I have a confession to make.

I confess, when I wrote that blog asking if I should go to Peru or Myanmar, I’d pretty much already decided the answer. I was just curious what you’d say.

For the language, the NGO’s, and continued exploration of South America, I was heading to Peru.

But then. I found myself looking for reasons to go to Myanmar. And not in order to feel like I’d given it a fair chance, but because I wanted to be convinced. The change already underway there was a compelling reason, but more importantly, Peru felt like taking the easy way. The easy way? No way!

So, Myanmar!

But then. I was drinking a cup of green tea after breakfast, looking at the giant wall-sized map of the world in the house I’m taking care of, whose owners are finishing up their round-the-world trip. Around the world?

Yes please.

Why skip straight to Myanmar, when there are oh-so-many places in between?

I researched round-the-world (RTW) tickets, and have found that they are much like Eurail train passes: a really good idea in theory but priced way too high by companies who think you won’t notice. Just in case, and they may well be cheaper for some routes, and offer other advantages*, I’ll share the results of my admittedly brief research.

       *The main advantage is that a RTW ticket would presumably satisfy that god-awful onward-ticket requirement that many confused countries are currently demanding. God I hate that idea. My plan is to book a flight in advance, though this will reduce my flexibility. Did I mention how much I hate the onward-ticket requirement? I’ll also probably fly between the capitals of SE Asian countries, which will deprive me of the quintessential traveler experience of border scams, but I figure I’ve seen enough of those already.

There are several options, but the biggest one with the most flights and airports is through StarAlliance. They have a trip-planner here which was the most fun I’ve had online since crossword puzzles. You get 39,000 miles to play with (though there are other options if you fly business class I guess) over the course of a year.

Rule #1: You have to end in the same country (but not city) where you started.

Tip #1: Don’t start in the USA! Americans don’t travel enough I guess, so a RTW ticket starting here costs much more than one starting just about anywhere else. Even Europe. It is cheaper to book your own one-way to Europe, then do a RTW from there, even if you don’t use the whole thing. And that way you get to stop off for some Belgian beer, chocolate, and fries, and that’s always a good idea.

Rule/tip #2: You only get 16 “segments”, i.e. flights, so try to fly direct, hub to hub, then fritter around by land from there. But you’ll probably want to return to the same airport where you landed in each country, because traveling on your own by land and flying out of somewhere else counts as a flight! Sneaky bastards!

But check individual flights before you book a RTW! Even using my fantasy itinerary, individual flights seem to be a fraction of the cost of a RTW. For starters, you can fly from Western Europe all the way to Istanbul for about a hundred bucks. Cross an entire continent* for $100? Awesome.

*For now we’ll pretend Europe is a continent. Socio-political cartography at its best.

And from Istanbul you have access to the network of budget Asian airlines. So instead of a RTW ticket, I’ll just go to Istanbul, and wing it from there. Pun pretty much intended, and only barely regretted.

I’ve already booked my first three flights…

I hope it doesn't come as a surprise

Yesterday I went for a walk on one of the dozen stunningly beautiful beaches a few minutes up the coast from Santa Cruz, where the majestic waves of the Pacific Ocean were roaring up close to the shore then getting embarrassed by a kelp audience and quieting down to softer white flows of water that slid humbly up the sand.

I was with one of the many friendly and kind-hearted Americans I know, comfortable in our conversations about what engenders happiness and a good life, Buddhist principles and finding the balance between individualism and community. As we walked the length of the beach, a couple tiny pieces of plastic caught my eye, since we have an admirably widespread aversion to littering that leaves our coastline impressively clean.  The only thing on the beach besides footsteps of humans and canines were little jelly caps of mysterious oceanic providence, but sure looked like mermaid slippers to me.

On the way back we stopped by a locally owned and operated restaurant for a snack of fresh local calamari. We ordered the chicken and vegetable soup, and when it turned out they had quoted the Soup of the Day wrong, they gave us the tomato-basil bisque for free. America reliably has by far the best customer service I've ever seen. Then we returned to a town by the sea where an hour's walk along the shore provides good odds of seeing seals, otters, and dolphins.

I thought to myself "I really love this land." And shortly thereafter "one probably wouldn't guess that from my last blog."

So yes Lady America, you fair damsel simultaneously insecure and arrogant, wise and foolish, I love you. You are beautiful, noble, ridiculous, inspiring, disappointing, and at the end of the day, one helluva nice place to live.

Makuwa Lisa: Let's Set the World on Fire

Whew, that last blog was negative! Sorry about that. It's a beautiful day, with gorgeous sun, good music, and a delicious cup of tea in my hand, so here's a blog from my friend Lisa over in South Africa. I highly recommend her blog.


