Why Archives - Adventures Outside and In

The End

December 15, 2018December 15, 2018 by ellrice, posted in Iceland, USA, Where, Why

In the sharp night Icelandic sky, which had momentarily cleared of cloud and rain, hung the familiar Orion constellation. There was something about the congruity of that ever-recognisable belt. The new depth revealed by dark skies and shaky binoculars, always inspired me.

The nebula hidden just below was my own cosmological constant and anchor to the world to which I would soon return. A reminder that just as with the stars, wherever I travelled in the world, there I would be. Like Orion I’d always be hunting for something. Less like him I’d not always be sure what it was that I was hunting for.

Tonight though we were all certain. The elusive Northern Lights were our prey and we waited with breath held in anticipation or stolen by the icy, swirling wind. Of course, like with any hunt we had to be prepared to go home with empty mouths. An unslaked hunger to bear witness to the silent inner workings of our complex world.

A slow bus-ward trudge commenced as the cold continued to gather while time ticked away. I didn’t feel bad that I was not going to see the lights. Instead only proud of the distance I’d come and that I’d given myself this opportunity to feel so alive. I was sure there’d still be plenty of explosive moments yet to come.

Besides, if anywhere had taught me not to be so shackled to my expectations, then New York, which I had only just departed, was that place.

Big Christmas in the Big Apple

What I’d expected was snow covered streets melted only by traffic and coffee spilled while handling giant pizza slices. Happy faces skating frozen lakes. Windows lined with wooden toys. The glass steamed up by the chilly breath of hopeful children.

It was a fantastic city full of sights and buzz. But the only Christmas magic I felt, as a few flakes of snow drifted down atop the Rockefeller centre in miraculously still conditions, was quickly dispelled. “Is it normally so calm like this?” I asked, “You’re 800 feet in the air man what do you think?” came that typical surly New York reply.

Brooklyn however had been full of nice surprises. Views of that iconic jeweled skyline. Probably the world’s best cup of coffee (not the one in Elf, that place had closed). And what was truly the best of what travel had offered me: coincidence.

Coincidence

Drinking in a bar close to the brewery, trying to come to terms with being back on my own again after having only just made friends in San Francisco, another friend coincidentally appeared. This time an old friend. Twelve years we reckoned had passed since we last met. Whilst I posted a picture of the bar for distant friends to see, he was sat right around the corner reading it.

Of course we didn’t have nearly enough time to catch up on 12 years of our lives. But the time we spend on the paths we travel I realised, was less important than how and when those paths coincide. Making unique moments that made this trip my own.

The final surprise New York would have for me was not any of the great things my friend recommended for me. Not even the relaxing night off I gave myself cat sitting Stirling.

No, instead it was one of the most touristic things I could have chosen to see.

The Statue

Although smaller than I’d expected, again it was the unexpected that made her come to life for me. Stood inside the pedestal, Emma Lazarus’ words stamped in copper changed the meaning of the statue for me like they had been doing for others for over 115 years.

I’m sure my travel-weary body and barbwire-tattered trousers went some way to helping me see these words from the perspective of the trembling voices of the Ellis Island immigration museum. Their striking effects empower the meek, welcome the needy and cast out the pomp and unduly proud.

As these sick and tired bodies drifted through the sea-washed sunset gates, inspection, detention, freedom and happiness were all in equal play. Any of my own anxieties these past few months were far out-stripped by what they must have felt.

I wonder did her beacon-hand glow with world-wide welcome, easing their fears and kindling their hopes? Or would they be doomed to wash up like wretched refuse on the teeming shore.

A Flag in the Wind

Such conflicted thoughts of hope and helplessness bubbled up again for me in Iceland.

An acoustic guitar warms the air in Hlemmur Mathöll food hall. I sit against the radiator and plate glass that resolutely combine to reject the cloud-locked skies of Reykjavik’s odd December. Perhaps by the end of my Prince Polo chocolate bar, the low-lit blue sky will return. Or snow. Or thunder even. The weather here it seems is as changeable as my thoughts on returning home.

I am like the restless Icelandic flag whipped by the wind. A bright red cross, a flame of passion for all the words and pictures I created. Like the lava the cross represents, spilling forth to form new lands and with them new purpose. The flag also bears a white cross of ice. Like some hollow cavern, sometimes empty of promise or belonging in the world. Finally, surrounded all by the deep blue of the ocean. At times I felt strong and proud like these Nordic island borders. But sometimes still like an islander without a boat, helplessly adrift on the colossal tectonics of the world.

I wondered as those New York immigrants probably did. “Could I somehow bridge the seas and find a life to live?” Would I be warmed by that subterranean soul I’d found within my core? Or would I wonder icy caverns instead. A chill-stifled voice inaudible, the only sound the echoes of my own lost footsteps.

The Light

As I neared the bus door I was resigned to my wish of seeing the Northern Lights, remaining just that. The wind that ragged at coats and ponchos, sapped out heat even through my two layers of trousers. I was ready to give in.

