Author Archives: John

This is a story about, well…poop. And for that I am sorry. Reader discretion is advised.

This poop story all started a little over a month ago, when Amy and I embarked on a sixteen-day safari across southern Africa. We traveled through South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Botswana. We traveled in a big red safari truck. We camped in tents. We saw elephants, zebras, giraffes, hippos, and much more. And it was awesome.

Things kicked off one very early pre-dawn morning in Johannesburg, South Africa, where we met our guides, Big Jeff and Little Jeff, of South Africa and Zimbabwe respectively. Big Jeff, who was more the logistics man, detailed how life would be: sharing tents, sharing cooking and cleaning duties, and sharing a safari vehicle that he dubbed “The Flying Red Elephant.”

We also met our fellow campers – eight friendly Germans (who spoke considerably better English than we spoke German – sorry Frau Champagne), and a young couple, Paula (from Argentina) and Andre (from Italy) who now live in Calgary.

Little Jeff, who held an encyclopedic knowledge of African flora and fauna, gave us the first day’s itinerary – our first “briefing,” as he called it. We’d drive for six to seven hours, and spend that first afternoon looking for Africa’s “Big Five” in Kruger National Park. Along the way, we’d need to stop for fuel, and we could get some snacks. And then Little Jeff introduced the running theme of the trip: if needed, we could stop to go “Bushy Bushy.” This was Little Jeff’s term for the call of nature. For the rest of the trip, no one ever spoke of bathrooms, or restrooms, or toilets. From then on, it was always “Booshy-Boosh!!”

After a long days journey, we arrived in Kruger National Park in northeast South Africa, where over the course of two days, we would do a number of game drives. It was a great introduction. We saw several elephants, up close, including one who trumpeted at us. We saw giraffes, and zebras, and baboons, plus a ton of impala. You see so much impala in southern Africa, you get sick of them sometimes.

At one point, the Flying Red Elephant began to swerve, and with it, we passengers were tossed around. Little Jeff stuck his head through the cab window and explained: “Our driver, Big Jeff, is a model of conservation. We won’t even run over the elephant dung, because it may contain dung beetles or other insects that are vital to the ecology of the area. So if we swerve erratically, it’s in an effort to preserve wildlife.” (In all honesty, Little Jeff, of Zimbabwe, was not as eloquent as that. But in the interest of clarity and brevity, I’ve summarized this for you. It really started like this: “Hello…um…small briefing…our truck…my brother Jeff is a conservationist…”)

That night we had our first experience with the tents. They were sizeable two-man tents, and we quickly learned how to put them up and take them down. These would be our homes for the next few weeks, and they were actually fairly comfortable. There was only one issue with these tents: the zippers were pretty loud, and the outside door flap was held in place by a few feet of thick Velcro. All night, you heard a symphony of zippers being zipped and Velcro being ripped. This, friends, was the sound of Bushy-Bushy.

The next morning, we got a lesson in animal bushy-bushy. After swerving on the road some more, Little Jeff poked his head through – briefing! – and explained to us that the roads that morning would be covered with elephant dung. It turns out elephants like the heat of the asphalt, and will travel by road at night, dumping their load along the way. And what a load, folks. Elephants are grazers, and these massive animals pretty much eat all day. This produces bowling ball sized dung, each weighing about 2.5 kilos – over five pounds. And each time they go, they drop about five of these balls.

If you read our post about the animals in Australia, you know that Amy is a bit of a poop expert (having correctly identified kangaroo and koala turds). Well, this new knowledge about elephant dung fascinated Amy, the Turdmaster General, and as we drove down the road, she would point along the way: “Five balls!…(another hundred yards)…five balls!…hey, there’s only four balls there (disappointment)…five balls!! (victory!)”

This now became another running theme for the trip. What had started simply as “Bushy Bushy” now became more defined, more illustrative:

“I’ve got to go bushy-bushy.”
“Do you have to go bushy-bush, or do you have to go five balls?”
“Well, it’s probably only two to three balls, but it sure ain’t bushy-bush…”

Armed with this puerile technicality, we pressed on into Zimbabwe. I can’t really speak to the politics of the country, which I know is a bit questionable, but Zimbabwe was otherwise a bit of a revelation. We first stopped near the town of Masvingo and the ruins of Great Zimbabwe, a stone city structure that rivals Machu Picchu and the Great Wall of China in its masonry. It was really pretty fascinating, I’m surprised it’s not more famous. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage site, but I’d never heard of it before.

The next day we camped near the town of Matapos, where the highlight was a bush walk that ended with an up-close encounter with a small family of white rhinos. That was simply incredible, being that close, and totally unprotected.

We also did a game drive through Hwange National Park, a beautiful game park where we saw many of the large animals we saw in Kruger, but also wildebeest, warthog, ostrich, and a wealth of beautiful, colorful birds.

But after nearly a week on the road, people were getting restless. Of the “Big Five,” we’d seen elephants, African buffalo, and rhinos. But no big cats: no lions, no leopards, and no cheetahs either (though not part of the Big Five). Finally, frustrated, Andre said what everyone was thinking, in his Italian accent: “Whare are-a de fooking-a leons?!” We’d have to wait.

But we did take something away from Hwange. During our stay there, Amy, the Minister of Fecal Affairs, sighted more five balls, and now moved on to spotting giraffe dung with regularity. Back at camp, she and I were discussing “turds.” Paula overheard this and asked, “what are these, ‘turds?’” Amy explained, in her own delicate way, marking our continuing contribution to international relations. You can thank us later, Nobel Committee.

Eventually we arrived at Victoria Falls, which turns out to be the Niagara Falls of Africa: an incredible force of nature, bordering two countries, and full of crummy souvenir stores. Victoria Falls is impressive as a natural wonder, breathtaking and absolutely worth the visit, but not much of a town. After a quick stay – enough to see the falls and do some laundry – our group crossed the border into Botswana.

And how were we welcomed in Botswana? By a herd of elephants, minutes after the border. Big Jeff explained that with its conservationist efforts, Botswana was rife with African wildlife. That night we went for a game cruise on the Chobe River, saw more elephants, and listened to the bellowing of frolicking hippos at sunset. I think this is the point I turned to Amy, stunned, and said, “we’re in BOTSWANA…”

The next day we went for a game drive in Chobe National Park. This was the site of two breakthroughs. First, we saw lions. Lots of lions. One big male lion, a few lionesses, and a brood of juvenile lions, on the hunt for buffalo.

But that wasn’t the big breakthrough. Amy, by now having officially declared her major as “Dung,” made her usual five-ball sighting. I chimed in: “Five balls!” And then a surprise: Andre, seated just in front of us, turned around and quietly stated, “Two point-a five kilos…” Like Dr. Livingstone, we had won a convert in darkest Africa.

A few days later, we came to the most unique and memorable part of our trip. We were leaving the safety of the land and heading onto the waters of the Okavango Delta for two nights of wild camping, riding in dugout canoes. It was an experience we will not soon forget.

All our gear was loaded on to the canoes, which were poled around the shallow waters by local guides, just like gondoliers in Venice. After about an hour on the water, we arrived at camp, set up our tents, and were told how we’d live out in the wild: cooking on an open fire, with no gas burners like our other campsites. A bucket shower (which only one person used). And our sanitary facilities – this pit toilet, dug into the ground in a clearing well behind our campsite.

Little Jeff continued the briefing: never stray into the wild – there were animals out there that could kill you. If a guide tells you to move, you move. And at night, when going “Bushy Bushy,” take your tent-mate, and shine a flashlight to look for eyes. If you see eyes – stay in your tent! Otherwise, relax, have fun, and enjoy the bush.

(A side note here: one of the greatest things I heard on the entire trip is an African proverb Little Jeff used repeatedly. Goes like this: “There are many ways to kill a baboon.” We skin cats; in southern Africa, apparently, they kill baboons.)

In the afternoon we took a bush walk, and came face-to-face (at a reliable distance) with a few elephants. Our local guide warned us – it was time to move – this elephant was heading in our direction and could be dangerous. We returned to camp, and in the waters next to our site, a hippo, one of the more dangerous animals in Africa, bellowed as the sun set. Baboons howled in the distance. We were surrounded by wildlife, and it was humbling.

We had a big pasta dinner, and then with the fire dying down, and complete darkness creeping in on us, we all went to bed. There was a mist in the air, and as the weather cooled, the hippos would soon come out of the water. The noises of the jungle enveloped us – the hippos bellowing somewhere close by, a baboon howling over on the other side of camp, and an owl in a tree that sounded intimidating. I couldn’t sleep, hearing (or imagining) noises outside the tent. And then at 2:00am, full of pasta and completely carbo-loaded, I was overcome by the call of Bushy-Bushy. This led to what I call “The Scariest Four Minutes of Your Life.”

Turns out Amy was up as well. She and I got dressed, listening to the sounds of lethal animals only footsteps from our campsite. The owl continued his threats. The hippo (or hippos!), who will kill anyone in its path, was somewhere nearby, undoubtedly on its path, awaiting victims. The baboons were out there, plotting. It was pitch black out; who knew what lurked on the fifty-yard dash to the pit toilet. We ventured forward, timidly.

Let me tell you about our flashlight: we bought a cheap dime-store flashlight before the trip; something we picked up last minute while buying, believe it or not, a doorstop and a whistle (long story). We used it a few times when the power went out in India, and during the campervan portion of our New Zealand stay. But it’s poorly made, and after seven months rattling around in my luggage, the beam isn’t that strong anymore, the batteries are weak, and the bulb has a tendency to flicker, or just go out completely. You have to shake it or hit it, like trying to get the last drop of ketchup out of the bottle. This was not the ideal flashlight to be spotting homicidal hippos. Other campers had strong beams capable of sighting enemy aircraft or signaling outer space. We had something you could barely use to read an Archie comic book under your Star Wars blanket.

