Maps Are No Fun

I’m not big on planning ahead. Or planning at all for that matter. Some might call me disorganized. I say I’m advennnnturous. It helps that I have the concentration span of a five-year-old at Disneyland after a breakfast of strawberry compote and whipped cream, but even if I know which country I’m in, traveling on the fly is a way to see things I’d otherwise likely never see – a forested temple, for example. A way-out-of-the-way village. An interrogation room.

I’d made it fine so far on my 2007 trip around Indochina, biking through Thailand and across Cambodia without a map. (I might have gone a few miles out of the way on occasion, missing a turn here or taking a wrong turn there, but if everything goes smoothly your stories in the end aren’t very good, are they?) Tomas, on the other hand, had a map – several of them actually, that he rotated through the handy-dandy clear plastic pocket on top of his handlebar bag. (This was back before the prevalence of iPhone GPS apps made it easy for your typical backpacker to not come back with any good stories.) Tomas and I had been traveling together since Trat, near where the Thai coast runs into Cambodia; we’d gotten split up twice in the Khmer Kingdom, once on our way out of Sihanoukville’s Wat Leu (I ended up going thirty miles out of the way that day) and again on our way out of the rarely-recommended coastal town of Kep, where we managed to lose each other somewhere along the fifty-meter gravel driveway of our guesthouse (he went one way around the barn in the middle of the path, I went around the other side and poof!).  Stephan had been on the road well over a year and had ridden thousands of miles with dozens of other fellow cycling travelers. He said he’d never lost anyone until he met me.

The solo ride from Kep to Takeo was fantastic – quiet roads and happy kids and perfect riding weather. Only the last few kilometers consisted of multiple lanes of truck traffic, and it was along this stretch that Tomas was waiting for me, on a shaded patio, sucking down spicy chicken and rice and ice-cold Pepsis. ‘What happened to you?’ he said through an ice cube. ‘Flat tire,’ I said. ‘About an hour back.’ Since that episode in the mountains of northern Japan I’m happy to say I always carry a bike pump.

Takeo, which can be spelled an infinite number of ways (Takau, Takev, Thakheew etc), boasts a rotary with a monstrosity called the ‘Independence Monument’ in the middle. Walking one way from this rotary you’ll find little besides decrepit streets, decrepit buildings and people hanging around along the edges of muddy, decrepit fields. This, we rationalized, was the perfect place for dinner. We found a joint with a few remaining un-upended tables, and after our decrepit dinner we walked around the rotary and found there was a nice side of town. In the morning we would head north, one of us leaving that rotary behind for good.

We rode through villages of wooden homes and bamboo fences, kids hanging around outside in the dirt yard, adults hanging out around machines that may or may not have been working. Before midday – and after an amusing episode at a crossroads lightly populated with people who didn’t know what a Phnom Chisor was – we reached Phnom Chisor, a temple complex sporting various states of disrepair, situated on the only hill (or mountain, depending on your personal distinctions) for miles around. All the way up the long staircase old people were selling brown paper bags of colored sand – apparently you are supposed to guess why – while young kids follow you around in packs, taking turns asking you the same three questions over and over. Not only does it seem that these three things are all the English they know, after thirty minutes you are pretty damn sure that they don’t even understand the three things they won’t stop saying. Until you tell them what will happen to them if they don’t leave you alone.

Turns out the colored sand is used in a sort of prayer ritual. Most everyone up top – Stephan and I were the only whiteys around – were spreading handfuls of the stuff around, in an area squared off with colored ropes. With my fingertips I gathered up bits of sand other people had spilled and joined in the somber fun. Tomas told me to buy my own sand or butt out.

A tour of the functional temple and its attendant ruins, long glances out over the dusty Cambodian countryside and we headed down the stairs to reunite with our bikes – assuming of course they were still there. They were, and after a ceremonial parting photo out on the same dirt road we came in on– it took forever to find someone brave enough to attempt to use my point-and-shoot Casio – Tomas turned to the north and Phnom Penh and I pointed my front wheel toward Vietnam to the east. ‘You sure you know where you’re going?’ Tomas asked. ‘That way,’ I said, pointing. ‘I checked your map. No problem.’ I knew Vietnam was that direction. Seriously, my sense of direction is uncanny.

