Koh Tao Heat

The weather is changing. The heat in Portland over the past few days has been nearly unbearable. It’s been hot enough that when I step outside, my feet burn against the hot concrete, and my hair, soaking wet, dries within a matter of minutes. Last night, as I opened my window, hoping for a some cool evening air, I witnessed heat lighting. This is a first for Portland. 

It reminds me of Italy, on it’s hottest day. No humidity, no breeze to soothe my sweltering body. Just straight, dry heat.

Perhaps it is simply the absence of humidity in these recent days that has me thinking of Thailand, where you can hardly pass a day without the feeling of thick, wet air around you. I do miss it, though it nearly made me delirious. 

I first began to love the Thai heat on Koh Tao. The heat on this island is unlike most areas in Thailand. It is the unmistakable Thai sun, but with the relief of ocean wind – a combination I enjoyed very much. However, the ocean itself did not offer much of a chance to cool off, since the water was so hot, and breezes came less than needed. I became very partial to ducking into street side stores, and standing beneath their rotating fans for a few minutes. 

I drank buckets of water, and had only two small meals per day. I was bronzed by the sun, and always happily dirty: sand between my toes and in my hair, road dirt stuck to my legs, arms and back greasy from sun cream. I had never been happier. 

My days on Koh Tao began at five or six in the morning. The air conditioner in my guesthouse was broken, so the early mornings were a welcome opportunity to stroll the main promenade in balmy weather. I walked through the small town, past all the closed market stands and cafes to the beach in the half darkness, tripping over tourists who had fallen asleep in the sand. When I became tired again, and the sun was finally up, I returned to my room and would lie back down, leaving my room door open so I would be awoken by my travel companions shouting in the courtyard about a breakfast time and destination. 

We all spent lots of mornings sitting at beach side cafes, our feet dangling off the wooden decks, our bodies laying back on our bean bag chairs, listening to the beach soundtrack it seemed like every cafe played. The songs consisted of a mix of reggae, The Cranberries, and Dido. We all drank a lot of hand squeezed juice. The cafe’s were excellent places to meet fellow travelers, and we became fast friends with some Irish students. The group of us sat on the beach side for hours, discussing travels and philosophy, until it was well past noon, and we all had begun to sweat too much for comfort. 

The heater on my shower did not work. My solution was to bathe in the afternoons, after the heat had made me crave a refreshing shower, and stand beneath the freezing water. The stream of cold water always made me gasp and shiver, but I did cool down. Pun Pun, my guide around the region, always warned me against becoming overheated and jumping directly into a cold shower. The extreme differences in temperature would make me sick, he said. 

And I did become ill. I was feverish for about a day and a half, and rested in my darkened room, wondering if my fever was breaking, or if it was still midday outside.

Once I felt better, I took a long walk of the town with my friend Jess, where we discovered a delicious Thai pancake stand. Our favorite way to pass evenings quickly became to order a pancake and stroll the beach side, which glittered with hanging oriental lights and small low tables with flickering candles. We eventually would pick a place, and sit on our bean bag chairs in the sand. We would order young coconuts, the cold coconut water satiating the heat a bit. Then, we read until it became too dark, always with our feet in the hot ocean water. 

All of a sudden it would be midnight, and I would meet Pun Pun for a motorcycle ride of the island. We would ride together in the dark, the welcome wind whipping our faces, stopping off at well-lit beaches for a view. He was always trying to decide if he should ask me out or not – although he never did. The awkwardness stood between us, an unanswered question billions have had to face: I like you. Do you like me? One late night, we ended up on the beach side. Oriental kilims had been thrown onto the sand, and torches were lit in between rugs, the scent of citronella emanating from the flames. There was a low hum of people speaking to each other, the unmistakable ocean cafe soundtrack playing softly, and warm sea water washed onto our legs. We lay on our rugs, not speaking to each other for a long time. Pun Pun would often do this.  He is the first person I have met who is a master of silent communication. I was surprised when he looked over at me and said: “how romantic this is.”

Maybe I would have liked to have been in love with him, for the romantic ideal of it – but never could summon the right feelings.  As it was, I had just emerged from the awkward formative years of high school, and first year of university. Finally, I was coming into my identity but I did not (and still do not quite) have a clear picture of what exactly it was. That night, when I returned to my room, I burst into a fit of confused, disturbing tears. I don’t know why I cried, but I did feel like a child again.  

