Penn Yan, New York
Finger Lakes Region
USA
Thursday, July 5, 2007
3.12pm

I have become one of those people who lets his travel blog wither away when he returns to his home country.

Before I left I had time at work to look at people's travel blogs. I was always annoyed when someone just stopped making entries. What the heck happened to them? Now I have become one of those people.

Making blog entries is like exercising or eating healthily. No one really wants to hear excuses about why you didn't to it; you should just do it every day. So I won't go into a long introspective analysis about why they haven't been there.

Andy (hobotraveler.com) is great: he says just write whatever comes into your head. He is right, of course, and that is why he has thousands of web pages and thousands of readers.

To fill you in: I am working at a winery helping with production and retail sales. I am in a beautiful area of the world, the Finger Lakes of New York State. It is not a very well-known travel destination. However, it is becoming better known.

I have that contradictory feeling I had in other places I have visited. The place is beautiful and I feel lucky to see it. However, as the area inevitably changes to accommodate more visitors, some negative effects are occurring. This is the contradiction that is cloaked in the words "development" and "globalization".

I grew up here, but I have been away for a long time. So I am both a foreigner and a local. My ties here are more permanent than the tourist, especially if I decide to live and work here. But I see the place through a foreigner's eyes at times.

Every day I have memories of specific moments of my travels. I might remember having breakfast at the hotel near Khao San Road in Bangkok or the hotel in Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India or the guesthouse in Kaza, Spiti Valley, Himachal Pradesh, India.

If you wonder if I am aware of how much more I can do with my website: I am. I imagine I am as aware as anyone. I have hundreds of digital photos to put online; different ways of organizing the information that I learned about places I visited; personal reflections on my travels; stories to tell; and maps to make.

I have gotten kind emails from readers. One suggested I put my finances up. He is absolutely right. This would help a lot of people. It is the kind of information I was looking for before I left. Another reader encouraged me to write a book. Receiving these emails is very gratifying.

My idea with this website has been that this website is about "places" rather than "travel". Wherever I happen to be should be subject matter for the site. So I have wanted to write about places in the U.S. as well as abroad. Like a geographer, I should write about the unique things about a place that a person who has never been there would find interesting, and that a person who has lived there all of his or her life never noticed.

While traveling, even though I wasn't "working", I still had internal conflicts over whether I should be "seeing things" or "working on the website". If I had let it, the website could have taken all of my time and I wouldn't have actually done anything.

Now, I am letting my life become even more complicated by working, and working without a set schedule. I also let myself become conflicted about what I should write about, since I am living in a place that is very familiar to me.

These are actually perennial problems with writing, and, just as exercising or eating right, I should "just do it".

I have become one of those people

I am working at a vineyard and winery in the Finger Lakes

I started working at a vineyard and winery several weeks ago. Today I collected soil samples from the vineyard. They will be sent to a commercial laboratory for analysis to determine if there are enough nutrients in the soil for the vines. In this area the following grape varieties are grown: Vignoles, Seyval Blanc, Chardonnay, Riesling, Cabernet Franc, and Lemberger.

Soil coring tool and sample bags in the vineyard

Coring tool filled with soil sample after coring

Primarily I have been helping with bottling. Tomorrow we will bottle Vignoles. Bottling wine is a matter of keeping a multi-step process running smoothly. The wine, which has fermented over the winter and is now ready to drink, is stored in a very large tank. The wine is pumped from the tank through a series of filters to a bottling machine. The machine is automated. At one end a person loads the empty bottles onto a bottle-width conveyor. The conveyor takes the bottles to be filled with wine and corked. Next the machine places foil capsules over the mouth of the bottle and heat-shrinks them in place. Then the bottles are automatically labeled. Lastly, another person takes the bottles as they leave the conveyor, places them in cases, and stacks the cases on a wooden palette to be stored.

View from the vineyard on the rainy afternoon I took the soil samples

I am working at a vineyard and winery in the Finger Lakes

I'm dreaming of tropical beaches

I will be doing something and my mind will flip back to some moment that occurred in the past fifteen months.

Most often I have a vision of the beach on Malapascua Island in the Philippines: white sand, aqua water, ocean breeze, perfect temperature, low humidity, palm trees, and a dive shop a sixty second walk away.

The beach at Malapascua Island, Philippines, February 25, 2007.

Sometimes it has been to Krabi, to some weird happening going on after dark in town involving foreigners and locals and eating and drinking.

When I have gotten my hair cut I flash back to barber in the "American barbershop" in Mysore cutting my hair or the place in Makati, Manila, Philippines, or the one in Leh, Ladakh, Jammu & Kashmir when each time I stopped there was never any power to run the clippers. There was that place in Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India with the hand-powered clippers with the dull blades which gave me the most excruciating haircut.

I have visions of the steep valleys and high mountain peaks of the Himalayas in Himachal Pradesh.

All of the vendors near Khao San Road in Bangkok, Thailand on the street brightly lit by the tropical sun come back to me.

I get a thousand little flashes of the schools of shimmering fish under which I snorkeled near Ao Ton Sai near Krabi, Thailand.

New Smyrna Beach in Florida reminded me of the beach in Calangute, Goa, India, although the beach at New Smyrna is nicer. But the beach at Malapascua beats out the beach at New Smyrna.

The beach hut at Malapascua Island, Philippines, February 24, 2007.

I'm dreaming of tropical beaches

I've been bopping around the east coast of the USA the past two months

I've been bopping around the east coast of the USA the past two months. I've been to two weddings, seen relatives on both sides of my family, caught up with college and grad school friends.

I landed in New York City, and stayed with friends in Jersey City, New Jersey. I flew to Florida for a Disney World wedding. I flew to Rochester, New York, to stay with family in the Finger Lakes region of New York State. I drove for my niece's first birthday party in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Then I went to visit friends in Washington, DC. After that I went back to Jersey City again for a wedding in Connecticut. And just a week ago I flew back to Florida to visit family in New Smyrna Beach.

The weather is finally turning warm here. I watched the lake go from frozen to melted. Still, though, people talk about how warm it is and it still seems cold to me. It's about 65F or 70F during the day.

The Finger Lakes region is devastatingly beautiful and I keep finding myself looking around all the time. I really don't like to talk about it because we'll get more people coming here than there already are.

I've been bopping around the east coast of the USA the past two months

Advice from the grave for a young traveler

On the road from Canandaigua to Gorham in the Finger Lakes in New York State, there is a graveyard at a crossroads. The crossroads intersect in the middle of rolling farmland. The graveyard is little more than a hillock with old oak trees surrounding it. The graves date from the the early nineteenth century, and the trees probably do too.

