The Simple Life

So it’s been a while since I’ve even looked at this blog. A lot going on I guess. A whole lot and not a lot at the same time if you know what I mean. I guess to some I am living the dream, no responsibilities, no time frame, just good times with good people. To some I’m just a wanderer, a bottom-feeder skimming by and making no real contributions to society as a whole. But to each their own. What real contribution does the nine to five accountant make? Or the McDonald’s clerk? At least I'm increasing awareness if only just for myself. And I can honestly say that in the last year I have learned so much, more than I learned at school, but in a completely different way. I’ve gotten caught up in a lot of situations that I didn’t plan on but I guess there are no surprises when you don’t have a plan. I missed a lot of things I wanted to see. I seemed to be a day late and a dollar short all around, but honestly looking back I enjoyed every day, every fuck-up. If you have no expectations its hard to be let down, but also without expectations you sometimes just feel as if you’re wandering and not getting “the experience” but then whatever happens is an experience. I spent one month, one entire month lost in Vietnam on a motorcycle. Literally there was not one day where I knew where I was or aside from general direction where I was going and honestly it was an amazing month. Wouldn’t have traded that mess of a month for anything.

I’m in Australia now craving the lifestyle that was so free and happy in Asia. Australian’s are laid back and all, but that westernized mindset is just killing me. I’ve directed a lot of frustration with this mindset towards Australians and maybe shouldn’t have been so quick to put it on them, but Asia is hard to beat. I’ve spent the last few months road tripping around Australia (northeast coast and the northern territory mainly) and it’s been an adventure to say the least. Over the last two months we (Devin and I) have had a carful of multicultural stragglers who have a love for the get up and go – who cares where, and an even larger love for booze. I’m currently working on a mango farm in the northern territory of Australia. I like the farm life, simple and very active. A bit boring, but hey it’s the northern territory… if you don’t know about the NT, well its an outback experience alright. The town that is closest to my farm consists of 2 gas stations (or petrol stations as they are referred to in Australia), a country store and a campground. Not a whole lot going on, but the nothingness is an experience too. Speaking of isolating yourself, when I was in Thailand I did a three-week meditation course and for three full weeks I meditated all day everyday and when I say all day I mean as much as I could handle. I didn’t follow every rule set out by the monks, but I sure did try and that’s all you can really ask of someone. I learned a lot especially in what I found most hard to do: be completely alone and cut off. Honestly though as much as I love the internet it really does take a lot away from the here and now because the other side of the world, the other side of your life are just two clicks away. But after the first week of this I began to really enjoy being alone and no having anyone know exactly what I was up to. I really enjoy keeping in touch with people and sharing my stories and whathaveyous with friends and that, but when you have an experience that’s just yours, words could never explain it, that’s something. You have to keep that with you.

From when I was in high school I had this mentality that everyone that chooses the box life is so completely crazy it almost drove me to be actually crazy in the eyes of the box-lifers. I guess I am an anti-conformist of sorts, but I think the term explorer is equally as accurate. I sometimes falter in seeing the point of all of this wandering, but then I think about the alternative, which would most likely being settling somewhere and still not knowing exactly what I want to do. I mean the other difference there is that I've got to pay rent and work and shit like that. I get the fear of the transient. It might seem as if nothing ever means anything and talking to new faces everyday doesn’t matter because you’ll never see them again, but you can learn something from everyone. This is almost always true. I have come to love the transient but this love may also stem from my flakey behavior, fear of commitment, general selfishness and love for spontaneity. The transient also teaches impermanence, which is also a major focal point of Vipassana meditation; nothing is permanent and everything is forever changing. You should refrain from forming attachments; those attachments are only in that moment and could be gone in a mere minute in this fleeting life. Mourning, regret and worry will almost never prove healthy although sometimes those feelings creep back into the foot-loose and fancy-free lifestyle. It all is what it is and life should be taken with a grain of salt. Its interesting to me that people are shocked when you are traveling alone, but that’s when you are the most completely free. Anything is an option (which I find makes making decisions very difficult …its hard to decide between everything) and if you gain this confidence that you are all you need its completely freeing. I have never felt so free as I have in these months of solo survival and exploration. “With freedom comes loneliness” which I did find to be true to some extent. In between adventures, sitting in your small white (always white walls) hostel room alone looking at all of your belongings, new and old, in a white room by yourself sometimes your mind takes you crazy places and its then you realize you are alone to an entirely different extent. The contraction between these two very different types of alone is quite vast, but both are character building experiences, both making you stronger. I’ve got 7 more weeks here on this god forsaken mango farm and then possibly off to India. Stay tuned for more. Maybe ill be getting creative with all this free time I’ve got here living the simple life, but then again you never know …

Life, in no particular order..

