trip review

my completed round the world trip 2006-2007:

(Ireland was also part of my trip)

For anyone stumbling through here now, this blog chronicles over a year of my travels and activities around the world between June 2006 to July 2007, ranging from my home in the Pacific Northwest, through Central and South America, stints in northern Africa and Europe, travel through the Middle East, northern India, and southeast Asia. To view the posts from a particular area, please click one of the following links:

North America | USA, Canada
Central America | Costa Rica, Panama
South America | Peru, Ecuador, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil
Europe | Spain, Ireland, Bulgaria, Turkey
Africa | Morocco, Egypt
Middle East | Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, Egypt
Asia | India, Thailand, Indonesia

My travels were made possible through the University of Washington's Bonderman Fellowship, which is a grant designated for independent international travel. For further information about the fellowship, visit:
http://depts.washington.edu/uwhonors/current/bonderman/

For more questions about my travels or anything else, email me at
spencerscomet@gmail.com

or facebook me at
http://washington.facebook.com/profile.php?id=10713238

To view more pictures, please visit my flickr page at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/spencerscomet

Thank you for visiting,
Spencer James
August 2007

what an epic year

What an epic year... over the last10 months, I traveled in 20 something countries on four continents, surfed in three oceans, explored two major mountain ranges, and lived in deserts, trekked on glaciers, rafted on rivers, and saw pretty much everything in between. I felt more lonely and homesick than I imagined possible at times in South America and India, and then experienced unbelievable levels of euphoria, like when I was allowed into Syria and when I surfed Impossibles for the first time. I made new friends in most of the countries I visited and caught up with old friends in Spain and Bulgaria; I maintained my belief that the Pacific Northwest is the most beautiful area in the world but found numerous places that contend for a close second. I experienced the famous nightlife of cities like Buenos Aires and Beirut, and celebrated Christmas in Patagonia, Carneval in Cadiz, Saint Patrick's Day in Ireland, and Orthodox Easter in Bulgaria. Here are a few more statistics and superlatives:

• general favorite countries - Argentina, Ireland, Syria, Lebanon, Thailand, Indonesia
• countries that I have yet to grow a thorough affinity for - India
• most commonly seen weapon - AK-47 (omnipresent in Uruguay, Lebanon, Kashmir)
• hours on buses - 300+
• longest bus ride - 21 hours from Montevideo, Uruguay to Florianopolis, Brazil after some idiot threw a rock and broke the window
• flights - 25
• countries visited with State Dept. travel warnings - 4 (Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Indonesia)
• most volatile area visited - southern Lebanon and Kashmir (tied)
• safest country visited - Chile (Ireland were it not for my Dad's driving)
• most listened to music on my iPod - Red Hot Chili Peppers
  
• best album for bus travel - Eric Clapton Unplugged
• most memorable meal - Filet Mignon with Casillero del Diablo Cabernet at an Argentine steakhouse in Quito, topped off with Dulce de Leche
  
• best wine - Malbec from Mendoza, Argentina, from a winery that I visited with five Irish guys
• est. average number beers/glasses of wine per day in Argentina - 4
• total number drinks in non-Turkey Middle East/India - 5
• average servings of beef/day in Argentina - 2
• number of beef items on the McDonalds menu in Delhi - 0
• best nightlife - Kuta, Beirut, Buenos Aires
• best waves - Impossibles, Bali
• most cherished item that was stolen - Chaco sandals
• favorite travelers - Irish
• new hobbies - skimboarding, sandboarding, motorcycles, sketching, writing, canyoneering
• friendliest/most hospitable people - Lebanese and Irish
• # of times I hope to ever drink Nescafe again - 0
• methods of transportation - walking, car, bus, motorcycle, ferry, river raft, bicycle
• nationalities that people have assumed I was - (after talking to me): American, Canadian, Irish, English, Aussie, Argentine.... (before talking to me): Uruguayan, Lebanese, Israeli, Egyptian (seriously!)
• worst hostel - Hostelling International, Madrid
• best hostel(s) - Oasis in Seville, Bauhaus in Istanbul
• hotel with most character - Talal's New Hotel in Beirut (anarchists, journalists, wanna-be journalists, and dudes who sit around smoking nargileh all day)
• best cities - Buenos Aires, Jerusalem, Dublin
• least favorite cities - Lima, Delhi
• most expensive accommodation - $120/night (houseboat in Kashmir)
• cheapest accommodation - $3/night (hostel in Arequipa, Peru)
• most expensive city - Dublin, Ireland
• cheapest city - Damascus, Syria
• best airport - Singapore (free internet!)
• worst airport - Alexandria (I seriously thought I had found a bomb sitting in the corner of the "terminal")
• least probable occurrences - running into Rula in a flamenco bar in Seville, getting a visa on the spot to visit Syria
• number of books read - ~25
• favorite books read - The Kite Runner, A Monk Swimming, Shantaram
• best ruins - Palmyra in Syria, Baalbek in Lebanon, Petra in Jordan
• best architectural sights - Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Taj Mahal, Aya Sofya and Blue Mosque in Istanbul
• best natural sights - mountains and valleys of Kashmir, Fitz Roy in Argentina, Sahara Desert in Morocco
• number of times I've been convinced that a country has the most beautiful girls and/or best food - 6 (locations will remain undisclosed)
• % of people I explain about the Bonderman Fellowship to - ~40%
• country with highest priority to quickly return to - Indonesia (next summer, inshallah!)
• speaking of inshallah, number of religions I learned more about - 5 (Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam)
• best homesickness remedies - best of craigslist, clean airports, changing countries, seeing my dad in Ireland and my family in Chile
  

