TravelStream™ news feed for member wheresmehat on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/wheresmehat en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Thu, 29 Jan 2009 20:26:26 -0500 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/wheresmehat/16/1223320200/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/wheresmehat/16/1223320200/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/wheresmehat/16/1223320200/tpod.html Thu, 29 Jan 2009 20:26:26 -0500 Go Westward Ho!

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Black Rock City, Nevada, United States

Phirst, Photos for your perusal:

http://picasaweb.google.com/jenroams/GoWestwardHo#

http://picasaweb.google.com/jenroams/BurningMan08#

http://picasaweb.google.com/jenroams/BurnersWithoutBordersCamp08#

Well, it's been an amazing few years on the road, but I am giddy to finally set down my bags and unpack my boxes of treasure and find a non-transient community to grow into. I am in awe of the many miles I
have crossed and thank each of you who has shared in the joy of the journey. I don't think you know how important it has been for me to be able to feel my friends and family by my side in spirit. Your
presence shared my awe across this extraordinary planet and I found solace in your distant support in times of loneliness and frustration. Thanks to each of you for being freakin' fabulous and keeping me company from afar. Really. Really really. I am so blessed to know each of you.

Enough schmaltz though. I had a brutal month of New York City taking me over it's lap and spanking the
dollars out of my pockets as I tried to pick them up off the floor. That place is such a land of high's and low's. I totally lost my voice and struggled to sell my wares. Even reading tarot in Union Square turned
out to make me into a low-paid therapist. "Oh, I know awl about myself, cus I read a lot of self-help books and I tawk about myself awl the tiiime." Ug. It was hard to get a word in to tell them to hush up and
start practicing the exercises in the books.

But I saw good friends and family and I broke up with New York City as peacefully as it would let me. Then I gave another glance to Boston and decided it's got a nice ass. Saw Batman with Jerry. Kira (from Indian roads) showed me great thrift stores. Alexa took me to Walden pond and her Swede hubby
Niklas made us yummy meatballs.

I head up to Montreal to see my Taiwanese neighbor and shopping/photography partner, Marie Eve. What a
fabulous city. Everyone should go. It's full of friendly French-speaking folk. They are welcoming and the city is both modern funky and classic cool. Poutine is crap though, don't eat it. They must
have kicked all their best chefs down to New Orleans back in the day.

Barely had time to enjoy Toronto, but enjoyed Hamilton despite its bad rap. Okay, it kind of smells bad in the morning from local industry waste. But it's a cute blue collar town. I hung with my friend Shane's eerily cute baby, Quentin. Then went to Buffalo, which is another cool town with a lousy reputation. I loved the gothic architecture. Ani Difranco bought an old church there that she renovated into an art space / music studio. I saw my babysitter Maggi who is as fun as ever. I adore her two kids and awesome husband, Peter.

Shot across the country to stop in Chicago for a day. Highlight: The Bean. (See Google Images: the chicago
bean). Cost them millions to buff it up all shiny. Well, I say it's worth every dang penny. One of the coolest works of art I have ever seen. I saw some other pieces of Anish Kapoor's in New York and I had already decided that he's one of my favorite artists. This clinches it.

Got a rideshare for the long pull to Boulder, where I reveled in my old college town and caught up with my favorite film professor, Suranjan Ganguly. Watched some Olympics and ran 100-meter mad dash to prep for
Burning Man.

My Salt Lake City friends Mark and Christine and their kids generously helped me continue to get my stuff together for the big show. I attended their Mormon Ward on Sunday and was surprised at what a
cacophony of sound permeates from the meeting. All these families gather in the main room for the first hour and the kids create a buzz in the room. It is such a crazy difference to the silence of a Presbyterian or Catholic church. I enjoyed it and felt very welcome without any sort of "pull her into the fold" vibe. Go Mormons.

It was a fun activity to do just as I head to the Burn as well. I went a week early to help build the Burners Without Burners camp. It was impressive to watch a nomadic gathering grow out of a dusty
desert dried lake bed. Incredible how much industry and technology goes into the art projects and super structures. This ain't no simple campout, folks. I worked to build large canopies, geodesic domes, and wood decks in the over 100 degree heat. It was a trial, but somehow very satisfying labor. Especially
once a few more of us showed up to help. Our camp was full of hilarious people who worked well as a team to get 'er done and then had a blast at the party together.

My favorite art pieces this year: a neon Blue Whale that breached out of the playa and splashed back under; a pack of a dozen unicorns that hugged me after I sang the Last Unicorn song to them on their megaphone; and a classroom setting with just an American map at the front. The theme was American Dream and I felt like that piece summarized my biggest issue with our America-centric education. Overall though, the theme resulted in a lot of art that represented a very real kind of patriotism. Not canned, that's for sure.

We were placed next to the temple crew who built the entire Basura Sagrada structure out of
trash. We were also next to Entheon Village, who are using Burning Man as a practice ground for their reconstructed containers that they are designing to drop on emergency disaster sites. It's a great opportunity
to see how to feed 500 people a day with little other infrastructure than what they brought in.
More on that here: http://ourfuturenow.wordpress. com/2008/08/10/shipping- containers-for-disaster- relief/

Next I head up to Bend, OR for some rest and then Portland where I stayed with a campmate, Kyla, who is a superfly cool chick. She showed me the best of her town. We went to a great play by Daniel Beaty, a modern dance show, a house party with a circus theme, another with an airstream trailer turned into a sauna, and we met the Yes Men! (See: http://theyesmen.org/ )

Quite the week. I house searched in vain but had a sense that this was the town for me. This feeling was despite the fact that one house I went to look at said that if I wanted to live there I would
need to be willing to poop in a bucket for the humanure composting they were doing. I've pooped in a lot of strange places, granted, but I've never kept it. Freakin' hippies.

Camped at Mt. Shasta with a fellow couchsurfer for 2 nights. Spent a few more in San Francisco at my friend Rob's new sweet pad. Saw Slovenian Nika who I met in Burma. World's getting smaller people. Enjoy it.

Finally, I did another 10 day Vipassana silent meditation retreat. This time the meditation and sitting came easy, which surprised me. They say that when you silence the mind and pause the flow of desire and aversion, then old Shankara - past karmas- can bubble to the surface to clean you out. Well, as it turns out my Shankara came in the form of a viciously violent imagination. Tee hee. Talk about animal nature. I spent three afternoons shocked at the horrific day-mares my mind produced. Afterward I'd have this deep
meditative sort of chat with my calmer core. By the end of each of our litle silent therapy sessions it felt like my heart and mind were physically lighter. Incredible. I can't recommend this experience enough. It's intense and indescribable. For all the travels I've enjoyed, these inward journeys have been the most
fascinating and insightful. I hope I will continue to practice daily meditation enough to taste the resonance of this peace for a good long while. Please do yourself the favor of giving it a shot. Find a
location near you at : www.dhamma.org
(Oh, and it's free and non-sectarian. They only accept donations after you complete a 10 day course.) If I can recommend it so highly after facing such inner turmoil, then it's got to be worthwhile, right?