I’d picked up the requisite visa for Vietnam a week earlier in Sihanoukville, guessing I’d hit the border around the 17th. And what do you know, trusting reader, today was the 17th. See? I’m organized and adventurrrrous. And according to my guidebook (I did have one – the greatest one ever created in fact, with minimal survival info and rough hand sketches for maps)(plus it was four years old – way outdated for the (relatively) rapidly-changing region) there was a border crossing, Khaom Samnor, between me and Chau Doc, Vietnam. There was also a river but I’d cross that bridge when I got to it – if there was one.

There wasn’t.

I’d been riding for so long it seemed the sun had gotten stuck on its way across the sky. I’d pedaled down dirt road after dirt road, each taking me further east, each a little narrower than the last, all of them rutted and pocked like mine fields (this was Cambodia after all). I passed through a town that may or may not have had a name, the streets all dusty and desolate, the river below packed with boats and mud and evidence of industrious if not prosperous humanity. I met a bright-eyed kid walking along the road, more like a path at that point, and gave him a ride on the back of the tandem, home to his leery-eyed, dumbfounded parents. Their look really should have been a bit of a clue to me, like everything else for miles around, that the road I was on was less traveled for a reason. But did you see Bourne Identity, when Matt Damon looks at that map of Paris for like five seconds and proceeds to escape the entire Paris police force chasing him through the streets? That was me with Tomas’s map of southeast Cambodia. Without the cops I mean. And the car, and the girl. All right the important thing was, I knew where I was going. And dammit if the road I was on didn’t come to an abrupt end under the trees along the edge of a river.

I saw a house, a boat and three people, none of whom seemed to know a single word of the English language – or any language for that matter. None of them seemed to have ever heard of a place called Khaom Samnor; one of them looked like he knew what the word Vietnam meant. Oddly, out here where one could rightfully suspect the people catch fish, grow vegetables and barter with chickens and pretty rocks, all three of them knew right away what a five dollar bill was. A minute later I was hauling my tandem down to the water’s edge and onto their boat, directing the guy at the helm to ply south.

As we motored down what I was hoping was the Mekong, I pulled out my passport. Blank stares all around. I opened it up and pounded the page with my fist, saying ‘Vietnam, Vietnam, stamp, stamp’ over and over. (Well come on, what would you say?) They nodded and half smiled like Grandpa when the battery in his hearing aid is shot and kept cruising down river. Miraculously, a Vietnam flag on a pole suddenly appeared, poking out above the trees on the far side of the (maybe) Mekong River. My guy pulled over and up to a rickety dock amid a cluster of about-to-crumble-and-fall-into-the-water houses.

I have no idea what all those people were doing there on that muddy riverbank, the air coated with an odor you could taste, cavorting like people who have no idea what to do on their first day off from work in twelve years but still enjoying the hell out of it. Of course, they’ve all been writing the same thing about me in their blog posts. But they were nevertheless damn happy to see me. And I was happy to see Vietnam. But just to be sure – and I am never this clear-headed, ever – I told my guy, somehow, that I wasn’t going to pay him for the boat ride until he took me to the official border crossing. To him that meant take me to the nearest – and likely only – place with any sort of authority figure hanging around in a chair worth more than any of those riverfront homes. We rolled down the street on the tandem, the townsfolk chasing after us, smiling and laughing and gleefully shouting something like ‘Kill him, whoever he is!’

We came to a green hut outside a gated compound. Inside a guy in a dirty white tank top was watering the lush garden grounds. The guy in the hut stared at my passport, my visa, me, my friend, me, my visa…and picked up a phone to ask someone to come figure out what the hell was going on.

They were very nice, these two, then three, then six, then eleven men, all standing around me, no one knowing what to do except keep me from leaving. Finally this kid shows up to let me know, in pretty good English, that I needed to personally thank every one of the men behind him for not tossing me in jail. I did, however, have that visa in my passport with today’s date, and I had the name Khaom Samnor scribbled in my notebook – luckily that meant something to one of the guys. ‘You need to get out of Vietnam,’ my young friend said. ‘Now.’

With his heavy-handed help I found a guy with a boat (my original driver, who was not allowed inside the compound where I was being politely and firmly accommodated, had given up and left forty-five minutes ago) who, for that same five bucks, would take me to the nearest village on the Cambodia side. From there I’d find another boat to that town with the dusty streets and all the boats (I will name it Kato for now) (alternatively Kateo, Katev, Katheew) where I had the option of sleeping in a temple (on what was by now an extremely empty stomach) or paying some other guy twelve bucks to take me to…Takeo.

