From the Desk to Vietnam (ITC Week 21)

 For week 21 of the Indie Travel Challenge, we’d like you to tell us what your travel dreaming tools of choice are. Do you still pull pages from magazines? Do you keep a spreadsheet on your computer, organized by country? Do you have a smartphone app or a website you love?

When I talk about trips I’ve taken or places I’ve traveled, one of the common responses I get is, “I wouldn’t even know where to begin to do something like that.”  How do I get from a blank piece of free time to getting hit by a motorcycle in Vietnam? 

To begin with, I love maps; I always have.  When I was a child, we had a dusty red set of encyclopedias, already years out of date.  The last volume was my favorite—an atlas with hundreds of maps of different parts of the world.  Now and then, I would pull it out and flip through, reading the names of distant cities and seas and mountain ranges. 

Maps still fascinate me.  I like to navigate on road trips, and I like to keep a map updated of where I’ve been.  Google maps is one of my most frequent distractions when I have down time at work.   Most of my trips start there; I start with my city, and zoom out: what’s to the north? The south?  What’s along the way between me and another major city? What loop could I go in that would include the most places I’d like to see?  If I go this direction this time, and that direction another time, what will I find? 

Once I have an idea of the general possibilities, my next step is usually lonelyplanet.com.  A bit clichéd, maybe, but useful, especially if I’m not already familiar with a country or region.  Lonely planet gives a list of “top picks”; while some of these are unavoidably touristy, it gives me a good idea of what’s on offer.  Then, it’s back to google: first stop, google images to see the place, then google search to find out about its importance and history and all, and finally back to google maps to plot it on a custom map I’ve created for the trip.  Repeat process, until I’ve plotted everything I would like to see or do on the map.  Then it’s time for lonely planet again, as well as train schedules, flight websites like Kayak and Vayama, bus schedules, etc.  What route is feasible, both time-wise and monetarily?  Once I figure out what would be entailed in getting to each destination, I can choose a route that will include as many as possible without backtracking too much.

Once I’ve got a general route, then I can find out about hostels on hostelworld.com or hostels.com.  I don’t usually plan a strict itinerary; in fact, the longer I travel, the less detailed my plans get.  I make a list of things I’d like to do in a city, but once I arrive I decide the specifics based on the weather, my mood, and what other discoveries I make along the way.  Here are the websites I use the most, if you want to research a trip of your own:

General Travel Information 

•  Lonely Planet
•  Google Maps
•  Trip Advisor
•  Wikitravel
•  Travel China Guide

Flights

•  Kayak
•  Vayama
•  Air Asia
•  (Within Europe) Ryanair

Trains

•  Rail Europe
• Travel China Guide: China Trains
• Indian Rail
  

Where to Stay 
(These are hostels websites, but they also show inexpensive hotels, bed and breakfasts, etc.) 

•  Hostels.com
•  Hostel World

Travel Articles, Podcasts, and Stories

•  Amateur Traveler  My very favorite travel podcast (also available on iTunes), but there’s a lot of good stuff on the website, too.
• Rick Steve's Radio Show  (also available under podcasts on iTunes)
• Rick Steve's Europe  Advice and planning for a beginner traveler to Europe 
•  Matador Online travel magazine
•  BootsnAll Travel articles, geared towards long-term independent backpackers 
• Vagablogging The blog of one of my favorite travel writers, Rolf Potts

Misc. 

•  Time and Date  Good for figuring out, until you get used to the time zones, if it’s too late at night to call home.
•  XE Currency Converter  Useful until you get used to a different currency.

Autostrada del Sole (ITC Week 19)

Indie Travel Challenge Week 19: Road Trips

 For week 19, we’d like you to design the perfect road trip. Who’s with you in the car? What kind of car are you driving? What snacks are in the cooler? What music is playing? And, most importantly, where are you?

When I read this prompt, the first thing that popped into my head was  sunlight pouring in the windows, catching a glimpse of Orvieto, an ancient town built on top of a cliff, out the window as I head south towards Rome on the Autostrada del Sole.  Giorgia’s Girasole (Sunflower) is next on the playlist, and I’ve brought along a bottle of A.C.E. fruit juice. It’s hot outside, but the air conditioner is thankfully working at the minute. 

