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Sabaidee Luang Prabang

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More than one friend had emphatically told us to go here.  The city was also voted by a big name travel publication their favorite little city in Asia.  Coupled with the fact that it was less than an hour flight from Hanoi and it was all to easy a decision to visit what now is also our favorite little city in southeast Asia.

There is no denying however, that this is anything other than a tourist town; but after nearly a week in Hanoi, a tourist town was just what the doctor ordered.  We arrived at the hotel, where despite it being hours past closing time for the kitchen, they insisted on making us a hot meal after our “long” journey.  The few days there were more like staying in a close friend’s home than a hotel.  Their unyielding hospitality was delivered with an ingratiating gentle manner that seemed to come naturally in their culture. 

A journey into town first required walking down a set of stairs held together with bamboo reeds, at the base of which a boat driver waited.  We’d gingerly duck into a longboat and grab a seat on a metal bench while the driver would ignite a rickety motor that sounded like stray bullets ricocheting off a steel wall.  He’d throttle across the fifty foot distance and cut the motor just in time to coast us up to the opposite set of stairs where we’d step off.  We’d repeat this process each morning and each evening coming and going from the one lane town across the river.   The town itself was clean and peaceful.  The pace of life was altogether more tranquil.  Street hustlers were nowhere to be seen.  Stores scattered along the road were inviting and interesting, but deliberately priced for a foreign visiting audience with money to spend.  Old swords, ornate Buddha statues, and all types of locally made jewelry including some from recycled bomb fragments, were on display.  More impressive however, were the intricate colorful tiled temples sprouted up above the town.  In the early evening gongs would ring and sonorous chanting would pull us ever close to a temple door to peek in.  One morning we stood on the sidewalk, along with the rest of the town, as several hundred monks passed through on a pilgrimage from China to India, walking the entire way; all clad in bright orange robes and leather woven sandals. 

The following day we visited an elephant sanctuary.  Unlike the highly restricted elephant parks of neighboring Thailand, here they were just beginning to develop a market.  Elephants were brought into sanctuary as a reprieve after labor in logging camps.  For one of us this was the first time ever having seen animals this big.  But it wasn’t their size that left us at the end of the day feeling like we’d witnessed proof of something majestic; it was they way they connect with people  They were giddy when they grabbed chucks of squash out of our hands; and patient when we climbed upon their dried leathery backs.  They were playful when submerged up to their shoulders in a river with us still astride them, spraying water and dipping us down as we washed their heads.  When we left that afternoon passing through the stables as they reached their trucks out to shake our hands goodbye.  It’s one of the many life experiences that seems to have passed far too fast once it’s over. 

That last afternoon we lay sprawled on cushions on the deck overlooking the river from our favorite hideaway bar.  No more than a gigantic glorified bamboo hut with vintage motorcycles hanging from the ceiling and American aerial bombs strapped to the support pillars, we passed more than one thundery afternoon here reading books and sipping on sweating local beers among a mixing pot of other foreign travelers doing exactly the same thing.  This wasn’t the place recommended by a hotel, packed full of tourists swinging selfie sticks and jonesing for wifi.  This place existed for people seeking somewhere not on a map; somewhere to unplug and live slow.  Like the elephants, it tended to be the beloved slow passing of time that passes all to quickly.  This place, like the rest of the best little city in Asia, was a grain of Utopia.  Like so many others, we wish it will always stay this way.  In more succinct words, as the famous Laotian proverb goes “Why are you the one with the watch and yet I’m the one with all of the time?”

       

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where-you-going
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Where you going?

Riding in from the airport we can already feel a palatable difference from the southern half of the country and here.  Gone are billboards and neon signs blinking CocaCola and Samsung.  In their places are bookshelves of houses stacked upon each other, and the frequent motor scooter dealership.  The entrepreneurial spirit of the south is replaced by one rooted in something more collective here.  Although not as populous as Ho Chi Min city, Hanoi feels twice as dense.  Narrow streets, and compact intersections leave little room for error.  A careless foot or elbow dangled off the sidewalk is pretty much guaranteed a scuff. There’s no shortage of things to see, places to explore and foods to try, but it’ll have to wait.  As quickly as we arrived, we’re headed for the train station boarding an overnight train for the most northern part of the country on the border with China.   

