Useless Facts and Humorous Observations

Dunedin, New Zealand
We climbed the steepest street in the world, Baldwin Street. Once we reached the top, we turned around and looked down the slope of our 401(k).

Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia
I walked into the washroom of our camp site and noticed a sign on the wall that said "Please Do Not Defecate on the Floor." So I went in the sink instead.

Broome, Australia
We classified Cable Beach as one of the most beautiful beaches in all of Australia. One part of the beach was nude, and the other part we never got to see.

Bali, Indonesia
Immigration denied us entry because we could not produce evidence of our intended departure. This crushed our dream of fleeing from the riches of America to sneak into Indonesia and live as impoverished, illegal aliens.

With the Bali to Java ferry docked in the harbour, tourist threw money overboard and watched as the local children dove thirty feet off the side of the ship to collect it as payment for such a feat. So fed up with Indonesians at this point, I thought about simply handing them the money and then pushing them off.

Singapore
We rented a seedy hotel room in the downtown area and noticed ants crawling over the carpet, walls and bed sheets. I called management and they nodded in agreement that something needed to be done, so they changed the sheets. We changed hotels.

Phucket, Thailand
Here we stayed at the cheapest hotel on our trip - $2.85 a night. Instead of leaving mints on the pillows, management left cockroaches. I'm just kidding, there were no pillows.

Guangdong, China
The SARS virus killed numerous people in the province of Guangdong. Chinese scientists conducted various test to determine if the "dong” portion played a role in spreading the disease.

Putoshan Island, China
Lonely Planet warned about drinking the water in spite of its delightfully yellowish color.

Beijing, China
So the day came when we boarded the train to Moscow. At the station, we hooked up with a Frenchman and an Englishman who were also taking the Trans-Siberian Railroad...

Trans-Siberian: At the China and Mongolia Border
...a Mongolian customs agent entered our compartment and noticed that a Frenchman, an Englishman, and two Americans boarded a train to Moscow. She asked, “Is this some kind of joke?”

Erica’s peeled, worn and ragged passport came under question by Chinese customs officials. They released her once they all agreed that a forger would have done a better job.

Trans-Siberian: Siberia, Russia
The fabled stories of harsh Siberian winters came under scrutiny when the beer, sold in kiosks outside on the train station platforms, was suspiciously warm.

Krakow, Poland
I walked up to the counter and asked for a round-trip bus ticket to Auschwitz. The lady looked at me straight-faced and said they only sell one-way tickets.

Istanbul, Turkey
After three hours of El Al "hospitality" in a back room at Ataturk International, airline officials x-rayed our bags for the fifth time when they determined that, following a short walk from the interrogation room to the departure gate, we may have constructed a bomb when both our Israel security escorts blinked simultaneously.

Jerusalem, Israel
Since conventional weapons became harder to smuggle onto buses and into buildings due to heightened security, Palestinian suicide bombers began frequenting Mexican restaurants hoping to develop explosive diarrhea.

An Unnerving Stroll Between Two Bombs

We caught word of the ceasefire while hopping around the tranquil Cyclades - an island group sprinkled in the Aegean Sea a few waves southeast of mainland Greece. Although we never intended on visiting a region so volatile that a lull in murder provided a cause for celebration, the ninety-day truce announced by the Palestinians presented an opportunity of Biblical proportion. Israeli suspicions, however, dismissed this peace initiative as nothing more than an attempt at easing Zionist pressure while the Palestinians planned future attacks. Standing on the sidelines, we watched and waited. Fortunately, we did not wait long enough.

The expiry date of our Greek visas soon tapped us on the shoulders, so we ferried to Bodrum and spent the next few weeks along the Mediterranean coast of Turkey slowly making our way toward Istanbul. After two delicately peaceful months between the Hatfieldbergs and al-McCoys, we stepped off a bus in old Constantinople, walked into a travel agency on Yeni Çeriler Caddesi, and purchased our flight to Tel Aviv. We picked up the tickets later that afternoon and headed back to our hotel. As CNN played on the 12-inch screen mounted from the ceiling of our cramped room, our eyes closed with a sigh as images from Jerusalem showed paramedics frantically carrying the injured from a bus that exploded moments ago. With a week left until our trip to Israel, we held the reins on any hasty decision, and again, we watch and waited.

Seven days later we packed our bags and, in a harrowing cab ride that pushed an Israeli bus to the number two spot on the list of most dangerous modes of transportation, walked through the doors of Attaturk International. After two hours of questioning by El Al security, and a thorough search of our bags, where each item of clothing was x-rayed individually followed by our empty backpacks, they gave us the okay to go through more security.

We touched down at Ben Gurion later that evening. I recalled a conversation Erica and I had about avoiding public transportation by either walking or taking cabs. Those words played over in my mind as I nervously looked out the window at the people boarding our bus that would take us into Tel Aviv. Backpacks littered the seats and aisles, and I longed for our stop which could not come fast enough. Finally, we arrived near the Hilton and stepped onto the sidewalk – the last ones off the bus!

We made several bus trips in the nine days following that ride on the “Anxiety Express:” Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Jerusalem to the Dead Sea and back, and Jerusalem to Tel Aviv where we caught our flight to London. We checked into the Jubilee Court Hotel and flicked on CNN. Continued coverage from Jerusalem showed familiar images of the bloodied and injured being carried into ambulances, but this time the images came from a café that exploded two hours after our plane left the Holy Land.

