Raju's: The Royal Treatment.

I now find myself in the most culturally confused country of them all, where religion is consumption and sports teams. I landed in Miami Florida one week ago. I am back, not that I really left or that I am necessarily finished with my travels, but for all intensive purposes I am home. I have decided that the information and ideas shared in this blog have absolutely nothing to do with foreign countries and therefore I will continue to post my personal insights as they arise. While in the absolute sense my journey has not come to an end the relative begs to differ and brilliant flashing memories sparked by various triggers are almost all that remain of the past five months, and without them reality may start to sink in, not that I am one to every let reality get in the way of anything. Here I am a twenty-two year old young man living with his parents in sleepy Vero Beach, out of shape and reaching new all time weight records (thanks dad I would love another brownie), I am drifting through space without direction. This of course is the outside perspective because on the inside I am happier then any clam that I have ever seen, eaten, or had any contact with whatsoever. The same infinite possiblities abound at my feet and I fear absolutely none of them. I have vowed to atleast consider myself to be reading a book for the rest of my life, I swim on a regular basis, and I sit alone and chuckle to myself outloud when thinking about a moment in the past (and more often then not I laugh heartily when thinking about my current situation). Okay, so why have I returned without any indication that my travels were coming to a close? I realized after evaluating my energy, health, and desires (and reading some wonderful emails from some dear friends) that it was time for me to begin on another perhaps more important journey, the rest of my life. I had reached that point in space where there is no more gravitational pull and you just float neatly along in your little suit and bubble helmet, which is delightful and fun, but I am ready for a new experience. So here I am just another rat in search of his cheese, but I plan to do it with style and always keeping the perspective I've gained over the last five months in clear view. NTC

Corny collection of beach thoughts

I feel the need to explain the direction that my posts seem to be heading. I realize that my posts are becoming more and more self-involved, focusing on my own transformation and leaving out many details about the actual destinations of my travels. I am trying to travel without fear or trepidation and so I feel I should take the same attitude in expressing myself to whoever it is actually takes the time to read these ramblings. I am back in Bangkok now readying myself for India on the 31st. However rather then a spontaneous burst of writing I have decided to share something I wrote a few days ago while on Koh Samui, which is incredibly sappy and somewhat contrived and overuses the word 'perhaps', but I feel it necessary to share anyway. Also this form of communication gives me the false protection of anonymity because I don't have to be there when you read it.

Now I sit at a simple bamboo table adorned with an orange cloth and small kerosene lamp gazing out over other tables then to the flapping waves coming to a rest on the well worn sand. Sometimes when I am alone it is just the loneliness that consumes me, blinding me from the incredible beauty right in front of my eyes and other senses. I know the fullness of my own life and just how privileged I am to find the time to recognise it, yet there still exists an undeniable emptiness, always that gap eager to be filled. Somehow, even knowing that the gap is just temporary is not enough to satisfy the longing. Such is the nature of human desire, never ceasing in the wakeful mind. Perhaps there is always fear, a fear that the gap will widen never to be satisfied, that causes our hearts to ache. Stopping to feel, really feel, is often so painful it is no wonder that the people who appear the happiest are the laborers, always consumed with their arduous work and never having the time to stop and reflect. Leisure is a luxury and a curse some of the times. When I look at me what do I see? I see a young man grasping to understand the nature of his own existence, caught in a wave of desire and delusion and pressing on into the world and his own mind; confused and distraught, happy and joyously moving forward across the infinite spectrum of the universe. Each moment presents an infinite number of possibilities and stopping to see the multitude of paths at your feet is overwhelming. Perhaps that is why I admire characters like Dean or Mitch because they are never stopping, always moving, somehow knowing that their course is the right course and that stopping to question just stops the process of enjoying and digging life. For them its not the road, but the attitude they take to the road, never blinded by their own minds they press on taking it all in grinning like an idiot all the while. NTC

Some Pictures of Late

First encounter with the beautiful Cambodian children.

Seven big dudes, one small Toyota Camry, and the worst stretch of dirt road for 7 hours.
First encounter with the Cambodian experience.

The temples. What's to say, they are beyond words.

Another terrible attempt to capture another world.