We settled into our bunks and turned out the lights as the old train trundled out of the station and rocked against the rails as it picked up speed.  We stared in silence as other peoples lives flashed past us.  An old woman carrying fruit in baskets dangling from a wooden pole balanced on her shoulder; kids playing in the river beneath a bridge;  a toothless old man; families at dinner, on the sidewalk, on a balcony, squatting and scrunched together on those colorful children’s stools.  At some point we swayed to sleep and woke the next morning for the hour ride up snarling mountain roads to Sapa town.  A day later we met Jane, our homestay guide in the town center and along with the rest of our group, started the muddy slog through the streets and up an uneven overgrown footpath into the surrounding mountains.   Four foot something and dressed in traditional colorful Muong fabrics, Jane set a quick pace through the wet misty air and would intermittently proffer stories of what life was like back in the mountains while we neurotically checked our shoes and socks for leeches.  Every twenty minutes we’d pass through another village; a cluster of wood beam and corrugated sheet metal huts tucked into the mountainside.  Happy barefoot kids ran past us playing a game rolling a tire with a stick while a girl no older than seven walked a few minutes behind them whipping a water buffalo along the road.  “Where you going?” they would yell after us, a local version of “how are you?”  A man on a motorbike dragged a 30 foot wood beam that he’d carried form town to improve his house.  We trudged through the ridges of rice paddies careful not to slip off the slippery edges in the on again off again rain.  That afternoon as we crossed over a stream and down into a valley where we arrived at our homestay.  A full extended family milled in and out of the house throughout the afternoon.  The house itself consisted of of wood fire in the kitchen, and low dining table in the room next to it.  The grandmother sat stirring a pot for that evening’s meal while the grandfather napped on a cot in the corner of the kitchen.  A ladder led to the exposed upstairs where mosquito nets and mildly musty sleeping bags were laid out for the six of us. Dogs, cats, and chickens freely roamed in and out of the house.  A pig was kept in a shed just off the cement porch.   Later that night, after several pots of tea and games of uno, we shared an authentic meal, in an equally authentic home, part of a world completely different in just about every way from our own.  As we walked back towards town the next day, past more villages and more rice paddies through which children were walking to school, we wrestled with the juxtaposition that although this is increasingly one of the more common tourist treks (after Ha Long bay) hawked in the tour agencies in Hanoi; and while the locals seem entirely accustomed to seeing all sorts of foreigners pass through their village snapping pictures like they would from the deck of a tour bus; visiting here is not a theme park ride, or pleasure cruise, its a true experience, if only for a brief moment, of a way of life wholly and completely different from the one we know.  It’s difficult, and isolated, and simple in a beautiful way.  It’s the type of excursion that will make you question what you really need to live.

We left Sapa on the overnight train back to Hanoi, where we hopped over a few tracks to catch another local train for a two hour ride south to the small city of Nimn Binh.  There are only two real reasons for a visitor to come here; the temples and the Ha Long Bay alternative of Tam Coc.  And while both reasons are spectacular, the part we’ll remember most will be bouncing down dirt roads on a rented scooter, surrounded by nothing but countryside and knowing that the only way to truly see Vietnam is from the back of a scooter. At sunset each night we’d jolt down the dirt road and onto the main street into town where we’d purse our mouths shut and close our visors against a torrent of insects, inhaling the cooling night air and waving hello at the goats and water buffalo watching us whizz by.  On our last morning we stole ourselves from the heat and raced the sun up the steps to the top of the Mua Caves for an early morning photo atop the spiked back of the dragon overlooking the valley below.  The view from the top was yet another a reminder that we are indeed very, very far from home. 

Back in the capital city we enjoyed the next few days playing chicken with oncoming scooter traffic, while searching for a suitable seat to feast on street cart made Banh Mi’s.  We zig zagged every street in the old quarter, circled the lake, and practiced our English with young students on assignment to engage in conversation to speak with foreigners.  One one afternoon we arrived five minutes early at an address which didn’t seem to exist in search of a mythical meal.  A shopkeeper pantomimed scooping chopsticks from a bowl and jerked his thumb down a dingy ally.  We stepped over puddles and ducked exposed electrical wires up a staircase to the living room of a family home.  Positive we’d gone the wrong direction we turned around and were promptly ushered back around by a grandma with little grasp of English.  We joined her husband in the family room. He had gotten a head start on their homemade happy water but wasted no time in insisting we join him in a shot, and then another, of whisky infused rice liquor.  At this point one of us was ready to make a break for it, before two strangers assured us that this was their second visit to one of the most unassuming and best meals they’d ever had.  What followed transcends the words and pixels on this page, but can only be described as the sort of thing that demolishes any preconceptions we may have ever held; a bowl of pho that will gloriously stain our memories forever.   

That last morning at our favorite art studio turned cafe we sat sipping orange tea and waiting out the morning thunderstorm rattling against the shutters.  Vietnam is like this; full of tranquil hidden nooks and crannies shuttered against the mayhem and mania of her streets; full of rooftop patios where we can listen to a guitar player strum to the ironies of life in tune with the pitter patter of the rain on the rooftop.  The Vietnam you want to see though; that’s the one in the small towns, some hours train ride from the cities.  It’s the one taken in from behind the visor of a helmet on the seat of scooter surrounded by a thousand other people on scooters melting into the dystopia.  Lost in chaos, melting, melting, into the landscape, swallowing bugs and smiling larger than life the whole time.

                   

in-like-ho-chi-minh
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In Like Ho Chi Minh

We gather on a ramshackle rooftop porch, dressed in basket lanterns and straw cushions on the cement floor.  Barely above the noise on the streets below, upwards of twenty of us sit together; all of us from scattered parts of the globe and none of us from here, but with no where else we would rather be.  A guitarist from Nepal sits in the front of the room and plays a song.  His voice is as soft as silk and his words are uncomfortably relevant.  An aptly timed orchestra of rain hammers down on the plastic sheeted roof like a snare drum.  On our last night in Vietnam, so far from home and yet so coiled in our history, we settle in and listen to the ribbons of words and inwardly think back to three weeks ago when it all started. 

