This Must Be the Place

And... The end is nigh. No more travel to plan. No more TripAdvisor reviews to parse for clues on commenter quality, no more flights to book, no more wearing the same thing three days in a row. In fact, there are just two things left: 1) a flight home (leaves in a few hours), and 2) culling the best pics out of the 3,000 I took for the three-hour slideshow I'm debuting at the August Family Christmas Party and taking on tour afterward.

Right before I left, my buddy and music sherpa Lee jokingly (?) predicted I'd be so homesick that I'd be seen walking around random European cities, headphones in, rocking The Mowglis' San Francisco with tears streaming down my face. And he got everything right, except for the part about the Mowglis and the crying. I was definitely homesick a time or two, and I had a pretty consistent soundtrack accessing my brain place through buds in my ear holes. 

I remembered this little prediction and it got me thinking. If I'm going to string together three hours worth of pictures into a single slideshow, I'm probably going to need some sort of soundtrack to spare my voice from telling so many stories. If the 80s taught me anything, it's that a well-placed montage is an effective diversion when you've run out of good dialogue. So while San Francisco didn't make the cut, here are a few of the songs that did.

Octopus's Garden, The Beatles

Last Tuesday, I went diving at the Murat Navy Pier in Western Australia. Ranked among the best dive sites in the world, it's in the extreme northwest tip of the continent on the Ningaloo Reef, which any Western Australian will tell you is more impressive than the Great Barrier Reef. (I'm sure that has nothing to do with regional bias.)

They call it an "open-water aquarium," because something about the pier, which extends a couple hundred feet (~75m) into the Indian Ocean, attracts an incredibly diverse array of marine life. There's a little spot on the floor called "Octopus's Garden" for very literal reasons: octopi hide among its coral and rocks, and they all continually sing Ringo's best vocal contribution to The Beatles. Which is pretty cool, I must say.

But that's not even close to the most impressive part. I'll just tell you this. I did not take this picture, but I could have if a) I had a camera and b) I wasn't busy suppressing my reptilian brain's very strong fight or flight response. I wasn't winning this fight, and, well, I wasn't winning this flight, either. So I floated there, 45 feet (~13m) deep, and watched three of these guys swim for awhile, making enormous groupers and entire schools of 25-pound cods look like goldfish. Absolutely mesmerizing.

Grey nurse shark (sand tiger shark to we Yanks)

Don't You Worry Child, Swedish House Mafia

I only include this song because Jenny O'Connor rocked our world in Cambodia by telling us we had the lyrics wrong. It turns out Sierra doesn't have a plan for you at all. "See, heaven" does. I know, shocking, right?

Which brings me to the rough silk shirt.

Siem Reap is one big commercial hub that sprung up because Angkor Wat attracts so many tourists. The most popular attraction in town is called the "Night Market;" essentially, it's a den of cheap consumer swag that's open at night, but you can get the same stuff during the day, too.

The protocol is simple: you look at something, the shopkeeper offers you a ridiculous price for it. You haggle for the sake of it. He laughs at you. Then you start to walk away and he cuts his price to 50% of the original. And if you're me, you end up walking away with a shiny blue shirt with a priest's collar and big buttons down the front, made of silk and looking damn cool in the package. 

Then I got home and put it on. We were all headed out to dinner and didn't have big plans the next day (just going to see Angkor Wat, one of the wonders of the world, that's all), which, unbeknownst to me and the shirt, sealed its fate. Out of the package and on to my body, I noticed some disturbing flaws the first glance in the mirror. I knew it was shiny when I bought it, but now it looked like a smurf with a greasy forehead. And the "big buttons" were clearly stolen from somebody's couch cushions. At least the collar still looked money. I mean, I'm sad they're not popular in the West. I'd wear them every day.

Hoping nobody would notice how ridiculous it was, I still wore it to dinner. 

Everybody noticed. 

"Did you mean to buy that?"

"Once you're done with it, you should cut off the sleeves and make it a vest."

So I did. Four hours later. At the club in town, which we decided to hit up since we didn't have to get up early the following day. I was busy imitating my friend Jill's favorite dance move (signaling "touchdown" and bouncing around with a huge grin on her face), and the right sleeve decided to rip at the armpit. Two minutes later, with help from my new BFsF Jill and Margo, I was rocking a one-sleeve shirt. Twenty minutes after that? Sleeveless.

Classy.

The buttons didn't even survive the 15-minute walk back to our hotel, and I just felt bad for whoever's couch they stole them from. What a waste.

The only known pic of the shirt: Vey thought his spell would make the shirt look better; I was too ashamed to show my face. Note: if you think you have another pic of the shirt, you don't. Right?

Something Good, alt-J

This song isn't really going on the soundtrack, but I wanted to brag that I'm going to see alt-J at the Fox in Oakland on Thursday night. 

And I believe I just did.

Lie in Our Graves, Dave Matthews Band

One of the best songs I know about carpeing the diem, it's made even better by DMB's classic technique of pairing Dead Poets' Society lyrics with Downtown Disney riffs. Dance, smile, laugh, feel good, and ignore Dave mockingly question why we live our lives as tiny bits of disposable tread on corporate tires.

A nagging feeling last year made me realize I had some serious day seizing to do, and in December I decided it was time to hit the road to find the reset button. I set off in March with loose plans and no official end date, figuring I'd find that damn button somewhere. 

