Mar 21
Mar 18
This morning I noticed the soft rustle of plastic bags around the room sounded like small fires burning. The knock of hands against bed posts, added pops and cracks.
The zip of zippers distracted me from visualizing this, until I found them to sound like farts. Quick, squeaky ones. Slow, deep ones.
I made images in my mind of the farts and fires around me.
Mar 18
Oh wow, it’s Saturday? My Indian visa should be ready on Monday, so I better start looking for flights. It’s kind of last minute, but last time I checked the budget airlines don’t care how far I booked in advance.
First let me search my favorite site, Orbitz. Ahh..they don’t book flights out of Singapore. Ok, so I’ll try my old favorite Travelocity…damn, the cheapest flight they can actually ticket is Singapore Airlines at $500. Gulp!
Oh yea, Lonely Planet reccommended that site Zuji. Why don’t I give them a shot?
Mar 17
At The Inn-Crowd Hostel, the row of five new shower stalls have clean, grey tile floors that pitch slightly towards the back wall. The water from each shower runs into a gutter of sorts, which pitches to the left carrying all the runoff from each shower away. A modern reproduction of a medieval drainage system. Last night I mistakingly chose the shower at lowest ground.
As many showered at once, the single drain could not handle the dirt, sweat, hair and extra’s that flowed with the water, so we began to have a little backing up issue in my stall. Not long after that, someone did the liquid nasty. My first means of perception was olfactory. I thought sweat, I thought toilet. Then the color came. And it was dark. Even diluted in the dirty shower water of three or four; it was dark.
Mar 17
It feels like Im traveling on so many different levels. Theres the obvious one, where Im physically moving around the planet, constantly seeing, tasting and hearing new things. But theres more.
Im traveling through the other travellers I meet. Daily I have conversations with people from far away, whose life path has crossed mine. Ive met a guy on a two year journey around the world researching to write a book on spiritual contemporary art, a kid from Canada who decided to move to New Zealand and gave away everything he owned all in a matter of ten days and an English girl who was traveling with her mother in the safety of Singapore where mom wouldnt let her go out alone at night, even though she had just come from a solo visit to the drug trafficking towns of South America. I met two girls from Jordan, that were surprised Id even heard of their home since most they met have not, a model from Vancouver whos walked runways and shot magazines in Italy, New York and Hong Kong and countless Germans and Australians on round the world journeys. One could simply sit in a hostel all day and by smelling the foods cooked, hearing the languages spoken and meeting all the guests that come in and out, feel as if theyre traveling the world.
Mar 15
The other night I and some friends I made here went to the Night Safari. Its a drive thru zoo that you can go to in the dark. Ive got mixed feelings about zoos in general, but theres no doubt I enjoyed seeing nocturnal animals during their waking hours.
The scariest were the two foot fruit bats that hung from the ceiling of a cage went inside of. They swayed above our heads and we stared straight up at them. Suddenly, one let go and dropped at us. Everyone ducked and yelped as the thing caught flight and glided past.
Mar 12
It cost us another $10 to have our driver to take us down a dusty road from the city to the river. We didn’t know anything about the floating village, except that he insisted we see it. He pulled over at a small building with three walls, a roof and a table where a couple men sat surrounding a metal cash box. I haggled with them on the exchange rates between the boat price listed in Cambodian Riels, my payment in Thai Baht and their change in US currency.
Back on the dusty road, I imagined how dry it must be during the dry season. The street dropped off on both sides into small waterways. Shacks stood high on skinny stalk legs. They didn’t look safe, but obviously held their weight against the rush of a wet season’s river. As we drove on, it became more congested. Stilted bamboo houses lined the entire road. The driver we had this day spoke some English. He told us the government lets the people live there for free, since they are too poor to afford anything else.