The city is immediately and wonderfully offensive to our senses.  It requires every operating piece of us to function in a heightened capacity.  Crossing the street is an act of faith in the humanity of the twenty scooter drivers careening at us, and in the mercy of God.  Once the first carefully set foot steps out into the street there is no turning back and no slowing down or changing direction, only a surrender into the entropy of Saigon.  On the uneven and crumbling sidewalks the scooters are jammed in next to each other.  Women are tending to boiling pots of broth, or woks of frying food over open fires.  Girls wash the dirty dishes in plastic tubs and dump greasy water onto the already treacherous street.  The constant blare of horns is relentless.  It’s smelly, and loud, and chaotic.  Just being outside is exhausting.  Walking a mile feels like a marathon coupled with an American Ninja Warrior obstacle course. 

But mixed into the madness is a thread of something more substantial.  We visit modern art galleries, and eat at Japanese born-Vietnamese grown-Italian-pizza parlors.  We drop in on a science and robotics fair hosted in a youth creative warehouse built out of shipping containers in the shadow of a high-rise building.  One night we have dinner with friends from back home who have moved here full of enthusiasm.  The city is littered with craft beer bars that would rival San Francisco.  Buildings are draped with living walls and hidden coffee bars that echo Seattle.  This isn’t our parents Vietnam anymore, no longer content to be defined by a war.  Today’s Vietnam is in the hands of its youth, who in the slow tides of time will do with is as they please. 

After five relentless days of sensory overload we retreated to a beach resort a short flight north of Saigon.  We celebrated a birthday and slipped into a four day bliss that smelled of lemongrass, ginger, and mint.  Here nothing happened; and it was a welcome pause.  We watched the sun rise in a pink fury each morning, and set behind dark storm clouds each night.  In the dark the bright lights of the shrimp boats would illuminate the bay.  In daylight, only the depths of the oversized pool offered a reprise from the steaming outdoor air.  Four days and five nights later we were ready to re-immerse ourselves into the functional chaos of South East Asia. 

It’s been said by a famous TV food show host, that the only way to experience and see Vietnam is from the seat of a motorbike.  Although we hadn’t quite worked up our motorbike chops yet, his statement was no less true from the saddle of a bicycle.  Our first few pedal strokes into the tumult of Hoi An’s main road were a tumble of emotions; fear, primal survival instinct, shock, adrenaline fueled intensity, and finally an elevated synchronicity.  True to the words of the TV host, for the first time we didn’t feel like visitors watching the entropic chaos from a distance, but rather a minuscule part of it; a leaf floating through whitewater rapids without a collision.  We knew we were viewing the country from the vantage point through which is it meant to be seen.  Call us crazy, but the whole of humanity, after five continents and many more countries, somehow makes a whole lot more sense from the seat of a bicycle in the mid-day traffic in Vietnam. 

For the rest of the three days we would wake early enough to brave the impending steam room humidity and pedal our two wheelers around the small tourist town.  Like all good tourists in a town functioning wholly due to the industry we gladly took part in all the hallmarks of the trade.  We visited silk factories and bought brightly colored scarves.  We attended an all day market-tour/food tasting/cooking class where we collected a book of recipes we promised to cook at home knowing we’d most likely have a hard time finding the ingredients. And we walked through the pedestrian only streets criss crossed by hundreds of silk lanterns where we took pictures sometimes by ourselves and sometimes in the company of an unsuspecting wedding party.  When it got too hot in afternoons we’d pedal back to the confines of our hotel and hide from the heat in the courtyard pool.  When our stomachs would protest at the thought of another meal of spicy foreign ingredients, we’d take refuge in an all day Aussie cafe serving traditional gut bombs and safe raw green vegetables. 

Ten days into our SE Asia saga we left Hoi An no longer exhausted by the innumerable differences of life in this part of the world, but instead invigorated by them.  We’d seen this place from behind the lackluster protection of handle bars and we were drunk on exhaust fumes and humid air.  Although we’re only halfway through our time here we’re thirsty for more.

   

                   

the-best
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The Best

It’s no wonder why Paris is the romantic destination of dreams of so many.  It makes sense why it’s the most visited city in the world.  It is after all, Paris. Enough said.  In this city, a flakey croissant, a flawless meal, an aimless stroll down a boutique lined street, a view from the top, will invariably be the subject matter of one of those experiences of a life time for anyone who visits this city.  We come here to absorb her romance, to live out a movie scene, and to experience perfection.  We come here because it’s supposed to be the best, and it is.

Our first day we sat at one of hundreds of street side cafes at a table too small for anything more than a glass of French red wine, an espresso, and the obligatory ashtray.  We sipped and watched as manicured tourists and pretty people all dressed in blacks and grays, and checkered versions of both strolled the streets with shopping bags in tow all searching out their own small cafe table to also sip wine and waft wisps of smoke.  Afterwards we took our turn to stroll the streets of this famous arrondissement window shopping in boutiques and antique stores.  We’d pause to watch an occasional street performer or make way for a groups of annual pub crawlers dressed in team culinary costumes befitting only the French.  Later in the afternoon we’d sample baguettes until we had no room left. 