The gravestones are crumbling and some broken pieces are piled next to the trunk of a tree. One in particular stood out for me. Apparently people would sometimes choose a standard verse for the carver to put on the stone.

A gravestone of a certain Luther, son of David (and ?) Elizabeth, died Jan. 30, 1810 aged 2 years (10 months?) & 20 days, has this inscribed:

Behold young traveler as you pass by,
As you are now so once was I.
As I am now so you must be.
Prepare in youth to follow me.

Advice from the grave for a young traveler

SkypeIn is useful for the homeless traveller

Yesterday I set up a SkypeIn account for myself. SkypeIn is a Skype service in which I choose a U.S. phone number. The phone number is not associated with a mobile phone or landline. Callers dialing the number can speak to me if I am on a computer connected to the internet and I am logged onto the Skype application.

SkypeIn is a separate product from two other products offered by Skype. SkypeOut allows someone on a computer to call people in certain countries as if they were calling from a telephone exchange in that country. As a result the cost is low -- for many countries it costs US$0.021 (2.1 cents) per minute. The Skype product refers to two people at computers using the Skype application to talk, the use of which is free.

What is even better is that SkypeIn comes with a voicemail account. So when I am not logged into Skype (which is most of the time), the caller can leave a message for me in voicemail. I can check the voicemail whenever I am on a computer that has Skype running and has a broad-enough band on the internet.

As I am still a homeless traveller in the U.S., this service may still be useful to me. At the moment the prepaid T-Mobile SIM card on my mobile phone is out of the T-Mobile network range. So people could call me on the Skype number.

The real clincher is that calls may be forwarded from Skype to another number. So I can forward calls to the number of the house I am staying at or to my mobile phone if I know it will be in range. If the call is not answered Skype voicemail will pick up the call. Since I get a new SIM card and, consequently, a new mobile phone number each time I change countries, forwarding phone calls from a single U.S. phone number could be very useful for keeping in touch with people in the U.S.

This service is really useful as a U.S. number to leave for banks, credit card companies, and online retail companies. All of these entities want a U.S. phone number at which someone can be reached. Leaving an international number generally is not acceptable. If I had a SkypeIn number registered with all of my financial institutions when I was in India, I perhaps would have found out about outstanding credit card fraud more quickly when my wallet was stolen in New Delhi.

In short, the service lets someone have a permanent U.S. phone number that they can use, maintain, and check while they are in another country for long periods of time. It is usually not possible -- and it is almost always not economically sensible -- to maintain a U.S. landline or mobile phone if someone is going to be out of the country for more than three months. Maintaining an identity for financial and tax purposes in the U.S. is partly dependent upon maintaining a phone number. (The other major component of maintaining an identity in the U.S. is maintaining a physical address. This is a huge topic, and for the American traveller is confusing and even Kafka-esque.)

The price for this convenience is US$12 for three months or US$38 for twelve months. It can be set up, maintained, and paid for online from anywhere in the world. As of this writing, other countries for which SkypeIn numbers may be obtained are Australia, Brazil, Denmark, the Dominican Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong S.A.R. (China), Japan, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

SkypeIn is useful for the homeless traveller

Fixing my car: feeling the economic pain

In three days I spent more money fixing my car than I spent on a month of travel in India.

This fact is difficult for my brain to reconcile.

In general I am still going through sticker shock in the U.S. When I converted Filipino pesos in Manila and realized I was spending over six dollars for a Wendy's combo meal, I thought perhaps there was a markup since it was overseas. But now I walk into a Wendy's here and see that it is the same price. I have been caught in a time warp for fourteen months and when I see the prices of ordinary consumer goods here I notice the inflation over that time because it jars with my idea of what prices ought to be. (Prices ought to be what they were fourteen months ago when I left!)

Maintaining an automobile is a big money drain in the U.S. (and in the rest of North America and Europe, I conject). In India, Thailand, and the Philippines most people don't maintain a car. This is not by choice - most cannot afford to own and maintain an automobile. However, because most cannot have automobiles, there are alternate modes of transportation. With a combination of bus and taxi you can get just about anywhere.

Most Americans probably do not want to admit the economic drain of the automobile or, more likely, do not even think about it. A car is considered a necessity. In many ways it is. We have built an infrastructure here where you really cannot go anywhere without an automobile; not only that, you need to own your own personal automobile. Granted, it is a big country with a lot of open space. But I am sure there is a silent minority (or perhaps majority) who are breaking their budget every month with the automobile loan and maintenance as one of the principal culprits.

The other zinger about maintaining an automobile is that repairs can be a crapshoot. You may go for months without a repair and then suddenly get zapped with several. Using busses and taxis are a more constant and plan-able expense. And if you don't have the money, you just don't make the trip -- and you don't have a fifteen thousand dollar white elephant sitting in your parking space.

In words of Ivan Illich and other critics of the development project, the technological transportation conundrum I just described is known as the "social construction of scarcity". Because of societal and economic decisions about transportation infrastructure, transportation becomes scarce and thus expensive.

I found that describing the cost of living in the U.S. to people I met in Asia usually went nowhere; there were few points of reference. The best I could do was say that even though some people in the U.S. made more money, houses, cars, food, and other costs were more expensive. This usually did not mean a lot to the person with whom I was speaking. And in the end, I was the one who could afford to visit their country and not vice versa, right?

Fixing my car: feeling the economic pain

Cold weather, hot weather on the US East Coast in March and April

It's 27F (-3C) outside and there were actually snowflakes - little snowdots, really - blowing onto the porch from the lake. The wind is whistling through the trees and a few minutes outside feels very cold.

I was in Washington, DC last weekend and it was 75F (24C) and sunny. The cherry blossoms were out in the metro area in time for the Cherry Blossom Festival. Last week just before I left the ice had finally melted off the lake here. The previous weekend I was in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and the temperature reached almost 90F (32C). The previous week here the lake was frozen and eight inches of snow fell and the temperature was about 20F (-7C).

When it was snowing two weeks ago I checked and it was below freezing here and above freezing in Leh, Ladakh on the Tibetan plateau. Now I just checked and its 27F (-3C) and overcast with light snow here and 39F (4C) and clear and sunny in Leh.

It's really blowing out there and the water looks cold. It is cold - if I measured it it would be just above freezing.

Cold weather, hot weather on the US East Coast in March and April

Thoughts after two weeks in the U.S. and a year of travel

I have been to Jersey City, Florida, Upstate New York, and North Carolina in the two weeks and three days in the United States.