And I did. Time and again, in very different places doing very different things. 

I found it while running six miles in Budapest with a fun and inspiring pair of sisters; carb loading with awesome new friends before running a half marathon in Oslo; in deciding to change my plans and go to Australia and Budapest and Bali because, well, why not?; while scouring this picture in a bar late one night in Hanoi with a few Limeys trying to figure out who that familiar face is right behind Joe DiMaggio (see below. And please help. I'm stumped.).

She's got Bette Davis Eyes. But who is he?

I found it with all the new people I met, including incredibly cool Brazilians in Copenhagen and Krakow (Brazil is definitely going to take over the world), Turks in Istanbul (a week before the shit went down, sparing my mother's blood pressure), Oklahomans, Jerseyans, Minnesotans, and Texans in Positano, Germans in Bali, and, in Eindhoven, an Israeli who heard I was from San Francisco and immediately assumed I was that thing everybody in the world thinks all San Franciscans are. A raging...

...stoner. 

They all spoke English, of course. Well, except for the Texans, but we didn't have much in common anyway. To keep up my end of the bargain, I learned how to speak the metric system, Celsius, the 24-hour clock, and attempted to use local pronunciations, which was the least I could do. Who am I kidding? It was the absolute most I could do. Balls, there are a lot of languages out there. It's hard not to feel like an atrocious stereotype when exchanging stories about how many languages you speak. My new German friend speaks five. I claim one and a bit, but my Spanish and French probably don't really qualify as "and a bit."

Nonetheless, in the last five months, I learned how to say "cheers" and "thank you" in a dozen languages; my favorite being, as always, England, where they mean the same thing. 

Aaaaaaand I've forgotten most of them by now. Whoops. 

Never Mind the Strangers, The Saw Doctors

I've had a very strategic adulthood, making sure to plop good friends throughout the world; it keeps the hotel bills down and all. And my trip has been full of them: Jay Malihoudis in 'nam; Jules, Gina, and Vern in various European locales; Nicky Carter in six different countries; the Donger in Bali; Al, Nat, and Ro in Tonbridge and Al and Nat again in Oz. (They're tough to shake.) I saw the Hans to my Franz, Mr. Evan Aydelott, and his lovely bride Crystal for dinner on Lake Zurich. I drove from The Netherlands to Switzerland with Tommy Ten Bucks; Ian Young and I solved all the world's problems in a four-hour drive from Zurich to Lake Geneva. (Don't ask. I forgot to write them down.) I had lunch with Liam Carroll and Jason Holowaty right after landing in London five months ago. And my old roomies, Ryan, Loni, and I rekindled our traditional roommate dinner night in London, being that they're still living together all these years later… since they're married. And I saw a shining example of how love and commitment can still look in 2013 while getting ice cream with the Lindberg family in Ahous, Sweden.

How did I spend the last two weeks of my trip? Partying hard, raging against the dying of my early retirement, refusing to accept my pending triumphant return to corporate life? Nah. I sat in Western Australia and made the same jokes about vegetarians that I've been making since I met Alex Malihoudis in 1997. Every night, I watched about 15 minutes of a Disney movie with his daughters before they went to bed (usually Sasha's choice...honest), and then Alex, Natalie, and I sat up and talked about everything and anything while half-heartedly watching a movie. 

It was absolutely perfect.

What's a great friendship if not one long conversation over several years between two people whose brains are somehow cosmically connected, conveniently interrupted by the other stuff they have to do so they don't get bored or, you know, go hungry? If they're lucky, they keep picking up those conversations where they left off, even as they start new ones. And I've been extremely lucky.

This Must Be the Place, Talking Heads
also: This Must Be the Place, Kishi Bashi cover (I couldn't decide)

And now I'm headed home. Tomorrow night, I'll be a zombie playing softball in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge Anchor Steam Brewery (unless the damn fog has other ideas) and in a week I'll trade in the five t-shirts I've rotated since March for buttons and collars in my cubicle at the end of Pier One. 

I want to thank all four of you for reading my ramblings while I crossed the globe. It's been fun to write about some of the stuff that happened, and I hope you chuckled a time or two reading about it. I also hope some day you'll get on a plane (or 32!!) and see a slice of the world and write about; I can't wait to read about what you find. I know the list of places I want to visit got longer in the last five months, which tells me I'll never stop hitting the road.

Until then...

"If someone asks, this is where I'll be"

Where I went. Lots more to do. Africa? You're next. Unless South America beats you to the punch.

Eat, Pray...

I haven't kept an official tally or anything, but I'm fairly certain I've heard somebody make an "Eat, Pray, Love" joke about my trip something between 200 and 248 million times this year. And, frankly, I've done a pretty decent job of making it seem like I was fishing for them. Two weeks ago, I went and made it worse: after spending 11 glorious days eating my way through Italy earlier this summer, I ended up in Bali, where, according to the book/movie, I was supposed to find a four letter word spelled with an l, o, v, and e.

Didn't happen. Worry not, though, I found several other four letter words on the way to a very good time.

1. D-o-n-g

For those of you who don't know the Donger, I regret to inform you that your life isn't quite complete. For those of you that do, you probably don't need this disclaimer, but I regret to inform you that I can't provide much detail in this space about our two weeks in Indonesia. This is a family site, after all.