One morning before the day’s first croissants were baked, we piled into a van for the three hours journey to France’s famed northern coast.  On grassy hills abutting long strips of windswept sandy beaches we stood and listened to some of our most famous, historic, and tragic stories of war.  Down on the beach, dogs played in the water and lovers walked bundled against the wind.  Looking down from the hillside we shared a sorrow not only for the toils of the war that soaked the sands here, but for how distant, almost unreachable, that past now seemed.  We drove through country lanes where the farmhouses saluted us with the unexpected sight of proudly displayed American flags and antique vehicles of war sprouted from the gardens.  A short reprieve from the atrocities of the past was provided by a bowl of steaming freshly netted mussels and a cup of locally churned butter that left no doubt that this is still France; and France is the best.  Our last visits of the day endured a duet of tributes to the lives sacrificed by those on each side who fought for their homelands.  One was a field of nameless black stones, lined up in groups of five.  Thick patches of trees threw dark shadows on the darker headstones casting an eerie gloom through the graveyard; yet at the same time they offered a blanket of protection to the tortured souls buried beneath the trees.  We entered the American cemetery on a tree lined pathway with a lone trumpet blaring in the windy distance.  The gently sloping hillside was streaked with perfect rows of white crosses and the occasionally lit by a Star of David, most of them displaying a name, dates, and home state.  A salt tinged wind blew up from the ocean at the base of the hillside, cleansing the souls of the men resting there for eternity. 

Back in the City of Lights we continued a schedule of doing all the things a good visitor should do at least once.  We queued with the masses to ascend the Eiffel tower to walk her decks and take innumerable pictures.  A rainy morning provided a perfect day to stroll the never-ending rooms of the Lourve, all the while trying to make sense of an impossible audio guide and map.  We carefully planned our meals and ate until every Parisian culinary category had been accounted for.  We walked along the Seine more than once,  and we stared up at the Arc de Triomphe.  It was just a little too perfect. 

On our last few days before leaving the European continent we moved to an outer arrondissement.  For the first time in six months of travel we aborted an afternoon walk because we felt uneasy.  Typical Parisian austere frostiness was replaced by aggression.  Groups loitered on street corners and in front of derelict buildings.  We saw a different city, rippling with palatable tensions. 

As we flew eastward that next morning and stared down at the the world’s most visited city we wondered if the next time we came here if it would be as changed as it is in the last four years.  It will no doubt continue to be the opportunity to live out a day from a movie scene, and experience the best of the best.  Inevitably however in the world of today, with that territory comes a slew of expectations and imitations.  Trip Advisor ratings and 10 Best lists, become the de facto experience guides.  For every 10 best there are fifty abysmal examples with pictures on the menu, tour guides with umbrellas and headsets, and street vendors hawking the same keychains and light up gadgets.  It can muddle the experience of a place that is supposed to be a version of perfection.  That said, the truly unique and ethereal experiences in this city that many of us come to this place in search of are still very much there, but for most they lie just beyond our grasp; behind black tinted windows of luxury sedans, on private rooftops where the cost of entry is a at least a three figure cocktail, in restaurants with six month waiting lists that fill up in five minutes, at the bottom of bottles of wine worth more than a plane ticket, and behind velvet ropes to clubs that employ the strictest of dress codes and frustrating selectivity.  On the other side of the gap is a place that may follow the fate of Casablanca, a city remembered for an iconic romanticized past that now has the charm of a stale cigarette, where metal detectors guard the entry to public places and five star hotels, and where tensions run high.

Leaving Europe we’re not for the first time confronted with a powerful reality of travel; that expectations will always be shattered and that travel is not in fact about meeting expectations, but rather having new experiences that often make us at least a little bit uncomfortable.  As far is Paris is concerned, the best croissant may be in San Francisco, the most memorable meal belongs to Israel, and the most powerful sight to behold isn’t in the Louvre, it’s several hours north along the shores of Normandy.  Paris will however, forever be Paris, and that alone is worth going to experience “the best” at least once. 

                                                

parfait
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Parfait

The southern french countryside employs a certain quality of life that everyone has seen depicted in countless films and across the pages of books on shelves, and as far as we can tell, they all are entirely accurate.  It isn’t graced with grand palaces, and it doesn’t sparkle with the precisely maintained beauty of Paris.  There is no vibrant and energetic nightlife.  In fact, it’s still and quiet; the type of quiet that makes you want to turn off the music, open all the doors and windows, just to listen to the wind blow through the rows of olive trees.  The two horse cart wide roads are restrained to their two hundred year old girth by rows of tall trees, long ago planted in preparation for a grand entrance by a king.  Vineyards are announced not by garish signs and billboards, but by simple plaques next to a gate.  Wine vines drape on their stakes only over specific plots the land, as if placed carefully and with much consideration and not in the mega industry style of their foreign counterparts. 

The days this time of year are warm, but for once not hot.  A gentle breeze always gusts at just the right moment.  The nights are cool but still invite us outside to watch orange moons with a glass of wine in hand.  Three hundred year old farmhouses, now converted to cavernous homes are the only infrastructure dotting the countryside between the one-laned towns.  On the lane there are no supermarkets, no speciality coffee shops, no stores that bear a logo of any kind. Mothers pick up their children from the schoolhouse and afterwards stop at the the boulangerie for that evening’s freshly baked baguettes and a sweet treat.  Meat is purchased from the butcher and has never known styrofoam packaging covered in saran wrap.  Cheese is selected from the formagerie; sometimes there are two.  The market is stocked as the Garden of Eden itself would have been; each item perfect, the subject of its own Cezanne painting.  Of wine shops there are many; but never is there a giant convenience store fridge filled with cardboard cases of beer.  There’s also a salon, always a church, and numerous restaurants all with patios for enjoying a slow meal.  Some days the street is closed for the local weekend outdoor market, but only just for the morning.  Afternoon’s are sacred and personal.  The already peaceful towns become perfectly still, with just the breeze that blows through the leaves.  It’s a time the people use to read books with yellowed pages, that smell like libraries, or to take long walks and hunt for fallen almonds, or wild mushrooms.  In the evenings the restaurants are always in business but are never crowded or rushed.  The rest of the people cook at home, simmering things slowly in glowing copper pans.  They pass time outside in the twilight at weathered wooden tables on which sit glass vases filled with white candles inside.  The air smells softly of lavender and lemon.  In front of them the is expanse of the southern French countryside.  Like the trees have sealed in the old king’s road, the residents of this place have sealed in their way of life here away from the rapidly spinning rest of the world. 