So after the unnerving sounds of zippers and Velcro (this will only anger the beasts!), we flashed the light out of the tent. We saw nothing but other tents and the dying fire – whew!… Then we crawled out and put on our flip-flops. I shined the flickering light around. Nothing but darkness, and the howling sounds of impending flesh being torn. We ventured towards the pit toilet.

Here’s the thing: it was absolute darkest night out. With the slight rain, there were no stars, and no moon; no source of light except some crappy penlight. There were animals SOMEWHERE out there. And we’d have to drop our pants over a small hole in the ground dug on the periphery of the jungle. I made Amy go first.

Meanwhile, I stood outside the toilet tent, alone in the mist, shining the pathetic light around so I could get a quick glimpse of whatever animal was out there before it ripped out my thorax. And, of course, the flashlight kept going out, and I’d have to keep hitting it with my hand. For those few seconds the light was out, in complete darkness, I was paralyzed with fear. It seemed as if Amy was taking forever, her bladder releasing the equivalent of Victoria Falls, while I waited for a hippo to trample me into the dirt like a human pit toilet. Remember that Lenten promise to stop swearing? It was long f***ing gone, people!

Soon enough, it was my turn. But pasta be damned, at this point there would be no five balls, no three balls – not one solitary ball. I didn’t even try. I took a quick leak and got the hell out of that pit-toilet tent. I held Amy’s hand and we cautiously walked back to our own tent, a single, weak beam of light flickering its way back through the darkness as we tripped over plants and shrubs and the withering bones of campers past. We un-Velcroed, unzipped, and leapt into the tent. Outside, the animals kept up their noisy terror, but inside our tent there was nothing but the sound of heaving lungs, as we caught our breaths after our brush with death, The Scariest Four Minutes of Your Life.

The next morning, with the sun safely in the sky, and our guides awake and making coffee, we prepared for the day’s bush walk, a nearly five-hour walk on one of the islands in the delta. This would be Amy’s crowning moment. We trailed the group most of the way because the Poop Whisperer was consulting with one of our local guides, Walter, about various dung, comparing notes from their respective doctoral research. And here, for your edification, are some photos of Amy and her new, steamy friends, along with some vital information so you, too, can recognize your African turds:

Elephant: as mentioned earlier, a grouping for four to five bowling ball sized turds, each weighing approximately 2.5 kilos (5 pounds). Mostly grasses. Tough to miss.

Giraffe: dozens of acorn-shaped pellets, in a sizeable pile, somewhat scattered.

Zebra: a massive pile of kiwi fruit to baseball sized turds. Interestingly, zebras often poop in the same spot. They kind of mark their turf.

African buffalo: If you’ve ever seen a cow pattie, you’ll easily recognize African buffalo. It’s a mess.

Warthog: Looks like a big pile of oversized black beans, some loose, some in dense clumps.

You may be wondering about hippo. Well, we have no hippo dung photos. They basically spray the grasses they’ve eaten back onto more grass or bushes. You know it when you see it – like when your lawn mower blows the grass into the hedges. But imagine it three times the size.

The next day we left the delta, and after a final, fantastic day spotting rhino and a leopard in lower Botswana (Big Five complete!), our safari was over. We returned to Johannesburg, then flew to Cape Town for a relaxing week – including a lot of laundry and catching up with our emails, etc. – and then flew to South America, where we are now.

I’ll leave you with this, a poem co-written by Amy and me while out in the wilds of the Okavango Delta. It’s suitable for third-grade classrooms everywhere, and rivals some of the all-time greats, like “Diarrhea, Diarrhea” and “Milk, Milk, Lemonade…”:

“Bushy Bushy, brown and squishy,
Pushy pushy, from my tooshy.”

(I already apologized, right?)

JUST IMAGINE IT…

After an early four-hour train ride from Boston, you and your wife pull into New York’s Penn Station, get your luggage, and start heading to the taxi stand. It’s August, and about 90 degrees. You’re layered in sweat, tired, and grumpy. A shady man approaches you: “Where are you going?”

“We’re just going to the taxi stand.”
“I have a taxi. Where are you going?”
“We’re going to the taxi stand, thank you.”
“Where do you need to go?”
“We’re going to the taxi stand.”
“Tourist information is over there.”
“Thank you. But we’re going to the taxi stand.”
“I can take you to tourist information.”
“No, thank you.”
“I have a taxi. Do you need a hotel room? Where are you going?”
“No, thank you.”

Another man approaches you, and looks your wife up and down. “Do you need a taxi?”
“Thank you, but we’re just going to use the taxi stand.”
“The taxi stand is closed today. Where are you going?”
“Thank you, but we’re going to the taxi stand.”
“The taxi stand burnt down. Come with me.”
“No!”
“I have a taxi. Come with me.”
“No!”

Another man approaches you.
“Where are you going? Train tickets are available across the street, I can take you there.”
“No, thank you, we’re going to the taxi stand.”
“The tourist ticket window is across the street, two blocks from this station.”
“No it’s not, there’s a sign for it right there – I can see it – and we don’t need tickets, we’re going to the taxi stand.”
“That window is not for tourists.”
“So why does it say ‘TOURIST TICKET WINDOW?’”
“I have a taxi. Where are you going?”
“Get away from me.”

You finally reach the taxi stand, and the first cabbie comes up to you. “Where are you going?”
“We need to go to the Marriott Marquis, in Times Square. Do you know where it is?”
“Yes, get in.”
“You know where it is?”
“Yes, get in.”
“So you know the Marriott Marquis?”
“Yes, get in.”
“How much to get there?”
“For the two of you? One-hundred dollars.”
“One-hundred?! No way! I’ll give you five dollars.”
“Okay, two people, eighty dollars.”
“No, no, no. It’s the same cab, one or two people. You’re ridiculous.”
“Fifty dollars, that’s a good price.”
“I’ll pay seven dollars at most, it’s not that far.”
“Okay, twenty dollars.”
“Ten.”
“Fifteen dollars is a good price.”
“C’mon. Ten dollars. The hotel is only 20 blocks from here.”
“Fifteen.”
“Ten dollars. There’s other cabbies here…”
A brief silence, and then the driver grudgingly waves you into his cab.

After you help the cabbie tie your luggage to the roof of his broken down Dodge Colt, you turn North on to Seventh Avenue. There is no air-conditioning in the cab, the windows only roll down so far, and the constant honking of horns seeps in as you enter traffic – your cab, the surrounding cabs, cars, trucks, scooters, bicycles…anything with wheels is honking its horn regularly. The cabbie turns to you. “Do you have a card for the hotel, with the address?”
[HONK]
“It’s the Marriott Marquis, in Times Square.”
“Marquis?”
[HONK]
“The Marriott Marquis…Times Square!! [HONK] You said you knew where it was!”
“Times Square?”
“YES. [HONK] It’s one of the city’s [HONK] best known [HONK] tourist hotels [HONK] in the biggest [HONK] tourist area [HONK] of the city. The MARY-OTT [HONK] MAR-KEE [HONK] TIMES SQUARE!!”
“Marquis Times Square?”
[HONK] [HONK]
“YES!!”

The driver gets to 34th Street [HONK] and pulls over to a newsstand. He calls the vendor over. [HONK] All you can overhear them say is “Marquis Times Square.” There’s a lot of pointing, [HONK] and hand gestures. A group of people gathers around, [HONK] looking in the windows at you as if you’re a zoo animal. [HONK] Your wife is of particular interest. [HONK] Someone leans in: “Where are you going?” You ignore him. [HONK] Hands indicate left turns, right turns. Nodding. [HONK] The cabbie gets back in.
“Marriott Times Square?”
[HONK]
“YES! The Marriott Marquis Times Square! Jeez Louise!…”

[ed note: you are also trying very hard not to swear, because you gave up swearing for Lent. Even though in this scenario, it’s August… But we digress…]

At the corner of 39th and Seventh, [HONK] the driver pulls over and yells something [HONK] out the window. Another guy comes up and leans in, looks at you, stares at your wife, and then chats with the driver. [HONK] They have a lengthy conversation. [HONK] You’re stopped next to a bus which is blowing its exhaust in your window, and you may never [HONK] get to the hotel. Just as he’s about to pull out, [HONK] the other guy sticks his head back in the window again, [HONK] and they speak for another 30 seconds, without any concern for your presence, [HONK] or care about the delay at your expense. [HONK] Finally you’re on your way. [HONK]

The driver pulls out, [HONK] and continues up 7th Avenue, approaching 42nd Street. “Hey, would you guys like to do some shopping? [HONK] We can stop along the way, [HONK] there’s this great overpriced [HONK] tourist shop ahead, with I LOVE NY t-shirts [HONK] and Statue of Liberty mugs and crap. [HONK] My [HONK] brother-in-law [HONK] owns it [HONK] and I’ll get [HONK] a cut [HONK] if I take you [HONK] there [HONK] and [HONK] you [HONK] buy [HONK] some [HONK] overpriced [HONK] crap.”
“No, just to the hotel please.”
[HONK]
“Or we can go shopping in Brooklyn, there’s a big mall. [HONK] I’ll take you there now, before you go to the hotel.”
“NO!”
[HONK]
“No shopping?”
“No shopping, please – just go to the hotel.”
[HONK]
“You can just take a look, you don’t have to buy anything… Just look…”
[HONK]
“NO!! To the hotel!”

At 43rd Street, the cabbie pulls over, gets out, and takes a leak, in broad daylight, on a Duane Reade storefront, leaving you stranded in the sweltering Dodge for a minute or so. [HONK] [HONK] [HONK] He gets back in and continues driving. You thank God for the slight breeze.

