(Dec. 28) On another 14 hour flight. This one’s from Hong Kong to Chicago. At the moment, however, it’s hard to think about anything but a very young, and very unhappy, passenger whose screams may break some windows before he’s done. My hope is that the steady drone of the engines will soothe both his and my jangled nerves. The flight plan for United 896 appears to take us over Russian air space. I presume the Russkies are expecting us.
Our vacation is over. Months and months of planning and coordination and, in a flash, it’s done. Isn’t it always the case? But, the memories of this one will last a long, long time. For Lily and me, traveling with Jesse and Alex once again (and Laura now too) reminds me how wonderful it is to do that, although no reminders are needed. Jesse is fast becoming a very accomplished guy: a 3.95 g.p.a. in grad school, an internship upcoming with the State Department in Mexico City, a graduate degree in June, and nuptials in September. A crowded agenda. He is so grounded and well-prepared for whatever lies ahead. His days as troublemaker par excellence are rapidly vanishing in his rear view mirror. He is master of his fate, and I love that about him. When he mimics someone’s voice, when telling one of his wonderful stories, he sounds like a stereotypical Russian, no matter what the nationality of the person he’s depicting. I find it hilarious. He and I are ruthless hearts players, and it is not uncommon for newcomers to our games to indicate that maybe they aren’t quite ready for this experience. But, we enjoy ourselves immensely.
And Alex? Here’s a guy who’s been traveling for a year. From Tierra del Fuego to Swaziland to Vientiane to Perth. And soon, Kathmandu and Mumbai. Mountain trekking, skydiving, shark cages, bungee jumping, safaris, and scuba. He has not been short changed in this adventure. What was once a kid with learning challenges and self-esteem concerns is now an emerging man of the world. When once reading was a painful exercise for him, he now devours books during his frequent solo journeys to the middle of nowhere. I know I am biased, but Alex may be the funniest person I know. Many people make me smile; Alex makes me laugh. Out loud. What could be better? Together, Jesse and Alex take great pleasure in pointing out my foibles, both physical and behavioral. It is one of the constant drumbeats of our time together. Lily is spared this; she’s their mom, after all. I, however, am fair game, and that’s fine by me. They kid because they love, right?
For the days we spent together in Indonesia in our shared scuba experience, I found myself watching not just the amazing marine life, but Jesse and Alex too. They would probably be embarrassed to learn this, but experiencing these fabulous underwater jaunts with them and Lily, together as a family, was at least as amazing to me. It provided one of those quintessential “pinch me” moments.
So, this adventure is now history. In this family, though, it is always about the next trip. On to Provence, I say!
Friday, January 1, 2010
Singapore, the New Cool
(Dec. 27) Move over New York. You too, San Francisco. There’s a new, cool dude you can learn something from. It’s Singapore. It’s modern, it’s colorful, it’s lush, and it is very, very cool. It is a city that reminds you of the old tale of the blind man trying to describe an elephant -- it depends on what part of the body he touches that reveals the creature’s appearance. The trunk, the leg, and the tail -- they all tell very different stories, and Singapore is much the same. It can be a modern, jet set-worthy, splashy shopping experience. Gucci, Prada, Rolex, Dolce and Gabbana, Calvin Klein, Louis Vuitton, even Starbucks. You get the picture. It has wide boulevards lined by a gorgeous canopy of trees and dotted with marble benches for the weary shopper. But, it is also a city that pays tribute to the best architectural elements of British colonialism. Beautiful white-washed buildings all flowing with graceful arches and large, welcoming courtyards. This style is typified most elegantly by the Raffles Hotel, now in its 123rd year. But, Singapore is also a city devoted to its ethnic neighborhoods -- Malaysian, Indian, and Chinese. Here, the streets are narrow with small shops and restaurants seemingly piled one atop the other as is so typical for so many parts of Asia.