Escaped to the beach for a few weeks. Deserted island style. Paradise. (oh, and i held an octopus. Dope.)

Haven't eaten chips in a minute. Salt and Vinegar all the way. 30 seconds.

The Killing Fields from the Khmer Rouge Genocide. A popular tourist attraction in Phnom Pehn, but when you get there you realize how real and how devastating it was/is. Walking through the mass graves an eerie, unsettling feeling comes over you as you realize -- visualize what happened here over 30 years ago. The Khmer Rouge was a communist party in Cambodia in 1975 and sought to purify Cambodia of external influences and any Westernization. They began killing off anyone who had any sort of education, even those who wore glasses as it was seen as a sign of intelligence. They moved everyone from the cities to the countryside and had them work as slaves until they either died of starvation or were killed at the hand of the Kmer Rouge. About 2 million were killed during this time and hundreds of thousands were killed and mercilessly and thrown into these mass graves. It was a chilling experience and it hit me hard standing there and seeing teeth, bones and bits of clothing still sticking out of the ground.

A ride through the fields...

I volunteered in an orphanage in Takeo, Cambodia called New Futures Organization. We helped to build the children a new playground, taught them English, played soccer and other games with them after school. It was a great experience.

New jungle gym for the kids. My main man T. in the foreground.

Riding the hour back from the village school through the fields. Stopped for some fresh picked watermelon with some nice locals. Language barrier but nevertheless a great afternoon.

Village school.

And back to the beach for some vacation time. That never ending vacation.....

In 'Nam

The cold, wind-blown beaches of Northern Vietnam

So, the last few weeks have been a mix of stressful and amazing. After two weeks of daily bike problems, rain and cold weather we decided to put the bikes on a train from Hue and head for the warm weather and sun of Saigon (now known as Ho Chi Minh City). The train ride took 24 hours and meandered along the coast line of Vietnam, mountains on one side, the ocean on the other. It was a long, but gorgeous train ride. We definitely would have rather done the trip by bike, but the cold weather and breakdowns was making for a frustrating trip. However in each of our break-downs we had a unique experience that we would have missed had we just cruised on by ...

One of the breakdowns in Northern Vietnam. Sign read "Guip Toi! Hue!" (Help me! Hue!)

A group of kids at one of the mechanic shops. This one's going to Canon.

They were fascinated that they could see themselves immediately. I have thousands of these...

We reached Saigon just as the Chinese New Year (Tet) began. The new year celebrations last for two weeks which means everyone returns to their villages to be with family and friends. Most shops close for at least a week so Saigon wasn't as bustling as it usually is. We found a good mechanic in the city that helped us fix the pile of metal that had become my enemy over the last few weeks and headed for the beach of Vung Tau. About 30 km outside of the city my bike broke again and Leland pushed me the remaining hour. (However, this was our most successful trip yet because despite the breakdown we actually made it to the destination we set out for). Same, same in Vung Tau ...

Sunset point... a second too late, but still beautiful.

All shops closed for Tet, but there were many celebrations going on along the beautiful coast with lots to see and eat. With one day left on our visa we headed back to Saigon and found out that we couldn't renew our visa because the government would still be shut down for two more days for Tet. We hopped on the ghetto bikes and headed for Cambodia!!