“So, what are you guys doing tomorrow?”
[HONK]
“We’re not sure, [HONK] we just got in and we’re tired.”
“You gonna go sightseeing, maybe take a tour?”
“We’re not sure, really.”
[HONK]
“I can take you up to Grant’s Tomb, [HONK] down to Wall Street, [HONK] Ground Zero, whatever. Only 500 bucks for the full-day tour.”
“No, thank you, [HONK] just the hotel please.”
“Okay, only 400 bucks, or 200 for a half-day tour. [HONK] That’s a good price. I can take you there. [HONK] So, pick you up tomorrow morning at the Marquis Square?”
“No, just take us to the hotel, please, no tours!”
[HONK]

Turning East on 46th Street, the driver hits the back of an ice cream cart, spilling a half-dozen Strawberry Shortcakes onto the steaming pavement. [HONK] The ice cream vendor comes running over. [HONK] [HONK] The cabbie and the ice cream vendor start yelling at each other, blocking traffic. [HONK] [HONK] [HONK] [HONK] [HONK] [HONK] [HONK] [HONK] A crowd gathers. [HONK] [HONK] [HONK] [HONK] [HONK] [HONK] [HONK] [HONK] A stray dog licks the ice cream. The spat continues, there’s much gesticulating, and finally they back off, [HONK] [HONK] [HONK] [HONK] [HONK] [HONK] yelling at each other and cursing, [HONK] but neither really making a point, or winning the argument. But the scene is fantastic. [HONK] [HONK] [HONK] And now the traffic is worse. [HONK] [HONK] [HONK] [HONK]

Halfway down the block, the cabbie turns back to you. “Whattya say we call it 30 bucks, huh? [HONK] Why don’t you just pay me thirty bucks for the ride? It’s been like five miles already…”
[HONK]
“No it hasn’t – and we agreed on ten dollars.”
“C’mon, make it thirty bucks. [HONK] C’mon, I’m just a cab driver, and you’re an investment banker.”
[HONK]
“What? We said ten bucks.”
[HONK]
“But you’re a fund manager!”
“No, I’m not. And we agreed on ten bucks.”
“C’mon mister…Thirty bucks?”
[HONK]
“No. We said ten.”
[HONK]

At last you reach the Marriott Marquis, and the cabbie cuts off a lane of traffic to pull up to the curb, nearly knocking over an elderly lady with a cart of groceries. [HONK] [HONK] [HONK] You unload all your bags – all six of them, [HONK] including two large duffel bags – onto the curb, [HONK] while the cabbie sits impatiently in his seat, waiting for you to get all the bags out by yourself. You give him a twenty-dollar bill. He looks at you.

“I don’t have any change.”
“For a twenty?! You’re a cabbie, right?!”
“We’ll just call it twenty bucks.”
“No, give me my change!”
“I don’t have any change. Make it twenty dollars, okay?”

You storm inside the hotel and make change at reception, while your wife starts to check in. You head out to the waiting taxi, and approach the driver, handing him a ten-spot.

“Here you go. Thank you.”
“So, pick you up tomorrow? Ground Zero tour?”
“No, no thank you. No tour.”
“What about shopping?”
“No, no shopping. Thank you again.”
“How about my tip?”
“What?!”
“My tip…”

Now add cows to the equation.
WELCOME TO INDIA!!

Just a quick post today, but one celebrating a milestone.

Six months ago today, Amy’s sister Laurie dropped us off at JFK for the start of this journey. It seems like it’s been longer than six months, because we’ve seen so much, we’ve been to so many places already, and we’ve had so many unique experiences.

Amy and I have discussed this many times: when you go on a great vacation for a week or two, you go home and talk about it for months. It gets burned into your memory bank, and you can recount the slightest details – a great meal, a bad hotel room, some random encounter with a local. But with the scale of this trip, the details start to fade fast, and only the big picture sticks with you. Taking photos and writing about it helps, but the brushstrokes are much broader.

I can’t speak for Amy, but for me the “big picture” experience so far has been a bit spiritual. I don’t necessarily mean it’s been “religious,” but it has given me an appreciation for things bigger than myself, and my everyday selfish concerns.

I’ve begun to appreciate the beauty of the world we live in, having seen scenery unique to so many different parts of the planet. We’ve seen incredible sights and fascinating wildlife, visited stunning natural landmarks, and looked at the stars like we haven’t been able to before. The Great Ocean Road in Australia, The Franz Josef Glacier, sunsets in Cambodia, the Jeju Island shoreline, and the brightest Milky Way we’ve ever seen (when getting locked out of our New Zealand cabin one night) are just some examples. And when you see how much people are trashing it as well, almost everywhere along the way (except New Zealand!), you appreciate the scenery that much more.

I’ve also had a growing sense of the “mysterious ways” of the world; how things will work out, how chance or fate will put you in the right place at the right time, or how what you thought was a wrong move turns out for the best in the end. Getting lost and finding a great restaurant in Japan. Bumping into our NYC neighbors in Da Nang, Vietnam. Walking around to discover a beer festival in Melbourne. Travel will do that for you. Things work out in ways we just can’t explain.

And lastly, I’ve had an incredibly huge sense of gratitude. I feel so fortunate. Being able to do what we’re doing, seeing how other people and other cultures live, realizing just how lucky we are to live the way we do at home – it gives me a great appreciation for where I’ve come from and just how blessed I am to have this life. I will never take tap water, toilet paper, or garbage pickup for granted again. I might even appreciate taxes (maybe). But I’ve been handed a good life. There’s a lot of people to thank – parents, family, teachers, mentors – and a bit of personal ambition involved, but ultimately I think there’s something bigger at work and I should be thankful.

And I am.

Early last evening, as Amy and I were at a rooftop restaurant having a few beers and a bite to eat, the skies darkened, and there was a hail-storm that rained mothball-sized hail, in the middle of the Indian heat, for minutes on end.

A woman we were speaking to, who works in India frequently, said she’d never seen anything like it in her time here. The locals at the restaurant stood watching, in a stunned silence. The owner of the restaurant couldn’t help but laugh later. It was extraordinary. These are the sorts of things that happen and make you go, “Wow.”

And I guess that’s all I really mean by all of this, all of what I’ve been feeling. Just…“Wow.”

But not to get too heady, here. On this, the six-month anniversary of our trip, I have woken up to find that my sweat smells like curry. Bona fide. Just ask Amy. The mystery continues…

At three months we offered up a Q&A – you have questions, we have answers. Now at six months, feel free to send them to us via the contact page, message board, Facebook or email, and we’ll answer in a future post.

Last week, Amy and I left Melbourne to start our drive down Australia’s Great Ocean Road, which follows the coastline of the Southern Ocean. Did you know there was a Southern Ocean? I didn’t. Well, there is, and it’s south of Australia, which is probably why they gave it that name. The Great Ocean Road is an incredibly beautiful drive, and the vistas have been phenomenal, like driving the Pacific Coast Highway.

On our first day we stopped in the small town of Lorne, and if you’ve seen the previous video of our cabin, you’ll have seen how things got started – with a visit from our avian neighbors, the cockatoos. Any time we took a step on to the porch, the wild cockatoos would swoop in (keyword: “swoop”) and look for handouts. And not just one bird, but three or four at a time. I don’t like big parrot-like birds lurking on my porch, and frankly, large birds creep me out altogether. They stare at you, too – they don’t take their eyes off of you. Look at this:

It was like Bodega Bay in a certain Hitchcock film, and I was the blonde. I picked the wrong day to stop swearing.

Wait, what?!

I’m not Catholic, but in solidarity with Amy (who is), I gave up cursing for Lent. Last year I gave up meat, and the year before I gave up booze. This year I gave up one of my biggest vices, swearing. Anyone who knows me well knows I pepper my conversation with obscenity as liberally as a Hungarian sprinkles paprika into his goulash, the result of my years spent in a pro-football locker-room, the merchant marines, and various outlaw motorcycle gangs.

Sure, a little everyday cussing is probably cathartic, but a litany of profanity isn’t very becoming. So in the hopes that forty days of watching my language might change my behavior, I decided to give up swearing for Lent.

Big mistake.

Eventually we checked out of the cabin, and hit the open road. We hugged the coastline for several miles, and saw some beautiful scenery along the way.

Lucky for me, it kind of leaves you speechless, so no problem with the Lenten promises, though you’re apt to take a wide turn and see some incredible vista and mumble “Holy…smokes!…”

Things got more interesting when we hit the town of Kennet River, less than an hour from Lorne. In the cabin video, you heard me lament that we’d seen no koalas, no kangaroos, and no wallabies, but plenty of cockatoos. That would soon change. Kennet River is known for its colony of koalas, and here we got to finally see some stereotypical Aussie wildlife.

Even as a former outlaw biker and generally hard-nosed tough guy who used to work as a stevedore, I have to admit, these guys are cute. They were hanging out in the trees in a local park, either sleeping or feeding on leaves. They look, well,…cuddly.

Eventually we drove further into the park to see if we could find more koalas. I drove slowly, and we had our eyes focused up in the trees. I came around a bend, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw something up the road in the distance.

“HOLY!…COW! It’s a kangaroo!!”

Our drive up the road had paid off, and we spent a few minutes inching up to the kangaroo, who darted away. As we drove on, we found a low-lying koala passed out in a tree like he’d been out on a long bender. Amy got within feet of him to take pictures. The koala woke up and looked her in the eye. They communed.

I can’t say for sure, but I think Amy gained some valuable koala knowledge from him, like the Buddha under the bhodi tree. She’s like a koala whisperer.

We continued on our way down the road, and later that afternoon we drove out to Cape Otway to see its famous lighthouse, about a 15-mile drive through a wooded area. At one point, zipping through the woods, another kangaroo suddenly bounced out in front of the rental car. I slammed on the brakes: “JESU-…Golly!!”

We came within feet of making kangaroo burgers, but narrowly avoided disaster. I gathered my senses, and we headed down the road a few more miles to find some cars stopped by the side of the road, looking at koalas. We were hitting koala-rich vein, and Amy perked up, on the lookout.