It has been crazy cold here. The lake in New York was frozen when I left two days ago. The weather was warming up but a couple of days before it was in the twenties and snowing and blowing.

My thoughts keep going back to Bangkok and Manila and the beaches of Thailand and the Philippines.

Two days ago I made the six hundred mile drive to North Carolina. I was struck by how spread out things are here. We covered six hundred miles in eleven hours, which is pretty amazing: how much ground can be covered on an expressway by car. But you have to spend some of the time driving, which requires alertness, unlike a bus or train. And we made a couple of wrong turns.

The past week in Upstate New York I have been getting my car running. In a space of a few days I have spent as much money on my car as I would travelling for a month in India. In my graduate school days I put myself through the debate about whether it was better not to have a car. But it really is difficult to get to places without a car in the U.S., and it can end up costing a bit of money.

For example, in the small town where I was staying there are no buses passing through to the neighboring towns. There is not one bus an hour, there is not one bus a day, there are no buses. Purportedly there would not be anyone to take the bus; people believe that they must have a car even if they are unemployed or don't earn much money.

I am also struck by the rows of stores selling me stuff. There are plazas full of huge stores: Target, Toys R Us, Lowe's, supermarkets.

On the one hand these things are great. You can find tons of different things. It feels like Christmas. On the other hand, can everyone here afford all this stuff?

There are many large houses, on large plots of land. They are furnished with new-looking furniture. Understand, the houses are bought with hefty mortgages. Perhaps the furniture is bought outright or on credit. No matter, they are impressive.

No wonder people I met in the countries I visited thought I was rich. But when I was there I didn't have any income, I didn't have any assets except a car in storage, a few years in a 401(k) retirement account, and the savings I was spending on the road. Was I rich? Did I have more freedom than they? Of course the answer in some way was yes to both questions.

In a drugstore in Cebu, Philippines I bought two bars of manufactured soap. Among a selection of tropical scents I chose green papaya. I really liked them. The second one was used up a few days ago. I have been keeping my eye out for something like it but I haven't seen anything. All this change in my surroundings and I am thinking of a bar of soap.

Thoughts after two weeks in the U.S. and a year of travel

Why are you so cold, U.S.?

When I was landing in New York on Tuesday evening, I looked out the window and saw snow in the fields. I looked closer and saw what could have been a crust of ice on the Hudson. The Kuwaiti attendant announced that the temperature outside was minus seven degrees Centigrade. That's about 20 degrees Fahrenheit.

No, no, no, I thought, I've made a mistake, take me back, take me back to the lands of Tagore, Kipling, Jim Thompson, and Imelda Marcos. Take me back to where I can walk around in short-sleeves and sandals day and night and putting on a sweater doesn't cross my mind.

I was supposed to miss this winter; I was supposed to travel from February 2006 and not see cold weather until November of 1007. I was supposed to catch some early Spring weather of 50 or even 60 degrees Fahrenheit or more. That was my plan. Instead it is record-breaking low temperatures expected in January, but not March.

I took the Airtrain, the rail system for the John F Kennedy Airport terminals, to Howard Beach station. On the train I am wearing sandals, khakis, and a short-sleeve blue shirt; everyone else is wearing dark wool coats and hats.

There outside the turnstile I untie the stuffsack tied to the bottom of my travelpack. I pull out my running shoes and socks and put my sandals back in their place. I pull out the fleece jacket and imitation Hard Wear shell jacket that I have been hauling around from South Indian city to Thailand tropical beach to Philippine tropical beach. I bought the jacket in Leh, Ladakh, in August 2006 for fifteen dollars.

You have to pay to exit the Airtrain outside of the terminal. Clever scheme, eh? I pay seven dollars for a combination Airtrain and subway fare card. I go down the steps to the A train platform. I have just missed a train to Manhattan. It is bitter cold. It is dark now and the wind is blowing; I read on the web the next day that it was ten degrees Fahrenheit, zero degree with the wind chill. What a shock it would be for someone from one of these countries I've been in to land here in this weather for the first time!

I really need a hat and gloves but I don't feel like digging them out of the stuff sack. The A Train arrives and I go aboard. New Yorkers are not afraid of strangers and like to talk. I see one or two people talk to each other. We pass through Brooklyn stations with the name of the stop tiled on the wall. I get off at the Chambers Street exit and walk several blocks underground to the World Trade Center.

The World Trade Center is still a big hole in the ground. There are big signs for the PATH train to New Jersey. I take the PATH under the Hudson River for US$1.50. I get off at the first stop on the other side, Exchange Place. It is below freezing outside. Behind me is the South Manhattan skyline, minus the twin towers. Ahead I walk down familiar-looking, American streets. Without hat and gloves the five blocks to my friends seems too far.

Why are you so cold, U.S.?

An American in Kuwait who is not a contractor meets a Filipina worker

I could be taken here as another American contractor, just as in the Philippines I could be taken for another American man arrived to meet his Filipina bride whom he met online.

There are not too many people here at seven in the morning, but a large number of them appear to be American contractors. I have also spoken to a Filipina airline attendant and a Filipina McDonald's employee; now that I have been to the Philippines I will notice Filipinos everywhere. In fact I asked the McDonald's employee, "Are there are lot of Filipinos in Kuwait?" "There are a lot of Filipinos everywhere," came the reply.

An American in Kuwait who is not a contractor meets a Filipina worker

If your flight happens to stop at Heathrow at least you can get Hob Nobs

I didn't know that this flight was stopping in London. When I bought the ticket from Nat Travels on Khao San Road, the e-ticket receipt was so cryptic that I could not pick out the London stop. I didn't spend much time looking at the flight details online at the Kuwait Air site.

We flew directly over Iraq and Baghdad after leaving Kuwait City. At forty thousand feet in post-Hussein, post-UN inspections I guess flying over Iraq is de rigeur. It was cloudy and I was dozing so there is nothing to report.

At the beginning of my travels in February of 2006, Air France flew me over Iran in the night to get me to Mumbai. At the time Condi Rice was sounding belligerent. A year later the talk over Iran is still fiery. That February I looked through the clouds onto cold high desert dusted with snow. I wondered that there was so much fuss about this little country. I finally saw roads crossing through the desert; it looked as it would from a flight looking down on Nevada during the winter. At last I saw a small city lit up in the distance.