Center of the Universe

Thailand, a bombardment of the senses. Nearly every waking moment is a sensory overload. So much has happened over the last few months that it has become more and more difficult to know where to begin the story. My whole existence is caught in the constant swirl of activity that surrounds me. Who is Naren? The observer, the one who occupies each moment of silence with his own research and reflection. Quietly brooding during each solitary cab ride through the jungle of Bangkok streets he concerns himself with feeling and emotion, philosophy and conjecture. so who then is the action, the liver of each moment, who from both the external and internal perspectives possesses a certain indefinable madness? Who is the legendary Mitch Cassidy? Perhaps just an amalgamation of the swirling environment, a creation formed out of every person Naren has ever read about, observed, or come into contact with. The unification of the entire universe has become a reality, the only reality. This is why it is not possible to just pick one story, one moment, or one experience to begin with or retell. This swirling madness is existence, the dizzying culmination of my own "personal" experience. Like the wild spirited Dean Moriarty from Keouac's 'On the Road' (who Mitch takes his last name from, the real life character anyhow) Mitch gives off that impression of not being concerned with any of lifes "negative" problems/situations/experiences, or for that matter anyone other then himself and his "kicks", knowing TIME, and finding people who have and express IT. This is a great misunderstanding of such characters, these are exactly the situations that they do concern themselves with, but the twist is that they search for the beauty in all experience, both pleasureful and painful. Experience is becoming brighter, more vivid and with Mitch's or Dean's attitude in the foreground the external existence of everything is just fine and dandy and wonderful. The guy at the table next to me has a massive tattoo covering half of his face. NTC

Chiang Mai

Piercing blue eyes of expatriates everywhere amble down the dirty side streets. Foreigners here, foreign to there places of birth. Yet Thailand is the one place that makes everybody feel at home. Friendly loving people have been welcoming the tourist and expats for decades and it shows. Travellers can find nearly every convenience imaginable, whether it be a late night snack from the 7-Eleven just around the corner, a tasty cheesebuger from one of the American run joints, or their morning cup of joe from Starbucks. While many people (including myself) find these corporate invasions to be unsightly and depressing, a large mass of white skin tourist can always be found lingering inside such establishments (including myself). I love it here. There is no end to what one can do and the prices are all too reasonable, however inflated prices can be found in more places here then in either Viet Nam or Laos. While an hour long massage cost less then three US dollars the price of a beer at a popular night spot can cost up to four. The live music scene in Chiang Mai is wonderful. Incredibly talented musicians bearing the most amazing smiles of joy and jubilation strum the blues like BB King on a low bar stage next to unfortunately dressed expats sporting socks with their sandals and blowing hard into shiny harmonicas. This city is alive but hardly in your face, which makes it one of the most attactive places I have visited on the entire trip. Sadly I have to leave tomorrow for Bankok, a place (so I have heard) that is dreadfully crowded and contains the pushy in your face locals peddling anything from a tuk tuk ride to prostitution. I will be joining two of my good friends though, Evan Huggins and Nick Runkle, so I carry very few doubts about not enjoying myself. I have come to discover that the most important thing in this world are the people who you are surrounded by, and in Thailand nearly everyone is on vacation or greatly benefitting from those who are and it just so happens that people on vacation are some of the happiest people in the world. This population makes it easy to enjoy Thailand because there is harldy an unhappy face in the crowd. I should note here that my Thailand experience is limited only to Chiang Mai and a few mountain vilages I visited on my first organized group tour so I am premature in passing judgement. In any case I am alive and well, enjoying every possible moment and thinking of Dean Moriarty all the while. Man would he have digged Thailand. NTC

Cup of Holiday Cheer

Thailand. Each of the southeast Asian countries are drastically different from each other, Thailand might be the strangest of them all. First world icons scatter the streets giving the place a developed and advanced feeling, but the culture and prices are still trapped in the third world. Perry and I crossed the border into Thailand yesterday without any trouble, in fact the just waved us through on the Thai side without even stamping our passports. After several hours of bombing down the modern divided highway we were still ages away from our goal, Chaing Mai. I had had enough of the highway drive and was not looking forward to another 10+ hours the next day so with after prodding Perry into springing for an overnight bus we loaded Ramos and Meigal onto a rather ancient looking Mercedes bus and tried to make ourselves comfortable for the 11hr ride. The bus was frigid and my knees were buckled under the seat, comfort was not an option. I popped the remaining half of a sleeping pill I had been carrying for this exact purpose and managed to get a couple hours of back aching sleep. Perry was less fortunate. By the end of the ride we had found some blankets in the overhead rack and huddled together, not in an act of man love but as a means of survival. At 5am are bus pulled into the Chaing Mai station and we unloaded our bikes into darkness. We were delirious, or still are delirious, and spent several minutes considering our options. We didn't really have any however and walked our bikes to the 7-Eleven for a cup of coffee and a packaged and processed pastry. In our daze we managed to get directions to the center of town, which we decided was our best option. A few minutes later we were staring at the familiar sign of corporate America, a three story Starbucks right on the corner of the main town square. Despite the stamp of corporate America, Chaing Mai has struck me as a very charming and inviting town. Perry wandered into the square and fell asleep in his sleeping bag while I wandered into the familiar decor of the corner Starbucks and swallowed my pride and my budget. I sat down in one of the purple overstuffed chairs with gold spiral pattern and sunk into the terrible holiday covers blasting from the speakers in the corner. I am ragged, wild eyed, and my fingers are perpetually tinged black from oil and grease, but with my overpriced coffee and horrendous holiday tunes all is right in the world and for the first time I realized it is actually the holiday season. NTC