It's pretty tedious to try to remember anywhere close to all of the things I've seen, particularly because this trip has been so segmented. My travels in South America felt like a completely different trip than my experience in Europe, which was in turn completely different than my journey through the Middle East. Indonesia didn't feel like a part of my "Bonderman" journey at all, but instead more like a vacation that I tacked onto the end of a completed eight month trip.

Sometimes I flip back a few months in my blog or on flickr, and I can't really fathom that I was actually, say, driving in a jeep in Kashmir next to the Pakistan border with a bunch of guys from Jammu who didn't really speak English. What really stuns me is the fact that I did everything I set out to do. It seems like that doesn't happen very often with big ambitions. Something always gets sold short, doesn't work out, or something else gets in the way, but here I am in Bangkok, about 10 months after leaving home, and I've visited Tierra del Fuego, Seville, Israel, and Kashmir (the places I originally proposed on my Bonderman application), spent almost two months surfing in Bali (a dream for me since I started surfing), and met a slew of incredibly interesting people from around the world who I hope to see again in the future. I guess throughout the trip I assumed there would be some disconnect, that something wouldn't work out, that I'd go home after eight months, change my plans dramatically, or whatever, but...no.

I hadn't thought about this until now, actually. I mean, it was so easy a year ago to be writing that I was going to be traveling to these places, seeing these things, but when the reality sunk in during those first weeks in Costa Rica of how lonely and strange extended independent travel actually was, I think I had some doubts about how far I would actually go. I remember reading something in a book called Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk when a guy traps these writers in his house after they had signed up for a "writer's retreat" there. They're complaining that they can't write in these conditions, and he replies, "what stops you here is what stops your entire life." I remember reading that (or listening to it, since it was on my iPod), and thinking how relevant it was. Things that could distract me and disrupt my ability to travel and enjoy the places I was so privileged to see were the same things that could throw off any of my life's ambitions and plans...I had to get the proverbial dirt off my shoulder (I wonder if Jay-Z and Chuck Palahniuk have ever been referenced in the same paragraph).

So, I did. I stopped getting mad because the water made me sick or because someone cheated me out of a peso or two, did things as I wanted to do them, and lost my hesitations of changing plans or making drastic decisions. I read at some point on the UW Honor Program's website that the Bonderman Fellowship was intended to "foster independence", and I was a bit surprised when I read that, because it wasn't one of the usual cliches that are attached to international travel. But it was true - independence had been fostered, and I lost the need to seek approval of what I was doing from anyone except myself. I wanted to go to Lebanon the night I flew into Amman, so I bought another flight and went. I wanted to properly see Kashmir, so I flew to Srinagar and went overland through the heart to Leh. I told the relevant people about these plans after I made them, probably occasionally to their consternation, but I lost the feeling like I needed to ask permission or gain anyone's approval except my own.

Similarly, I felt like when I started my trip that as a Bonderman Fellow, there were certain things I should and shouldn't do. I shouldn't travel in western Europe, spend too much time surfing, or have an overly active social life. When I headed to a beach to surf or went out for a night with people from my hostel, I felt somewhat guilty, like I should be on some dusty 30 hour bus ride in central Africa or talking to some village chief in Borneo. And this is probably true to a large extent - there are definitely more meaningful things to do in one's travels than drink vodka Red Bull with backpackers in a club in Rio, but then again, some of my most vivid and best memories of this trip are from the people my own age, both locals and travelers, who I wouldn't have met if I was sleeping in some obscure suburb in an effort to unearth some deep crevice of "culture."

The last segment of my trip in Bali was simply two of the best months of my life and basically consisted of surfing all day and going out all night, and I don't have a single regret about deciding to spend so much time there. Sure, I could have spent the time traveling through more of southeast Asia and checking out the temples of Angkor Wat, the islands of Halong Bay, and the culture of Changmai, and those things would have been great, but I think they would have been just photographs, whereas I know I'll never forget the people I met and the waves I surfed in Bali. I don't want to be too serious, though. It's hard to go wrong with 20 grand to spend and a whole world to explore.

Anyway, I thought this last post before flying home would just be numbers, but I started writing and suddenly there's several paragraphs above me. It's 10:20pm on the 26th here. I have to be at the airport in 5.5 hours. I am deliberating staying up until my flight leaves so I can sleep all "night" (my day, Seattle's night), but after 10 months of safe travel, I don't want to tempt the travel gods into making me sleep through my flight.

In less than 30 hours I'll be able to say that I traveled around the world!