I have not been to London since I was a student here eighteen years ago. Going through security (again) for an hour in Heathrow and reboarding the same plane does not count as a visit to London. Being in London is not being in London without visiting the stores, the concert halls, the pubs, the streets, the Tube, and hearing those varying London accents.

Instead what I got was a tease. But it was a delicious and effective tease; I peered out through my little 777 window as the plane did a wing-tilt over central London. There were the bridges over the curving Thames; there was Parliament; there was Hyde Park. Hyde Park may be my favorite feature of London. The unmistakeable Serpentine dominates the scene. I found my Kensington neighborhood at the northern border of the Park and remembered walking across the Park to class at Picadilly Circus or hopping the Tube lines to get there in time.

There were some new additions since I was here: the Eye right smack-dab in the middle of things, and that funny stadium they built.

I suddenly realized as we pulled up to the gate that even on my short visit I might be able to score some Hob Nobs. These would be a pure nostalgia trip for me; we had as many Hob Nobs as we wanted every Sunday night at our hotel near Queensway after Mass. They were served with whole, non-homogenized milk, and dipping the sweet, chocolatey cookies (biscuits!) in the milkfat floating on the surface was pure heaven.

It turned out that not only was I allowed to disembark from the plane, I was required. Everyone disembarked and then went on a ten-minute plus walk through Heathrow with carry-ons to go through Heathrow's security. By the time I passed a woman was holding up a sign saying "Final Call Kuwait 101".

She was just holding up the sign to keep people from dawdling in the huge duty-free area that I entered next. I ducked into the first shop -- Score! -- chocolate Hob Nobs. I picked up two small cans at US$3.50 each. I'll have to pick up some whole milk in Jersey City and share them with my friends there.

When I got back to the gate, I went through another security checkpoint. Of course the plane was not boarding -- the "Final Call" sign was exposed as a ploy. After a while we reboarded to the same seats we were in when we landed.

The flight is another seven hours to New York. It will be early March and I am in sandals and short-sleeves. I'll decide after I'm in the cold if I want to dig out my running shoes and fleece jacket.

If your flight happens to stop at Heathrow at least you can get Hob Nobs

Little travel mistakes when leaving the Philippines

There is such thing as a bad day of travel. The clincher a few moments ago was that I realized that I had lost a small stash of U.S. bills that I had kept in my passport pouch. I pulled out my passport several times today to look at my airline tickets. The passport and e-tickets are in one ziplock bag; the bills were in another; I must have inadvertently pulled out the bag with the bills with the bag with the passport and tickets; this could have happened in the internet cafe or the taxi.

Generally I make little "mistakes" like this when I am tired. "Mistakes" are when I misplace or drop something, or leave my daypack pocket unzipped, or leave an extra bag of snacks behind at a store. When I'm tired I do this sort of thing constantly, which is why it helps me so much to get some rest while I'm travelling and try to plan rest into my travels. These little mistakes can turn into really unpleasant situations where one is missing one's passport or airline tickets or money. More often I cannot find something that I just purchased or some other little inconvenience. Every time I pull one of these on myself I feel like I have had a tiny failure and that I ought to have better concentration.

I was distracted by the taxi driver. I tried to save some money by not taking a taxi from downtown Manila to Ninoy Aquino International airport during rush hour. This is possible by taking the elevated train to the last station of Baclaran and then getting a taxi from there. You pass above all stopped traffic below. You can take a pedicab to the domestic airport -- it is very close -- or a regular taxi to the international airport which is several kilometers away.

It was raining and the taxi driver took me for a stooge. I asked him to turn his meter on -- he wouldn't, which should have been a tipoff. He said we should settle on a price. How much? I asked. He wanted me to name a price but he finally said, a hundred U.S. dollars. I just laughed. Perhaps I should have gotten out there. But it was raining outside and I had boarded on a busy street. He went down to twenty dollars and then ten. I finally told him I'd give him five dollars. It was almost as much as I had paid for a taxi from the international airport to downtown when I had arrived in Manila -- it was about eight or nine dollars. So I did not save much money in the end. But then at this point of course I just wanted to get to the airport and I am not a hard-headed enough traveller to change taxis and get the best price.

Mixed with all of this is a general sadness I feel at reaching the end of my travels. I will fly to the U.S. on Tuesday morning. I have really liked the Philippines. The parts I have seen are beautiful and I can tell there are many other beautiful parts left to find. The dissonant tone in the beauty of the Philippines is that so many people here don't have much money, from what I can tell. Things are not that cheap here -- I think the Philippines has been battered by inflation until recently -- and compounding that unemployment seems to be high. There is the flight of young people from the countryside to the cities to look for work, which I also saw in India and Thailand. So it is a beautiful place but the economy is not as it should be. This makes me sad when I meet people who will not get what they want: money; to go to another country; to get married and have a stable family life.

Little travel mistakes when leaving the Philippines

I'm in Puerto Galera, Philippines; at least, I'm in the area people generally refer to as Puerto Galera. Puerto Galera itself is just a port, as the name says, where one disembarks and goes to other places. The other places are beaches for the typical tourist traveling from Manila.

I took the SiCat bus from Manila to Balangas. At Balangas I disembarked at the ferry terminal and took a small outrigger called the Blue Penguin 1 to Sabang, a one hour ride across the water. The cost of bus and boat were 600 pesos. It leaves from Citystate Tower Hotel on Mabini Street in Manila promptly at 8.00 am. You can buy tickets the same morning.

I had been told that Sabang was very touristy. Most people had told me not to stay there but a couple of people had said yes, it was not that bad.

But from the boat Sabang and Small La Laguna Beach and Big La Laguna beach just looked like resorts piled on top of resorts and stacked up the hills. The beach itself was a tiny strip of sand not worth lounging on. Against the beach was concrete wall holding back bar after girlie bar.

So I stayed on the boat and let it take me to Puerto Galera. The shoreline actually looked more attractive the longer I traveled. There is some development but also empty beaches on small islands forming a harbor.

At Puerto Galera I caught a tricycle motorcycle taxi. It took me to White Beach. White Beach is two steps better than Sabang. It still has many hotels but the beach is wider and the scene is not as crowded and is more subdued. It looks like a popular place for Filipinos to go on weekends and Holy Week.

I rejected the beach and had the driver take me to Aninuin Beach a few minutes further. This place is much more pleasant, with only a few resorts. First I checked out Aninuin Beach Resort, which is listed in Southeast Asia on a shoestring. But they have knocked down the huts listed in the guidebook, and are in the middle of building a small hotel. The rooms were 2500 pesos a night, so I passed on that.