Trouble in Laos

I realize it has been ages since my last post and will most likely be another several weeks for a follow up for this one. I am in Laos now. Perry and I met back up in Hue (Viet Nam) before trekking through several hours of rain and across the Laos border. What is most surprising is how drastically different Laos is from Viet Nam even though they are so close together. Viet Nam is aggressive, loud, and overrun with traffic. Laos is calm and friendly with hardly any traffic on the road, an ideal place to explore by motorbike. We crossed the border without any hitches and continued into Laos just as the sun began to break through the clouds. Things were looking up, I liked Laos already and I hadn't been here more then fifteen minutes. We roared down the countryside road seeing far more goats and pigs then other vehicles. I liked Laos even more. Then just 20k outside of Savannakhet Ramos ran out of gas. I switched to the reserve tank and began heading back to the nearest gas station. Less then 2k down the road Ramos again came to a halting stop, this time the loss of power was preceded by the most terrible noise in the biking world. His engine had seized. Ramos had a heart attack. I tried not to let the feeling of despair sink in, instead Perry towed me back to the closest town and I rolled Ramos into a mechanic. He took one look at the top of the seized piston, laughed, and then motioned for us to take it into Savannakhet. It was growing dark and flagging down a flatbed truck was proving difficult. Finally a white truck pulled up and the girl in the passenger seat rolled down the window and spoke english to us. I was shocked by her ability to communicate in our language that the question she asked us didn't register immediately. "Are you Christian?" I paused, Perry answered, "Yes." It was the right answer, because the next thing we knew was that our Christian sister was ordering her Christian brother to help me load the bike onto the truck. Ramos and I had a ride, I was thankful. Little did I know I was going to be forced to defend my claim for the entire ride into Savannakhet. Somehow, but not without difficulty, I managed and they took us all the way in and right to the door of a mechanic. They discussed the price for me and after a few minutes told me that it was expensive, fifty dollars was the price quote. I ridiculous sum for a country like Laos, but after all Ramos did need an entirely new heart so I agreed. Then our Christian brothers and sisters dropped us at a guesthouse where we collapsed after the full days adventure. The next morning I went straight over to the mechanics, he said he couldn't do it, I began to panic. What now? We spent all morning searching for a mechanic who would take the job without success. Defeated we went back to our guesthouse where the owner, a very nice man who speaks some english, decided to help us solve the problem. Within the hour he had one of his mechanic friends willing to take on the project. I was relieved but still a bit sceptical. Well it took two days but Ramos breathes again. However the new piston is fragile and it will take some time to break it in, but the ride will continue. Tomorrow we set off for Vientiane. NTC

Hoa's Place

It has been more then two weeks since my last post, the reason being that I have been on vacation. Resting and recovering from the aggressive tactics of the northern Vietnamese was my initial intention, but after a few short days I was sucked in by the hours of cards, darts, and backgammon, playing in the waves at China Beach, the glaze in Hoa's eyes after a few beers and an emotional story, and the incredible homecooked food. Tomorrow I will finally break free from the nest with only a twinge of sadness. Two weeks is long enough, it is time to get back on the bike and resume my southern trek. With the most active of the past 15 days consisting of a trip to the local pool hall or a cab ride to the bowling alley in Da Nang, this post will undoubtably be cut short. Even with the lack of activity and adventure these past two weeks have been two of the most memorable weeks so far. Perhaps after more time to reflect I will have more to say. For now, in the words of Hoa, "take it easy, we'll work it out." NTC

Pictures, new suits included.

Josh and I part ways in Hue.

Finally some dramatic coastline along Highway 1.

First Belgian roommate Dave during a sand dune chess match.

New suit. Smart.

Somehow I managed the exact same expression.