It is a crowded city. Make no mistake about that. After spending almost all of our three weeks in relative backwaters with no roads or cars, sharing sidewalks with what strikes me as one-third of the planet’s population was unnerving and alien. The chaotic flow of pedestrian traffic, often elbow to elbow, paints the same picture for me as the hysterical movements of ants whose nest you have just unearthed. Nothing like post-Christmas shopping to get the juices flowing, I guess. And, the heat -- formidable. Not that it is any hotter than Thailand or Indonesia, but it’s amazing how it wears on you when you can’t shuffle around in nothing more than your swimsuit.
Lastly, a word about the food. It reflects its people: Chinese, Malaysian, and Indian. Every nook and cranny offers a fabulous diversity of cuisine. Having gorged ourselves for weeks on Thai and Indonesian food, Lily and I stopped for a change of pace -- middle eastern fare offered up by one of the many open-air sidewalk cafes. My grilled lamb was delicious, but the shawarma Lily had was to die for. Maybe one of the tastiest treats of the entire trip. I went so far as to inquire in the kitchen how they made it only to learn that the chef whose recipe it was had died some months earlier leaving it in the hands of a supplier to deliver the goods to the café. With a shrug, the current chef smiled and suggested that it was no doubt some combination of the 4 Cs that did the trick: curry powder, cumin, cardamom, and coriander. I will experiment when I get home.
Singapore: whatever you want, it’s here.
It is a crowded city. Make no mistake about that. After spending almost all of our three weeks in relative backwaters with no roads or cars, sharing sidewalks with what strikes me as one-third of the planet’s population was unnerving and alien. The chaotic flow of pedestrian traffic, often elbow to elbow, paints the same picture for me as the hysterical movements of ants whose nest you have just unearthed. Nothing like post-Christmas shopping to get the juices flowing, I guess. And, the heat -- formidable. Not that it is any hotter than Thailand or Indonesia, but it’s amazing how it wears on you when you can’t shuffle around in nothing more than your swimsuit.
Lastly, a word about the food. It reflects its people: Chinese, Malaysian, and Indian. Every nook and cranny offers a fabulous diversity of cuisine. Having gorged ourselves for weeks on Thai and Indonesian food, Lily and I stopped for a change of pace -- middle eastern fare offered up by one of the many open-air sidewalk cafes. My grilled lamb was delicious, but the shawarma Lily had was to die for. Maybe one of the tastiest treats of the entire trip. I went so far as to inquire in the kitchen how they made it only to learn that the chef whose recipe it was had died some months earlier leaving it in the hands of a supplier to deliver the goods to the café. With a shrug, the current chef smiled and suggested that it was no doubt some combination of the 4 Cs that did the trick: curry powder, cumin, cardamom, and coriander. I will experiment when I get home.
Singapore: whatever you want, it’s here.
Night Dive
(Dec. 24) When I asked Alice, our dive master, whether a night dive would quicken or slow the pace of breathing, she said either was possible. People are either so excited or apprehensive that they use up the air in their tanks more rapidly than is otherwise the case. Or, she said, for some, breathing slows for those who find this adventure to be a remarkably relaxing experience.
Actually, I found both to be true. I freely admit my apprehensions at the prospect of descending to the ocean floor in total darkness. Wondering whether you’ll get separated from the rest of the group and feel the ultimate sensation of being lost, was in my mind not so much indulging in paranoia as it was recognition of a possibility that was uncomfortably greater than zero. We would have underwater dive lamps, of course, but their range was hardly limitless, and (definitely allowing my paranoia to take center stage) I felt the beam in mine was weaker than it should be.
And, so we descended as the sun was setting out over the South China Sea. It was Christmas eve. The drill was to stay together in a mute, marine conga line with admonitions not to bunch up too closely lest one whack a fellow diver in the head with an errant fin. There would be a dive master at the head, middle and rear of the line ostensibly to prevent strays. Well, that didn’t last very long. Not that anyone was lost, but by the end of the hour dive, most of us observed that at least at one point in the dive we had been the last in line with nothing behind us but black and endless ocean.
As we settled in to this weirdly new environment, I relaxed and began to understand what Alice meant by the likelihood of one’s breathing slowing. None of us knows what it’s like to be in the womb, of course, but this has to be a damn close approximation. Movement slows, effort eases, and each breath extends longer and longer. The 86 degree water temperature soothes and relaxes. And, the pace is slow -- very slow.