Mr. Dong W An

Dong's a buddy of mine from SF that I've known since the late 90s; he runs operations for a hedge fund, but he's about to embark on a new career in the East Bay. In order to prepare himself for a daily commute across the Bay Bridge, he decided to bolt to Asia for a few weeks and become a better surfer. He did all the legwork on planning the trip; all I had to do was book a flight that got me to Bali on July 27th. After getting scammed by a few guys in official-looking clothing at the airport, I was picked up by a few locals who whisked me away to our first stop: Kimasurf, an awesome surf camp full of very friendly people, 95% of whom were German. Throw in a few great people from the Netherlands, and we not only had instant friends, but we got to hear a lot of people talking in languages that strongly emphasize the loogie-hocking muscles. Which is always nice.

Dull moments are in short supply when you're hanging with Dong. He doesn't do mundane; he makes the mundane hilarious. Example: instead of learning campers' names, he pulled a classic Dongerism and assigned nicknames to everybody. Here's how he (and eventually we) referred to various luminaries:

Lars, the German manager of the camp - Hans Gruber

This girl who "showed up" on Wednesday but had really been there all along and he just didn't realize it - the self doppleganger

The group of insular Germans who didn't invite us into their circle - the nihilists

The way to say "good morning" - "Where's the money, Lebowski?"

One camper who happened to be incredibly attractive - Dreamweaver (and he sang her theme song aloud every time she walked by) 

To be completely honest, nothing crazy actually happened in the whole fortnight. Our 25-year-old selves would be ashamed. We did, however, go scuba diving at an old US WWII shipwreck, which was awesome.

Darling, it's better..

...down where it's wetter...

...take it from me

2. S-u-r-f 

My first surf experience was more existential crisis than exhilarating high. In my defense, I assumed that a "surf camp" would include instructions for beginners, but here was day 1's "lesson:"

Grab board

Walk to beach

Check out diagram in sand of safe spots to surf

"Have at it!"

Whoa. At this point in my life, the only experience I had holding a surfboard was the eight-minute walk from the camp to the beach, and I even screwed that up by accidentally swinging the backend into two very unimpressed French women. And it only took me two minutes in the Indian Ocean to realize that I was going to be very good at two things and very bad at a third: 

Good:

1. banging hard plastic on soft tissue (mine, luckily)

2. Drinking salt water

Bad: 

3. Surfing

In fact, halfway through my first hourlong "surf" session, in order to stave off the rapidly unfolding cascade of ego damage, I started to compile a list of things I'm naturally good at. Here's what I came up with.

Note: not an exhaustive list

After three more sessions of really bad surfing, I decided to enroll in a surf school, which I should have done on Day 1. And while I'm probably not going to enter the pro circuit anytime ever, at least I know how exhilarating it is to stand up on a board in a wave, even if the board is 15-feet long and we're only 5 meters from the beach. 

Bali's Volcano

3. G-i-l-i

The southwest coast of Bali shows all the signs of a major tourist influx. Large construction projects are underway on every vacant parcel along the beachfront, soon to add thousands of new rooms to the already substantial resort hotel inventory. A new terminal is under construction at the airport, designed to process 25MM new visitors a year, doubling the current capacity. And many streets feel more like a Hollywood set for "International Beach Resort City" than an actual foreign place, with most of the unique Indonesian experience stripped away by Western convenience, save for the locals sitting outside souvenir shops offering you a good price on something you don't need or cab drivers pulling over to hail you. Even the Indonesian restaurants promote their western options over local fare, usually involving some take on "Australian" beef. If Bali is the Australian Hawaii, the southwest beaches (Kuta and Seminyak) are Waikiki. 

I saw the same phenomenon in Thailand - in Phuket, Koh Samui, and even Chiang Mai - the more tourists come to see it, the more Western companies try to get their grubby little hands on the money that's escaped their homeland, invariably stripping away the local flair with over-processed foods and half-baked smiles. McDonalds, Burger King, Dunkin' Donuts, KFC, Starbucks, W Resorts, Four Seasons…when they flock, you've both arrived as a tourist destination and become the kind of place tourists ironically call "too touristy." Vicious cycle, that.

And then there are the Gili Islands.

If you pull out a world map and look for Trawangan, the largest of the three Gili Islands where Donger and I spent three nights last week, you either won't find it or will mistake it for an extra speck of ink the mapmaker dropped off the coast of Lombok. The "road" around its perimeter - mostly sand, brick, or sandy brick - is just 4.5-miles long (~7km), and is only used by three modes of transport: horses, bicycles, and feet.

It's the kind of place that teems with tourists but somehow doesn't feel touristy, managing to maintain its rustic, old-world charm. There's something so unique about it - so small, untarnished, anachronistic by choice - that it feels like a different world that happens to have a few foreign visitors dropping in to say hello instead of a soulless tourist trap.

Plus, it has a silent disco and some of the best seafood in the world. If I could choose my own setting for a sequel to Groundhog Day, starring yours truly, I'm pretty sure it'd take place in Trawangan. 

Representing Turkey in Trawangan

Horse taxi

4. U-b-u-d

Ubud is another soulful respite from the bustle of Bali's southwest coast. Tucked into the interior of the island, it's surrounded by terraced rice paddies, a forest full of monkeys, and easy access to the nearby volcano that remains active today.