It's prepard me well for my current task of looking for work in Portland. It's likely that I have a house to live in for at least 6 months, but I'm waiting to meet the other roomies before I know for certain if it's my place, hopefully it will work out. It's good folk in a lovely house and a great neighborhood, so I sure hope
so.

And to you all . . . a saying that sent me off on this path . . .
May the long day's sun shine upon you. All love surround you. And the pure light within you guide your way home.

With Love and Light,
Jenna
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/wheresmehat/15/1214411520/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/wheresmehat/15/1214411520/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/wheresmehat/15/1214411520/tpod.html Tue, 05 Aug 2008 12:43:38 -0400 Long Way Round - Circumferential view of the homeland

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New Orleans, Louisiana, United States

Sometimes I think I do these just to wrap my own head around it all. If you can't be bothered to read all the sick details, I think this photo link better summarizes a lot of this anyhow. Now with youtube links to the things I experienced!

http://picasaweb.google.com/jenroams/BigEasyToBigApple

I am currently in New York City for a month seeing friends and meeting new members of my family. My Brother's wife Jen just gave birth to their first child, Lily Norine Macpherson. She came a month early due to complications but is now doing quite well and keeping them up at night.

"Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?" This song got me choked up my last week there. I had an amazing 2 months living with my dear friend Joanne and her new baby boy and making my living by reading tarot in Jackson Square. Both were eye-opening life experiences. I also volunteered at the Jazz Fest and sold some wares at Chaz Fest, a sweet party in some locals backyards. I ate a ton of Crawfish and heard some excellent music. New Orleans is truly a big gaudy jewel in the tiara of American cultural hubs. People there are authentically crazy and life-loving freaks. I love them.

I bid adieu to Mama Jo and munchkin and head back to Austin, TX , for the Burner regional there called Flipside. I met Pharaoh at the Burners without Borders meeting in Mississippi, and he and his wife Susan welcomed me to hitch up with them at the Damn F@$king Texans camp, which is right on the main drag. I also reunited with this awesome girl Michelle, and now she and a boy she met there, Troy, are heading to Thailand to help with the Burmese situation.

Flipside has the same wild and generous communal creedo as Burning Man, but they do it on a hill in hotter, more humid weather and without bicycles. In the day you sit under a tree and drink beer and water until you get up the gusto to head down to the creek. Then you sit in the creek and watch funky, half-naked, American Gladiators battle on floaty platforms and wonder at how much more murky the water gets everyday. The night is your standard collective madness. Good times were had. Funky outfits worn. Heat shockingly brutal.

I head East, hoping the air would cool along the way, but drove right into a heat wave that hit half of the country. My tire popped on the way to Memphis and I pulled over in Dallas and found a last minute couchsurf house with a generous gay couple. One of them, Marty, was just setting off the next morning for an Iron Butt ride, where he rode his motorcyle all the way to San Diego and then up to Vegas and back. We may meet up in Montreal.

I made it to Memphis, where I stayed with a super cool woman named Jennifer and her awesome kids. I like Memphis, it's a very down to earth place with good mellow vibes. A lot of people there talk about it's issues with racism, but hopefully that means it's trying to shake that stuff out. I enjoyed my first traditional black Southern church there, led by the Rev. Al Green . It filled me with the spirit for sure. Can I get an Amen, people?

Took the side roads to Nashville and blasted blue grass along the way. I love 2 lane highways. They make the drive a bit longer but it goes by so much faster. Got to my couchsurf house and immediately was taken by Marky and Amanda to a bluegrass jam session at the Station Inn. While that was great, and Nashville has a better reputation for race relations and all, it just didn't have that authentic flavor of Memphis. Eh, and I'm not so much into country music.

Hit Asheville, NC, where I stayed with these great guys who had a big balcony and brewed their own beer at home. I worked here selling my wares to stores and made out well. It's a great hippie town a lot like Boulder, CO . Super nice people in beautiful mountains.

Next I stayed in Durham with another BwB friend Tony and his girlfriend Carolyn. I talked them into parting with the precious a/c and heading into the 105 record breaking heat to go to this little bluegrass festival I found online called Preddy Fest. They agreed to go if we took our time getting there, and I'm so glad we did. Good Gracious it was hot. We ended up being the 'city folk' at an all hic party. The only shops sold BBQ, Harley Davidson gear, purses, and knives. Everyone rode around on golf carts between the stage and the motor homes. I met a 72 year old man named Rebel who proudly plays Dixie at 9 am every morning. "It's the National Anthem!"

Finally, I stopped off with family friends Martha and Jack, who I haven't seen in 15 years. Great to catch up with them and she got me into James Madison 's Montpelier for free. The 300 year old forest behind it is ethereal.

Arrived in New York in time to meet Mukunda and we toured the city and hung out with my lovely ladies. Then I went out to meet my brand spankin' new niece and my folks who were both visiting as well. Week after that I dove into trying to sell my wares, but on Friday I completely lost my voice. I mean I couldn't produce a resonance at all from my chords. I went to the doctor and he adamantly told me NOT to speak at all, and gave me meds. He did an attentive job but was so serious that he scared the hell out of me. Y'all know all too well how much I love the sound of my own voice. Luckily, it's back and I'm seeing a specialist about it tomorrow.

Feeling physically fine otherwise, I went to a party that night where I met a really cool girl who is a little person and she helped translate my predicament to the people we met. I acted out my non-verbal charades like a confused Marcel Marceau and we danced our booties off with a playwright named Gamal. I spent the rest of the week writing and hoping that I can sell some of it.

The plan post-New York is to head North to Quebec and then shoot back West to go work at the burn. Afterward I shall seek out a homestead somewhere between San Francisco and Portland. I am more than ready to lock down. As much as this trip has been a fantastic journey, my travel habit is starting to smell of a dirty addiction. I am itching to root down long enough to build a community in a place that I intend to return to in case I get itchy feet again. I actually get dreamy at the thought of a routine.

Ah but be careful what you wish for, eh?

Stay cool like Fonzie.
Or fun like Fozzie.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/wheresmehat/meditationrocks/1187784900/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/wheresmehat/meditationrocks/1187784900/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/wheresmehat/meditationrocks/1187784900/tpod.html Wed, 22 Aug 2007 12:36:26 -0400 I'm more englightened than you are . . . Neener Neener ...aummmm... Neener.

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Igatpuri, India

My first week in India, I was recovering from the Camel Fair cacophony on a rooftop in Pushkar by writing in my journal. An Israeli boy started up a chat and pointed his chin at my journal. "You write?" He asked with that typical swallowed R sound. "Yeah." "Someone tell me a good thing once. Your first day in India, you can write a poem. After a week, you can write a song. A month later, you are speechless, beyond words." My gut winced a bit, but I figured it may not apply.

Seeing as this is the first entry since November, it seems he was right. Sort of. I wrote. I just didn't feel an urge to clarify it. So please excuse the length of this entry covering my extended period of disconnect.

India vibrates spiritualism. Every place you go has a unique resonance that speaks more about the place than any guidebook can verbalize. The cities are intensity squared, and the shanti places exude a sense of peaceful well-being you usually only feel after a good meal with friends. Mind-blowing coincidences become almost mundane. It challenges all your comforting concepts of how the world works. Well, almost all. It solidifies the shit out of some other things you only had a sneaking suspicion about before.