AirAsia

It seems like all too frequently I find myself in strange, partially inexplicable situations like being in the hot and humid Kuala Lumpur airport at 7 this morning wearing half a dozen t-shirts, a raincoat, and a zipup hoodie (all at the same time), and being laughed at by a group of girls as I methodically stripped off the layers and crammed them into a small bag.

Now I'm in Bangkok for two days, next stop - Seattle.

the Bali List

The things I'm going to be missing in about 10 hours when I fly out of Bali:

• Driving motorbikes on sidewalks and going the wrong way down one way streets being acceptable ways to deal with traffic or navigational woes, and the general void of speed limits and driving rules
• Warung Indonesia
  
• "Hey boss! You want transport, motorbike, surfboard, magic mushrooms?"
• basically every surf break on the Bukit Peninsula, but particularly Balangan and Impossibles
  
• MBarGo, Skygarden, and other venues of Kuta's chaos-themed nightlife
• Never being more than 5 minutes from a surf shop
• My daily perusals of surfboards
• the people I've been hanging out with - Welsh, Irish, French, Swedish, South African, American, etc.
  
• Everyone smiles so much here! I haven't been home in almost 10 months, but I seem to remember smiles or general expressions of happiness are sort considered faux pas
  
• It's a strange thing to miss, but I've developed a bit of an attachment to daily injuries I seem to accumulate
  

Anyway, I couldn't have picked a better place to end my trip, though I am a bit relieved to have escaped unscathed from the last month and a half. Being in Bali kind of keeps you on your toes...there's this t-shirt that says something like "Indohazard: perfect hollow waves, sharp reefs, terrorism and bomb threat, volcano explosion, .." and some other stuff, but it's probably not an exaggeration...I mean, you take something slightly less than safe, like riding a motorbike, and then stack it on top of driving on the left in the middle of chaotic traffic, and then stack that on top of the fact that you're driving to surf heavy Indonesian waves that send a number of people away on crutches or with any sort of injury possible...and then you do this every day. I am definitely, definitely coming back here.

A week or so ago I made a few trips on my motorbike up the island to some other beaches and then inland to Ubud, which is a little bohemian (first time I've ever used that word, I had to google define it to make sure) town in the middle of a bunch of rice paddies. I've been pretty much in paradise out on the Bukit Peninsula, but the rest of Bali that I've seen was quite beautiful, too, and seeing it while driving a motorbike really topped the experience off.

I got a lot of surfing in, too, and did some fishing and snorkeling when it was flat. I'd forgotten how great fishing is, oh, and one of my several dozen ambitions for when I get home is to take up spear fishing.

The girls who work at my hotel started calling me Snapper (as in red snapper, the fish)partly because they can't say my name and partly because I came back sunburned one day. The nickname has grown on me.

An American expat I know got me a second one month visa with a connection he has at airport immigration.

I got hit by my surfboard at Padang-Padang and had to get stitches in my face, so I can't surf for another few days now, or even swim in the pool. Walking around Kuta with a large dressing on my face gets me a lot of double takes, which is mildly satisfying.

An Irish guy I know got a pretty bad cut on his foot, too, so we've been regulars at Legian Clinic in Kuta. I also got a sizable burn on the back of my calf from the muffler on my motorbike, and a nice accumulation of cuts and bruises on my hands and legs from surfing Balangan. Since I can't surf, I've spent a lot of time oggling surfboards at the several dozen surf shops in Kuta, and I bought a number of new t-shirts.

It's disturbing how many times on this trip I've seriously considered the possibility of terrorist attacks when making plans. There's a massive memorial for the 2002 bombing at the actual site of the attack on Legian, which is right next to several other popular nightlife haunts. I went out several nights in the last week with a crew from Dreamland, which was great after a few months of having a low key social life, but matter-of-factly discussing terror threats and levels of security at different nightclubs is a little hard to stomach. Indonesia is the fourth country I've been to with a travel warning from the US State Dept. - Lebanon, Syria, Israel being the others - but it's the only one I've been to where I feel like the threat has Westerners as the deliberate targets. That is supposedly the case for Syria, but there were so few Westerners there that it was hard to take seriously.

Anyway, sorry about the blogging hiatus, but I'm always somewhere between just writing about another surf session or wanting to write something conclusive about the last 9.5 months, but I don't know, it seems like everything is already there. I never had a definitive moment or period that resulted in a then-and-now thing. I was homesick and lonely for most of my time in South America and rarely felt that engaged, I generally kind of lacked direction or resolve in Europe, I loved every minute that I spent in the Middle East, India was a vivid little anomaly of big mountains, Thailand was truly relaxing and easy, and Indonesia has been, well, see the posts below. What I really wonder about is what would have happened if I did my trip the other way around - started in Asia, continued through the Middle East, Europe, and finished with South America. It's hard to imagine that I would have loved South America like I've loved Indonesia and the Middle East, but I think one of the reasons it's so easy to enjoy my time here is that the end is tangibly close. I think the fact that I had so much ground to cover and time to spend when I was in South America made it difficult for me to just relax and enjoy the scenery and experiences.