“The head is the general and the body are the soldiers.” – Gezrat, My first boxing coach.
Everybody goes on and on and on about yoga and how amazing it is for you and how it is the thing to be doing if you are a zen and awesome human. Truth be told, I wouldn’t know zen if it bit me on the butt. The last yoga class I attended was hot yoga. I was in a bad mood after receiving some bad news, the instructor was brazen and rude to me, I swore I would never go back because I don’t need to be bored and offended all at the same time and so I haven’t.
It is an odd thing. People think that because I travel and am somewhat reflective that yoga would be right down my alleyway. Even my ex, after I ditched his cheating arse, figured I would make my way to a yoga retreat to ‘heal’ and ‘find myself’. Where I did ‘find myself’ instead was singing karaoke whilst dancing on a bar top shotting tequila and getting showered with cans of whipped cream in San Pedro La Laguna. Even I wonder sometimes how it is that I cannot manage to come to peace with such an activity. I love other physical activity. I box, I enjoy CrossFit, I really love hiking. And people tell me that they guess this is my way of ‘meditating’. I ‘meditate’ so hard sometimes when I am training that by the time I am done I want to puke into a bucket and that is what I define as ‘exercise’. Any form of exercise that I do not find hard is not defined as exercise in my book, especially when I am not even breaking a sweat.
So I finally figured out why this whole yoga thing is such an issue for me. I was born a fighter. I have spent my entire life arguing and screaming at my family members. It is in my second nature to be passionate, feisty and aggressive. It is why these activities such as boxing, CrossFit and hiking are among the things I love. They are a war between the head and the body. The brain being the general gets to tell the body what to do. No matter how much it hurts, no matter how much you think you can’t, you do because that is what you have to do. There is no time to be bored when you are engaging in something so difficult that you need to place all of your focus and mind power into keeping on going.
Yoga on the other hand requires the body and the brain to work together in some kind of harmony that I am unfamiliar with. One must work with the other to find this inner peace that people talk about. I am so engaged and used to the internal war that I love winning (because who doesn’t love winning, right?) that I haven’t yet figured out how to win the war by shutting the fight down. And so this becomes my next challenge. To those of you who laugh at me and tell me it cannot be done, my next challenge is to quiet myself. To fight the inner struggle of boredom and excessive thought. To let the mind be the general, still in control of the soldiers that are to stand at ease and do nothing. Let the games begin….. and shall I not die of boredom, yell at someone and tell them where to go or have a total mental breakdown from my own rapid and erratic thought processes during the week I am interred. Peace out! Namaste!
To see how I deal with my first ever yoga retreat, check out next weeks post!
OK, so I survived. After waking up in the morning to the phone buzzing off the hook I did the standard birthday checks. Any more wrinkles? Not that I am aware of. Have I become more sensible? Clearly not given my mothers’ Facebook plea to come home one day. Do I have any idea what I am doing? No. Quarter life crisis averted. I am clearly still in one.
Early morning birthday wrinkle check.
It is one of those things that I have watched friends go through. Some ignore it, some have festivals that last for an entire month in aid of their birthdays because it is a grand excuse for a party, some freak out and do something extreme. I prefer option A. I always have done. There is something that makes me uncomfortable about people making a fuss over me for my mere existence. In fact I tried to rename the whole day after my mother because I believe she deserves more credit for pushing me out and dealing with the last thirty years of my shit than I do for my mere existence.
So anyway, discomfort about birthdays and people making a fuss aside, I decided to go and visit the elephant park in the morning and hang out with the elephants. I got to go and sit on one in the river and bathe her and I also go to go for a ride on another one later too. I also got to feed her some bananas and she slobbered all over my arm affectionately as her trunk kept grasping for more and more bananas to contribute to the 400kg of food a day she needs to eat so live. Despite adoring elephants, they are my favourite animal, the whole activity made me really sad. The animals despite being seemingly well cared for have this really sad and sorrowful look in their eyes. They had no spirit or want for play that I expected they would have or remembered the elephants that I was with five years ago had. I stood staring into the eye of my elephant for quite a long time. She stared back at me sadly. We had a moment of understanding. But I can’t do anything to help her. So I told her I was sorry and I left. I don’t think I will ever go back again. I feel too guilty about how sad she seemed. She would have been happier in the wild.
My 55 year old elephant. If I make it to 55 I am retiring… again… poor and yet beautiful creature
After arriving back into town I went to get a Thai massage. I normally cry through these, but today I slept through it as my phone started buzzing at 4:30am and woke me up and I couldn’t get back to sleep. I was super tired by early afternoon. My massage was proceeded with a Thai red curry for dinner at 4 o’clock followed up with a banana roti pancake and then rushing back to put my laundry on and watch the latest released episode of Arrow. (Yes, even those living a life of luxury can’t avoid laundry).
Who couldn’t use a banana roti pancake?
