Why Is The World Important?, Part Two
Here is the conclusion of Torgeir Higraff’s Trip Reports of his 2023 World Tour. As he points out, technically, it was not a world tour since he didn’t travel everywhere. But he still describes places that most of us will never see. Likewise, he is not, technically, an expat since he always returns to his home in Norway. But his travels - drift voyages in the South Pacific, sailing to the Shetland Islands from Norway, archeological expeditions to Greenland, and multiple trips throughout Europe - are more extensive than most expats ever manage.
Torgeir’s reports allow us to see what people in other countries see every day when they look out their windows. In doing so, we can begin to understand what they expect from the world. Limited though they are, we can all benefit from his glimpses of our increasingly interconnected world. As I wrote in China Bound:
All my life, as I traveled or when I saw photographs of different cities and regions, I played a mental game with myself. Looking at the various places, I always thought, “If I lived in this city or in this area, and this was the view outside my window each day, how would I feel about the world? What would I think if, looking out my window, this was the first thing I saw every morning? What kind of person would I be?”
Here is the exciting conclusion of his trip observations. (No, not really exciting. More like reflective and vulnerable, speaking for all of us.) If there are others in this international TEL community, expat or not, who would like to tell their story, please contact me to explore possibilities. The view from your window gives you a unique perspective on the world - also a unique worldview. Why not give others an opportunity to see what you see?
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Why Is The World Important?, Part Two
Travelling from India to Thailand was a step toward a tourist paradise! You notice the difference on the airport. At Indira Gandhi International Airport I waited fifteen minutes for a chicken wrap and almost lost my plane because of my patience. The same meal in Bangkok took them 30 seconds to serve. The domestic flights take you to all parts of Thailand for 50 USD. And everywhere they are ready to serve thousands of tourists and treat all of them like kings - it's hospitality on an industrial scale.
I went north to Chiang Mai to walk the mountains. But the first day I wanted to relax, and for me nothing is more relaxing than kayaking. So, I walked through the streets to find a kayak to rent. After being offered a massage 329 times I finally arrived at a company that would take me to a suitable place to paddle. What they called “kayak” was not a kayak, it looked more like a plastic beach toy - and the river was quite dirty. But the bird life in the trees along the riverbank gave me associations to the rivers in Ecuador where I floated balsa logs from the jungle down to the coast. The sunset was amazing. It was also great to paddle into town in the evening. People in the riverside restaurants waved and raised their glasses to me, almost as if they had never seen a kayaker before in their lives. I think I could do good in a business in Chiang Mai giving tourists a real kayak experience.
After all the weeks in the high-altitude mountains, I had gotten quite fit. So, without doing any research I decided to climb Thailand’s highest mountain. All I did was to check the location. After a delicious breakfast, I rented a small motorbike and headed for the national parks. The traffic in Thailand was almost organized and welcoming compared to India, I felt like a native driver and pushed the motorcycle up to a hundred kilometers per hour to keep up with the traffic. After only a couple of hours of driving south, I passed the first checkpoint before Doi Inthanon. The road got steeper and steeper, and with lots of sharp curves. In some places it was 20 degrees steep. As I sat there on the motorcycle enjoying the beautiful view, I began to wonder:
“When will this road stop? Where does the path up to the top of this mountain begin?”
I had a backpack with fours liters of water, I had made several sandwiches with fried chicken - I was super ready for a physical challenge after some lazy days in India. Suddenly I was at the top, more than 2,500 meters above sea level! I was quite surprised and a little disappointed that I could drive up to the top of the mountain, I almost envied the cyclists who arrived sweaty and completely exhausted after all the climbing.
The other tourists were shivering and freezing, perhaps because they had forgotten to put on the woolen underwear of the type that I was wearing. Did they expect it to be 30 degrees here? I thought about all the nights in the Himalayas when my drinking water froze to ice inside the room:
“This is like the tropics; how can they freeze up here in several degrees plus?”
The following day was also strange. I drove north to Srilanna National Park. Again, the drive was the best experience. Narrow roads surrounded by tall trees. Almost no traffic, it felt like I owned the whole forest. I especially remember the bridges across the big dam, the sunset above the lake in the horizon, warm winds, and good speed on dusty gravel roads. I will carry such moments with me as long as I live, I feel rich to do things like this.
