Hope For the Guest

I’m on Koh Phi Phi, its a quiet little island (until the hangovers wear off). The cycle here is simple, wake up late, eat (probably something with carbs to help with the hangovers), maybe go for a booze cruise or a kayak to one of the breathtaking beaches around the island. Around 7 or 8pm is the time to grab dinner before the exciting stuff starts. 9:30 onward things start to pick up, bros walk around like packs of hungry animals searching for the most hoppin spot to show off their newest tank top (the one with the elephant or some sort of pattern that represents a culture that they are not taking part in, usually). I think its a sort of interesting play to watch, I don’t think its wrong to be an actor but I didn’t go to acting class so I feel more at home watching the characters play their specific parts.
If you make it to 2am when all the bars close and there is no more music to gyrate to than you are usually left to group up for the confusing, not so steady, walking back with new friends or the group that has mysteriously broken into smaller bands throughout the night. It happens every night in much the same way.

I did not come here thinking I would enjoy it, but I am a person that believes in trying things despite the chance of it tasting awful. I know I’m better in small groups of one on one, the big groups of strangers make it hard for me to feel like myself. But I wanted to push myself into that fear so at least I will have given it a fair chance before I continue on with my pensive journey through SE Asia.
I really didn’t know where to start at first, I ate dinner too early and than I was walking around wondering why it was so quiet in this notorious party town when someone stopped me to ask if I knew where the beach was. I didn’t really know but I walked with Tom until we found it and than I joined him and his friends for a drink (of sprite for me, the others thought that was humorous). I was surprised to find that I felt relatively comfortable where I was, talking with a few new people in a rooftop bar. I eventually had a couple beers and by 2am I had a rather large group of people to walk with back to their hostel, unfortunately one of the group had gotten separated and I felt able to respond (responsible) to give the search a try. I wandered down the beach and through most of the streets, I was also trying to get my bearings for my own walk back to my room. I eventually ran into a Tom and Sam and walked them back to their hostel which felt sort of ironic for me since my room was situated down several very dark winding alleys and their hostel was on a brightly lit street. It was out of sheer luck that I managed to walk directly back to my room without wandering around for an hour or two. I was only stopped once by a handsy massage lady that nearly physically dragged me into the massage parlor before I broke free.
It was an adventure for me, like a jungle trek but in a jungle that is more foreign to me than any wilderness I’ve been in. I wonder sometimes what it would be like to be one of those people that feel at home in the haze of alcohol, dancing, and meeting strangers. I don’t own a tank top or a pair of Ray Ban’s, or flip flops.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll get some Ray Ban’s just to see the world that they see.

It was a slow day in the beginning. A good simple breakfast at the market and a bit of a walk to wake up. I was heading to Thailand, I didn’t know how or where exactly. Its not much of a thing to know really, its not enough information to put my finger on just knowing the name of the country I’m going to (I also knew it was north of where I was).
Before heading out the door of the hostel at around 10:30 I asked the owner and got a tangent involving information that I later used to find my way to the ferry and train on the other side.

Why are we going backwards? I was thinking as the train seemed to start its journey south, not north like I had planned. It left me sitting facing the wrong direction so I could only see backwards, I don’t know why but I keep tending towards letting things happen the way they are heading since I’ve been traveling. So I stayed facing backwards, leaving my future to be discovered only after I had past it. It was so easy and comfortable with Tom and Jerry playing in the background and the air conditioning keeping the temperature a degree above shivering. I was quickly lulled into a unconcerned mindset.

“Where you go?” a man said just before the Thai border. I told him I needed to change my money and go to Thailand and he said  a few words with “motorbike” and ” 3 Ringgit” somewhere in the sentence. I agreed and in several seconds I was zooming along on a motorbike feeling mildly terrified, a couple stamps on my passport and than I was zooming away down the road. He gave me a helmet for the first 5 second journey and than forgot to give it to me on the next two short journeys but it didn’t seem important when I knew nothing would keep me in one piece if an accident did happen.