Makuwa Lisa: Let's Set the World on Fire: Something rare happened today in Kloof.   The sun showed his big yellow Raisin Bran face!   I guess if you want to live in a tropical p...

I am deporting myself. (And fair warning, a lot of sex talk.)

Note: This is not my favorite of my posts, nor typical, so if anyone finds it via Lisa's reblogging of my other post, skip this one and read any of the others for a better representation.

I remember thinking that eating in a restaurant or seeing a movie alone were the loneliest, saddest things on Earth.

Nothing to do with the blog, just lots of Santa Cruz pics.

I got over the first one many years (and many passport stamps) ago, but I had never actually seen a movie alone until this week. I wanted to see The Hobbit before he put on his ring and vanished…from theaters. So I biked into town for the Tuesday matinee.

I can happily report that I didn’t feel lonely, awkward, or out of place for being there alone. But I did feel lonely and out of place…in America.

The preview to the previews  was commercials, but fine, show me ads. But they showed this one. I don’t like linking to an advertisement, but in case you’d like to see what I’m talking about.

Ugh. More digitally animated baby humans and animals. Yawn through the pastiche.

But worse than dull, I find this ad irresponsible. It’s an implicit endorsement of a culture whose parents are too immature to talk to their kids about sex.

“Where do babies come from?” Asks the kid. The parents evade. Chuckle chuckle. Then the kid goes home and learns about sex from the internet. We have an entire generation (or two…or three?) who have learned about sex from pornography. That is a crime against ourselves.

Why talk to kids about sex even if it’s uncomfortable? Because otherwise they’ll get their sexual miseducation elsewhere. I presumably got mine from a 70’s era informative book of the “When a man and a woman love each other very much, they share a special kind of hug” variety, with drawing of the fuzzy pencil type that I associate with advent calendars. Illustration more appropriate to missionary handouts than the missionary position.

But I really got my info on the playground, which was cute in a clueless adorable way, but man oh man am I glad there was no internet back then.

Of course, neither kids not parents enjoy that process (though judging from my experience in college, Jews do a much better job of it) so my advice to parents: delegate the job to an uncle/aunt/godfather/godmother.

My family’s rather progressive-for-the-era plan was for our godmother to buy us a Playboy when we turned 14. Or as it 13? I don’t know, because years before that my folks caught us with a Hustler. We didn’t know why we wanted it, but we knew we weren’t supposed to have it, since sex was this big secretive thing that was the focus of 90% of pop culture, and that was good enough for us.

Part of America: urban gas guzzlers saying "B educ8d."

I am sooo tired of television, and our mass culture, performing for our weaknesses. And it’s not that I think I’ll find a country that does it any better, but it’s harder to tolerate when it’s your own. We fancy ourselves such cultural pioneers, but even after all these decades we’re even still fighting about gay marriage? Really?

Ok. Breathe. Thank you for letting me rant. I feel much better. Did you know you were a therapist? What do I owe you?

After my tirade played itself out in my head, I sat in the theater feeling out of place while everyone else cracked up. I deeply envy those who can just laugh at a cutsie commercial and not overthink it, I really do, but I can’t help it. Television, advertising, the media, all that stuff is way too powerful to waste on easy outs and inane fluff. And if I start thinking about the messages it sends women…my vision is already hazing towards red.

It’s enough to make me flee the country.

So I think I will.

I am being deported.

Three months in one place seemed like a long time back in December. I could unpack! Use a machine to wash my clothes! Cook food!

I've enjoyed this time in Santa Cruz. I got some work done on my project(s), socialized with Americans, and took lots of pictures. (Hence I'm spraying a few up on each blog from now on. I also tried a new HDR software...but it's free and ergo, crappy.)

Three months has become three weeks.

I decided I wanted to stay here and work some more, but then I started looking for housing. I knew the housing market here is crazy, but I didn't have the perspective before. For example, according to this blog, a proper 1 bedroom apartment in the upscale Eixample neighborhood of Barcelona costs the same as a crappy little 310 square foot studio with half a kitchen and no insulation in Santa Cruz, and you'd be lucky to find the studio at all.

I've walked through the Eixample. It should cost twice as much as here.

According to this site, which compares the Cost of Living in various cities, rental prices are 68% lower in Barcelona than Santa Cruz. 46% lower in Rome. 42% in Paris.

I am being deported. By the rental market. So where do I go?

I only got to see the corner of South America, with a long beautiful loop of countries starting in Peru and winding south, east, then north. I have a prospective project I could work on there, a list of great NGO's to visit, and most importantly, I speak the language. That is invaluable in improving a traveling experience. I loved the parts of the continent that I saw, and am hungry for more.

