Another Beginning

Here I am in Singapore, my first dip into Asia.  The city is nothing like I expected, but I'll get to that in a minute.  First things first: the arrival.

Typical Singapore-- tall, tall buildings, some construction,
and an enchanting array of trees and grasses coexisting
alongside buildings and people.

I flew from Mexico City to Los Angeles on May 12th and spent a week in LA, seeing it for the third time but really, in many ways, for the first time.  The last two visits were short romps, more like drive-throughs than anything else.  This time I got to live there for a week, to walk the suburbs and get new-age fusion Korean food (whatever that means).  I picked up dry-cleaning and went to Goodwill and did other day-to-day things.  Really, the city's not all that bad-- certainly not as bad as I remembered.  Yeah, the people are kind-of loud and self-obsessed.  Yes, it's an unending jungle of cars and streets, but it's also got lush, rolling hills and a pretty good variety of trees and shrubs growing throughout.  I don't know, I guess my point is that the place has a more intimate, human element beneath that calloused exterior.

On the 18th I boarded a plane for Taipei and 13 hours later we touched down.  My layover was ten hours long, so I wandered the airport, found a good, comfortable spot, and slept.  At 7 am I made the 4-hour jump to Singapore, where I've been ever since.

The urban planning is amazing.  You're in the middle of a
five million-person city and if not for the misted facades
of distant buildings, you'd never know you weren't lost
amidst virgin jungle.

So Singapore.  It's absolutely amazing: huge buildings and modern architecture, an absurd amount of malls, and the most efficient public transit system I've ever been on in my life.  Trees and forests are everywhere; really the island is probably 50% city and 50% green spaces, mixed together in such a way that you never feel like you're in the middle of a humongous city.  The place is also like 75% Chinese by descent, with the rest being Malaysian or Indian and then whatever white people have immigrated here for business.  You hear English and Chinese everywhere, with Hindi and Malay thrown in at irregular intervals.  Every kind of Asian food is here in droves and in general the place just feels like a melting pot on a scale I've never experienced before.

And the famed draconian laws?  Pretty much Western media sensationalism.  Jaywalking is technically illegal but never enforced; people here jaywalk as much as in the US.  Chewing gum is allowed for personal use; you just can't sell it (so you have to buy it outside the country, I guess).  And the upshot of the strict penalties for crime (e.g. caning or death) is that the city/country feels like one of the safest places in the world.  In short, Singapore is like a tropical Europe with a hint of the exotic (via Asia) thrown in.

So much color and beauty find their way into the everyday
here, like this apartment building in Little India.

Other than shopping though, there really isn't that much to see as a tourist.  I've mostly been hanging out with couchsurfers, going hiking with a few, swimming with like 15, meeting up for dinner with a bunch more, pub trivia night with another gaggle, and then playing ultimate frisbee with, I kid you not, 40 of them.  I have met more people in the last five days than I probably ever have other than freshman year of college.  The couchsurfing community here is so active!

I'm thinking of leaving on Thursday, going to a play tonight and then heading off early tomorrow.  The next stop is Malaysia, which based on my discussions with people in Singapore could be summed up as "pretty alright but Thailand is better."  Honestly most people have said just to visit Malaka, Kuala Lumpur, and then leave.  Heh.  As with most advice though, I probably will just do my own thing and play it by ear.

And We're Out

Tomorrow at this time I will be in an airport, leaving Mexico.  Tomorrow at this time I will have been in the country 87 days, two days shy of three months.

It's been an interesting experience to say the least.  The last few days have only added to that.  I left Puebla on a Saturday after some of the most exercise-filled days of my trip.  Two spinning classes, one full-day climbing outing, and plenty of dog- (and people-) walks.  I was even in Puebla for Cinco de Mayo, which I found out that day is really only celebrated in Puebla; nowhere else in Mexico really gives a shit (the battle had to do with defending Puebla; Mexico's days of independence are actually September 15th and 16th).

On Saturday I got in to Mexico City and found that my hosts had left for a party.  They'd told me they'd be in from 4-6 pm but with traffic and a bus delay I didn't make it in time, so I spent the night in a large, lonely hostel.  At least I had the room to myself, I guess.  The next day I went climbing.  Well, I went *with* people who went climbing.  After climbing five times in less than a month -- all this after 8 months without doing it once -- the tendons in my fingers were hurting and so I thought it prudent to avoid further damage.  I belayed and watched people going up and, occasionally and unexpectedly, very rapidly back down. 

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I've been staying at a yoga commune since Monday, spending my last four days there.  It's without a doubt one of the most interesting places I've stayed in Mexico.  The place belonged to my host's grandparents and it's adorned with all the pomp and opulence of a rich, late nineteenth century mansion: large, impressive chandeliers; wooden flourishments decorating walls and doorways; stained glass and old, dusty furniture.  The place looks like it fell out of time, like it's been lost or drifting since a hundred years ago and maybe still is. 