As planned, late in the dive, we form a circle on the ocean floor sitting on the sandy bottom extinguishing our dive lamps. Blackness you cannot imagine. You know there are people all around you, but you are alone, believe me. Lily, Jesse, Alex, Colin and Shanti might as well have been a thousand miles away. And then, magic. On cue, we all start waving our arms as if in some legless dance routine, and in front of our eyes appear phosphorescence -- tiny, tiny marine life that appear to you as thousands of tiny fireflies or microbursts of a thousand fireworks. Awesome.
There was no evidence of Santa or reindeer that night, but there was no question that this was a pretty amazing way to celebrate the arrival of Christmas.
Actually, I found both to be true. I freely admit my apprehensions at the prospect of descending to the ocean floor in total darkness. Wondering whether you’ll get separated from the rest of the group and feel the ultimate sensation of being lost, was in my mind not so much indulging in paranoia as it was recognition of a possibility that was uncomfortably greater than zero. We would have underwater dive lamps, of course, but their range was hardly limitless, and (definitely allowing my paranoia to take center stage) I felt the beam in mine was weaker than it should be.
And, so we descended as the sun was setting out over the South China Sea. It was Christmas eve. The drill was to stay together in a mute, marine conga line with admonitions not to bunch up too closely lest one whack a fellow diver in the head with an errant fin. There would be a dive master at the head, middle and rear of the line ostensibly to prevent strays. Well, that didn’t last very long. Not that anyone was lost, but by the end of the hour dive, most of us observed that at least at one point in the dive we had been the last in line with nothing behind us but black and endless ocean.
As we settled in to this weirdly new environment, I relaxed and began to understand what Alice meant by the likelihood of one’s breathing slowing. None of us knows what it’s like to be in the womb, of course, but this has to be a damn close approximation. Movement slows, effort eases, and each breath extends longer and longer. The 86 degree water temperature soothes and relaxes. And, the pace is slow -- very slow.
As planned, late in the dive, we form a circle on the ocean floor sitting on the sandy bottom extinguishing our dive lamps. Blackness you cannot imagine. You know there are people all around you, but you are alone, believe me. Lily, Jesse, Alex, Colin and Shanti might as well have been a thousand miles away. And then, magic. On cue, we all start waving our arms as if in some legless dance routine, and in front of our eyes appear phosphorescence -- tiny, tiny marine life that appear to you as thousands of tiny fireflies or microbursts of a thousand fireworks. Awesome.
There was no evidence of Santa or reindeer that night, but there was no question that this was a pretty amazing way to celebrate the arrival of Christmas.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
The Gilis -- How You Say Island Bliss
(Dec. 22) I know it would be an exaggeration to say that here on Gili Air we have truly reached the other side of the planet, in all things literal and figurative. But, we are getting close. Gili Air is a tiny island, maybe 4 miles around. It sits in the South China Sea about a 4 hour ferry ride east of Bali alongside its island sisters Gili Meno and Gili Trawangan. These tiny islands serve as stepping stones off the coast of Lombok, an Indonesian province that will soon be a rising star for savvy jet setters. Stepping off the longboat that brings us to Gili Air, your personal decompression process begins to take hold. Not that what preceded this destination was stressful, but this place sets the standard for all that is laid back. It is one thing to say that there are no roads here or cars as was the case in Koh Phi Phi, but the difference between Phi Phi and Gili is the difference between New York and Mayberry RFD. There is only a dirt path that hugs the shore around the island, and the only thing that moves faster than the always strolling humans is the occasional pony-drawn cart and a random bike. There are a few bungalow-dotted “resorts,” a string of beach front bars and eateries, and, after that…..nothing.
