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Housekeeping in Kuala Lumpur

Having done a number of long-distance cycling trips in other countries, Ian and I have worked out something of a routine. There is always a bit of housekeeping to do at the beginning of a long trip.

There are a list of chores before we go (and I will include my packing list at the bottom of this post as I have learned that one of our friends is as list obsessed as I am!) and then a list of things to do once we have arrived (usually route plan, buy maps, assemble bikes but it varies a bit).

We always give ourselves at least four days in our port of arrival, which happens to be Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia this time. Although we will make a point of seeing a few of the bigger tourist destinations here, most of our time has and will be spent simply experiencing living here while enjoying the exoticness of the destination which makes the chores interesting for us. We also allow ourselves this time to get over jetlag and acclimatize to the warm temperatures (32 degrees today).

We are staying in the Thousand Miles Hotel – a small budget hotel that has a guesthouse feel (29 Euros a night). The map says we’re on the edge of Little India and Chinatown but it feels like we’re in the middle of Little India. Most of the restaurants are Indian and there are lots of gold jewelry stores and tailoring shops. (Malaysia is a multi-cultural society with three main ethnic groups: Malay, Chinese and Indian.)Despite the fact that there are quite a few budget hotels the place is not crawling with backpackers. In fact, we have been the only westerners in a local restaurant we have decided is our local – a place that serves Indian and Malay food (tandoori chicken, nasa goreng, roti with three sauces, four watermelon drinks 7 euros). The staff have been very friendly with us as we are something of a novelty. The lack of backpackers does not mean there are no tourists – but a lot of them stay in more upbudget hotels and they give this area a miss except for a few of the main sites in Chinatown. The Malaysian government has chosen to develop tourism so as to attract the middle class rather than backpackers — there is no real backpacker scene like there is in Bangkok.

Yesterday’s chores took us to a place popular with tourists and locals alike, a huge shopping mall, appropriately named the Mid-Valley mega mall. I was feeling breathless and worrying a bit about it (I’ve been plagued with colds these last few months) so I decided to go see a doctor and see if I could get to the bottom of it. I looked online and found a healthcare clinic called iHeal and was able to choose an Ear Nose and Throat specialist. I emailed him and he asked me to make my appointment with WhatsApp. Everyone has a smartphone of some sort here! I had to explain I only have email at the moment (buying a cheap phone and sim card is one of the chores on the list) so we made do with my limited technology and I booked an appointment for a few hours later on a skype call with Dr. Tan.

With some effort we hailed a cab and made our way out to the mall. It took a half hour to go a few kilometres as KL traffic is a problem. For 15 ringitt (5 euros) we got to see what the suburbs look like: we passed a beautiful mosque, some very green and verdant jungle, and we passed countless modern condo complexes — towers of green glass, just like Vancouver.

The mall was bustling with locals and foreigners and we walked past a lot of kiosks set up for Chinese New Year, selling loads of gifts wrapped in red paper and red and gold decorations.

We took an elevator from the mall, 7 floors up to the The iHeal medical center. This was a snazzy joint that included a surgical ward, consultation rooms, and a waiting area with a bar that sold healthy snacks and juices and lots of beautiful orchids decorating a glossy waiting area.

Malaysia does have universal health care but they also have private clinics. I got the feeling that there was some prestige and status involved in being able to afford a private clinic.

I probably would have had a much less expensive experience if I had simply found a general practioner…however, 135 euros later Ian and I had been treated to a large screen view of the insides of both nostrils, checked out my uvula and watched my esphogagus open and shut. Dr. Tan figured I was still struggling with the last vestiges of the colds I’ve been suffering from so prescribed some antibiotics. He thought perhaps acid reflux might be an issue and prescribed something for that too. He told me to keep snorting the nasal decongestant the French doctor gave me and believes I have allergies. He invited both Ian and I to do an at home sleep test for apnea as he figures that’s an issue for both of us. (We declined as we don’t want to stay in KL for another two weeks). He kindly threw in a prescription for some antibiotics for Ian’s infected tooth (Ian did try to make an appointment with a dentist before we left France but couldn’t get in anywhere because of Christmas holidays.)

Yep, dealing with health issues becomes one of the chores on the list when you get old and insist on bicycle touring in developing countries!

We had noodles with beef and chinese spinach and porkballs for lunch in a Chinese noodle joint in the mall – very suburban with high chairs for babies and a ‘do it yourself’ menu where you pick your own ingredients for your noodle soup.

If it hadn’t been for our chores (we also found a book store with maps and a book on cycling Malaysia we’d read about) we would probably never experience this big part of Malaysian tourism – the middle class tourist zone with its shops and restaurants. For shoppers, KL is a piece of paradise and middle class tourists here can experience exotic KL from high-end highrise hotels that are connected directly to the mall.

Back in backpacker land Ian has now put together one of our bikes and fixed my computer (which I dropped on the floor. Oops). I have taken pictures of all the documentation and filled out the paperwork we need to work on getting some compensation from KLM for the disaster of a trip we had getting over here (two nights in hotels in two different cities we never planned on visiting and a bit of a lost luggage adventure to add insult to injury).

We have done some initial route planning and see that getting a train to Malacca isn’t that easy with the bike, nor is getting the bikes on a bus. I believe because the standard of living is generally high in Malaysia (relative to other Asian countries) there isn’t the same bevy of people around willing to transport bikes. It is also because the country, a little like Singapore, is more highly regulated. However, we believe with some effort we will find someone with a minivan who will drive us and our assembled bikes to Malacca (on the coast and south of here) which will be our starting point for our cycle to Bangkok.

Ok off to see some KL’s iconic architecture by night…the topic for another blog.

 PS..For list lovers… see below to see what will sustain me for three months on my bike here (we are cycling Malacca to Bangkok). All of the items below fit into two panniers, a handlebar bag and a knapsack. The contents of the panniers fit into a dufflebag for flying. (On the plane, the empty panniers fit in my bike box as well as my helmet and handle bar bag and spare tire). The shoulder bag I carry when we aren’t cycling contains my wallet, passport, glasses, camera, handkerchief and this all gets transferred to my handlebar bag. The duffle bag with the pannier contents weighs approx 10 kilos. I will probably be carrying about 15 to 20 kilos on the bike altogether.

3 pairs of bike shorts

2 pairs of biking capris (can also be used as pants on non-biking days)

5 non-biking tops

3 bike tops

2 pairs of sandals (both I can walk a lot in and also ride in)

1 pair of trainers (for long walks)

2 pairs of bike socks (I normally ride in sandals)

1 pair of long socks (for the plane)

1 pair of capris pants (non cycling)

1 pair of very light trousers (non cycling)

3 bras

7 pairs of underwear

compression straps (for strapping knapsack to back rack) and also for attaching bike to railcars, ferries, tops of busses and cars.