                 

egeszsegere
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Egészségére

Sometimes deciding to go somewhere can be as simple as tracing a spinning a globe with a pointed finger, or tossing a dart at a map.  This trip happened very much that way, and as we’ve repeatedly discovered, the most underplayed destinations often make for the most unexpected and memorable surprises.  On a whim we decided to meet a friend here for a few days of absent minded wandering and discovery. 

The main boulevard in front of our apartment that leads to and from the river was closed off to traffic that first night.  Shortly after the sun went down we joined into a sea of people marching towards the water.  Echoing in the distance we could hear Viennese waltz music.  Behind ornate Austro-Hungarian buildings a constant cannon fire rippled off cement and stone.  As the crowds grew thicker from more people pouring in from side streets, the cacophony rose in tandem.  At the end of the block where the buildings gave way to unobstructed views up, down, and across Danube the the music crescendoed, while overhead, synchronized bombs of color exploded in the sky dancing to the rhythm.  Glittering streamers of fire raced down into the water off the sides of the bridges.  Ash and smoke twirled through the crowds standing on the shore.  With our eyes closed and craned skywards, and jaws slack, it didn’t take any imagination to fall back in time to when the flashes in the sky were real bombs, and the march music was coming from real instruments.  Budapest, it turns out, has a magical ability to drop her visitors into a semi-permanent time warp. 

Five minutes of walking through her streets is all it takes as a reminder that this place once housed one of the greatest and longest European empires in history.  The buildings display an intricate grandness that is the product of a bygone era, that has been regifted back to the people who walk through her streets now.  It’s impossible to stroll along the riverbank, the great separator of two great cities conjoined as one, and not experience the same lighthearted butterflies you’d have from a first kiss.  It left us breathless, awestruck, and euphoric.  Sometimes that same breathlessness was a gut punch that knocked the wind out of us.  Behind a chain link fence a world war two memorial of bronzed empty shoes were scattered on the river’s edge.  Concert speakers lining the sidewalk for an event later that night played an ironically poignant song about the bonds of humanity. 

We crossed a chain bridge guarded by two stoney lions and weaved through the crowds on the opposite riverbank where all the sights and smells of a celebration drifted in the air. Cold beers and homemade apricot liquor poured from taps.  A folky band played on a stage and people danced.  Giant charcoal baked apple breads dusted in cinnamon rolled off the grill into hungry hands.  Sometime later, over satiated and exhausted we lost ourselves in one of Budapest’s great institutions; a bathhouse.  Inside, fancifully tiled pools were tucked away in and endless maze of rooms.  Locals seemed to have a purpose for each one;  lap swimming, lounging for hours on end conversing, and water stretching, depending on their size and temperature.  Outside, rows of lounge chairs surrounded a wave pool that would draw splashing crowds every thirty minutes.  The three of us found our place in an adjacent hot spring and did like the locals do; soaked ourselves until our fingers were wrinkled and any worldly worries were sufficiently washed away.    

By night, the palatial persona of the city fades to black its eastern European hard edge cuts through the darkness.  Crowds from restaurants and bars spill out onto broken sidewalks smoking cigarets and clanking bottles.  Ruins of buildings decimated by a long finished war, have been deliberately un-maintained and transformed into one of several infamous ruins bars in which we sipped drinks on shrapnel tables with twisted rusty plane parts hanging from the ceiling.   Just before the sun begins to poke through the horizon as we strapped on our backpacks and left our apartment that next morning a few groups of friends sat still swirling the dredges of last nights beers, half an unopened pack still in front of them and no intention of going anywhere anytime soon; still lost in the alluring vortex of Budapest.  So are we. 

                

turkish-delight
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Turkish Delight

Certain destinations more than others we’ve approached with a complete lack of expectations; not because we expect nothing, but more as a function of not knowing what to expect.  It turns out, that this has been one of the greatest pleasures of travel and the recipe for some of the most profound moments.  This was one of those places.

In retrospect we should have spent several days here and not just a long layover.  It was one of those places our families cautioned us not to go to because of periodic instability and terrorism, but by that logic we probably shouldn’t visit New York, London, or Paris either.  There is of course a line between open minded and overly dangerous, but with the exception of active war zones, that line is fluid and situational.  In other words; shit can happen anywhere so don’t stop living in the meantime. 