My last night on Koh Tao, we all sat at our favorite beach side cafe, and fell asleep on our bean bag chairs. We awoke in the mid morning, being dragged out of the sun by some waiters. Five of them had grabbed onto our bean bags and pulled us directly in the shade, laughing at our sunburns. As I combed sand out of my thick, tangled curls, and applied aloe vera to my roasted back, I wondered what I would miss most about Koh Tao. 

I knew I loved my one cold shower in the afternoon, and two small meals per day. The promise of walking the beach side in the evening, and falling asleep beneath the clear sky, full of familiar stars was something I was already missing as I watched the island disappear from the ferry deck. 

So when I got home, I continued with the freezing showers, two small meals per day, and settled for memories of beach side sleeping. I noticed after a time however, that the showers migrated to lukewarm, and two small meals per day became two larger meals per day (with a snack here and there). How things return to “normal”. 

Yesterday night, my room was as  hot as the outside temperature (102 fahrenheit). I have no air conditioning, you see. I took my freezing shower. I don’t think I have ever relived a memory that well. 

The main street - Koh Tao

A Global Home

My new living arrangement. That I share with nine others. Don’t scream in horror! The nine roommate situation is working pleasantly well. The house is clean, adequately sized, and bubbles with excitement. We are all from different corners of the world. We are all students, and all Global! The house has American, Spanish, Romanian, Indian, Japanese, German, Chinese, Korean, and Irish students. We are a real melting pot. Everyone is interesting, and very nice. On top of it all, we all swap languages, traveling stories, and delicious recipes. I walk into the very large kitchen (equipped with three refrigerators and two stoves) and smell the food we all cook, unique to our homelands. Yesterday I lifted a lid of a pan and saw home cooked Pho. The day before that we had home cooked sushi. It’s been a lovely first few weeks here.

It’s hard to keep traveling all the time. So this is an example of how I try to “travel” without actually traveling. Sneaky, huh?

Everybody Jumps

Alyssa taking the jump!

In my days of youth, I had the good fortune of living a blissful life, empty of worries. I recall winters in Heidelberg, amid sparkling lights of Christmas markets, contrasted against snowy German hills. Summers were spent in Verona, where I would happily run through fields, the grass taller than I was, stopping at ice cold streams to dip my feet. These are joyful memories, which I suppose are typical of a wonderful childhood.

However, children grow, as do responsibilities and worries. Adulthood, as I am beginning to discover, is difficult enough, without the added pressure of having to make life changing choices. Choices I may not have quite enough experience to make yet. Everyone faces hard choices with some trepidation. However, something I have been noticing both within myself and others, is a frequent trend of making a decision solely based on fear. Picking a more practical option because the other has no clear outcome. But what choices would we make if we weren’t afraid? 

This question, really mulled over, can offer quite an insight into your own mind. You can effectively find out what your main priorities are.  The outcome, of course, is that you would eventually take “the jump.” 

Taking the jump surely means different things to different people. To me, it means taking that first initial step toward something unknown. It’s more serious than realizing if you were not afraid, you would eat a lot more chocolate or become involved with extreme sports. Not to say those would not be wonderful, but taking the jump is about coming up to a life changing fork in the road, and choosing the more dangerous route, without worrying about the consequences it may have upon your future. I believe everyone makes at least one, if not many, such jump(s) during their life.

Currently, I can only stand by while the dreams I have had for myself for so long become more and more difficult to attain. This realization, I sigh to my co worker, is part of growing up. 

Of course, I am not the only young student who has had high hopes. Others have turned their dreams, some less than realistic, into excellent realities. I find hope in the thought that many people have been in far worse situations than mine, and have acheived grand things. 

So what comes next? I struggle with what the next few years will bring. A year around the world, teaching English overseas, financial calamities, academic pursuits, career anxieties, and an upcoming six-month stay in the Middle East, away from my family, and the boyfriend.  

The other day I walked with him down the busy street where I live, stopping at a Chinese restaurant. I had not tried this particular one, but the pot stickers taste just the same as they do at my other long time favorite place. There is a woman sitting outside with her dog; two young women stroll up, asking to pet him. The three women laugh easily with each other, and begin talking like old friends. They refresh me. I look at him and wonder what I will miss more: my friendly neighborhood, or enjoying it with him. I can already predict the loneliness I will encounter. I wonder what my six month absence will do to him. To me? To our love? 

