Author: jensen

Arrived on Wednesday morning November 5 in London shortly after hearing the captain announce Obama’s victory. Wish I had left on nov 5 instead of 6pm on the fourth so I could have partaken in the out in the streets spontaneous joy fest in seattle which I heard about from tina and read in the online papers. i love that stuff. didn’t really make me feel joyous when I heard, although my soul is dancing for the result, maybe not have gone back if mccain had won…don’t know if i could stand another four years of living in a country that is mine and not mine. GOBAMA!!!!

So england is great. first time travelling to europe. different feel than se asia. I mean they’re very different places, don’t mean to say that fact is interesting, but that they make me feel differently. when I see old buildings in asia I didn’t feel as much of a personal connection methinks. when i saw stonehenge and some other old buildings it makes me think about humanity and stuff in kind of a snapshot…view my life as more of an example of the whole, one thread in the tapestry of humanity. Makes me feel more universal and also more individual at the same time. Thinking about ancient  civilizations and that my ancestors’ success was required for my life makes me want to kick ass and take names as they must have to hold on to their lives and create more of them.

I’ve a theory that as people decide to have less and less of an impact on the world that there’s a tendancy to start to dislike human life. I mean, to live is to kill, to absorb, to take away from the world, to make food into shit. So if my goal in becoming vegetarian is to be more ecological in the sense that I want to take less from the earth because taking from the earth is bad then to follow that to its logical extreme, i must die for that is the way I will have the least impact on the earth and its inhabitants.

This idea comes up when you talk about the point of civilization, It is definitely to organize and support human life, but with what goals? are we to live harmoniously with the earth, in the way that perhaps hunter gatherer tribes lived, so that if all people were to die there would be no trace of them shortly after. This goal would be most harmonious perhaps, but maybe not as comfortable as i’ve become accustomed to. I guess that making peoples’ lives more comfortable is nearly the same as supporting their lives, it was a rough life that caused such early deaths back in the day when old age was 40, but taking these two different goals to their extremes might have different results.

Another reason for civilization is to ensure humanity’s continued existence. If this is the goal, then we need to conquor and control the elements in our lives that threaten humanity. I see these as ourselves and nature. The problem of humanity destroying themselves is more of an internal struggle to mold one’s self into a person who will not destroy humanity, like not making bombs or genociding, and helping others to avoid becoming those pernicious people. The solution to that problem is beyond the scope of what i want to talk about here. The other problem, conquoring nature, requires that we survive and build space ships so we can live on tons of planets, maybe not be dependent on planets to survive, spread the seed of humanity throughout the stars.

When I get to this point in the conversation and someone disagrees, then I ask “what, you think that humanity not existing is an acceptable possibility?” to which they reply something like, “yeah, that wouldnt’ be so bad”  MAN! that’s depressing. what a crazy mix of self and species hate. I know this feeling comes from a place of compassion for the universe and stuff, but it’s a painfully paradoxial way to live your life. Too compassionate I think.

I agree we need to be nice and not hurt stuff unnecessarily, but it is a fact that to live is to kill and suck the life force out of things. It’s just the balance that we make in our lives that decide if we are considerate or inconsiderate, kind or mean.

So anyway to bring this back to my point before about how england and all the old castles and stuff make me feel…it makes me value humanity more than i used to, and also my life and ancestors more too. I feel better about eating animals, and I’d feel more okay about killing to save my life if i needed to. my ancestor’s ability to do these things has made my life possible.

that brings up a good point. If there are any people out there, and I know a couple of you personally, then remember that you wouldn’t have this life without your ancestors fighting for their lives. and when you really think about it, or maybe when you really don’t think about it, (depends how you think about it) life is totally awesome. Or at least sometimes it is and in those moments you can’t help but think all the shit was worth it eh

well i went off on quite a tangent there…

folks and i went to bath, nice place, nice churches like every largish and some smallish towns here. Toured the roman bath and partook in the more modern thermae spa to take the waters. their hot tubs were pretty much warm tubs, but i could stay in them longer than 105 degree tubs like I prefer, and so i felt slow roasted…very relaxed 🙂 The weather’s fairly miserable like seattle in the winter, but england’s five degrees or so north of seattle latitudinally and so perhaps a bit crappier.