That’s when I heard it. A hoot of excitement from the American contingent. I wheeled around like a wide-eyed prize fighter who’d been caught off guard with a celestial hay-maker.

There in the sky, hung an off-white glyph. A milky lizard tail laid lazily across the night. Like a sorcerer had stamped their ownership on the heavens above us. From it traced down neat ruled lines that gave the sky a depth no star could ever manage.

Like Fuji’s clouds the lights would slowly and imperceptibly change. The tail became two great beams. A ghost train from behind the cloud, ferrying beings in worlds we’d never know.

Bracing myself against the wind-shook bus was not enough to capture the moment. Merely enough to reveal the colour hidden to our naked eyes.

In a way I was glad. Too often would I have to force myself to put the camera down but now I was left with no choice but to stare up at this silent-lipped spectacle.

The End

This would be the punctuation point in my little trip once around the globe. A point by which I’d hoped to have become so changed by the world that I would no longer worry about the flaws in my character, concentrating only on my strengths.

I thought back to Bartholdi’s statue and how her mild eyes and silent lips command such power without aggression. Her meekness intertwined with her greatness.

Also her Liberty Green shell, when formed, created widespread worry among her carers and admirers. I know some words I’ve written appear like a creeping rust oxidizing over how I’ve previously been seen.

But that flaw now forms an essential part of the statue. It seals the thin copper from the harsher elements she faces. My own flaws give me my perspective and the passion for what I enjoy.

With all the wondrous and terrible things I’d seen in these past 100 days the world had changed me it’s true.

More than anything it merely changed the way I looked at the person I always was.

Henry Miller was right, “One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.”

I look out to the green haired rocks, gathered like petrified goblins awed by the abyssal falls. With my notebook only halfway filled, I’m ready to see in as many new ways as the world will let me.

My trip was at an end. My future was just beginning.

Embrace the Suck

November 30, 2018December 2, 2018 by ellrice, posted in USA, Where, Why

A butterfly flaps its wings in New York and causes a hurricane in China. You’ve probably heard of The Butterfly Effect and the various exaggerated examples of its power. I’m sure you’ve taken them with a pinch of salt too.

The closer you look at your own life however, the more you can trace it back to some seemingly insignificant moment that started you down this specific branch of the myriad of ways in which your life might have gone.

In Sacramento with the rain driving down, walking amidst the characterless concrete surrounding the Greyhound station, I wonder. Can any good come of tracing things back like this? Will it simply make you obsess over your “poor life choices” as my friend from the bus station limbo puts it? Or can it be seen both ways – a catalyst for the good, bad and just plain unexpected? Things that might be considered the real, but less glamorous adventure.

As Benji goes “full hobo” and climbs in to his sleeping bag on the cold station floor he turns and reminds me of a motto he learnt serving in the armed forces. “Embrace the suck man. Embrace the suck.” He laughs.

The Suck

Attributed to what I have termed my occasional “common sense blackouts” there was about 15 seconds in which I flapped those dreaded cotton wings and formed a hurricane in the path of my future. Perhaps through believing we’d entered a digital era, or perhaps just sheer dumb absent-mindedness, I removed my driver’s licence from my wallet thinking “I wont need it, I’ll probably just lose it”.

Despite my good friend posting it out to me in Vancouver, fate it seemed had other plans for me. As I left for Seattle on the bus I learnt my licence was stuck in a depot in Richmond due to unclear postal bloopers. It might eventually make it back to the UK. I didn’t care at this point. I had food poisoning, the start of a chest infection and my travel buddy had left. I’d never felt so alone.

A chain of events had been set in motion that would see me give up my dream of seeing Mount St Helens and Cannon Beach, fall off a bike in Portland, break my camera, pay for a room I would have no chance of staying in and taking the worst bus journey of my life.

Mount Hood from Pittlock Mansion, Portland

Two hours delay in departing and fourteen to Sacramento. As I write this the announcer brings news of snow, making our forecast lay over another six hours before we get the final three hour leg of our journey. In less time than this one bus journey I’d flown half way around the globe.

That’s plenty of time it turns out, to completely re-type this post after what seemed like an inevitable power cut and then as the power came back on a blue screen of death !

The Wake

Clearly, there were large tides of suck flowing in to my life. The moment I realised I’d booked the wrong accommodation back in Portland for example. About to tuck in to a bacon and blue cheese burger in the stylish Kelly’s Olympian, one such wave crashed over my thoughts creating an awful inception, ruining my lunch.

Beautiful shot of Portland suggested by a friendly passer-by

“Maybe I’m just a loser?” I thought. In truth this thought had bubbled up a few times in recent years. Underachievement, bad luck, mistakes and mishaps. In spite of all my gifts things would often not work out in one way or another. Could some people end up losing while others inexplicably land on their feet? Was I the unfortunate balance to the off-tilt scales of fate?

I know I can be very focused on the negative sometimes. This could just all be part of my own neurosis. So I forced myself to find the positive things that had arrived in the wake of these waves of suck. That’s when I started to realise that as much good had found its way into my path as bad. Some that I would never have seen on my original trajectory, some simply made better by the relative suck of the previous days. How many could I name I wonder?