I imagine it's something near Mecca for the yoga retreat set. Though I never got official confirmation, I'm pretty sure there's a local ordinance requiring every cafe to use the word "organic" in its name. And if you're ever stuck in Bali looking for an organic avocado and kale smoothie with bee pollen, green tea extract, and lecithin, go to Ubud. There's no better place to find Balinese oil paintings you'll feel tempted to ship home, price tag be damned; no better launching point for overnight hikes to the top of the volcano, white-water rafting trips, or rides along the two rivers that meet in town. And, say, for example, you have six nieces and four nephews at home? Ubud is an excellent spot for gifts.

MFT and Lotus Pond in Ubud

Organic cafe, Ubud

Coffee and tea tasting. Best thing ever.

One thing it's not great for? Two dudes who don't particularly love shopping who didn't book any yoga or outdoor excursions. So we only actually spent about three hours in Ubud. #Fail.

5. S-n-s-t

Okay, okay, I know I'm cheating, but if the crazy kids these days can shorten words to "cray" and "delish" and "ridic," and if I have to accept that "lol" is not a fad that the world will collectively come to its senses and reject (even though "ha!" has same number of characters), I can totally spell "sunsets" with four letters so it fits my story. Bali puts a huge magnet on the beach everyday at 6 PM, making it impossible for any breathing human creature not to find their way to the shore to watch the sun dip below the horizon. Here. See for yourself. There's a reason most ancient societies worshipped that spirit in the sky. I wonder how many of the world's problems could be solved if we just made everybody stop what they're doing and watch the sun set everyday.

Seminyak

Single Fin Club, Uluwatu

Gili Trawangan

Seminyak

And now we're sprinting down the homestretch. I keep reminding myself that most Americans would kill for a two-week vacation, so having two weeks Down Under until I go home is still quite the indulgence. I'm at my friend Alex's house just outside Perth, Australia, reconnecting with modern conveniences like safe tap water and toilets designed so that you can flush toilet paper, and the guy I spent so much time with in college that my cousin Emily wondered if we were getting married. Luckily, Al has much better taste than Emo gave him credit for, and his wife Natalie and their daughters have already made it feel like a family reunion. Sasha even wanted to wake up Uncle Kevin at 6:00 AM yesterday before going to day care and couldn't understand why daddy thought it was a bad idea. "Daddy lived with Kevin for two years in college, Sweetie. He's not exactly a morning person."

One last thing. Something about my last post struck a nerve, because it got the most pageviews since the first thing I wrote. If you've just stumbled upon this blog or checked back in after a few months, I'd love for you to check out the story about my week in Cambodia, undoubtedly the most memorable week I've spent on the road in a year of memorable weeks.

Oh yeah. I'm going home August 26th. Crazy.

Until next time...

This Whole Nutha Country

It can still be a blog if you take over a month off from writing it, right? Cool. I've been adventuring around Southeast Asia since the end of May (accompanied at times by one of a few blokes from Tonbridge, Misters Nick Carter and Jay Malihoudis, and a few other friends), taking full advantage of exchange rates that always come out in my favor and eating more rice than the previous 35 years combined. After a week in Cambodia and nearly four in Thailand, I've been in Vietnam since the end of June. It looks like a comma with a coastline, and it feels a bit like the Europeans tried to turn it into their summer beach house.

Because, well, they did.

And that's how Vietnam became what it is: an eastern country with a few recessive western traits - pockets of western-looking architecture; cities with wide, tree-lined boulevards; crusty bread and fruity pastries. In fact, Central Saigon feels a bit like somebody tried to copy Paris from memory but forgot to add in all the rude. Throw in harrowing experiences like "walking across the street" and "ordering something called chien on the menu,*" and you've got a mashup of East and West that demands you're always on your toes. And since western tourists only began converging on the country two decades ago, its tourist industry is still growing up, resulting in the most endearingly awkward place I've ever visited.

Saigon

Hanoi

*There are scooters and motorcycles EVERYWHERE here, and they don't believe in inconveniences like stopping - even for red lights - so crossing the street is always a game of Frogger. Chien, "dog" in French, means "fried" in Vietnam, essentially harmless but way too close for comfort, especially before you learn what it means in Vietnamese.

And it's a place that will always stick with me. Whether it was kids who giggled while saying the only English word they know, "hello," the bolder ones who asked to take a picture with me, or the constant glares in my direction while confused people tried to figure out how a human head could be so enormous, Vietnam is a friendly, gorgeous, quirky place. One that, sitting here in Singapore, I already miss.

Here are just a few of the many reasons why.

I Won't Tell No One Your Name

The first thing I noticed in Vietnam - in contrast to Thailand - was how genuinely friendly the locals were. Wait, that was the second thing. The first thing? Their names are ridiculous. Not the real names, mind you, but the names they've chosen because westerners can't pronounce the things g's and h's do to other letters. Instead of watching us butcher Nguyen, Gook, Anh, Luong, Ngoc, et al, many people there adopt Western-sounding names to make it easier on tourists, Jon Stewart style. (Gook's name, for example, has three syllables; he eventually told me to call him Henry.) At a hotel in Hue, I was greeted warmly by Amy, Anna, Mary, and Emma, whose names were definitely not Amy, Anna, Mary, or Emma. In Hanoi, a few of the guys took creative license with their names; Dragon and Happy were two of the best guys I met in the whole country.

