scottyallen.com

Well, I did it. I’m coming home. I bought my plane ticket today. I’m flying from Bangkok to Los Angeles on March 17, leaving at 5:55pm, and arriving at 6:30pm. A 35 minute flight. The weird thing is that I change planes in Taipei at 11:15pm. So I’ll be going into the future, and then back again. The date line is still very strange and novel to me.

I still don’t have the actual plane ticket, just a receipt and a little slip of airline computer gibberish. So it still doesn’t feel very real. I pick up the actual ticket on Monday evening.

I added some pictures from way back when I was in Borneo and Australia. You can find them here:

Fraser Island
Borneo

Enjoy! More recent pics are coming, when I make it home and have the time to scan them.

I thought I’d write a bit about what I’m up to as of late, since I really haven’t been journaling much since I hit Bangkok.

My life recently has been largely preoccupied with errands, mostly related to heading home. Yes, indeed, I’m really coming home. As the plan stands right now, I should be back in the old US of A around mid march.

I’ve just signed up for an intensive 10-day meditation course from March 5-March 16th. Incidentally, I’ll be out of email contact during that period. I’m a bit apprehensive, given that it’s a complete vow of silence in all forms for 10 days (except for 5 minutes with the hed teacher once a day about practical aspects of the meditation), 10+ hours a day mediation, with no reading, writing, or exercise allowed during the course. But I’m excited as well. Buddhist mediation is something I’ve been working with a bit on my own, and I’m eager to actually be taught the “proper” way, plus have an environment conducive to actually practising it in depth.

I’ll likely be flying home the day after the course finishes, as that’s conveniently the day my visa for Thailand finishes.

I got my photos developed for the last eon. They turned out magnificently. Unfortunately, I don’t really have the money to get them scanned, so I’m going to have to wait till I get home and can scan them myself.

I went up and saw Jane and her 5-year-old son Ian, and Jane’s sister and her family, and Jane’s mother up at Jane’s sister’s house in the suburbs of Bangkok. It was really fun seeing Jane and Ian again, and meeting everyone else. Plus I got a hot shower, and slept on a real couch. It was definite luxury. Jane’s sister Mary and her family live in a gated expat community, which was definitely interesting to see, but also definitely a bit strange. Both her sons play baseball at the local international school, and we went to their games. I felt like I was back in the states.

I’ve been spending too much time on the internet, some of which is productive, some not. The productive part has included trying to find short term work on the various freelance auction sites, such as scriptlance.com. My favorite project I’ve seen so far was this highly ironic one. Needless to say, not all the work is strictly above board.

I’ve been riding my bike in traffic a lot, which, when it’s not terrifying, is lots of fun. I better sell my bike soon before I die. It does seem significant that I’ve seen very few locals on bicycles in traffic. On a related note, I showed my bike to a swiss guy today who seemed really interested. He was going to check out the local bike shops this afternoon, and get back to me.

And… I think that’s it. Life isn’t that interesting for me lately, at least compartively.

I’ve had a blast the past couple of days trying to sell my bicycle. The majority of offers I’ve had have been from tuk-tuk drivers and street vendors, for ridiculously low sums of money. Most of them are simply joking around. One guy persistently offered me 500 baht (a little over $10). Another guy even offered to swap me the stack of block prints he was hawking for the bike. They were nice, but I don’t fancy being a Khao San street vendor for the rest of my life.

My basic tactic was to find a piece of cardboard and make a sign that said:

I then stood out on Khao San Rd. with my sign and my bike and a loud voice, calling out to likely looking buyers(the one’s that looked physically capable of pedalling a bicycle), “Hey man, buy a bicycle. It’s a good deal.” I got mostly smiles and shaken heads. Some people even simply ignored me, even when they walked right by me, and we were the only two people around. It gave me a taste for what the thai vendors must put up with.

But some people stopped to chat as well. I even got a few, “Ok, let’s have a story then. It says stories free.” I had the most fun with people who stopped to chat. I met the coolest travellers I wouldn’t have had the chance to meet otherwise.

I met a 65+ year-old man who drove a custom VW van from England to Singapore 15 years ago. I met a couple who just cycled around india for 2 month on local one-speeds with panniers made from rice sacks. I met an Indian guy who spent 5 years travelling around India and Nepal on a bike. I met a guy who was living in Bangkok, living off the income from the house he was renting out in San Francisco. I met a Frenchman, who spoke no english, who lives in the Pyrenees with a heard of 50 cows, who I spoke French with for at least an hour and a half, who ended up inviting me to come stay with him if I ever go to France.

Most intriguingly, perhaps, I met a guy who is also named Scot, who owns a salmon fishing boat in Alaska. He sort of offhandedly offered me a deckhand position this season (starts in june, lasts about 6 weeks), if I’m interested. I have to say, I’m definitely interested. The pay sounds good, and the whole experience sounds incredibly interesting. Plus I’d get to go to Alaska again, which sounds great.

Today was my first attempt at trying to sell my bicycle. I knew it would be interesting, but I didn’t know it would be this interesting.

First thing, I had to clean all the mud off it. I asked around as to where I might be able to wash it. Some sharp person suggested a car wash at the gas station. Only the one that I knew of is closed on Sundays.

So I rode around for a good hour, looking for another one. I finally found one, and they washed it for me, though I helped with the gears and chain. It came away looking nearly new.

