Anyone who has taken a gander at our blog (or can muster minimal imagination based on limited descriptions) might be inclined to believe our trip has been nothing but kicks and laughs all over Asia. While I admit that our year-long vagabond adventures have beaten the stuffing out of working, we have inevitably been hurled into inconvenient and sometimes downright atrocious situations that can (momentarily at least) cast serious doubts on the potential of humanity as a whole. With so much attention given to the beautiful and fun in our trip, let's examine the horrors.
The 10 Worst Things in S.E.Asia:
(especially on Thai islands & near Angkor temples)
The sun never sets on
the British empire so these jerkholes think they're entitled to drink 24
hours a day. Call me uncool but I just can't seem to have a good time
drinking red bull and vodka out of a bucket while listening to cheesy
techno (with no one dancing) on a southern Thai island while watching a
glam-punk British guy (who we thought was all right....compared
to others present) steal hard liquor from poor Thai people.
(all over Asia, especially in Myanmar)
This disgusting
vegetable looks something like a bumpy zucchini but tastes more like
medicine. It's vile, bitter flavor invades all that it touches, ruining
the tastiest looking of curries. It sometimes hides in your food,
pretending to be a normal tasty vegetable and then BAM it hits you in
the mouth with it's bitter flavor. Anytime we see this vegetable, or it
is served to us in something we say, "OH NO! Bitter Melon!" and push it
all onto the side of the plate. There is no method of cooking that I
have experienced that can save this vegetable. Why, Southeast Asians, oh
why do you love such a gross tasting food item?
(at every single Angkor temple in Cambodia)
At the foot of the immaculate celestial manifestations in
massive ancient stone that are the Angkor Temples lies a deeply
impoverished contemporary Cambodia. The [evil free-market crusaders
known as the] World Bank estimated the average annual income per person
at $750, with 30.1% of Cambodia's population living under the poverty
line in 2007 (down from 47% in 1994), compared with neighboring
Thailand, which had a poverty rate of 8.1%. With corruption running
rampant and little help and few resources in sight, many people take to
hawking postcards and cheap bracelets to tourists at the Angkor temples.
Everyone will say, "Hello mister!" and hoards of people (including many
small children, some too young to talk) will follow us around saying,
"You buy something?! No good business today!" which is not surprising
considering there are dozens of people at every single temple selling exactly
the same thing. You really can't buy something from
everyone----there are that many people and they are all fiercely begging
you to buy something.
(in the verdant countryside of Sulawesi, Indonesia)
I, Sarah,
had my doubts as to whether I was going to enjoy this popular tourist
activity of attending a traditional Torajan funeral ceremony, as I had
heard that it involved the gory sacrifice of gentle water buffaloes. Our
tour guide promised that we wouldn't have to see that part, so I
agreed. When we arrived, some traditional dancers came out, so I thought
that was alright, but then the pigs began to arrive. They carry the
poor beasts on wooden poles and leave them with their feet tied out in
the hot sun. The pigs, black in color, were panting like they would die,
sometimes squealing in agony, and we learned that sometimes they do die
from the heat. Only a few feet away the ground was black with blood and
a severed buffalo head lay attached to all of it's tendons, bones and
meaty bits. I (Sarah) ran away from this horrible spectacle as quickly
as possible. As an animal lover and vegetarian, I couldn't take this
torture.
(between each and every country but especially between Thailand and Cambodia)
Our least favorite days were always
travel days and the worst travel days involve the multi-step
bureaucracies of crossing a border. It always makes me think of John
Lennon's "Imagine:" "Imagine there's no countries..." If only. In
reality we have to undergo a series of papers, applications, payments
(and bribes), and sometimes searches to get through. In one particularly
terrible border crossing we underwent with Sarah's wonderful and
patient parents between Thailand and Cambodia, people repeatedly tried
to scam us. They took us to a bad overpriced restaurant and told us to
give them $40 for the visa, which we refused because we know the visas
cost $20 on arrival but they said it would take so long and the bus
would leave us. We calculated that it would be much cheaper to hire a
private taxi in that event than to get scammed and insisted they take us
to the border, amidst the chaotic hail of misleading Thai demagogues,
and managed to pay the normal $20 for the visa. The immigration
officers, however, did insist on a 100 baht (admittedly only $3.30)
bribe. Phew! What a day!
(occasionally in nearly every country but especially in Yangon, Myanmar)
We had eaten at this Indian place 3 times before, but on the 4th
time it made us horribly sick. Like so disgustingly ill for several
days. Think like coming out of both ends violently, and then sleeping
for 18 hours. We didn't do much here. To make things worse, there was a
live worm in the bathroom, somehow, on the 3rd floor, happily slithering
around for days in the wet floor. Not the best thing to see when you
are violently ill. All we could do was rest and drink re-hydrating
salts. Luckily we only got this sick one time.