Despite my phone being off the hook constantly, I still feel like it is just another ordinary day on the road. There has been nothing special, nothing out of the ordinary and certainly no freak outs about age…. oh except for that minor melt down I had about governments globally telling me I am in my last year to get working holiday visas and so I am freaking about timelines for that. Once that ends I am going to have to do a serious life evaluation. But otherwise. Still the same old me. And not much of ridiculous debauchery and party times to report…. hell maybe I am getting old…… 😛
OK, so for any of you who know me personally, you would know that last time I was travelling I used to put a weekly post up on my Facebook called ‘Shit I Learned This Week’. It was a combination of funny and serious facts that I learned along the way that I wanted to share with people. As ordinary life and the monotony of working and then going to the gym set back in, I got lazy and let it slide as it became harder to come up with creative things I had learned. However, back by popular demand on my Facebook page Thomas Takes On… (chuck us a ‘like’ to keep in the loop) is “Shit I Learned This Week” and as a part of this continuing tradition, I shall reinstate it with a special post about “Shit I Learned In Indonesia”.
Shit I Learned In Indonesia
Useful Indonesian Words
Doso (doh-zoh) – “high five” useful for saying hi to or scaring small children. Some will laugh and slap your hand, other will scream and run yelling “monster, monster!” in the other direction.
Kontol besar (con-tol be-sar) – “big penis”. Men down the street will occasionally tell you that they have one of these for you. You shouldn’t believe them. They don’t really.
Capek (cha-pey) – “tired”. Even when you use this word it still won’t prevent police officers waking you up on the train just so they can say hello to you because they want to practice their English. And here I thought I was getting woken up because I am doing something wrong…..
Bule (boo-lay) – “white person/foreigner”. The word most commonly shouted when both adults and children alike see you and start pointing at you as if you are a crazy anomaly in society. It will usually be accompanied with the word “foto”.
Foto (foh-toh) – “photo”. Avoid this word at all costs. It will mean that you will spend an hour standing on the side of the road while locals take pictures with you and of you like you are some kind of celebrity. Then if you say no, they will still follow you and take pictures of you while you are not looking. Akin to Kim Kardashian, you are famous for doing absolutely nothing.
My blonde friend getting swarmed by a kazillion Indonesian people and their phones saying ‘foto? foto?’
Ayo (aye-yoh) – “lets go!” Useful for getting a boot up peoples butts and to get moving.
Tidak (tee-dah) – “no”. Despite being a word in the Indonesian language, this word seems not only to be ignored, but magically most of the time translated into the word “yes”.
Kamu cantik (cam-oo chan-tee) – “you’re gorgeous/beautiful”. Frequently used by local men when you walk past them down the street or are sitting on the back seat of buses as their opening line to chat you up. Usually it is followed up by the question “you marry?” to which the appropriate answer is always “yes”.
Mas (maas) – “bro”. The men here will usually say ‘hallo mas!’ or ‘terima kasih mas’. I need to remember that while ‘mas’ in spanish means ‘more’, that I am saying ‘thanks bro’ in Indonesia instead of ‘thank you very much’. Especially when I am talking to a woman and she looks at me confused as I just called her ‘bro’.
Coca Cola Batik (koh-kah koh-lah bah-tik) – “Fake art work from Yogyakarta”. The local style of art, ‘batik’, involves covering material with a wax and then dying the bits left over. If it is real they say you can wash and iron it to keep it good. Sometimes locals will lie to you and sell you the fake stuff that the dye runs from when you wash it. I am not sure what Coca Cola has to do with this….
My real batik art, not the Coca Cola crap 🙂
Culture and People
If you ask how far or how long something is, do not expect an accurate answer. Concepts of time and distance are pretty much non-existent in Indonesia.
Everybody smiles. They can be happy, mad, angry, sad… any array on the emotional spectrum and it will always be delivered with a smile. As such, when angry the best way to deal with things is to smile and be polite. Passive aggression will get you everywhere.
On top of smiles is the laughing. People are always laughing in Indonesia and the laughter is often infectious. Sometimes a local will be so amused by something that you do that it almost difficult to not laugh back at them as they are so funny when they are being funny,
This guy laughed at us and called my friend a ‘bludger’ despite not knowing what it meant and kept laughing for half an hour while we waited for the bus to Borobudur
Indonesians do not walk anywhere if they can help it. They will always take their motorbike. Even if it is 50m down the road, the will still go on “moto”.
Fat is a compliment. “Hey girl, you fat!” = hey, you have money and eat lots and are super healthy. I wish it was like this in Australia….
Say one thing. Mean another. Do another entirely. This is how we wind up having our passport in immigration for 16 days and not being notified of meetings. Then they tell you they have transport to immigration. Then they don’t. Then they do but you need your own helmet. Then they do again. And then they drive you to immigration and leave you on the side of the road there in the middle of nowhere because apparently transport to immigration does not mean transport home. This is also how you wind up homeless on New Years Eve as a ‘booking’ apparently can be given away if somebody with money comes in first and you aren’t there. Always be prepared for the unexpected. Always have your A game problem solving skills cap on or you will wind up in a pool of your own tears. Oh and laugh. Because what more can you do?
Passed out on the hostel floor on a pile of my junk over new years trying to have an afternoon nap and failing dismally
Indonesians have to be the friendliest people ever. I am trying to eat my bowl of bakso on the side of the road and a family invite me into their home to sit at their table to eat it and play with their kids… two hours later I am making my way out the door.
Politics and Religion
You will get woken up everyday to the sound of random warblings of Islamic prayer broadcast over giant speakers to the entire community. Earplugs required.
In Bali, one needs to constantly watch where they walk because not only will the gods be angry if you step on one of the offerings they lay out, but you will also wind up with massive soy sauce explosions up your leg.