When we were in Cambodia, Amy would put on her glasses to see the wild monkeys on the side of the road. Ever since then she’s called them her “Monkey Glasses.” The Monkey Glasses were working their magic apparently, because as we drove, The Koala Whisperer began to see more and more of her animal patronus charms. I was focused on the road, looking to avoid any further rogue kangaroos and Lenten slip-ups, but Amy however…

“There’s a koala!…there’s one!…there’s one…and there’s another one…”
“How do you keep seeing all these koalas?
“I just look for the fuzzy lumps up in the trees.”
“Well I can’t see sh-…I can’t see anything.”
“WAIT, BACK UP, BACK UP!!!”
“What?! What did you see?!”
“There’s like a colony of kangaroos!!”

I hit the brakes and backed up the car. And sure enough, back in the woods about 50 feet, sitting on the ground eating some grass…were two cows. The Koala Whisperer in her Ralph Lauren Monkey Glasses had misfired. And we never even went to the lighthouse, instead pushing on to spend the night in Port Campbell, near some of the greatest scenery on the Great Ocean Road.

The next day we drove off the Ocean Road briefly to have lunch inland, in the town of Timboon. The area is best known for its dairy farms and local cheeses. We had a great cheese plate for lunch (as well as some delicious pork belly) and after, we stopped by a local landmark:

That’s right – Cheeseworld! It’s like a whole world of cheese, and we went there. We read about cheese, we looked at cheese, we bought some cheese, and had a few milkshakes. With all the dairy appreciation, you’d think the local cows would have been happy with us. But apparently not. As we got closer to our motel room in Port Fairy, we pulled behind a double-decker stock trailer. It had the words “beef bus” painted on the back, and it was filled with cattle being moved somewhere, likely for some nefarious end. We pulled up next to the beef bus, and here’s where Elsie got even. Our rental car was showered with cattle urine.

I don’t know how the cow did it, but her aim was impeccable. It was like being in a yellow car wash, shot out of a bovine Super-Soaker. Sure, the wipers could clean the windshield, but the rest of the car, dusty from a few days of driving on dirt and gravel roads, looked like a map of the Grand Canyon. The next day was the first Friday of Lent, and we had been warned – we would eat no meat.

Animals: 1 – John & Amy: 0.

Friday morning we were awakened by an odd ringtone outside our Port Fairy motel window. It would repeat every few minutes. I was getting mad that the thoughtless person wouldn’t answer or turn off their phone: “What’s with this assh-…goofball?!” I got up and looked out the window, and this was the scene:

It was a couple of Australian magpies. They have the strangest song. Google it. Wait! – DON’T Google it, here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYEYc8Ge3nw
Imagine having that waking you up. It’s pretty incredible to think it comes from a bird. That’s a bird I can respect, unlike creepy voyeuristic cockatoos.

Our first stop after leaving Port Fairy was the Tower Hill Wildlife Reserve, where you can see koalas, kangaroos, wallabies, and emus. After parking the car, we went to the ranger station to get a trail map. While there, I read a little bit about emus. Some interesting facts:

Emus are the third largest bird in the world.
Emus can grow to about 7-8 feet tall.
Emus are flightless, but can run very fast.

So, armed with this knowledge, Amy and I went out for a hike. And before we got out of the carpark, we came face to face with a prehistoric looking emu.

You know how I feel about cockatoos. Emus are a whole different story. This is a bird who can claw out my eyes, run faster than me, and likely dunk on me in a game of one-on-one. I was having none of it. We stopped and watched quietly, and the emu approached us, very slowly. I was ready to punch this animal in the face and run, but when he got too close, Amy assumed this position:

Yep – they may be big, but they’re dumb! If you stretch out your hands high over your head, they think you’re a bigger, domintant emu, and they’ll walk away. And that’s what happened with this emu. Sucker.

Animals: 1 – John & Amy: 1

So we headed up the trail, and Amy and I became very quiet in the hopes of seeing a kangaroo or koala in the wild. The Koala Whisperer kept her eyes in the trees, and I kept my eyes on the bush. And then…a rustling in the trees…and just in front of us… “SON OF A…Biscuit!”

An emu hopped out on the path in front of us, scaring the daylights out of me. This thing was the size of Kareem Abdul Jabbar wearing lifts. Hearts racing, we stopped and let it pass, and continued our trek.

Soon, in a clearing, we came upon a fresh turd. Yes, a turd. Amy, a keen bush tracker, noted that this was an unusually big turd. And like all good zoologists, she picked up a stick and started to poke it, as if it might spring to life.

“What are you doing?”
“I’m poking it.”
“It looks like an everyday dog turd. Even worse, it could be human…”
“I think it’s a kangaroo turd.”
“Do kangaroo turds look like that? What do kangaroo turds look like?”

Well, all credit to the Whisperer, because it turns out it was a kangaroo turd. And a few minutes later, in the underbrush, I spotted a massive kangaroo, with forearms the size of Floyd Mayweather’s.

This guy was big. We watched as he fed on some grass, and eventually he hopped off into some brush. We walked on a little further, and minutes later, more rustling, and with it another startled kangaroo, who stared at us as long as we stared at him, until he, too, rustled off into some impassable shrubbery.

With no other kangaroos to be found, Amy and I started to head back down the trail towards the car. Amy heard rustling. We paused, and right next to us…

“MOTHER…of Pearl!”

Just off the path in the trees, two massive emus looked us in the eye, and then slunk off. We picked up our pace, and then the best wildlife encounter of our trip happened. Directly in front of us, a wallaby crossed the trail. He hopped into a bit of brush, and nosed around for something to eat. Amy and I quietly approached.

This little guy was about the size of a black lab. We moved in slowly, and the wallaby didn’t seem to pay any attention to us. Then he turned toward us, and hopped in our direction, heading just behind us. He turned, and he very slowly started to sniff and move his ears. That’s when we noticed – this wallaby had one milky eye, and the other was missing. He was blind, and with us frozen in place, he slowly approached us trying to figure out what was going on, sniffing and twitching his ears. We were within a foot or two, like you could reach out and grab him.

It was incredible. And as a former longshoreman, amateur Golden Gloves contender, and retired hard-boiled detective, I’m not afraid to tell you it was very cute and touching. We didn’t want to move and disturb or scare him, but eventually we slowly backed away, and he hopped off into the woods. “That was fu…reaking incredible.”

Animals for the win.

Over the next few days, during our most westerly stay in the tiny fishing village of Nelson, we were warned not to drive at dawn or dusk – the kangaroos are out en masse, and will jump in front of your car like a whitetail deer. (Ed. note: see our Nelson hotel room in our last post). We also spoke to a nice woman about koalas:

“Ooh, they’re nasty little buggers.”
“Koalas?!”
“Oh yeah, if you get too close to them, they’ll scratch you up. Nasty things.”
“Wow, I didn’t know that.”
“I’ve been to Colorado in the States.”
“You have? Did you enjoy it?”
“Yes – you know what I like?”
“What’s that?”
“Squirrels. They’re cute, I like them a lot.”

I guess everything is relative, and familiarity breeds contempt.

As we headed back east, working our way back towards our current cabin stay in Lorne, we stopped in the Glenelg River State Park. There we saw dozens of kangaroos who leapt in front of our car as we slowly drove down the dirt road. When we exited the park and picked up speed on the highway, two massive emus crossed in front of us. I’ll tell you one thing: you don’t have to find the wildlife in Australia, it finds you.

As we drove on, I realized I’d stopped reacting as violently to the wildlife, Amy had stopped putting on her Monkey Glasses, and I’d stopped swearing as much. Even as I type here in Lorne, the cockatoos on the porch don’t bother me as much as they once did. Familiarity breeds contempt. And some breeds are more familiar, and some breeds more contemptible.

(We know this was a longer-than-usual post…if you’ve made it this far, congratulations! You shall be rewarded with a song:

Hi Mom, and a big “HELLO!” to all of our faithful followers out there. I know you’ve all been clamoring for a new blog post, but we just finished a three-week car and campervan adventure in New Zealand which has kept us fairly busy, and with limited internet service we’ve been out of touch. Sorry about that! But now we’re leaving, and we’ll have a post about the campervan trip soon…in the meantime…

One thing I can tell you about New Zealand: we’ve met so many nice folks on this global trip, but this may be the nicest place we’ve been. Take this exchange, that happened a few nights ago:

(Sunday night, 11pm)
[KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK]
Me: “Sorry to wake you, but do you have a spare key for Cabin #6? We locked ourselves out…”
Campground owner, standing in doorway, in his underwear: “Oh…well, no worries, mate.”
(sounds Australian, I know, but they say it in New Zealand, too)
“We went out to look at the stars, and then I realized I forgot our key, and the door was locked behind us…beautiful stars out tonight…we don’t get these kind of stars in New York, you see…”
“No worries, mate.”
“I’m terribly embarrassed about this – I hate to be a bother – but the stars, you know; and the doors automatically lock when you step outside, so…”
“No worries, mate…”
“My wife is actually trying to stay warm in the toilets right now, she’s in there in her nightgown; so she’s not very happy with me, as you can imagine…”
(ed. note: “toilets” = “bathrooms.” Public camp bathrooms in this case.)
“No worries, mate, here you go.”
[hands me key]
“Thanks so much! Hate to be a bother…sorry again, I appreciate your help!”
“No worries, mate.”

More New Zealand facts: there are a lot of sheep here. A lot. So much so that during television coverage for the opening day of rugby season (opening day, people), there was a commercial for sheep mouthwash. You read that correctly: a commercial for sheep mouthwash. I can barely floss my own teeth, let alone force some ewe to gargle a belt of Listerine. But I guess you have to keep on top of your sheep’s dental care here, it’s a matter of national interest.

Something else interesting: some people here walk barefoot, even in cities. And why not? There’s no garbage or litter anywhere, and abundant recycling opportunities. Hell, they even had a primetime show about recycling. And the public restrooms are spotless, stocked, and without a trace of graffiti. So yes, you can go barefoot just about anywhere.

Other things of note:
“Shopping Carts” are “Trundlers.”

Dogs kill penguins.

Bananas are scarce.