Contrary to what the tricycle driver told me, there were a few other, less expensive places to stay on Aninuin Beach. (He was gunning to put me in the first hotel on White Beach.) I found a decent place called Tamaraw Resort, which has both air-conditioned huts and hotel rooms for 1500 pesos each.

The place is right on the beach, and the beach is quiet. If I really want to I can walk to restaurants and dive shops on White Beach, or take a tricycle taxi for about fifty pesos to Puerto Galera or another fifty pesos to Sabang.

This place is pleasant enough, but nothing like the white sand paradise I found at Malapascua Island. This is a place where Filipinos get away on the weekends from the huge city of Manila. As such it appeals a lot to the common denominator, such as average food, snorkeling trips to broken coral, and rides on inflated torpedos behind runabouts on the shoreline.

I went on a snorkeling trip today and it was heartbreaking compared to my dives off of Malapascua Island, Philippines and my snorkeling on the small islands near Railay Beach, Thailand. The "Coral Garden" is a "Coral Graveyard" of broken coral from hundreds of snorkeling boat anchors and hundreds of tourists paddling around in life jackets and standing on the coral. The handful of fish were diverse but were paltry compared to the huge schools of fish dancing a ballet around me near Railay. The coral was broken and gray compared to the colorful stuff near Malapascua. At least they keep bringing the life-jacketed tourists to the same patch of coral over and over again, I concluded. Maybe it limits the damage to other places. (There are supposed to be good dive sites near Puerto Galera.)

It is a taste of another slice of life, and perhaps an incentive for conservation and preservation: perhaps I should not be so cynical and we still need to save the planet from ourselves.

I'm in Puerto Galera, Philippines, pondering coral

I'm on Malapascua Island, Cebu, Philippines. The internet connection here is terrible, so I'm only going to type this entry.

Malapascua is a beautiful little island at the northern tip of Cebu in the Philippines. It has white sand beaches and palm trees. I was trying to figure out if it is overdeveloped: does it have big hotels, and so on. It does not. It has these little "resorts", which are mostly huts. Many are near the beach and they are reasonably priced. I am staying at Dano Beach Resort. My hut is right on the beach. It is 900 Philippine pesos a night, or about US$18, and includes breakfast, which costs about 100 pesos.

On the local bus that I took from Cebu the conductor, a Filipino of about 30 years of age, told me that Malapascua likes to call itself "Little Boracay". Boracay is the long wide sand beach on an island further north halfway to Manila. I have talked to several people and Boracay sounds indeed quite nice; I've heard phrases such as "the most beautiful beach I've ever seen". I wondered if it was overdeveloped, but they told me that it was not. The Filipinos have done a nice job with it, with no multistory hotels. Plus it is a very long and wide white sand beach, so it can accommodate some resorts.

I have been here three days. I leave early tomorrow morning to take a boat and bus to Cebu and then fly to Manila. When I am in Manila I will have several days before I fly to Bangkok.

While here I at first just enjoyed the restaurants and the nice setting and met some of the locals and tourists. It has been quite pleasant talking to these people. Yesterday I finally gave in and did a scuba dive; diving is one of the main attractions for tourists here. It is one of the only places in the world you can see thresher sharks. I did not make it on a thresher shark dive, but I did two nice dives: one on an artificial reef with a sunken jeepney (converted long jeeps used for public transport in the Philippines) and a natural reef at Lapu Lapu Island. I took dives for US$28 from Exotica dive shop; but there are several shops to choose from.

Tomorrow morning I leave early. I have to catch a boat and then a bus to Cebu. The boat will take about an hour to reach Cebu Island and the bus will take three hours or so to reach Cebu. I should be able to get an air-conditioned bus on Ceres Tours for about 105 pesos; I traveled with the locals on Ceres Liner, the ordinary bus, for sixty pesos. It took more than three and a half hours and stopped frequently.

A week from tonight I fly from Bangkok to New York City. I have reached the end of my year of travel. The end keeps surfacing to the forefront of my mind. I am looking forward to seeing my friends and family; but I am also uncertain about my future. But we can't live life worrying about the future, can we? A definitive "No" to that. So my return will just be the next step in my adventure in this one-time opportunity called life.

I'm on Malapascua Island, Cebu, Philippines

Skyscanner.net has been invaluable for searching for air tickets in Southeast Asia.

It has an easy to use interface. It searches across the discount airlines. It displays multiple departure and arrival days along with the prices of each flight. The price includes taxes and fees, which you do not find out until the end of the booking process with Cebu Pacific Air. It also displays the prices in any currency.

You have remember to select a flight and click "Check Price" to get the updated price.

I'm using skyscanner.net to search for Southeast Asia airline tickets

I walked down the Pedestrian walkway, a boardwalk by Manila Bay along Roxas Boulevard, last Friday night. There were crowds of people there, packing in to see bands playing in the open air. I saw two all-girl rock bands, a balladeer wearing green toreador pants, a ladyboy comedy act, and "little people" engaging in a mock fight as part of a band's act.

Filipinos love to sing, and a lot of them are very good. Over and over I have heard very good bands in the bars and on television.

There were also ice cream stands, food places, and generally just a lot of people milling about on a Friday night.

Across the street from the Stone House pension on Mabini Street in old Manila were several job agencies. Each morning lines of people would apply for jobs. People want to get jobs abroad, and the agency across the street claimed it had jobs in the USA, Taiwan, Caribbean, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Brunei, Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, and Saipan. Many people are looking for work in other countries.

In addition to the job agencies on the street was a 7-Eleven, money changers, people who approach you to sell you Rolex knockoffs and "old American coins", and people looking to do other business.

I also went to the "rich" section of Malate (an area of Manila) to the Greenbelt shopping complex. This is a marked contrast to the Mabini part of Manila where my pension was. Well-dressed Filipinos and foreigners crowd exclusive cocktail lounges and Habana Cafe, a Cuban lounge.

Job postings in front of an agency.

A "girl band" performs on the boardwalk on Roxas Boulevard.

Children sit on a dinosaur back on the pedestrian walkway on Roxas Boulevard in Manla, Philippines.

A "girl band" on the boardwalk along Roxas Boulevard.

Little people mock fight as part of the act for a band on the boardwalk . Everyone found it funny, including the little people...

Chinese New Year is celebrated near Remedios Circle in Manila, Philippines.

At the posh Greenbelt shopping complex in Malate, you can eat your favorite Bollywood star at the Bollywood Bistro. Should I have olives on my Preity Zinta? How about some parmesan on your Sharukh Khan?