Off the Itinerary

At least two places I loved were a direct result of my karmic debt being collected in full the day I left Japan. I’d had no travel mishaps so far so when the last Gyoza hit my stomach and the cramps begun I knew it was going to be a tough time. It was so bad that even after two days of not doing a whole lot in Vancouver we decided to retreat to the mountains in Squamish and splash out on our own apartment with hot tub, cinema room and mountain views. Without my stomach bug I’d maybe have never seen Squamish or Whistler. I’d almost certainly have not enjoyed a blissful Netflix and hot tub regime!

When I realised my licence was not going to find me in Canada, I needed an alternate itinerary quick. Portland had never been on my radar since I had been thinking of wilderness and camping. But this city was so much fun for me I told at least four people I would move there one day. I hiked and ran, saw mountains, and humming birds, watched live music and my first ice hockey game. This place was full of life and without the suck, I likely would have driven right past it.

Off the Wall

Staying in cities for extended lengths of time makes you seek out things you might not normally look for. Thanksgiving dinner in the hostel in Seattle was just such a thing for me. A large plate of small talk to go with my side of turkey would usually be a definite no. Instead I went for it, found a girl who really needed a friend and sipped Naughty Nellie while praising the notion of “to have loved and lost”. We watched the happy faces of the Macy’s parade the following morning and found ourselves smiling too.

A museum could never normally be considered “off the wall”. But I had a good feeling about Seattle’s Pinball museum from the moment I stepped through the door to be meet the resident greeter Buddy the Golden Retriever. There I found machines from 30 or 40 years ago as well as two of my all time favourites, Fun House and Arabian Nights. Who knew for $15 I would be playing on machines worth $10,000 and upwards.

Off the Chart

It’s every traveller’s hope that their dreams are fulfilled by the places they travel. To feel that elation that where they are in the world is exactly where they want to be. Turns out that feeling gets amplified when you’ve had such a run of bad luck. In Sacramento, in the 5th hour of delay, during the first power cut, coughing uncontrollably I was suffering an off the chart low. Within an hour of that moment we’d escaped in our own rental car and were cruising out into view of the San Francisco skyline. The rain had given way to a glorious sunset, the concrete swapped for sea, sky and painted houses. We both instantly hit off the chart happiness. This place would be special, made all the more so because of the lingering suck.

Back in BC, I couldn’t really see a future for this trip. I imagined being sat in some smokey city on my birthday resenting the obstacles that had prevented me getting out to places like Yosemite. In Portland I’d watched a film about a man climbing all 3000 feet of El Capitan without ropes.

If only I’d remembered my licence, if only it hadn’t been lost in the post. If only a million other things that made me lose this goal like all the others.

It’s my birthday in a few hours so I bought myself a present. A tour to Yosemite. Something I know I’ll appreciate just a little bit more because of the totally unplanned way it has come about.

Light and Darkness – The Spine of the World

November 18, 2018 by ellrice, posted in China, Where, Why

It was time to face the Great Wall and find out if it was a ruin like I found in Abhayagiri, tainted by the past or the future like in Xi’an, or something worse. What if it was a true wonder, choked by a ceaseless tourist torrent? Deluged by a wretched wave. Drowned of any possibility for enjoyment or appreciation.

I should, by now, have become accustomed to China making it all of these things at once and simultaneously none. Yin and Yang. Death and darkness. Light and beauty.

Foundations of Bone

There in the foundations of the wall lay the bones of a million slaves. Worked to death, their backs splintered like the heavy wooden joists that levered each stone block into place in this impossible jigsaw.

Yet there on the windswept peaks of Badaling, away from the tourist torrent, very little imagination is needed to see that jigsaw complete in your minds eye.

Before you the spine of the world is laid out, snaking at unbelievable angles, defiant to the forces of nature.

Invading Mongols, enthused by how easily they had traversed China’s mountains to the north then faced this. Such obstinance in the face of its surrounds must have given them pause.

Warning Song

Even now, at sunrise, 1100 metres up, the wall it seems, is not undefended. For a second I hear singing, as if a thousand men call to tempt their enemy’s courage. Perhaps it was some sound echoed from the mountains, or wind whipping up through the battlements. Or maybe those countless soldiers who served their seven year service for the rest of their lives, still patrol that ancient wall. They call to all as a warning, even the rising sun.

Now the wall falls silent again. The rising sun turns the higher towers a soft red rose colour. The trees already bare for the coming winter, leave nothing but these great bones as far as the eye can see. Its design is a mystery, engineering unfathomable, it fills you with wonder.

Greatness

I’m reminded about our guide Luna’s story at the bottom of the wall. Three things she said made the Great Wall great. At over 8000km for just the Ming dynasty sections, the wall is truly great in length. All the slaves and soldiers for which it is a tomb make it one of China’s greatest tragedies. Finally, with over 2000 years of construction it is a great example of the ingenuity of man.