At the hotel in Pushkar, I met my first blatant coincidence in Kira, an American traveling with Stella, her faithful guitar. She happened to be one of the 60 other people going to the same teacher training in Madurai. We had fine adventures in the Rajasthan deserts with 3 fresh French boys, and happily reunited at the Ashram.


The schedule there was from 5:30 am to 9pm and pretty much full. Wake up, meditate, chant, do yoga, learn to teach, eat breakfast, do clean up, rest a bit, philosophy class, Bhagavad Gita class, yoga class, eat dinner, rest a bit, meditate, chant, bed. I have never known much discipline of routine, and this was new. Luckily, our resident guru was the wonderful Swami Govindananda, who loves teaching and has a very mellow sort of clarity.

One of my first nights there, I had this intense dream that I was on the death penalty. A group of men were waiting to take me to the ax, and at first I freaked out in a frantic 'Bjork in Dancer in the Dark' kind of way. Then I calmed and thought, I am not this body, and relaxed and found peace with it. My parents walked me through a pitch black night along a wet city street to the gallows, and along the way I assured each of them that it was all okay.

I woke up at 4 am to the distant wailing of a mourning woman. No joke. The megaphone is one technology that Indians should never have been allowed. Some nearby village had a death, and the family set up a platform to blast their laments throughout the expansive valley. Heaving sobs of despair with shrill cries to God for mercy followed by the all-time favorite Bollywood hits of the deceased. Both wails and tabla tunes are usually just a cassette tape they put on a loop. Not easy to meditate over.

So I wake up from my death dream to these convulsive howls. Went out and sat under a mango tree and listened and pondered.

Two nights later, in my dream I gave birth to retched premie-baby-creature that I wished I had aborted. Swami said with a placating head waggle that it was "just the yoga purification squeezing out the old junk. Don't think about it."

So the mental garbage disposal was on, and the yoga was cleansing, and the Swami was answering queries, and the other students were all really cool folk. Then the Swami got chicken pox and went into quarantine in his house. The leftover staff, as is the case at many ashrams, became overly serious on us and at first a mini-revolt happened. Another drama was that a bunch of people had already become sick and as they came back to health others got feverishly ill. One of the staff said, "There's a lot more karma getting worked out at this TTC than usual". Ummm, let's hope so.

I was spared the physical illness, but was hormonally bouncing. I also was disheartened to lose a guru in the Swami, and the new one didn't suit that role. This was a blessing though, because it forced me to find the answers within, which is obviously a better, albeit MUCH slower, process. Patience patience.

On the last day, Christmas Eve, a lovely French woman named Jacqueline gave a Reiki course and I was certified at level one. While she was explaining it, a little bird landed nearby. She mentioned that often animals come to her when she does Reiki. A moment later it landed on her head and we all cooed with glee. Then it just didn't leave. Finally, she said in her lilting accent, "Well, I suppose I just continue with the class", and did so with the little sparrow on her head until it fluttered off a few moments later.
The mixture of the Reiki chakra opening and Ashram purification had a strange effect on me. I felt like I was going through puberty again, but as an adult. I didn't feel quite myself, but supposed it was just on a hiatus. I was in a socially awkward blob. Kira and I went strait to Varkala beach to decompress, and there we ran into an Ashram escapee, Finola.

Finola is an Irish woman who has been on a long spiritual journey and is writing, what I assume to be, a highly entertaining book about it. She was one of the people who became super sick at the ashram, and left saying, "I know my body, and it's telling me to go. I've got to go." So we ask her how was her 10 days since then and she says she met this guru who took her into the mountains and she meditated for 3 days in a cave and found realization.

Man I love India...

She noted my odd state of being with compassion and guidance. I mentioned that I had heard about this Vipassana thing, where you meditate for 10 hours a day over 10 days of silence. She leapt on it and said with a crisp Irish affirmation, "That's it! Of course! You're ready, you've got to go. That's just it." She wrote down the 5 steps to awakening for me in the journal, took Kira and I on a journey to get a snuggle from Amma-ji, the living deity hugging mother, and set off back to Ireland in a mad whoosh.

I had a month from signing up for the Vipassana to getting there. Spent it all in a haze of that lightly lost feeling. Enjoyed Varkala beach by floating for long stretches behind the wave breaks, staring up as eagles circled overhead. Made my way up the coast to catch my flight to Sri Lanka for a visa run.


While in line to turn in my passport, I saw a guy named Asaf who I ran into twice in Rajasthan at the camel fair and then later at a Bhang shop in Jaisalmer. He was with an Israeli woman named Rotem, who I called Autumn until I built up to a proper Hebrew throaty "Rrrr". She and I became fast friends and had a crazy journey through Sri Lanka that involved many agitating problems with creepy men. And a lot of excellent talks together. And smokes. And silence. She rocks.

Along the way, we met a British man who had been a Buddhist monk for over 6 years before waking up one day to decide he wasn't supposed to be there anymore. He gave some great advice about how Vipassana is not about the goal, but the process. Other advisors on how to get the most out of it included a Spaniard who could only communicate with me in German, and a whacky Quebecois who had just returned to India after 4 years away and was freakin' JAZZED. Whenever anyone asked him where he was from, he replied with a showman's voice, "What's your favorite country?!?"


I got to the meditation center, handed over all my books, journals, pens, and music, as you are supposed to abstain from all distraction. I got to my room and had an amazing view of a valley at the bottom of a massive red desert mountain. I was downright giddy for the 10 days of pure silence and meditation ahead of me.

The first day of meditation I kept falling asleep. I just folded over my crossed legs and plopped my forehead on the floor. The afternoon of the second day, this creep who bothered me with dirty gestures on the bus ride there entered my thoughts again and again. My daydream reactions made Hannibal Lectur look like an Amnesty International cardholder. My belly chakra (at your diaphragm level) was a churning cauldron of hot wrath. This seemed further from peace of mind than usual.

Finally, I went to the very androgynous German guide, who sits facing the foreigners and is the only person we are permitted to speak with and only about meditation issues. I went up and pleaded for a method to overcome the psychosis. She said, "Yah, dat is okay. All zis is part of zee process. Just akzept it and remember zat everyzing is changing all of zee time." I nodded and sighed back to my creepshow cushion. Curiously, within an hour or so, the mental institution closed up shop. I think I needed a confession to move on.

As the time sitting passes, you don't quite meditate per say. But you try. And you try. Then get distracted by entertaining floods of obscure and insightful memories, bubbles of emotions with no cause, and streams of mini-revelations.

It's said that these are ways for the ego to keep its grip on your mind. You, yes you, are just a muppet being controlled by an ego-hand up your sock booty. Meditation is a Muppet Rebellion! The bourgeois ego keeps it's grip on you like a song stuck in your head. I was bopping in my seat to showtunes such as Cabaret and Rent, melodies of Sufjan Stevens, and girlscout camp chants "I said a booom chicka boom, I said a boom chicka rocka chicka rocka chickaboom". Other forms of repression come from such treats as obsessive thoughts, emotional highs and lows, a short attention span, and Doing.