Scenes from Manila, Philippines

Headed to Malapascua Island, Cebu, Philippines

After a couple of days in Cebu, I am headed this morning to Malapascua, a small island at the northern tip of Cebu.

Cebu is relaxed and not as crazy as Manila.

I will take a taxi to the North Bus Terminal in Cebu and then a bus to Maya and a boat to Malapascua.

Kamuning House is nice enough. I have a single room with hot water, cable tv, and air conditioning for 710 Philippine pesos. There are many pensions near the Fuente Osmeña Circle here in uptown, but late in the day many of them are fully booked.

Headed to Malapascua Island, Cebu, Philippines

Sweet rice from the market in Krabi, Thailand.

At the market in the morning in Krabi, you can buy sweet rice wrapped in a leaf. The owner of Lipstic guesthouse shared one with me. Very tasty.

The night market in Krabi, Thailand is full of food stalls.

This photo was taken sitting in one of the food stalls at the night market in Krabi, Thailand.

Nat Travels on Khao San Road has destinations posted for all over the world.

It really gets your mind thinking about where else you'd like to go in this lifetime.

At the restaurants in Bangkok women who seem to be waitresses are actually in Singha beer dresses promoting specials.

These lovely ladyboys are dressed to the nines on Soi Rambutri near Khao San Road, Bangkok, Thailand.

Thailand scenes

Befuddled in the Philippines

I arrived in the Philippines, in Manila, four days ago. I spent three days in Manila.

I bought a ticket to Cebu and flew here last night. Yesterday I was really stumped. Where should I go in the Philippines? The place is very big and to get anywhere seems to take a combination of road, boat, and airplane.

Cebu is supposed to be very nice. The beaches near Cebu are supposed to be powdery white sand beaches and nicer than those near Manila in the north. So I flew here and I'm going to head out to a beach on the island of Cebu or a neighboring island.

Boracay is a big tourist destination and is supposed to be beautiful. After I bought my ticket to Cebu, I realized that Boracay is not that close, and if I wanted to go there I should have bought a ticket directly there.

I arrived late last night and took a taxi to five hotels before I found a room. Finally I found a place at the Kamuning House. It seems to be very quiet and the room is clean and it has a fresh coat of paint.

Manila is a very, very large city. Many foreigners stay in Malate, which is a large section of the city. Part of it is the old city, and part of it is very new. I stayed in the old city in an area called Malini. I stayed at the Stone House Guesthouse, which was also clean. I visited an area called Greenbelt, which is a large complex of high-end shopping malls. As a Philippine couple told me in a Thai restaurant, that is the other side of Philippine society, where well-to-do Philippines and foreigners and Filipinos converse at swanky cocktail lounges.

I finally concluded that I was befuddled because I don't have near enough time to see the Philippines. I had scheduled my return ticket to Bangkok for one week from my arrival. I can probably change the ticket to leave later, which I will do so that I can actually see something here.

I also confirmed my earlier realization that I just don't like traveling quickly. With my return to the U.S. approaching, I had scheduled a whirlwind trip around Southeast Asia. But I just don't like traveling quickly. I like to stay in a place for a few days at least, and if it's nice, longer.

So I will rebook the tickets for a later date. So far I really like the Philippines. The people are friendly. Many people here speak English just fine, in addition to whichever Filipino language they happen to speak (in Manila Tagalog; in Cebu I believe they speak Cebuano).

The Philippines were ruled by the Spanish for four hundred years. As a result, people here seem to have a Latin sensibility. I can make jokes with them and it's a lot easier to talk than with Thais. There is a larger cultural and language barrier with the Thais. People here look Asian, but you can also see the Spanish influence. People are good-looking here (in my subjective opinion) as in Thailand, but there is a subtle difference of the Spanish mark that you can see in their faces.

Befuddled in the Philippines

I shape the next few weeks buying airline tickets in Bangkok

On Monday I took the bus from Krabi to Bangkok. I came back primarily to buy an airline ticket. Before I left Bangkok for Krabi I had reserved an airline ticket with a travel agent for Bangkok to New York on March 6. For several reasons I did not buy the ticket before I left and I could only purchase the ticket from the agent in person.

So this ticket was hanging over my head while I was in Krabi. I needed to get back to the U.S. for a family wedding in Disneyworld. On Tuesday I bought the ticket from the agent, Jeroen at Nat Tour and Travels in the alley behind Khao San Road. The ticket is on Kuwait Airlines and was a real steal at US$535.

Jeroen was recommended to me by Andy Graham of hobotraveler.com. On the walls of entrance to the agency they have posterboards of deals to exotic places all over the world. These people know how to get around.

So once I had bought that ticket, the rest of my plans fell into place. I bought tickets on Continental to Orlando for the wedding, and then to Rochester, New York where my parents live. I will look into the operating status of my car there. They just received over a foot of snow in Upstate New York. It should be gone by the second week of March, but you never know about the weather there.

I also booked on Cebu Pacific a return ticket to Manila, the Philippines. I leave today, Friday the 15th, and return to Bangkok next Friday, the 23rd. These tickets cost me about US$185 return. The deals look very good on site; however, there are substantial taxes and fees for each leg of US$30-50, so it is a bit deceptive.

I felt like a change after spending some time in Thailand, and I had heard the Philippines were an interesting place to go. One week really is barely enough to see anything, but I'll see what I will see. The place is very spread out, with a thousand islands. But I'd like a taste of it before I go to the U.S.; maybe I'll go back there if I like it.

After that I will have about ten days left before my flight to the U.S. I am still deciding how to carve this time up, but I think a beach may be in order.

This is by far the most planning I have done in a year of travel. I have had a general outline in my head of where I'd like to go, but I really have been picking and choosing as I go and taking one decision at a time. I especially have not been thinking too much about the time spent at a particular place.

For example, I spent several weeks in Hampi, India. The place was so pleasant I just didn't leave for a while. This way of deciding things fits my personality. It allows for changes and adaptation. You never know if you're going to like a place until you actually get there.

So my modus operandi has changed temporarily. But I'll get a little sampling of a few places I might not have otherwise seen. And once I booked all those tickets, I actually had a good feeling about having a little bit of structure to my travel for the next few weeks.

Incidentally, February 12 was the anniversary for one year of travel. That's when I set off from Rochester, New York. February 14 I was greeted by my friendly hosts in Mumbai, India.

I shape the next few weeks buying airline tickets in Bangkok

ItinerantWitness.com Updates are now archived on site

The ItinerantWitness.com updates are now archived on site.