For me though, none of these say what the Great Wall was and still is today. It is a great wonder, that – staring out over the misty peaks – is impossible not to feel. Like so much of China and indeed myself, it was not light nor dark. It was all things at once and through it all amazing to me. A reminder that not all the world is there to be understood, but sometimes just experienced instead.

The wind chilled my bones as the sun finally crested the peaks to the east. I picked up my bag and scrambled the steps back toward the coach. My time in China was at an end I realised, but I didn’t look back at the wall again. That I knew would be coming with me wherever I went in life from here.

Light and Darkness – Meat and Claws

November 15, 2018November 18, 2018 by ellrice, posted in China, Where, Why

I’d gone to China with the hope to understand it. My feeling was that growing tensions in the West over a threat from a pariah nation in the East were somewhat exaggerated. I’d hoped to find a side to the story equal and opposite. A tale of an inherently good but complex people at conflict mostly because of history and bad politics.

Instead I found a paradoxical mix of light and dark. China’s famous Yin and Yang. The more I saw of China, the more I realised it exists inside ourselves as well as this place.

A Warning

Personally, I have a love for all things alive. I once rescued a fly from the sink and dried out its wings with cotton buds. So if you feel the same or similar, please beware. This post will be hard to read, just as it has been to write.

Meat

The hanging dogs bereft of their fur are completely motionless. Their jowls hooked and expressions fixed in rigor, each the same as the last. A cloned visage of their sudden ending.

Crates upon crates of live ducks and chickens form towers of clamor and panic. They stare out at me accusingly but I don’t help. I just walk right by them.

The concept of Yin and Yang make sense to me. No light without darkness, good without evil. If darkness is the absence of light and evil the ignorance of good, then one cannot exist without the other. They are merely the ends of single spectra, not atoms in their own right.

What’s harder to understand is that those two stark and separate extremes exist inside you simultaneously.

You are not good while some other person is evil. You are inherently both at the same time and that is somehow necessary to make you who you are.

This is what I’d started to realise as I’d begun to pass by the meat in the Yangshuo market. Those horrible images had not yet jarred me as I thought they would. And then one lone cat looked up at me from her cage.

Her kin already gone, she lay patiently in a classic feline curl. Her eyes however belied the comfort of her posture. One upwards glance, without the courage to lift her head, stopped me in my tracks.

It was not a look that begged for help, she somehow knew that was not coming. Instead her eyes asked just one question, “Is it my turn now?”

I knew that look would never leave me and that it made me good and her captors evil. But was I good to care for the cat or evil to care less for the ducks and chickens?

China’s rural poor have long suffered from lack of food. From problems of motivation to farm under extreme communist rule, to classic capitalist problems of a developing country’s rich leaving its poor behind.

So is it really wrong for a nation who will industriously use every morsel of an animal to save itself? Or is it wrong for a wasteful nation to select which life has value based on how cute or tame it is?

The answer I fear is both and neither. Throughout China I would find glimpses of its atomic parts. When viewed so close they could seem malignant. With context they might seem necessary. In reality I find them to be both at the same time.

The Iron Claw

In Chengdu, a city of some 17 million, I’d expected a dooming smog to smother a sea of sullen faces. Instead I’d found thriving markets feeding fresh food to happy people. The youth were enthused and individual. Beautiful creatures were sheltered and fed.

Yet still you might simply disappear if you were to protest against the building of a chemical plant near the city’s water supply. It was like a pearl in the grip of an iron claw. The blue sky could still be seen in between those powerful talons – mostly.

Did it in fact make the city safe from such calamity as the London protests in 2011? Is it better to defer opinion to your government to avoid things like Brexit? Or is it impossible to be free under such an unrelenting grasp?

The stories our guides had given about their own tangles with the iron claw had not given much of an answer. They themselves seem happy despite.

Only China’s future would give the answer. Looking back to the past only left me with more questions.

There are so many threads woven into the fabric of China that understanding it seemed just out of reach. Something, like us, that was both light and dark at the same time.

Draining Batteries

October 29, 2018October 29, 2018 by ellrice, posted in Borneo, China, Why

From Kowloon Pier the Hong Kong city skyline glistens in the night. Like a jewel encrusted guardstone by the great doors of China.

What discoveries I might make there flash through my mind like the laser light firing from the pulsing towers. It illuminates the stubborn mist for mere seconds at a time, exciting for just a moment, the mystery of what is yet to come.

The Hong Kong Island light show

Climbing Victoria’s peak there was a strange mix of British engineering and glimpses the alien landscape below. One second a sea strewn with countless ships, haphazardly formed and arranged. The next, a regiment of pipework and concrete water courses, purposeful and precise. It was familiarity in a foreign land, shrouded still by that stubborn mist.

Ascent to Victoria’s Peak

The mist it seemed would follow us for a few days at least, but all trace of familarity was dispelled the instant we boarded the bullet train and shot toward Yangshuo.

