kangaroo. And finally saw a kangaroo, which helped to lift my opinion of Australia. The beaches, the weather... amazing. The mullets and Yutes, not so much. I'm excited to see more. But I can't say a tiny part of me doesn't wish on a daily basis that I were still in Asia.

4:23 AM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Australia

The weather is amazing and I feel like I just keep repeating that. Which I do, and it is. I wish I didn’t look back on photos just taken a few months ago in Asia and wish that I were still there and I was still her. I am, but I’ve been gone long enough now that sometimes I don’t know if I would recognize things, if I were to suddenly come back home. It’s not that I want to come back home, not that I am not having a good time, it’s just the shite reality of running out of money and working and dealing once again with Western people. Australia is great, and there are a lot of things I love about being here. It’s the stopping to work and feeling semi-settled that is wearing on me, I think I preferred running around with a pack on my back, travelling the entire time. I’ve been here 7 weeks, in a house. I have a washing machine, keys, an address, a closet full of clothes. It’s temporary, but doesn’t feel like it when I have a job, I’ve made friends here, and then I will leave. Far enough away that I feel like I’ve been gone years and I know things won’t have changed that much when I come home. If it’s not me feeling homesick, then it’s one of my roomates... it’s seems contagious. And it’s not something you can expect sympathy for because what we’re doing is our choice and a lot of people envy it, but maybe sometimes it’s harder than we thought it would be, to just up and leave everything, or maybe it’s even harder knowing none of what we left will be there when we get back.

Western Australia is laid back. People run into grocery stores barefoot and it’s all beach culture. The beaches are gorgeous and everywhere around us. I work on a harbor and stare out at boats and the ocean all day. We’ve managed to recruit several people into our little group of backpackers and seem to always have some reason to celebrate and hang out. It’s not that I’m not happy here or haven’t met great people... I just can’t wait to be back to wandering.

1:56 AM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Some things I will miss.

Pure lawlessness. Cheap food. Ridiculously cheap, spicy food at food stalls and eating fron questionably clean utensils or chopsticks that have been left out at tables. Tuk-tuks. Motorbikes. Bargaining. The heat and humiditiy, smell of incense and rice and spices. Little kids smiling and waving hello, in their language, or sometimes "hello!" Cheap and plentiful massages and pedicures. Learning from random locals who speak a bit of english. Renting bikes for a dollar a day. Wearing only flip flops and having dirty feet and not caring. Wearing no make up and being extremely tan. Beer Lao, Beer Chang, Bintang, buckets, and lao-lao, among the wide variety of cheap and heavy hangover- inducing ways to imbibe. Bonfires on beaches. Anything on beaches. $4 bungalows with hammocks on the porch. The views. Longboats. Not knowing the language. Dusty village roads. Night buses, in all of their misery, and the way that you always meet new friends on these buses and get to the next town and end up seeing everyone that was on your bus and end up being friends with them as well. Seeing the friends you made 2 months ago in some random city. Cheap hostels. The joy of finding a room with a hot shower and maybe even splurging for air-con. Reading good books on the beach or over strong Vietnamese coffee. Trading books. Not being 100 percent sure that you're actually on the right bus to the right destination. Staying as long as I want, and until I am ready to move on. Night markets. Strange money. Seeing monks in their orange. Having sand everywhere. The smell of mozzie spray. Seeing "happy" next to food on menus. Chilis. Monkeys. Dogs everywhere, roaming the streets. Finding noodles at 5 am and washing them down with a .70 cent beer. Passing through villages. Rice fields. Breakfast on beaches. Always seeing sunsets, and sometimes sunrises. The surprise of hearing good music at random beach bars-anything other than reggae or jack johnson. Meeting like-minded judgemental people with whom you can pass the time on buses with by making fun of others. Huge palm trees. Having laundry done (finally!) and feeling decadent for wearing a clean shirt. Always wearing the same shirt. and skirt. Banana pancakes. Fruit shakes. Pad Thai. Chopsticks. Food stalls. Incorrect english making signs hilarious and nonsensical.

I could go on and on. But just felt like making a list of all of the things I have loved and will miss about being in Southeast Asia.

2:53 AM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

The last month of S.East Asia

I guess I've been writing mass emails and not blogs, so here is a brief synopsis of the last month or so that I spent in Laos and Vietnam...

I stayed longer in cambodia than I should have, it's hard to leave people you've met and easy to just keep taking the same buses and seeing new places with familiar faces. I met a few guys in Sihanoukville over Christmas and ended up back-tracking through Cambodia with them, which is fine bc I did love Cambodia, but in the end came back to haunt me when I was rushed for time in Vietnam.

I decided last minute on New Year's Eve day to leave these guys and get back on my own track and randomly flew to a small town in Laos called Pakse, then caught a local bus (local as in, with baskets of pigs and bags of sugar and cement mix and locals eating sticky rice and hocking loogies onto the dirt road beneath us.) The ride was dusty and bumpy and took 4. 5 hrs and we stopped through villages and got to see the lower part of Laos. Finally arriving at the 4000 Islands (Si Phan Don) and took a small longboat to the the island of Don Det. No electricity except from a generator from 6-10 pm, and a big group of us walked along a dirt path for 30 minutes to get to what felt like a secret party, but was really just the only party on the island. A mix of locals and westerners and bad Laos music and a mangy christmas tree and warm big bottles of Beer Laos and dancing with the locals and everyone seemed to have eaten something "happy" and therefore we were all just staring at the Christmas tree in the center of the party and watching ourselves dance awkwardly to the loud live music singing words we didn't know. New Year's Eve was strange.

