Our Third Voyage Around The World

At some point last year Ileana asked why don’t we go to Samarkand. Very good question, why not? Let’s go. We looked it up, saw that we might need a few days, but if we go there we should also go to Khiva and Bukhara. It might take 10 days, best time to visit should be in the spring or fall. Slowly over several months that idea turned into a trip of three and a half months (104 days) around the world in which we visited 14 countries. Here is a brief summary of what we did. 

First some numbers:

• UNESCO World Heritage Sites (WHS) - 36 (in the text below the number in parentheses identifies the running count).
• Tentative World Heritage Sites (TWHS) - at least 15
• Countries - 14: eight new for both of us, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, Oman, Bhutan, the Netherlands was new for me, revisiting England, Turkey, UAE and Thailand, plus of course, Romania.
• Flights - 23, for 29300 miles (46900 km), and at least 75 hours.
• Road trips - give or take 9200 miles (14700 km), some of it on highways and some of it on really picturesque “roads”. 
• 20921 pictures to go through to select a few for you...

Our goal to visit UNESCO World Heritage sites played a major role in the planning of this trip. Ileana had seen a couple more than me and to make it easier to keep track, I asked her to take me to two of them: London’s Kew Garden (245) and Amsterdam’s 17th century Canal Ring Area (248). 

Kew Garden, up in the temperate house

The 200 Day Mark

We've been on the road for two hundred days! Since last time I wrote a collection of anecdotes, I think it's a great idea to write another. Excuse the lateness; I've been bad at keeping up with blog posts, as you may have noticed.

Let's recapitulate where we've been since Hong Kong.

 We've been in:

Macao

Cambodia

Thailand

New Zealand

Hawaii

Australia (though I won't write anything about here in this post)

The trouble is that

Paradise

Define paradise. A lost island in Thailand, a hut on a white, fine sand beach, azure, shallow waters with a ripple like a wave, a couple of long boats, painted in their bright, hot colors and palm trees sharing their shadow in the gentle breeze. Rocks on the side with some reefs and colorful fish. The hills and the jungle behind, cutting off any sight, sound or thought of an outside world. Warm just enough to be naked all the time. Great tasting food, tropical fruits and cold drinks. A quiet night with buckets of stars, squeezed in a long chair along your loved one. Silence, just the sea sounds or maybe some subdued great music. A stunning sunrise and a breathtaking sunset. If it has to be just one, who decides, do you get options or just take what comes? And when some of these ingredients are missing, where does someone draw the line and counts it as a good enough paradise?

Up at the viewpoint

The Land of Siam

Sawatdee Ayutthaya

With lots of adventure (link 1 2 3), bad feelings and Mihai’s skill, finding our bus in a huge terminal, we arrived in the old capital of Thailand. It is a change of plans, we didn’t know we wanted to come here, because we didn’t read about it. While at home, Mihai tried everything, except bribing, to make us find more about where we wanted to go, but we procrastinated. For one reason, I can’t remember all the details and I didn’t want to read about something that later would prove that we were not going to visit. We wanted flexibility and that’s what we were doing: deciding that we don’t want 5 days in Bangkok, but two in Ayutthaya.

Thailand

"I love this sink!" Ioan exclaims when he goes into the bathroom in Koh Phangan, Thailand. Without waiting for an answer, he continues, "It's got this huge crack in it."

We didn't notice the crack much over the next few days, but it was definitely there.

The bungalow is small, cramped, and starts telling us how much clutter we can accumulate over three weeks.

It's a lot. Even though we each have two to three shirts (I actually think my wardrobe is the largest in this family, which would explain my backpack's tendency to shrink whenever objects are placed into it), it seems our backpacks are overflowing with stuff. 

And where could it all possibly come from? Where has this gargantuan collection of stuff been absorbed?

Yes, Ileana bought me legwarmers in Tibet.

I would have died without them, to be honest, and I still have the cardboard that they came with, mostly because I haven't been able to get a proper picture of "Fits perfectly your nice legs." Or "Conforms to your nice legs." Or whatever it is. The point is that the packaging assumes you have nice legs, not that you need legwarmers to make your legs look nice.

Please note the difference. American packaging tends to tend toward the second example. I vastly prefer the Tibetan.

I also bought the punjabi in India. Well, okay, Dad did, but I picked it out. The trouble is that the top is a perfect just-above-knee dress for warm climates. When paired with the leggings, it feels a bit like something one would only wear in India. I'll be fixing that soon.

All three of these items (legwarmers, punjabi top, leggings), are actually a bit more bulky than I'd expected. Paired with gloves, scarves, winter clothing, and hiking shoes, suddenly the backpack balloons. It becomes ridiculously heavy. And even though I'm not carrying my laptop around, it seems to have gained weight. Trust me, clothes are lighter when you're wearing them, not carrying them.

For one thing, the clothes' weight is evenly distributed over arms, legs, chests, torsoes, feet, waistbands, etc. A backpack tends to center on one place-- your shoulders. And your back, if you decide to lean forward and look absurd.

But still. The amount of sheer stuff in three backpacks is nothing compared to the average closet in the average home. We three together own, what, ten percent of what an average person owns in clothing? Scratch that. Twenty percent.

And yet… this little space is full of stuff.

--

Our toilet paper becomes infested with ants. We have no idea where they come from, and we're not sure how they found our toilet paper. But soon Ileana and Ioan are dousing it with water (we went without TP for some time thanks to this, letting it dehydrate on the unused safe), I'm moving it around and systematically killing insects with a well-placed thumb. I don't mind eating the occasional ant which has crawled into my fried rice, but I draw the line at toilet paper. The little things are hunted out and we have a few days of insectless bathroom.

Until they somehow find it again. I must have missed a messenger ant one day, because all of a sudden there's a swarm of them everywhere all over again.

Ah well. It's one of those things you can record for posterity.

--

The waiters here tend to be happy and inclined to make conversation about anything and everything. They laugh frequently, spin trays, play guitar, and suddenly start belting out the lyrics to whatever's playing on the stereo system.

They say good morning, yell out "Who ordered rice pudding?", laugh, and exclaim, "Now I know who you are!"

It takes getting used to.

—

The days are spent in sitting. Relaxing. Reading. Writing. Drawing. Swimming. There's absolutely no pressure to do anything. We can choose whether to eat breakfast or lunch or both. There's no 'family' time except dinner and playing a card game afterwards.

This might sound weird. A family, at the beach, basically avoiding each other.

It's not that strange, actually. We've been around each other 24/7 for the past four months. 

--

If I had only six words in which to describe our island experience, they would be:

Relaxing, sometimes boring, bemusing, a relief.

A relief, that is, from perpetual motion.

Beyond Fear

I fear water! 

It is a force of nature, untamable, uncontrollable.

 I don’t like to be in deep water, to not have the bottom in reach. If I have to, I will do it, but not for fun. It is a conscious decision. So how come I am taking a SCUBA diving open water course? We’re doing it as a family, we’re taking advantage of being in Thailand where the waters are warm, 28-30 ºC. There are a huge number of schools, that makes the prices lower and also you get to choose what kind of school you want. For us is a small group, just our family (we exceed the group limit by one) and it is made possible by New Way Dive School. Anna is going to be our instructor and Sarah will join us in the diving sessions.

We Got Mermaids

We went to Ko Tao to dive. It is a small island in the Gulf of Thailand, on top of the more famous and much bigger, Ko Samui and Koh Phangan. Like most places on this side of the world, there are a couple of spellings that all go along together, Ko Tao, Koh Tao. The name means the "turtle island", there are no turtles here, the name comes from the shape of the island. It has a population of about 5000 people and it is famous for its diving schools. Like with any government in the world, stupidity and greed reigns here as well, corruption is the name of the game and the local police and immigration services impose hefty "shares" to let the  diving schools alone. It is stupid because they support the local economy and are essential for the way of life of the locals. Somehow the schools get by, and probably because of the competition, it is the cheapest place in the world to get an open water PADI certificate. It has warm tropical waters, the sea is calm and clear, there are about 30 diving sites in the vicinity with relatively low depth making it easy for beginners to learn their skills and pass their testing.

Getting on the boat in the Gulf of Thailand

A Slice of Thailand

Thailand is proud of its history, never being occupied by a western power. It is a monarchy, the dynasty has been in power for 700 years, their king is the longest reigning monarch in the world (65 years and counting) and probably one of the most loved and respected. It is illegal in Thailand to say anything negative about the king or the royal family. That is all good, but it is surprising to us to see the huge monuments, the colossal pictures of the king from the earliest age to the oldest, it looks like the cult of personality that we know so well from the communist Romania. It is a bit annoying, especially since I have no idea if it actually reflects the real sentiment of the people. Then looking closer, people really have pictures of the king all over, on their dashboard and in their houses. They might be official pictures, but they show the young king of 50 years ago with a bicycle or a camera, or other "candid" pose. The cabs have banners on their windows "Long live the King." In public places they play the royal anthem at 8 am and 6 pm, and people stop and stand for a few minutes with their right hand to the heart.

Wat Pho, the reclining Buddha

Fifty Tickets In 24 Hours

Three months after deciding the departure day. Less then five months until we leave we find ourselves closer and closer, sometimes too close. We bought the first tickets for an amazing price, breaking our trip in two, Asia until February 29, then New Zealand and the rest. In March I bought the first leg of our trip. Another great deal, taking us from New York to Osaka. In April I bought another three tickets, from Kochi, in the South tip of India, to Kuala Lumpur, then to Guilin, Hong Kong, Macau and back to Kuala Lumpur on January 27. It was a quick and impulsive decision, but we wanted more time in China, we wanted Hong Kong, we initially wanted to avoid the Chinese New Year. Then we realized that we actually want it in the craziest, busiest, most crowded place we could imagine, so we will be there for it. That wasn't anymore a time to look for cheap tickets, I think I justly assumed that the closer it gets the higher the price so we got the tickets and even reserved 2 rooms in Hong Kong for 3 nights and payed for 2 nights in Macau! Then we took a long break. We bought more things for the road, we bought some books, we read some more and went on with our life. We kept talking about it. We answered some questions, took some decisions, postponed some others. We are stuck (for now) trying to decide how to get from Tokyo to Beijing. Considering that the cheapest one-way direct ticket is more than $2000 (even more for return ticket), I have to come up with an alternative.

People ask me if I am excited. Yeah, maybe, I don't know. I explain that "travel is the saddest pleasure", at least planning for it. This is a quote from Paul Theroux, I will read something by him at some point. It makes sense. With the whole world and "all the time" to see it, we find ourselves constantly making sacrifices, eliminating things, giving up on some dreams. Every yes for a destination involves a no for several others. Deciding to go to China a second time means no Laos, Burma, or Northern Thailand. No Vietnam. Going to Xining means no Chengdu and so on. More days in Tokyo means no to Hiroshima and South Korea. So I explain it sometimes, but I'm not sure if I get my point across and I wouldn't blame them, nice problem to complain about. We set some dates to break our trip in different stages. Then we break it further apart, leaving room for decisions on the road. Anything could change at some point and we just need to know our options. How can we tell if we'll survive India? How long should we stay there? We all are very excited, very eager to discover it and a bit scared. How long should we stay in Nepal? Every extra day there would take a day away from India. So we decided not to decide anything. We'll cross Himalaya on December 3rd and then six weeks later we'll have to catch a flight 2200 km away. That's 1340 miles by air, but it will be much more and much slower by land. We are all confident that we will make it somehow.