went to a proper english pub and it was nice. the barkeeps were great, real friendly and reminded me of people i know, which reminds me of another idea i had: that all people have all elements of everyone else in them, and that they’re individuals based on what amounts of the different characteristics they have in them. now to identify all the characteristics people can have…nope way too complicated for right now.

oh, and money, what a crazy thing, representation of value, what it does to society, etc etc wow. could think about all the implications of money for days. I don’t really get it. oh, and if someone could explain to me why there can be fiscal depressions please I would really appreciate it. My problem with it is this: there are tons of people out of work and then they have no money to live. Money represents value right? well how do we get things of value? they are products of a person’s labor, their purposeful intelligent interaction with the world, like planting crops and tending them, or felling a tree and carpentering up a chair to sit on. So there’s tons of people who will starve unless they create value to support their lives, why don’t they just work for each other, like I’ll make some food if you make me chair. There’s so many people around trying to work to sustain their lives, why don’t they just start doing it? and dont’ tell me there’s nobody to hire them because you’re stuck looking at money as having value in itself. People can create value with their labor, and there’s tons of people willing and desperate to sustain themselves with value. Is it due to the organization of society? That there’s a system, an infrastructure, that if some of its parts fail the whole thing falls apart? Please help me to understand this, I hope I’ve described my confusion sufficiently for you to tell me what I need to know to understand this better. THANK YOU!!!

Okay, enough philosophizing and enough topics, prolly can’t even remember what they were if you’ve read this far 🙂

so yeah, india is cool. we started in calcutta/kolkata and that was nice. there are tons of people and lots of chai stands around and restaurants. the way people drive is quite erradic but it works for them. lots of honking is the only bad part. I’m told that to see the real india one needs to travel outside of the cities so maybe we’ll do that.  however we took the night train from kolkata to varanasi where I am right now. varanasi is unlike any city i’ve been to, its proximity to the holy river ganges pronounced ganga by the locals, gives a unique character to this place. the whole riverfront is stone stairs and walkways and kind of like a huge long stone park. only instead of being all clean and steril like the places like this in the us there are tons of peopel and animals and the signs of living. guys pee into open gutters, people are dressed in religious robes or washing or just going to work in collared shirts and slacks. there’s everyone here. got into a talk about whether or not the homeless people here give it a better feeling by making it seem like home and lived in and whether india’s relationship with the homeless is more healthy than in the us or perhaps the homeless people have something different here than the do in the states…something more or just different is part of the interestingness of the topic. This place feels ancient…like it’s not much different than it was 2000 years ago. Sure you can buy dvds of the most recent ganga worship ceremony and there are some tourists and motorized things and electricity, but the people seem to be living more like people did thousands of years ago than they do in seattle. cell phones etc are here but seems different anyway. i really like this place. oh! and one big difference is a large part of the city is composed of buildings lined with pedestrian only streets because they are too narrow for vehicles. mostly…some motorcycles/scooters go around. but mostly you’re dodging cows instead of motorized honking things. very nice and one of the biggest reasons why varanasi is different than other places I’ve been. I heard europe or some places are like this too. very cool, looking forward to checking this out. makes me think about urban planning… we should design cities for pedestrians and not so much cars.

Man should you guys see my beard, it’s about an inch long all around, shaved my neck though a while back and mustache but it’s since grown back. It’s awesome and going to be more so. Tina doesn’t like it but tough for her. I think I’ll get her to braid it when it gets a bit longer perhaps.