Sometimes its easy and sometimes its not. Sometimes traveling is so easy, so cheap and so good that it feels like nothing could be hard and than it is, sometimes very hard, and dark, confusing. Sometimes you find yourself standing on an unknown street with unknown dangers in the middle of the night unable to communicate. It could be scary or exciting or humorous.
It was all three for me after hours of not knowing where I would sleep that night or if I would sleep. The bus had broken down, the new bus that was brought had a new driver that dropped me 30k away from where I needed to be and than where I needed to be was still too far to safely walk at night. Smith Zen  to the rescue, he was a young local guy with a smart phone who knew a few words in English and was kind enough to delay his journey home to help a very confused and tired backpacker. I don’t know if I would have been okay without his help.
It feels so weird to need help and not even know the words to ask for it, its hard enough in English but it makes me thankful that people are so similar. Everyone needs to sleep, a man with a fruit stand helped me find a motorbike that took me to a hotel, he spoke no English at all but he understood when I put my head to both my hands and closed my eyes miming sleeping. I ended up riding three to a motorbike looking for a hotel at 12:30am, it was one of those moments when you have to go forward, there is no stopping. I just had to ride it out, its like reading a story that’s only partly yours and the only way to find out what happens is to take another step. I began to be very thankful for my sense of humor during the nights adventure, there are many attitudes to have when its not easy but I find that being able to find the hilarity in a tough time smooths the transition into acting. Its harder to act when you feel stupid, its easier when you can laugh at yourself and take another possibly foolish step forward.

So far I’ve noticed that I can have many dissimilar experiences in a single day here in Malaysia. Today was like that for me. The morning began in a night bus arriving at a bus station on Penang island. I didn’t know thats where I was but soon enough a few strangers gave me opposing opinions and than one person told me to get on a bus that had just pulled up. I did even though I was hardly sure of it and I was soon glad that I had because it took me just where I needed to go. After finding a hostel I went walking until I found a market and I thought that a nice place to sit down, watch people go about their business and get a bite to eat. I had a cup of tea, a cup of fish ball soup and noodles with chicken and mushrooms for 1USD. In the afternoon I paid 3USD for a cup of coffee. The separation between things here is odd. A bottle of water could cost between 25 cents USD to a dollar depending on who is selling it. The way people live is just like that. One person might have a shack and eat rice every day and another might live like a wealthy westerner with a fancy car, house, smartphone, and never need to spend money at the cheap places.
For me I can do either and enjoy it. Some days I feel like 25 cents for tea and some days the 3 dollar coffee is what sounds nice. Its an interesting privilege to try a taste of both lifestyles.

It wasn’t dark yet, my legs were tired from a long day of trekking and it made it easy to sit patiently waiting for night to fall. The open room was two hours from the edge of the national park and overlooking as much of a clearing as you’re likely to see in the jungle. I was eating some few snacks I had brought when the quality of the light really started to change.
It happened fast, it felt like stepping out of the regular world and into a fairy tale. I’m not someone who thinks very whimsically most of the time but seeing the jungle go from light to dark was magical. The first sign was a call of some unseen animal that sounded like a giant creaky door closing. Then the rest of the sounds were exchanged for the night time versions, it was loud and each sound was like it was designed to send shivers down my spine. I saw a dark shape with a long tail walk over a light colored log, a catlike tail. It made a low, short sound several times before passing out of earshot. By this time their were lights all around, light from fireflies and light from lightning, like from some sort of mold or fungus on the jungle floor.
The changing of the guard all happened in about an hour and than slowly settled to a level a little lower than the peak at dusk.
I don’t know how any native people could not believe in magic.

   Today I went for a walk, it was a humid day in Taman Negara and the jungle seemed busy with life. I stretched my senses as I walked to try and pick out which noises were animals moving close enough to see. The saturation of sights and sounds made it hard to differentiate between wind rustling the leaves or animals making a similar sound. There is a difference though, I started by assuming all sounds were animals and over time it became more apparent which were actually animals. After that started to seem easier it was much harder to tell the size or kind of animal making the sounds, sometimes squirrels sounded like Tapir or monkeys or a falling leaf would confuse it all together.

After  20 minutes walking a saw a rustling branch low to the ground and the first second I spent thinking it was a squirrel before my mind kicked in and said “wait, it might be something else”. I paused and after another second a boar as big as a big dog walked out from behind the foliage, a few seconds later a few small boars trotted past. I was surprised, I had heard they were very difficult to see. And maybe they are.
I watched them for ten minutes before they grazed out of sight. I kept walking slowly after that, hoping to see a Tapir or some deer. I didn’t see anything other than squirrels until 15 minutes later I saw a tiny shape moving a little ways off from the trail. It didn’t have a place in my folder of animals I’ve seen and in a few seconds I saw it was a mouse deer. I don’t know why their tails flick up and down every few seconds, it seems like the only weak point in their camouflage. Than it was scared off by loud walking people coming up behind be on the trail, they didn’t stop to see why I was staring into the trees.

After all that I started to wonder why everyone walked so fast and loud.
I saw more mouse deer but after that more and more tourists walked quickly past me and it seemed like a poor time for being an animal near a trail.