This is an island devoted largely to divers. There is really nothing else to keep you here except perhaps a driving ambition to lower your blood pressure. No credit cards here, no ATMs. Things here are pretty much a half step ahead of the barter system. Our hotel, Gili Air Bungalows, offers 4 steeply roofed thatched bungalows, each with a front deck and a bathroom in the rear that is open to the sky. Sink, shower, and toilet -- all alfresco. Pretty cool. The pool is salt water as is the tap and shower water. Bottled water is, naturally, essential. The beach bars offer covered, raised thatched platforms each with overstuffed pillows you can lean against while you throw down your Bintang beer and your shrimp or calamari schnitzel. There you can while away the afternoons between dives or after dinner hours, reading, sipping cocktails, playing hearts and trading stories. And the dress code? Let me just say that dressing for dinner means putting a tank top over that bathing suit. And, if you simply insist on footwear, let it be flipflops.
Oh yeah, there’s stress here -- will it be tequila or beer, red snapper or calamari? It really doesn't get much more complicated than that.
This is an island devoted largely to divers. There is really nothing else to keep you here except perhaps a driving ambition to lower your blood pressure. No credit cards here, no ATMs. Things here are pretty much a half step ahead of the barter system. Our hotel, Gili Air Bungalows, offers 4 steeply roofed thatched bungalows, each with a front deck and a bathroom in the rear that is open to the sky. Sink, shower, and toilet -- all alfresco. Pretty cool. The pool is salt water as is the tap and shower water. Bottled water is, naturally, essential. The beach bars offer covered, raised thatched platforms each with overstuffed pillows you can lean against while you throw down your Bintang beer and your shrimp or calamari schnitzel. There you can while away the afternoons between dives or after dinner hours, reading, sipping cocktails, playing hearts and trading stories. And the dress code? Let me just say that dressing for dinner means putting a tank top over that bathing suit. And, if you simply insist on footwear, let it be flipflops.
Oh yeah, there’s stress here -- will it be tequila or beer, red snapper or calamari? It really doesn't get much more complicated than that.
Mayhem on Main Street
(Dec. 20) A word about the traffic here. Astounding. Beyond comprehension. There is simply no analog in the western world for this particular brand of hysteria. I grew up thinking that the mad dash urban traffic scenes of Paris and Rome were the benchmarks for madness -- where the rule of law evaporated in the no man’s land beyond the city’s sidewalks. What I didn’t know then was that these traffic models would be mere child’s play -- a stroll in the park -- compared to what southeast Asians engage in every day. To say the streets are crowded goes without saying, of course. The roads are blanketed by cars, trucks, buses, cyclists, and the ever-present scooters and motorcycles that soon take on the feel of swarming mosquitoes rather than machines. Scooters, often loaded with 3 or 4 people, dart among each other and between cars with a hair-raising optimism that their sudden movements will be injury-free. Helmets, though common, are hardly universal. Unhelmeted, small kids, in particular, who are sandwiched (indeed, seemingly suffocated) between parents, appear oblivious to the harm that I believe is not just apt to happen, but a dead on certainty. Cars, like the ones we traveled in, come up on the bumpers of these two-wheeled vehicles so damn closely that so often you can see what kinds of screws hold their license plates on -- and this is at cruising speeds. Add to this mix the suicidal brand of pedestrians who actually deign to enter this war zone and you have the dictionary definition of chaos.
The notion of lanes is not even paid lip service. Are you kidding me? I’m telling you, it’s a huge waste of paint. Sure, there is oncoming traffic. But, that gives no assurance whatsoever that the oncomers own their lane. They must share it with the cars and scooters that pass from the other lane, sometimes three abreast, in what I can only describe as a fiendish game of chicken. I am amazed as much as I have ever been that accidents are not just more frequent, but hellishly repetitive.
It is truly a video game on wheels, but I hesitate to learn in whose hands the controller rests.
The notion of lanes is not even paid lip service. Are you kidding me? I’m telling you, it’s a huge waste of paint. Sure, there is oncoming traffic. But, that gives no assurance whatsoever that the oncomers own their lane. They must share it with the cars and scooters that pass from the other lane, sometimes three abreast, in what I can only describe as a fiendish game of chicken. I am amazed as much as I have ever been that accidents are not just more frequent, but hellishly repetitive.