While in malaysian borneo we went to Uncle Tan’s wildlife refuge and stayed two nights. Played guitar with the guides, learned and have since forgot the beautiful girl song that perhaps everyone’s heard. Saw animals like, bearded pig, monitor lizard, orangutan, nose monkeys (proboscis), king fishers, the eyes of crocodiles, long and short tail macaques that would sneak and steal breakfast biscuits until they were shooed off by the guides, the tourists just stood around and watched them haha. One of them stole a can of sweetened condensed milk. It’s fun to have monkeys steal stuff, where most places they’d be watched and loved, here they were pests to be scolded and throw stuff at hahahaha. Boat trips on the Kinabalu river, jungle treks through mosquito swarms to see tarantulas as big around as my head, frogs, crazy looking bugs, scorpions (had one on my hand for fun but it wasn’t), millipedes that smelled like marzipan if you rubbed their backs, more frogs, vines and plants and stuff that were cool and tropical, ants big around as my pinky finger, horn bill birds, eagles of some kind and some owls. Probably more too but that’s most of them. Naps in hammocks, butterflies swarming where some german guy peed the night before (I think they like salt?) and a pick up soccer game. The water level while we were there was static but they told us that it rises and sinks like 15 feet over the year, good stuff.

So we’re in Chian Mai now, northern thailand. From KK we went over to kuala lumpur, the penninsular side of malaysia. They had great indian food and there was a protest for fair elections going on when we were there. Lots of police and their trucks and even a helicopter, but no action the crowd was just taking pictures in front of the mass of po pos, so that was good if not as exciting as it could have been. We stayed a couple of days, oh and the indian food makes me hungry for india, gonna be so awesome!!!! Then we were up to the cameron highlands about halfway between KL and thailand, to check out the tea fields and strawberry farms, the tea fields were very picturesque and we got some accordingly and drank some tea and ate some crumpets. Walked around the jungle a bit and saw a waterfall, lots of garbage in it though, and not one to jump off of…more like cascading. Hawaii’s got everyone beat so far for falling water to jump off.

There are some travellers that we’ve run into in various countries just by accident, small world, probably because the tourist/backpacker areas are the places where everyone goes. We’ve been lucky with weather so far…Hmm…Oh then after KL we went north to george town on the island of penang? and stayed one night before heading off on the sleeper train to hat yai where we stayed a night and booked a taxi, bus, boat trip to koh pangnan for relaxing on the beach again.

Koh pagnan six am we arrived on the sleeper boat, great this, matresses laid out on the deck to sleep on while the boat took ten hours or so to get to koh pagnan. We skipped the taxis at first to walk a bit and caught a great double, almost triple rainbow on the beach. Funny that the ferry took us to thongsala, the south western tip of the island when everyone was going to hat rin on the south eastern tip, probably get kick backs from the taxi guys. That’s really the way it works everywhere, everyone all set up to take advantage of the unconnected and unknowing backpackers, c’est la vie 🙂 One joy of travelling comes from all the different names of hostels and shops and restaurants and places, so much fun. Right now we’re across the street from the crusty loaf bakery in a coffee internet shop that would fit in seattle wonderfully with its wood and om buddhist art and progressive what have yous.

So we spent a week and a half or two on haad yuan per Josh Brewster’s recommendation and it was great. Stayed in haad yuan bungalow with gunther and his wife sarah p as innkeepers in a great bungalow overlooking the beach and ocean. As picturesque as you could make it. Oh and I had TONS of fun climbing over the huge granite boulders on the beach jumping around on them. They were washed clean and very grippy…perfect for scrambling exercise. I think this is my favorite form of exercise, climbing around on huge boulders, up them between them under and around. Like a giant adult jungle gym, I think if a person could hook up some kind of gym in the city like this, giant adult jungle gym, it would be a big hit with at least one seattle resident. It includes all kinds of movements and works the whole body. I could set this up if anyone wants to invest in something that’ll be bigger than tae bo!

And we went to the haad rin full moon party which was like a huge frat party on the beach minus the machismo. Not as organized as a seattle festival, could have had more cohesion, each bar had their own thing going on, all of them played electronic music. One had a guy kind of rapping along with the music which would make beat poetry in that style, with the beat behind the poet, very powerful, maybe write something and try it out when I get back perhaps…now have to think of something to say….