Computer (mac air book)

Ipad

Camera

Smart phone (without data roaming or a local sim card)

Sketch pencils

Trip journal

Tiny tiny bottle of perfume

Face soap

Body soap

Shampoo

Conditioner

Hair dye touch up kit (thanks to Paula)

One pair of earrings

Eyeliner

Mascara

Sunscreen

Bike computer

Bag of adapters, cord to charge and connect devices

Nailpolish

Hair elastics

Baby wipes (good for washing face and other delicate bits)

Travel towel

Wash cloth

Large cotton scarf

Small cotton hankerchief

Extra tire

Extra tubes (2)

Extra cables

Bathing suit

Nightgown

Skirt and

Matching headscarf

Matching tunic style top

Ibuprofen

Antibiotics

Band aids and gauze

Small sewing kit

Two pairs of reading glasses

Immodium

Rehydration powder

And this trip extra cold remedies: prednezone, throat lozenges, dollypran, nose spray, fevrex (light powdered cold remedy night time drink)

Nail clippers

Tweezers

Tigerbalm

Sunscreen

Body lotion

razors

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If you smile at me…

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If you smile at me I will understand…cause that’s something everybody everywhere does in the same language…. (Crosby, Stills and Nash – Wooden Ships)

This post is dedicated to the World Kindness Movement

Cycling Stats since Kumbakonan
Kumbakonan to Managurdi 40 km
Managurdi to Pattukkotai 34 km
Pattukkotai to Mimisal 68 km
Mimisal to Thondi (26 km in car)
Thondi to Ramanathapuram 49 km
Ramanathapurm to Kanyakamuri (270 km car)
Kanyakamuri to Colachel 38 km
Colachel to Kovalam 58 km
Kovalam to Verkala 61 km

One of the joys of cycling touring is the perfect speed of it. It is much faster than walking so you get the thrill of moving from town to town in the space of a day. Yet, unlike being in car, it is slow enough that you can interact with the people you meet along the way.

In India, that means kids waving at you from school buses and guys on motorcycles slowing down to chat with you as you both move along. It means passing women carrying water jugs on their heads and stopping for goat herders moving their goats across the road. At the end of a day of cycling here, I feel like I have been witness to a kaleidoscope of images in slow motion: villages with arches covered in bright colored paper celebrating a wedding, the hub bub of a market, a small lake with boys jumping gleefully into the water.

And flashing throughout this movie are a lot of smiling faces.

When we do get off our bikes and get to meet with people, our conversation is often limited because we don’t speak the local language and although English is the language of commerce here, there are a lot of people, especially poorer people, who don’t speak it. Yet, I am amazed at the richness of our communication.

After cycling in many developing countries where we know that the average wage of the people we are meeting is much lower than ours, we find that, despite the disparity between us, and especially in rural areas, we are met with nothing but smiles and kindness.

On our first evening at our guesthouse in Varkala (Kerala, India), we met Nawar another guest at our homestay. Nawar, has been in India for three weeks now, having fled Syria, his birthplace. He had asked what our experience was like cycling and we talked about how people who haven’t travelled to India had warned me about it being dangerous. I explained that this was not our experience and related this story: One afternoon we had been cycling through a small village when I braked too hard on a patch of gravel and took a tumble. I wasn’t moving very fast and the injuries were minor: a scraped knee, a bruised toe. I was immediately surrounded – two men picked up my bike and took it across the street to where my husband was standing. Three women escorted me to a seat in a nearby bus shelter. The first poured one of my water bottles over the wound. The other made me drink water. The third offered me food and all three of them fussed over the bandaging of my tiny scrape as though I were an injured child. There was little English spoken but we were made to understand that they were worried about me and offered us a place to stay if need be. When we convinced them I was ok, they gave us candy and waved us off.

I told Nawar that our experience — thanks to cycling in so many remote areas — was that most people in the world are good and kind. He smiled and said, I agree – in fact I run an organization that promotes kindness – the World Kindness Movement (UAE). And then Nawar related his story.

Although he was born in Syria, he grew up in Dubai and became a businessman, eventually forming a partnership and running 14 companies. He enjoyed running the business, but there came a point where he wanted something else and a change in lifestyle. He resigned and became the founder of the World Kindness Movement for the United Emirates in Dubai.

(according to Wikipedia): The World Kindness Movement is an organization with no religious or political affiliation. The WKM’s chief object shall be to foster goodwill among the broad community – local, national and international – by way of kindness and in so doing, create greater understanding and co-operation between all people and all nations throughout the world.

The World Kindness Movement of the UAE developed, political change began in Syria, ultimately developing into the war we are all familiar with. A few years ago Nawar returned to Syria to try and do what he could to help. Since then, the conflict has grown steadily worse and in the end Nawar was forced to leave and is now displaced. He is spending some time in India to think about the next phase of his life, and trying to keep the organization in Dubai running remotely.

Despite the seriousness of his situation, he is positive and committed to the values of the kindness movement. One of the core values is respect for other people’s beliefs and despite his experience in Syria – war obviously being the antithesis of that — this is a theme that filters up in many of our conversations.

It is both heartbreaking and heartwarming to listen to Nawar’s stories. I admire his ability to maintain his optimism after experiencing difficulty most of us in the west can only imagine and I’m inspired by his commitment to such positive values.

Check out the world kindness movement here…
http://www.theworldkindnessmovement.org/member_nation/the-kindness-movement-of-the-uae/

Note on the photos – these are some of Ian’s Indian portraits.

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Magical Thinking

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Lakshmi Villas to Kumbakonam 61 km

We had a great ride into Kumbakonam (home to no less than 188 temples). We were happy to be on quiet roads (relatively speaking) and the rural landscape of rice fields and coconut palms was nicely broken up by some large villages where we bought oranges and other snacks (Indian peanut brittle and what I think were deep fried plantain chips with chilies).

As I rode along I couldn’t get Neil Young’s “When you Dance” out of my head. I think it was all the reading I’ve been doing about Shiva, one of Hinduism’s principal deities and a favourite of mine back in the day when I spent a year learning about Vedanta philosophy, meditating and playing Neil Young. Shiva, like all Hindu deities, manifests in many forms. One of the common ones is Shiva as Nataraja, where he is depicted as a dancer performing the cosmic victory dance (our Lonely Planet guide says in this dance Shiva is pacing out the creation and destruction of the cosmos).

I always liked Shiva because of his message that out of every ending there is a beginning. This idea has given me courage when it was time to leave a situation, and consolation when grieving an ending.

In earlier days I was smitten with things Indian, the chanting I heard at sat sang at the ashram I attended in Ottawa when I was 18, the taste of chai with cardamom, purple silk saris with silver threads and the smell of sandalwood incense. Learning that there was more than one way to understand God (I was an atheist by the time I was 12 or 13) was also liberating and heady. There I was at 18, wandering around in Indian cotton skirts, wearing bangles and bells and as I finished my last year of high school (at night as I’d left home), I pulled off 100% in my final economics exam and to this day I know it was partly due to the focus I’d achieved meditating. I stomped around in my small studio apartment doing a victory dance, and there was Neil all raunchy guitar and revolution, exhilarating. “When you dance, do your senses tingle and take a chance…when you dance, I can really love.”

