The Laughing Nomad

Backpacked The Hippie Trail In The 60’s? If Not It’s Not Too Late!

Taking the kids to Mexico, the grandparents to Hawaii and ourselves to Central Asia in the mid 1990’s on an 18 day trek in the Atlas Mountains had pretty much been the extent of our international travel together. Bob had climbed Mt. Rainier and Mt. Kilomanjaro and some of the lesser mountains in Nepal and Tibet but he thinks climbing mountains is a thing of the past for him. “Crossing borders and boundaries…climbing cultural mountains much less painful and ultimately more rewarding,” he says.

So in 2002, after Bob retired from 35 years as a pediatrician in Salem Oregon and I retired as an educational administrator and after raising our three sons, Greg now 41, Doug 39 and Josh 35, we rented our house and set off for a year around the world with only our backpacks. But we didn’t honestly do the “Hippie Trail.” Landing in high-rent London in February, we forged our own trail and moved quickly through France, Spain and Portugal. Looking for warm weather we finally found it in Morocco.

Then back to Southern France, Spain and Italy before moving on to Athens, the islands of Sifnos and Santorini in Greece, Cairo and Luxor in Egypt and finally to Nairobi Kenya where we took an overland truck with about 15 twenty and thirty-somethings from England, Australia and New Zealand for a month and a half through East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia and Botswana) and across to Namibia on the Atlantic and down to South Africa where we, desperate to be in one place for awhile, rented an apartment for a month in the beautiful Cape Malay district of Capetown.

After a few days in a bed and breakfast in Soweto, the Black township near Johannesburg, we flew to Mumbai, India…in hot July…which, after Rajistan and New Delhi, made Bangkok Thailand feel luxurious! After backpacking through Thailand, Burma, Laos and Vietnam we spent two months in a cold wintery China with no central heating and gratefully ended the year on a beach in the Philippines.

A year eventually became four years. A few months after we returned home, Bob took off for Argentina, Chile and Uruguay.

When Bob returned home, and with our then unmarried sons living in Las Vegas, Thailand and New York, we found ourselves ready to hit the road again. So in July 2004 we rented the house again, flew to Frankfurt Germany, traveled across Eastern Europe including my maternal ancestral home, Poland, and on to homestays in St. Petersburg and Moscow. Then we took the Trans-Siberian Railway across Asian Russia and through Mongolia to Beijing…spending two more months in China before going on to Southeast Asia again (Burma, Viet Nam, Thailand and Laos). After a month driving around the island of Bali we returned to Thailand.

In the meantime, our son, Doug married his Thai girlfriend so we spent several weeks in Krabi Province visiting them…Doug and Luk having barely escaped the tsunami with their lives the day before we arrived! They now live in a little Thai-style bungalow on the island of Koh Samui and welcome visitors.

We emailed our renters to not pack up anytime soon, however, and we sublet a furnished apartment from September 2005 to January 2006 in Brooklyn so we could be near our son Joshua who was a chef at the Tocqueville Restaurant near Union Square in Manhattan at the time. Upon arrival Josh and Amy, who was getting her PhD in history and was teaching at Rutgers University, surprised us with wedding plans that would take place at the Brooklyn courthouse in two days!

Our oldest son Greg who is an anesthesiologist in Las Vegas, visited us later in New York.

January 2006 saw us in Thailand again…I spent a month in Bangkok getting dental and medical work completed and then to Koh Samui Thailand to spend a month with Doug and Luk while Bob disappeared somewhere in the Thai environs. After Bangkok I went to Chiang Mai in Thailand for a month and on to Laos for the rain festival in April.

With the renters out of the house by this time, Bob flew back to Salem on March 29, 2006. I flew back to Bangkok to catch a flight to the States at the end of April. I visited my son Greg in Las Vegas before continuing on to Salem to pack up my stuff for my move to Oaxaca Mexico June 1 2006. Bob rented the house for two more years and returned to Thailand with a year-long visa in August 2006.