(Rental prices are 80% cheaper in Lima than Santa Cruz...)

Or, do I go to Southeast Asia? Specifically, Mynamar is just opening up, and going now would be a different experience than it will be in even a few short years. It's more...authentic...today than it will be after tourism really gets going. I hear tales of what Thailand was like 20 years ago... I want to be telling those tales about Myanmar in 20 years.

So, blog reading people. Where do I go? (You can vote on the poll at my other page.)

Monuments, funerals, and a flying disease wagon

After the Air Force Monument we headed to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s. The statue itself is a stern one, and I felt it highlighted the severe nature of the struggle more than his compassion. Though it honestly reminded me a bit of the Soviet monuments I saw in the Baltics, I would be more offended by a fluffy-light monument, and the quotes engraved on the wall behind him are a clear testimony to the caliber of the man.

I was in Washington DC for the funeral of my step-grandfather. After a career in the military spanning three wars and three decades, his ceremony was held at Arlington National Cemetery, with full military honors. I may not agree with every one of those conflicts, but it is a clear thing to honor the life of someone who gave so much of themselves.

The ceremony was held on a chilly morning of crisp air and even crisper salutes, and the 21 shots from the honor guard were felt as much as heard. The familiar taps military funeral melody was suddenly far more poignant than I’d ever heard it as it echoed over the headstones of generations of servicemen and women. We drove out past tombstones from World Wars I and II, rows with dates only days apart in 1864, and some reading simply “civilian.”

It’s a sobering place to be, and I can only hope that our leaders will rise to be worthy of these sacrifices. Lobbyists and profiteers need not apply.

The primary occupation of my time however was meeting the step-family, which proved to be an entertaining endeavor. Faces bearing familiar resemblances spoke with accents from New York to rural Texas. They have some strong women in that branch! Why not climb Mt Kilimanjaro for one’s 60^th birthday, and why not still swim half a mile at age 91? You go, gyrlz!

My brother and I went for some quick sightseeing our last morning. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to remove the pocketknife from my bag when I left home. Having a thumb-sized precluded me from entering 95% of that most fearful city, and I was not allowed to even wait inside the building while my brother checked out an exhibit by Ai Weiwei.

Luckily there was a work in the courtyard.

The flight home featured some impressive turbulence over Missouri, nearly sufficient to overwhelm the symphony of enthusiastic coughing that erupted relentlessly from bronchial tubes all around me. One guy behind me apparently believed that the key to coughing was not just the expulsion of air, but the simultaneous vibration of the vocal cords, so he basically shouted his coughs.

So this morning I am nursing a waterfall of a nose and squishy sneezes. Three cheers to an unending cup of hot green tea.

Peanut butter and jelly before dawn, with many miles still to go.

I was shaking my head as I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich at 4:30 in the morning yesterday.

A pbj sounded absolutely disgusting at the moment, and the bread felt cold and dry in my hands. The peanut butter was stiff and stubborn, and as usual the jelly worked its way up the knife and onto my fingers.

I explained to a sleepy Scoobie: "I'm flying to Washington DC in a couple hours, and they don't give you any food on planes anymore. They might have pbj's for sale, but they'd probably be, like, $8."

Scoobie didn't buy my exaggeration, and went back to bed. I looked at my sandwich, grimaced, and slid a slice of pizza into a second bag, then stuffed them both in my bag.

A few hours with later I pulled the menu up on the plane and saw that yes indeed they sold pbj's, and they were $4...for a half. So no Scoobie, I was not exaggerating. They do indeed want $8 for an undoubtedly small sandwich which would probably be dryer than an Algerian lint trap.

The wealthy blond lady next to me glanced at my homemade food as she ordered another "snack pack" of crap for $12.

They charge you for the TV or movies on the plane too, but they had some free shorts from YouTube, so I put on "Written by a Kid." I don't want to give you high expectations, but you should go watch it. Watch several of them.

My neighbor glanced at me again as I shook uncontrollably, and a tear came out of my left eye to slide down my cheek.

As we touched down on the runway in Washington I leaned over to her and asked, in a Scottish accent "Excuse me miss, but can ye see the Statue of Liberty from here?"

I gave her a couple moments to stammer before admitting that I was kidding. She looked relieved.

That evening I met up with my parents, and some friends took us on a quick driving tour of a couple monuments. The Airforce Monument stretches three spikes high into the sky while suitably solemn bronze statues look on in front of a wall engraved with "Integrity, Service, and Excellence."