I am a doer. My folks are doers. It's good to be a doer! But then again, no. By Day 3, I had cleaned everything in my room down to the lint in my bellybutton. I put up a hammock and watched the mountain village kids play cricket through my mini-binoculars. Thank God they let me keep the hammock up, it was my sanity.



Over hours of learning the art of not doing, you pull away from the shore and set off. A clear objectivity kicks in, and it's like you're an engineer inside this intricate machine of thought and emotion and action. You watch the gears turn and marvel at the system.

Then you find that the watcher and the system are separate. The watcher appreciates this, and takes a cat nap. Now you're meditating. Weee~!

So, after all this physical traveling through Asia, I find out that just sitting in one place takes you into a vast universe. There are infinite sensations of meditation. The first really good one came the evening of the 4th day. I felt a sinking sensation and a voice said, "Lean back". I did and a wave of joyous tingles washed through my whole body. I felt light and loose, my thoughts coming from a distant hollow box. When I finally moved - as slowly as possible- my head lolled to the side. I let it go and felt as though I rested it upon an enormous motherly breast. In a satisfied way the next day, I kept singing in my head, "Do it to me one more time".

The next night again I heard a voice tell me to raise up and lean back. After I did, my heart raced and I lost all feeling except for the sense that my body was the densest material on Earth. I was heavier than metal or stone and pleasantly paralyzed. A great circle of energy connected through my heart chakra as big as the hall I sat in. I felt like I was tiny bubble attached to a huge bubble that slipped back forth along the bottom of it. Like taking a ride at an amusement park, heavy but swinging simultaneously.

The next night I had the most intense meditation, which I will keep personal. It was a freakin' trip. However, I found it the most surprising how non-overwhelmed I felt afterward. After returning to the senses, you don't feel special for experiencing something incredible from these endless hours of sitting and trying to. It's the most extraordinary type of normal. Slowly that dissolves though, and you get your head up your ego-ass again.

The next day though, I was blissed out in the best way. It's this whole lightness of being thing. Crap-happy I tell ya. Floaty and free. You aren't supposed to dance, but I snuck behind a building nearby where some workers were hammering on a rooftop and just bobbled about for a few minutes to the clinking rhythms. It was the best high ever.

Followed by the comedown. You begin to cling to that feeling of calm ecstasy, and in a slow poof it's gone. Then you're really screwed from getting a cool affect again for a while. If you want it, it won't come. You must sincerely release desire and if it begins to come, you must enjoy it with the attitude of contentment that it may leave at anytime. Let go. Let it be. Then 'Be' totally. It's a bitch, but well worth the effort.

Other payoffs happen as well though. The anger from the beginning rarely resurfaced afterward, and by the 8th day my chakras were placid lakes. On the final day, we learned a new "metta meditation", where we wish love, peace and happiness to all. When Goernka said a line about "To all those who have harmed me or my loved ones - intentionally or unintentionally- I pardon you." It made me weep in a swirl of relief and the desire to fully mean it.

On the tenth day, you are allowed to speak again. It's an explosion of chatter, and totally changes the mood. Suddenly there are 300 women who you've been watching but not acknowledging for 10 days. Now you can relate your inner-experiences. All the little old Indian women wore their brightest saris. A New Yorker-Indian girl named Farrah immediately dove into gossip about the death of Anna Nicole Smith that was in the papers the day before Vipassana started. I spoke a lot with a sweet 18-year old girl who had broken the rules by laughing at my desperate hunt for a banana at lunch one day. I seriously doubt I could have handled these 10 days at that age. (Oh and you can laugh, I had some great ones, but you are expected to do that in privacy. Understandably.)

In the rush of greeetings, I met a girl named Pali who I had never noticed before. She lived 3 blocks from my old place in Brooklyn and knew my friend Joanne. When she speaks, it's with pause and ponder, and it's as though time slows to follow her chill pace. I thought, that's the person I want to leave here with. So we did. And had a great week traveling together. But that's another story . . .

It's been 6 months, wow, to the day since then, and I have naturally slipped back into the ego jacuzzi (Ahhhh, pass the vino, I'm gonna blog up some enlightenment.) But the awareness of this greater energy of being, and my relationship with it, remains. I dabble in meditation and Reiki to keep it close, but not nearly enough. It likes yoga. I hope to get a bit more disciplined about all these things to keep that balanced vibe through the days ahead.

I also hope that anyone reading this will feel inspired to look into taking the time to do a Vipassana yourself. There's no fee, no religious dogma (well, just a few Buddhist parables), and no greater gift you can give yourself. Check out: http://www.dhamma.org/ to find a center near you. It's really really worth it. Hot diggity is it ever.

This will probably be my last entry here for a while since I am getting on facebook in the next few weeks. Then I can tell you the sick little details of each and every freakin' day! Yup, I'm hitching a ride on the bandwagon.

If you care to check out photos click Sri Lanka
For photos of my time in Varanasi working for a school click HERE
For more on that amazing grassroots charity, go to Basic Human Needs.net




]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/wheresmehat/pushkar/1163081880/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/wheresmehat/pushkar/1163081880/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/wheresmehat/pushkar/1163081880/tpod.html Fri, 24 Nov 2006 03:16:57 -0500 Welcome to freakin' India. The night before my flight here, I bought a shirt with a Pi symbol that says, 'faith in chaos'. That pretty much sums it up.

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Pushkar, India

Photos Available here:
Pushkar Camel Fair
Rajasthan

The night before I came to India, maybe even on the plane, I had a tsunami dream. I was floating in the shallows of the shoreline, and felt all the water pull away out to sea. Then a rumble sounded, and an enormous swell threw up a skyscraper-high wave into the sky. I knew it was hopeless to escape, so I started hyperventilating, figuring I had a chance if I just dove under.

I've had similar dreams on this trip actually. The difference being that this sensation is how India has felt over the first month. Especially diving into the dust of the insanely bustling camel fair.

I once heard an editor describe cutting a feature film like composing a symphony, and editing a doc like playing jazz. If European travel is symphonic, then India is raw jazz. Not the smooth dentist's office stuff either. It's like an experimental Charlie Parker or a coked up 70's Miles Davis. That kind of asynchronous cacophony with hidden rhythms and sudden epiphanies.

And that just begins to describe the sensory overload that India offers. My first day in Delhi, I felt like I had taken a strong, mind-altering drug. My belly went wobbly, and the need to slow down and take it in gently came over me. I have only felt this particular ill sensation from a few experiences in life: shrooms, love, and India. As I first walked outside the hotel, an Aussie woman walking with me to the internet cafe noticed my bewilderment as a painted Sadu holy man passed us. She just said, "Yeah. Welcome."

That feeling didn't end for a while, although I think I have decently adjusted. The camel fair was an initiation by fire though. You take a peaceful little town on a lake, and bring in thousands of villagers who live in the outskirts of the desert along with tourists and puja pilgrims and street salesmen. The noise is constant and deafening from just the chatter and transits of the crowds. Then loudspeakers blast out announcements of lost kids and Bollywood music at ridiculous decibles. Sadu's chant "Ram Ram Suh" and groups of colorful sari-wearing women sing Hindu hymns. Camels bleat and hawkers holler about their goods. Your ears are exhausted.

