8,471 miles and Counting

After spending the night at Burger King's Kuala Lumpur International Airport branch, and nearly missing my flight despite being at the airport ten hours early (all my fault), I landed in Yangon, Myanmar. Coming from Kathmandu--where monkeys have been spotted snatching human food at the gates, and a leopard near the runway once delayed flights--I was impressed with Yangon's clean, modern, high tech terminal building. My taxi into town was on smooth pavement with flowers lining the roads, as opposed to the bumpy, dusty thoroughfares of Kathmandu the day before. The sun was hot, but I had to remind myself this is the weather I was dreaming of while sleeping in freezing temps up in the Himalayas. As I took in the city, something seemed a bit different, and then it clicked--no motorbikes are allowed in the city (except post, utility, and police workers), a very odd ban for an Asian city. The threat of three years in jail keep any would be offenders at bay. They drive on the ri...

I slept like a baby on my VIP night bus from Yangon to Bagan, waking just once for 11pm "dinner" a few hours into the journey. This brand new rest stop was a stark contrast to the bare bones roadside stands I've mostly seen on this trip. Air con dining hall, clean bathrooms, staff on hand to serve you, and surveys handed out to try to improve. Of all my bus stops, the best one was in Myanmar? Well rested, I took to the hot sand to explore the thousands of temples that made Bagan famous. Over 10,000 are believed to have been built between the 11th and 13th centuries with over 2,200 brick temples, pagodas, and stupas remaining today. Some are scattered around town between houses and shops, most are reached on sandy trails that shoot off from the main roads, nestled in patches of sand among greenery and palms. No shoes allowed around the monuments meant walking barefoot on scorching hot sand, gravel, and brick. At the less visited pagodas, a sense of calm would blank...

And now for a little bit of hope, straight from Myanmar, to supplement what's been in the news lately. Ashin Ottamasara was a successful Burmese businessman who quit it all to become a monk at age 33. He opened his apartment as a meditation retreat, especially for other businessmen. Land was then donated and in addition to continuing meditation retreats, he decided to open the Thabarwa Center in 2007 to anyone in need. Anyone. It's become a home for all with no discrimination of age, condition, background, nationality, or religion. Orphans, the sick, elderly, homeless, hopeless, refugees, blind, deaf, disabled, and mentally ill are all welcome here with no payment, contract, judgement, or end date. This has resulted in a population of over 3,280 residents these days, including monks and yogis (those who practice meditation), and 20-30 foreign volunteers at any given time. Early on in my travels looking out over the sea from Koh Samui, another traveller shared this place wi...

I would love to know what Bob Seger was thinking when he really really wanted to go to Kathmandu. At the Kuala Lumpur airport when I said aloud where I was headed, I caught myself a little off guard.  Not until the idea of trekking in Nepal came up did I ever think I would end up in Kathmandu. Interestingly, there are only three places in the world that have 15-minute offsets from GMT; Nepal is one of those, so it's 9h45m ahead of new York City. I stepping out of the very basic KTM airport and onto the loud, dusty streets full of polluting buses. One thing was clear, this is not a pedestrian-friendly city. The Kathmandu Post I was reading over my coffee one morning lamented, "the city is openly hostile to pedestrians," and walking is "a distinctly unpleasant experience...Pavements are narrow and the tiling uneven and full of holes, unnatural flora often bar the way, doorways and driveways emerge onto sidewalks, walking space is earmarked for parking, and al...

Each time I enter a new country, that's one more currency to exchange, one more exchange rate to get down, and one more set of "fair prices" to learn. Thailand has the baht, 35 of which are worth a dollar. When shorted change once, I had to remind myself that one baht is just three cents. They have bills, and coins as small as a quarter of a baht. Currency shows the face of the king, to whom everyone shows the utmost respect (if for no other reason than that's the law). Another traveller in a 7-11 dropped a coin and to prevent it from rolling away, stomped on it (feet are considered the lowest and dirtiest part of the body, and stepping on or over anything is extremely disrespectful), to which the employees exclaimed, "the king, the king!" Don't do that. Vietnam has the dong, 22,600 of which equals a dollar. Math isn't quick except for a rough conversion. Costs will sometimes be listed in dollars, but you pay in dong...this results in some playi...

The more friends and travellers I talked to, the more Nepal came up as the place to go trekking. So why not pay the Himalayas a visit while on that side of the world? Kathmandu is the starting point for nearly all trekkers, and it must have one of the highest concentrations of outdoor stores. Here was my $133 haul, all "authentic" of course: (2) pair wool socks (1) pair sock liners Patagonia fleece Synthetic down jacket UnderArmor long sleeve base layer Mountain Hardwear winter gloves with liners 30L North Face backpack Wool hat I also hired a -10C sleeping bag for $0.50/day, and a pair of trekking poles for $0.20/day. With that, two trekking permits, and the fattest stack of cash I've ever held (no reliable ATMs high up in the Himalayas), I boarded a local bus to Besisahar, the official start of the Annapurna Circuit. I was fortunate to have a seat, but for the first two hours we crawled through dusty Kathmandu traffic, and for the remaining six, made ou...