Some Hindu offerings… no soy sauce this time, just some tasty biscuits and flowers.
Soekarno was the first President of Indonesia and was responsible for their independence as a country in 1945.
Indonesians will approach you and start listing religions and ask you which one you are. “I have no religion” is never met with a good response, usually anger or confusion. I later learned that according to the “Pancasila” (translated in Javanese to mean “five principles”), which was the document used to found the country of Indonesia and unite all of the islands, the number one legal requirement on this list of all Indonesians is “belief in the one and only God”. What this means…. 1. It is illegal to not have a religion in Indonesia. 2. You are only allowed to follow a religion that is monotheistic. The Balinese made a few adaptations to allow Shiva to be their almighty God allowing Hinduism to be a part of the list of only 6 religions allowed in Indonesia including Islam, Buddhism, Confucianism, Catholicism or Protestantism. No allowances were made for other religions such as Judaism, Sikhism or any of the spiritual beliefs of the smaller tribes from the more secluded islands that form Indonesia. Sounds scarily like discrimination to me……
Other Indonesian Learnings
“Hallo Mister!” is a common greeting from all people here. Their addresses to each other are unisex, so I always get ‘mister’. I exhaust myself trying to explain that I am a ‘miss’ because I am a woman. The last English lesson I gave was to a group of 7 kids of 8-10 years old cutting school and smoking cigarettes on top of the hill overlooking the Telarga Warna. They followed me down the hill screaming at me “Miss! Miss!” Well at least they learned something….
Bed bugs. After getting them twice in Java I am now a total expert in anything bed bug related. The Indonesian word for bed bug is ‘kutu busuk‘ and I am ‘alergi‘ or allergic to them. I know about hunting them, their life cycle, how to get rid of them and even that if you isolate and tape the bed they will climb the walls and drop on you from the ceiling to get at you and your tasty blood. Ugh, I am creeped out thinking about it and haven’t slept in a month.
Fried chicken here rivals that of Colonel Sanders (KFC) an is way cheaper… between these and cheap Magnum Gold’s I will wind up the size of a house and require rehab after Indonesia to deal with my withdrawals.
Yet another evening on the Magnum Golds… had to find another shop because we cleared the first one out.
I am ‘seexxxaaayyyy’ according to a 60 yo local woman on the bus to Wonosobo and this is apparently hilarious to everyone else on the bus.
And I think that shall be it! For the weekly versions (much shorter I promise) tune in to Facebook and I shall be back next week with more challenge and adventure (Si bolang!) Until then 🙂
Just imagine if you had amazing sex and actually remembered it! A novel concept in our society when the outcome of what is perceived as being a ‘good night’ is becoming as intoxicated as possible to the point where you don’t even remember what you did the next day and waking up next to a person you look at and go “oh seriously? Ewww!” but hey “that was like so funny, what an awesome night!!”
Call me boring, call me a prude, call me old even, but whatever. I don’t see how in any sense of the word waking up feeling like shit in the morning every day next to somebody you don’t know or like equates to ‘a good time’. I currently sit here in Bali, Indonesia as the only sober entity in the place ready to punch said men that walk in and assume that 1. I am wasted, and as such 2. I am theirs so they can feel free to put their hands on my arse, hips or whatever other part of my body they feel like because ‘like, it is just cool man, it is what people do’. It is like people expect a free pass under the excuse of drunkenness for all manners of poor behaviour and I for one right now am not standing for it.
Where has the respect gone? Since when did we start treating our own bodies so disrespectfully all of the time by constantly pumping them full of toxins for a quick good time and handing our bodies over to just anyone we meet for the hell of it because that is just the done thing these days. You can plough as many fields as you like but it is just a whole lot of hard work for a crappy harvest most of the time, something I just can’t be bothered dealing with anymore. It is not an act that builds or fortifies self esteem. It is not an act that demonstrates self respect.
Furthermore, I have sat and watched both guys and girls make the rounds of an entire group of people of the opposite sex in an attempt to figure out what their options are and who is most up for it. I am sorry, but in any language that screams to me ‘I am desperate for someone to validate me as I have no self esteem’.
So as I sit here, I contemplate this and challenge people in our current hook up society to have a go at the following:
1. Try actually getting to know a person before you decide you are going to just hop right in to the sack with them, you might actually discover that you ‘like’ the person instead of just what they look like or better still, what you think they look like because you are too off your face to actually see them.
2. Respect yourself enough to decide that not anybody will do. If they clearly don’t respect you, then what is the point? Time to respect yourself more.
3. Go out for one or two, get a bit tipsy, drink some water, have a multivitamin and wake up the next day feeling awesome instead of thinking that the more you consume the cooler you are and thus the more awesome your night is. Oh and that the worse your hangover is = the better your so called night you can’t remember last night. In my world, that = dumb.
4. The bigger your ‘number’ doesn’t equate to how awesome you are.
5. Find other ways of dealing with stress and emotional issues other than excessive drinking, smoking and drug abuse as these are both a great way to an early grave.
6. Try letting yourself get emotionally attached for a change instead of running scared of every person you might actually like in exchange for the next random hook up. You might even discover that the sex gets better than all the rest of the sex you are having with random strangers that don’t know your needs. Oh and you might discover the joys of actually having somebody to share things with other than a drink and a box of condoms.