And their commitment to service can be so personal that it borders on creepy. Everytime I walked into that hotel in Hue, Amy, Anna, Mary, Emma, and two bellhops I never met gave me the Norm Peterson treatment, standing up and saying "Hi Mr. Kevin" in unison. One day, I walked to the city's famous Citadel in the boiling heat, and Anna was there to greet me afterward. Which led to this:

"Hi Mr. Kevin, what did you did today?"
"I walked over to the Citadel. It's gorgeous. Can't believe so much of it was destroyed in the war."
"You walked there? It's too hot. You must be tired."
"Nah, it was okay. There's lots of shade and it's pretty close. I enjoyed the exercise."
"You sleep good tonight. And have many good dream. Tomorrow, I ask you about them and you tell me everything. All of your dream."
"Um, well, yeah. Okay, goodnight."
"I won't be here in the morning, but I will talk to you in the afternoon and hear all about your dream."

No, Anna. No you won't. Thanks though.

The Citadel, Hue

Everywhere I went - particularly if I was alone - locals took the chance to sit next to me and practice their English. One girl in Hoi An complained about her job and told me she was going to quit and go to a more popular bar/restaurant down the street.

With her boss standing five feet away.

My caddy at Danang Golf Course, a spunky 23-year-old named Hong (no Western name because Hong is easy to say), taught me a few new phrases in the language, including "hai wa" (good shot, which we didn't need to say very much), "come un" ("thank you"), and "mmm" (the slangy way to say yes). Unlike my friends the Ridgeways, who needed a machete to play golf along the Amazon, my foreign golf experience was, well, luxurious.

Danang Golf Club

Camera shy caddies

The best moment may have been delivered by Luong (David), my guide around Hue, who rattled off facts at historic sites like a sixth grader reciting the Gettysburg Address. No eye contact; can't be distracted and forget the next line. He took me to the elaborate tomb of an emperor from the early 1900s not well liked in Vietnam. He was a puppet for the French imperialists, he was consumed with vanity, he had no children. But the main reason he was despised?

"People think he was a homosexual."

I understood what he said, but he felt the need to enlighten me.

"It means he liked making love to the man and not the woman."

I see.

Name That Tune

There are few truly transcendent experiences in life. And rarely in my daily life do I come across things I must experience first-hand to fully appreciate, things where I can't take another person's word for it, visceral experiences that words are powerless to convey. You know, things like eating uni to realize how disgusting it is, crossing the Golden Gate Bridge on foot, and seeing an Asian man dressed like Kenny Rogers play "Fly Me to the Moon" on pipe organ.

Yep, I went to a live Muzak performance in Saigon.

Live.
Muzak.

It wasn't even all that shocking to see live Muzak in Vietnam, because from what I could tell, the entire country owns one of only three music collections: modern Muzak hits, loungey covers of The Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Rod Stewart, or Delilah's Favorite Hits. To say that Muzak and soft rock thrive there would be to understate their grip. They. Are. Everywhere. One delightful day in Hoi An, the most charming town in Southeast Asia, I sat in a restaurant eating cau lau and chocolate mousse and heard the following setlist, entirely in Muzak: "P.I.M.P" by Fitty Cent, the Theme Song from Rocky, and "Dancing Queen". Another night, I was walking down the main riverside promenade in Danang - Vietnam's third largest city and biggest magnet for Japanese money building high-end resort hotels - to see a very familiar sight in Vietnam: large groups of locals sitting on tiny plastic chairs on the sidewalk, drinking fresh beer out of ice-filled glasses. And I heard a very familiar tune on the cafe radio; familiar, at least, to my inner love-sick sixth grader: "Girl I'm Gonna Miss You," by Milli Vanilli.

It's a tragedy for me to see the dream is over, and I never will forget the day we met...girl I'm gonna miss you

(You're welcome)

The Great Outdoors

The biggest thrills in Vietnam don't happen in cities, though. I spent a lot of time riding my very own motorbike, despite Vietnam being the most dangerous place to drive in the world, and hopped of the beaten path for several hikes, bike rides, kayak trips, and more. Here are just a few pictures from the tours I took in the great outdoors, including one of the most remarkable experiences of my life hiking/swimming/climbing through the Phong-Nha cave system just north of the DMZ.

Hiking through the jungle

The mouth of the cave

Phong-Nha

With Mr Malihoudis

Everything Zen

Mr Carter and his kayak

And now I'm only a month from going home. I'm off to Bali tomorrow to meet my buddy Dong and, hilariously, learn how to surf all week. Off to Australia after that, and my trip comes to an end on August 26th, when Doc Brown and I travel back in time from Sydney to SF to tell the past me what a terrible idea it was to go home (depart Sydney at 14:25, arrive in SF four hours earlier at 10:30. May need a ride home. Ahem…friends?).

Round peg, square hole

Until next time...

Cambodia with GO

I met Bora on my first day in Cambodia. He looks like the prototype young associate you'd see in financial districts the world over: slightly built and smartly dressed, with short hair, wire-rimmed glasses, an easy smile and earnest, eager eyes. His work schedule would make any young investment banker jealous; he's only in the office 20 percent of the time, spending the remaining 80 percent in the field with clients. 