It is truly a video game on wheels, but I hesitate to learn in whose hands the controller rests.
A Day in Full
(Dec. 19) Days can be memorable for so many reasons. The one we had today, I suspect, as wonderful as it was in the moment, will become mythic with the passage of time. The major ingredients were all there. It was the first day in virtually a year that Lily, Jesse, Alex and I had been together in one place. With Alex scampering around the globe and Jesse and Laura encamped in Denver, putting us all together in one place was all but impossible. Yet, here we were together again -- a huge delight without more. Add to this that we were all in Bali, and though we had not much more than a day there, it provided an exotic setting for our reunion.
Our day was hinged around a trip up to Ubud, a slow 2 hour journey up into the hills with our driver, Lele. Ubud is known for its crafts and, while we hoped to absorb as much as we could, our day‘s entertainment came from other pursuits. We stop first at Mandala Wisata Wanara Wana, a lengthy Sanskrit denomination for a monkey sanctuary. Here, the inmates (as it were) run the institution. The macaques who reside here run wild and free. If you’re worried about not getting close enough, worry no more. They find you, believe me. All it takes is a bunch of small bananas in hand to bring them running, and they do like their bananas here. If you want one on your shoulder, no problem. You want a grandpa or maybe a baby, they’re yours. What you realize after several minutes is that you’ve taken 900 pictures many of which you just know you’ll want to delete before sharing. But, this is fun without a doubt.
We follow with a trek through rice paddies, a tougher task than we first realized. Our guide, Made (pronounced “Maddy”) takes us down steep slopes through steamy jungle terrain with slippery rocks and dirt, a chore that us flipflop wearing touristas make more difficult than necessary. But, the beauty we witness is incomparable. What is revealed to us, we all agree, is what we had always believed to be the essence of Indonesia: greens so vivid they render the term “technicolor” woefully inadequate; terraced rice paddies that, taken together, provide a stunning landscape mosaic-- so utterly and exclusively Asian. We are dripping from our efforts after the long climb back up to where Lele is to meet us, but we are unanimous in our delight for what we have just come to see.
We stop for lunch at “Indus” recommended by Lele and this special day continues. Spicy calamari salads, an incredibly flavorful lemongrass chicken, and even a paella. All this served on an elevated open air terrace overlooking the rolling Bali countryside. Perfect.
Returning to our hotel, we can’t wait to hit the pool and then have drinks as we watch sunset over the Indian Ocean. Lastly, again at Lele’s suggestion, we are ferried to another part of the city for a grilled fish dinner on the beach at the Ganesha Café. He said it had the best seafood around, and it didn’t disappoint. Grilled red snapper with garlic sauce, all washed down with Bintang beer.
We all regretted having just this one full day in Bali, but as our heads hit the pillow that night, we did not feel cheated.
Our day was hinged around a trip up to Ubud, a slow 2 hour journey up into the hills with our driver, Lele. Ubud is known for its crafts and, while we hoped to absorb as much as we could, our day‘s entertainment came from other pursuits. We stop first at Mandala Wisata Wanara Wana, a lengthy Sanskrit denomination for a monkey sanctuary. Here, the inmates (as it were) run the institution. The macaques who reside here run wild and free. If you’re worried about not getting close enough, worry no more. They find you, believe me. All it takes is a bunch of small bananas in hand to bring them running, and they do like their bananas here. If you want one on your shoulder, no problem. You want a grandpa or maybe a baby, they’re yours. What you realize after several minutes is that you’ve taken 900 pictures many of which you just know you’ll want to delete before sharing. But, this is fun without a doubt.
We follow with a trek through rice paddies, a tougher task than we first realized. Our guide, Made (pronounced “Maddy”) takes us down steep slopes through steamy jungle terrain with slippery rocks and dirt, a chore that us flipflop wearing touristas make more difficult than necessary. But, the beauty we witness is incomparable. What is revealed to us, we all agree, is what we had always believed to be the essence of Indonesia: greens so vivid they render the term “technicolor” woefully inadequate; terraced rice paddies that, taken together, provide a stunning landscape mosaic-- so utterly and exclusively Asian. We are dripping from our efforts after the long climb back up to where Lele is to meet us, but we are unanimous in our delight for what we have just come to see.