 Even the name Autostrada del Sole, the Highway of the Sun, Interstate 1, seems an invitation to find out where it goes.  It’s the backbone of Italy’s interstate system, running like a spine from Milan to Naples.  In between, it passes through most of the major cities of central Italy, including Bologna, Florence, and Rome. 

When I lived in Italy, I traveled every mile of it at some time or another, most of those in a large and crowded van (the rickety old gray Bible School van on our way to a convegno in Velletri, just outside of Rome; crammed in the back of the di Marco’s van with the Naples crowd as I bummed a ride down to explore Naples after another trip to Velletri) or else riding along with the Shorts to Florence, or again Velletri.  I guess those trips to the women’s retreat and family retreats held at Velletri really added up the highway miles. 

However, the thing all of these trips had in common was that I was in route somewhere, and I had a time I needed to be there.  And while the sights along the way are nice even in passing, it would make a beautiful road trip if I had the time to wander: a side trip to the independent country of  San Marino, parking and taking the tram up into Orvieto to see the famous old church,  fields of sunflowers with the Tower of Pisa floating on the horizon behind them, eating the original ragu (meat sauce) in Bologna, meandering off side roads to explore the small towns perched on top of hills in rural Tuscany, parking at Piazza Michelangelo for the postcard-picture view of Florence, passing miles of empire-era aqueduct just south of Rome, and finally taking my life in my hands driving into the chaos of Naples, with Vesuvius looming over the city.  Dozens of other side trips would be possible, if the time and money held out. 

Sadly, it’s been three years since I left Italy; nearly as long as I lived there.  I still feel homesick sometimes to walk across Piazza del Duomo in Milan.  I thought when I left that I’d find a way to visit frequently, but as always, life hasn’t worked out that way.  Life instead took me even further the opposite direction, to China.  My Italian is getting rusty as there’s rarely anyone to talk to around here. You would think that after living for three years in Italy, I’d have seen it all, but I only scratched the surface.  I could spend three more years and still not make it everywhere I’d like to go: I’ve never seen Juliet’s balcony or the ancient amphitheater in Verona, taken a cable car up over the Alps into France from the mountains near Aosta, visited the Borghese Gallery in Rome (I could spend three years just in Rome), or gone to the little republic of San Marino, and the whole mainland of Italy south of Naples is unknown territory for me.  I’ve been to Catania and Mt. Etna in Sicily, but making the loop around Sicily would be another road trip of a lifetime in itself. 

Plastic Islands (ITC Week 16)

That island of plastic debris swirling in the mid-Pacific scares me.  Food waste, wood, paper—all that will disintegrate, but plastic…that stuff’s going to be around a while.  The number of plastic bottles I use myself is a bit overwhelming, and I’m just one person.  Unfortunately, the green tea I like only comes in 16.9 oz bottles; I wish they had jugs of it so that I could just refill a bottle instead of using so many. 

When I’m traveling, I try to keep one water bottle for as long as possible, refilling it when I get the chance. This was easy in Europe; there was always a museum or large store with water fountains right across the road.  In Rome, and many other places in Italy, there are public fountains on the sidewalk.  It’s been a lot more challenging in Asia, as tap water is often not potable. When I’m at home, I try to buy tea and juice in the two liter size and drink out of a glass, but on the road it seem inevitable to end up using three or four bottles a day.  I don’t remember hostels having water tanks available; I wish they would—I’d chip in bit to fill my bottle. 

At least it seems that recycling facilities are becoming more common, although nowhere near fast enough, in my opinion.  Any other travelers have any suggestions on how to use fewer water bottles, or how to environmentally friendly while traveling? 

Ravenclaw!

Okay, I'm being a dork, I know.  I'm twenty-seven, and I just got around to reading all the Harry Potter books, and watching all the movies (only ten years or so late!).  Anyways, I'm not in a very productive mood today, so I was goofing around online, and I found a site that confirmed what I'd already thought: if I went to Hogwarts, I'd have been in Ravenclaw.  I knew that's where I'd want to be ever since I read the description of their common room... :)

The sorting hat says that I belong in Ravenclaw!
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Said Ravenclaw, "We'll teach those whose intelligence is surest."

Ravenclaw students tend to be clever, witty, intelligent, and knowledgeable.
Notable residents include Cho Chang and Padma Patil (objects of Harry and Ron's affections), and Luna Lovegood (daughter of The Quibbler magazine's editor).

Take the most scientific Harry Potter Quiz ever created.
Get Sorted Now!

Indie Travel Challenge Week 5

If you’ve never been to Asia, tell us about your dream trip in the region. Would you rather find your own paradise among the Thai Islands, or shop for crazy Harajuku fashion in Japan? Are the uncrowded temples of Burma calling you, or are you dreaming of a visit to China’s Great Wall?

And what if you have been to Asia?  Who's writing these things anyways?  Oh well, there's still plenty of places in Asia that I haven't been that I hope to get to.  

The Waiting Time

Lately, I've been going back and typing up some old journals and adding them as posts here.  I've got a couple from my first experience living outside the U.S. on a semester abroad in Belgium when I was a junior in college (fall of 2004, if you're looking for the posts).  It took quite a while to click back enough months to put them in their right chronological place in the blog...kind of like watching life fly by.  It'll be eight years this year since that trip. 

I guess everybody struggles sometimes with time passing by.  I'll be twenty-eight this year; sometime I feel near panic at how fast time goes.  There's so much I want to do in life; I want to marry, have children, write, travel, live...and the biological clock is ticking louder and louder insinuating that I had better hurry, I'll run out of time, it'll be too late...

And here I am, living with my parents, working a job that I know is just a time-filler and that, though I once enjoyed, is becoming more and more grating.  I'm in the same place as I was when I was twenty, before and after that grand adventure of being an inexperienced college student thinking I was a great world traveller sitting in coffee shops in western Europe, drinking hot chocolate because I don't even like coffee.  Depression seems to close in sometimes; it has for the past few days; feeling shame at not being on my own, at not having accomplished more, at loosing myself in stories instead of living my own--but i know it's lying.  Yes, I'm in a boring point in my life, but it's only a stop.  I haven't built a great career or started a family or earned more degrees, but the last few years haven't been wasted.  The work I did in Italy and in China was worth the time spent, and the traveling in between has been more of an education that many college classes. 

I'm in a rut right now, and there has been a lot of wasted time.  And I don't just mean time spent with him; even though it didn't work, the relationship and the time spent in it taught me a lot about myself and what I can and can't give up and compromise.  It would have been nice to have learned those lessons in less time, but life is life and there's no point worrying about it now.  And where I am now, this is not because I'm floundering around looking for direction.  I know my direction, but I need to stay here for now and save money to be able to start on the next adventure.  By August, I should be ready. 

It's only my own lack of self-discipline and caving in to depression that makes this period a waste of time.  I have so much to be doing--I have years of photos I've been looking forward to scrapbooking, stacks of books on my to-read list; I need to be working on my Chinese, and studying the Bible with much more discipline and purpose.  I need to write more; I've wanted to write ever since I knew what letters were, but again it's my own self-discipline that's holding me back.  I need to get back in shape so that I can climb mountains again. I have so much I need to do now, before I'm busy teaching and travelling again and won't have the time.  But it seems like I go through too many period like this weekend of accomplishing very little, because I let the boredom and loneliness settle into a great weight around me. 

The last couple of weeks, I've drowned myself in the Harry Potter series.  I'd never read the books before, and I'd seen only one of the movies.  I always thought it sounded like the sort of thing I'd like, but when all my friends were reading them in high school and college, I didn't want to read them because they were too trendy--I, as the cultured English major, didn't want to be reading something just because of the sensationalism around it.  I'd wait and see if they stuck around awhile.  (However, I don't think I'll ever get around to Twilight, no matter how long they stick around.  I value my brain cells).  Of course, once I started reading the Harry Potter books, I couldn't stop.  I read during my lunch breaks, and for a couple of hours every night, and read the entire series in about a week and a half.  Then, I watched all the movies.  I've watched the last two probably three or four time each.  I don't know why this blinding obsession, but I had a hard time focusing on anything else.  This weekend, though, it felt like I was stuck in the foreboding, stress, and uncertainty of the search for the horcruxes; the scene stuck in my head was the one where Harry and Hermione dance in the tent, trying to break a little of the unbearable tension of their lives.  I've watched the last movie twice and read the last half of book seven again to get myself past it.  Weird how a fictional world can pull you in, but I guess I'm particularly vulnerable to getting lost in a fictional world right now as my real life isn't particularly interesting. 

However, getting lost in them also just reinforced the bit of panic about time passing by--in the Harry Potter series, it's now much closer to the "nineteen years later" than the original series.  If it were real, Harry and Ginny's kids would now be seven, six, and four.