With restricted time we jumped in a taxi and headed straight for the main attraction, starting in the esplanade between two mosques; one of them a wonder of the world, and the other a modern shrine of worship, tolerance, and acceptance of all visitors.  Inbetween them stretches a grand park that smells like orange blossoms.  Along its tree lined walkways and in front of it’s fountains, citizens and travelers from far away take pictures.  Others sit on benches eating ice cream that has a taffy consistency, served up by a cart vendor with a knack for theatrics.  We enter the grand courtyard of the open mosque and read some of the educational posters about the faith while we wait for afternoon prayer to be over so we can go inside.  After queueing up with other visitors we were provided with customary clothing to cover ourselves out of respect.  We removed our shoes and bowed our heads in deference to God as we crossed under keyhole doorway into something wholly unexpected.  Instead of the chilled, stoney, grandiose and all powerful presence of a Catholic cathedral, with its hard pews, incense and organ music; we stepped onto a deep soft carpet that stretched the entire building.  Above us a carved ceiling of dark wood hung low as if to cocoon us in the building’s warmth and tranquility.   In cordoned off areas on either side worshippers prayed, each at their own pace in private moments between the individual and their God.  Across the floor and around the base of large pillars some people sat in circles and talked, others laid down to take a mid afternoon nap, and still others stood, selfie sticks extended to capture a moment.   We’d expected to feel like outsiders in a place that didn’t belong to us.  Instead we found ourselves settling down onto the soft floor, closing our eyes to listen and to share a sacred moment in a holy place. 

After we left we walked for a while in a pensive silence.  We walked though another courtyard garden where four men sat at a table, playing a game with tiles and drinking tea.  They were also sining in a perfect gentle harmony.  Kittens in the water grate below us pawed at our feet as we walked onward.  We stopped the buy a box of Turkish delights and chewed on the afternoon on our way back to the airport, wishing we’d stayed for longer and promising ourselves never to avoid going somewhere and risk not witnessing something beautiful. 

                    

poetic-justice
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Poetic Justice

Before we had even arrived several people had made sure to mention that this was their favorite city, that they’d live here if they could, and that it was the tech startup capital of the East.  Even so, we came here without expectations.  In the first few minutes here, it was clear that Israel was going to be a sharp blend of tradition as old as the book it comes from from, and a font of newness like fresh light. Just walking through the enormous modern airport awash with travelers from all faiths and dressed for the occasion, from burkahs to kippot, pouring into the gateway to the Holy Land, was a testament to the uniquely delicate but functional symbiosis of this place where tradition mingles with technology and old perseveres amidst the new. 

On the recommendation of a friend we sat down to dinner that first night and got to taste Israel as much with our eyes and ears as our mouths.  High school era hits bumped down from the ceiling.  The staff behind the bar playfully danced with each other to the beat.  The chefs chopped along to the rhythm, pausing every so often to pass a new dish around to share amongst themselves.  A round of shots was poured for everyone, including the kitchen.  Everyone waited until the last glass was full and then there was a cheers to life.  Ten minutes later there was another, and then another.  No one bothered to take themselves too seriously and in fact there was a genuine effort to avoid just that.  It was like being at a friend’s house party.  We all talked, about where we all were from and why they were there.  They wanted to know what we thought of their home; we wanted to know more about what life was like here.  Nothing was off limits; and nothing was sugar coated.  The food itself was as powerful and vibrant as the people.  It also might be the best kept secret in Israel.  Each ingredient erupts in a concentrated version of itself; wistfully soapy basil, eye wateringly sharp black pepper, arugula that bites back, cauliflower that manages to melt, and even apples from Eden.  It turned out that this joie de vie wasn’t just a lucky first night, but true of almost everywhere. 

That first night as we meandered our way home dodging whizzing electric bikes and stepping over stale water poured out of closing market stalls, this Middle East city wrapped us in a sense contentment and natural ease that we hadn’t experienced in any city in Europe.  Small tables spilled out of cafes crowded with friends late into the night.  No where was left empty, and no one it seemed, was left alone.  It might be the center of some of the world’s most enduring and greatest conflicts, but to the people in Tel Aviv it really is the land of the New Spring; guaranteed to be different tomorrow from the day before, leaving no moment wasted and unlived. 

An hour’s journey from the wild youth of Tel Aviv sits the epicenter of the world’s most enduring conflict and its most treasured history.  It was almost too real in its differences for us to wholly accept and understand it as other people’s everyday reality.  In order to enter the old city, we first pass through a modern outdoor shopping mall at its border.  During our first visit the entire place was ghostly empty in observance of Shabbat.  Once inside the old city walls reality was for the time being, suspended.  Some people would call this the beginning of a spiritual experience.  We pass through the market in the Muslim quarter avoiding eye contact with pushy shop keepers.  Orthodox Jews wearing enormous fur hats and long black coats in the hundred degree weather, shuffle past us with a determined gait.  A group of boys practices acrobatic flips in a pedestrian intersection, while a nun patiently waits to pass.  At the top of a row of gradually sloping steps there is an arch overhead announcing the entrance to the courtyard of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the burial place of Jesus Christ.  Above the arch an imam’s voice crackles from the speaker of a minaret. 

That next afternoon we visit the Western wall, expecting to find a scene of a thousand prostrated bodies in a state of somber prayer.  Instead we find scenes of celebration and levity.  Young men celebrate their Bar Mitzfahs and families dressed in in their most bright and colorful formal wear pose for photos that will eventually hang in a place of honor in their homes.  This birthplace of belief that is inexorably tied to in some way nearly every war in the world;  this place of reverence and solace that is too often ruined for the many because it has been stained by the actions of an extreme few; this place doesn’t seem like any to those things today.  Today it’s suspended from reality.  Today it is a celebration of the gift of life and humanity.  Today it was perfect.  Those that live here though, were quick to remind us that tomorrow it all could change, and more often than it should, it does. 