Today my questions remain. They will not be answered until I take my jump (s). Of course, taking a new risk is frightening to me, but I could not travel down the safe road without a horrible feeling that I had given something up. In the back of my mind, I hope that life will remain the same, despite my plans. After all, if I simply travel around the world, I will just end up where I started. Or perhaps my queries are simply part of being a young adult. 

I’m often curious about what it will be like to arrive back “home” after my first time living abroad as an adult. Will I recognize it? Will I know it better than I did before I left? 

Maybe we are enchanted by these mysteries, or simply the possibilities the choices have for us. What is most terrifying, of course, are the outcomes. Our lives won’t necessarily be changed because we travel somewhere for half a year. But they will be changed if we find something meaningful, something significant enough to change our perspectives and ideals while we are away. As it is now, I am sure I will encounter this during my time abroad. This is what scares me. 

However, what is the point? We could all speculate what could happen to us if we made a certain choice. But maybe the joy in life comes out of chasing something large, perhaps forbidden, letting it take us to the unknown, and then taking that scary jump, and seeing where it may lead.

The Mysterious Travels of Agatha Christie

Over the years, only a handful of things remain constant in people’s lives. I like to think that my life is so full of adventure that there simply are no constants. However, that’s just not true. Ever since I can remember, there have been rainy evenings where I have felt the only sensible thing to do was to settle down on the couch, tea in hand, and watch an Agatha Christie murder mystery. Oh yes. “Death on the Nile”, “Murder On The Orient Express,” “Murder in Mesopotamia”, “A Caribbean Mystery”. The mysteries draw you in with their exotic and somewhat glamourous premises. A woman strangled aboard a traditional felucca, a man stabbed somewhere between Bucharest and Budapest, eerie happenings among ruins in Iran…

It should not have been surprising for me to learn that Christie herself was a sophisticated traveler. She often wrote on location, and many of her ghastly murder mysteries were inspired by the places she traveled to. I was delighted to learn that Christie had traveled everywhere from London to the ancient city of Ur, and had spent 30 years accompanying her archaeologist husband to excavation sites in the Middle East, sleeping in the desert among the ancient ruins. I can certainly see where the inspiration for many of her books came from. Christie herself said that while the characters in her stories where fictional, the settings were always real. Her books have outsold all but Bible and works by Shakespeare. This further affirms my suspicion that part of the reason why she was so successful was because most people are fascinated by travel, and many of her mysterious novels center around exotic locations. 

Now one cannot speak of Agatha Christie without mentioning her own “mysterious affair”. On a fine day in December 1926, Christie drove away from her manor house in Berkshire and was not seen or heard of for almost two weeks. Her car was found abandoned on the side of the road and the speculation was that she either drowned herself or was murdered by her unfaithful husband. A chilling end to the “queen of crime” indeed. 15,000 volunteers combed the country side searching for her. Even the search and rescue airplanes were brought out. Eventually, Christie was found at a hotel spa living under the surname of her husband’s mistress and an assumed personality of a woman just in from South Africa. When her husband arrived to collect her from the spa, Christie exclaimed: “Fancy! My brother has just arrived!”

Some believe she was a victim of amnesia, due to stress. Others claim it was publicity stunt. Still others say it was an attempt to scare some sense into her adulterous husband. I don’t have a hypothesis, but I certainly enjoy the drama and glamour of the story. 

It was not until recently that an attempt to find the truth of the matter was made. While a biographical movie of Christie’s life was being filmed, a psychic was brought into a hotel room in Istanbul that Christie had spent much time in. In fact, this room was where Christie had penned the famous “Murder On The Orient Express” novel. The hotel, the “Pera Palas” was an elegant and hip place to be in the 1920’s and 30′. Guests included Ernest Hemingway, Alfred Hitchcock, Greta Garbo, and the spy Cicero. “Pera Palas” still stands to this day. Visitors can see Christie’s old room, 411, and the very writing desk she used to write her excellent mystery.

The psychic, Tamara Rand, claimed to see Christie entering room 411 and hiding a key under the floorboards. The room was searched, and low and behold, a key was found in the corner of the room, under the floorboards. But the key never left the “Pera Palas” due to arguments over price. It still sits in the hotel, the last clue to a puzzling event. The origin of the key, as well as the details behind Christie’s disappearance will remain a mystery. 

However, her stories still remain enchanting and timeless. They include parts of the world that were rarely traveled during Christie’s time period. A truly remarkable writer, Agatha Christie brought to life her mysterious travels and is proof that traveling inspires us, excites us, and fascinates us.