7. Don’t do things because society tells you that it is cool. Have a brain, think for yourself. Do what makes you feel good and not what other people tell you is cool.
End Rant. I am off to sit somewhere in the world that is quiet and where people’s conversations don’t consist of getting smashed and bagging bitches.
One of the hardest things for some people to fathom is that much of your fate in life is determined by the cards you are dealt when you are born. If you are fortunate enough to be born into a westernized culture you will find you will have access to money, jobs, ‘things’ that are deemed to give people status and feelings of self importance and worth in the world because ‘they made something of themselves’. On the other side of this, if you are born into a country that is developing, majority of the people don’t have money, don’t have opportunity to make money and live in incredibly poor conditions.
My guilty conscience again kicked in as I am laid up on a massage table in Bali. $6 for an entire hour of massage. It is really nothing. I worked very little to make that money. I probably made it while I sat there supervising kids doing silent reading for ten minutes. My masseuse Anna is telling me that she works on commission. Of the $6 I pay, she receives approximately 70 cents. If there is no customers, there is no pay. She works 14 hours a day, 7 days a week with no break.
This whole conversation came about when she asked me if I was married. I told her no and she told me she got married a week ago. I asked her if she had a party with her family. She told me that she didn’t have time. Work gave her an hour off to go and sign the papers and then she came back to work. Her husband works down the road as a builder. They have two children that live three hours away in the village with her brother as they cannot afford to send their children to school in Kuta as it is too expensive. They are lucky to have jobs that allow them to afford to be able to send their kids to school at all because many people can’t afford it. They don’t know what they are going to do now though because her brother is very sick and has been in and out of the hospital but they now can’t afford to send him back to the hospital. Rising numbers of tourists in Bali has increased the cost of healthcare here and so it is too expensive to see a doctor.
As I lay there getting my massage I take all of this in. I get relatively cheap healthcare in Australia. I have a job that pays me enough to live comfortably and send any kids I have to school. I don’t have to send my kids away to live with other people so they can get a better start at life. I don’t have to work 14 hour days 7 days a week. And if I want to get married, I could probably get some time off from the boss to organize it if I wanted out of the 20 paid vacation days that most Australians are legally entitled to a year. And yet all we do is complain. And I feel guilty about that too.
I lay there and ponder what it is I can do about it because as much as I want to just open up my wallet and say ‘take my money, I can make more, I don’t need it’, I know that this is not a good fix in the long term. So I made a decision. I can’t help everybody. But I can help Anna by going back every day that I am here, getting a massage to keep her in work and her boss happy and giving her a hefty tip at the end of each massage. At least for this month, she will have a little extra in her pocket to help with the bills without feeling like a charity case.
What is more, this understanding makes me more patient with the onslaught as I walk down the street. “Transport!!”, “You buy sunglasses, one dollar”, “manicure??”. I understand that with each call out, there is somewhat a desperation to survive and make enough to keep their families going. I met one girl who moved from Java to here at twenty because there was no money in Java. So she moved to Bali so she could make the measly $70 USD a month that classes as ‘good money’ here. She couldn’t survive at home with her family.
My options are limitless as I flounder about the world hiking mountains, sitting on the beach and doing whatever I please. In an Australian sense I don’t really have that much money, but in an Indonesian sense I have about a lifetime of their wages sitting in my bank account so how am I supposed to feel OK about this? How am I supposed to feel OK about being on a perpetual holiday when these people get no days off work until they die and sleep only 5 hours a night every day as even sleep isn’t a luxury they can afford? How am I supposed to feel about drawing the lucky straw in this life when billions of others didn’t? Guilty. That is how I feel. My conscience weeps every single time I see something like this and I know that this is reality for so many. I am merely more than just a privileged western tourist staring into the fishbowl from the outside with all my money. And then I will go back to my privileged world and not think about it anymore because it is too hard and uncomfortable to think about. If I was them, I would hate me so much. And yet they don’t. They have a graciousness about them that well surpasses the graciousness of most people I know that have money.
I can’t change the whole world on my own. I can’t change the greedy nature of mankind. I would if I could but there are some things you have to accept that you just can’t change. But maybe, just maybe, I can help one person at a time and try and make my difference that way. Maybe by imparting kindness on all people I meet and choosing where I direct my dollars I can help to make small differences in the lives of few. If everybody in my situation made the effort to do this, then maybe we could make a difference to hundreds and even thousands of people to make their lives a little easier. So I challenge you! Be aware. Don’t sweep it under the rug because it is too big or uncomfortable to deal with. Choose something small and start making a difference there. Because it is with small steps, not giant leaps that we change the world. And the world really does need changing.
“Micro-retirement: noun 1. the action or fact of leaving one’s job and ceasing to work for extended periods of time on multiple occasions throughout one’s working career.” – from the Danni Dictionary of Good Times.
I was sitting at school one day in the staff room and one of the women there asks me whether I am back next year, to which I respond ‘no’. When she asks why, I inform her that next year I am going on what I term as ‘micro-retirement’ again. I am off to go and travel until the money runs out or I get antsy and need to stop and do some work for a little stability for a while.