After relaxing on the beach we booked passage to bangkok where we stayed, not on koh san road, but close to it on a better street I think that wasn’t as washed out touristy but still catering to backpackers. Bought a bunch of stuff like hammocks and teeshirts and little sculptures and some paintings and stuff then shipped back a ten kilo box to seattle with the goodies. Oh, bought some thai pants too which are great and I’ve been going commando for days now. We took the sleeper train to bangkok and it was nice. Watched some movies, stayed at the gecko guesthouse and had our laundry done for 25 baht/kilo.

The dollar is doing so poorly worldwide, if anyone knows why or how this works then please explain it to me. Also, please explain how a depression happens. There’s all these people out of work, wanting to work, why don’t they just work for each other? I don’t get depressions in the economy either.

After bangkok we took the sleeper train to chiang mai where we arrived today and will go on a jungle trek tour for three days starting tomorrow, where we’ll do some elephant riding and bamboo raft floating and wat looking, that sort of thing. Okay okay, more later, I hope I didn’t forget anything. Wish you were here 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

November 3rd, 2007

  Hello, so day two in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia. People call the city KK and Kula Lumpur KL for short reference. So I’m liking here quite a lot, the names of places like Kinabatangan and Sandakan are fun to say. So far in this city, more like a town compared to Seattle or Manila, nobody is begging for money which is nice, makes me feel as though people are taking care of themselves and society is taking care of them too around here. And I don’t feel obligated to give them money, which no doubt I will run short on towards the end of the trip.

  We just found out by reading the Indian Visa that the tourist visa is not-extendable which is a bummer because then we’ll have to go home by February 7th when our visa is up. I hope to be able to get another one or extend it against the rules by getting an exception because we won’t have used four months of our visa by the time we get there. If you have advice from your travel agent to get a visa before you leave the US or where ever, I suggest you ignore them and get the visa at one of their embassies, or maybe at the border when you get there. Unless you think you may be rejected of it and require assurance that you’ll be awarded the visa. Ah well, we’ll work that out later.

  It looks like the tickets are cheaper to Barcelona from India than Vietnam or Thailand so perhaps we’ll make our way to India by christmas and get a round trip ticket for visiting family.

  So KK is nice, there are a few dozen inexpensive hotels and hostels around town for us to stay in, the town seems to be all malls and hotels and corner restaurants.  From the airport we walked about twenty minutes to the bus stop to catch one to the city center where we were approached by two malaysian guys who were trying to help us but pretty much we knew where we were going from the map we got from the tourist info booth at the airport. Ate two plates of rice and some meat dishes with a bottle of water and a mango juice for 12 RM (ringgit, and right now it’s 3.3RM/1USD….the dollar is doing very poorly the world around and the value has been about 80% all over the place from where it was when our travel book was written a couple of years ago). So still very cheap, it was a 24 hour place and the food was mediocre. Today we had free breakfast like all the hostels offer, but it’s only coffee and toast with jam. Bought some peanut butter today and had a toasted PBJ for dinner and it was great. 

  Last night we stayed at the Borneo Adventure Lodge or something like that, and tonight we’re at Asia Adventure Lodge. There’s free internet here, but the computer is a pentium II from 1996.

  We met some girls from Borneo at Friendly’s Backpacker Hostel in Manila who’ve recommended a place called Uncle Tan’s Jungle Lodge or something like that and we may meet up with one or both of them. One, Joannie is planting fig trees so the mature ones will provide food for orangutans, and the other, Sharon works in some capacity for an orangutan wildlife rehabilitation center. We’ll head off there first, tomorrow, to be able to meet with Joannie who’s leaving the 7th, and then spend a couple of days checking out the jungle and orangutangs and then go to Mt. Kinabalu (5100m) for a trek and hot springs after at the bottom to recoup my soon to be wrecked body 🙂

  Oh, and people here drive on the left side of the road like in England, nearly got myself run over last night due to this and my inattention. There are also lots of KFC restaurants, they’re like starbucks in Seattle, one on every corner. Great sunset today…excited for tomorrow. Oh, and we walked up to a lookout place on the hill above KK, went past a HUGE banyan tree, got a pic.

