THE ODYSSEY

i was gonna upload some pictures from zanzibar and other parts of tanzania here but it seems i’m unable to, either because of some mumbo jumbo related to the internet connection (slow as molasses in january all throughout tanzania) or bootsnall. not sure which, but anyways i cannot do this, and so you’re gonna have to wait for those. rest assured, however, that they are stunningly good, national geographic quality photos of fluffy and hoofed and winged critters from the safari and some maasai warriors doing their maasai tribal jumping schtick.

i should be in india right now. sadly, i’m not. i’m in dar es salaam, tanzania. i flew to india only to be turned away for lack of a visa to enter. the kind folks at qatar airways got me on the first plane back to tanzania at 4AM, roughly, and 8 1/2 hours later i was back in tanzania. this super sucked and was really, actually, the worst day of my life (aside from the iPod mishap) this year and i hope the very last and worst of my travels. am working on getting to the bottom of why exactly i did not get a visa before arriving (who knew you couldn’t get one at the airport? clearly i did not know this and therefore was unprepared) and where i shall go from here. one funny thing did happen that was unexpected and, i assume, typical of india: a security guard at airport security in delhi asked if i was married FIRST THING when i was getting ready to send my luggage through the x-ray machine. i had to laugh because this question was posed immediately after “hello. where you from?”, no hesitation whatsoever.
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let me first express my apologies for taking so long to update the blog. tanzania has fair to middlin internet connections at all ‘net cafes i’ve been to since i have been here (about 1 1/2 weeks). i will be unable to update the blog until i am in a place where i can get a better connection. so, for the time being please know that i’m not ignoring the email messages all y’all have been sending me (THANK YOU!), it’s just that time is money and when i can only open and read 1 message in 1/2 an hour’s time, i have become very discouraged by the speed of the connections (when the connection stays connected, that is, which is about 1/2 the time) and so have been unable to respond to you guys. believe me when i say i will reply very soon (esp. benn and monica - i am sorry about your news and will write immediately when i get a good connection. i have thoughts to pass on).

and so meanwhile, i have very much enjoyed Zanzibar, the Spice Island (you’d think they know who the Spice Girls are here! but noooooo, they do not! i’m chagrined), so far. i have slaughtered no less than 1,000,000 potentially malaria-carrying mosquitos in my hotel room and beyond, ruthlessly and without remorse. i have also had the good fortune to have befriended a real, live Maasai guy named Chipa Chipa. his job is security guard at my hotel. because he is from the Maasai tribe, he is (supposedly) of fearsome warrior stock and not to be messed with. Chipa Chipa carries a big stick and wears the traditional drapey scarf/sarong thing and lots of jangley jewelry every day. his skin is a beautiful blue-black and his smile shines with perfect rows of perfectly white teeth. he smiles a lot and his English is good. despite his affability, i would NOT wish his wrath upon me. i do not doubt that with a diet (according to the literature - he has not confirmed this to me) of cows blood and milk, he could take your humble narrator down in about a nano-second. i try to stay on his good side. he and his brothers/cousins/sisters here in Nungwi Beach will perform a traditional dance ceremony down the road from my hotel this Sunday. i will try to arrange to see this, unless i am in the middle of the Serengetti on safari at the time.

at any rate, i am constantly working on writing in my paper journals and hope to condense and upload the juicy bits onto this blog very soon. send in the authorities if you do not hear anything from me by September 1. at that point, one may assume that i have been devoured by lions out on the plains…

i know i’m seriously behind on my writing. thing is, i’ve been a bit bummed out lately. it’s cold, i miss my friend in cairo, i miss my friends and family (esp.those of you who LAG, SERIOUSLY LAG responding to my feeble attempts at keeping in touch - you know who you are. now, HOLLA AT ME), it’s cold and i’m bundled up in everything i have that could possibly keep me warm and i’m very conflicted about the things i’ve seen here in south africa.

first off, south africa is still not the safest place on earth, thanks to apartheid and the years since then (it’s been 20 years!) of recovery therefrom and the current xenophobia battles. i was on an island in thailand when the sh*t hit the fan here with xenophobia. asylum seekers from zimbabwe camping outside of police stations, starving, getting sick, having no access to south africa’s “civilized” services and yet fearing return to their own country because they would (a) be killed or badly hurt by thugs, (b) find no work, (c) find their homes occupied by someone else and/or (d) find there is no food and that disease is sure to follow imminent starvation. there’s still quite a bit of crime - robberies, muggings, break-ins, etc. and it’s always advised you take extra care walking at night, especially alone, and so i’ve been limited in what i’ve been able to do at night, not wanting to take any chances out there. this repression is a big albeit necessary drag.
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i’m sad to report that my good friend, Claws Cartwright, passed away from a bout with feline lymphoma. claws was a kitty with lots of personality. for awhile there he toyed with kitty hippiedom, growing dreads on his sides. claws pawed around the planet in the company of miss julianne coffee (and others, myself included for a brief time a couple of times) for 14 years before succumbing to the cancer that finally had him breathing his last.