We walked on the powdered sugar sandy beaches of Tel Aviv for our last few days letting our time here crystallize.  We watched a blotchy and broken sun, like a few strokes from God’s paintbrush, set over the beginning of our world. Along the waterline countless pairs played paddle ball, the sharp plink of the paddles, an off beat rhythm counting time not in minutes and hours, but in moments of now because they know that that’s all any of us really have. Together, Israel’s newness and its history create their own sort of harmony.  Sometimes its a sad, deep and tragic harmony; while others it sings with a vibrance and zeal for life that make you want to live like this every day.  We watched and we listened, and we thought about history, and the future, and our new reality and then promised to return here. 

                    

  

 

 

haha-whatever-i-dont-know
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Haha, Whatever, I Don’t Know

The cab driver from the airport spoke just enough English to ask us where we were from, comment on the weather, insist that we eat a few dishes we’d never be able to pronounce, and we visit a whole list of places that all sounded like Hephaestus (which we also couldn’t pronounce).  Five minutes in, and it seemed we were already smack in the middle of any Greek comedy movie.  We were dropped off at the edge of an empty dingy alleyway where the cab driver pointed towards the end and summarily sped off.  At first glance, if this were an empty street in the middle of San Francisco, we probably would have opted not to walk down it with all our worldly possessions on our backs.   Graffiti covered ever visible vertical surface.  There were no lights, and aluminum gates barred the entry to every building.  It took some searching to find our apartment key lockbox camouflaged into the aerosol painted landscape.  Up a poorly lit stairway humming with that chilling sound of nearby open electrical currents, our situation wasn’t looking much better.  Once inside the door however, the veil was lifted, the wand waved, the genie blinked, and our Greek pumpkin transformed into Zues’ chariot.  Views of ancient Athens stretched from wall to wall and floor to ceiling.  The apartment was larger and more modern than any New York city shoebox.  On closer inspection, the street graffiti below looked not just appropriate, but artfully and intentionally placed; like someone’s tattoo that you can’t help but gawk at.  Hanging over the street, easy to miss by day but now lit up in the early evening, were rows of festive and colorful paper lanterns.  The gated buildings, turned out to be trendy bars and restaurants that would come alive with a circus energy at night.  We didn’t know at the time, but over and over Greece was going to tell us that things are not as they seem here. 

Our two travel partners joined us that night where we stayed home to create our own Greek feast and watch the sun set over the world’s most mythological city.  Almost immediately an infectious laughter sparked up, and didn’t stop for the next eleven days.  Requisite historic walking tours, inclusive of stick drawings in the dirt completed, we escaped to an accidentally discovered locals only rocky cove on the coast.  Above it, beachside seafood restaurants sat empty, waiting for the crowds there were sure would come.  A few hundred yards away the jumbo inflated kids water fortress drifted empty.  The four of us splashed around in our own isolated bubble of Greek paradise, save for a few local couples as old as Hephaestus, watching us with equal parts confusion and amusement. 

A short puddle hopper touched us down in the romantic blue and white tiled isle of honeymoon dreamers everywhere; except that we were’t honeymoon dreamers, we were four friends looking for a beach and some adventure.  And that blue and white tiled island of a Hollywood movie set? It turns out that version of Santorini was just that, only as big as a facade movie set.  Our southern chunk of the island looked as if someone had hit the pause button during the set construction and everyone came to a slow halt at different speeds. Afternoon sunlight pierced through abandoned empty cement frames of round roofed houses and hotels alike.  Ghost staircases led nowhere.  On the beaches tourist restaurants peddling souvlaki and mojitos survived a bit longer, but unlike the southern shores of France, these places were were basically giving away the beachfront lounge chairs and umbrellas.  Where most second and third world countries of southeast Asia might be inexpensive tourist destinations, Greece has managed to draw a very distinct line in the sand between its costly tourist market and a crumbling country for everyone else. 

For us, this meant a week of exploring both faces of this new Greece.  Afternoon excursions might take us on scenic drive past skeletons of sea view mansions to a guidebook recommended secret beach only to discover it windblown and abandoned.  But instead of a busy beach, we found our own private sunset.   Evenings were spent in one of two bustling tourist villages perched high above gentle waters and gleaming yachts.  Shoulder to shoulder with other tourists all looking for the same evil eye jewelry, we’d laugh harder and join in the fun.     Back at our beach view home away from home, we’d pass the hours on the rooftop deck chairs sipping homemade cocktails that were appropriately colored for an island vacation watching the sky turn shades to match our cups.  The next morning we’d wander down to our favorite beachfront breakfast bar accompanied by some now familiar local dogs; a chain-cigarette-smoking-captian-hat-wearing old timer, and fiery greek waitress who would give us the homemade jewelry off her wrist. 