Tina and I are wrapping up our time here in boracay, land of beach and bars and crafts shops and not too crowded but still lots of vendors selling stuff and more pale tourists arriving all the time busy season is starting. Our stay at the hotel for 14 nights turns up to be 8880 pesos/200usd can’t beat that and they did our laundry and fed us some breakfasts too. We’ve switched to eating pbj for breakfasts to cut down on some costs, living under our 40usd/day budget. Starting to look into plane tickets to mallorca for christmas and new years, heard from a spanish guy that it’s way cheaper to fly to germany from bangkok and then to madrid, so we’ll check that out, it’ll be great to see you.

We’ve decided to cut out indonesia because of our goal to get to know places instead of just pass through, so we’ll have a month and a bit to see vietnam, thailand, cambodia, and laos before we head to spain and then we’ll fly back to india probably, or maybe go up around the mideast and then south through china to nepal and india. We heard from a nice vancouveran/canadian that her stay in tibet recently was lame because those dern imperialist chinese are making it all officious and cultural undermining and militaristic and bad and stuff. People can get fines of thousands usd if they’re caught giving a ride to a tourist without a permit that china now requires of them. So we’ve decided to stick to india, land of amazing food, and nepal, to get our buddhist fix, the lama is in some place in india that sounds like dhali lama, like darma lima or something anyway, and surrounded by a huge population of buddhists (oh, I miss my cat buddha mucho) so that’ll be great. So India after spain and then when we get bored we’ll head up to nepal and rent some winter clothes for the frigid weather, yak fur most likely :). Too bad we’re missing the camel fair in northern india right now, heard it was great.

Made a couple of canadian friends here in boracay that we’ll no doubt go and visit, except for erika who’s in seoul korea, have no current plans to go there, unless she comes back to vancouver then we’ll head on up. Her sister dawn and her are great. And Montrealan Sylvan was great too, takes a month or two off per year for travelling, can see myself being inspired to do that too. He’s saving europe for his older years because he’ll have more money then and be less physically able and europe is more expensive and easier to travel around, brilliant!

Lots of other interesting and inspiring people too to meet, probably the best part, one of them, of travelling is meeting all the other travellers. Some aren’t so good but we just don’t spend time with them.

Lots of fruit shakes here too yum. Philippine food isn’t all that great to me, lots of seafood that smells and tastes like low tide, but the rice and eggs are good, no century eggs or salted duck eggs here 🙂 Although they do eat fetusized chicken eggs, 18 days I hear is the best, not 22 like most people like, but I won’t eat one. There’s no tofu here either. Beer is cheap, fifty cents for a beer if you know where to get one, otherwise prices go as high as the states.

Some days I think, why am I travelling? I’m the same wherever I go, and sometimes I walk around and look at stuff and see things and meet people and remember why. But life’s life though and some days suck badly, told tina to remind me that someday I’m going to die and to stop wasting time being lame. I find death very motivating usually. Although when I’m depressed I don’t care about much at all seems like. Mostly I’m great though, oh, send me your mailing address and I’ll send you a postcard from someplace.