Josh and Amy and about a dozen friends celebrated their “real” wedding on Poipu Beach Kauai Hawaii in July. Josh then took a position as Chef de Cuisine of the new “One East On Third” restaurant at the Hilton Hotel in Beijing China. Amy followed at the end of her term teaching at Rutgers in September 2006. She taught history at an international school in Beijing.

A year became 6 years. I obtained a one-year Mexican visa to live in an apartment in Oaxaca City. Oaxacan teachers were striking and had been camped out in the Centro for a month when I arrived June 1 2006…at once educational and harrowing. They have been striking every year for the last 26 years. They were finally driven out of the city on November 25 2006 by Federal Riot Control Police using tear gas and arrested and beat scores of people…many were innocent bystanders.

I drove nearly 4000 miles from Oaxaca to Salem, Oregon in August 2007. Being in my house in Oregon felt like I was on vacation.

I returned to Asia in February of 2008 for Chinese New Year and visited Josh and Amy in Beijing China for 12 days. It was unearthly cold so I went south to Kunming and then Jinghong China.  Next was Bangkok Thailand in March for unending dental/medical care. In May Doug, Luk and I flew to Kuala Lumpur Malaysia to renew our visas.

Josh and Amy since moved to Hong Kong in August 2008  where Josh is the Executive Chef at the American Club and Amy teaches school at the HK campus of the same school where she taught in Beijing.

Bob and I separated in 2005 and he is living in Thailand in Jomptien, south of Pattaya in Thailand. He returned to the States in May 2008 to visit our oldest son Greg in Las Vegas and his mother in Portland, Oregon and take care of some business.

I returned to Oregon in June 2008 to spend the summer and fall of 2008 in Oregon.  I rented out the house in Salem and  returned to Oaxaca Mexico on November 1, 2008 where I live in a beautiful apartment in the Centro with a veranda overlooking Conzati Park.  I returned to Salem on December 17th, in the middle of an ice storm, to pack up some kitchen and personal belongings on December 29…via Las Vegas where I spent Christmas with my son Greg. After returning to Oaxaca, I then took a short journey through mountain villages in Guatemala for two weeks…returning to Oaxaca through San Cristobal Chiapas.

You can view pictures and videos I made of our travel by clicking on the links under “My Links” on the right side of the screen if you scroll down a ways.

Thank goodness for the internet calling device I use with my computer to make calls costing less than a cent a minute…Skype. If both parties have Skype calling is free. Check out http://www.skype.com.

Eunice “Zoe” Goetz

Oh, I forgot. I hitch-hiked through Europe with a friend the summer of 1965.

At the Smile Guesthouse I attend cooking school. A Dutch couple and a German girl and I each have our own “station” with a wok sitting on a gas burner. O (pronounced O?…the voice rising up at the end) teaches us “New Thai” cooking style that is an attempt to limit the amount of calories and fat in the food. Coconut milk, common to all curries and many other dishes, is normally high in fat but in new style it is diluted by half with water flavored with dried mushrooms. Girls now limit the amount of rice and noodles in their diets…not eaten every day but considered a treat. No wonder the Thai girls have such flat tummies!

For curries a little coconut milk is mixed with water in a wok. Prepared curry paste bought at the market is mixed with the water and milk and “fried” until it becomes dry. I make a “mistake” and try to mash the curry with my wok utensil…ending up with it all stuck on the back of the spatula instead of in the liquid! Everything is done precisely…the spatula is turned upside down and the paste is “chopped” and stirred into the water. More water is added until you have the right amount and consistency for a sauce. Then the chopped chicken, pork or beef or tofu is added (never fried ahead of time) along with strong tiny unpeeled garlic cloves, onions, a couple teaspoons of fish sauce, a little lime juice and half a teaspoon of sugar. Holy basil leaves are added last. For Tom Kha Gai soup, the coconut milk is never boiled because boiling separates from the fat from the “milk” and makes the soup look and taste greasy.