Then to sell it. I decided I’d like to get $90 ideally, but would easily settle for $80. $90 is about 3700 baht. The first thing I did was to go around to the various stands with signs saying “We buy everything”. In past expereience, I’ve found them to be confrontational and aggressive in their bargaining tactics, always criticizing the item in question, and offering ridiculously low prices.

This time was no different. I got offers ranging from 500 baht to 2000 baht. I did get one enthusiastic offer of 300 baht ($70 USD), to the point the buyer had the money in his hand, thrust towards me, waiting for me to take it. I was tempted to take it. But I’m glad I didn’t.

The next step was to see if I could sell it to a traveller.

An aversion to writing lately.

Two days back in Thailand now. It’s interesting that a place which once represented the exotic, the unknown, the adventerous, has come to symbolize luxury, comfort, and the first world for me. Thailand is 7-11, real gas stations, paved roads, and safe food. It’s airconditioned coaches and cheap email and good fruit. It’s people that speak english.

It’s nice to come back to a country I’ve already been to. So many times going to a new country feelslike starting all over again, learning a new language, new customs, new food, and new ways of living your life, and everything that entails. As exciting as it is discovering a new place, it’s discouraging as well, leaving the previous country just as you were starting to have figured it out, realizing you have to relearn everything anew.

But it’s also surprising how much you forget about the country you left in such a short time. Even now, Cambodia is fading fast in my memory, and I feel compelled to record all the little things I took for granted and never wrote about.

I had to stop today to fix 2 broken spokes. Must have broken them in Cambodia, and just now noticed how warped my rear wheel was. I found a shop where a guy with one food did an expert job replacing them and retruing the wheel. He even had a real truing stand. Fancy that.

Today I added:

• Angkor
• Met an experienced SE Asia cyclist
• Repairing ox carts, carving stone, and road hassles
• Making good time
• Dirt roads and staying with locals

Tomorrow I get up early and ride the 100+kms to Sisophon, and then on to Thailand the day after. I’m pretty pressed for time to get across the border, as my visa expires tomorrow, and it’s a $5/day penalty for overstaying.

After that, I ride for Bangkok…

Check out www.vagabonding.com I suppose that’s what your website looks like when you actually sit down and come up with a real design, in addition to carrying a laptop, digital camera, and DV video camera on your trip. I’m envious.

I haven’t written much lately, which I regret, but that’s the way things go.

Today is my third day at the Angkor temples, and they’re simply magnificent. For them to be so old, and yet at the same time so well preserved, is remarkable. That, added to the remarkable stonework, huge difference in culture to that of the western world, and sheer size and quantity of structures leads for an awe-filled experience.

My favorite temples have been: the crumbling overgrown Ta Promh, because it satisfies my sense of adventure and desire to explore; The Bayon for it’s hundreds of heads and amazing bas reliefs of daily life; Ta Keo, for it’s unfinsihed, blocky massive feeling and sheer size; and Preah Kahn, for it’s sprawling mass, and because Chewan and Dooj (two kids working at the food stalls at The Bayon) hitched a ride on the back of my bicycle because they’d never been inside Preah Kahn before, and wanted to see it.

In Siem Reip finally. About 90kms today. I met a German cyclist along the way, also headed for Siem Reip. Talked with him for a bit, and saw him several other times throughout the day, though we never really cycled together. It was interesting talking with him, as it seems like he’s done a fair amount of cycling in the region. On this trip, he started in Rangoon, Mynamar. He said Mynmar was hard, because there are so many polic and military and they place so much restriction on where you can and can’t go.

I asked him if he’d ever had problems with locals here in Cambodia. He said no, not in the past two years. But before that, yes, men on motorbikes would pull up alongside him and ask for money. He said he always told them no, as they weren’t armed. He said that because the roads here were a lot worse, many fewer people were on the road. Thus the increased problems. Midday, when people stopped travelling to get out of the sun and have lunch, and late afternoon, when people stopped for the day, were much more dangerous and times not to be on the road.

Today I stopped and watched a blacksmith by the side of the road, preparing to rest the iron bands on wooden ox cart wheels. He and his assistant were removing a section out of every band, before rejoining the ends, making the band smaller. As in Laos, the fire was band by a hand pump. The tools looked like they hadn’t changed much in a hundred years.

Yesterday I stopped and watched a series of stone carvers carving various images of buddha, from small to humongous. They lined either side of the road, squating amoung rock chips and dust, bent over their work, beneath palm thatch roofs, shading them from the intense afternoon sun.

I’m finding life on the road hard here. Life on the road in a literal sense - the time spent pedalling on the road. All vehicles seem to have an insatiable appetite for honking at me. It’s rare a vehicle that’s fitted with a horn will pass that doesn’t make liberal use of it. I hear so much non-stop honking I’ve become numb to it’s possible worthwhile uses, as if I yield the road every time somone honked, I’d spend the entire day in the ditch. Motorbikes even honk as a way of gretting, expecting me to wave back. I rarely do.

But this is only half the story. The yelling is the other half. I get yelled at nonstop by people along the road. As far as I can tell, the majority of it is not any form of greeting, or even words. It’s usually of the form, “Oy!”, or “Hey!”, or “Oh!”. The expected response seems to be that I’ll wave, or say hello, or even stop, or at least do something interesting. Whole groups of people will scream at me in a caucophany, for as long as I’m in range, sometimes stopping if I respond, though sometimes not. I’ve even had several people clap their hands at me.

I’ve tried hard to be openminded about this, and see it perhaps as a difference in cultures. But when it comes down to it, I see it as rude, as though I’m a circus animal people are waiting to see perform, or a zoo animal with people tapping on the glass.