And the rest of your other senses are equally affronted. Smells of animals and sewage and incense and food. Desert dust becomes rank mud from the hundreds of people and cattle using it as a toilet. Men try to get a feel of your ass. The seemingly softer desert earth turns out to have little stickers tucked away that snag your pants. And there is nowhere to look without seeing something you've never seen before.

I loved it. But after the fourth day, I was anxious for everyone to clear the hell out. I actually had to take it really easy anyhow, since I got food poisoning on my third night in India. Slept for a full day, saw a doctor, and was able to go out and about in bits the next day. I can't believe I ate at that nasty make-shift fair restaurant. Using caution now.

Enjoyed the little that I did thoroughly though. I went to the desert to bring some shampoo to a gypsy woman named Santi who drew henna on my palm and asked for it the day before. Had a nice evening drinking chai and vaguely chatting. Walked back to town under the full moon with her wrapping her sari scarf around us as we went along. Freakin' fantastic.

Also saw the beautiful sight of pilgrims taking their holy bath in the lake on the main morning for puja (prayer). I woke early to the static buzz of the chattering crowd outside, mixed with the clangs from the MASSIVE kitchenwares salesman next door. I swear you could cook a kid in these pots and pans.

I slipped into a light sweater and went out of the hotel to see where the throngs were heading. Nowhere in particular it seemed. The street outside was flowing both directions, full of brown faces one way and black hair the other. I stepped off the peaceful edge of the stairs and swept along to the left, a spot of sandy blonde in the dark mass. I winded my way to the ghats (wide stairways that drop into the lake for prayer bathing). As the streets narrowed, the bodies squeezed in against my shoulders. A man in a turban behind me kept shoving in pulses, and I snagged my elbow back to deter his habit. In my periphery, I caught his shock at getting a reaction out of someone.

Boys around me started to throw questions in heavy accented English, "Itch con-chay?" (which country?), "Air-fra?" (where from?), "nam-wa?" (Name what?). They kept coming from all sides, each boy asking for himself. I nodded and asked some of their names until it became tiresome, and then just smiled in reply.

Finally, I saw the turn off for the ghats and I cut through the human intersection. The openness of the soft white marble arches calmed me a bit and I took off my shoes and pattered down the steps, halfway down I followed a ledge around a corner to observe from.

The stairs all around the lake were covered in people and colorful clothing. It looked as if a box of crayons melted together and was covered with a bag of black marbles.

The Hindus are not quietly reverent in their spiritualism. Overhead a loudspeaker or two clamoured out announcements or prayers, security blew whistles at wrongdoers, children shrieked and laughed as they cannonballed into their penance pool. Some swam out to a pink gazebo further out from the shore. They would climb up and plunge off into the water, their silhouettes black against the white haze of early sun.

The pilgrims set offerings into the waking lakeshore. Wax paper boxes filled with little oil wicks bobbled along like boats through speckles of rice swirling like galaxies in the deeply dark green water.

Some women bathed in their saris, pouring cups of water over the bright cloth. Others took off their tops and dunked into the water completely. Two girls waded out a bit and held up a hot pink sarong over their heads, showing silhouetted modesty behind the vibrant veil.

Men came out of the water in their cotton boxers. The ones with wirey brown muscles shivered in the warm golden sunlight. Each quaked his breath through chattering teeth, holding his arms in close, rubbing palms in a spontaneous namesteh. Heavy men with round bellies like Buddha shook off the cold more easily, quickly wicking off the icy water from their skin.

All castes are equal in their half-naked plunge and chilly exit. Once they shake off the wet though, the big men slip into their fine threads and gray vests, while the thin men pull up their tattered trousers.

I am surprised at the poverty here, and also am disturbed at how I am able to breeze past it so easily. It's far worse than any place I have seen. And the attitude from rich to poor seems to be pretty unsympathetic amongst the locals. I'm not even close to figuring it out.

Anyway, as I am too tired to write a full report on Rajasthan, I will summarize it here.

I had a great time with a group of three French guys (Sancho, Franck, and Raphael) and an American girl from Arkansas (Kira). We spent a few nights in Pushkar, with them playing guitars and a didgeridoo. We had a nice time and Sancho offered for me to join them.

We went to the fabulous fort in the very unfabulous city of Jodhpur. Sancho winced for his lost love for Pushkar, and sang his love ballad to it with forlorn feeling. I attempted to casually pick up French, but just barely improved my pronunciation.

Next we hit Jaisalmer, a cool desert city of tan adobe homes piling up to a massive fort in the middle. Kira and I found a fine fellow named Dr. Bhang who showed his credentials in a dusty leather journal where an artist had drawn his picture and written "Dr. Bhang" in big letters over the top. We stayed at a hotel where the staff played Rajasthani music for us. That was cool enough, but they were a bit creepily helpful. One couple left just to escape their constant prescence.

At the end of the week, we took a camel safari together. Kira and I loved it, and the boys did as well, although they did not appreciate the effect it had on their "eggs", as the locals call them. We camped overnight in the desert, and a group of villagers came up to our fire to see what was up and hang out for a while. Not much communication, but they seemed to like the music okay.

The desert was beautiful. You could drink in the silence along the way. Sadly, we camped near a road so the night was less serene, but still quieter than any town in India. Such is the modern world.

I really liked our guides. One of them is a prankster who would hand you ticks like a gift. Deraj is a very down to earth man who tells you strait to get away from the camel (Leave it to me to get kicked by a camel). Dala, the son of Deraj, was a sweet boy who was kind enough not to hit on me (most Indian men try to work it with the white women, it's like the sore opposite of Taiwan). He shared my camel for part of the journey, and told me, "Now is camel love season. I make camel happy, give him girl camel. This why he run fast for me. Happy camel. I give him big tub butter also. 250 Rupee! But this why he run fast for me."

Dala kept singing, "I am camel maaaannn." So I said, "We need to write this song!" I added the line, "I live in Rajasthaaaan." Then he completed the rest of it. So I will leave you with the full lyrics for your own singing pleasure.

I am camel man,
I live in Rajasthan.
I make camel safari,
So you no worry.
Maybe chicken curry.

Disco leather
Disco Camel
Ah Ah AHAHHHH
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/wheresmehat/cambodia/1162125060/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/wheresmehat/cambodia/1162125060/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/wheresmehat/cambodia/1162125060/tpod.html Thu, 23 Nov 2006 08:13:22 -0500 Zipping from Phnom Penh to Angkor Wat, and then back again due to a rained out road to Bangkok. Makes for a full week.

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Siam Reap, Cambodia

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This is an amazing country, split in half by a crisp blue sky stretching overhead and endless bright green rice fields layed out flat below. Seemingly very simple in beauty, but hiding all these secret contradictions.

The place is both warm and haunting at the same time. The people are delightful and in good humor despite the atrocities that happened here not so long ago. Most of the population is under 30 years old, but they have started raising their own families and I think the young energy is cleansing the air. It seems that, perhaps due to the horrors of the past, people really appreciate the little they have. They know things are good in comparison, and are working toward a better future. Even still, there is a lot of suffering from poverty and a lack of medical care. The Lonely Planet pretty much just says, 'If you go to Cambodia, have insurance to get you out if you get sick or hurt'. Ouch. Oh, and yes, I do have insurance.