One other thing, and with this I’m being totally serious: New Zealand may be the most beautiful, scenic place we’ve ever been. Ever. Every time to you turn a corner, your eyes expand and you say, “WOW…” The scenery is really like that. It’s amazing.

And speaking of amazing, there’s this lengthy tale: A few weeks ago, Amy and I went to the New Zealand Rugby Sevens tournament in Wellington. It’s a two-day tournament in which sixteen nations compete in fourteen-minute matches of rugby, with seven players per side. Hence, “The Rugby Sevens.” But it’s more than just a sporting event. It’s like Halloween, Mardi Gras, and a dance-off all rolled into a big two-day party.

First of all, EVERYONE wears costumes. As one Kiwi told us, “we don’t really celebrate Halloween, so this is a big costume party for us.” Secondly, EVERYONE is drinking from mid-morning until late at night, like Mardi Gras. And like Mardi Gras, EVERYONE in Wellington embraces the event, which takes over the whole town. In fact, these posters were up all over the city, a friendly reminder from a tolerant community:

Things kicked off early on a Friday morning. Around 9am, as we walked down to the bus stop near our rental room, we saw people in various costumes drinking in pubs which had been open long before we walked by. This seemed normal, and didn’t phase anyone. Then we boarded a bus bound for the city center, where we joined groups of lumberjacks, construction workers, football players, and a biker gang for the ride downtown. It was as if we’d stumbled upon The Village People ride at Disneyland.

(Note: here’s another example about how nice everyone is in New Zealand – at every bus stop, nearly every person who got off the bus paused briefly and shouted to the front, “Thank you, Bus Driver!!” And the bus driver would smile and nod, or tip his cap like he was Fred Astaire. As a New Yorker, it was unnerving.)

As the day went on, we concluded that the most popular costumes, it seemed, were as follows:

#1 – Caveman/Flintstones (with varying degrees of animal skin, from the real to the cartoony).

#2 – Ron Burgundy and the “Anchorman” crew.

#3 – Superheroes (a catch-all, but again, very popular).

And finally, #4 – Mexicans.

Yes, that’s right – Mexicans! Everywhere there were people dressed as your stereotypical Mexican.

For example, look at this classic movie cast, from right to left – the Cowardly Lion, the Scarecrow, the Tin-Man, and the Mexican.

And no one seemed to take offense to this. In fact, we saw a few guys dressed as Hasidic Jews, with big-nose Groucho glasses. And we also saw a bunch of people dressed in blackface – yes, blackface. But WAIT, it gets better – including a black guy in blackface!! I did find it fascinating that this is acceptable in New Zealand. This seemed normal, and didn’t phase anyone.

Maybe it’s just culturally accepted, like they have some very advanced sense of humor, or very thick skins. I can’t really explain it, honestly. But as another example, first we saw a black guy dressed in blackface, and then – and I wish we had a better picture of this – there was this little person – dressed as a leprechaun! (Note Fred Flintstone behind him.)

Also of interest – two guys were dressed as the Blues Brothers, and some other guy came up and pointed at the bigger guy and said (earnestly) – “Hey! Jim Belushi!” Then there were the “sexy” girls. You know, sexy policewoman, sexy kitten, sexy viking…all the iterations of sexy whatever. Now you can add the following to the list of “sexy” costumes: Sexy Rubik’s Cube. Sexy Michael Jordan. And Sexy Pasta.

There were grown men dressed in adult diapers.

Please tell me if you’ve heard of this song: it’s called “Double-Bubble Bubble Butt.” Yes, that’s the song. And apparently, at the Sevens, it’s a thing to be on the Jumbotron shaking your butt – your “double bubble bubble butt” – to this song. This happened half a dozen times at least.

People chugged beer, people puked.

People STOOD in puke.

People in costumes played double-dutch, in a stadium hallway.

The fleet was in town.

Fully-grown babies terrorized the venue.

..and Bill Clinton French-kissed Arnold Schwarznegger.

This seemed normal, and didn’t phase anyone.

All-day drinking combined with the anonymity of costumes equals trouble. They did something at the stadium in Wellington that they would NEVER do in the USA – sell beer in bottles. Sure, they were plastic bottles, but as the days got longer, you were prepared to be hit in the head with an empty beer bottle missle. Bottles were flying everywhere, and with total impunity.

And something totally funny: there was an actual sporting event going on during all of this mayhem. I can tell you some of the results now, if you haven’t already checked on how your fantasy Rugby Sevens team did…

The USA actually won something. They were the “Shield Winner,” and it was the Rugby Sevens equivalent of getting a participation trophy for being on the intramural squash team. We were the best of the crappy teams, beating notable rugby powerhouses like Spain and Portugal. USA!!!!

Kenya also won something. They were the “Bowl” winners, meaning they are not that bad, but frankly not that good either. And here’s the interesting part – during their award presentation, the stadium loudspeakers played “Buffalo Solider.” Seems an awkward choice to me, but then again, I was not dressed as a pants-free nun, so who am I to judge these proceedings?

And of course, New Zealand’s own All-Blacks sevens squad won it all, taking home the first place trophy. The crowd went nuts, and once the award was presented, we high-tailed it out of the stadium to avoid the crowds, the flying bottles, and the vomit. In doing so, we missed the All-Blacks doing an impromptu “Haka,” the Maori battle dance that’s become a symbol of national pride.

So this national pride came to a crescendo at the Sevens. And it should have. When you live in a country where everyone’s nice, where the streets are clean, where every vista is more amazing than the next, and where your national team dominates the world in your favorite sport, there’s much to be happy about. So much so that you thank the bus driver on your way home to wash out your sheep’s mouth with a fluoride rinse. This is normal, and doesn’t phase anyone.

I should have known better when I saw our boarding passes were written in magic marker: this was going to be an interesting flight.

A little over a week ago, Amy and I left Myanmar for Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia, where we are now, in Bali. The first leg of the journey required a flight from Bagan, in upper Myanmar, to Yangon, where we connected to Kuala Lumpur.

By our count, we’ve flown about 20 times so far on this tour, from intercontinental jumbo jets to regional turbo-prop planes, and we’ve taken some carriers that give you a little pause for thought. Like Vietnam Airlines – sounds scary right? But they’re part of the Skyteam alliance, and an excellent carrier. Hainan Air or DragonAir? Never heard of them before. But both worked out fine getting us to and from Taiwan.

Then there was Air KBZ Flight 263, from Bagan to Yangon. First off, Air KBZ is run by Kanbawza, a government-backed bank in Myanmar. I like my banks to hand out toasters and invest in risky credit default swap schemes, thank you very much, not take the helm of shoddy, out-dated aircraft. If a bank wants to crash something, crash the housing market, not my flight. Air KBZ has been in business about three years and they have just six older planes in their fleet. In that time, one plane has overshot a runway, and just last week, they evacuated another plane in Yangon, right on the tarmac. With that ratio of planes-to-incidents, we had pretty good odds, right? Just the kind of odds Amy and I were willing to take…

We got to the airport in Bagan early, reservations in hand, and checked in. Check in was easy enough – we walked up to a “counter” that was basically a folding card table, where a dude in a black track jacket wrote out the aforementioned boarding passes in his blue magic marker. Then we handed our bags to another guy, and away they went…

Yep, that’s him, literally carrying our bags through a wooden door to the plane. Then there was the security screening. We went through metal detectors, and our bags got x-rayed, and that was it. No shoe removal, no laptops out, no liquids issues. I actually think my belt buckle set off the light, but they waved me through anyway – what’s the bigger danger, my belt, or the plane itself? So we went through the metal detectors, sat in some old plastic waiting room chairs that looked like they were shipped via time machine from 1975, and waited patiently for the plane to arrive. The Myanmar version of “The Today Show” was on a fuzzy flatscreen TV. They were interviewing a monk. He looked bored, too.

When the plane finally flew in, we were aroused from our slumbers, and it was basically “ALRIGHT – EVERYBODY ON!!” I was fairly excited because there were only about 10 to 15 people waiting for the flight, and when the plane pulled up to the doorway – er,…gate – it was clear this was a decent sized aircraft, so plenty of seats. Amy and I were schlepping a few extra carry-ons because we’d bought a bunch of souvenirs in Thailand and Myanmar. I was happy to have room in the overhead for the bags, and to be able to stretch out my legs some. Little did I know the surprise Air KBZ had in store for us.

We were loaded on to a small bus – for safety reasons I guess – which drove us about twenty feet to the aircraft. No joke, twenty feet, if that. The driver had barely put the bus into gear when he jammed on the brakes and opened the door and motioned for us to get out. With all the loading and unloading, we could have walked there in a fraction of the time. I could have thrown our bags that distance, if it came to it. I guess everyone needs a job in Myanmar, and this was his assignment, so no getting around it.

Here’s what should have been the next indication about the flight: the plane’s engines were still hot, and started up as we all boarded. It was like the pilot had pulled in the driveway, and honked the horn – “Okay, let’s go! I have to drop you off at the movies in Yangon, and then I have to pick up your brother from hockey practice in Mandalay – let’s hustle!!”

So we got off the bus, scurried through the prop-wash and loud whir of the engines, and boarded the plane in the rear of the aircraft. And when we got in, all was revealed. This flight had just come from Mandalay, and was already three-quarters full. The pilot had already been to pick up your brother, and the whole damn hockey team was crammed in as well! All the gear was stowed in the overheads, all the seats were taken…this flight was already packed to the gills, and now they were going to shoehorn us in somehow.

