Before I give you some details of a four-day bike trip a friend and I took recently, I want to take a moment and say why I write these accounts of my traveling life. Of course, I want to stay in communication with you, my far-flung family and friends. As I’ve aged, this desire has only grown stronger, and in retirement I have more time to gratify it.
Road Trip through Croatia and Bulgaria
August 2011
By the time we’d reached Varna, I was fed-up. We were in our fourth week of traveling through Croatia and Bulgaria, and I was tired of everything associated with a long road trip in countries with unfamiliar languages. It was hot, and my knees were in pain. Adding to my irritation, our hotel was in a seedy part of town. After misreading the listing outside the Opera House and waiting in line at the box office, we learned that we’d missed the performance of “Rigoletto” by a month. The final irritant was coming across an event sponsored by women-targeted cigarette, razor, and magazine companies – short foot races of models wearing tight clothes and high, high heels.
China Impressions
Hey, I’m in Vietnam, finally! The U.S. Government wanted to send me here in the late 1960s, but that plan fell through. However, as the barman Moustache said in the film Irma La Douce, “Cela c’est une autre histoire.”
My China days ended with a flight from Shanghai a few days ago. I had planned a much longer stay and was dismayed at first when my passport came back from the Chinese Consulate in Istanbul with a 15-day visa. No matter; I decided to schedule those days as tightly as possible so as to be able to visit the sites that conventional wisdom declares first-time travelers to China must see. This plan took me first to Beijing and then to Xi’an, Guilin, and Shanghai.
Along the Mekong from Thailand to Laos
Tuesday, May 29 & 30, 2011
Chaing Kong , Thailand to Luang Prabang, Laos
These two days might be considered as one. They were the days of the slow boat to Luang Prabang, Laos. In total I spent at least 15 hours traveling down the Mekong River from the Lao – Thai border to L.B. It was an experience. I’m glad I did it and wouldn’t want to repeat it.
Laos to Thailand
May 2011
Bumped and shaken for eleven hours on a bus over the torturous mountain road between the towns of Luang Prabang and Vientiane in Laos, I had ample time to reflect on the vicissitudes of independent travel in Southeast Asia. I was one of only three westerners riding the bus that day, and if the ride itself were not enough, my seatmate, a young male Lao, was a narcoleptic whose head kept lolling on my shoulder. To complete the picture, the peasant woman in front of me had reclined her setback all the way. Then the driver’s young assistant came up the aisle passing out barf bags, and I knew I this would not be one of my happiest travel days.
Surprising Cambodia – May, 2011
I write “surprising” because knowing a bit of this country’s traumatic history of the past 50 years, I find the people to be so gentle and outwardly well-adjusted. The Cambodians I’ve come in contact with are the most gracious and hospitable I’ve met so far on this Southeast Asian journey.
Cambodia has suffered immensely. From the American carpet bombing of the borderlands alongside Vietnam, to the short, genocidal rule of the Khmer Rouge, to the ensuing civil war that didn’t end until 1990, life here for most was a prolonged agony. And yet, the country is recovering, rediscovering its pride and slowly reestablishing its traditional Khmer culture. However, it is desperately poor, and corruption is a big problem.
Vietnam Days
May, 2011
It’s Tuesday the 10th of May, and I’m in Cambodia where I arrived yesterday by bus from Vietnam. Although hot (and I don’t mean to pun about the weather, which is in the high 90s) to explore this interesting small country, I wanted to take a little time to put down my feelings and observations about the last 20days in Vietnam while they’re still fresh.
An Innocent Abroad – Ups and Downs in China
I think I used to be smarter or at least more careful. Here in Shanghai I feel like a baby. Yesterday, to make a day trip to Hangzhou, another really big city (aren’t they all) I first took the wrong train (slow) to the wrong station (Hangzou South) and then took the wrong bus to get to the right station before I finally made it in a taxi.
Continue reading An Innocent Abroad – Ups and Downs in China
Dubai
Dubai, April 4, 2011
With my western background and outlook, spending two days in the Emirate of Dubai has been a strange experience. It was only this morning as I prepared to leave that I realized I hadn’t seen a single beggar anywhere in the city, nor had I seen any buskers like the street musicians I’m used to.
The Ethiopian HIghlands
Until recently, all I knew about Ethiopia is that it is a poor country in the Horn of Africa that was once ruled by the emperor Haile Selassie. So when I signed up for a nine-day tour of the country’s historical region offered by the American Research Institute in Turkey (ARIT), I thought I should do some research of my own.