We stop for lunch at “Indus” recommended by Lele and this special day continues. Spicy calamari salads, an incredibly flavorful lemongrass chicken, and even a paella. All this served on an elevated open air terrace overlooking the rolling Bali countryside. Perfect.
Returning to our hotel, we can’t wait to hit the pool and then have drinks as we watch sunset over the Indian Ocean. Lastly, again at Lele’s suggestion, we are ferried to another part of the city for a grilled fish dinner on the beach at the Ganesha Café. He said it had the best seafood around, and it didn’t disappoint. Grilled red snapper with garlic sauce, all washed down with Bintang beer.
We all regretted having just this one full day in Bali, but as our heads hit the pillow that night, we did not feel cheated.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Scuba
(Dec. 15) After graduating from our rigorous and amusing introduction to breathing underwater in a pool, and having reviewed endless reams of dive instructions and instructional videos, we are now ready for our first open water dive. We go to Maya Bay, site of “The Beach” with Leonardo DiCaprio. Fantastically beautiful, the bay is surrounded by steep, green limestone cliffs evocative of what we imagine pre-historic times to have looked like. In that moment, as we enter the bay, an appearance by a t-rex does not seem utterly out of the realm of possibility. In our longboat, it is just Lily and me, our dive master, Keira, and our boatman. These long, narrow wooden craft you’ve seen a thousand times in movies set in this part of the world.
We submerge. It is hard to keep from smiling. A whole new world reveals itself. Within minutes, we find ourselves circling a sea turtle which is attacking a huge jellyfish from beneath, essentially trying to eat him alive. The jellyfish tries to move away as quickly as nature permits, but his throbbing hulk is no match for the sea turtle. I root for the jellyfish, the underdog, hoping he will miraculously find breakaway speed, but today is not his day.
I delight in new perspectives. Unlike the “horizontal” world where you pass someone either on the left or right, here you have an additional option. Go over or under. How novel! I find myself passing over Lily and a couple of other divers, all arrayed in a vertical plane. As I look down, I feel like I have the barest appreciation for what it’s like to fly in formation with the Blue Angels. Swimming above Lily, I have the absolutely delightful experience of having her air bubbles drift up and past me. They appear as metallic, shiny inverted saucers, reflecting light as clearly as mirrors. I poke them and they break apart into fifty smaller saucers. This is, at heart, a psychedelic experience.
As part of the test for scuba certification, we are asked to jump out of the boat and swim 200 meters to shore. Forgive me, but I think of myself as Leonardo as he and his friends make the desperate swim ashore to “the beach,” just as I am doing in that moment.
Really, I do apologize for this.
We submerge. It is hard to keep from smiling. A whole new world reveals itself. Within minutes, we find ourselves circling a sea turtle which is attacking a huge jellyfish from beneath, essentially trying to eat him alive. The jellyfish tries to move away as quickly as nature permits, but his throbbing hulk is no match for the sea turtle. I root for the jellyfish, the underdog, hoping he will miraculously find breakaway speed, but today is not his day.
I delight in new perspectives. Unlike the “horizontal” world where you pass someone either on the left or right, here you have an additional option. Go over or under. How novel! I find myself passing over Lily and a couple of other divers, all arrayed in a vertical plane. As I look down, I feel like I have the barest appreciation for what it’s like to fly in formation with the Blue Angels. Swimming above Lily, I have the absolutely delightful experience of having her air bubbles drift up and past me. They appear as metallic, shiny inverted saucers, reflecting light as clearly as mirrors. I poke them and they break apart into fifty smaller saucers. This is, at heart, a psychedelic experience.
As part of the test for scuba certification, we are asked to jump out of the boat and swim 200 meters to shore. Forgive me, but I think of myself as Leonardo as he and his friends make the desperate swim ashore to “the beach,” just as I am doing in that moment.
Really, I do apologize for this.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
