WanderingWhy…

Asia is huge.  I think we forget the majority of the world’s population lives in Asia.  It’s also very different from one place to the next, sometimes within the same country.  Having finished our wandering through Southeast Asia’s mainland over the last five months I’m still no authority but at least the picture is a bit clearer.

After passing through the ultra-modern, organized, friendly gateway of Japan we dropped into Hanoi, Vietnam.  The Vietnamese are some of the hardest driving people I have ever seen-they make New Yorkers look lazy.  After Tokyo, Hanoi seemed like pure lunacy.  It seemed the world’s population lives in the old quarter of this city alone.  The mix of tight streets and sidewalks filled with motorbikes, BBQ’s, cafe tables, soup stalls, and aggressive touts competing for your attention all baking under intense summer heat is tough.  Anyone that professes to be an anarchist should live in Hanoi first.

All this drove me crazy as I looked at it through my western lenses.  Things like, “Why is that guy driving the wrong way down the road? Straight at me? How do I get across 10 lanes of motorbike traffic? Why do I have to haggle for everything down to a bottle of water? Why does everyone think I should pay 5 times the price?  Why don’t touts accept five no’s for an answer? It takes a little while to find a travel groove here.

By the time we reached Saigon I thought we had crossed into in another country.  Still very busy but much bigger, it seemed there was room to breath here.  Or, maybe we were starting to adapt a bit.  In fact, what seems like complete lawless chaos to a westerner at first works quite well for the self-policing masses.

From Vietnam we crossed into Cambodia.  We didn’t plan for much in Cambodia other than going to see Angkor Wat but the country really surprised us.  The people have such a violent, sad and tragic past yet are some of the kindest and most positive we have ever met.  It is sickening how much corruption still exists here while children starve in the street. We had some of our most eye-opening travel moments here. And the mind-blowing Angkor complex did not disappoint–truly one of the world’s gems.

On to touristy Thailand.  For me, when a place has a reputation as touristy I have little desire to go there.  It usually means there are over-priced hotels, restaurants that serve bad expensive western food with “local flair,” cheesy tours, and tacky shows.  Maybe this happens when a place is overrun by travelers looking for something different then complain when they get there that things are not like home–so the locals look to accommodate them. Or maybe I’m just jaded from living in Florida where they have perfected this kind of thing into an art form.  Anyway, while these things do exist in Thailand they are not overwhelming.

Thailand was right in the sweet spot for me.  The country lacked the mayhem of Vietnam, yet was still different enough to be interesting.  People still rode motorbikes down the sidewalk, there were elephants in the street, lots of expat characters in the bars and my over-sized appetite was fed down every street with the world’s greatest street food.  I bought a cell phone, got an apartment, and lived the expat life for a bit.

After all the fun we had in Thailand, things seemed dull in Malaysia (Borneo aside). This was my first time in a predominantly Muslim country. The country is nice and so are the people, but it lacked the edge of Thailand and we kind of muddled along with mediocre food, endless shopping malls, and beaches empty of locals due to religious modesty.

Singa-snore, er.. I mean Singapore, is nice also but at times it seemed the whole place was one big shopping mall.  I was thankful for all the air conditioning but we got so bored we went to the movies.  The biggest highlight was the zoo which was really great as far as zoos go, but looking around I could have been in any theme park back home.  In this country you could be fined for eating or drinking on the subway, spitting on the sidewalk, crossing the middle of the street within 50m of a crosswalk, or even chewing gum!

I travel to see things different than my own culture-or so I like to believe. Traveling through these countries you can’t help but compare it to what you know.  Maybe we enjoyed Thailand so much because of the “western-ness” in this Asian land.  Interesting, without being very challenging or uncomfortable.  Then we headed south and things became more like home with corporate food chains, shopping malls, and little interest.

Or maybe there is something to be said for putting down roots in a place and digging in a bit deeper.  Constant movement is sometimes like watching a highlight reel.  Running down the checklist of places, sights, and experiences becomes dull… keep pushing and it becomes to much like work.

From the crushing numbers of humanity, motorbikes and work-ethic of Vietnam, to the kindest people with a dark, painful past in Cambodia, to the wild mix of eastern and western culture in Thailand, to the super reserved culture of Malaysia, and the sterility of Singapore, South East Asia is very different from one country to another. Traveling from Hanoi in the north to southernmost Singapore is almost a microcosm trip from east to west.  A classic overland trip.

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