I stayed in those islands for a few days then went back up north to a few cities in Laos- Pakse and Vientianne and then Vang Vieng, which was brilliant and amazing and finallly got some physical activity in- climbing and kayaking and tubing. Caves and waterfalls and swinging off giant ropes into the river. Vang Vieng was a giant playground with mountains and the river and was unlike anywhere else I have ever been, and I loved it. Then up to Luang Prabang, a beautiful small little city that somehow feels like Charleston set in Asian mountains, with palm trees and it's a romantic, pretty town, with monks wandering the streets and temples and overpriced tourist shops. Loads of restaurants along the rivers and on the brick streets. I went biking and kayaking here, and fell even more in love with Laos. I should have just stayed the rest of the time in Laos, but decided to use the Vietnam visa i had paid for and gotten in Cambodia and so I flew from Luang Prabang to Vietnam.

The weather was shit in vietnam-- rainy and gray and cold in the north. Hanoi was an unexpected jolt into Vietnam, having just come from a sleepy romantic town in Laos into honking, loud, insane traffic and a busy city, cramped and filled and winding little alleys and it was more expensive, more harsh, the people trickier and at first, i thought, meaner, but as I got to know Vietnam I changed my mind.

I worked my way down the coast of Vietnam, going to Hue and Hoi An, then Nha Trang. I didn't have nearly enough time in any one place, except maybe Hue, where I rode my bike out into the middle of nowhere- into rice fields and villages in the pouring rain.
I met lots of good people along the way and only one bus broke down- our bus at 4 am, started smoking and we just hung out on the side of the rode but had to squat and pee next to a little shrine, which we thought was okay because someone had offered up a beer either in laziness or as an offering, so i figured, beer on the shrine is no worse than me peeing next to the shrine.

After about 9 days in Vietnam, I hurried off to Bangkok so I could catch another flight to Jakarta. I was exceedingly hungover the day of all the flights, from Nha Trang to Saigon and then Saigon to Bangkok. I was meeting a friend who'd come to surprise me in Bangkok and my pack was up to 20 kilos (started at 15...) and it was a miserable little search, through the crazy packed streets of Bangkok, to find the hotel where this friend was staying, only to have him not even in his room, but out drinking. One last crazy day in Bangkok, and then I flew back to Jakarta.

So here I am, back with my family for a few days before I head off to Bali. I'll be there a week and then it's Australia for .... a year? not sure. finding work as soon as I get there, in Perth.

I will really post pictures soon.

7:57 PM - 0 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Cambodia II

I am now in Phnom Penh... took a bus here yesterderday from Siam Reap and it took about 6 hot and bumpy hours, but not too bad. Got to see lots along the way... more villages and houses with thatched walls and dried leaves for roofs and people. It is such a poor country, but the people are really sweet and the kids are absolutely gorgeous.

I got in and found a guesthouse last night... there is a "lake"-- with random rows of green plants all over-- and there are guest houses actually built on the lake, above it. I went to a place called Number 9 and just took the first room offered- was hot and tired.  Not so nice... no mirror or sink in the bathroom , dirty mosquito net... but whatever. Huge deck with hammocks and popazon chairs and pool tables, mats and pillows and people chilling out everywhere... 24 hour playground for adults-- movies and beer and people hanging out. I had some curry and just looked out at the lake for quite awhile and met an american guy and had an earlier night. It was a weird vibe though-- hard to describe, but i felt like i was in 1970... maybe it was the bob dylan playing and the local cambodian girls flitting around and flirting with the young australian guys... but it seemed easy to imagine that it was not 2007. DIrty guys were picking the girls up and taking them up on their offers and it was really gross to see them go back into their rooms and emerge a few hours later to go back and drink or eat. It skeeved me out and its hard to explain but the whole thing felt like a movie.

I got up and switched rooms when i found the shower nozzle didnt even work, and am in a slightly better place, at least it has a proper window rather than an open hole. I hired a moto and we drove 30 minutes to the Killing Fields. It was a strange and heartbreaking, goose bump giving place. I was actually walking on bone and bits of clothing while hearing school kids nearby singing. People were brutally massacred here... there was a huge tribute (stupa?) glass tower thing with hundreds of skulls in it, and areas where they explained had been mass graves for people. A tree that had hung a loudspeaker that made noise to drown out the moans of people being brutally killed. Horrible, awful, gut wrenching to see and read about.

Hopped back on the moto with chills and burned my leg badly on the exhaust pipe :(.  Rode back up to the city to the Tuol Sleng museum... it used to be a school and was taken over by the Khmer Rouge and turned into a prison camp. Eerie and horrific, room after room full of the mug shots that were taken of the prisoners that were also starved and beaten and tortured then sent off to be dumped in the Killing Fields. The worst part is that it was so recent.. the thought that as I was being born not long after people were still being killed here... and the whole thing seems so backwards and awful and unimaginable...  it was pretty exhausting mentally to see all of it.

I walked around outside for a bit and met some german guys and ate with the locals at a food stall for 75 cents. and then hopped back on the moto. This was the best part of the day... being in the traffic with all the other motos, bikes, cars, buses. Pulling up next to 5 kids on one moto, all smiling and so f'ing cute. Old ladies smiled, guys smiled, everyone seemed to catch my eye and smile. And seeing them just living their every day lives... they seem happy. Poor, but happy...but after seeing what their country has gone through pretty recently, it seems amazing that they are so happy.

back to the guest house where I caught the sunset with a beer at 5 30 on the lake... amazing.

Off to find some Cambodian food. Exhausted and sunburnt... it's so hot here.

can't imagine that it is almost christmas and cold where so many of you are. Christmas should be interesting in Cambodia. But I am really loving it here so excited to see what that will be like.

4:56 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment