Trapped
A pile of unwashed dishes sat collecting flies in the sink in front of me. Outside, a pile of fifty-one days worth of uncollected garbage dominated the front yard. It too collected flies. My head pounded from the night before. I had just moved in, and everything about the house seemed dirty and out of place.
I brushed some flies away from my face, got a glass of water and sat at the kitchen table. The Venus Fly Trap I had bought at the grocery store the day before sat watching my pitiful, decrepit state smugly from the counter as it perched contentedly in its robust, healthy greenness. My stomach grumbled. Mickey, the flytrap, had been feasting. I had not.
Mailing a Package from Kathmandu, Part 1 of 2
On my journey through India, I had accumulated so much stuff that by the time I reached Nepal … and saw the mountain ranges that I wished to enter looming above me, I soon realized that this was not going to work out well for me if I didn’t shed some ballast. A lot of ballast. Easier said than done. I mean … some of these items symbolized many hours, even days of tenacious bargaining. Running the gamut of false emotions including tears and prophecies of my non existent children starving if I paid the asked for price. This, added to utilising all the tricks and devious devices from the world of psy-ops.
Traveling Photography Series: The Mighty Asian Scooter #2
Alert: Neighborhood Prank Egger May Be Pictured as Above
Twelve Trivial Travel Tips
In no particular order of importance, here are twelve random travel tips for you to consider:
Don’t leave a tip in New Zealand – it’s often taken as an insult if you do.
How To Get Robbed (Part 2 of 2)
Before I could even blink, two of them sat down with us. They were both from Russia and were both very friendly and were all too interested in us for it to be a normal encounter. I looked down and they had empty glasses, which had only moments before contained what I would later find out to be almost $60 wine. And then they asked for another. I asked where the bathroom was, hoping I could slip out the door and into the night. A huge, strapping bouncer was only too happy to escort me to the bathroom and wait outside the door for me to finish.
I stood in the bathroom for a moment, alone, and considered my options. I could go back out, cause a ruckus and try to leave forcefully. I could go back and try to slip out the exit. Or, I could go back, buy the cute Russian girl another drink and probably contract syphilis or gonorrhea. I chose the slipping out the door option.
My attempted slip went badly. When I was just a few feet from the door, two even more burly and strapping bouncers stepped in front of me and, in as menacing a way as possible, told me that I not only wasn’t going anywhere, I also was going to be stuck with a 250 lira bill. Jun came running up to me. He said that he had no idea that this was a shady hooker bar and asked me to forgive him. He paid 150 lira (Of which I never saw) and I paid 100.
I threw the five crisp 20 lira bills I had gotten out of the ATM only a few hours before onto the counter, looked him in the face and told him exactly, exactly what I thought of his lying, cheating, stupid face. I looked over his shoulder and saw the two girls sitting at the table with cold, indifferent looks on their faces. Long tails of ash hung nonchalantly at the end of their skinny, Euro trash cigarettes.
How To Get Robbed (Part 1 of 2)
Turkey has a lot of prostitutes. They are all for some reason Russian. Turkey has a lot of Russian prostitutes. The Turks and the Russians are geniuses at swindling Americans out of money. In Turkey, I was thoroughly swindled. The closest I came to a fistfight in a very long time was my last night in Turkey. Two buddies, John, Matt and I decided that our last night in Turkey should be spent in Taksim Square, the main hub for nightlife in Istanbul (At this early point in the story I’m going to stress that Istanbul is Europe’s biggest city and Taksim Square is Istanbul’s biggest nightlife attraction). We went to Taksim simply to see what we could find.
En route to the square we were solicited to go to a small bar, Mojito, by a dubious looking gentleman. I quickly made a mental note not to go there. That was right before Taksim Square. At TS I went to an ATM and John and Matt suddenly disappeared. It was a Friday night in the busiest bar district in one of the biggest cities in the world and I had lost the two friends I had come with and at that time of the night, in that part of the city, without cell-phones or any sort of communication device, things and people who are lost stay lost. I think the Turks and Russians like it that way.
The Street Diver of Calcutta
So I’m just following my nose, in hot, dusty and smelly downtown Calcutta. Sun’s blazing from straight overhead and I have time to kill, so I’m trudging more than actually walking. Breathing has taken on a masochistic quality, considering there are about 14 million people and their relatives around me and every one of them seems to be in some form of transit, utilising a stenching 2 cylinder engine. Added to that, the countless homeless people living on the streets. The children go around collecting whatever cow dung they can find, to mix it with straw or papers bits and stick the patties onto walls until they dry. These are then removed to fuel their cooking stoves with emit their own special thickness to the air. You have to chew the grey-black clouds of air before you can breathe them. It’s much worse than Bangkok.
Anyway I’m walking down Chowringhee Road, one of the main drags and passing the Indian Museum. Ahead of me, on the sidewalk, I see a gentleman, on the ground, with his head sticking into the aforementioned ground.
The Two Hundred Snakes of Whidbey Island
I was hiking down a wooded trail some years back with two buddies of mine. It was on Whidbey Island in Washington, and our agenda was open. We each carried a coil of fishing line and some hooks in our pockets, as usual, and were headed beachward. Not difficult on an island.
A bubbling stream was just as likely to sidetrack us. If the crawfish looked plentiful, we might decide to go Cajun for dinner. Or just kill time chasing frogs. Once we caught about 50 frogs and released them all at once just to see them ride the rapids over a little waterfall. Looked cool.
Stories Of A Wee Canadian Lass
Suspicious Minds: When traveling, we inevitably put ourselves into positions where we have to choose whether or not to trust a total stranger. And part of the character of the places we visit is defined by how trusting the locals are of the invading foreigners.
Trusting the Traveler
The Winner of the Summer Writing Contest
I am very pleased to announce the winner of the summer writing contest as voted by the readers is travel writer Olivia Giovetti.
Her tale Fringing On Eternal takes your through the wandering path of living and strolling through Rome.