About a half an hour into the trip my chain guard got caught in my generator ... Awesome. A little Vietnamese guy pops out of the woodwork and gets busy getting it out and wouldn't accept any money. Up and running again we make head for the border. Surrounded by amazingly green wheat fields, mountains and rivers we cruise through the dangerous one lane road trying to make it before sunset. But now guess what... this border doesn't have an officer on the Cambodian side at the moment. Awesome. We stay the night in the tiny town of Moc Hoa where we are treated like celebrities for the night .. "eeellloooo!" people shout from both sides of the street as we stroll down. Asking directions the next morning was the same, we drew a crowd of about twenty people trying to point us this way and that. With less than a dollar Vietnamese Dong (VND) and no ATM's in sight we divide the gas in my bike between the two bikes and set back toward Saigon to then try another border crossing...

After 9 hours of riding we make it to the Cambodian border with only one of four screws holding my engine in place and the bikes on the verge of explosion. Great success. The farther old Bessy rode the more and more faith I put into the pile of metal.

So now we're in Cambodia ... more to come...

Dog... It's what's for breakfast...

The past few days we have had some bike problems and found ourselves in some interesting situations. Let me paint a picture for you... It's 7 p.m., it's raining, we have no headlights and I just ran out of gas (I don't think I have ever run out of gas with anyone more than I have with Leland...) and we are in the middle of nowhere. As we are trying to tie our headlamp to the front of one of the bikes a guy comes up and says he can take us to somewhere close to sleep and eat. Awesome. Lucky lucky. The next morning we wake up to some sounds of death right outside of our door...

Turns out it was true... I thought it was a chicken though.

Nothing like a good old blow torch to get some cookin' done...

Check that blade out. That's for murder.

A little less cute now...

This guy is gettin' worried... better start being useful...

Before we left the family we stayed with asked us if we were hungry... Not so much anymore... Thanks though.

So... tried to wake up and get an early start today... day 5 -ish... which we did. Then around 11 am we have a little run-in with the 5-0. They check our papers, passports, visas, and drivers licenses' and everything checked out... so they wrote us a ticket for missing a mirror and tried to charge us 500,000 VND (approx $25 USD). We only had around 337,00 VND so they took all but the 37,000 (about enough for a bottle of water). Luckily a little down the road I found about 200,00 VND in my pocket because about twenty minutes later my bike blew up as I was told these old Minsks like to do. So now we are in some random town just waiting for a new engine.... just watched a cockfight though...dope. Bout to run back over there and throw fifty-thou on the one with no neck feathers... you know he's been around...

Check the new whip...

get some...

Turns out its winter in Northern Vietnam... cold and no sun. Heading south in search of some warm weather.... Checked out Ha Long bay on the new bikes, but it was too foggy to see much, but worth the trip back in the summer... Looks gorgeous!

Let me break this down for you here:

Water: 3,000 Kip ($.40)

Beer: 8,000 Kip ($1.00)

Fifth of whisky: 10,000 Kip ($1.30)

I'm in the right place here...

Headed to Vietnam where I hear that it makes Laos look expensive. Looking to buy some old Minsks and head south down the coast... Ill keep you posted....

We came to Laos on Christmas Eve and tubed the infamous "Tubing in the Laos" river. It was a complete mess of bars, techno, drunks, rope swings, slides and anything that generally goes along with getting drunk on a river. (YouTube "Tubing on the Laos" and get the cyber experience). Some people have been doing this for months... It was an epic Christmas and New Years in this touristy town where you can find and do absolutely anything you want. Not to mention the terrain is completely gorgeous with huge mountains, amazing caves with underground lakes .... some creeeepy swimming. Let me tell you. We had a blast, but then moved north to Laung Prabang which was much more chilled out. Highlight: At the night market you can fill an entire plate of food, piled high as you want for 10,000 kip (approximately $1 USD). Awesome.

Most amazing waterfall Ive seen on the trip... you can walk along the ledge, looking down thousands of feet to where the water pools and overflows and pools and overflows with the most amazing tropical blue Ive ever seen in freshwater. (Lang Prabang)

On the way to one of the underground caves the "road" is a about a foot wide dirt path through the rice fields on the outskirts of town. Water buffalo everywhere... And that bamboo bridge a little sketchy on the scoot scoot.

The best view... still on my bucketlist....

Before the water falls...

Most unbelievable. Most beautiful.