The updates are newsletters that review the past few weeks of travel and link to the blog entries for that time period. They serve to tie my journey together and put the blog entries into the context of a larger time frame.

When I look through them I am reminded of that part of the journey; cyber-thumbing through them gives a sketch of the journey from June 2006 when I began sending them.

The archives are also listed at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ItinerantWitnessTravelUpdates/messages. You can sign up to receive emails of the updates here.

Here is a list of the updates as of today:

• Update 1: report from Manali; (June 7, 2006)
• Update 2: leaving Manali to explore Kinnaur and Spiti Valleys in Himachal Pradesh; (June 20, 2006)
• Update 3: Arrived in Spiti Valley; (July 5, 2006)
• Update 4: Went to the Himalayas, now to Nepal for one day, then back to the Himalayas; (July 28, 2006)
• Update 5: I'm whizzing up to Ladakh, and I've added some features to ItinerantWitness.com; (August 1, 2006)
• Update 6: Heavy rain in Ladakh for the first time in fifteen years; (August 8, 2006)
• Update 7: Blog entries with good photos of landslides, bridges, and Buddhas; (August 11, 2006)
• Update 8: I see a sand mandala and get sand blown in my face on the world's highest road; (August 20, 2006)
• Update 9: Bangalore, tropical city with not much monsoon; (August 27, 2006)
• Update 10: Living in Bangalore; (September 12, 2006)
• Update 11: Leaving Bangalore, headed to Mysore Dasara festival; (September 25, 2006)
• Update 12: The contrast between Mysore and Hampi; (October 10, 2006)
• Update 13: Happy in Hampi; (October 19, 2006)
• Update 14: Zigzagging across the Western Ghats of South India: Karnataka to Kerala; (November 12, 2006)
• Update 15: catching fever and ridding it in a Madurai Hospital; (December 4, 2006)
• Update 16: Goodbye India, Hello Thailand; Merry Holidays!; (December 24, 2006)
• Update 17: Thailand is not India; (January 13, 2007)
• Update 18: Life in Krabi, Thailand; (February 6, 2007)

ItinerantWitness.com Updates are now archived on site

I like Lipstic Guesthouse. I like the family that runs it. I see them every day.

Nok just converted the ground floor to a restaurant this year. It has a nice appearance and they have come up with a mix of Western and Thai food oriented toward farang travelers.

Although the guesthouse has been in the family for a long time, they have the anxieties of a new business. The ground floor and uppermost floor used to be a karaoke bar and VIP rooms; hence the unusual name. Karaoke works like this: Customers, mostly Thais, come in groups to the bar. Everyone participates in singing. The establishment makes its money from the large amount of food and drink served. Thais would rather finish off a night at the pubs at a karaoke bar than anywhere else.

Karaoke brought in a lot of money but also had a lot of costs, including paying all of the various music companies. In the first foreigner-oriented season, business is okay but not great. With luck it will pick up the next season. There is a six month low season of rain and heat. A couple of places closer to the pier offer similar prices, although this is about the best value you'll get for your money. (150 Baht small room, shared bath.) The rooms are simple but very clean. Other travellers I've talked to here like the place. It is on one of the side streets and you would have to have some luck to chance across it.

During the day the family runs the restaurant. When the small children are not in school they play on the sidewalk. Nok is playing movies on some nights and occasionally English Premiere matches.

You would think anything tourist-related would be a shoe-in for sure money in Thailand. But there always is those factors in the service industry: too many sellers, not quite the right location. And if the revenue is not high then the family works all day, seven days a week.

I like this place.

Lipstic Guesthouse in Krabi, Thailand

Dr. Travellove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the World

Have I really reached that point? Just about. I realize I can wake up and do just about no wrong. Does it matter if I eat breakfast here or over there? No. If I give ten cents to this beggar or not? No. If I stay in this place or go somewhere else? No. If I say hello to everyone I meet or no one at all? No.

Far from leading to a cynical, dark place, this revelation leads to freedom. It removes fear from eating breakfast, giving to a beggar, going someplace new, and saying hello to a stranger. It drops the walls of suspicion that build up when I'm not paying attention.

To have this feeling everyday, what is necessary? A clear mind and an open heart. A sense of humor.

The driver of the bus I am riding is not going to veer off the cliff. At least it's highly unlikely. He has driven this route many times before. I'm sure.

I have not contracted an incurable tropical disease. It's an ordinary chest cough, curable with antibiotics. (When I rely on my own intuition rather than the doctor's dream scenario.)

My wallet is not going to be stolen and my credit cards maxed out in twenty-four hours. Unless I carelessly leave the wallet next to the computer terminal in Delhi.

Even so, the companies will give me the benefit of the doubt and I won't lose my life savings.

Something totally unexpected will happen to me with uncertain frequency.

Almost every day I meet genuinely happy, interested people. ("What country?"; "U.S.A."; "Oh, Ah-ME-di-ca! Great country!"; "Yes!"; "George Bush!"; "Yes... he is the president...")

To particularly hyper-annoying auto-rickshaw drivers who want my business: "What country?"; "Antarctica"; "An-ca-ti-put...?"; "Antarctica"; "... Great country!"; etc.)

Get some rest, feed yourself, look around, smile at people, "go with the flow" and don't rush things, and most people will smile back. What is this cloud over my head? It must be something I cannot control, for which I have no responsibility, such as global warming, environmental degradation, rampant development, my own health, high-tech war, corruption, violence, hatred, extreme want. Please, I am not these things.

It is in the head, the feeling in the morning. The feeling can be plus or minus. The plus is: Don't worry. The words DON'T PANIC are printed in large friendly letters on the cover of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

I know when to stay in a place and when to leave. Wait and see, things will happen, opportunities will present themselves. Be patient.

In Bangkok Andy told me, "One day you realize you can do whatever you want." That's the Modern Dream, isn't it? Is it true?

How I learned to stop worrying and love the world: I've almost reached that point. I still have some of the anxieties of the West lurking over my head. As do many of the people of the East. I am not blind enough to deny them. And I cannot attribute things to Fate and Good Luck and Bad Luck. But I have almost learned how to stop worrying, and I've almost learned to love the world.

Dr. Travellove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the World

I have been taking it easy in Krabi. I've done some touristy things, but mostly I've been meeting the locals and the local tourists. In "Krabi Town" itself there are not too many tourists (unlike Ao Nang), and it seems to lend itself to smiling and chatting with people.