I had booked a treetop cabin. The place looked great on photos. And when I was there, the place really looked great! Narrow, steep stairs wound its way up around the tree to the cabin, twenty meters above the ground. The hut was just big enough to accommodate a comfortable queen size bed, a bookshelf of books on Buddhism, and a sink. I had a whisky there and just started to love the view. Then the cicadas started their concert. Cicadas in this part of Thailand noise equals the sound effect of an aircraft taking off. Then the sound got even stronger! An ungodly racket, like the apocalypse was looming.
ZZZBREEEEEM-ZZZZBREEEM-ZZZZBREEEEEEEM-ZZZZBREEEEEEEEEEM, on and on without end! If the Hitchcock film Psycho is familiar to you – this was the sound from the killing scene in the shower repeated on and on and on, combined with a high pitch violin and the screeching sound of fingernails on chalkboard. This sound was all around me! This lasted seven hours! I paid 70 USD for this!
After this night I jumped on the motorcycle and drove to the airport. I decided to be a regular tourist in Thailand. I went south to the island Koh Samui and got a small cabin by the beach and stayed there for a week.
Then I took a bus south to see even more famous tourist spots, and jumped on a plane to Malaysia. Every day in this trip was exciting. Like when I was going out in the streets of Kuala Lumpur to buy a pair of trousers, because the one I had was dirty and I didn’t have time to wash it. It took me an hour in the huge mall to find the trousers, and another twenty minutes to find the place to pay for it. The lady behind the counter refused to let me buy it. Because I had to buy two pairs:
“It is two for one!” she repeatedly said again and again with a high pitch voice. I said I wanted only one. “It is two for one!” she said again, almost aggressive now – with probably her only words in English. I had to go back and pick one more pair of trousers. But I had forgotten where I found them in this gigantic shopping mall – I wanted to pay for two and get just one item. No, didn’t work that way here. This was Kuala Lumpur. I left the mall without pants after two hours of struggle.
Later, that week I got ready to leave Asia. I was in Singapore. My flight was boarding 5 AM so I had to stay in the airport for the night. But on my way to the airport the metro stopped five stations away from the airport. “No more metro this evening!” said the official guy. “We’re closed!”
This was a stroke of luck for me. In the big taxi queue I met some fine gentlemen from India. One guy who owns several restaurants in Malaysia got the news that his father had died. He had to run to the airport. Who was first in the taxi queue? Me. He was at the end of the line. Him. I could tell that he was in a hurry from his movements and swearing back there. “Want to join me?”, I shouted when my taxi arrived. He was very happy for my suggestion and jumped into my taxi with his two suitcases, and the guy in front of him, another guy from India. From that point, the restaurant owner delivered a five-hour monologue about his life. We shared cigars and his extremely expensive bottle of Scotch single malt whisky.
My goodness, during those hours I learned so much about India and running a business!
The other guy from India was waiting for his family to arrive, it had been five months of work in Malaysia without seeing them. His engineer job was to produce the robots that distribute medicines to patients in very big hospitals.
Also, a Romanian man in his twenties who had been in Laos for three months and had got the idea to create a restaurant there, joined us outside the airport where we could smoke. The four of us became good friends, like a united team. The Romanian and I shared the flight back home to Greece.
I spend the last days of my journey "Important World" on Paros. I had lost my credit cards in Singapore, but again I meet the most friendly people who help my out. The daughter of my landlord lent me 300 Euro in cash and her family - complete strangers - invited me to a traditional family dinner at their home. My landlord Voula made "bakaliaros skordalia". Fried salty cod with garlic sauce, potato and olive oil. They normally serve it on Greek Independece Day, March 25. I was with Voula, her husband Takis - their daughter Vasiliki and their son. This fantastic family on this lovely island is one answer to my question "Why is the world important?"
The way I traveled for eight weeks made me very vulnerable. And that was the point! This made me able to find compassion from many of the world's inhabitants in ten countries. There is enough division and disagreement. I'd rather find out what we can all rally around, what we can agree on. I want to find out what unites us.