Night fell as my fourth boatman of the day plied those grassy waterways for two hours, finally dropping me off and getting his twelve bucks. I looked around and put up my hands in that ‘What do I do now?’ way. He pointed down the road behind me – a road that led directly to the Independence Monument.

I slept in the same place as the night before. In the morning I found an ophthalmologist’s office, a few doors down from my guesthouse, and asked him which way to Vietnam. ‘That way,’ he said, pointing down a wide, newly-paved road – one that hadn’t yet been built when my guidebook was published. Two hours of smooth riding later I came upon the Tinh Bien border crossing, well south of where I’d made my illegal entry into Vietnam the day before. And much more accommodating.

So really, I didn’t need a map; I’d gone east, found the Mekong and made it to Vietnam – and back to where I started without being jailed, black-mailed or accosted. Admittedly, having an up-to-date guidebook might have helped me understand that the Khaom Samnor border crossing is, largely or perhaps exclusively, for boatloads of tourists traveling between Chau Doc and Phnom Penh. But then with the crutch of complete and correct information I wouldn’t have encountered that kid and his parents, met some of Vietnam’s most forgiving henchmen or set foot, eagerly and illegally, in that muddy, stinky riverside village.

If I’d been less organized I might have even experienced an overnighter in a Vietnamese jail.

Maybe next time.

House Sitting for the Irresponsible Budget Traveler

When you are on the road few things are better than having a place to crash for a night or three. Whether they be relatives (as was my good fortune last weekend), friends (like this past week) or former co-workers from eight years and fourteen time zones away (like tonight), having people who will welcome you into their homes is pure bliss for the traveler – particularly if your gracious hosts have young kids and/or toys to keep your own road-weary munchkins emotionally stable for another day.

If the gods of the itinerary are really smiling on you, your gracious hosts will, after providing you with free range of things, leave town.

But before that kid-in-the-candy-store giddiness gets out of hand, you’d be wise, fellow freeloader, to keep a few things in mind. After all, you might pass back through on your way home and want to crash again.

-- Not all appliances are created equal. Familiarize yourself with the finer workings of things like the electric stove and the washing machine. And the shop vac while you’re at it. Know where the fire extinguisher is. Pull the pin ahead of time.

-- Easy on the Nutella.People always say ‘Go ahead and eat whatever you want.’ – the unspoken caveat being ‘then replace it you scrounge.’ Don’t eat a lot of one thing; sample every open box, bag and container in the pantry, it’ll be impossible to tell how much you’ve scarfed. Same goes for the liquor cabinet.

-- Addendum to the above: Shuffle the canned goods around.

-- Don’t stress about locking yourself out or losing the house key. Pick a back window or side door and leave it unlocked and leave the key on the kitchen table, right on top of the note that says ‘Make sure everything is locked, including (that side door).’

-- Alternatively: Get a spare key made and tape it to your lower abdomen. Either way you go on this one, introduce yourself to the neighbors beforethey call the police.

-- We all have bad habits. Don’t leave incriminating evidence around, particularly in the kids’ rooms. When in doubt, don’t flush stuff either. Just be sure to take out the trash, a simple act of reputation-preservation which also scores points with your hosts, as they will think you are actually trying to be helpful. (Apply same concept to dirty diapers.)

-- Refrain from advertising on social media where you are house sitting. Forget about strangers, you don’t need your friends dropping by.

-- Sports fans: Know where the CANCEL button on the remote is for when the DVR suddenly starts recording two shows at once and totally cuts off the Giants game right when they’ve recovered a fumble in overtime of the NFC Championship game.

-- Bring and use your own laptop. Some people know how to find out where their pc has been, virtually.

-- Any pets in the house? Nip that potential disaster in the bud and lock the creatures out. They can’t tell on you. Then again the neighbors can, so let the monsters into the garage at night. Feed them beer.

-- Email people you want to talk to. Tell them your host’s phone number.

-- You don’t have to note what channel/station the TV/radio was on when you got there. You should, however, think about what channel/station the TV/radio is on when you leave. And how loud.

-- And come on, no matter how good that game/show/movie is, keep your ass off the crème sofa in the living room with the off-white carpeting and eat your damn pizza in the kitchen.

These pointers do not of course comprise an exhaustive checklist of ways to avoid house sitting catastrophe. They merely reflect bits of useful wisdom garnered from experience. Please feel free to add your own, and together let’s help maintain the good standing of the feckless, freeloading cheapskates of the world.