She sat across from me and said to me ‘I think this is amazing, and I am so glad that you choose to do this. You never know what will happen tomorrow’. She continued to tell me about how her and her husband had lead active lives and he used to run marathons, was healthy and fit as fiddle. They had spent their entire lives saving for a house, saving for kids, and then saving for their retirement to go and travel, see the world and enjoy their lives. After her husband retired, he went into hospital for a hip replacement from wearing it down through running triathlons. He had a complication in the week following and died of a blood clot post surgery. All of their savings and plans had gone to waste, because he was never going to see or do any of it. And now she doesn’t know how she is supposed to do it on her own.
This to me was heartbreaking. I was almost in tears listening to her talk. Her loss was both abrupt and horrifying. And yet she sat across from me and said ‘You don’t know whether you will die tomorrow. So live like there is no tomorrow. Do what you want to do today if you can. You will never know what will happen, even if you are the fittest and healthiest you can be. You just never know’.
Moments like these inspire me. I hear stories like these from so many people. In the blink of an eye, the plans are gone because their loved ones are gone. These moments remind me of why it is I choose this option of micro-retirements over the conventional decisions that others make. But in many cases micro-retirements can be quite a daunting thing to many. And so here are my tips to living adventurously and like there is no tomorrow by taking a micro-retirements as opposed to saving your whole life for one big retirement.
1. Learn to embrace instability
Stability-schmility. There is plenty of money to be had if you are willing to work for it in this crazy world. Who would you be if you weren’t defined by what job you worked, what house you lived in, what stuff you owned and how many kids you had…. an interesting thought in this world that promotes capitalism and excessive need for stability.
2. Become well versed in multiple different jobs
Some people shun me for being“a jack of all trades and master of none”. WhatI do know is that this particular skill has had me working in every field from science to education to promotions and marketing to forklift driving. As I say to my students all the time “don’t close doors on yourself. Do as much as you can and keep as many doors open as you can”.
3. Be prepared to do literally ANYTHING for work
I am not super proud. To keep me on the road and fund my travels I have done everything from working as a cleaner, a manual labourer and one job I had was sticking promotions stickers on men’s toilet urinals. I have even sneakily collected recycling for bottle collection return.
4. OR choose a career that is supremely flexible.
My current career as a teacher is greatly flexible. I can teach anywhere in the world and am flexible enough to teach a lot of different subjects. Other friends I have met that travel with their careers are nurses, accountants, scientists, trades people, people who work in hospitality and tourism.
5. Make your money go further
When you are on the road look for deals and do it the cheap way. If you have the time, take the local bus. Eat the cheap food off the street instead of from in the restaurant. Stay in smaller and cheaper guest houses. Think of the money you spend in terms of “how many nights accommodation” it is worth.
And most of all ENJOY!! If you aren’t enjoying your life to the fullest, then what is it that you are doing? Time to take stock and try something different if what you are currently doing isn’t working!! Good luck!! And happy micro-retirements people!!!
For anybody who has ever packed up everything that they own into boxes and disembarked on a life journey with a one way ticket, this is for you. This is my third time doing this. And I must say, that it doesn’t get any easier. If anything, I believe it gets a little harder each time. The pull between the things you want in life gets stronger and stronger and before you realize it you are getting pulled apart in opposite directions. One direction is towards the road, the unknown, adventure, adrenaline and constant challenge, the other is towards the stability, familiarity and safety in the known.
There are positives in each, as there are negatives. I have sat for the last ten months working in my home town to make the cash to head off on the next adventure and it has been an interesting time. It is hard in a small town to feel like there are people to meet that understand who you are and the experiences you have had when you share none of these common experiences. Making friends here was so incredibly difficult compared to the ease of making friends on the road. Friends on the road come from a mutual understanding that everybody is in the same boat and everybody has the same needs. They are open to what is around them. People not travelling have their friends already, They don’t typically need new ones because they have what it is that they need. The effort you have to put into trying to develop friendships with non-travelling people is so incredibly high in comparison and it can take months to feel like you are even cracking the surface of a real friendship with people. It can feel very lonely and isolating. Your amazing friends that you make on the road however eventually go home and take a small piece of you with them. Then you spend your time pining away on Facebook for all of the friends that you miss from every far reaching corner of the planet that you will never have all in one place again.
It is hard to relate to friends from forever ago that all now have husbands, children, mortgages and the rest and they ask you when you are going to settle down and eventually have these things. It is hard to explain that you are not even sure that you want these things in your life. But you do want a partner in crime. Somebody to live and share your adventure and zest for life with. “You will never find somebody unless you stay here in one place” they say, but at the same time, you feel like you will never find somebody in a place that is so insular. You would have to start again somewhere new and filled with more people like you, and if you are going to do that, then you may as well just go on another adventure. You are more likely to meet people like you to find a partner in crime on the road. But then you find an amazing partner in crime on the road and know that they will be around for only a fleeting time because these things on the road never seem to last unless you get really lucky.
You worry about money. Sure I have enough of it to start. But what happens if there is an emergency, I need to get home, I run out too quickly and I am forced to come home. What if I get a work visa for somewhere and I can’t find a job? What if…. what if…. what if…???
You feel bad about the things you miss. The birth of a niece or nephew and watching them grow, a death of a member in the family or old friend, weddings, Christmases, important milestones. I have missed all of these at some point. Before you know it, you are gone for two years and the baby you remembered is now a toddler you barely recognize.