I am amazed that people come to the jungle just to scare away their chances of seeing what they came here to see. I don’t know how much of this story is in my mind and how much is true, it just makes me wonder.

Arriving in Kuantan happened very slowly, first traffic slowed the bus to a crawl and then the first bus station was out of town so I had to take another bus straight back the same route until I got into town again. I didn’t know anything about Kuantan because I didn’t plan on staying there, I missed the last bus onward so my trip to Taman Negara national park was delayed. My first hour in Kuantan was odd. I had never seen so many prostitutes. The first hotel I tried was okay but over what I wanted to spend. The next was empty except for an old lady that I thought at first was dead, I couldn’t wake her the first time and when I came back ten minutes later she was almost awake but when I asked if she worked there she shrugged and went to sleep. The third hotel had a deal but they added a tax so it was just as expensive as anywhere else, I still checked the room but when I got to the second floor there weren’t any lights on. The atmosphere was like a horror movie, I almost turned around as soon as the elevator doors opened. Eventually I decided on the first hotel because it was normal seeming.

That night I made up for the expense of the hotel by eating street food, I spent a dollar and got four kinds of fried things, meat on a stick, shrimp bread balls, fried banana and friend yam fries.

Kuantan seemed nice……

I said goodbye to my girlfriend yesterday, we decided before this trip began that we needed to travel alone. We wanted to start traveling together to give each other that kick out the door and support in the first part of our trips. Its scary parting ways and breaking up, its easy to feel lonely, and traveling alone is harder than with someone I can trust. I just know that if I’m going to become who I need to become this challenge is going to push me towards that.

I had a blast in the first month, it was great to have someone to share experiences with and to support me when things got stressful. When I look toward my trip on my own I think it will be harder and I want that intensity to help me learn about myself. For me I need time to myself to decide how I want to be in life, its essential for me to find out who I am when I’m alone.

Easy isn’t what I’m searching for. Since I’ve reached one month of traveling I’ve become anxious about how I want the next 7 months to be. I don’t know how to feel satisfied, how to feel like what I’m doing is enough. It’s a problem I’ve had for a while and I need to delve into finding a solution or I will continue living a worthwhile life without feeling like its worth a thing. That would be a shame.

Sitting in the middle in the backseat of a truck isn’t comfortable on a normal drive but when hurtling along on a winding jungle road as our guide tells about how two days ago a group of elephants tried to break into the truck it makes for an interesting introduction to the jungle.

Five minutes after we arrived at the dorms at the Endau Rompin national park headquarters Kenny our local guide drove up and threw a few inner tubes on the ground. I hadn’t read the itinerary so it was a bit of a surprise that was to be the first activity of the three days in the jungle. The water was warm and before long Kenny was pointing out monkeys as we drifted along the river. Kenny had been a jungle guide for years, he went into the jungle for one of the seasons of the TV show Survivor. Kenny seemed to have a lot going on for him, he had his own brand of perfume that he made from a local tree, he had a wife in the village over, two kids, a dog named “come here” and a monkey named Abu.

By the time lunch came around it felt like a full day, by the time two more days had past we had seen leeches walking up our legs, elephants, a jungle cat the size of a big house cat, mouse deer, a cobra, and innumerable small critters. I kind of expected the jungle to be full of crazy animals and plants but even so I was blown away by the diversity.

After three days in the jungle my awareness felt so clear, It was like having a wider field of vision. In the jungle I had constantly searched with all my senses for snakes by my feet, leeches crawling up my shoes, monkeys overhead, tapirs or leopards around me. I didn’t have the same pre-existing patterns to help it be easier to know what to pay attention to, so I tried to be aware of everything at once. It made the previously chaotic town seem calm after having the jungle surrounding me. I can’t wait for my next foray into the jungle.

Mersing is a town full of cats, there are cats on every street, in every alley, and every restaurant. Nearly all the cats have some kind of deformity to their tail, some have full tails with a lump on the end and some have just a stub like a Bobcat. I’m not sure how many cats have homes but a few at least are fed and taken care of.
Besides the cats Mersing seems to be a fishing town and a gateway town to the islands to the east and the national park to the north. Despite not seeming like a destination town for travelers there are some great, cheap places to eat. My favorite so far is a bakery that serves meals of noodles and chicken, and for dessert a plethora of cakes, tarts or ice floss which is sort of like ice cream but lighter.

In the future I’ll try to keep writing little notes about towns and places I’m in to give a little color to my trip.