It feels like it's right out of Great Expectations.  The furniture is sparse, dust-covered and unkempt.  The

bronze is worn and rusted, the paint peeling and some glass panels broken.  Lights are notably absent, or perhaps I should say that darkness is conspicuously present.  At night, shadows dominate the place as the one working light on the chandelier is swallowed in the large, open space.  It feels a little bit magical.

And then there's the fact that the doors are always closed, locked.  All these grand spaces and yet you're kind of shut into a tight corridor

with a metal railing overlooking the shadow-lined corridor below.  At uneven intervals doors will open or shut and out will come someone you've never seen; I have no idea how many people live in the house.  At least 8.

The whole place is some odd mystery and yet it's all just sitting there in the middle of Mexico City, hidden behind an old, iron gate and a white façade.  So unexpected.

Anyway, that's about all to report.  Tomorrow I leave (theoretically) for LA for a six day stint in the US.  Wish me flight luck!

Long Time No See

So it's been 41 days since I last posted-- over a month.  Trust me when I say that wasn't intended.  Moreover, being that the last post was a story about suicide, the insensitivity (and irony) of leaving a long silence doesn't escape me; sorry for that.

In any case, an explanation is in order.  My intent with this blog was not just to say, "I'm here, doing this.  A week ago I was in this other place, doing such and such," but instead to try to convey my thoughts and feelings.  Apparently that kinda petered out.  The thing is, after a certain amount of time, traveling becomes life.  The lack of routine, contantly meeting new people, engaging in new and unexpected experiences or troubles or frustrations-- they form a new kind of order.  The novelty becomes less novel.

I get the feeling that, were I traveling in a different culture or atmosphere, everything would start over again.  The game would be reset like an hourglass being turned over and I'd be left scrambling again to orient myself in a new world.  However, that hasn't been the case these last three months-- it's been Mexico from the get-go.  As a result, the grooves have been well-trodden and it's been rather easy to just flow with the current.

That's why I haven't written: things just haven't seemed that noteworthy.  I'm sure in a year I'll think back and remember it all as so exciting and exotic, but for the moment this has been life.  Still, I probably should be recounting that life, and so from here on out I'm gonna try to write more regularly and say what's going on, even if I don't feel like I can say it poetically or well.

With that in mind, here's a super-fast recap of the last month and a half, with apologies for the unfortunate length:

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I spent a week and a half in Guadalajara.  The city was large and cosmopolitan, though I can't say I really fell in love with it or anything.  The couchsurfers I stayed with were really cool, though, and for me at least that really can make or break a place.  While there I got to go mountainbiking for the first time in my life and it was a hell of an experience.  The bike that my host procured for me had 21 gears, all of which would consistently skip while you were trying to go uphill, jumping and jolting to the point that I pretty much had to run up every hill we got to, dragging the bike alongside me.  This added to the memorability of the experience-- shooting down gravel slopes, swerving or popping over big rocks, then quickly dismounting and running up the next slope to try to keep up with my host.  It was terrifying, exhausting, and a lot of fun.

 

The thing I remember most about Guadalajara though, is my host Claudia.  She made racing noises while driving, didn't know how to cook almost anything, and had such a unique was of talking it pretty much was guaranteed to make you smile, if not for her gesticulations then for the random, incomprehensible sounds she was prone to throwing in.  She was so vivacious and fun to be around, always bursting with excitement at everything new and novel.  I remember when I described her as "quirky" and, more than anything, remember the look she gave me when I made a terrible attempt at explaining what quirky means: "it's like if you were a painter but you only painted lemons and you had, like, twenty paintings of lemons in your house."  I spent a long time after that trying to assure her that I wasn't calling her insane....

After Guadalajara I went to Guanajuato, a city of steep, narrow streets and tight alleys.  It was my first time staying in a hostel alone and the best way to describe it would be terribly underwhelming: one Aussie dude snoring loudly all night and two Chinese girls that spoke not a word of English or Spanish.  It was kind of a lonely two days. 

After that came San Miguel de Allende, a beautiful artist town that's completely swamped by American and Canadian ex-pats.  It was there that I met Michael while staying in another hostel.  He was a 20-something Dane that was incredibly intelligent, logical, and who disagreed with me on everything.  Somehow, though, we got along great, and my four days and three nights in San Miguel were spent almost exclusively engaged in 5- or 8-hour debate marathons with Michael, discussing the value of science or medicine or conspiracies or morality or practically any other subject out there, the two of us firmly planted on opposite sides but, in time, each coming to see a bit of the other's perspective.  I honestly don't think I've ever learned as much talking with any one person as I did talking with Michael, and I can only hope he feels like he gained something talking with me as well.