(everywhere but especially in Vietnam, Laos and Indonesia)
It was rather unfortunate to see a baby sea
turtle for sale in a tiny plastic container (of fresh water) in
the national aquarium in Jakarta, Indonesia but it was much worse to see
people eating sea turtle soup in Sulawesi, Indonesia----unphased by our
critiques of such behavior. Sharks are routinely killed for only
their fins to make into soup for Chinese weddings (in China and all
over S.E.Asia), which
demand the rich to provide these endangered animals to show that you
value your wedding guests enough to spend the money on them. Traditional
medicine all over has people killing endangered bears, tigers,
elephants, rhinos, sea horses, monkeys, and the list goes on.
(especially in Java, Indonesia)
We took some lovely 24 hour sleeper buses in
Vietnam, where you could lay all the way down and sleep in between the
driver's furious honking. We took some really ratty buses that broke
down repeatedly in Myanmar, which always either departed or arrived in
the middle of the night for no apparent reason. But Java wins worst
buses. They pack 30 people in a bus built for 12, including people on
the roof, who somehow manage to hold on around wild turns and hills.
Everyone in Indonesia chain-smokes like an active volcano (an Indonesian
role model?) and somehow people will be cold in the breeze and roll up
the window even if it's 100 degrees. The worst part though, as if it
isn't already bad enough, is that in Java you can't take a direct bus anywhere----you
need to transfer every 50km----which forced us on several occasions to
take 5+ buses in one day. One day we had to take seven buses in
the rain to go only 250km (150 miles). I remember the rain not just in
our many transfers but also on many of the buses, into which the rain
poured. I can't wait to settle down a minute in Taiwan.
(EVERYWHERE (except Malaysia))
On the sides of the roads, in the country,
in the city, piles of plastic trash adorn anywhere that a Southeast
Asian person touches. The locals seem to have no regard for the beauty
of their country and will toss a candy wrapper, a soda can, plastic bag,
or whatever they have onto the ground without a thought. We have seen
villages where their front yards are COVERED in trash. Do they like
living in filth? I guess so. We have seen a little girl taking a big
plastic bag of trash out and dump it into the river, to be carried off
into the ocean. Even some of the nicest, most generous and smartest
Southeast Asians we have met think it's OK to throw plastic trash onto
the ground. So infuriating. I can't decide if it's worse when they toss
it or set it all aflame, plastic and all.
For some reason, countries want to restrict
tourists from coming in and spending money on their tourist
infrastructure. To do this they make you buy this thing called a visa,
which as you may know, means you have a certain amount of time to stay
in the country. If you overstay, you will be punished, usually
monetarily. This is such a big headache for us, costing us precious time
and money. For some countries you must apply in advance, and the
immigration offices are always so slow and bureaucratic and sometimes we
have to wait for 5 days or more. For Indonesia it was especially
annoying because to do a "visa run" (leaving a country and re-entering
to get a new visa) we had to fly to Malaysia, which was expensive. So
visas cost money, you have to plan your trip around them, and they are
super annoying to obtain in advance. Our visa for Taiwan cost us 170
dollars each! (It costs $50 for everyone other than U.S. citizens
because, they say, the U.S. charges this much for them to get a
visa, if they can get one at all.) This has been the number one headache
and annoyance for us. Dear Malaysia, thank you so much for the free 90
day on-arrival visa. You are an example to all the Southeast Asian
nations (*Cough Indonesia cough*). We live in a globalized community
where goods and ideas can travel freely, yet we people are still slaves
to the vicious bureaucracy of visas. Alas.
So as you can see from our list, we've had it pretty easy, had a mighty fine time on a whole. To those of you who are considering traveling, too, remember: it's not all fun and gallivanting. To everyone else: well, it is mostly fun and gallivanting. I know some of my friends and family at home have had much more serious tragedies and misfortunes in our absence and I don't mean to make light of them in any way----I'm sorry we haven't been there with you. But lately people have been asking us if we're tired of traveling after almost a full year on the road and the answer is, YES!
We are, of course, still having a great time, currently in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, eating delicious Indian food every meal and visiting our wonderful friends Iga and Mattheus, whom we met in Myanmar. But we are near ecstatic, albeit a bit nervous, to make the leap from vagrancy back to sedentary living in a few days. We're flying to Taiwan on January 7th and have been applying for positions teaching English like it's our job. So expect to hear from us in a month or so when we've settled ourselves in a brand new apartment and convinced a school board that we've mastered our insanely complicated and illogical language well enough to convey it to others!
Much love and best wishes from your newest expat friends!
-Travis and Sarah
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