In to the belly of the beast

If the rolling limestone panorama in Ha Long Bay had been the descending dragon’s back, then the sharp karsts of Yangshuo were undoubtedly its teeth. The jagged and crumbling peaks seemed to be battle scarred by China’s rich and turbulent past. Something which is hinted to in Hong Kong for those with a keen eye (or like me, a friend’s guidebook).

The Dragon’s teeth

Stephen and Stitt, two fierce bronze lions, guard the Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation HQ on what used to be a shoreline centuries ago. But look to their hide and they bear the shrapnel marks from the Japanese, who used them for target practice during their occupation. This, just one small crest on this country’s mountainous history.

Target Practice

Now, even at 300km/h it felt like our train was being slowly swallowed by that mountain. Our first day in real China would be deep in the belly of the beast.

What I found in Yangshuo town was not what I expected. Those ancient peaks fill your mind with fire and magic but what remains today is noisy and neon. Still unique and multi-faceted, but no longer a jewel. You can still dream of that mighty dragon while adrift on bamboo rafts along the Li river.

Then in the streets the smells of mysterious foods entice and affront in equal measure. There’s beer pong on the roof terraces and Yahtzee in the nightclubs. You might find yourself seated with a giant stuffed bear or biting down on a sweet raw sewage pancake (durian).

The most unexpected thing though was that I might connect with someone who spoke no English at all.

Energy Accounting

Despite how easily it comes to other people and even species, interacting with my own kind has never been easy for me. The peaceful proboscis monkeys back in Lambuk Bay would so naturally gather and be at rest in each other’s company. For me though, even sitting within a group would draw on my energy like some old and failing smart phone. An ember warm and comforting, but continually using fuel as it burns.

Family at rest

This often shocks people who believe me to be a naturally friendly person. As a good friend of mine with a similar personality explained though, we are just a different kind of personality.

An extrovert can often withdraw energy from a large group, feeding from the buzz in the room. An introvert can be opposite. Enjoying just as much the interaction but depositing their energy in the process. I don’t see it as a price, more like heat lost from a light bulb. Something barely noticed by those dancing in the lights.

Strange Connections

It’s easier for me in quiet places with fewer people. So as I rammed in ear plugs in a Yangshuo nightclub, surrounded by people I could neither hear nor understand, I was quickly losing my patience. Then Mĕi Líng, a miniature ball of energy in black Converse and a Coca-Cola top forced me on stage.

She showed me that the weird government approved (monitored?) version of WhatsApp can do instant translation. So we stood there and chatted without ever speaking a word in the same language. By closing time I had a new friend, a Chinese name, and a strange feeling that the future had arrived.

The next morning I was so tired, and not just from the hangover or late night karaoke! The enjoyment and exhaustion I get from a meeting like that is partly imagining that person’s life.

My saviours back in Borneo had been Alwin and Aline a naturally friendly couple who kept me company whilst we waited patiently for those Oceanic Engines to do their thing.

With nothing but a plain cafeteria and instant coffee to pass the time, they did what humans do best – they told stories.

In the space of two hours they transported us to Ho Chi Minh and the Walking Street. We saw thick hot coffee, giant melting middle pizza and rooftop bars.

Ben Tre and a little girl surrounded by creatures and coconuts. The myriad ways in which their lives could have gone, and all that brought them together to this very spot. These are all at once alive in my mind. With little thought or expectation these strange connections had given me whole new journeys to places I could never have seen by myself.

Although my fierce independence and failing batteries would gladly have me spend every second of this trip alone. I feel already richer that I have not.

I’ll always be the tired looking one on the edge of the group photo, but I love being there all the same.

Amazing Animals Part 2

October 11, 2018October 11, 2018 by ellrice, posted in Vietnam, Why

Vietnam had blown through my life like a hurricane. A swirling vortex of landscapes both spatial and social. Not destructive, but powerful. Absorbing my energy like moisture evaporating from the warm South China Sea.

The Sunline Paon Hotel in Hanoi was the eye of the storm for me. I was still surrounded by a cyclone of traffic, and raw surging experience. But for now at least the winds had subsided enough for me to reflect on the group of amazing animals who had been my family for the last 10 days.

Sharing Something

It’s hard to imagine what brings some people together and separates others. The busy riverside road running past the DMZ sky garden bar in Hue, is itself a kind of river. An endless stream of tooting mopeds, each with up to four humans aboard and occasionally a pet dog.

As they aggressively jostle for position it is amazing there are no collisions. Each traffic tributary somehow finds the path of least resistance, and they all go about their lives never having met.

Yet right in the middle of this confluence of disparate lives are group of people with sometimes 15 years between them, homes thousands of miles apart. They play pool, chat, drink and sing together as if there were more between them than just a few shared experiences.

What that thing was, I was sure I’d never understand.

Little did I know that Hoi An would change all that. Like the mysterious mountain resort on Ba Na Hill, there was something there to be understood, but it would take me time to lift it from the mist.

The Bike Ride

The rain ran off the rusty bikes soaking into the fake plastic grass outside the Hotel Paradise. At the time I couldn’t imagine anything further from paradise.