After that I became disillusioned and a little afraid of the ashram as I watched people getting drawn deeper and deeper into a situation that felt cult-like. I talked to a psychologist at the time who warned me that westerners often have a hard time putting eastern religion into context.

His sentiment still rings true decades later. There is something so compelling about India for some of us westerners – there’s such a big romance about it. This is especially true for anyone with a religious yearning who has been left flat by Christianity. The yoga I studied through the ashram was a kind of intellectual practice with the goal of transcending your ego through practicing non-attachment and ultimately becoming enlightened, living in a state free of anxiety. This was so attractive after years of Catholicism where I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to believe in. Literal heaven or symbolic heaven? Literal resurrection or resurrection myth? But then the swami (head of the ashram) turned out to be sleeping with the devotees and on one hell of a big ego trip. So much for transcendence, sexy Sadie. And so I learned all power corrupts and there is a lot of confusion for westerners about how Vedanta philosophy is to be practiced and interpreted outside of Indian culture.

They mystery remains as I visit these wonderful temples. Today we walked through the Nageshwara Temple, the oldest temple in Kumbakonam, founded by the Cholas (an Indian dynasty) in 886. The priest followed us around discreetly blessing everything – I don’t know if we were auspicious or somehow polluting. I watched people making offerings and meditating in front of the statues of various deities. We were the only foreigners there (in fact I haven’t seen a foreigner since we left Lakshmi Villa three days ago). I wondered what people were praying for…enlightenment or perhaps a new pair of shoes.

I am a big fan of Karen Armstrong, the ex-Catholic nun who is a religious scholar, writer and winner of a TED award. In her “Case for God” she talks about how pre-modern people did not take their religious mythologies literally. The myths were understood in a manner similar to the way we (if we are lucky – my thought) understand art. Art is transformative – we learn important things about what it means to be human through metaphor that touches us emotionally, whether it be music, poetry, or visual art. Our religious myths are not meant to be taken literally.

To believe we are going to achieve a permanently altered state of consciousness – some blissed out trance-like devotional state of mind as we flit about in saris sniffing incense – is to engage in magical thinking. A more grown-up and romantic version of the magical thinking that allowed us to believe in Santa Claus, and certainly a lot more fun than the magical thinking that has us believing that we will be resurrected in physical form on Judgement Day.

But that doesn’t mean there isn’t any magic. There are magical moments, transformative experiences when we are struck dumb by a piece of music, or cry when we read a poem.

Or dance to Neil Young wearing bangles. Rock on :-0

(p.s. Paul – even if I have to learn bar chords I think I should learn how to play this song…)

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Practising the India Travel Yoga

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Cycling Stats:
Pondicherry to Chidambaram 68 km (East Coast Road)
Chidambaram to Lakshmi Villas (T. Nedenberry)16 km

Now that we have hit the real India, I am realizing I’ve got a lot to learn about travelling here.

In the traffic-laden areas, cycling takes pure concentration and becomes a kind of dance — a kind of cycling yoga if you will. Motorcycle slides up beside you on your left? Make sure you don’t swerve into something on your right to avoid him. Bus passing another bus up ahead? Get out of the way – like onto the shoulder or dirt. Horn honking — well there’s always horns honking — learn to figure out if it’s meant for you and move accordingly. Always give trucks the right-of-way. It is a lot like cycling in Vietnam.

We cycled our first day on the road from Pondicherry to Chidambaram, leaving a lot of the western tourists behind. Traveling outside the touristed part of cities like Pondicherry we are learning how the poverty prevents hotel staff from delivering up to western standards. The staff simply don’t know what that means.

In Chidambaram our very basic room (22 Cdn a night) looked out over a temple and the grounds leading up to it – despite this being a reasonably big town, people were getting water from a local well. On our way out to the rural resort where we have spent Christmas (Lakshmi Villas) we were transported back in time to farmers living in thatched bamboo huts, working the land by hand, and tending goats. On our walk through the local village yesterday we were a novelty and were greeted and giggled at. A local potter called us in off the street to show us, with great pride, his manual potters wheel. Many people ask us to take photos of them – this was true in the local village as well as the main temple site (Najarata –a huge temple complex that dates back to the 12th century and worships Siva) in Chidambaram. I had read that we needed to be careful about taking photos of people worshipping but we were asked numerous times.

The living conditions explain why the waiters never wipe the table we eat at with a damp cloth — they simply wipe it with a napkin, leaving a residue that hardens and which I recognize the next meal. The walls have probably never been cleaned despite the enormous number of staff hanging around. Our only real issue with this is we are paying western prices (60 dollars a night nets you a clean motel room these days in North America). However, the staff are charming and genuinely try and feel badly if they feel they haven’t measured up.

Today we had a big issue with trying to pay with a visa card, although the owner had reassured us in Chidambaram (16 km from here) that there wouldn’t be a problem. (If we’d known they needed a cash payment we would have come with the right amount of cash, of course.) I figured out eventually that the staff had not been trained to troubleshoot the visa card reader (I urged the manager to phone the help line on the device and he gave up when he was put on hold – I think he was having problems understanding the English voice recording although I bet if he’d waited he would have been talking to someone in his own dialect in Chennai). Eventually we discovered that there was an ATM in the local village and our problem was solved – but not before a bit of a tussle with the hapless manager who wanted to send us back to Chidambaram in a tuk tuk at our expense. My only issue here is charging western prices for non-western service…something the owner will eventually need to figure out. Once we are out on the rough again (this was a Christmas treat) we will expect grubbiness and haplessness but will be paying less.

On Christmas Eve night we shared the resort with two groups of Western tourists. We had as much fun watching them as we did the dance troupe (which included an acrobat who was quite amazing). One group, the Veggie Voyagers (not kidding) were lovely, sweet, eccentric and in love with all things Indian. One bony elderly lady came back from the temple with garlands in her hair and looped over her ears – she reminded me of a goat festooned for a wedding — but she was thrilled and looked as though she expected a goddess to manifest right in front of her. The other group were Italian and they were a bit bitchy about whatever they perceived was not up to snuff and kept popping out of their rooms in various states of undress asking for extra towels and pillows, and complaining about problems with hot water etc. and so we were treated to the Indian version of Faulty Towers as we sipped our evening beer and giggled a little to ourselves.