Bora's boss, Vichetr Uon (pronounced "vee-chet"), was born in 1979, a time of great strife in the former Khmer Empire. A young man by Western standards, Vichetr's considered old in Cambodia, where as many as three million people of his father's era were murdered by the brutal Khmer Rouge regime, eviscerating an entire generation of intellectuals and leaders whose ideas threatened its existence. Vichetr's father was one of the victims. 

Bora and Vichetr live and work in Kampong Speu, an outpost an hour outside Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh. It's a quick drive out National Highway Four, past the textile factories where Old Navy t-shirts are made for pennies, where rules of the road are merely suggestions, and scooters zip by carrying entire families of four. On one bike.

That's where you see the real Cambodia, tucked away from the main road. A vast maze of dirt roads delivers you to the villages, where 80 percent of the nation's population lives in a kind of squalor tough to comprehend for a Westerner like me. Dirty green ponds supply drinking water; skinny white cows mill about next to the ramshackle huts the families call home, staring longingly at the mangoes and rice and whatever else is for dinner that day. And then there are the kids. Everywhere kids. Five of them for every adult. Data here are murky, but somewhere between 50 and 60 percent of the population is under the age of 22, a sobering reminder of the Khmer Rouge's genocide.

This is where Bora spends 80 percent of his time. He works for Vichetr's Sao Sary Foundation (SSF), doing the kind of work this country desperately needs. Together, they spend their days drilling wells in villages and installing water filters in huts, bringing families clean drinking water for the first time. They rescue kids from families who can't afford them and put them in school instead; saving them from being sold as forced laborers or tragic suppliers of the world's oldest profession. Vichetr educates villagers on basic concepts like saving for tomorrow - literally tomorrow, the day after today - to lessen the crippling grip loan sharks have on the village population. 

Vichetr teaching villagers about basic budgeting

And all of this comes for a price. If the villagers don't maintain their wells and filters, they lose them. Vichetr realizes that merely handing out things for free won't kill the fatalism that pervades in Cambodian society. He knows the path forward involves education, helping people create new habits that could turn around a culture whose people can't help but feel like the losers of a global game of wealth and security. Both Vichetr and Bora have an impressive work ethic, and each admits to crying sometimes when villagers don't hold up their end of the bargain, allowing their filters to fall into disrepair. 

But that doesn't deter them. It just means the work is nowhere near complete.

Bora and a BioSand filter

GO to Kampong Speu

Last Sunday, I met up in Phnom Penh with a delegation from Groundwork Opportunities, a San Francisco-based nonprofit with a simple, ambitious mission: to end extreme poverty. Founded and run by Bart Skorupa and Jenny O'Connor, GO scours the developing world for social entrepreneurs just like Vichetr: locals who are working in their homelands to combat poverty. Their model is relatively simple. Find people who are doing good work but need money and material support, and pair them with champions in the West who help provide those things. Unlike some NGOs who fly in and out without much follow-up, GO focuses on the data, making sure to track the results of every dollar donated, and guarantees that all donations make it to the field. Overhead is handled separately. A couple of times a year, Jenny and Bart bring groups to meet their partners on the ground and see the work they're doing.  There's no special qualification to join the trip ("just an open heart and an open mind," Bart told me when I met him for lunch earlier this year), and while several members of our 13-person team had already done something tangible to support GO's work, I merely tagged along to see what it was all about. 

And this is how I spent the week. Watching guys in t-shirts and bare feet install wells in villages while skeptical kids looked on. Helping build and install BioSand filters, miraculous little cement boxes that kill the bacteria in well water, bringing for the first time drinking water to huts that previously had to lug buckets of water from dirty ponds and boil it to make it safe. I stayed at a guest house started by SSF, where girls rescued from a future as sex workers are taught the hospitality business. I taught an English class in a village outside Siem Reap, at a school started by a Cambodian named Vey Lav in 2006; it's supported by Western donors and fees Vey ("way") earns from his tour guide business. I ate lunches in villages prepared with care by host families, eating unpeeled bananas and mangoes, chicken that was mostly bone, and ants. Yeah. Ants.

WATER!

And maybe I destroyed a perfectly good rough silk shirt, a highly traditional fabric in these parts. But that's a story for another time.

Elma School, Siem Reap

Vey is an entertainer; frankly, it'd be more efficient if - like the Joker - his mouth constantly formed a smile, because that's what he's doing most of the time. He hadn't even met our whole group before he was climbing a palm tree and bringing us its juice to drink. He wrapped a scarf around his head for a photo op, then perched dark shades on the face of a 60-year old village woman for a photo of her own. One day, when we all grabbed lunch on the long bus ride to his hometown of Siem Reap, we'd barely gotten our food when he grabbed his plate and thrust it in the face of a total stranger, lest they miss the chance to smell the fish he ordered. 

Vey being Vey

Vey studied English literature in University - his favorite book and movie are both Love Story, "Ali McGraw and Ryan O'Neal, so lovely" - and that's where he got the idea to teach English to the kids of his hometown. His school doesn't look like much: just two small cement buildings, three classrooms, a library, and a courtyard where the kids play soccer and volleyball. But here the staff teaches English to 288 students out of donated books with donated pencils, markers, and white boards. Say what you will about cultural imperialism, but learning English, in today's world, means one essential thing: opportunity. 