Our ears still ringing from the previous night in Tiger Tiger. Our clothes still wet from the torrential rain/river/swimming pool incidents on the way home. The prospect of a bike ride in the rain was not at all appealing. Especially not with such bizarre sounding stops as the recently bereaved half of the happiest couple in the world. Or watering someone’s allotment and sniffing some herbs.

But I was dead wrong.

Perhaps in part it was, the exercise or the restorative shots of rice and banana wine. But by the time we were all bouncing down the river in conical hats and coracles I was so happy to be there.

Same Same

Later, in Hoi An’s gorgeous old town, the river would reflect what I’d realised. The lights of bars and boats and lanterns all mixing in the water suddenly made sense.

We had our little groups and our own styles, like the clusters of similar shapes and colours on the river. The enthusiasm for that rainy bike ride was same in all of us though. Like the bright candles behind all that coloured paper.

By the time we’d reach Hanoi I’d have shared ghost stories with some, travel nightmares with others. Heard tales of tragedy, music, heartbreak. Shared beer, football, mystery. Even random drunken birthday cake.

I’d realised that just like those lanterns on the river, we were, as they say in Vietnam, “Same same but different”. Through it all together we were something bright and colourful, that I was glad to be a part of.

Amazing Animals Part 1

October 10, 2018October 10, 2018 by ellrice, posted in Singapore, Vietnam, Why

The night train to Nah Trang was the first place in Vietnam I felt relaxed enough to open my notebook. The previous 48 hours had been a boiling stew of free shots, dodging mopeds and profuse perspiration.

Ironically, what I’d been told would be the hardest part of my time here was easy: Chilling in the 1^st class, 4-birth sleeper cabins for 10 or so hours was not the coffin-like accommodation I’d been warned about. No, instead I’d find the hardest part of my experience would be this very post.

With all the amazing animals I’d seen in my first month of travel through Sri Lanka, Singapore, Borneo and Vietnam, I was not expecting the hardest one to write about would be humans.

Foundations of Singapore

Teylok Ayer street in Singapore’s Chinatown was once a coastal road. A port in to which desperate immigrants sailed, unaware of the harsh lives of back breaking work and opium addiction that awaited them. Now that shore is lined with the crisp clean edges of skyscrapers built on reclaimed land. Through it all run seams of rich greenery, giving shade to happy souls.

A tour round the Chinatown Heritage museum can still give voice to those forgotten settlers, and shape to the lives that they lived. Though the accounts and conditions are hard to hear, there are also families provided for, businesses built and doctors who helped the needy in those stories too.

It is the countless past lives of coolies and trishaw drivers who laid the foundations for the litter-free streets in modern-day Singapore. Streets like Sago street; once a place where the frail would go as to not inconvenience the living. Hearing the strength that they had makes me believe they would not begrudge me enjoying my time in the city they helped to build. I tip my glass to the skyscraper sea and give thanks to the builders.

Two Futures

From Singapore’s chequered past to it’s bright future.

I am sure that modern day Singapore still has its problems. Some say the money that once flowed through private swiss accounts now plates the city’s shimmering façade. That western faces peer out of the crystal towers while the descendants of those early settlers are still told where to live. Like Raffles original town plan dividing the growing groups of immigration, allocating people their futures.

Spending time with Bida and Poppy lets me see another viewpoint. The view down Jelan Besar makes the world seem like just another of their playthings. Micro Machines stop and go in unison in between towers made of Lego.

We found Wally, we burst balloons, we hid and chased and swam. They renamed me “baba” and just like that, with no questions asked, I was part of their family.

Their futures were not set, their lives would be what they made of them. Their minds were not corrupt, love and mischief are what they know. Since they are two facets of Singapore’s future, that future feels bright to me.

Cool Waters

Despite it being relatively comfy, when the night train finally reached Nah Trang I was ready for another sleep. I don’t even remember checking in or signing up for a boat party the next day. It wasn’t until the boat left harbour my memory kicked back in and I met my next amazing human.

Turning to shore, the clouded skyline of Nah Trang looked like a city in the grip of industrial revolution. An ever-multiplying line of beach-front giants, the clouds, their exasperated gasps as they struggle to keep up with the tourist influx.

‘Fookin Meenging Cocktails!” The floating barman announced, with a levity that had until now eluded him. I wondered if perhaps after one too many rowdy tour groups, it took being lowered in to the cool waters of the bay to soak away the stiffness in his heart.

Speaking to him later I learned he did not resent us I assumed he would. Vietnam after all has a labyrinthine history of war with French, American, and Australian enemies to name a few. All of which were represented in our group.

He had actually sided with the Americans in their struggle against the Viet Cong in the 70’s. An air traffic controller for wounded fighters, giant C130’s on one last engine, and bombers coming down with live explosives.

New War

In his own words he describes living through the civil war of north vs south as a brutal and horrible time. But today he faces a new kind of invasion.

