8/16/07 - Epilogue

Mount Joy, PA (see my travel map here and latest batch of photos here)

Wow, 15.5 months later, and sitting in my apartment, procrastinating from packing by cranking out the very first of this (rather ill-fated) blog seems both like yesterday and like a lifetime ago. I arrived back in the good old US of A 11 days ago, and, as anticipated, the eyebrows of the customs official shot skyward when he saw my re-entry form, but he was a decent guy and after a few questions was apparently reasonably enough convinced that I wasn't trying to smuggle would-be immigrants into the country in my backpack to let me go without searching my bags.

So far, the reacclimatization hasn't been nearly as bad as I had feared it would be; my biggest problem has probably been finding myself having to summarize my trip when I see people I haven't seen in a while, and who almost invariably ask something to the effect of "So, how was it?" Talk about open-ended: how on earth do you condense a year+ of always interesting, often amazing, sometimes boring, occasionally frustrating travel into a conversation measured in minutes with someone who wasn't there for any of it. Answer: you don't, and you can't; it's just not possible.

Almost as difficult but at least a little less general are the favorite questions: "what was your favorite food, your favorite country, the best thing you did, etc". I can usually manage to come up with a top-three or -five, but singling out one thing is really tough. Maybe as time goes (flies) by, I'll gain a little more perspective, but at the moment, everything is still so fresh in my memory that very few things (or maybe too many things) stand out so clearly in my mind as to be an obvious first choice answer...

And so, as a final farewell / parting shot on the blog that started off gangbusters but faded rather quickly, I thought I'd give a quasi-summary of my trip through a series of 'top-threes' in a variety of categories touching on many of the areas of my trip. So, without further ado:

Countries I visited and want to return to most (not necessarily the same as countries I liked best):

1. Indonesia - friendly people, beautiful scenery, cute girls, a language that's probably among the easiest in the world to learn, relatively few tourists, and no hint of the islamic terrorism that is the justification for paranoid US State Dept's ludicrous travel warning. if that's not enough for you, it's cheap, too. and I only visited the three most touristed islands (Bali, Java, and Sumatra), and didn't even come close to doing them justice. there are still 17,505 other islands, including Sulawesi, Kalimantan (the Indonesian part of Borneo), Lombok, Komodo, Flores, the Moluccas, and I'm itching to go back and explore some more.
2. Turkey - I had an amazing time in Istanbul, but apart from a few days near Selcuk and Bodrum, didn't get to see much of the rest of the country. more turkish hospitality -- where do I sign?
3. Ireland - friendly people always up for a laugh, pubs, gorgeous countryside, pubs, amazing music, pubs, fresh Guiness. oh, and the pubs are brilliant too.

Countries I was most dissapointed with (not necessarily the same as countries I wouldn't go back to):

1. Dubai (I guess technically the UAE) - commercialism and crazy money in the middle of the desert, with a healthy dose of pseudo-religious hypocrisy mixed in. one day was enough to see the ski slope in the shopping mall and be convinced how over-the-top everything is, although to be fair I probably only saw what I would consider to be the worst side of life in the UAE.
2. Australia - maybe a consequence of over-hyped expectations, resulting from having met lots of people who told me how amazing western Australia was. but after time in India and Indonesia, the fact that Oz is probably as similar to the US as any other country in the world made it seem very uninteresting, and in retrospect 3 weeks on the west coast were probably too much. too many backpackers looking to pick fruit during the day and party at night; the latter is fun but starts to get a little old (and that fact definitely made me feel a little old). plus for a nation of boozehounds, the beer is bloody expensive.
3. Greece - again probably the victim of heightened expectations more than anything else, because I did enjoy my time in Greece. but with one or two exceptions, ancient ruins get pretty old pretty quickly, and even my three-day stint in the semi-independent monastic republic of Mt. Athos - one of the things I had planned from the very beginning of the trip and was really looking forward to - wasn't as interesting as expected.

Best beers I "discovered" (i.e. hadn't had before):

1. Murphy's (Ireland) - Strictly speaking, this might not count, as I'm pretty sure I had had Murphy's in the US once or twice before leaving. But Murphy's in the US is not Murphy's in Ireland, and I actually preferred it to that other stout that's managed to make a little bit of a name for itself outside of Ireland (although Irish Guiness also tastes much better, especially in Dublin where it's at its freshest).
2. Bintang (Indonesia) - my favorite of the generally nondescript Asian beers. Straightforward but definitely tasty pilsener, although granted sitting by the pool in a tropical paradise, Bud Light probably tastes pretty good, too.
3. Deuchar's IPA (Scotland) - the best of the UK's many beers that aren't really known beyond the shores of the British Isles. comparatively light & refreshing, and eminently drinkable (especially in summer).