You are unnerved by all of the lectures that you receive from people telling you that you need to settle down. “You are getting older now, you have nothing and will never have anything if you keep living like this” because majority of society place their value in the accumulation of material possessions. They don’t understand the value you place on memories. But they will also tell you that the memories you are making are the wrong ones. Because they don’t involve houses, children and work. Because they aren’t the conventional memories. Because memories of parties and having a good time won’t keep you warm at night when you are eighty. And yet my fondest memories from travel are not of parties at all.
And yet despite all of this you hit the road. You trade your double bed and privacy for a different single bed every night in a room with seven others. You trade your classy wardrobe for clothes with holes in them. You trade a cupboard for a backpack. Trade a house for a tent. Trade a car for a local bus. You quit your job. And you go.
You can’t explain to those who haven’t travelled before the enrichment that you get from going. The constant state of challenge you live in as you navigate new places, new cultures, new languages and new problems. The way your eyes change as they see everything in this world for the first time. The way your heart opens to new people and emotions every single day. The adrenaline. The freedom. So much of me yearns for it. And the biggest problem with living like this, is that I know I won’t be able to live a ‘normal’ life ever again. It has become a part of my being.
As I go, I am smacked with an array of emotions. Loss of what I have here, excitement at the prospect of new things and challenges, numbness in disbelief that anything is actually changing. But the biggest emotion I feel is fear. I am afraid. Afraid to stay. Afraid to go. But at no point in this life have I ever let that stop me before, so why should it stop me now? Fear is my nemesis that I kick in the arse every single day that I am on the road. And yet this is a fear that I am so familiar with that it is almost home. I almost wonder one day whether I will find the courage to face the fear to stay. Who knows…. maybe one day. But that day is not today. And so it is time to go.
Sometimes in this life you need to recognize when the higher powers are throwing lemons at you and saying ‘Come on! Juice me! Make lemonade!’
So on this one particular day I am making my way down the street on my way home after getting little work flyering during the week and having just paid my last rent check for a week. I have ten dollars burning a hole in my wallet and this is literally all I have to my name. That and the eighty one cents that I have in my bank account that I probably can’t withdraw. The plans are wandering through the brain…. “What exactly can I get in Chinatown for ten dollars that will feed me for three and a half days until I get paid? Mmmm…. 5 for $1 rice vermicelli noodles, Mr. Noodles, maybe even splurge and get a banana….. a person does need some vitamins.”
As I ponder these things I walk past a restaurant which has in the window ‘dishwasher for tonight needed’. “Oh hell yes!” I think to myself and I walk inside. “Hi! You need a dishwasher?”
“Yes. Are you a dishwasher?” he responds.
“I can be. What is the going rate?” I say.
“Ten bucks an hour for 8 hours. Maybe more. It is our closing night before we do renovations” he tells me.
“Feed me and you have yourself a deal.” I said.
‘Done! You can start now”.
So before I know it I am hustled up to the back of this kitchen and decked out in aprons and other fun things that are ‘chef like’ that are way too over-sized for me. Then I am shown around the kitchen. “Here is your hose to wash things off, here is your dishwasher, here is your bucket with a cloth, start washing walls”. Argh, shitful…. anyway. That is when the fun started and Alberto says “What would you like to eat?”.
So I tell him “I will eat whatever”. So my new best friend Alberto comes back with this salad with balsamic vinegar soaked strawberries and prosciutto that tastes more like heaven than any salad I have ever had in my life. I ate like a woman possessed who hadn’t been fed in about ten years and got back to cleaning some dishes. Then Roberto says to me ‘before it gets busy, maybe I can make you some food?’ Ummmm…. hell yeah you can make me some food! So then I wind up with a pasta covered in parmesan and olive oil with prawns and garlic. Amazing!
So then the real work began. And it was flat out. It was such a busy night that I struggled to keep up with things, but what made it all the more fun was that I got to listen to flamenco music playing live from just outside of the kitchen and it was incredibly uplifting. I was floating on air given that several hours earlier my options were Mr Noodles, Mr Noodles and more Mr Noodles. So I washed and danced in a state of merriment and before I knew it, it was getting on towards close time. Things were winding down. They had some desert left over from the night. Hello caramel flan!! I will have two of you thank you!
What is even better is that at the end of the night they had food in the fridge that they were going to throw out as they were closing for the renovations. Like a mad woman hoarder I am stuffing sliced oranges, tiramisu, chopped vegetables, half a prosciutto leg and whatever else I could get my hands on into multiple shopping bags. I must have looked like the biggest scab of a homeless person ever. If I felt that I could have carried more I probably would have stuffed another flan in my bra! But needless to say I finished up my night of washing, thanked them kindly for everything and headed home at 2am with my $80 cash in my wallet and my bags of goodies.
It is funny to think of how quickly the tides can turn in some situations. Eight hours ago I was walking down the street contemplating Mr Noodles flavours, and at 2am, I am happier than a pig in shit trotting down the street with all of my food and money with a flamenco music band dancing around in my head shaking my booty. Most of the patrons on the street probably thought I was drunk I was so goddamn ecstatic. Life couldn’t have been better! And neither could my stomach!