raise a glass or sprinkle some catnip for claws (a.k.a. “knuckles”) and think a good thought that he’s in that better place above earth, chasing mice and bugs and drinking from a heavenly bathroom sink tap that never shuts off.

yeah, i know, it’s been ages since i have updated Ye Olde Blogge. i’ve got a slew of new stories and tales of mad adventures in the arab world since my last post. i do not, however, have the time or energy at the moment to write. see, i’ve got a nasty head cold at the moment which i’ve had for over a week now and all i want to do is sleep and sleep and sleep…let me just say, though, that i have, sad and emotionally drained, left my humble family dwelling in cairo. i spent 8 days there after splitting dahab. i was in dahab for nearly 3 weeks. while dahab was chilled out and relaxing cairo was the polar opposite. mayhem, chaos and MORE. i loved it though and will return again as soon as possible. my special egyptian friend hassan gave me lots of useful arabic (arabian, according to locals) words and phrases to practice for when i come back.

yesterday, 23 july, i landed in cape town, south africa after a 7 hour flight from cairo to johannesburg, then a 2 hour flight from jo’burg to cape town. thanks to martin’s friend percy in hermanus, i have arranged to take several tours (i know, i know, backpackers don’t DO tours, but i just couldn’t resist these options). get this: cheetah petting! shark cage diving! wine tasting in stellenbosch! oh yeah, baby. south africa’s going to RULE.

am shacked up at the ashanti lodge (hostel) in cape town, just off the main backpacker area of long street which is, as percy puts it, cape town’s version of khao san road in bangkok. he’s not far off the mark either. the hostel itself is very nice and clean and secure and pretty much has everything i could possibly need from the bar/cafe to internet to travel and other information. my room is about $50 US a night and well worth it (although it’s freezing in there…there’s a good heater though) for the modern bathroom, common kitchen facilities next door and gorgeous victorian/african architecture - imagine a gingerbread house with wrap-around porch and that’s what the building is like. cute as can be. some highlights so far: good wine, coffee and pork products. HOORAH!

there will be more on my adventures in cairo soon, i promise, as well as the remainder of my stay in dahab. stay tuned, folks. i’ll be baaaaaaaack…

“welcome to egypt.” “where you from?” these are the questions posed to me day in and day out roughly 100 times a day here in egypt. occasionally, i become so exasperated by these annoyances (and others such as “you have beautiful smile. can i just talk to you for 2 minutes? just please 2 minutes!”) that i am beginning to make things up just to amuse myself and make things interesting (”i’m from egypt, can’t you tell?”) but mostly it just bugs the sh#t outta me dealing with these aggressive dudes. once in awhile i come across someone genuinely nice and quiet and will have meaningful conversations with that person. i have met such a person here in dahab, on the southern end of the sinai peninsula. this guy walid runs the restaurant across from the hotel where i’m staying and has shown me much kindness and generosity (discounts on food and drink, free drinks, complimentary sheesha pipes breaks, lifts in his 4WD car to the nicest beach, etc.). the conversations have been interesting and he’s taught me a bit about egyptian culture which is, of course, fascinating to the uneducated. he also taught me how to write my name in arabic! if i could do so here i would share this with you people, but i don’t think i can on this keyboard.  Read the rest of this entry »

early june: arrived @ london heathrow. afternoon. am happily communicating with the people in the same language i learned as a small child. two weeks of asking for things in english, being responded to in english, and actually getting what i asked for was sheer bliss.

i have a lot of good friends in england and in scotland. i made a few more good friends in the short time i was there. i will not soon forget any of them. the kindness flowed like a fine single malt scotch and i drank it up in spades. i was surrounded by record collections vast and impressive at the homes i visited (except at jonnie’s parents’ house in norwich). needless to say much of the conversations i had with these fine folks was centered on music: always a favorite topic of mine, as those of you who know me know very well.

first stop brighton. the weather was perfect on the first day and rained on the 2nd. i found the alley where the mod guy and girl, in a brief escape from the mods vs. rockers riot, shagged up against the wall in that movie Quadrophenia (quintessential mod flick from some 25 years ago). although the scene wasn’t the most poignant of love scenes ever created on film, it seems a fitting locale considering the characters were sleeping under bridges and on the beach and thus had no access to private domains for such rendezvous. ahem, anyways, so that was fun. my hosts in brighton, martin & lina, were nothing short of gracious and lovely. i hope to repay the kindness someday.

next stop: london. my hosts there, jo and matt, were also most kind and fun to hang with. they live in swanky notting hill. the visit started out well at an afternoon DJ gig matt was doing between bands at the Macbeth that went on late into the evening. many drinks were consumed. good to catch up with my peeps across the pond.