In the all-day class, we prepared six dishes…three curries, fish steamed in a banana leaf, (not my favorite) Tom Kha Gai (chicken in coconut milk soup and papaya salad. If green papya cannot be found you can fix it with shredded carrots…carrots and papaya taste the same we are told. We were supposed to eat it all afterward but of course it was much too much food for one meal. My left-overs are in my refrigerator in my room waiting for me to figure out how to reheat it for dinner tonight.

I leave for Lao soon.

Supuat drove me to Tha Tan...right on the Thai-Burma border directly north of Chiang Mai to see several minority groups, Lisu, Lahu, Akha and Longnecks, that live there. Last year in southern Yunnan China, ... [Continue reading this entry]

Nice to have someone faithful to me. I trust Supoat, in his 50's, with soft face and warm bright eyes. I call him when I need him to drive me somewhere in ... [Continue reading this entry]

I have changed hotels. I am now at the brand new Bau-Tong Lodge with free WiFi that is down little soi 3 off Loi Kroh...for half the cost of the Galare Guesthouse where I was for the last three ... [Continue reading this entry]

This last week I found a very small, unassuming massage shop...very simple understated Thai Lanna-style salon with rough dark stained wood...a couple couches draped with yellow ochre and red umber raw silk cloth. Branches of pussy willow fill a huge ... [Continue reading this entry]

Have been here three weeks and Chiang Mai did feel like home for awhile...just long enough to get oriented and find the good places to eat. I spent all afternoon today in my ... [Continue reading this entry]

His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand will celebrate his Diamond Jubilee in Bangkok in June 2006. The King of Thailand is one of the most highly respected spiritual leaders in the world in the last half century. In ... [Continue reading this entry]

The oldest (700 years) and most interesting temple in Chiang Mai that had it's top toppled in an earthquake.

A day trip north took me to an elephant training camp, monkey training school where they learn to twist off the coconuts and let them drop from the trees. The snake show I ... [Continue reading this entry]

Tired of the Night Market for tourists, this week I walked to the Warorot Day Market...a market for the local Thais. I bought delicious garlic flavored BBQ ... [Continue reading this entry]

"Letters From Thailand" is a lovely novel wrtten in 1969 by "Botan", a pseudonym of the Chinese-born Thai female writer, Supa Sirisingh, and recently translated into English by Susan Fulop Kepner, an academic on Southeast Asian studies from UCLA. ... [Continue reading this entry]

In spite of my petty but honest day-to-day frustration with bureaucratic silliness while traveling in most developing countries, I treasure the lives of the people who ironically seem to have integrity...congruity. The way they live is understandable in relation ... [Continue reading this entry]

Thousands of people have been demonstrating for several days and nights in the streets of Bangkok calling for Prime Minister Thaksin to step down. One hundred university and business leaders signed a letter pleading for the King to appoint ... [Continue reading this entry]

Every month my son Doug has to cross into Burma and come back into Thailand to get another 30 day stay in the country. If you are late it's a $12 fine per day. ... [Continue reading this entry]

Yesterday morning I walked to the Post Office around the corner and down the street and then slowly swung a wide path through the city...dawdling in used book stores, Jonesing for all the quality crafts and household items in shop ... [Continue reading this entry]

Ending the BBC news report today on the Oscar winners, the anchor noticed that the Icelandic singer Bjork was nowhere to be seen. "She was wearing the white feathered swan dress she wore her Oscar year," he said, "and ... [Continue reading this entry]

A friend recently emailed me asking what it is like to have all the world as my "playground." This was my very brief answer: Well, the best thing about traveling in developing countries like SE Asia, Africa and China ... [Continue reading this entry]

Flew from Koh Samui on Bangkok Air (the only airline off the island because Bangkok Air built the airport) and then on to Chiang Mai on budget Air Asia. I guess Bob is in ... [Continue reading this entry]

As soon as we returned to Bangkok from Bali Bob took a train to Chiang Mai for a trek in northern Thailand near Mae Son Hong. I stayed in Bangkok to have some ... [Continue reading this entry]