I've been thinking lately about the epic stories that capture our imaginations--Lord of the Rings, the Harry Potter series, the Narnia series...and in each, it's children or teenagers who have the bravery to change their worlds...Frodo, Harry, the Pevensie children...I haven't read the Hunger Games yet, but my friends are all screaming at me to do so, but from what I know of that, it's the same thing...now, I know the "coming of age" plot is a staple of literature, but for someone closer to thirty and than twenty it's also a bit depressing sometimes.  I know they aren't real, and that real life doesn't go like stories, but I can't help but wonder sometimes if it's not too late; if I wasn't a child prodigy, is there any chance of being a hero now?  Has anyone else ever felt like that, wanting to read about the "Harry Potter" who is a thirty-year-old single woman?  It seems everything written about people my own age is all about sexual relationships that just emphasize the desperation in the continued wait for Prince Charming to come along and finally usher in a beautiful life. 

You know, that was part of why I wasn't happy with him.  He could offer me that--getting married, having children--that's supposed to be the happily ever after, but I wanted more than that; while I do want that, desperately, having children is not the end of my ambition in life.  I want them, but I want them to be raised as part of something bigger than themselves, as part of work that is more than just muddling through day after day.  I didn't want to have to give up adventure and purpose and feeling alive just to have them, for their sakes as much as mine. 

The Piano Guys

Alright, Lokey put this video up on facebook.  On a whim, I stopped and listened to it.  And there went my evening...I've been listening to The Piano Guys videos on YouTube for the past three hours.  Really good stuff...this one is my favorite, but there are several that I was really impressed with.  This is what I like most about the internet--the sharing of stories and talents and music and art that otherwise you'd never hear about. 


Coldplay - Paradise (Peponi) African Style (Piano/Cello) Cover - The Piano Guy

Indie Travel Week 1: Resolutions

As I mentioned in my last post. to get myself back in the habit of writing regularly, I'm going to do the 2012 Indie Travel Blog Challenge.   This is an idea from Bootsnall, which is one of my favorite travel websites.  It's been a website to daydream on, as it wasn't blocked at work over the past few months.

The first week's topic is resolutions, surprise surprise.  Although not terribly original, I do appreciate that we have a time each year that we think about where our lives are at and what we'd like to improve.  It's too easy to get so busy living that we don't stop to evaluate and check our direction, and besides, we all need a fresh start sometimes.

My first resolution is, obviously, to write this blog about resolutions.  One down!  Well, really, 1/52 down.  I really want to write, but lack of self-discipline is my worst shortcoming.  The challenge involves writing a blog post  each week, so I'm going to keep you all hanging until December to see if I really keep it or not.  Or at least until next week when I forget to post.  No.  I'm going to do this...I will write a weekly post. I will write a weekly post.  I will write a weekly post.  There.  Leave obnoxious comments if I don't. 

My more difficult resolution is the classic one: I've got to get in better shape.  I've blogged before about my very favorite of all my adventures: mountain hiking.  There was Mt. Etna in 2006, the hike up the mountain on the shore of Lake Como to the lighthouse on Pasquetta (the day after Easter, a public holiday in Italy) in the spring of 2007, Swiss Alps around St. Moritz, and then later around the Matterhorn in summer and winter 2007 (well, I took a train/ski life for most of it on both of those), summer camp in the Sibylline Mountains in central Italy in the summers of 2008 and 2009, looking into the crater of Mt. Vesuvius in May of 2009, hiking in the Tatras in southern Poland in 2009, Hua Shan and Huang Shan in China in the summer of 2010, and, well, Rock City on Lookout Mountain in 2011 (well, it was fun, if not quite so exotic as past years...).  But each year the mountains get a little harder on my knees.  Each year the getting-there gets more miserable.  Hua Shan involved a lot of prayer.  The peaks are always worth it, but the getting-there would be a lot more fun, too, if I kept myself in better shape in the meantime.  And my face wouldn't be so red in all the pictures.