Air Travel - Wonder & Woe

Last week I flew from Newark, New Jersey to Tokyo’s Narita Airport. (If this were a facebook status update I’d simply say ‘EWR-NRT’, assuming such snark has not yet become passé.) It had been a while since I’d flown –six weeks almost – so it took no time for the incongruous wonders of air travel, like the burn of a jalapeno, to rip into my senses once again.

Of course, the physics alone are mind-boggling. I’m sure Orville and Wilbur never imagined an eight-million-pound plane, loaded with another eight million pounds of people, luggage and processed dinner omelets, could make it over a sand dune let alone the Pacific Ocean. Legalized extortion (commonly known as the fuel surcharge) notwithstanding, that we can in twenty-four hours get from any semi-major city in the world to any other semi-major city not currently steeped in rioting and/or armed conflict is nothing less than an everyday miracle (until we figure out those wormhole things). Yet people will still complain about the dinner omelets.

However many times I’ve flown, the experience still makes me giddy. Feeling the lunge and thrust of a plane leaving the ground; looking down on land and water lying six miles beneath my squished nose; being able to doze off while hurtling through the atmosphere in a metal tube held together with bolts no thicker than my thumb; human accomplishments in aviation are indeed a wonder to behold.

Which makes the prevailing thought processes driving the whole air travel culture that much more incongruous.

‘This is a bicycle,’ I said as I laid my tandem, disassembled and all bungeed up tight in a bicycle bag, on the conveyor belt/ scale thing at the check-in counter. (I have no idea how those two can be combined.) ‘It’s kind of fragile,’ I told the woman.

‘Do you want me to put a fragile sticker on it?’ she asked, oblivious or maybe just used to the fact that her red neck scarf had a ridiculously huge bow in it.

‘Yes, please do.’ It had made the trip to Thailand fine, wrapped in foam inside a heavy cardboard box. But that box and all the foam were now in a dumpster in Chanthaburi somewhere, and I was a bit apprehensive about the protective qualities of my thin nylon sack. ‘Yes, a fragile sticker thing would be great.’

‘Okay, please sign this for me.’ The woman slid a small rectangular form across the counter at me.

‘What’s this?’

‘It means we are not responsible if we break your bicycle. Please sign at the bottom.’

Whoa. ‘Wait a minute, why wouldn’t you be responsible?’

‘Because you are saying it is fragile.’

I'm no psychology major…wait, yes I am. And I’m sure we covered logic in there somewhere.

‘Well yes, of course. I am telling you it’s fragile so you don’t break it.’

‘You are saying it is fragile because it is not packed properly. So if it breaks you can not hold the airline responsible. That is why we need you to sign that.’

So I tell them it’s fragile so they don’t break it, and my reward is signing a little form that says it is okay if they break it. These airlines must have lawyers working for them or something.

‘What if I don’t sign this?’

‘Then I take that fragile sticker off,’ said the woman, disregarding the red pterodactyl attacking her throat.

‘So then if my bicycle is damaged I can hold you responsible?’ (I made it a point to say you.)

‘No, the airline (she made it a point to say airline) would not be responsible.’

‘Why not? If you break my bicycle…’

‘Because without a sticker we don't know that it is fragile.’

I ended up signing the form.

On the up side, since I was flying an Asian airline, the beer was free. And since this was not a Chinese airline my bicycle made it through okay. Not perfect, but okay. (Note to anyone traveling by bicycle in Thailand: there’s a big cardboard box and lots of foam in a dumpster behind the restaurant by the side of the road where the bus from the airport drops off people going to Chanthaburi, please help yourself.)

On the other hand, the following conversation took place at the check-in counter of one of the American airlines, all of which have the audacity to charge for beer. This was last Fall while checking my family in for our flight from Tokyo to L.A.

‘Excuse me,’ I said, showing my flight info sheet to a woman with a large blue tuna fish can pinned to her hair, noticeably off-center. ‘There’s no meal for the baby.’ I meant it as a subtle, helpful hint.

‘That’s correct,’ she replied. ‘There’s no baby meal.’

It’s obvious when someone is ending a conversation, even in Japanese.

‘Okay, well, we’d like to request a meal for the baby.’ Two meals, really, though I figured I didn’t need to point that out.

‘No, I’m sorry. We don’t offer baby meals.’

‘...He gets a regular meal?’ I knew this couldn’t be the case but neither could the alternative. So I thought.

‘No, there is no baby meal on this flight.’

‘On this flight?’

The woman stared, cock-eyed like a confused puppy so that her tuna can was now sitting on the highest point on her head.