Arguing about the lack of (promised) internet for four days was an interesting experience and made me think about the differences between Indian culture and Western culture. We expect to take control and be in control. Indian culture accepts and shrugs. This ability to roll with it and surrender is one of the big attractions for westerners learning yoga and meditation – we are so programmed to be in control we get anxious when we aren’t and learning to let go relieves anxiety. But there is a limit to acceptance as well – non-action isn’t always the right way to go. The caste system here is served well by the fatalism that is inherent in Indian religion and now when the government run visa website doesn’t work, or when the Internet is down in a hotel for two days, the answer is to shrug.

Striking that balance between accepting a situation that can’t be changed (or isn’t worth the hassle) or deciding to stand up for yourself, in as culturally appropriate and polite a way as possible of course, has become our own personal yoga practise — the Indian travel yoga practice.

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Bom Shiva

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We’ve finally left our lovely little town of Lauzun to continue our bike trip and flew Paris to Chennai this week to begin a cycle trip we hope takes us to Goa.

Despite all the annoyances and stress of airline travel, I still love the fact that in a mere number of hours I can step from one world into another. One night I am sleeping in an airport hotel in Paris and the next I am standing on the balcony of my Pondicherry hotel, breathing in warm, waterlogged air, watching the crazy traffic on the street below, and falling asleep to the sound of motorcycle engines and horns.

Pondicherry is quite a soft landing as far as India goes. Having travelled a lot in the third world we are finding that we are adjusting very well to the chaos – traffic that obeys few rules and navigates by horns; shops that spill out onto sidewalks that are already crammed with parked motorcycles so that pedestrians share the street with moving traffic, cows, dogs, and other people; narrow tiny shops with big signs that compete with all the other big signs so that it all becomes one big sign; no street names; and bewildered and bemused traffic cops with ineffectual whistles.

We’ve given ourselves five days to get over the jet lag, plan our bike trip, and to buy the odds and sods we have forgotten. (Ian forgot his underwear and is quite amused to find that in India, the men wear underwear with pockets – we guess that this is for the men who wear dhotis and have no other place to put their keys and rupees).

As we have worked down the list (maps of India, mosquito repellant, shoe laces, hair dye, underwear, batteries for bike lights) we have ambled about both the French and Indian parts of town and admired the scenery. We liked the market for its colour and overpowering smells of fish and spice. We walked the boardwalk along the ocean and admired the Bay of Bengal while people watching and dodging the come ons from local sellers (drums, jewelry, wash off tattoos, scarves etc. etc.)

There are a fair number of tourists about, many French given that this was governed by the French until 1954. Many of the tourists are interested in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram right in Pondicherry and the commune, known as Auroville, 10 km outside of town. We were able to pick out a few of these travellers from the airport gate in Paris – girls with yoga mats and yoga pants and hair piled in top knots and wrapped in Indian cotton scarves.

We had thought about visiting the ashram and commune but a very unfortunate incident this week has the city tense and the ashram off limits. It seems that the locals resent the fact that the ashram is not governed by any local authority – it reports into the federal government — and there are all kinds of accusations of corruption and mis-management. This week there was a supreme court ruing against a family who had lived in an apartment in Pondicherry which was owned by the ashram. After a decade of fighting eviction for an infraction of ashram rules, they lost in the final ruling and the entire family walked into the ocean to commit suicide. Three of them drowned and four were rescued by local fishermen. This sparked a protest by Pondicherry citizens who want local governance for the ashram and today, a day-long general strike. Felt just like France…

We took the opportunity of a relatively quiet Pondicherry to take our bikes out for their first Indian spins. All was well with them and as soon as we were three kilometres out of town we hit the real India and I quit feeling sorrier for the mangy, hungry dogs than the people (my guilt-ridden reaction to our first few days here where I felt the opposite). Yes, it is still a very poor country for some people and the living conditions are appalling.

But we were both happy to be out on the bikes and meeting people not so used to tourists. Everyone was friendly and when we stopped at intersections more than one person asked if we needed directions, including two lovely children who giggled and charmed and eventually, unable to tell us what road we were on, pointed to the police across the street and very helpfully suggested we could get help there.

We passed loads of garland eating goats and sandy-coloured dogs and happy looking cows as we plotted our route out of town (we leave the day after tomorrow when the real journey begins.)

The extremes of India – the dirt and pollution, the amazing colour (of saris, and of spices in the market and painted temples), the noise, the chaos of traffic and no queuing and hordes of people, the piles of stuff for sale, the fabulous food, the amazing smells of fruit and curry – all the stimulation is what makes it both exciting and exhausting.

I first started thinking of going to India when I was in my late teens. I had become friends with a couple who had recently come back from a trip to India. Bill played guitar with my boyfriend of the time and I thought he was one of the coolest people I’d ever met – he was in the final stage of earning his PhD in biochemistry and liked to smoke hash – this contradiction in itself amazed me — and he was supplementing his student loans by dealing a little. He had a pipe he called a chillum and whenever he would spark up he’d say Bom Shiva. He talked a lot about India and in that small prayer he acknowledged the reality of the world – the bigger world that includes both light and dark, destruction and creation, the extremes of India and our relatively easier lives in the west. And although we westerners may be lucky in many ways I, like many of my kin, can become obsessed with having enough money, especially these days as I try to get advice on taxes as a non-resident, and lose track of the precious present. I like to come to India to be reminded of that.

So, yeah, Bom Shiva.

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Loving Lauzun…we don’t want to leave…

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We’re staying an extra week in Lauzun and then booting it up to the border in a car so that we don’t overstay our Schengen visa and potentially mess up coming back (remote chance but we are so in love with France we don’t want to risk it).

Yep. We are both in love with this area and we are plotting and scheming to figure out how we might make it a part of our lives on some kind of regular basis.

The cheese is fabulous and during the summer it arrives in a cheese truck that parks outside our house so that I can wave to the cheese lady on Saturday mornings. Aside from various tommes and chevres (including the local cabecou) she sells crème fraiche. What’s not to love…

The bakery is less than 100 metres away around the corner. The croissants, pain au raisin and baguettes are fresh every morning. We have restrained ourselves and only bought dessert once – a pomme tarte with almond pastry crust to eat with vanilla ice cream and the sauterne style wine (sweet white dessert) from Montbaillac, the 15th century chateau and vineyards 20 kms from here.

There is another guy who sells right in front of our house on Saturday mornings. Wanda discovered his smoked duck. It was so good we looked up regulations on bringing food back to Canada. (Sorry John, it would have had to have been in a can. I hope you enjoy the foie gras instead).

The skinny capris are struggling to keep up. We are cycling on average every second day and the rides are hilly and we usually do more than 20 km. However, I believe I need to pump up the volume and try for longer rides and average 5 times a week for next two weeks. Oh yeah. The wine lady also sets up in front of our house on Saturdays and sells 5 litres of decent rose (really) for 10 euros (14 dollars). Ok maybe I need to ride six times a week…

When we do ride, no matter which way we go, the scenery is pastoral and lovely – fields of wheat or sunflowers, sometimes vineyards, rolling hills with patchwork quilt fields and the odd chateau for visual interest.