The kids here are the same as kids anywhere. Quick to pick up new concepts. Always ready to laugh. Much better than me at paper, rock, scissors. Huge fans of Angry Birds, even though there's no chance they've ever held a smart phone, let alone played the game. Pure, innocent, ready to be molded; generally well behaved, afraid to make mistakes in front of their friends. You know, kids.

Class, repeat after me: "Hello, my name is Kevin"

Kids, presumably not named Kevin

A few years ago, I did a six-week course with Junior Achievement in San Francisco, teaching second graders at a school in Chinatown the basic economic concepts "want" and "need." We'd show them pictures of things they could buy and ask them to identify which it was. Water? Need. Playstation 3? Want. Cheeseburger? Want/need, and so on. Standing in front of the kids at Elma School, kids who farm half the day and go to school the other half, who opt to spend an additional hour at Elma so they can learn English, who live with their families in huts the size of my living room and count toilets and t-shirts among their extravagances, who aspire to be tour guides and teachers and anything but beggars and sex workers, I was reminded of that lesson I gave about wants and needs. Only this time the kids were teaching me.

Cambodia's Future

Vichetr, Bora, and Vey are the Sergey Brins and Steve Jobs' of Cambodia, the bold visionaries who see a problem and dare to try and solve it. They're Indiana Jones in that cave searching for the Holy Grail, stepping blindly into the great divide, having faith there's a hidden rock or something there to land on, knowing that falling into the crevice is better than turning around and walking away. 

Sometimes, when he's not laughing, transitioning into a British accent to crack a joke, or spontaneously climbing a tree, Vey's demeanor changes, his voice gets lower, his eyes fix on a spot in the distance instead of darting around to make sure he sees everything in the room. He starts to talk about Cambodia, about the political challenges of de facto single-party rule, of stagnating nepotism and history books that scrape away entire sections of Khmer's plight. "Sometimes I lose hope for today's kids," he told me one night. "They'll never know what happened here. History is told by the winner and we didn't win."

I know I've only been here a week. I didn't know anything about Cambodia a week ago, and I still don't know much now. I know nothing about the leadership vacuum created by Pol Pot's genocide, or the cultural forces that kept this country poor while much of the world got rich. I know nothing about the post-Khmer Rouge agreements that Vey thinks ceded too much power to Vietnam, potentially shielding kids from a history they should learn so there's no chance it gets repeated. And I've seen only a tiny glimpse of their problems. 

But I do know this. There is hope for these kids. I'm not naive; I know the incremental nature of change means we're generations away from a fully-developed Cambodia. But Bora and Vichetr and Vey grew up here. They're products of the very system that, in their more defeated moments, each can sometimes doubt. And they're taking it upon themselves to change it, one step at a time.

I have a few ideas on how to help, and Bart and Jenny have identified several projects that need support. When I get home in the fall, I'm probably going to ask you to give us a hand. Stay tuned for details.

Aim high

Building filters

Delicious ants

In Thailand now. Scuba school all week. 

Until next time…

Au Revoir, Europe

…and we're back. I reached the two month mark on the road this week, which can only mean one crazy thing: today is the day I've been dreading since planning this trip. It still beats a great day in the office, but I left my hotel this morning at 3:55 AM to catch the first of four flights over 24 hours that'll end with me in Cambodia. Here's the rest of my "day" - Istanbul >>>> Abu Dhabi >>>> Bangkok >>>> Phnom Penh. Should. Be. Bueno.

I've spent the past week staring longingly at Asia from the European side of Istanbul, a gorgeous mess of a city that straddles the official line dividing the two continents, the Bosphorus. More on that later. Here are some highlights of my final two weeks in the old world:

Switzerland

After leaving Italy, I shot up to Zurich for a rendezvous with my buddies Evan and Crystal. Evan's uncle, a Bay Area native, left the US for Switzerland during the Reagan Administration and never looked back, settling along the banks of Lake Zurich with his wife and son. Over a deliciously traditional Raclette dinner, I learned a lot about what makes the Swiss economy the most competitive in the world. To wit:

1. Counties (called cantons) compete with each other for residents and businesses, often negotiating tax rates directly with the businesses and residents themselves. 

2. Echoing Tip O'Neill, all politics in Switzerland truly is local. Any development, within a canton or one of its municipalities - a new road, new street lights, a new soccer field - is subject to a referendum, making direct democracy an actual fact of life and forcing residents to take ownership over their vote.

3. All residents' income and taxes are public information, providing ample motivation to pay your fair share.

4. While university is paid for entirely by the government, only 13% of students qualify and 10% of them are cut after their first semester. 

There's a lot more where that comes from, but the main economic hallmark is clear: competition. Institutions designed to foster competition create a competitive state. Seems simple enough, especially in a country surrounded by mountains and small enough to drive across in half a day. I'm dubious the same thing could happen in large measure in the States, though. Sure, Texas can try to lure Californians with its favorable tax situation, which is why we get so many visits from Rick Perry into our Golden State. And yeah, lower state income tax rates would be great. But then you'd have to live in Texas. (I know, I know, and I agree. Austin IS awesome.)

I spent the rest of the weekend visiting with my buddy Ian, the burger mogul I mentioned a month ago, who has a house in Zurich and a thriving chain of restaurants throughout Switzerland called Holy Cow. Thanks to Facebook, I learned that my cousin Jessica and her boyfriend were also in Zurich for a six hour layover on their trip home from a medical school rotation in Kenya, which is totally awesome. Not awesome? I learned about it when they were boarding their flight home. Noooooo! So sorry I missed you, Jess. Next time, I need to heed that strange disturbance I felt in The Force. It can only mean a beloved family member is nearby. I must have skipped that day in Jedi training. Lesson to all you kids out there: go to school.