On our last day we set sail for an afternoon tour of the island’s coastline.  With a well practiced efficiency, numbed to the joys of their job, the deckhands laid out the rules and retreated inside to prepare lunch.  We drifted through the afternoon on the netted bow of the boat, miles away from the group just five feet away from us.  We followed the parade of other tour boats around the island, stopped for a swim in volcanic hot spring coves, and snorkeled in enormous schools of fish who had discovered that a sure supply of bread would be tossed form the stern of a sailboat about once an hour. With blueberry yogurts in hand at exactly 8:11 that evening we crested the peninsula of the island for a grand finale of a golden sun setting over the Aegean sea.  Four minutes later we effortlessly docked at port and ushered ashore, sunburnt, tired, and happy.  The reality in Greece is vastly different than the version that fits within the confines of a 5×7 postcard, or efficiently doled out to tourists who still come to relive a scene from a Hollywood movie set.  After all nothing in Greece is as it seems.  For the four of us however, neither of those versions of Greece are the ones we’ll remember.  A wise man once told us that the beauty of travel is that no matter who goes there after you, or before you, the experience you have can never be re-lived or re-created.  The beauty of this trip were not the beaches we walked upon, or the seas we swam, but rather the company we kept and the echo of laughter that stays long after the sun has set.

                                         

tutti-frutti
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Tutti Frutti

After the mountains we had a few days to spend before we were supposed to be in Rome.  We decided to make our way south in the most Italian way possible, and for us that meant three things; at a leisurely and relaxed pace, in something that was fun to drive, and in search of good food. 

We picked up our obnoxiously sunburnt orange ragtop and cruised down the autostrada to the first of several towns whose named would all start with “P”.  We dropped the car in a 2 day parking garage and hoofed it on baking stones into the old streets.  Local ladies on movie set worthy bicycles would ring their bells as they glide by at an easy speed, off to nowhere in no hurry.  In the mornings we’d take our coffee like the locals do; at a restaurant counter and from a proper espresso glass with a water back.  To go requests were strongly discouraged.  Here a person who doesn’t have time to stop, if only for a few minutes, to take their morning coffee, is far too busy with their life.  Late morning lunches were the source of heaping piles of home made pasta noodles doused in buttery sauces and sometimes dressed up in things like pomegranate seeds as if to make amends for the sin of eating rich food amidst the oppressive heat outside.  We’d hop-scotch through the afternoon shadows, avoiding anything in view of the sun.  Once the sun set we’d spend the evening outdoors like the locals do, standing at a wine barrel turned table top and eating the famous ham and cheese each bearing the town’s name, sipping regionally made sparkling red wine.  Parma is our reminder that the best things in life can never be rushed, and are meant to be enjoyed slowly without a care in the world. 

For the next few stops we threw away the plan to avoid tourist traps or crowds and let the current take us.  Heat be damned, we paused for an overnight stay with a view of Italy’s most infamous tower.  Goofy posed photos were snapped, reviewed, perfected, and snapped again.  Around the grassy field in front of the tower that day a good number of the world’s languages were spoken, but none of us had any difficulty communicating, at least for the sake of asking for a photo.  Sometimes the best view at famous attractions though, are what you can see when you turn around.  Pisa pit stop completed, we coasted into five beach cove towns connected by train and hiking paths only.  We dodged swinging selfie sticks and twirling tour guide umbrellas on the way down to our village’s rock cove.  Only once we’d slipped into the indigo blue water did the heat and the crowds wash away.  Clinging to an empty buoy we watched as teenage youths cliff jumped off an island rock.  Around the shore simple boats painted in light blues and yellows swayed in the swell.  From our vantage point, just beyond the melee, it made sense why this place is the subject of so many post cards and coffee table books. 

A few days later we took the road south towards Rome with one overnight on the way.  We arrived in the evening, chasing a rust orange Tuscan moon.  Sweeping country hillside stretched out around our narrow and slowly deteriorating road.  An evening breeze rustled tall dry grass that smelled like ripe grapes and dairy cows.  Even the itch it gave our eyes was a welcome feeling.  That evening, we lived a scene from a memory long since faded; at a tree covered iron table, part of a Italian farmhouse overlooking the hills we’d just driven through.  In the distance lights from aged towns that smell like fresh grassy cheese and leather gave off soft glows.  Here we re-ate the best meal of our lives and listened to the stories of a funny old man with sparkling eyes and tuxedo tie. 

We rode the summer heat wave all the way to Rome.  As a visitor in Rome, we’re just as likely to walk into chain clothing store found in any mall, and despite the fact that nine out ten pizza joints will have pictures on the menu and a disappointing pie, nothing could dissuade us from the allure of this city.  Maybe it was the old stomping grounds of a semester abroad and a once hidden gem trattoria, now a top ranked trip advisor “locals” find that requires reservations; but the same grandma still works the kitchen and still puts out plate after plate of food that we’d eat every day if we could.  And yes, maybe gelato now comes in fanciful flavors like basil-honey and balsamic-strawberry, but it’s still the best gelato we’ve ever had.  And okay, our AirBnB was directly in front of one of the most visited tourist monuments in the city, but step outside into the Pantheon piazza at 4am when the world is quiet,  the tables and chairs from the cafes are tucked away inside, when the square is at its darkest before dawn, and you can still hear the whispers from the ghosts of one of the world’s greatest civilizations.  Sweating it out with a global diaspora of tourists in Italy during the late summer is a reminder that regardless of it’s touristic popularity and regardless of the fact that we’re all taking the same ridiculous photo, or searching for the same over priced pizza, Italy transcends ever becoming numbed by the likes of us.  Italy is historic.  As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.  Amen.

                       

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