My point is that this country has some harsh realities, but is nowhere near a downer. I even found my visit to an orphanage uplifting. It's just like that here.

I started in the capital Phnom Penh. Somehow I liked this city, don't know why. Went to see the palace, which is a lot like the Bangkok palace. Same same, but different. The girls I was with, from Santa Rosa, and I saw a music dance rehearsal there. A little old lady kept giving the young girls the details they were missing in hand gestures and rhythms. I bet she was quite a dancer in her day. It was hard to look at an old person and not wonder, 'Wow, what have you seen in your lifetime?'

Speaking of which, I went to one of the killing fields. It's a field of dented ground where the graves of the bodies were dumped. The killers often were under duress themselves for fear of death, and had to just massacre with a blunt blow to the head to save bullets. The ground still spits out teeth and tattered bits of cloth from the victims. But over that is a layer of lush green grass with little butterflies and birds flitting about new flowers. It feels so strange to have a place so full of life that was once a center for death.

The next day I head up to Battambang, which is a small city off the river. Took a cooking class, went on a scooter ride around, and took a "bamboo train ride", which I really enjoyed. Simple engineering, excellent transportation. The next day I took a river boat trip to Siam Reap, home of the hotels that lead you to the ancient temples of Angkor Wat.

Anyway, the highlight of the week was obviously Angkor Wat. Woah. I can't imagine any other historical site being quite as impressive. I spent two full days at a sturdy German hiking pace (on some seriously steep stairs) and hardly scuffed the surface. It's a MASSIVE complex of 1000 year old stone temples, some the size of palaces, that are then ornately decorated from head to toe and growing over with electric green moss and
300 year old trees. It's mindblowing. Put it on the list. My photos don't do it justice, but I hope you check them out anyhow. I especially like that it's so large that there are red dirt sideroads that take you into villages, and local people roam around the grounds doing their daily routine activities in these ancient ruins. It's also pretty expensive, and you are regularly chased down by kids hawking bracelets and crap. But this is a minor distraction from the endless engraved walls.

Plans got changed last minute, as the road to Bangkok was flooded. So I had to cut my touring short and dash back to Phnom Penh and catch a cheap flight to Bangkok to catch my flight to India. (Air Asia rocks my world for it's bargain prices).

The day before, I caught an email from Steven who I traveled with in Sulawesi. He asked if I was passing through Bangkok, and I noted I would call him in the morning. Sweet living. It was so great to see him again, he's a rockin' cool guy. He has since flown home to Riverside after a year of living in Thailand. Enjoy the cheese enchiladas, buddy.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/wheresmehat/message/1161689760/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/wheresmehat/message/1161689760/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/wheresmehat/message/1161689760/tpod.html Thu, 26 Oct 2006 11:06:46 -0400 NOTE: EACH TRAVELOGUE MAY HAVE 2 OR MORE ENTRIES. Go to the first entry by clicking on a log below, continue, then click "next entry" in the black headline box above the article for more fun! Enjoy!

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Sulawesi, Indonesia

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]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/wheresmehat/malaysia/1161690300/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/wheresmehat/malaysia/1161690300/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/wheresmehat/malaysia/1161690300/tpod.html Thu, 26 Oct 2006 10:57:20 -0400 Malaysia . . . yup.

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Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

(Not a whole lot of photos, since I accidentally deleted them all on the second to last day. HA! Oh and my camera crashed a few days later. Heh! Bought a new one. Hehhhh.)

These two weeks have had some sort of lousy mojo.

If you have seen Kenneth Branagh's 'Frankenstein', there is a scene where the Dr. completes the monster's ungodly birth. In it, the doc attempts to lift his large child to it's feet, both hopelessly slipping and slopping together in the placental fluids. They finally stumble along, both bruised and covered in slime.

That is how I felt after every progress I attempted to make over the last 2 weeks.

I will spare you the details. However, if my ticket arrives at the correct address in Bangkok, and I do as well in time, then I should be in India as of November 1. If I ever get through the waitlisted train tickets, I may make it to Pushkar for the camel fair. I will have to do a visa run out of India soon, since I only got the 3 month visa instead of 6 for some bureucratic reason.

Luckily, all these (and others) have been minor issues, and I am healthy and still happy on the road. Knock on wood for me.

It's funny when you have frustrations while traveling in 3rd world countries. Just as you're kicking yourself for screwing something up, or get to feeling lonesome, you see the beggar with no arms waving his stumps above a cup in his daily desperation, and you feel like more of a schmuck than before. I need to do some volunteer work soon.

All I know is, I am happy to be in Cambodia. Despite what this place has suffered, I immediately felt a more beautiful energy here. Maybe it's the cleaner air. Malaysia is covered in a humid haze of smog from Indonesia burning down thousands of acres of rainforest. This didn't affect the air in most of Indonesia, and I asked an expat why Malaysia doesn't call to stop it. He claimed that it's because they own most of the land getting clearcut. He said that the government is pretty corrupt, then looked around anxiously. Doesn't want to lose his work permit.

You don't normally sense this anxiety amongst the Malaysian people though. It's a pretty safe place; clean, relaxed, relatively rich, and very friendly. The best times I had there were sharing tea with groups of Indian-Malay, Chinese-Malay, or Malay-Malay. It's very diverse, and everyone gets along pretty well these days, but get one group alone and they blame all the world's problems on the others. It's openly racist, as I called them on it and they always just laughed. Each sticks to their cultural heritage, and I loved the colorful mix of Indians in Saris, Muslims in scarves, and good old crazy Chinese fashion. It was also superstar fun to speak Mandarin to get around, as the people were always a bit taken aback. Best of all, they speak English, so I didn't have to rely on it.

I went on some short trips out of Kuala Lumpur. First to the jungles of Tamana Negara, where I visited a tribe who let me try shooting a blowdart. Then to Melaka, a port town with dutch colonial buildings making up Chinatown and Little India. Weird. I had a fun night with a group of Indian and Sri Lankan old men who gave me a history and politics lesson and chatted football. Also met some New Yorkers, one who lives on the same block as Erin & Erica, the other who is from two blocks from where I lived in Williamsburg. Madness. Then I hit the beautiful (and not so freaking hot!) tea plantations of the Cameron Highlands, which are where all my photos come from after the accidental loss. I wasn't even that bummed when it happened, which surprised me in itself. The best shots of the trip came out afterward, so enjoy.

Anyway, overall it wasn't a bad place, and most of my agitations are from unrelated matters. It's like the suburbia of South East Asia. A good place to start a trip with a friend who needs a lot of comforts when traveling. Nothing wrong with that, as I am sure I'll miss it when my tailbone is cracking on a hard bench bus seat along an unpaved road. But for now, I'm feeling free.