As we head back to shore, we pass under the cable car to Vinpearl. A theme park resort cut into a previously green and beautiful hillside. “A scar on the landscape,” as my new friend describes it. He prefers the untouched view on the other side, where Russian and Chinese money has yet to flow and Vietnamese are still welcome.

But though his life today is shaped by our tourism, he reflects the peaceful water and warming sun with his crooked smile. “I do this every day,” he says. “Every day the same. No planes, no wars. The only bad thing… fookin meeging cocktails.”

Devotion

September 20, 2018September 23, 2018 by ellrice, posted in Sri Lanka, Why

Today I saw my first dead body…

Our train shunted with the kind of metallic impact that previously had me clinging to the arm rests and awaiting the derailment.
Now though, with two solid days of solo-traveller experience, I already felt calmer about these things.
So this time, the noise barely made me flinch. When the train ground to a halt, as it frequently would, I merely leant out the window for some air.
Just at the end of my carriage, about 10 feet away, were the legs of a man who moments earlier had been alive, but wished to be, no longer.
Despite some relatively rough years of late. Enough inner turmoil at least, to compel me to quit the life I knew, and circle the Earth in search of resolution. I still could not fathom the beliefs that had led this man to such an ending.
As the crowds gather, they pick at what remains of the man. Trying, in their own way, to understand.
But in my time alone in Sri Lanka I’ve encountered more, like those still, untelling legs, which will remain a mystery to me.

The Abandoned Capital

Anuradhapura’s sights sprawl like the ancient branches of the Sri Maha Bohdi. A sacred tree brought from India with the Buddha’s teachings and guarded continuously for over 2000 years. They curl and curve like the fluent arches of the Shinhalese script. Or the fingers of an open palm, cradling the faithful who visit three times each and every day.

I take a bike with good brakes, and with a deep breath, funnel in to the multiverse of lanes unmarked but understood by Sri Lankan road users alike.
Fortunately, it is a quieter time for the island. When I pass in to the Citadel it becomes quieter still. I thought I might know when I’d arrived but the ruins are not imposing fortifications, but ancient relics.

Plaques and pictures help paint a scene of 5000 monks filing in to receive alms from the giant stone trough that remains.

More cycling through unassuming park, reveals a royal palace. Though columns and guardstones were the only features not reclaimed by the jungle when this once great capital was abandoned.

Then, in Abhayagiri, an explosion of ruins. An exquisitely carved moonstone, twin ponds with cobra-headed guardians and the monumental Dagoba.

This great dome, said to enshrine the spot where Buddha left his footprint, once stood as fifth tallest of the ancient monuments at 100 metres tall. The Great Pyramids of course are the first three. After that Abhayagiri is second to only Jetavanarama, another Dagoba a short cycle away.

These giants have no entrance. They merely sit, protect, and embody the devotion of centuries past. Like the million bricks I saw in Ferrara, such effort both beguiles and disturbs me.
I lay the flower, given to me by a kind local, at the foot of the ancient tree. But I do not pray.

The Lizard’s Lung

Incense burns in a great cloud from the gilded temple pyre. The smell familiar and yet alien all at once. A thousand candles burn but what do they illuminate? In the temple, a carpet of lotus flowers is laid, but whose feet do they cushion? A glimpse of a golden casket containing a sacred tooth, before being quickly ushered past, leaves me no more enlightened.

The Kandyan temple is vast and beautiful, and the glistening lake nearby teems with elegant Heron and formidable Monitor Lizard. I do find one mote of recognition in these places in among the crowds of devotees. Beauty seems to draw in the pious. Like the deep restful breaths of those lakeside lizards, people and their passions are unerringly consumed by the sights here.

The Lion’s Back

I see the same perched atop the magnificent “Lion Rock” Sigiriya. The huge pool below me was painstakingly hewn into the bare rock of the lion’s back. The water gives form to the ceaseless but cooling wind. Over the edge and over 600 feet below, beneath the polished Mirror Wall and mesmerizing frescoes that cling impossibly to the island-mountain side. There a great dark moat of wild green trees surrounds. Walled in by distant mountains that seem to stare in like an invading horde. Still green, but with envy of the beauty here.

The structures here are built from those same bricks again, rising like the undying history here, red as the earth that surrounds them. This place is a true labour of devotion, but the question remains as to why?

The sun beats down, slowly turning me the colour of the bricks and I see the same thing I saw in Kandy. Palace or Monastery, Kings or Gods. Those who sought either would have surely felt what they came for here. Not necessarily because that power is real or true but because such beauty as in the Lion rock, elegance within the Temple of the Sacred Tooth, or the ingenuity of the cave temples in Dambulla, makes them feel real and true.

Whatever reasons people came to these places, they, like I, found themselves captives of them. Staring at the infinite panorama, all questions answered. Devoted to something that could not be understood.

Anxious Moments

September 15, 2018September 21, 2018 by ellrice, posted in Sri Lanka, Why

Here I am, stretched out on a comfy wooden sunbed in a hotel whose, eager to please staff, outnumber us about 4 to 1. Palms top a frame of creeping flowers, surrounding the glass-like pool. My hands are cushioned by Buffalo Grass.