Amy grabbed the first seat she could, and I saw an open seat a few rows back from her. I opened the overhead to store the souvenir bag, and had to play Tetris with the other bags to make ours fit. I took my seat next to a clearly miserable fellow who first acknowledged me by starting up the old “elbow game” with the shared armrest. I’m relentless with that game, by the way, so it ended up being his elbow front-half, mine back-half. We were both working up a sweat, it was pretty hot and humid on the aircraft by this point, no wonder he was miserable. Then I saw what was going on in the seats directly behind me…

They were packed with luggage! Just piled up on the seats. But there were still people who needed to sit down. Where were they going to go? I looked up to see if there was any additional overhead space, and I saw this:

Yup, that sucker is broken and TAPED SHUT with cheap packing tape. I assume they used clear tape in the hope that no one would notice – very tricky, Air KBZ. Nothing was going in that overhead. So get this – they took the bags from behind me and put them a) in the aisle (to trip over, clearly), and b) in the crew’s service area, where they prepare the meals, etc. I think the crew just sat on them, probably, while they drew straws to see who would get the last parachute. Eventually we were all in our seats, and the flight took off.

Here’s an example of the kind of loose program being run on Air KBZ: do you see this guy? He’s got an ANTENNA on his head, a radio antenna. He’s listening to Burma’s Top 40, or having a short-wave conversation with someone in Bangladesh. During takeoff!

Clearly this is okay, or at least it’s not frowned-upon. I like to think he was sitting over the wing and letting the cockpit know if the flaps were actually working.

I’m normally not afraid of flying, but I thought about it. This plane was overloaded. It was an older plane (taped together, mind you), and we were flying in remote upper Myanmar. When you hear about plane crashes on the news, where “two Americans are among the missing”…this is that situation. I began to recite the old Sioux battle cry: “Today is a good day to die.”

And sure enough, about halfway through the flight, terror struck — but in non-lethal form. A sudden disturbance erupted about ten rows ahead of me. A very concerned Asian gentlemen popped up immediately and motioned wildly for a crew member. What could be happening?! And we found out all too soon: a young white girl was barfing violently, like a drunk cheerleader on prom night. It could have been the heat on that flight, or it could have been the turbulence – it could have been the fear of death! – but this poor girl’s insides were on the outside now. I’m glad I didn’t see the results, but I know this much – when she was escorted to the back of the plane to freshen up (slaloming the excess luggage, of course), her face looked as pale and sickly as the Crypt Keeper’s. And the clean up! Oh man…

The poor male flight attendant – he had nothing to use but old newspapers to sop up the mess, and he must have gone through the equivalent of the Sunday New York Times, including the Magazine, the real estate inserts, and the Sunday Styles section, “Vows” and all. This poor guy single-handedly cleaned up the likes of the Exxon Valdez spill up there in Row 12. He deserved some kind of medal. Or at least the last parachute…

With that excitement soon behind us, and a few sprays of Burmese Lysol around the cabin, we all looked forward to landing in Yangon. And what a better way to land in Yangon than to have massive crosswinds pushing the plane off the runway.

Yes, that’s right. We were basically coming in sideways as we landed – I think the pilot watched a little too much “Dukes of Hazzard” growing up. There was the first initial “squelch” of the tires, followed by a little bit of a fishtail, and then another “squelch,” and then a quick straightening out in the other direction. My stomach turned – I thought we were going to need more newspaper, pronto. There were a few gasps, and then…sighs of relief. We’d actually made it. The guy next to me looked over at me, wide-eyed and giggly. It was the sort of look someone gives you when they just got away with something, like getting out of a speeding ticket in Georgia, or returning the golf cart they drove into the water hazard. Or in this case, cheating death.

And then it was all over, as quick as it began. We all unloaded, and got put on to another bus for the twelve second drive to baggage claim. “Baggage Claim” is basically a garage door where you wait for some guys in uniforms to transfer your bags off an old pickup truck and on to a big pile of other luggage, as if they planned on burning them all, and then you pay another guy (not in a uniform) a dollar because he found your bag in the pile, and put it on a luggage cart for you.

That’s just how it works in Myanmar, all of it. It wouldn’t make sense any other way, really.

Last week, we traveled to Yangon, Myanmar. That’s Burma, folks, the former Rangoon. It’s a fascinating city, and a great example of what happens when you don’t clean your room. What do I mean by that?

The British Empire extended here, and in the colonial architecture you can see what a stunning city “Rangoon” once was. Some of these buildings rival the great Victorian and Edwardian buildings of London. Except for one thing – they’re all run down, and many of them are totally derelict. It’s a shame. The mix of the Asian (the stupas, the temples, the food!) and the European (the architecture, the grand boulevards, the cocktails!) must have been striking.

But after years of military rule and neglect, Yangon is a shadow of it’s past glory. The people are perhaps the nicest we’ve met on the trip – everyone smiles and says hello, EVERYONE – but the town could use an enema.

Which leads me to another derelict item which has seen better days. My Adidas.

Like Yangon, my blue suede Adidas Campus sneakers were constructed in Asia to serve a distant European commercial entity. And again like Yangon, my Adidas are falling apart.

They’re the sneakers I wore as I boarded the flight in New York, and they were the first thing to hit Japanese soil when we landed. In their year-and-a-half life, they’ve seen three continents, 15 countries, and New Year’s Eves in Panama City in 2012 and Ho Chi Minh City in 2013. They’ve been to North Korea, and lived to tell the tale.

Their soles have touched liquids unimaginable, and stepped in organic matter I care not to discuss. They have stood sentinel over the world’s worst squatty potties, provided a lift in back-alley bathrooms, and a half-inch barrier between my feet and certain dysentery. I am ever thankful that they have not been under one of those blacklights they use in Lysol commercials.

But Adidas, it’s time for you to go. As a certifiable heel-dragger, I have worn you down. Walking around last week, what I thought was an irritating small pebble in my shoe turned out to be a staple – A STAPLE – that had poked through the thinning sole of the right sneaker. And that was just the right sneaker. The dominant left foot heel is so worn down, there’s a small rock I’ve been carrying around for who-knows-how-long, a stowaway on our Asian voyage.

Photographic evidence indicates the blue suede shoes were purchased in the summer of 2012, as revealed in this Labor Day photo taken in Henry David Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond. Little would we know at the time that these sneakers would accompany us on our own search “to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.”

Sharp-eyed readers will notice something interesting in that Walden photo: the Brazil t-shirt. One night in Cambodia, while drinking a beer with Mr. Ox, he asked about that very t-shirt which I was wearing. I explained it was a Brazil soccer jersey replica, and he said, unremarkably, “nice shirt.” I looked around, and saw this honest man, who fought the Khmer Rouge, making an honest living trying to support his wife, soon-to-be five kids, and a mother-in-law for dollars a day on a beach in Cambodia. And come to think of it, I never saw him wear a shirt. So I literally gave him the shirt off my back. And the next day when we left Castaways, he was wearing the shirt, and a grin.

So Adidas, we’ve come full circle. You were born in Asia (Indonesia, to be exact), and you’ll stay in Asia, where you’re hopefully making someone as happy as Ox seemed to be wearing that t-shirt. Yes, you’re worn down, you’re dirty, and at times, your smell has rivaled that of a sick farm animal. But for someone on the cleaning staff at our Yangon hotel, who likely makes under $200 a month and wears $1 flip-flops every day, I bet you were a welcome addition.

Adios, Adidas, and good luck. But don’t worry about your replacement. Nothing could be more American than skateboarding, California, and Jeff Spicoli. You’re being replaced by these kick-ass American Vans – made in Thailand.

Hello from Bangkok, y’all!! (FYI, that’s an American term for our global readers…both of you.) It’s our last night here. It’s been not “One Night in Bangkok,” but by dint of nature — foreshadowing! — nearly ten, broken up by a five-day beach trip to the island of Koh Samet. We leave for Myanmar tomorrow, and will have spent about two weeks here.

We arrived in Bangkok on New Year’s Day. I know it sounds a bit strange, but Bangkok for us has been a vacation from our vacation. It’s a cosmopolitan city with all the amenities of home, but here in Asia. After our adventurous loop through Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, it gave us a chance to rest, regroup, and restock supplies; to take care of some housekeeping. The internet works well here, for example. We got our visas for Myanmar. We mailed a box of souvenirs home. And one other thing…

Because of its many canals, Bangkok is called the “Venice of the East.” And guess what?! I got my very own canal! A very small canal…

I got a route canal! In Bangkok!

Let’s recap: when I was about ten years old, I smashed my teeth on the side of a pool. I like to refer to this unique way of losing one’s teeth as “poolside dining.” My four front teeth are all fake. Then, as luck would have it, one of my caps broke off on this trip. Here’s a fun way to lose your dental work should you have the self-loathing desire to hemorrhage money and be inconvenienced:

1. Leave home for a year.
2. Fly to the other side of the planet.
3. Visit a country with questionable health care options (like, you know, China).
4. Go somewhere totally remote (like, you know, the Great Wall of China).
5. Bite into a Snickers bar.

So I got a “provisional crown” in Taipei, and planned on getting a new permanent cap later, in either New Zealand or Australia. But while we were at dinner on New Year’s Day, my tooth felt a little loose – the one with the provisional crown. I didn’t mention it to Amy, because I wasn’t sure what was going on. I only sort-of remember what a loose tooth feels like, because since I was ten, several of my teeth have been bolted to my skull. Plus, we were eating sushi – it’s not like we were eating candy apples and corn on the cob. Then later, back in the hotel room, it was definitely shaky. I finally told Amy. I tested the tooth a little bit… And very easily, this monster came out:

I KNOW, RIGHT?!! GROSS!! The whole damn post came out, cap and all. I freaked out a bit. Here’s a recreation:

NOTE: Based on the last photo alone, I’ve been offered a try-out with the Toronto Maple Leafs.

But a stroke of luck that it happened when, where, and how it did – first, I could slide it back in and have a tooth. It was loose, yes, but usable, and fun freaking people out, like when your great uncle took out his dentures after a few Canadian Clubs at Thanksgiving. Second, there are about a thousand really good dentists in Bangkok – it’s a dental work destination. And lastly – they work fast and cheap.

Here’s how easy it is to get dental work done over here: we got up the next day and walked into a dental office in the mall across the street, recommended by our travel insurance folks.