Climbed a coconut tree, fresh milk tastes way better than canned stuff, wish I had a kitchen to cook in. Buying bottled water instead of using the UV ray steripen because the water tastes better when it’s filtered, spoiling myself. Prolly use that steripen next summer when I want to walk the whole pacific crest trail, who’s with me? Inspired by zak mermel from hawaii who did it this summer cowboy camping style. Finished reading ”a problem from hell: america and the age of genocide” and want to save the world again sometimes, broke down all emotional one drunk night about all the hurt in the world in taiwan at guanziling muddy hot springs hotel place, that was fun 🙂 (in retrospect)…went sailing with guys here in boracay and the canadians and tina and did some snorkling, about on par with hawaii, maybe a little less good than that beach…five mile?…in hilo yay hilo. Great indian food restaurant here on the strip that makes me salivate for india. Got a tour of some mango trees with a 50yo prostitute named queen anita who bought me peanuts and a ride on a motor scooter and tricked me into eating a pepper that burned my mouth so I had to have a beer to put out the fire. Made a hammock out of a bed sheet and some nice rope stuff I bought from a shop that makes awesome fish-flops in the shapes of squids and spider man and geckos and stuff. Dance to live music on the beach, question life’s motivations, had a beer with an elderly hugely bearded scottish mailman and an english seaweed farmer living on cebu. frisbee with people from all over the world of various skill levels with the haight&ashbury hypercolor disk brought that I bought when david and I drove to mexico. Tina got a good massage on the dime. Pretty much healed from my crazy staff infections on my legs. Multiple sunburns that are fading into a protective layer of darker skin. Found out big cities aren’t where it’s at for my travel tastes. More and more, wish you were all here, more to come.

love,
jensen

Sooooo….Tina and I were in Taiwan with her family. That was nice, going to eat, them taking us to temples, beer houses for gambei/campai/bottoms up, relearning chinese chess (thank you ten years ago alex) and playing with her uncles and cousin, it’s a lot like international chess but the pieces and board and rules are different, same kind of thinking though. Then it was down to Dulan bay to stay with tina’s uncle sam’s friend, ride around on his four wheelers, get really sunburned, the best was riding them on the beach and doing doughnuts and stuff. Eating mangos and humbaos/baotses and papaya and things. Back to Taichung with her family for another week or something, staying in their old apartment and getting cheapo delicious breakfast from the local place, always local places, try and avoid chains and names of stores I recognize, although 7-11 is everywhere like starbucks in seattle and good for water.

  Now we’re down in borocay, tropical beach land where the water is cool enough to be refreshing and warm enough to be in all day if you want. We’re at a place called Roy’s somethingorother and it’s nice 500 pesos a night exchange rate is 43/1usd and good food and stuff. Okay more later, just relaxing and making plans to make a hammock out of our bedsheets 🙂

Hello from Taipei!

Tina and I just got in yesterday on sunday after our 13 hour flight of which I slept a good 8 hours. THings are well, we’re staying at a hotel that one of her uncles “General” set us up with. It’s nice and has a western toilet which is nice, and a shower. The entire bathroom is tiled and is kind of like a big shower with no doors on the shower. We’ve had some great food, dumplings and the like. Yesterday was the first day we were here and her uncle Sam (I know hahaha) took us around.   We went to a geopark which was a beach with sandstone shores that have been eroded into really cool shapes, big rocks on top of small spires of sandstone. Little fish in the water and things like that. Nice plants and birds and stuff. It was like we were in another world when we were walking amongst the rock shapes…lots of picures to come when we set that up.

Then we went to get some sea food at a restaurant where her aunt ordered some lobster sashimi along with some other stuff. The lobster arrived in a bowl of ice with it’s body sticking out of the ice and it’s shelled tail sitting next to the tail meat that we ate with wasabi. The lobster was moving a bit because (I thought) of the cooling of it’s body was causing it to contract. So I poked it and the thing started waving its arms around and its antennae too IT WAS STILL ALIVE!!! Tina poked it and it started screaming at us for like fives seconds. Its eyes were moving around looking at us too as we were devouring its body. Then they took the dish away after we ate the meat and we saw him next in a soup that they cooked the rest of him in. It was like “oh hello, I remember you, you were delicious” craziest culinary experience I’ve ever had. I can’t really get over the dried fish smell and the dishes with the little fish in them that were dried whole. Reminds me of the beach smell…you know.   So things are good. We’re going up into 101 today, second tallest building in the world next to Dubai’s tower something or other. It’s raining a bit now, like it does in Seattle, not really enough to get wet and it’s misting mostly so perhaps we’ll wait on the 101 until a clear day will give us an unobstructed view. Be well and merry and I’ll keep these coming 🙂

~Jensen