The villages are quaint and charming and most of them host street markets and festivals throughout the summer.

Real estate is cheap.

The people are friendly. The people are so friendly in this village we are thinking our love affair with France may be somewhat the result of their influence. Ian will be singing with a local folk group here one night next week and we were invited to and attended a local birthday party last week. They couldn’t be more welcoming.

From Lauzun as a base, we can drive to Bordeaux in an hour. We can be in Spain in 5 hours.

I’ve always wanted to learn French….

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If it’s Tuesday it must be Greece…

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It sure went by in a blur. Here we are already in Italy, getting ready to leave for France tomorrow.

Cycling Distances:
Piraeus to campground 30 km east of Korinth 55 km
Camp to Korinth 30 km
Korinth to Akarta Beach 65 km
Akarta Beach to Rio 63 km
Rio to Patras 12 km

Even on a trip of this extended length there are sites we miss and places we’d like to linger but we manage to run out of time. Greece and Italy are getting short shrift this trip as we refuse to change our relaxed pace and we are restricted to 90 days in Europe as a result of the Schengen visa. Given we have rented a place in France for a month and that when we conceived the European part of this trip it was to be about cycling in France, we have missed much of Greece and will miss much of Italy to make sure we get that time in France.

So we are following the first rule of travel – always tell yourself you will be back. “Trip of a lifetime,” a phrase my Mom is very fond of, is great for pumping up the adrenaline about a trip but ultimately relaxed travel is the key to experiencing a destination rather than ‘doing’ it.

So. I loved what little we saw of Greece. We divided our time between Samos and Korinth.

Ian’s suggestion to ‘take a week off’ in Samos met with no argument from me as we wanted to unpack our bags for an entire week, in a place we actually planned to stop (rather than unplanned extensions because I was sick). Samos is one of Greece’s most easterly islands; it is closer to Turkey than it is to the Greek mainland.

We took a 90 minute ferry from Kusadasi and landed in the port of Samos.

We rode a pretty 2 km road out of town and wound our way up a cliff to the Scorpios Apartments. We rolled our bikes through the bougainvillea covered gate and admired the stone floors of the whitewashed lobby and then stopped to admire the pool, and the stunning view of the Aegean from the pool deck. We loved the place even before we entered the apartment and discovered a balcony with the same stunning view and a small kitchen. I noticed a giant rosemary bush on the grounds and after a trip to town to provision I was humming away to music playing on our ipad as I marinated chicken legs in Samos white wine, rosemary and capers and then baked them basting them with honey. We ate them with rosemary and garlic mashed potatoes, drinking white wine on the balcony watching the waves crash onto a cliffside far below. Heaven.

We used booking.com to make our reservation just outside of high season and thought 40 euros a night was an absolute steal. The owner Nansy is an artist and her work is displayed throughout the hotel and we appreciated her artistic touch noticeable throughout the property.

Nansy recommended that we rent a car to tour the island and gave us a great itinerary. We found a car down the road for 28 euros a day including insurance. We drove to Pythagoria (the hometown of Pythagoras — yes responsible for the Pythagorean theorem on right-angled triangles). The town hosts a small boat harbor for people cruising ‘the med’ and we had a nice seaside moussaka lunch watching people back in and do ‘the med tie’ which involves tying up the stern of the boat and throwing an anchor down off the bow. We also drove the narrow winding mountain road up a few hundred metres to the town of Manolatas. The houses and shops are all built on steep slopes on top of the mountain and we enjoyed walking the stone streets and admiring the views and a beautiful little chapel and bell tower.

We spent 9 days on Samos and between our day of touring by car, checking out beautiful beaches, hanging by the pool, visiting Samos town itself (there is a good archaeological museum as well as a wine museum which includes wine tasting – Samos is famous for making great dessert wine using muscat grapes), we were not bored.

From Samos we took a ferry to Piraeus, the main port for the city of Athens. We took NEL lines, a little bit of a rust bucket but very affordable at 80 euros each for a cabin and a 16 hour journey. The cabin was clean and just as nice as the one we had on the more expensive Superfast ferry line which we took from Patras Greece to Ancona Italy – (although the Superfast ship was a very luxurious new boat with a pool).

We landed in Piraeus and it was Ian’s experience from 20 years ago where he cycled the same route in reverse that helped us navigate to the ferry terminal for Salamis island (about 10 kms away from the port). We rode across Salamis Island (12 km) and onto another ferry to get us to the mainland, now the Peloponnesus peninsula. This shaved off a significant chunk of heavy traffic highway riding and the ride across the island was quite lovely. From that ferry landing, we followed Ian’s instincts to get us to highway 8 (the old national road) and then were very happy to follow that all the way along the coast, eventually to Patras.

It took us a few days to get across the peninsula to Patras, with a longish stop at Korinth.

Korinth is home to the Korinth canal (very narrow and steep canal that allows boats to get from the Gulf of Corinth to the Aegean without a big detour around south of Greece.)

We stopped at the canal enroute to the Blue Dolphin campground, close to the ancient city of Corinth. (Corinth is spelled both ways with a C or a K).

We almost gave ancient Corinth a miss – if Ian had not made the connection with Corinthians and St. Paul we may have just kept barreling across Greece. As it was, I spent the night before we checked out the ruins reading up on St. Paul.

This is where slow travel really pays off – exploring the ruin sites at a leisurely pace and cycling to them enhances my experience of actually feeling the history. I walked around that ruin site imagining Paul walking the same ancient road (the road through the old town is still partially intact); in my mind’s eye I watched him eating in one of the restaurants, looking up at the acropolis, buying olives and wine in a shop, (they had rows of shops along the main road through town and there are stone remains of the shop buildings) and writing his epistles to the Corinthians. He became a man for me, a historical figure not so far removed in time as he had been the day before for me, and this took him out of the mythical category he was filed under in my brain. That led to really trying to understand his experience and once again crawl my way through Catholic theology trying to understand what it was I was really supposed to believe when I was a churchgoer as a child.

Sure enough I discovered a contradiction that I am still puzzling over – St. Paul was very clear that he believed in the resurrection of Christ in a literal way. The current pope does not. So here I am feeling vindicated again — all those years in catechism class and hours spent in mass and I could never get a straight answer on theology questions and fought bitterly about being forced to believe in something I could not understand. (I gave up God when I gave up Santa Claus as it was about then that my brain started rejecting imaginary creatures of all kinds and none of the answers I got about what God is made any sense to me at that time.)

I have a much more sophisticated idea about what God is now and in very minor circles might be considered agnostic because I can come up with definitions that allow me to say “I believe under certain definitions.” In most circles I would be considered an atheist because I reject what I have come to believe is the common conception of God and I believe that conception is unsophisticated and wrong. But hey, not to pick on Catholics — they are not the only people confused in their theology – this is true of all major religions but I like to find evidence to back up this theory I have.