I decided on my latest sabbatical from school to do a whirlwind tour to visit friends in Melbourne, travel by train and bus up to Orange in Central New South Wales to visit my little brother and then over to Sydney to fly home for the start of the new term.
Big cities are big cities. And while they were fun, they were pretty standard. Not a great deal new to expect. The real adventure was in the exploration of the bush and surroundings of the small towns and parks around Orange, of which I got to explore for five glorious days.
My first adventure was to the town of Bathurst a couple of days out from the world famous Bathurst car race at Mount Panorama. I tried to drive around the track, but parts of it were closed off so I did some driving over the finish line and for the rest of it we walked around the entire track. It was a beautiful day and the views were spectacular. On my walk, I discovered that Australian’s are such massive alcoholics that to get around the ‘one slab of beer per person per day’ rule they impose in the camping areas around the track that the locals would go into this region which is completely open to the public outside of race week, dig a hole in the ground near their camping spot and then bury bottles of spirits in the ground to come back and dig up several weeks later when the event is on. Kind of like a treasure hunt for alcoholics….. “Now where did I hide my rum again?” If there is one thing that I can attribute to my peoples, it is that we certainly know how to hide our alcohol and have a multitude of inventive and imaginative ways of sneaking it into events.
Speeding over the Bathurst finish line at Mount Panorama
My second day was spent hiking around the Mount Canobolas State Park. I went around the Federal Falls loop and then down to the Hopetoun Falls. There were wild mountain goats floating around and I saw a few echidnas on the track, but mostly I was fearful of coming across snakes. Snake season is upon us and it is not good to be out bush on your own treading on snakes.
Wild goats ‘just chillin’ at Mount Canobolas
The Federal Falls were stunning. They were a drizzle of the top of the cliff face at best because there had been little rain, but you could crawl around the rocks into a cave that is hidden at the back of the waterfall and hang out there for a while. It was beautiful. A very steep climb back up the hill and then it was off on another steep hill down to the Hopetoun Falls, which I must admit were a little bit disappointing compared to the Federal Falls. Back up another gruelling hill to the car and we are off to the next adventure, only half stuffed.
Federal Falls
I met up with my brother late in the afternoon and we decided to go four-wheel driving through the abandoned gold mines at Ophir. On the way we stopped at Banjo Patterson Park to see the place where he was born. For those of you who don’t know, he was a poetic rocking legend back in his days and wrote the lyrics to Waltzing Matilda, undoubtedly Australia’s unofficial national anthem.
Banjo Patterson Park Memorial Statue.. and my brothers dog investigating the scene…
So off to Ophir Gold Mines. These mines were the first payable mines in Australia and are crazy to explore. In some areas you will be walking around and there will be giant holes drilled down into the ground where people had just dug downward in an attempt to find a quartz seam which is where most of the gold accumulates. There are also mine shafts that have been dug into the sides of the very steep cliff faces. He was telling me about the world’s largest nugget being found here. Rumour has it that the guy who found it didn’t want his wife to know about it as he planned to divorce her so he buried it under a tree, told a close friend about it and then a couple of months later he died. The friend who he had told about the nugget went out with his son around the area they were told the nugget was and started digging around the base of the trees until they found it. According to the locals, it was the son’s discovery, but the father took credit for it. All local stories, which are pretty cool and you wouldn’t normally know about unless you were in with a local.
One of the old mine shafts at Ophir Gold Fields
So after nearly getting bogged, blowing up the gearbox in my brothers truck, exploring a whole bunch of mines and not finding anything of great value, we headed back to Orange to contemplate the following days activities.
Being a bit of a science nerd, there was no way I was going to come out this way and not make a trip to the famous “Dish”. For those of you who don’t know and are not familiar with the Australian movie “The Dish”, the broadcast of the first moon walk by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the 20th July, 1969, to televisions all over the world came from this CSIRO satellite dish at Parkes. It is crazy to think that this parabolic piece of metal sticking out into the sky could be responsible for such an amazingly large feat at a time when our world was only just starting to get a grip on many different kinds of modern technologies like television, but I was pretty chuffed to be there and my brother got up to mischief while I ran around and read every surface of writing and played with every interactive display.
Hanging out at “The Dish”
On the way home from Parkes, we stopped in at the Borenore Caves only about twenty minutes out of Orange. For a free cave I didn’t expect very much, but these caves were a total hidden gem. The large open caverns and beautiful formations of stalactites and stalagmites made it one of the best caves I have ever explored. We crawled through lots of holes and up and into small caverns exploring where every single passage in the cave lead to. It was such a rarity to find something in nature this fabulous that you aren’t charged a bucket load of money to go visit and isn’t riddled with tourists. We were the only people there and had the caves all to ourselves.
Borenore Caves
My last area of exploration around this region was just out of Katoomba at the Blue Mountains National Park. I spent one full day hanging out at Scenic World and riding the cable cars and the worlds steepest train among the mass amounts of hiking I did through the valley floor along the side of the famous Three Sisters. Given that I am in somewhat of a training mode for my pending Mount Everest Base Camp trip I decided that this time I was going to navigate my way up the famous ‘giant staircase’. It tells me on the sign that it is a 400m ascent of over 900 stairs… other signs told me different things but it was supposed to take 45 minutes according to the sign. Well imagine my surprise when I managed to mount those three sisters in just over twenty minutes. Feeling pretty chuffed with myself, I went in search of food in the form of KFC chicken nuggets…. hard work undone.