The aptly named hotel Serenity, Tissamaharama got me thinking about the contrast of this to my first day in Sri Lanka.

The Gulf of Discomfort

“I was so desperately seeking some comfort in my first few days of travel,” I’d written. But to be honest it was more than that. There had been a moment when I thought about just staying on the plane. Sri Lankan Airlines had been comfortable and I knew this comfort would become scarce outside the cabin. “So maybe a few more movies, another nice meal and just call the whole thing off,” I thought.

Before me was a gulf of 100 days and over 40,000 kilometres to be travelled, and at the time I was fixating on something as trivial as the taxi from the airport to my accommodation.

I know I’m a traveller at heart. I knew it when camping in the Rocky Mountains of Canada. When the horn of a late night freight train was the only sound in the world. Its echoes from the mountain haunted my dreams and all around our electrified site were animals that could have been our ending. However much this had felt right, I was still obsessed with keeping my comfort zone. But why, when the most uncomfortable days in Sri Lanka had yielded the most amazing sights?

The Cycle of Unchange

I’m learning that it is an anxiety about doing things wrong. Very specifically being seen to do things wrong. So, being duped by a taxi, or sounding like an idiot while getting one, terrify me much more than the time I jumped off a bridge with a bunch of guys holding the rope I was hooked to.

My mind refuses to change in light of my experiences. I survived the jump (despite having to catch a plummeting counter weight with my feet). I survived a night in a ditch in Spain. And, after stone-walling the first few touts in Sri Lanka, walking outside and thinking “I’m not really going to walk out to the main road am I?” I swallowed hard and ended up bartering about 50% off the first price I’d been quoted. So I’d survived that too. But it hadn’t changed me. I was still seeking the correct procedure for everything.

I’d awkwardly fumbled through introductions with my deaf guesthouse host. Then I was immediately bitten by what I concluded was Sri Lanka’s biggest and most disease-filled mosquito. I resolved to retreat into the mosquito net to research “the procedure” for imminent death by malaria. This was despite having previously read Sri Lanka had been declared malaria-free since 2016! So the cycle continues.

Calcite Eyes

Before I departed the UK I spent a day looking round the Natural History Museum. It’s easy to find yourself searching for the meaning of things when confronted with the bones of 65 million years ago.

But strangely it was crystals from deep with in the Earth that triggered it in me. Calcite double refracts the light passing through it so there are two distinct images offset from one another. The crystals in my mind do the same. One view of truth and logic knew I wouldn’t die of malaria and tomorrow I’d try some basic sign language much to my host’s glee. The other distorted view was always the worst case scenario. It could not be dispelled, merely lived with.

Quartz: because my picture of Calcite was rubbish

Better Days

We are always changing. Whether you believe that seven year cell cycle that supposedly renders you an entirely new person, or that experience and age imperceptibly shift you toward new ways of thinking. There are great examples of conquering your anxieties such as in Lauren Juliff’s inspiring travel memoir How Not To Travel The World. But as for me, I think I will always be this way to some extent.

Some days are better though, like in Mirissa, sipping Lion Lager from a chilled glass. Thunderous waves like nothing I’ve seen are on steep ascent to the shore. The climb reduces them to tickles at your feet as you eat grilled squid from your sun lounger. Maybe later I’ll climb Parrot Rock… if I feel like moving.

Strip all the detail of the world back to three stark bands of sky, sea and sand and there in between it all you sit. Suddenly, it becomes so much easier to simply be yourself.

The Wanderers

September 3, 2018September 4, 2018 by ellrice, posted in Why

Inspiration

“As he stared blankly into the pale fluorescence of the empty computer screen, he began to feel the tug of that weary thought once more. That he was sinking into a life which he never wished for nor planned. That in all the hours of all the nights that he did not quite feel ready to forge his master plan, there had been his life, played out by circumstance and expectation. Not instead by will and by passion.”

That rather glum sounding paragraph was part of a slightly longer piece of writing that, 6 years ago, made me swallow my fear and head off to cycle Italy. This time around it was watching this 4 minute film by Erik Wernquist narrated by Carl Sagan.

It is well worth a watch, because it explains a great view point on what makes us become dissatisfied with the lives we have found ourselves living, seeking out adventure in new lands. But also because Carl Sagan… what a legend.

Survival vs Living

As I laid in the peaceful Park Square digesting my lunch (and the fact I’d just hit send on the email that would lead inexorably to all of this adventure and change), I listened to Carl’s words. He suggests we have been meticulously crafted by natural selection to traverse inhospitable lands. That we do this in order to preempt the arrival of long winters and failing crops. A simple survival mechanism.
It was clear to me as I watched the ants leave the safety of their subterranean world and strike out in the dangers above, Carl Sagan made a good point. But I think he might have conceded that the “romance we invest in far off lands” is more than just a mechanism. “The incessant itch for things remote” described by Herman Melville in Moby Dick, was for more than just survival alone.

He did not just need to sail forbidden seas. He loved to.