And there you have it, what I learned on my summer vacation and I am inspired to read on. Thank you St. Paul and ancient Corinth…

Well. Back to modern-day Greece…and then we cycled back to the campground….We spent four nights at the campground, partly so we could do laundry and take a day to see the ruins, also because we met a British couple there named Ian and Sue and so we had to stay up late and drink gallons of wine with them, delaying our departure by yet another day…

The ride from Corinth to Patras took three days. The first day was beautiful along the old national road which parallels the highway. It was Sunday, there was virtually no traffic and we were treated to ocean views the whole way. The only challenge was a very strong headwind that kept us pedaling hard the entire ride. Then next day we rode from Akarta Beach where we had camped to Rio which is just outside of Patras; there we found a great hotel for 65 Euros a night that included breakfast and had a lovely beachside bar where we could say goodbye to Greece at sunset.

We rode 12 kms to Patras the next morning, found a ferry booking company and two hours later we were on the Superfast ferry to Ancona, a 20 some hour ride that was very luxurious.

Ancona itself is a dirty little port town with nothing to recommend it but we stayed overnight near the train station and then cycled out to the airport the next day to pick up a rental car and then whizzed across the entire country to Pisa, bikes and panniers in the hatchback. We admired Tuscany as we drove through, and reminded ourselves of other times we’d been in Florence and told ourselves we would be back one day as we negotiated out of central Florence in rush hour through a traffic jam…

And here we are in Pisa…whew….off to France tomorrow.

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The Last Hurrah in Tawdry Hua Hin

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Apparently Ian and I are managing to get older without getting any smarter. The night before we had to take our 6 am train from Hua Hin to Bangkok we decided to go out and photograph a girly bar or two and ended up hanging out in one of them instead. (It was too dark to take decent photos without a tripod or being too intrusive so the shots are lousy but I’ve included a few to give a hint of what its like there). An old Londoner with a big cockney accent bought us beer and shortly thereafter he and his ‘thai wife for a week’ and his old fart of a friend and his Thai “wife”, and Ian and I, were all singing and trying to follow the hooker behind the bar who was doing the arm movements to YMCA (as in “I wanna stay at the YMCA”). So too many hours later we got home too late to do anything but tumble into bed. However, we did manage to get up at 4:30 am as planned, pack our panniers and the bikes in suffering silence and cycle out to the train station in the dark only to find, hey deja vu, our 6 am train was delayed by 2.5 hours. Sigh.

Ian caught a few zees on a bench at the station and I amused myself watching a local family sorting out all the stuff they were moving to Bangkok including their rooster who they let out of his box for a bit so he could get some air. We also met a chiuahua whose owners have taught her to put the tips of her paws together and wai (traditional Thai greeting). She was very cute and did her tick many times for us so I shared my cheddar cheese with her. She loved it and would have gobbled down my entire stash if I hadn’t held back as I was worried about her eating too much given her teeny little stomach.

I shared cheese with another little pet we met in Dolphin Bay, 50 km south of Hua Hin. We stayed at the Terraselin (next door to Dolphin Bay Resort, 50 bucks a night including breakfast, double our budget but a nice treat) and the manager there had a six-month old black kitten that Ian nick-named Miss Marnie and who visited us every morning for the 5 days we were there. She purrrrred when she ate cheddar – I have never seen a cat purr and eat at the same time. But I know exactly how she feels. Extra-old New Zealand cheddar.Yum.

We haven’t done much in the last two weeks. We’ve enjoyed our time on the coast but have learned a few things for future trips. First, it is too hot to cycle in Thailand after mid-March and when it starts to get hot, the best place to be cycling is right along the ocean. So, a possible plan for next winter is to fly from India to Malaysia in mid-January and then cycle up to Bangkok along the coast and then home to Canada by the end of March.

Despite the heat we tried to make the best of our 50 km ride to and from Hua Hin to Dolphin Bay a week or so ago. We managed to ride most of it off the highway and a significant chunk on a road paralleling the ocean. Except for the 10 kms on the highway the ride was quiet and we loved the views of ocean and palm trees on one side of the road and, between Hua Hin and Pranburi, all kinds of resorts on the other side of the road. By the time we got to Dolphin Bay, the resorts were fewer and further apart and we loved the peaceful setting and the pool we found ourselves in for a week where I celebrated my 51st birthday and finally got over the flu. On both the ride there and back we put up with 39 degrees with fully loaded bikes and there were moments when that was not a lot of fun.

After our week at Dolphin Bay, we headed back to Hua Hin for another few days of being ocean-side before heading to Bangkok (where we are now). Hua Hin itself is a small city, about 100 kms south of Bangkok, with an eclectic mix of people. We stayed at Bird’s Guesthouse, which we learned has a regular expat following, and we enjoyed the people we met there. The room itself was kind of run down (we paid 23.00 per night) but the location is amazing as it is right on the ocean. The building sits on stilts and we could hear and watch the tide come in under us. There is a large deck which the guests share and in the late afternoon we gathered to drink beer and gin and tonic and watch the fish boats that were anchored directly beside us get ready to go out for night fishing.

Hua Hin is home to a bunch of condo developments for expats, weekend Thais from Bangkok, European family tourists staying next door at the Hilton, and a fair number of sexpats and tourists looking for bar girls. There were days when the bar girl scene got to both of us – it is sleezy and discouraging – and days when we just shrugged as it is commerce as old as humankind and well, there ain’t no fool like an old fool and we saw lots of them every day. Many older white guys are dumb enough to think that they can find themselves a gorgeous girl thirty years younger who will fall in love with them and not their money. Let’s just say that that is a rare event. The other side of the coin is that a lot of these girls are from Issan, a poor area of Thailand, and they are expected to work in the bars and send money home. If a foreign guy does get involved in a long-term thing with a bar girl, he will be expected to support her family (that is her parents and siblings and any children she might already have). So, not a great situation for a lot of the girls either although I think it beats the street-walker level of prostitution we see at home on the downtown east side.

That being said, I think we all sometimes need to be shaken out of our own judgmental points of view and by happenstance Ian and I were drawn into an interesting scene at our night in the girly bars. The old cockney guy and his ancient buddy told us they come to Thailand once a year for a three-week blitz. One of them told us he was married to a Thai woman for a number of years but she had died a few years back and he was on his own now. On this trip, these two old guys had rented a villa and two ‘Thai wives” for their three weeks. As we drank beer and chatted with them, a street vendor came by with lots of slinky looking dresses. Mr. Cockney bought dresses for his ‘wife’ and one of the bar girls who just happened to be sitting on the other side of the bar from us, acting as the disc jockey. There was a lot of laughing and teasing going on and no one seemed to be under any illusions about who felt what for whom in that foursome. It was strictly business and fun. But eventually Ian and I started chatting with the hooker who had been leading the YMCA song. She had watched us talking between ourselves for a long while and then told us rather wistfully that she had a 63 year old Austrian boyfriend she didn’t see very often. She eventually poured out her heart to me telling me she loved him and was waiting for him but it was hard because she missed him (and reading between the lines I could see she was worried about whether he felt the same way about her). She told me she had lots of invites from other foreigners who would set her up and pay her 5000 baht (a week I think) but she said no as her heart belongs to the Austrian farang (foreigner). When we got up to leave she came running around to the outside of the bar to give me a big hug, grateful for having had someone listen to her heartache.