After spending this past year entirely in the U.S., with ubiquitous cars, no sidewalks, and too many creature comforts indoors, I especially need to get into some better habits.  I was going to join some exercise classes offered by my job, but they've schedule them to where everyone from my branch can't attend them (still miffed over that one).  Once I get my new computer, I'll download some of my favorite exercise videos again.  I've thought of catching up on actually watching some of my DVD collection while peddling on the stationary bike upstairs. That doesn't seem to really be much of a workout, but I suppose it would be better than nothing.  I'd go for a walk, but it's dangerous to walk along the highway or in the parking lot at work; we've got the woods behind the house, but the summer I'd get eaten alive by bugs.  In the fall, our neighbors all deer hunt. In winter, it's dark by the time I get home.  That leaves a bit of early spring before the bugs come out too bad.   I also need to forget that Little Debbie Brownies even exist; unfortunately, the rack of them is directly within my line of view all day long at work. :(  Why does it seem  like healthy habits are so inconvenient around here?  When I lived in Italy or in China, or even in college, for that matter, you had to walk to get to public transportation.  You had to walk to the grocery store.  There were sidewalks everywhere and large safe parks to walk in.  There were neighborhoods to meander through and explore; there were towers/belfries/hills/domes to climb for the view.  The lack of walking as a part of everyday life is one of my biggest gripes about life in the U.S.  I get too lazy here.  

Getting in shape may not seem like a travel resolution, but I think it is for me--or at least, that's my biggest motivation for it.  I want to be in better shape to make my travel adventures easier and kinder to my knees. 

Now, the resolution I like to daydream the most about is, as it has been for years, to find my mountain for 2012.  I keep hoping that one of these years it's going to be to Everest base camp, or in the Andes to Machu Picchu, or, my ultimate dream, Kilamanjaro, but I don't think that any of those are going to be right for 2012.  I'm not sure what it will be...but somehow I'll find one.

Indie Travel Blog Challenge 2012

It's easy for me to get caught up in the minutiae of day-in, day-out life...playing games on my kindle, wasting hours on those life-sucking inventions pinterest and facebook timeline, and fiddling with the layout of the blog instead of actually writing anything...as well as those little things like my job, church, family, friends...but I really do want to get back in the habit of writing.

As a means, of reminding myself and having a goal, I've decided to really, really try to keep up with the 2012 Indie Blog Challenge.  There will be a new prompt every week (and I'm already over a week behind), all about my favorite subject, travel.  Please nag me if I don't keep up.

New Chapter in Life

As usual, I've gotten behind on my blog.  I guess the act of writing, especially about traveling, makes me want...more.  When I'm writing, I long to learn, to experience, to grow, to have adventures...and over this past year I was living a life where those thoughts were a bit...dangerous isn't exactly the right word.  Well, thinking too much about traveling, writing, learning, having adventures made me dissatisfied with the life I was living.  It was easier to just not think about those things as I tried to be "normal" and settle in to small-town life.  So I focused my mind on other things, because the days I spent listening to travel podcasts or researching destinations made me feel like a traitor to this life I thought I wanted.

In the end, the dissatisfaction with that life won out.  I don't want to have to avoid what makes me happy, what makes me feel alive, what makes me feel like I'm developing myself as a person, just to be relatively contented in a life that I'm told is "normal" and that everyone around me is happy with.  And so I've left that life, and although I hate that it hurt the person I shared that life with, I can look to the future with excitement again.  I'm still staying in middle Tennessee for a while; I've got a (broken down, unfortunately) car to pay off, a new job, and some life-organizing to do, and besides, I need to save up some money.  But I'm planning.  I'm dreaming.  I'm living my life again, instead of tagging along on someone else's.

And so, I decided it was time to revive this blog.  I've got so many stories I've never told, and now I know there will be stories ahead to tell as well. 

Photos 5

 It was a blissful experience after a long, hot, hard bike ride over rough roads to the Dragon Bridge to ride back on a bamboo raft on the Li River.  This was taken near Yangshuo, China, in late July or early August of 2010. 

 Another shot of the Li River, near sunset, as I rode a bamboo raft. 

 Moon Hill, with an amazing crescent-shaped hole in it, near Yangshuo, China, in 2010. 

 One of my favorite little hikes as a child was to Jackson Falls, on the Natchez Trace, about seven miles from where I grew up near Columbia, Tennessee.  This particular shot was taken in the spring of 2011. 

 I love cities...I especially love cities that have a downtown worth walking around.  This is in Memphis on a cold December day in 2011. 

Sunrise, as seen from the summit of Hua Shan, a mountain I climbed in July of 2010, in China.