Zurich power lines

The Gibbon-Aydelott Juggernaut

Budapest

Then I spent four days in Budapest, a lovely city bisected by the Danube River with that special kind of beauty reserved for hilly cities next to water. Hungary still feels like it's emerging from decades of communist rule, even though the Wall fell more than 20 years ago, and its history is stuffed with tragedy: they've constantly been invaded, conquered, overthrown; their bridges have been destroyed and reconstructed, their churches and castles miraculously spared, keeping it a very worthwhile destination. I went for a run to check out the architecture with two girls starting a running tour business - Eszter and Lidia - and their determination to launch something in a country still feeling its way around capitalism was downright inspiring. "It's very hard to start a business in Hungary," Eszter explained. "In America, if you have a good idea, people are happy for you and want to help. Here they get jealous and try to stop you or steal it." 

She also apologized on behalf of the country for a dodgy lodging situation I chose of my own volition, and blamed herself when I couldn't get into the restaurant she recommended because I asked her where to go too late. Basically, Eszter is the nicest person in the world. Here's hoping Running Tours Budapest thrives.

Budapest Running Tour - nice shirt!

Budapest

Panorama

Istanbul

I made it to Istanbul last Friday, extremely excited to meet up with three of my good friends from SF: Julie, Veronica, and Gina (who stayed in Italy last week while I headed north). Not long after I arrived, we whisked ourselves to dinner and a night on the town ushering in Gina's birthday at a few establishments of dubious repute in Beyoglu, a pedestrian-friendly neighborhood full of bars, clubs, and restaurants, some of which charge men more than women for the same round of drinks. Boo.

Istanbul is an amazing place; as physically gifted as San Francisco or Seattle, with natural vistas and hulking bridges high above its waterways, it's uniquely positioned to marry East and West. Like most of Europe - we only crossed into Asia to hit the airport - its cobblestone streets zig zag with little organization, and they catch more than their share of flip flops (causing the clumsier among us to trip several times a day). While officially a secular state, Turkey sits at the nexus of the Islamic world; it borders Iran, Iraq, and Syria, and its population is predominantly Muslim. In case that wasn't clear, there are five daily reminders that you're indeed in a different part of the world: the solemn, eery calls to prayer from a godlike voice echoing above the city. Whereas the skylines of Stockholm and Copenhagen are marked by myriad ornamental spires, Istanbul's landscape is dominated by the minarets of its seemingly uniqutous collection of mosques. And while not as prevalent as some of its more overtly religious neighbors, it is still very common to pass on the street several women clad in black burqas, every body part covered but their eyes and fingertips. 

About those Turks. There are a few new world ideas they haven't yet adopted.

1. Lines are an essential pillar to orderly society. Wait your turn!

2. Men should be subtle when checking out ladies they find comely. Staring them up and down is kinda creepy. 

3. Being creepy is a bad thing.

4. Men should use deodorant. Like, everyday.

5. Men and women can be friends. Honest. Just because a guy is walking around with three ladies doesn't mean he's a pimp. Or a sultan to be admired, though he very much appreciates the nickname.

6. It isn't necessary to put a flag on every building. Even if it's one of the coolest flags in the world.

7. Your food industry is supposed to drench the cuisine in butter, deep fry frozen meats, and overindulge on artificial ingredients. As a result, I think it's possible that Turkish food is the best in the world. Absolutely delicious.

In one of the more surreal days of my trip so far, I scored an invite to a black-tie event at a museum owned by the richest man in Turkey. A friend of a friend has some clout in town, so after being told I needed a tux, it took me two hours to be fully suited up and ready to go, Pretty Woman style. Thank god I didn't have to eat anything with a funny-looking fork, because I definitely would have shot it across the room. And now I have some James Bond pics from a night out in Istanbul, which we can all agree everybody should have. 

Ballin'

The girls at Boo Mosque

We were each interviewed on camera by young Turks learning English. Adorably. My interviewer was the least experienced. His first question: "are you learning English?"

Galata Bridge

Yerebetan Sarayi - Turkish for "Air Conditioner"

Vern stuck in a mirror, Superman style

Farewell, Europe

And that's a wrap. After setting foot in 13 countries, reuniting with several old friends and making countless new ones, my European Vacation 2013 is complete. When I land in Cambodia tomorrow morning (around 7:00 PM Friday night in SF), I'll meet up with the delegation from Groundwork Opportunities and begin my volunteer project in Siem Reap. I'm sure to write all about it in a week, so stay tuned for that. It promises to be different than anything I've done before. After that, I make it to Koh Tao (Thailand) on June 3rd for a weeklong scuba diving course, and the beat goes on.

Until next time...

PS - The girls and I created a Spotify playlist as a soundtrack for our trip to Turkey, appropriately named "Turkish Delight." It's full of reminders of what happened while we were here, but we're missing one key track. Does anybody know a song that will remind us of the time that one of us played euchre for the very first time (in their whole life) but still felt the wrath of another player for misplaying one measly hand? If so, let me know in the comments. It'll make our soundtrack complete.