So, judgement suspended…

Given there weren’t a lot of sights to see in Hua Hin and the fact that it was so hot we spent a lot of time on the internet. I have downloaded three books of fiction by Turkish authors from the Vancouver library, found a blog on camp sites in Turkey, have spent hours looking at an interior design website called Houzz (highly recommended), have downloaded a learn French app for my ipad and once again can remember how to conjugate a few basic verbs in a few basic tenses and have been having a lot of fun looking at a site that publishes menus from Michelin starred restaurants and saving them as inspiration for a time when I can cook again. Oh yeah and yesterday morning I found a bunch of DIY sites and learned how to make self-irrigating vegetable planters.

A busy few weeks indeed ☺ I don’t think I have ever been so relaxed.

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Home is where the Panniers are — Winding it Down in Chiang Mai

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After months on the road with no more than a week in one place, Chiang Mai felt like home pretty much as soon as we’d unpacked our panniers. That feeling of arriving home was even stronger after leaving our stuff in our room here in the R.C.N. Court and Inn and travelling for a few days up to Chiang Rai, Mae Sai and into Myanmmar to get our Thai visas stamped and then taking the bus back to Chiang Mai. I guess that ability to be home wherever we are and the sale of my condo in Vancouver confirms my nomadic identity – at least for the next 13 or so months.

There is comfort in knowing how adaptable I can be, although it is no particular talent of mine. I think all human beings are amazingly adaptable but I’ve been lucky enough to have been given the opportunity to experience being nomadic and to learn that home is something we create no matter where we are or for how long we stay. Some painful losses have taught me that it is the loss of people we love that hurts, not the loss of our stuff. I don’t see the need for total asceticism but in a society that preaches absolute consumerism, to the degree that we often define the value of an individual according to the value of what that individual owns, I see value in learning not to be too attached to material things when that attachment leads to working at a job you don’t like or fear of change.

That being said, I am looking forward to buying a little house on the Island and I’m enjoying looking at the jewel colors and mirror mosaics on Thai temples and statuary and imagining them somewhat transplanted. I find myself thinking about how I might re-create bits and pieces at home — I see jewel-colored glass door pulls on white cabinets; I see jade-green, ruby red and gold glass mosaic on garden pots and vinegar bottles. I imagine a red lacquer-painted second-hand dresser with a gold naga stenciled on in metallic gold paint. I notice gardens and garden features in all the outdoor cafes we eat in here and make note of what might work in a back yard garden in Ladysmith. I like the creative challenge of defining a new home space.

And when I’m not wandering around looking at the head-dress on a white concrete temple elephant, I’m taking care of business, often in the early hours of the day when Chiang Mai and Vancouver time zones intersect during business hours. After many conversations with realtors, the financial advisor, and friends helping with logistics, and many trips to the photocopy print and scan store, I am happy to say it is almost all done. Still another couple of conversations with the notary in Vancouver and a trip out to a notary here and we can wrap up the condo sale and focus on the boat sale…

I try to take some days entirely off and we’ve had a couple of nice day trips when I do. We went out to the Sankampaeng hot springs with a couple of friends last week. We took a songthaew (a pick up truck with benches in the back) for 1.60 each, each way, about 60 kms round trip. In addition to the geyser, and pool where you can cook eggs (our friend Alyce cooked quail eggs for us) there was a small canal that was almost too hot to soak our feet in and then a large swimming pool which was about 98 degrees. We relaxed for an hour in the pool and had a couple of good water fights with a bunch of school kids who were out on a field trip.

We also managed to get out to meet the Chiang Mai Cycling club which meets every Sunday at 7 am outside the Tapei Gate. The membership director lady was very nice, spoke some English and handed us a microphone to introduce ourselves to the forty or so Thais decked out in spandex and ready to ride. I don’t know how many of them understood us, but they applauded and invited us to ride with them. We were actually there hoping for a swap meet (we read that these happen occasionally) as we had some bike grips that were too big for my handlebars. We were able to sell them for a little money and then declined the invitation to ride as we already had our own itinerary planned.

Then we headed across the street to the Art Cafe, across from the Tapei Gate and between the Starbucks and McDonalds (you really can get anything you want here) and after breakfast headed out of town on the bikes, passing through Chinatown and over the Mae Ping River, along highway 1006 out into the country where we found small concrete paved lanes to ride on amongst the rice fields.

Yesterday I had an early birthday celebration with Mary a new friend I’ve met in Chiang Mai. She wanted to celebrate leaving Chiang Mai and moving onto to her next adventure which is hiking the Santiago do Compostela with her partner Dan. We treated ourselves to a 3.5 hour spa. For 60 bucks including tip we headed out in a tuk tuk to Zabai Thai Massage and Spa and had a Thai massage, a body scrub, an oil/aromatherapy massage and a facial. A terrific deal and a lovely day.

We’ve had some very nice dinners together with another couple we met who live in Powell River, B.C. We got talking to Janet and Wayne in a local Japanese restaurant and discovered that they also have a boat hauled out in Jack’s Boat Yard up in Lund where we left Ian’s boat so many months ago.

I’ve finally gotten around to a little cooking in the communal kitchen and have spent a couple of fun afternoons shopping in our local market and doing a little entertaining. I love markets and Ian and I have agreed that this is something I am better off doing on my own. So I’ve also spent some quality time wandering around the Sunday night market that sets up two blocks from our guesthouse and sells local crafts. On my own I can take my time wandering around the stalls checking out jewelry, textiles and carving. I am practicing good restraint but have decided to get together a bundle of stuff to send home and to Ottawa.

As comfortable as we are we realize we have ten days left here and so we’re beginning to plan our next moves. We’ve got a rough itinerary that has us leaving Chiang Mai on the train and doing some cycling to the southern train line. We may spend a few days in a couple of small towns as we make our way down the peninsula by bike and train and then cycle across to the island we like in the Andaman Sea. We’ve got a tentative guesthouse reservation in Bangkok and our tickets to Instanbul are booked April 13. We are then on the road again in a big way until we stop in France in August. We are happy that we managed to find a place to rent in France as when I began to do a little research we discovered that places were getting booked up for August and realized that we had to make some decisions and commitments to ensure we would find a spot for our next month off the road. We found what looks to be a beautiful townhouse that we we will share with our friend Wanda who is planning a well-deserved extended summer vacation this year.