Best "simple" eats (i.e. non frou-frou, foodie food):

1. Mercimek Corba (Turkey) - i.e. lentil soup, one of my main staples in Turkey, and despite being about as simple as you can get, it never got close to getting old. some fresh lemon juice and a little chili pepper sprinkled on top, and a few slices of fresh bread: of the many things I loved about Istanbul, this was very close to the top.
2. Pho (Vietnam) - my breakfast almost every day in Vietnam, and occasionally lunch or dinner as well. for less than $1, you get a big steaming bowl of rice noodles and beef (or chicken, if that's what you prefer) in flavorful broth, and a heaping plate of sliced lime, bean sprouts, and mint and coriander sprigs leaves to dump in in whatever quantities you choose.
3. Okonomiyaki (Japan) - quite possibly the ultimate 'toss-a-bunch-of-random-stuff-together-and-voila' food (okonomiyaki means something to the effect of "fry up what you like"), usually consisting of a minimum of batter, cabbage, and some sort of meat or seafood fried in a general pancake-type shape, covered in special sauce and mayonnaise, topped with bonito flakes. Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki is even more random (and, I thought, better): in addition to all of the above, it also contains noodles and a fried egg, as well as a lot more cabbage.

Cities with the most beautiful women:

1. Riga, Latvia - no real contest here, Riga wins hands down by a mile. like a lot of things in Latvia, the girls are a mixture of nordic and slavic. as far as looks go, those are two pretty good gene pools to start with, but in this case, 1 + 1 definitely equals 3 (or maybe even 4).
2. Catania, Italy - still Europe, but about as far from the tall, thin, light-haired girls of Riga as you can get. Still, dark-haired, voluptuous Sicilian girls are stunningly beautiful, and Catania took the cake.
3. Nagoya, Japan - interestingly, Nagoya is actually known within Japan for ugly women, but that wasn't my experience at all. I was only there for a day, but there were a lot of cute, well dressed Japanese girls walking around, and my impression was only reinforced by an adorable girl I met in Tokyo, who happened to originally hail from - you guessed it - Nagoya.

Best books I read with relevance to the places where I traveled:

1. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie - maybe not worth it if you haven't been to India or aren't at least a little familiar with post-independence Indian history, but if you have and/or are, this might be one of the best books you'll ever read. the adventures of the main character, whose life parallels that of the nation of India, are highly entertaining, and Rushdie is a creative genius.
2. Snow by Orhan Pamuk - there's been heated controversy in Turkey over whether Orhan Pamuk deserved the Nobel Prize, but I have a hard time believing that anyone who read this book would claim he didn't. gripping story, and very interesting perspective on the secular/religious conflict in Turkey (and, more generally, the islamic world in general)
3. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad - maybe not as immediately culturally relevant, but still a really good book (much better than Heart of Darkness) with insight into life as a colonial expat a hundred years ago, and from that perspective still very interesting for modern day visitors to Asia.

Places I'd escape to if I had to disappear for the rest of my life (which I hopefully never will, since my top choices are now blown):

1. Kalpetta, India - a small, pleasant, wealthy (at least by Indian standards) town set among plantations up in the hills of northeastern Kerala. a refreshingly cool climate, extremely friendly locals, lush scenery, and all the fresh tropical fruits, spices, and coffee you could ever want.
2. Malang, Indonesia - a pretty, thriving but orderly former colonial market town in east Java. plus the best football (soccer) team in football(soccer)-mad Indonesia.
3. Dingle, Ireland - a small town in the middle of the stunning Dingle peninsula, which juts out into the wild north Atlantic. oh, and there are some brilliant pubs, too.

Best "newly discovered" tropical fruits:

1. Mangosteen - possibly my new overall favorite fruit, i first came across mangosteens in Indonesia, but happily they're easy to find all over SE asia. about the size of a child's fist, a woody purple/brown shell covers the milky white edible segments, which are simultaneously sweet and tangy. and thankfully, I may not have to fly back across the Pacific to get my hands on some, as mangosteens may soon be available in the US...
2. Jambu - i had jambu in southern India, but they also exist across SE Asia, where they're more commonly known as water apples but aren't that prevalent. small, pinkish, and crisp, with a slightly sour flavor.
3. Duku - another example of Indonesia's mind-boggling array of strange, delicious tropical fruits. duku are small (roughly the size and shape of a quail egg), light brown, and have a flavor quite similar to grapefruit, except a little sweeter.