From San Miguel I went to another of Mexico's "colonial jewels," Querétaro.  There I met a girl-- an American named Yael-- and wasted two days on her.  At the end of it I came to the realization that her pretty face didn't make up for her personality, and with that I was off to Mexico City.

Mexico City was nothing like I'd imagined.  Big, sprawling, incomprehensible in size?  Yes, yes, yes.  But dirty and polluted and overrun with traffic?  Well, not really.  In fact, it was a heck of a lot nicer in all those aspects than most of the places I'd already been (granted I was almost exclusively in the downtown area of Mexico City so i can't speak about the more peripheral regions, but I'm also comparing that against mostly downtowns in other cities as well).  I stayed in hostels again, thinking this would be a good place to meet fellow travelers.  The first place I went to had great reviews on the internet, being lauded repeatedly as a very "social" hostel.  I soon came to understand that "social" meant "beer, drinking, and bars."  In fact, the hostel had a bar on the roof and that's pretty much where everyone remained from 3 pm until 3 am. 

I tried to socialize, to hang out and meet people, but I discovered that in a bar, a man without a beer in his hand is a social outcast.  The only real conversation I had was with a German whose name was Zach as well.  I asked him where he'd been to already and where he was going.  He'd spent some time in Cuba.  "Oh yeah?  What'd you see in Cuba?" I asked.  "All of it," he said. "All of it?" I repeated, increduously.  "Yeah, it's not that big."  I let that conversation die and just went down to bed. 

The next day I found a different hostel and five days later left Mexico City.  Before I left though, I had a chance to go rock climbing with two couchsurfers, going about an hour and a half outside of Mexico City to a forest with large, rock spires shooting out above the canopy.  I didn't have my own shoes with me, though, and had to borrow shoes from my hosts.  They were really small and incredibly painful, making that experience particularly memorable but enjoyable nonetheless.

From Mexico City I went to Oaxaca, arriving April 6th.  I ended up spending three weeks there.  The time I was there, the people I met, and the things I did probably deserve their own post, but I'm on a roll.  I didn't intend to spend so much time in Oaxaca-- in truth it was my shoes that made me stay.  I'd finally decided that I wanted to make rock climbing a big part of my travels, so I'd asked my parents to send my climbing shoes and harness down from the US.  The USPS said it'd take 6-10 days to arrive, but I found out from several Mexicans that it sometimes can take up to a month.  With that in mind, I hunkered down and tried to find something to do.  The first CSer I stayed with works for an NGO and said they could use database help.  I said I had some theoretical knowledge of it and would be willing to give it a shot but that you get what you pay for (they weren't paying me), so I did that for a bit. 

I also saw what is reputed to be the widest tree in the world in terms of trunk girth (El Tule tree) and saw some cool ruins (Monte Albán).  Mostly I hung out with the hosts I ended up staying with for almost the entire three weeks-- Magali, Susano, and Pavel.  When they'd get back from school we'd talk about music, watch lucha libre (wrestling) or a soccer match on TV, chat about life, or whatever.  I even got a chance to go to a quinceañera and see Pavel's band play, being of course the only white person and spending most of the time being stared at (we were on the outskirts of a little village an hour from Oaxaca).

Near the end of April I had the chance to go with Pavel to see Juquila, a small town tucked in the mountains of southern Mexico.  Pavel, Magali, and Susano were all born there and, when Pavel and I went, Magali and Susano were there as well, staying with their parents in the house across the street from Pavel's.  The town is one of the holiest in Mexico, with many Mexicans making a pilgrimage to it at least once in their lives in order to see the Virgin of Juquila.  I spent most of my three days there vomiting and listening to every crazy theory out there as to why I was sick-- it was the mole I ate or the fact that I ate it with water instead of juice or that I ate a piece of cake in the evening or it was the altitude or the change in weather or this or that or another thing.  I ended up carrying the sickness with me back to Oaxaca, continuing my early-morning vomits for 5 or 6 days total, though in truth I felt fine except for the mornings. 

And then on May 3rd I finally left Oaxaca.  And now I'm in Puebla, staying with a 27-year-old that absolutely loves to bike.  She leads spinning classes and so I've had a chance to try that (more enjoyable than I expected!) and we also got a chance to go climbing which, added to the one time in Mexico City and the three times in Oaxaca, makes five times in Mexico so far. 

The plan at the moment is to leave on Saturday and return to Mexico City, staying there till my flight on the 12th to Los Angeles.  I'll be in LA for six days and then, on the 18th, leave for Singapore (unexpected, I know).  I'm hoping to wander up through Southeast Asia and then either head towards India or China, with the intent being to learn either Hindi or Chinese, the choice probably ultimately coming down to whim and fancy, I guess.

So with that, things are caught up.  Apologies for the length of this post and, once again, apologies for not keeping this updated.  Hopefully I'll do a better job of this in the future, though at this point it's probably better if I don't promise anything....