I waited for five minutes, and then the dentist met with me for a consult. As a walk-in, mind you. I’ve waited longer to use the men’s room at Yankee Stadium. Turns out that that tooth in particular, after the pool accident, was stunted, so the post didn’t have much to hang on to. And after so many years of use, and all the monkeying with it in Taipei, it just gave up. So my best option – for now – was to get a new post (requiring a route canal) and permanent cap, and get dental implants in the future. “So I’ve got that going for me, which is nice.”

This was on Thursday the 2nd. The route canal was scheduled for Saturday the 4th. Fittings and temp crown scheduled for Sunday the 5th. I was there for a half-hour and billed $5 for an x-ray. Five bucks. Take that American Healthcare System!

Saturday afternoon Amy and I went back to the mall. Amy was going to buy some things from the supermarket and drugstore. I was going to buy complex dental surgery from a mall dentist is Thailand. It was going to be awesome.

There’s something to be said about Thai dentistry, or at least the practice I went to. They’re both very thorough and very sterile. And some fun new things happened, like this: after I got the local anesthesia, the doctor covered my other teeth and gums with some kind of latex dental dam – kinky! It’s supposed to keep the route canal from getting infected. I was like “The Gimp” in Pulp Fiction.

And this: after all the drilling, they sprayed something like Clorox in my mouth – I guess it was some kind of disinfectant. With that, my mouth kept filling up with saliva, it was like I was getting water-boarded. Then I was taken to get an x-ray. As I sat there with the heavy lead protector on my chest, I drooled about a half-pint of spittle all over the vest. The dental assistants said something to each other in Thai that I can only imagine was something like, “we got ourselves a drooler!”

So I got the route canal, I was fitted for the new crown, and they put in a temporary crown for a week. Funny – they used the Taipei crown as the temporary, and I asked that when it was all over, if they’d please give it back to me. I wanted to keep it for my museum, with my bowling trophy and flip-flops. But they never gave it back. I guess there’s good money to be made on eBay with my old dental work, like selling a lock of Justin Beiber’s hair, or a vial George Clooney’s tears.

We had to wait about a week before the new crown was ready, so we went to the beach in Koh Samet for five days. And when we got back this week, the rest was pretty easy – just a matter of getting the new crown put in. I wish there was something exciting to tell you about that, but if you’ve ever seen a piece of hardware getting mounted to a wall, or a small dental fixture getting mounted to your face, then it’s no big deal. But here’s the final results:

So I’m basically as good as new – until it’s time to get dental implants. And won’t that be great, when I go around telling everyone I got implants: “Hey, I got implants! Want to see them?! They cost me a few thousand dollars, but don’t they look- HEY, NO TOUCHING!!”

Anyhoo…tomorrow we’re off to Myanmar, and who knows what the internet will be like there. But I tell you this: when we climb Mt. Kyaiktiyo to see the Golden Rock and Buddhist temple, I will not be biting into a Snickers bar at the summit. Or possibly ever again.

Perhaps you’ve heard the news. They’re rioting in Bangkok. They’ve taken to the streets, shut down traffic and closed most schools and businesses. And sadly, a few people have been killed. This is all happening, as I write, within blocks of our hotel room (except for the killing part). We thought people would want to know how we were doing, and if everything is okay. Well…

PROTEST SELFIE!!

Okay, let’s be fair – this is a serious situation. Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets to protest what they consider a corrupt, illegitimate government. They’ve decided to “shut down” Bangkok for several days to send a message. For more on the story, check this out:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25708092

But on street level (isolated gunplay aside – yes, not to make light of that) it’s really not that bad. It’s been like a big party around here today. I ask you: is this the face of violence?

In the USA, she’d be one of those “Red Hat” ladies, or the person who sells cork-topped bottles of sand art at the flea market.

Last night, Amy and I went to a rooftop restaurant for a few drinks. It was quiet, but on one corner a block from our hotel, you could see people gathering. You can maybe see that street very lit up in the photo below, in the foreground, crossed by the elevated metro line:

After a few drinks, we decided to get something to eat. On street level, everything was closed. The streets were basically empty, except for protesters settling in for the night.

Most stores had their gates down. We were forced to eat dinner at…The Hard Rock Café. Chicken Fingers, Nachos, Macaroni and Cheese, and a Filipino cover band. In this way alone, we were victims of the protest. The shutdown worked – on my alimentary canal.

This morning we woke to the sounds of constant cheering and whistling. As we did some housekeeping – emails, travel bookings – things got louder, and then impassioned speeches started to echo over loudspeakers. Here’s the view from our hotel window:

Eventually, it was lunchtime. We had to get something to eat, somewhere. So we braved the protesting crowds and did like all good Americans do – we went to the mall for some tacos.

The mall is right across the street from our hotel, and to get there, we had to cross a major thoroughfare filled with protesters. Of course we were nervous about what things would be like. I mean, people had been killed, what should we expect? Here’s what we discovered:

OCCUPY STARBUCKS! First of all, a great majority of these protesters are middle-aged folks and older. They’re dressed up like it’s a parade, or the Republican National Convention. And many of them were in the mall having a nice lunch.

Outside, people were wandering around in groups, blowing whistles. Several hundred sat on the steps of the mall. OCCUPY SEPHORA!

People are selling t-shirts everywhere, and Thai flags, hats, armbands. Here’s some of the better ones we’ve seen…

So of course, I had to get one. Got mine for 100 baht, a little over three bucks. Translations are welcome; hopefully there’s no course language. Sorry if there is, Grandma. But I can’t read it either.

Amy and I walked up to a more crowded area, at an intersection a few blocks the other way from our hotel. It was jam packed with about five to ten thousand protesters. TV crews were there, and a big stage – this seemed to be a main gathering area.

One woman had just finished speaking, and music was now playing. People were singing and clapping along, and handing out free water to combat the heat. Especially to fair-skinned folks like us. It was crowded, yes, but all very peaceful. Let me tell you something – I’ve seen more crowd violence at a Grateful Dead concert after the beer ran out.

Example: Here’s some very bored EMS folks. Note the one guy playing with the blood pressure thingy…

And all the people smiling and posing for photos. You’d think it was summer vacation at Mount Rushmore. A lot of Facebook profile shots in the making…

But I will tell you this – these folks know how to protest. They’re all out there – every age group, every walk of life. They shut down their capital city, and they’ve made a statement in one single day that’s being heard around the world. And they’re stopping for sushi along the way. It makes the “Occupy Wall Street” movement look like the pep rally at Ridgemont High.

So…don’t worry everyone – we’re okay. What violence there has been has occured in isolated areas away from our hotel. Tourists are being treated nicely. And Amy’s at the pool as I write, likely sipping on some coconut-infused lime martini. We’re fine, Mom.

Thursday night, Amy and I left Hanoi for Hoi An. It’s a beautiful UNESCO World Heritage site on the South China Sea – low slung, brightly-washed buildings on a slow-moving river, and at night, twinkling lanterns that give it a romantic feel.

If it wasn’t a real place, you’d think this was the Epcot version of Vietnam. Situated about halfway up the coast between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), it’s accessible via Da Nang, which is a very quick flight away. But we didn’t fly.

We took an overnight sleeper train.

Neither of us was terribly excited about a 15-hour train journey, but there’s a company in Vietnam that offers a “luxury” overnight sleeper car for western tourists: all the amenities of a hotel room crammed onto the rails, and at a very reasonable price, not unlike a room for a night. So we determined we’d give it a try. I’d convinced Amy of the romance of the sleeper, having experienced it several times during my study abroad. And while Amy has never done a sleeper, she did enjoy a classic train experience on our honeymoon, when we took an Orient Express train from Machu Picchu to Cusco, a three-hour trip that included a five-course meal and a mariachi band.

We were delusional in thinking this journey would be the same. This would not be riding a Eurail pass on an efficient German train, and it would be far from the luxury of the Orient Express. We came to realize this very quickly when we went to the tourist train office. The luxury train was sold out for days – it’s the holiday season, and there are lots of tourists around. Our next best option would be to take the “soft sleeper” offered by Vietnam Rail itself, basically their first class sleeper. So we headed across the street to the Hanoi station ticket office.

Buying train tickets in Vietnam is one part DMV, one part Spanish Inquisition, and one part Rollerball. You have to navigate the bureaucracy, ask relentless questions to get any answers, and meanwhile keep elbowing and shouldering fellow ticket buyers who are literally trying to push you away from the window. We took a number, sat in the airless waiting area, and watched the numbers slowly click by. Eventually our number was called. We approached the window:

“Tomorrow, 26th, Soft Sleeper to Da Nang, 2 persons.”
“NO. SOLD OUT.”
“Next day? The 27th?”
(A guy came up on my left and tried to push me out of the way to access the window. I elbowed him in the shoulder. I lived in New York for twenty years.)
The ticket seller started typing. Then more Typing. Numerous glances at an ancient computer screen. Then a look at several columns of numbers hand-written on the back of an envelope (what?!). Leafing through a rubber-banded packet full of tickets. More typing. More typing….
(The same guy tried to push me again, shoving his number in the window. I elbowed his ribs. An older man sidled up to my right side. I was not afraid to elbow an old man, if it came to it. I needed to get to Da Nang, damnit.)
“NO. SOLD OUT.”
“Okay, HARD-sleeper, two persons, on 26th…”
(I elbowed two people, including a young woman, simultaneously on my left; checked my pocket for my money; looked over my shoulder to make sure Amy was okay on my right – she was shooting daggers at the old man – and I leaned in to obscure any possible entry to the window, making my shoulders broad. I basically stuck my head through the window, like an ostrich. Though perhaps a guillotine is the better metaphor here…)
“NO. SOLD OUT.”