A semi-touristy thing I did was to take motorbikes with some friends and see a giant catfish farm and a mangrove nature reserve. The landscape and weather are striking in Krabi, so just going for the motorbike ride was fun. The catfish were ugly.

The distinctive cliff climbers love on Ao Ton Sai beach that separates it from Railay beach.

Kayakers explore an overhang between Ao Ton Sai beach and Phanang bay near Ao Nang

Kids get a ride on a motorbike delivery vehicle.

A girl at Lipstic Guesthouse and Gusto Restaurant holds a one-month-old puppy.

Ugly catfish at giant catfish farm in Krabi.

You can swim in the stream that passes through the mangrove forest at Tha Pom Nature Park in Krabi. Underfoot are pleasant smooth tiny pebbles and polished mangrove roots.

Krabi people, puppies, mangroves, and catfish

Last August I set up Google Analytics to track visitors to my website. It has some great features and graphics in addition to the standard stuff everyone wants to know, the number of visitors and pageviews of the site.

Since ItinerantWitness.com is a travel blog, I find it interesting to see from which countries people come to the site.

Geo Map Overlay of ItinerantWitness.com by Google Analytics for the month of January. Click on the map for the full-size graphic.

Most people come from Europe, North America, and India, and some from Southeast Asia. Google Analytics actually mapped 488 locations for the month of January. A "location" is a place, often a city.

Geo Location of ItinerantWitness.com by Google Analytics for the month of January

The above graphic lists only the first ten countries of visitors to ItinerantWitness.com. For the month of January visitors came from 56 different countries, including Japan, Sweden, China, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Argentina, Uganda, Croatia, Russia, Reunion, and Qatar. A couple of months ago someone was visiting from Mongolia.

Most visitors come from the U.S., with India a nearby second. U.K. visitors find the site, as do people in Thailand and Ireland. This makes sense because people I know are from the U.S.; many travellers are from Europe; and I have written a lot about India and some about Thailand on the site. There are visitors from Southeast Asia because of its proximity to India, and in addition the internet is ubiquitous and heavily used in Asia, as opposed to South America for example. The fact that it is an English-language site also heavily influences from which country it is visited.

I look at the visitors and wonder how they ended up at my site. When I first started it, only people I knew knew about the site. I could look at a location and figure out which of my friends had clicked on the site. Now most people arrive at the site through a Google search. They are looking for specific information and my site comes up. I do occasionally receive an email from a regular reader who found the site through the internet. For me that's an exciting thing about the internet; people can find you from anywhere. (It's exciting if you want to be found.)

The Google searchers are often looking for accommodation in a specific place. I would guess that many of the visitors in India and Thailand are travellers searching for information about the next place they are going to visit. But I think I have some nationals in these countries discovering the site also.

I can see the search phrases people use that bring them to the site. They are often place names or guesthouse names. I try to be specific and spell correctly when I put these names in a blog entry so that it is more likely to be found. Sometimes people are searching for strange things, such as "eve teasing holi". "blog india swingers": Doubtful you'll find any useful information about that on my website! (Now that I've put it in a blog entry, I'll get a lot more search requests for it! Ack!)

There are more kinds of information than that available: for example, user network domain names (think: your internet service provider or your company's domain name). Be careful, Big Brother is watching you!

From which countries do people visit ItinerantWitness.com?

- from a brochure found at Hollywood restaurant in Krabi for Ao Nang Group Travel & Services Co. Ltd., Ao Nang, Muang, Krabi, "One Day Canoeing Tour at Bor Thor & Thalane (Half day, Full day)"

I especially like the turn of phrase "tidy lows".

Krabi, Thailand, Small-Town USA

I had to get away from Ao Ton Sai beach. I was getting cabin fever. Although it is on a peninsula, it is only accessible by boat. I had already gone snorkeling and climbing and wanted to go somewhere with more than just tourists and people catering to tourists.

Krabi has been a good answer to that. I've been here for a few days. It is like small-town USA (except of course that it's very Thai). It has a main street and lots of little shops and a Woolworth-like department store. Most everyone here is from here (I think) and there are only a handful of tourists who spend about a day here on their way to a beach. People are friendly and the traffic is not bad. There is a traffic interesection where statues of Neanderthal men hold the stoplights.

Krabi is cheap, cheap, cheap: 150 Baht for a room (US$4) at Lipstic Guesthouse (simple but not as tawdry as it sounds). Finally I feel like my money's been frozen and I don't have that leaking feeling I had at Ao Ton Sai. I was paying 700 Baht there at Kasbah Bungalows (US$20). I did find nice but simple bungalows at Green Valley Resort for 450 Baht (US$13) before I left, and when I go back I'll probably stay there.

I'm sure I've seen more typical Thai life here than at Ao Ton Sai. I see the kids in school and people going to work. I checked out the local nightlife two days ago and did a whirlwind tour of the local clubs. Mixer Pub was a motorcycle taxi away. When I walked in there was a live band singing Thai ballad rock. Only three tables had Thai teenagers sitting at them, a mix of boys and girls; the place looked empty. For a few seconds I had the spotlight turned on me as I sat at a table. The lead singer said "Welcome" to the lone old white guy at the table. I might get the same reception showing up at the teenage hangout in small-town America. The girls mouth all the words to the songs.

The band plays in perfect time to the video of the song playing behind them; the local guy is mouth is moving exactly the same as the Thai star behind him. How is this possible? The band is not lip-synching; they are actually playing. When I change seats all is revealed to me: the video is also being projected on the back wall of the club. In addition, the video is being projected by a karaoke player and the words in Thai turn purple as he sings them. Presumably the rhythm section is paying close attention as well.

After enough Thai rock ballads (about twenty-five minutes), it's another motorcycle taxi to a new place called Slim. One hall has another band playing rock ballads. But this time the place is full of teenagers and the band is hopping. The drummer looks like he's about fifteen. The other hall has a runway and a DJ playing dance music. I sit down at a stool by a cocktail table. Four slim twenty-year-old (?) women walk in and climb up on the runway. They are dressed Coyote Ugly style and begin dancing fervently. I conclude this is the main attraction at this club. Nobody else dances; they choose to sit at their cocktail tables and watch.

So it's further on down the street to the Krazy Pub. This also has a live band and more Thai rock ballads. I'm not interested. I hear dance music nearby from a building that looks like a warehouse. I find people (teenagers again) dancing enthusiastically in a small club with a DJ. When the place closes at one the DJ chats me up for a few minutes. There have been no foreigners in any of these places (except me of course). This is Krabi, Small-Town USA.

Krabi, Thailand, Small-Town USA