Last week I started to hear rumors that AirAsia is having the yearly sale. Tons of tickets for 10 cents for travel from February 6 to June 20, 2012. We had to decide quick on a day to leave Australia, that being one of the most expensive tickets. We did that and starting Monday night I bought 50 tickets in 24 hours. I also worked for 12 of those hours, slept for 4 and else. After getting the Darwin to Bali ticket on May 8, I decided to buy a ticket from Penang to Kuala Lumpur on February 29. Then I had the "great" idea to try to fly from Bali to Yogyakarta, no direct connection, but who cares. I bought tickets from Bali to Jakarta, then return Jakarta - Yogyakarta. After another hour or so, I decided that we really don't want to spend any time in Jakarta so I got tickets to Singapore, one year from today. Initially they were $2.42, but until I made my mind they were gone. Finally I found 4 tickets for that price, and got another one for $25. It was enough for the evening, it was after 2 am. I went to bed still trying to solve some puzzles. Next morning at 7, I bought tickets for Thailand, leave Bangkok to go to Krabi (February 8), return on February 22 to fly to Penang. I went to work and when I got home I bought the tickets from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur. Funny, the tickets were listed as 7-8 cents, but the final cost with all the taxes and convenience fees was $215. Still a good price for 5 tickets. At this point Ileana said STOP! I was done anyhow! I got 50 plane tickets for a little over $1500. Average of $30 per flight, that's a decent price especially considering that most of it is in fees. $200 of that is just the luggage cost, for just 2 bags.

Overall an amazing thing, we now have 15 flights bought and still plenty of open dates in our calendar to make our plans as we please. There are some missing links, three more mandatory flights, two optional ones and we are set with the air transport until June 1st. The first 230 days of travel. After we are done in that half of the world, assuming that we want to go on, we will most likely move to Africa. I'll write more before that...

The World Is Coming To The End

A young Englishman married his fiancee in London this Friday. A million people celebrated in the streets and about 2 billion people watched the wedding on their TVs. They kissed twice! So there is one good thing happening and everybody clings to it, they don't really have much else.

Cambodia and Thailand are fighting at their border. There will be elections in Thailand later this year and the politicians and the army are likely using this issue for political advantage. So they kill a decent number of soldiers and flatten some of the temples they are fighting about. "What is not in doubt is that this won’t be the last time that Thailand and Cambodia lob shells at each other over the border. They have been tussling over this land for many years, and politicians know better than to be reasonable and generous in a situation like this." (the economist) We plan to cross that border somewhere south from where they fight.
Earlier this year there was a major earthquake in Christchurch and we bought our plane tickets there two weeks later. Maybe some people didn't hear of Christchurch before, but when we mentioned it, they knew now: "this is where the earthquake was, right?" And then there was another major earthquake, a tsunami and a nuclear meltdown in Japan and a few weeks later we bought our tickets to Osaka. So when we said something we left some people speechless.
A tibetan monk sets himself on fire to protest against the Chinese occupation, China closes some areas for tourists "because of the unrest" but we are still going to Tibet. India eliminates American companies from the 10 billion bid for fighter aircraft as they arm themselves to be better able to fight (who?). People are arguing back and forth about the reasons for this and the American ambassador to India will retire for "personal reasons". Nobody cares how much 10 billion could do to help some poor people or some hungry children, we need war planes.
There is a guy in Syria who is killing innocent Syrians en gros and the world is watching and not doing anything about it. There is a guy in Libya who kills Libyans and the world wanted to help so they went there to kill some Libyans too. We might have to skip Syria next year. We knew that we wouldn't be able to go to Libya, but now, who knows?
Tornadoes happen in US and 340 people are killed in one day because they didn't listen to their radios, or they listened but didn't act on it.
As the price of fuel jet goes up, AirAsia restores some fuel surcharges and will make our plane tickets more expensive. Meanwhile America is recovering from recession but continues to manipulate the data about inflation and subsequently the dollar value will continue to go down and the price of oil will continue to go up. We will have less money on our trip. So what?
Annette just told me the other day that she knows that it is the end of the world, some guy who died and went to hell returned to tell his pastor and then the pastor went to Texas and died in a car accident. At least with this theory it all makes sense now, I have one less thing to worry about.

According to Britney Spears latest single we still have until December 21st 2012 - "till the world ends". She recommends that we keep on dancing. We will keep on planning and taking our trip until then and maybe dance a bit.