You can see where this was going. Nowhere, fast. About a half-hour and several bruised ribs later, we secured two hard-sleeper berths on the 26th. This is after the ticket lady told me repeatedly that the soft AND hard sleepers on the 26th were sold out, and the 27th would require moving berths to a different car at 1:00am midway through the journey. I think ultimately, after my refusing to leave, my asking question after question after question, and my callous disregard for human life and clear dominance playing “pushy-shovey”, she simply wanted to get rid of me. So we got two tickets for the day we wanted.

An explanation of the hard sleeper: a hard sleeper is a compartment with six bunks and mattresses about an inch thick. Not the luxury tourist tickets we originally wanted, not a first class car as we’d hoped. It was a sleeper car, yes, but now we were riding with the great unwashed. The romance was over… The nightmare was about to begin. There would be no mariachi band.

At 6:30pm on the 26th, we boarded the train at Hanoi Station for our 7pm departure. After walking past a “washing up” area with two already polluted sinks, we squeezed into the hall past about 100 Vietnamese people carrying oversized bags to find our berth. We approached the door and peered in to see which level of hell we’d been assigned.

To our great relief, we found two absolutely delightful British women – Jo and Sam – who, like us, had been stuck with the hard-sleeper. The four of us made introductions, traded war stories, and had a few laughs. We also had two Vietnamese gents with us. They each had the uppermost berths, and retired there almost immediately for most of the journey. They were pleasant, unassuming, and generally kept to themselves except for the occasional trip to the stainless steel bathroom at the end of the train car.

With fifteen hours ahead of us in a room the size of a crowded prison cell, the four of us quickly broke into a handful of tepid beers we brought along, or, in Amy’s case, a bottle of red wine.

We exchanged travel stories and watched the world pass by our window. About an hour into the trip, Amy decided to explore the train and go find the “Club Car,” where we’d heard rumors you could buy food and drinks. From here out things got interesting.

Like a modern-day Marco Polo, Amy came back with fascinating tales of strange people, foreign lands, and a Shangri-La where one could enjoy life with cheap beer and open spaces. The Club Car, we were told, had café seating, big windows on either side, and a small staff eager to serve the weary traveller. But first, Amy warned us, to reach this fairyland, you had to navigate through two cars of open seating – the Greyhound bus of Vietnam Rail – the cheap seats – a veritable Scylla and Charybdis of cranky old people, crying children, snotty teenagers, cellphone zombies, aisle-standers, leg-extenders, loud-talkers, and worst of all, vestibule-packing smokers.

(Please note: many of these photos are blurry because of the rocking of the train. It’s not a terribly smooth ride in Vietnam, and we tried our best.)

I was game, of course, but Jo and Sam were happy to stay back in the sleeper, likely looking forward to a little peace and quiet. Amy and I went into the hallway and immediately started following two other gents headed in the same direction, each tippling a can of cheap Vietnamese beer along the way. We had encountered another advance team from the rear of the train.

After a few minutes, we reached the elusive Club Car. And Amy was right: there were about six train employees, all looking incredibly bored, and a handful of Vietnamese passengers eating bowls of soup. Wooden booths were set next to large windows, and a run-down bar at the end of the car stood opposite a few refrigerators and cases of beer, soda, and other supplies. The two advance-men slipped into a rear booth by the door, and with no other seating available, Amy and I asked if we could join them.

Here we met Chris and John, an Irishman and Aussie, respectively, who had only recently met as part of a tour group. They were the reason we couldn’t get the luxury tourist berths, as their group was taking up the entire car. Apparently they had been through a rough tour day together, and were escaping their wives, families, and less sociable tour members. They had been to a Vietnamese “water puppet” show earlier in the day. We asked them how it was. John replied, “it was SHIT!” Chris said he was unsure, because he fell asleep when it started. John said he would recommend it to all fellow travellers, because “if I had to sit through that rubbish, then so does everyone else!” We all got along swimmingly.

During our conversation with Chris and John, a clearly inebriated Vietnamese fellow sat at the table across from us, drinking a glass of hot milk. He interrupted our conversation to ask where I was from. He laughed and we shook hands. Then he asked Amy for a piece of paper, and wrote something totally illegible. He laughed even harder, so we all laughed with him, nervously. Then he made a two-finger pointing motion, a la the Three Stooges eye-poke, and said something like “FEE-SHEE!” Then he made a slashing motion: “CHECK!” He repeated this several times. I mimicked him. “FEE-SHEE! CHECK!” He laughed even harder. We did this about 10 times, back and forth, and he was laughing hysterically. This guy would not stop laughing. He slapped me on the back several times, shook my hand again. Then I tried to explain to him as best I could that I had no idea what he was talking about. He asked Amy for more paper, and wrote something equally as illegible. Then he motioned to take pictures. He couldn’t stop laughing. We took this picture:

Then we shook hands AGAIN, and he made another “FEE-SHEE! CHECK!”, laughed like a hyena, and was off into the night, never to be seen again. If anyone out there is familiar with Vietnamese culture or humor, and can explain this to us, please do!

After that new friend left, we met a newer one. I spotted a mouse. A small black critter the size of a ping-pong ball scurried across the floor from one booth to another. From here out, Amy kept her feet up on the booth. Several times over we would see the Club Car mouse flitting from booth to booth. Chris and John wanted to buy the mouse a beer. With all the excitement, Amy went back to liberate Jo and Sam, letting them know the Club Car was a good time. They joined us, and we all shared several good stories told over several bad Vietnamese beers.

At one point I got up to use the restroom. This is what it looked like:

Like all the other bathrooms on the train, it was stainless steel, the floor and seat covered in water. Chris and John told us their Vietnamese tour guide had actually taken sheets of newspaper and cut holes in them to make seat covers for the tour group. We were not so lucky. But I’ll tell you this without any going into any graphic detail: I never once sat in one of those bathrooms the entire trip, I only stood. And in standing, I noticed an electrical panel. Here’s a close-up of what caught my eye:

I have no idea what that button does, or what you would push it for, but I sure as hell was not going to find out.

Closer to ten o’clock, a few other things happened. We were joined by a bunch of Vietnamese military who sat in a booth near us. They looked at us and laughed.

John was now stacking beer cans. The mouse was getting cocky and making regular appearances. And one of the waitstaff put her hair in curlers to create buns on the sides. We called her “Princess Leia.” I tried to take a stealth picture of her, but because of the increased rocking of the train, the green focus light kept flashing, and she waved me off angrily. The picture never turned out because the train was rocking so much.

A few minutes later, we were presented with a sign that said the Club Car was closing at 10pm. We hadn’t seen it before, but it was obvious we’d worn out our welcome. We all said goodbye, and retired to our respective sleeper cars. Jo, Sam, Amy, and I got back to our bunks to find our two upper-berth mates fast asleep. We all quietly rearranged our bags, got ready for bed, and I slipped into the middle berth, with Amy on the bottom bunk. Here’s a point-of-view shot of my berth:

I had my toiletry bag hanging next to my head. My day-pack was at my feet, along with my button-down shirt and jacket. I had two posters rolled up next to me. It was a tight fit, not helped by the two chains that hold up the berth on either end. And I was otherwise fully clothed, minus my shoes.

The pillow and duvet were actually pretty nice, but the mattress – what there was of it – had no give. If you lay on your back, your spine started to get sore. If you lay on your side, your hips started to get sore. If you lay on your stomach, your knees and pelvis felt the brunt. It wasn’t horrible, by any means, but it didn’t help me sleep at all. And I was stupid enough to keep my belt on, so the buckle and leather ate into me as well.

Amy, of course, can sleep in a hurricane. I, on the other hand, am a light sleeper, and spent most of the night awake. I heard the guy in the upper berth snoring. I felt the rocking of the train. I heard the whistle, I heard coughing down the hall. I heard everything. As I told everyone in the morning – either I couldn’t sleep, or I had a very vivid dream that I couldn’t sleep. I occasionally peered out the window, but couldn’t see much, other than once seeing a beautiful sliver of the moon that faded into some trees all too quickly.

But it could have been worse. Consider the following photos. This woman’s bed is in the hall, right by the bathroom. No doors, nothing, just an open platform next to the latrine.

See this folded up lounge chair in the sink area? – a woman SLEPT in that lounge chair, next to that sink. And her husband slept in the desk chair – upright!

People were sleeping anywhere there was a flat surface, or a surface to lean against. I say this with a great respect and jealousy – the Vietnamese can sleep anywhere. At one point, in the midst of my restlessness, I took a trip to the can. I slowly eased my way down to the floor and my shoes, and saw a mouse – maybe the same Club Car mouse? – run across the floor. I withheld that information from Amy until morning.

Eventually morning did come, and with it the news that we were running two hours late. Of course we were. Bathed in our own filth, each of us got up, rearranged our bags, and quietly waited to arrive in DaNang. We had become the great unwashed.

We did get to see some pretty good scenery along the way, though, as we chugged along the coast of the South China Sea.

At one point Amy and I returned to the Club Car to get coffee and tea. First we walked through the open seating car – Oh Lord! It smelled like a ripe high school locker room. Just humid and sweaty and reeking of humanity. When we got to the Club Car, Amy ordered a coffee, and I pointed to a menu at the words “Lipton Tea.” What I realized all too soon, however, was that the menu was printed over a picture of some of the beverages on offer, and the person serving us thought I was pointing at the picture, not the words. I was given a Heineken for breakfast. I was not going to complain. I needed it. FEE-SHEE! CHECK!

We returned to our bunkmates, and a few uneventful hours later – 17 hours after leaving Hanoi – we pulled quietly into Da Nang station. We said our goodbyes, grabbed our bags, and after an hour-long taxi ride, Amy and I were at our hotel in Hoi An. We took long showers. We stretched out and napped on the queen size bed. We watched bad movies on HBO. It was a great afternoon.

Today is our last day in Hoi An. We’ve recovered fully. We also ran into Sam and Jo on the street; they seem to have recovered well, too. We’ve been taking bike rides through town and the surrounding countryside, generally enjoying the wide-open spaces. And tomorrow morning, after we say goodbye to Hoi An, we’re flying from Da Nang to Saigon.