Twelve Dead Jurors

We never passed on visiting the many used bookstores dotting the backpacker ghettos. One evening, while browsing through a cramped shop in the Khao San neighborhood of Bangkok, we stumbled upon a novel by John Grisham called Die Jury. The title intrigued us, so we picked it up for a quick glance at the plot printed on the back cover. We placed the book back on the shelf with a chuckle when we discovered it was his novel, The Runaway Jury, translated into German.

The Legend of Mr. Sleep

The ninety-mile journey from Poipet to Siem Reap took roughly ten hours over a cratered road victimized by third-world neglect. While the van violently rocked from side to side as it challenged each pothole, choking dust drifted through its ill-fitted windows and clouded the interior. Five hours into the demanding trip, I welcomed the stop.

We pulled off the road and into the parking lot of a sleepy restaurant. Any possibility of a peaceful reprieve from the drive vanished when several children approached and began aggressively selling fruit and drinks. One twelve-year-old girl offered me a piece of pineapple for 2000 riel. Not that I couldn’t afford the fifty cents, but the health section of our Lonely Planet warned of the dangers from diseases contained in certain types of fruit that included pineapple, so I politely declined. And I declined again, and again, and again. Once she understood my position, we engaged in small talk.

“What’s you name?” I asked.

“Niet,” she replied. “And what is your name?”

“Steve,” I said.

She laughed…and continued to laugh. Then she held her hands up to one side of her face, tilted her head on them and closed her eyes.

“Sleep,” she said through a wide grin, “Your name is Sleep.”

Before I could correct her, she rushed to her friends and my name quickly spread. They all laughed, so I said nothing and enjoyed the misunderstanding along with them.

Eventually, the break ended and we crawled into the van for the remainder of our drive to Siem Reap. I said good-bye to Niet and waved as the van pulled away. What began as typically exhaustive dialogue between a tout and a traveler ended as a pleasurable moment with the local people. Whether Niet felt the same, I will never know. We faced a drive that would continue well into the night with conditions unsuitable for getting any rest, so it fitted perfectly when she waved back and said, “Good-bye, Sleep.”

A Cut Below the Rest

After we arrived on Pinang Island, just off the west coast of the Malay Peninsula, I decided my long hair needed a snip. I hit the streets of George Town and settled on a salon that charged around three dollars. A quick fifteen minutes in the chair produced a style that looked more like she ripped my hair using her fingers. With her English worse than my Chinese, I did not bother explaining the problem. I paid for services poorly rendered and hurried back to the hotel room.

I faced the mirror and concluded that a shaved head would rescue me from this disaster. I picked up my Remington beard trimmer and began above the ears chiselling an inch-wide strip down to five o’clock shadow length. Then the batteries died. If it looked bad then, it looked really bad now. I decided that I caused enough damage for one day, and would live with my new hair “don’t” until dawn.

The following morning I humbly walked into another salon and, in my best combination of body language and facial expressions, indicated I wanted the rest of my hair matching the racing stripe I carved over my ears. She nodded while laughing then sat me down. Moments later I hit the streets of George Town again, but now with the best looking scalp in all of Pinang.

The Disorient Express

The announcement knocked the wind right out of me. Erica and I understood nothing from the voice crackling over the speakers, but the collective moans from those who spoke the language told us the train, already hours behind schedule, remained several more hours, if not days, away. With the insufferable bus ride from Bali to Yogyakarta still fresh in our minds, and now this frustrating delay to Jakarta, I concluded that constipation moved bowels more efficiently than Indonesian public transit moved people.

The train finally inched its way into the station amongst the cheers of impatience. With Business Class tickets in hand, we squeezed through the doors and grabbed a spot on the floor against the wall. Only a handful of passengers enjoyed the relative luxury of the sixteen bench seats due to the acceptable practice of overcrowding. The vast majority of us sat on the floor or stood. My sarcastic hopes for culinary delights or hot towels usually associated with Business Class quickly vanished, but at least we were inside the train unlike those in economy clinging to its exterior.

We labored for hours along the track rocking from side to side past the ubiquitous rice fields and dilapidated houses. I occupied most of my time people watching. Some passengers slept while others indulged in rice smothered with sauce and served on a banana leaf by a woman ignorant of the guidelines for safe food handling. Nearby, another lady read the newspaper. “6 MORT!” proclaimed the headline next to a photo of a derailed train. I did not know if Indonesia used the same word, but I knew that mort, translated from the French, meant dead. Within moments, we neared the town of Kebumen, and our train crawled by the wreckage. I stared out the window at the buckled rails and overturned carriages littering the rice field amazed that only six people perished.

We arrived in Jakarta well past midnight after another arduous journey through the countryside. Having battled almost every mode of transport Indonesia offered, from busses to tuk-tuks, an experience best described as a bumpy ride on the back of a motorized tricycle, choking on exhaust fumes, all the while being serenaded by a chainsaw, we stopped short of clashing swords with their airline. Instead, we toyed with the idea of taking a freighter across the Strait of Malacca until one day, while walking past a travel agent, we noticed an unassuming sign in the window advertising $79 flights to Singapore on Bahrainian-owned Gulf Air. Yes, I would love a hot towel after my steak. Thank you.

A Picture Worth Only One Word

Being approached by strangers requesting I take their picture in front of some tourist attraction happened quite frequently. If they could not ask me in English, they usually pointed to their camera and nodded with a smile. One afternoon in Bali, a Chinese couple walked toward me and gave the familiar point and grin. As I reached for their camera, the lady shook her head. Then her husband, or at least I assumed so, walked up and stood next to me with a big smile. And so, in an album of memories somewhere in the Orient sits a photo of two complete strangers, posing by the temple Pura Tanah Lot, smiling like they knew each other all of their lives. Odd.