The Three Sisters I just mounted and I 😀
Another hike around this area was the Wentworth Falls hike that I did with my brother on the last day before I caught the train out to Sydney. This by far was the most spectacular hike I have done in a very long time. You climb down steep ladders to get to the valley floor and along the way you hike along paths that have been carved into the cliff faces by workers. They are really incredibly spectacular. The falls themselves were stunning and have multiple tiers, all of which are different. At the bottom of some of the falls you will find shallow pools that you can swim in or stand under the falls but you have to be super careful of the slippery rocks.
Wentworth Falls
As we weaved our way further into the valley floor, my brother laughing every time we went further down on yet another staircase knowing that meant another staircase to go up, we reached the bottom of the falls and the lowest part of the trail. We traced it through the forest and around the cliff faces until we found the parts to start climbing up. It was not as bad of a climb as I had anticipated, and the waterfalls and cliff faces on the way up were different to the ones we experienced on our way down. Within three hours we had smashed it and were back to the car. Time for me to get on a train and make my way back to the city.
So many people in this world live day to day life not ever experiencing the wonderment of their surroundings because they are “too busy”, “too stressed” or “too something-or-other-else” to actually pay attention to what is around them. If only we sat up and paid attention. If only we learned to appreciate things around us and expressed a graciousness for them. I feel that a huge part of being able to do this lies withing the ability to tune in to your senses.
SEE
During my time overseas I learned to look at things with completely new eyes like a child would in many cases. I learned to look up from what I was doing and take stock of what it is that is around me. On my drive to the coast today, multiple things that I saw gave me joy. The kookaburra’s sitting on the electricity wires and in the trees, the bright sun coming up over the mountains, the stunningly rugged lanscape of my surroundings that is so unlike what you would find anywhere in the world. It is beautiful. And although my eyes have seen it hundreds of times, I feel like everytime I see something new and every time I see it in a different way.
In your own life, I challenge you to look up. Look at something and actually see it for the first time. Every single day in this life there is a sunrise and a sunset. And everyday there is a different kind of beauty in these two things. Look up from the road when you are driving and see what is actually in front of you. See the rolling hills, the beauty in the trees, the streets around you, the people.
On my way home from work there is an old man that sits on the side of the road and ‘fishes’. In his chair he sits with a wooden stick from a tree that has a fishing line attached to it and at the end of the fishing line is a coke bottle. He sits out and fishes daily at the same time. And as I drive home from school I wave to him. The excitement he shows in waving back makes me happy. It never fails to make me happy and yet so many people criticize him, make fun of him and say he is weird. Sometimes all it requires is a different perspective. Choose love and show love. You will find love and happiness in return from places you never imagined.
TASTE
Food is one of the most incredible things in this life. It is a gift that we get to undertake multiple times a day. In our busy lives however, it is hard to actually take time out to properly ‘taste’ all aspects of our food while we are chowing it down as fast as we can to get to our next meeting or wherever it is we are going to.
Let what you are eating roll over your tongue. Feel where the sweet, the salty, the bitter is detected on the different areas of the tongue. Feel how all of the different tastes come together to form one glorious sensation for the taste buds.
Eat new things and appreciate the flavours of things you may have eaten a hundred or more times. Appreciate the subtlety of some of these flavours. It truly is one of the most amazing gifts.
HEAR
Sometimes when I am walking down the street, I can tell you whether people are watching television in their houses. Despite not being able to hear what is on the TV, there is this high pitched frequency that occurs when a TV is on that some people have the ability to hear and others don’t. And sometimes we learn to block certain things out so that we don’t hear them at all.
Now there are some things that can be quite annoying to hear, but next time you are outside, listen to the sounds of the wind, for the birds in the trees, for all of the sounds in your environment and focus on them separately. Embrace the sounds around you and let them resonate as a part of you and you will feel way more in touch with your environment.
FEEL
Tactile sensations are wonderful. A simple hug releases a large number of chemical endorphins in the body that make you feel happier. So get your daily dose of hug. Often it is nice also to go and get a massage and just relax with the sensations smoothing out all of the knots in your muscles. But feel is more than just physically touching things.
One of the most magical things I find is the warm feel of the sun on your face on those cold winter days when the summer is starting to appear. Feel your breath and all of the parts of your body working together in harmony to keep you going. Feel your movement and your vibrations and be aware of your surroundings. Appreciate the wonderful gift that this sense allows.
SMELL
How many times have you heard the saying ‘wake up and smell the roses?’ There is nothing quite like the glorious smell of roses and flowers in spring as you walk down the street in spring. Or the smell released by the fungal spores in the air after it rains.
Smells have long been associated with memories and triggering them. Smells associated with people especially. Stop and take note of what smells you have in your house, outside in your surroundings. Take in the aromatic smells of the food you cook and how they make you feel.
By combining your senses and developing your awareness of your surroundings and of your body and how it responds to things you will find that your appreciation and love of life will increase. Your levels of happiness will go through the roof as you find a gracious attitude that is not only calmer but more respectful of the things you have in your life. So take time, sit, and be aware. Use your senses, develop your sensibility.
Thomas Takes On.... 