next stop: essex. specifically, bumbles green, nazeing (what a name, eh? wow! doesn’t get much more english than that!). helen came to collect me at tottenham hale and we drove down to essex to where she lives with her folks. they have a lovely country home with some horses in a field next door and lots of clean air. it pretty much drizzled the whole time. we walked around some woods and gabbed and had a nice visit. helen has traveled a lot on her own all over the world and so proved a valuable source of information for me as she has visited many of the places i’m visiting. i hope to have as good adventures as she’s had on hers. poor helen didn’t sleep the night i was there and so couldn’t really hang out the next day. got the train back to london, back to matt and jo’s, and hung out there for a day or so until it was time to catch a train northeast. met up with sonja, the friend i’d made in koh tao, for a drink and a bite. was good to catch up with her too and we swapped stories about thailand and she very nearly arranged for me to appear (vocally if not physically) on Big Brother. i was meant to call in and be interviewed about Big Brother. as it turns out, i was not needed. shame that my fifteen minutes of fame were so short lived - non-existent, actually.
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it was a sad day the other day…ı left koh tao on may 18 on the 9:30 am boat to koh samuı where ı caught the plane to bangkok ınternatıonal aırport. the samuı aırport ıs small and nıce not unlıke the aırport ın huatulco, oaxaca. it was sad because, as many of you already know, i left behind a few very special people whom i will not soon forget and will indeed see again one day soon. the buddha necklace i was given on may 1 remains a integral part of my wardrobe. the fond memories of my small bit of paradise and the genuine smiles i received daily from my south asian friends are forever imprinted in my mind. doubtless i will return there again and again and again.
ı arrıved ın bangkok after a short flight and after a couple of hours in the airport waiting area had a most pleasant surprıse ın the form of my frıend sonja whom i’d met on koh tao. turns out she was on her way to srı lanka and was waıtıng to go to her gate. we had not seen each other for a week or so and so had a great catch up and a few laughs and memory lane yucks. in the airport book shop i picked up a copy of “thailand fever” cowritten by a western guy and a thai woman and which is written in both thai and english. the book is a “how to” guide to thai-western relationships and although it speaks primarily to the western man-thai woman connection, it also has invaluable information on the differences in general thoughts and behaviors between the two cultures and how to work out the differences (eg., compromise, communication, expectation, family and monetary values, etc.) in order to successfully grow in a bi-cultural relationship. fascinating stuff and gave me some good insight as to why the thais act the way they do. doy, you say, they’re different. yeah, no sh%t they’re different. nobody could or would explain to me exactly how they are different, certainly not they themselves cuz how could they possibly explain these nuances to me, and so the book shed a bit of light on practical matters associated with close relationships with thais. this was an eye opener, although i doubt i’ll need to use many of the pointers myself (marriage, dowry, family commitments and monetary support for same), however it did explain the fundamental principles of generosity, loyalty and saving face even in circumstances where “noble lies” must be told in order to maintain harmony. the book also explained how the position of body parts (head and feet) are significant in how they communicate and show respect. for instance, one would never point his or her feet at something as that is considered offensive; nor would one touch another’s head as that is offensive too. one always sits below head level of the more respected or higher caste when they sit together in a room. there are lots of other tips to clue us farangs in on thai culture but these seemed the most important in my estimation. and it’s a funny little book with silly - but spot on - illustrations.
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sabaidee ka, dear readers. i’m STILL on koh tao enjoying (for the most part) my little bit of paradise. the bits i have not enjoyed so much include torrential rain storms, 100 mph winds (or at least it seems like they were that gusty), and the flying around of detritus (palm fronds, dead coconuts, sand, and various flora from up high and down low) during same climatic madness. another weird feeling i’ve had during all of this drama is that i am the only person remaining, and have been the only person for a couple of days now, at my bungalows besides the thai owners and few burmese workers. they all go to sleep fairly early and i suppose are used to the monsoons, but i am unused to such chaos from the heavens and i have found that sleeping through the night is challenging at best. fortunately, my bungalow is made mostly of cement but the thatched conical roof with its fiberglass windows way up high in the cone make me wonder just how secure these parts of the structure really are. so far, knock on bamboo, nothing has caved in or flown away, but the areas between cement and thatch are open, as are the windows which only have a few jail cell-like bars keeping out the larger critters and covered by thin curtains, allowing all manner of smaller debris to fly up and into my room. each morning i discover a whole new pile of small leaves and bits of seaside debris covering my floor and blanket. i have also had a late-night visitor when the winds and rain have been very heavy: a cute little gray rat. he/she is very scared of me and hides between the bed stand (the bed is up about 3 1/2 feet from the ground on a cement block with a thin layer of linoleum between it and the mattress) and bamboo bathroom wall (the latter being simply stalks of bamboo cut in various heights of about 5 to 7 feet. because thai plumbing cannot handle toilet paper, we have to toss our used paper into a bin and flush our business down with buckets of water. these buckets are usually placed right next to the loo so one can easily “flush” right after doing one’s business.
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after much careful thought and consideration, and due to some heavy influence from a certain person or persons, i have opted to give Malaysia and Indonesia a miss this time around. the fact is, now that it is early may i would only have about 9 days to travel south on overnight boats, trains, buses, etc. in order to get to borneo, bali & sumatra, and i simply don’t have it in me to travel that hard right now. then there is the sky and sea:
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