I was thrilled to have found another kindred traveling spirit, as well as a favorite author.

I will leave you with a travel quote, written on the Orient Express, from the mistress of murder mysteries herself: “…fascination with looking out at an entirely different world; going through mountain gorges, watching ox-carts and picturesque wagons, and studying groups of people on the station platforms.” 

Haggling The Right Way

Haggling can be a daunting task. I approached the whole situation with trepidation, but quickly lost all limits when I saw how easy it is to settle on a price. Here is a list of helpful (if I do say so myself) tips on how to pay what you want for items!!!

1. Don’t be needy. It’s not attractive in any situation, especially haggling. Its very important not to get attached to an item. Remember there are a million shops to go to with similar, if not the same thing for sale. You have to be prepared to walk away.

 2. Don’t Be Unreasonable. The vendor is trying to make a living. You can’t expect him (or her) to give you the item for less than they paid for it. If the vendor has stopped negotiating on a price, ask yourself if it is really that big of a deal. It may be a couple dollars to you, but quite a significant amount for the vendor. Don’t waste your day making sure you get the best deal on the cotton shirt or Buddha figurine. And honestly, if you are hung up about the extra dollar you probably don’t want the item that badly. And if you do want it, don’t loose the item over a few cents just for the sake of winning the haggle. It’s important to remember the goals of haggling: to BOTH agree on a fair price.

 3. Don’t Start Yelling When the Vendor Isn’t Coming Down. Be relaxed at all times. You don’t want to take it to the next level and move from haggling to arguing. Always be polite and cheerful when haggling, even friendly. Remember that haggling is a fabulous way of interacting with local people. The worst thing to do is cause a scene, or create a negative vibe between you and the vendor. If there is a problem agreeing on a price, tell the vendor you will move along down the street (to other stores) and return for the item. They will probably cut you a deal at that point.

 4. Know your limits. You must set a price, and stick to it, even if it means walking away. If you start changing your price around, acting overwhelmed and scared the vender will know you are incompetent and that you will probably cave.

 5. Walk away. Don’t stay too long with a vendor. If you can’t agree on a price, the best thing to do is walk away. 99% of the time the vendor will chase you, offering a lower price.

 6. Learn the language. It is best to learn a few phrases of the local language before you hit the markets. It really helps the communication level, and makes you appear more “with it”. Learn numbers, so you can state your price, and some phrases. Simple ones like “how much,” “too expensive,” “no way,” “thats insane,” will suffice.

 7. Act. A lot. When the vendor quotes a large price, look at him (or her) in shock, widen your eyes, drop your jaw, a sharp intake of breath is also appropriate. Haggling is like poker. It’s all about bluffing, and if you act shocked at the price, the vendor will probably back off a little.

 8. Feeling Frisky? Pretend You Don’t Like It. State things you don’t like about the piece, imperfections that obviously make it not worth the x amount of dollars asked for it. Tell the vendor what you will pay for it, despite it’s problems. Be creative with the problems too. For example, I wanted a beautiful piece of Thai red silk, with elephants etched into it with gold thread. There was nothing wrong with it, it was exquisite. However, it was a pricer item. I told the vendor I wanted it, but probably was not going to buy it because the red was too red. “It wont go with anything in my apartment.” I decided to go to another vendor to find more colors, when she dropped the price dramatically.

9. Multiple Item Discounts. These are very effective. If you are buying more than one item at a shop or stall, the vendor will usually give you an all-around discount for buying many items. If they don’t, ASK for it. I bought six bracelets at a stall (and got a bulk discount for those), but came back later in the night to buy one more. She remembered me, and gave me a substantial discount on the last one because I had bought so many previously.

10. Start Low, Then Go Lower. If the shopkeeper acts insulted, don’t fall for it. Act insulted right back at his outrageous price, then, suggest a price lower than what you originally suggested. For example, a vendor offered me something for 700b to which I said I would only pay 400b for. He then countered with 650b. I offered 250b. This often shows the vendor you are not willing to back off of your original price.

11. Don’t Dress Up. I’m not saying to go to the market looking like you should be begging for alms, but my point here is that you probably shouldn’t go flashing around your Prada bag.

So there you go! Some tips on how to start your haggling career! Oh, and remember that once you agree on a price, it is expected you will buy it! It’s offensive to walk away after you have both agreed on a fair price!