We are really enjoying a fantastic trip and feel very lucky to have the opportunity to do so much travelling this year.

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Butterflies and Bicycles — Lost Days in Chiang Mai

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We’re almost at the end of our month in Chiang Mai. It has been eventful in some very fun and some not so fun challenging ways as we work through a retirement plan that includes selling the condo and boat.

We’ve decided to extend our trip until April 2014 and put off India until the fall of 2013; as a result we are staying in Thailand until mid April before heading to Turkey.

Having visited here before we knew that Chiang Mai is a great place for an extended stay. Some of our best days have had us out on our bikes exploring the city particularly the small sois that wind through the old historic town. These are the sois we like to get lost in, as they are full of surprises – temples we didn’t know existed; small markets that return us to the real Thailand, with rank market smells and market dogs sleeping in the street so that we have to cycle around them. Yesterday we returned to the terra cotta garden, one of Ian’s discoveries – a walled in patio-stoned garden full of decaying terra cotta statues and mural tiles, all artfully displayed, leaning up against jungle trees and brick walls, some covered in moss. As I wandered through the garden taking pictures I watched flocks of butterflies flying amongst the statuary. Very pretty.

We have also cycled up to Doi Suthep (Ian twice) a challenging 1300 metre climb over 13 kms where the grade averages more than 10 percent. I still have to walk bits even without panniers. Doi Suthep itself is an amazing temple and very popular with Thais and tourists – the whole area at the base of the temple itself (which sits on top of the mountain and requires a further climb of 300 stairs) has a carnival like feel with tons of trinket and food stalls. I will be doing it a couple of more times as well as some other out-of-town rides to try and stay in shape for the next 5000 or 6000 kms we plan to cycle.

Then there are days of slow breakfasts either in the neighborhood or up in our room, and then a slow walk around the sois that eventually take us out to the moat road and beyond the walls of the old city to a favourite street full of used book stores. We are thankful these exist as I am averaging three books a week and Kobo prices and their non-sharing policy is expensive on the retirement budget! I am buying used books here for 2 or 3 dollars a pop and I am able to trade them in when I’m done. Kobo is averaging more like 12.00 a book and that is with me searching for their bargain reads. However I have also splurged a little on a David Foster Wallace bender buying a biography, his editor-finished novel The Pale King and his big hit Infinite Jest. This has been a period of intense reading and I feel like I’ve completed the equivalent of a university survey course on American university-produced writers since 1985. Perhaps more on that on another blog…

Our first weekend here someone told us that the woman’s prison was being repurposed as a temple and the women moved to better facilities out of town. Curious, we cycled down to see it and were very moved by the place, a tough spot to end up in, and I suspect that, like most people in prisons around the world, economic circumstances and family background has a lot to do with how they end up there. The women had only recently moved and we were sobered by the personal items left behind, magazine cut outs of women in bridal dresses in one cell, and shampoo and shower cap laying outside the communal shower.

We’ve finally found things to do in the evenings here beyond trying every restaurant in our walking radius :-0 We were happy to learn that the North Gate jazz co-op is still operating and we managed to stay up late enough finally to get down there and hear a first set that starts at 9 pm – it was terrific jazz, a Thai band with a French sax player.

We saw our first movie ever in Thailand a couple of weeks ago on a Friday night – at the Cineplex in the large shopping plaza near the airport. I managed to talk Ian out of cycling there (although its only 3 kms) because we have not been in a tuk tuk since we arrived in Thailand (Aisa for that matter) and I needed a tuk tuk hit. (For those who don’t know a tuk tuk is a three-wheeler open cab that is built around a motorcycle.) The theatre was identical to the Cineplexes at home — so much so that when we left (we saw Life of Pi which was fantastic) we were completely disoriented, expecting somehow to walk outside to a rainy Vancouver Friday night near Tinseltown (the theatre complex in Vancouver we typically saw films at) and to jump in Ian’s old car to get home. Instead we jumped into a tuk tuk and ate dinner at a street stall close to our guesthouse. It was a little bittersweet – novel and fun and yet it made me a little homesick for Vancouver. However, two theatre tickets cost us 11.00 Cdn., dinner was 3.00 for the two of us and we sat outside eating in our t-shirts at 9:00 at night watching a very international world go by.

Ian was also able to get a hockey hit at the U.N Irish pub which plays a variety of sports events on big screen TVs; Ian is on their mailing list so he can catch whatever hockey games come up. Our first wasn’t a Canucks game (Leafs versus Rangers) but it was CBC and we made fun of Don Cherry with an expat from Toronto and had a few pints and a good time.

We celebrated Chinese New Year last night with some people from Tennessee one of whom is bigger than life and very charismatic. We had dinner and drinks at a street stall table close to our guesthouse. Dan bought ten flying lanterns and then began calling people who just happened to be walking by our table, to come and light a new years lantern and watch it disappear into the heavens. What started out as dinner and drinks turned into a kind of instant street party and a good time was had by all.

On quieter days and evenings I have been thinking a lot about community and citizenship and globalization…I have moments of guilt re taking advantage of cheap living here in the winters (which is making early retirement possible with six months every year in Canada as well) as I imagine the expats have been driving up the prices for average Thais who, at least minimum wage earners, make the equivalent of 300 dollars a month. On the other hand, the cost of living in Vancouver has skyrocketed over the last 20 years with wages not keeping up to any degree (unless you are a government worker who gets cost of living raises). In my own case, my highest salary was more than 13 years ago now and my salary proceeded from there on a downward trend to the last two companies I worked at fulltime. Those companies also closed shop in Vancouver moving to India in one case and the U.S. in the other. So, perhaps I have also been a victim of globalization and there is some balance with me now taking advantage of it, or so goes the rationalization now.

When I think about what is required for me to manifest and manage this new life I think of a phrase I have adopted from my friend Dana. She talks about ‘living creatively ‘ and I believe that that is exactly what is required of me now. There is the creative challenge of finding and adapting to a cheaper winter lifestyle in other parts of the world. There is the challenge at home in Canada of training myself out of a consumer-oriented mindset to more of a producer-oriented mindset – can I create a home with second-hand furniture in a smaller cheaper town and make it an expression of myself that I am contented with rather than requiring expensive digs and furniture to do the same – can I learn to cook so that the 200 restaurant treat meal is something I can produce myself – can I learn to find expression through drawing and other art rather than solely through the purchase of other peoples expressions (art). Can I find flexible work that I like doing so that I am not completely retired (and get tax breaks as a self-employed individual in retirement). I think the answer is yes to all of the above and the challenges are exciting – more exciting to me than working as a consultant on a full-time basis.

So forward we go, working a retirement plan and enjoying the easy life here in Chiang Mai.