To end on a happy note, the Petronas Towers are currently my favorite skyscrapers in the world. I sat there gaping at them for an hour. Complex and simple and intricately designed. Excellent architecture.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/wheresmehat/tana_toraja/1160463360/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/wheresmehat/tana_toraja/1160463360/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/wheresmehat/tana_toraja/1160463360/tpod.html Fri, 20 Oct 2006 00:00:54 -0400 Tana Toraja: Not going Vegetarian anytime soon

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Rantepao, Indonesia

Note: This one is a bit extensive. The first six paragraphs pretty much cover the basics, and it is more interesting if you follow along with the (sometimes gruesome) photos of the events here:
Funeral Photos

and more photos of Sulawesi (the North as well) here:
Sulawesi Photos

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On my way to write this at the internet cafe Rantepao, Sulawesi, Indonesia, I stopped by a night food stand for a bite to eat. There were these breaded things on the counter, and I tried to ask what they were, but they gave me the smiling shrug of, 'don't
have a clue what you're saying' that I often give to the locals myself. I nodded and handed over the posted amount of 1500 rupiah and they bagged one of the mysterious
foreign foods for me. I pulled up to the cafe and bit into . . . a peanut butter and jelly sandwich! Go freaking figure. . . after some of the things I have eaten this week, it was a shocker. Not the most amazing travel tale, but it is where I am at . . . just . . . as . . . I . . . type . . . this. Be here with me.

So I am currently in Tana Toraja, on the oddly-shaped island of Sulawesi. It is home to the Torajans, a very unique tribe who have rice barns shaped like boats and 5 day funerals where they slaughter usually between 12 and 24 buffalo and over a hundred pigs. They are mostly Christian, but keep the cultural traditions alive, and it seems most of
them very much believe in the Animis religion as well as in Christ. Good on 'em.

I got here on Monday night and met some Japanese backpackers, Fukuto and Mitsya, on the night bus up here. We arrived early and found a guide to take us to a funeral together on the day when they slaughter pigs. We took a Bemo (a public van that often gets stuffed full of people) to a small road and walked up the hill. As we reached
the top, some men were severing off limbs of a black pig carcass while others were hovering around a fire that had the whole body of one flopped on top. We all
paused and watched as another group walked down the hill holding thick bamboo sticks over their shoulders with a pig tethered in the middle (right-side-up). The pig was grunting and making a hoarse wince as it was led to the knife. They went behind a truck
and high-pitched shrieks filled the smokey air. My legs debated between curiosity and repulsion until I looked down to see my feet were standing in a pile of innards. The latter won, and I had a chuckle of dismay and followed the guide up to the funeral grounds.

Each time a person dies here, the family must perform special rituals, some unique to their lineage, in order to help the person get to the afterlife in Puya. They wash the body and put a sort of herbal embalming fluid in it, bring the body into the South- facing part of the home, have a meeting to decide how many animals each is donating to slaughter, and prepare to build a "dead tower" and huts for funeral guests. All of this can take a long time to arrange and to set a time when the most family members can attend, often two years from then. In the meantime, they keep the body in the house, and call the deceased a 'sick person'. They don't believe the soul leaves the body until the grave is brought to its resting place in a natural cave in the mountains. The person may also have a wooden tau-tau carved in thier likeness (if they can afford one).

The rituals and spirits of the animals they slaughter help bring the soul of the deceased into the sky and speed along its path to Puya (the afterlife). There are trials along the way, and depending on how you acted in life and how your relatives handle the funeral rituals, it can be an easy trip or a rough one. Everyone gets to Puya in one day regardless. It is not so much heaven, as a world exactly like this one that you will die in as well, and in that passing become a semi-god to watch over your family here on Earth. You know, your basic Joseph Campbell shit.

The grounds of the funeral were set up in a sort of square courtyard, and people there were casual and jovial. Some younger granddaughters of the woman who died were dressed in traditional colorful costumes and makeup. Older women wore black, and a large group
of men wore lavender polo shirts with a cross on the back. After a long procession of
mourners entered the center hut, the men in shirts stood in a circle and swayed side to side slowly increasing tempo while chanting a song. Another man occasionally spoke over a PA system to lead them.

The people were very welcoming and proud to share their traditions. It wasn't solemn at all, outside some of the processionals. I suppose after someone is gone for two years the grieving is mostly over, but my guide Benny told me that on the final day there is a lot of crying and grabbing at the coffin.

I went around interacting or talking with people and asking to take pictures, which they were happy to allow. One grandma even spontaneously posed for me with pig fat in her
mouth and a big grin. It's a very fun-loving and relaxed culture.


We ate lunch of rice and meats and pig fat and sugar cookies made from a plant sap. The guide tried to explain things to me, but I couldn't hear him over the sounds of pigs squealing and honking and grunting. We gave bags of sugar to one of the closest family members and said thank you for welcoming us. On the way out, I saw a big pile of poo with a severed pigtail in the middle. It seemed somehow profound about what these rituals are about.

Actually, these funerals keep the regional economy above average. Not just tourism, although it helps. The funerals require many family members from all over Sulawesi and Indonesia to bring buffalo and pigs to the party. No one wants to pay to transport
them this far though, so they buy them here. Many Torajans go and buy a buffalo outside the area for 10 million rupiah and then sell it here for 50 million. There is a very set class system of 4 castes though, and it seems the only way to break out of the poorest is to have a buffalo give birth to a prized spotted white-and-black buffalo. It's a genetic anomaly, my guide says some college kid tried to make it happen with
science and couldn't do it. I figure that's a matter of time. Even the poorest aren't as bad off as many Indonesians though, because these funerals feed the community. They also require that there is peace between members of the family, which probably helps the laid back feeling around here.

Anyhow, two days later we went to a pre-funeral event of Buffalo fighting. This was a more mellow day of hanging and chatting with the locals and petting buffalo. There was also a ceremony to give the deceased her name in death (The Torajans get 4 names in life). Men sat in a circle performing a chant and repeat until they spontaneously arrive at her final name.

Lunchtime consisted of just pig skin-fat and rice. I snagged the jawbone as it was the only thing that had meat on it and gnawed away. Afterward, everyone proceeded to the dry rice field platform above the village.

Boys led two bulls at a time to the center by their nose-ring and had them face each other. Then we'd wait. Sometimes the bulls would lock horns, sometimes one would rally and the other would run away, the crowd darting out of their path. Most of the time they'd stand there with their noses in the air or eating grass while the crowd whistled and laughed. The boys burned the field and spanked their shanks to get them to go at it, but it rarely helped. Some tribes drug theirs with a plant to make them more feisty, but I seriously doubt this was one of those.

Afterward, we went down to watch the ceremony of moving the coffin and body from the house to the rice barn before moving it into the dead tower the next day. The family asked us to pose with them in a smiling shot with the coffin. We gave them cigarettes as
gratitude for theinvite and wished them well.

Whew. Well, this is much longer than usual. After three funerals and a wedding in a week, I am just worn out. I just chilled out today with an American guy (from Riverside) named Steven who just studied in Thailand for a year. He's also into documentaries, so we're quite chatty. We've also had a good laugh pretending to be agitated 'Amazing Race' partners.