I tried again, without the sarcasm (which was already becoming increasingly difficult). ‘You mean, you have nothing for the baby?’

‘Yes.’ (Which, translated into English, means no.)

‘No food for the entire eleven-hour flight?’

‘Correct.’

‘You’re kidding me, eleven hours and the kid gets no food.’

‘There is no baby meal.’

‘No crackers.’

‘Yes.’

‘Not even a piece of bread?’

‘You can give him some of yours.’ (They probably don’t mean to, but Japanese people can come across as terribly magnanimous at the worst times.)

‘But he gets nothing,’ I said.

‘That is correct.’

(At this point I had to switch to English.) ‘Are you flipping serious?’

No answer.

‘Infants get nothing?’

‘Meals are reserved for people in seats.’

‘...You mean he’s not a person if he isn’t in a seat?’

‘I did not say that.’

‘What do you think he is, a carry-on?’

Silence. Sarcasm is clearly non-existent in Japan.

‘For eleven hours…more than eleven hours, he gets nothing to eat.’

‘Yes, I’m sorry.’

‘You’re sorry? Don’t be sorry, just do something. He’s a real live person. He needs to eat.’

‘There’s nothing I can do.’

‘You can give me back the four hundred dollar fuel surcharge I had to pay for him.’

‘The fuel surcharge applies to all passengers.’

‘And all carry-ons with hair?’

If I ever teach in Japan again I am teaching sarcasm and only sarcasm.

‘Great, so he’s a human being when it means four hundred dollars for you, but when it comes to meals he’s a piece of luggage.’

Blank face. I had to try in Japanese. She still didn’t understand me.

I pointed to my older son. ‘You gave him meals when he was a baby.’

‘United has never given baby meals.’

‘United? What do you mean United? This is Continental!’

‘Sir, I’m sorry, we don’t offer baby meals.’

To be honest, I had plenty of food in my backpack for the kid. My wife always packs enough sandwiches and rice balls and crackers for the five-hour bus ride to Tokyo, the three hours until we are in the air, the entire pan-Pacific flight and lunch the next day in New Jersey. But my wife’s overzealousness provides an airline with neither reason nor excuse not to offer something in exchange for their four hundred dollar shakedown on my sixteen-pound kid.

‘Let me guess, you don’t offer diapers anymore either, do you?’

‘United stopped offering diapers several years ago.’

‘Why do you keep talking about United? United is United, this is Continental!’

‘We follow United’s policy for infants.’

It was my turn to stare cock-eyed. I wanted to ask her if she could make my kid a tuna sandwich.

‘So this is what you are telling me...’ I motioned to the guy at the next check-in window, two hundred fifty pounds easy even without the Louis Vuitton carry-on. ‘My baby pays the same fuel charge as him?’

She glanced over, thought a moment, and turned back to me. ‘Yes. But that man doesn’t get diapers either.’

Okay I made that last part up. But the point remains. For all the advancements in air travel technology – self-check-in, a hundred movies on-demand, special plastic bags for liquids to keep any would-be terrorists from making a bomb – there remains a degree of inconsistency in the application of human intelligence here.

Or maybe the airlines and their lawyers really are smart enough to know just how much they can get away with because we are never going to stop flying.

Until we figure out that wormhole thing.

By the way, Continental and United Airlines are merging, in case you hadn’t heard – or been personally introduced to the circus in progress. This would account for the odd logic the woman with the tuna can was tossing me – though I wish she’d explained why my kid was now legally both a human being and a piece of luggage.

I swore after this encounter with United-Continental’s cherry-picking, profit-driven policy decisions I’d never fly either airline again. Of course I said the same thing about all Chinese airlines not too long ago, for their baggage-handling non-policies. But the reality is that my air travel decisions are savings-driven. Until the day I can afford to fly business class on whatever airline tickles my fancy I’ll have to live with the prevailing air travel culture while I continue staring out the window, marveling at how fast we are going, how beautiful the world looks from six miles up, and how many movies I have at my fingertips.

And hey, the coffee’s free.

Note to the alert reader: Yes I know that while I mentioned at the beginning of this post that last week my senses were reintroduced to the capsicum-like effects of air travel, neither of the above instances occurred last week. This is because I have to go feed and change my carry-on and thus have no time to delve into this latest episode, involving both the bold statements slathered across the pages of the in-flight magazine and the finer print lurking quietly below. This will be covered in an upcoming post – probably the next one as I am not planning to fly for another two weeks, almost.