Final note, the men wear these sarongs sewn into a tube shape. They wear them in all sorts of ways: as skirts, hats, scarves, belts, sashes to carry items in, over their whole body and head as a shield from the sun, as armwrests when standing, around their knees when they sit, for warmth at night, and so on. Simple design, endless purposes. Kick ass tribal gear.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/wheresmehat/bali/1159118520/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/wheresmehat/bali/1159118520/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/wheresmehat/bali/1159118520/tpod.html Thu, 19 Oct 2006 23:59:14 -0400 Bouncing thru Bali by Bemo Bus

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Uluwatu, Indonesia

More photos of Bali available here:
Bali Photos

and of a wedding and cremation ceremony I went to here:
Love and Death in Bali

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I was a bit anxious heading out, being a big trip and all, but once I saw Nedda I was chipper again. We didn't have a hotel booked, but scored anyhow by finding Eric's Villas on Dreamland beach. Nedda went surfing (sadly in less than rocking waves) and I ... well, I don't really know. I think I just laid in the hammock on the balcony or something.

Midweek, we rented a car and went on a shopping journey to Ubud. Driving in Indonesia on the left side of the super-thin streets was quite a challenge that I let the LA driver handle. It's a similar chaos to Taiwan, but with added bonuses of dogs sleeping in the middle of the road, signs with arrows all over the place, tree branches jutting out into the path, and security gate guards who try to sneak a feel of the leg. My favorite was how the two-way roads suddenly became one-way with little notice. It was hard to quickly discern when this happened, since so many scooters drove on the wrong side of the road anyhow. We had fits of slap-happy laughter over the confusing way back.

After a fine week of chilling out together, I dropped her off at the airport and head off for the mountains. I arrived in Bedugal and came across these two strapping young Dutch men who also had just scootered into town (motorbike being a much easier mode of transport than car). We got along and ended up hanging out for 5 days. Irian and Brag were fun boys. We puttered about the beautiful countryside and went hiking in the jungle and enjoyed passionfruit shared by local farmers.

One day in a park, the boys asked if we could use a soccer ball, and we were invited to join a big Muslim Mosque's pre-Ramadan picnic. It was a fun time with group games and painfully spicy, but very tasty, Javanese food. They were incredibly welcoming and I enjoyed a long conversation with a 23-year-old woman who got pregnant before marriage, recently divorced and was raising her son while going to school. She made me realize that Indonesian Muslims are a lot more liberal than I had expected.

Afterwards, Irian and Brag and I head up to Lovina beach in the north and went snorkeling and swimming in hot springs. We also enjoyed a Hindu ceremonial day.

They left me with a riddle I have to solve:

Wappen is wippen met een slappe.

If I translate this phrase, then they will send me a naked photo of themselves. But if I fail to within 6 months, then I will have to send them a naked photo. My virtue is at stake here people, help me out.

After they split, I head over to the volcano area. It was an obnoxious hawker area, where you couldn't pass more than ten feet without someone hollering, "Helloooo, Misss, Where you going?" so they could try to get you to buy a crappy T-shirt. I got out right quick.

I went to Ubud and happened to arrive at the time of a cremation ceremony for a nearby village's queen. Sweet! The day before that event, I was lost and frustrated while trying to find these rice terraces. While grumbling, I came across some guys setting up a ceremonial entry. I asked if it were for the cremation and one man said, "No, for a wedding. Do you want to come?" Do I?! Shucks. I have photo journaled both events and some funerals in Tana Toraja here:


On my way back from the wedding, I scootered over to a tourist site. As I head down the path I heard someone say, "Oh my God . . . Jen?!" I look up to see freaking Will and Sandra from Taichung! Totally random running into each other, neither of us had any idea the other was even in Indonesia. They had been at the cremation ceremony the day before as well. How much madness is that?

I left Bali that evening still shaking my head at that little tidbit of wonder.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/wheresmehat/daybyday/1144245600/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/wheresmehat/daybyday/1144245600/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/wheresmehat/daybyday/1144245600/tpod.html Mon, 09 Oct 2006 16:03:06 -0400 My home and work and play and whatnots.

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Taichung, Taiwan

(This entry is not as entertaining as the next on about teaching, which you can get to by clicking on Next Entry in the upper and lower right hand corners)

I love my apartment. I look at it with a sigh of bittersweet sadness that we must part in June. I have a two bedroom, two bath (plus tub), with a living room, dining area, mini-balcony, and kitchen. There is a double-level roof one flight up. In fact, I am going to go there now instead of writing this blog. >>>>>> Ah, that was nice.

When I first came here, I lived in with two Canadian boys in a big apartment in an unsocial part of town. Most of the Westerners in Taichung live in a few specific neighborhoods, and we were boondocked apart. If you can't speak the neighbors language, it's a bit isolating.

I liked it anyhow. I dug our high-ceilings and wood floors, both rare treats for Taiwan. Also, it came furnished (with washer-dryer!) which saved a lot of agony when we first got here. The place had two bedrooms and a Japanese tea room, which I made into my bedroom. My walls were paper thin, but my rent was about $100 a month. Cheap even for here. I liked the smell of tatami mats and enjoyed my alternately low-ceilings for the cave dwelling effect.

We had windows all around, and a balcony with a view of a school yard. This turned out to be very entertaining at opportune times. The kids did their bland P.E. routines in the afternoon, flopping their arms in lazy jumping jacks and windmills. Also, if I sauntered in from a night out at 5 or 6am, the grandma's would be circling the track while clapping or smacking their hands on their bodies.

It's considered healthy here to beat yourself while walking. While it's funny to watch, I have picked up the habit a bit. Many of their health practices here are rough. One technique they use to relieve a fever or the heat in the summer is to scratch the back of the neck with a rock until it's purple. The first time I saw a kid with the results I nearly flipped out until she assured me it doesn't hurt. I would give it a try if I need to.

While the track made for some fine live television, I felt the need to move out on my own. When the contract was up I went looking. My acquaintance at the time, Marie Eve, mentioned that the apartment below hers was free, and I liked both her and the roof, so I called the realtor to check it out. First and only place I looked at. Super happy.

The only downer is the ants. I have a headache today from spraying Raid when I found their nest. Fuckers. That's what you get in the tropics. I was stupid to spray the Raid when I knew I would be home anyhow. That stuff is nasty. The movie The Incredible Shrinking Woman was quite right in it's point about cleaning chemicals.

Another pest at first was that the landlord made me keep some random items the last guy left behind. It worked out though, as I used the extra mattresses and made a little opium den- pillow lounge-love lair. Sadly, of the three, the room has only seen pillows lounged on. It was a bit of work just to put together the simple décor, and made me appreciate the work that goes into interior design. I dig it though, and am proud of the layout. By the way, I used Juxtapoz for the posters, it's a sweet art mag.

I also now live closer to all my friends. It's nice and convenient to hop over for a movie or a chat. But since we call each other to alert of our interest to socialize, I still get my privacy, which is so freaking fabulous. I love living alone. I don't know how to go back. I think that it's especially good for creative activities. I think it's hard for most writers or artists to live with the influence of people -and their moods- hanging around doing their daily stuff. It's necessary though, as most artists and writers are poor. So I suppose I should just soak this up for all it's worth. Speaking of which, I am off. Good Night.
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