... or how I traveled over 17,000 km for 8 weeks to avoid an 11 hour flight
Hello wonderful people,
Sorry for the long pause in the updates. I arrived in Chiang Mai about 5 weeks ago and things have been very hectic since. Now I finally have some time to tell you about my adventure from Israel to Thailand. My journey took me through many countries where I could not communicate and didn't know how things generally worked. I also never really bothered to do any research on how to do any of what I tried to do. Instead I just showed up and hoped things would work out. Not surprisingly, this strategy led to many obstacles. I was very lucky in that I did not encounter the three things that can cause, in my opinion, the biggest problems while travelling. I did not get physically injured or seriously ill, I had nothing stolen, and I had no big conflicts with the police. Those aside, the number of problems and unexpected turns and twist was pretty astounding, but ultimately it is everything that went wrong that made the journey as amazing as it was. I practiced accepting every step of the journey and learning to enjoy it. I hope you'll enjoy the story.
The One Flight
Getting from Israel to Thailand is pretty simple. There are several direct flights from Tel-Aviv to Bangkok every day. But I don't like flying. It's expensive, environmentally destructive, and most importantly, boring. The probability of adventures and mishaps is much lower, and when I fly I don't get to experience what exists between the two locations I am travelling between. I am in no rush to arrive at any destination, and my entire existence currently revolves around wandering, so there is no point in rushing through the path to arrive at a destination. With that in mind, I decided to try to get to Thailand without flying. Leaving Israel without flying is tricky though. I could go to Egypt, but that is in the wrong direction, and I could go to Jordan, but all of the countries surrounding Israel and Jordan are ones that would not be too happy with an Israeli, even a German born in Israel. Instead I decided to try my luck by sea.
I went to Haifa to try to find a large cargo vessel that is headed to Southeast Asia that might be willing to take me along. I figured once I was in Southeast Asia I could find my way to Thailand. But with security at the port in Haifa I wasn't even allowed in to try to speak with captains and crew. If I had any connections, I may have been able to figure out some way, but as it was, I crossed the idea of the list.
Plan B was to find a boat that would take me to Turkey, or otherwise to Cyprus, assuming I could get to Turkey from there. I spent a lot of time looking through visa information and discovered that with a Israeli/German passport combo I could go from Turkey to Thailand and only need to apply for a Chinese visa beforehand. However, my plans were again thwarted. I discovered that sailing season more or less ended in late October/ mid November. And I was trying to sail in early December. Boats were still going out, but there were so few that it would take weeks to find one. I was feeling stuck and increasingly depressed and anxious, so I cracked and bought a flight to Istanbul, the only flight I took in this trip. I figured a cheap 1 hour flight still offered me the chance to see the way from the Middle East to Southeast Asia. Once it was decided that I will go overland, I considered applying for the Chinese visa in Israel, but I was feeling lazy and rushed, and I bought the flight only two days in advance, so I decided I would just do it in Istanbul. This turned out to be a mistake, one that had massive consequences on the rest of the trip.
Chasing the Visa West
I was on a hitchhiking high after the hitchhiking I had done in Israel, so I decided to continue whenever possible. After some struggles, I managed to get a ride from near the airport in Istanbul to only a short walking distance away from where my friend from college who I was planning on staying with lives. This was the first in a series of amazingly generous gestures by people, especially those who pick me up hitchhiking, that I experienced. The man who picked me up drove an extra 10 or so kms past where he was going to drop me off right at the ferry that would take me across to the Europe side of Istanbul.
I had a great time in Istanbul. Staying at Alix's place was extremely comfortable and convenient, and it was a lot of fun to sit around and catch up with a friend from college who I hadn't seen since graduating. The area she lived in, around Taksim could be explored for hours. Even the largest streets were small, uneven, winding alleyways with fresh fruit sellers and bakeries dotted along the way. When I wasn't sleeping off my exhaustion, I would wander around, battling the steep hills in her neighborhood. The first day I could, I headed to the Chinese consulate in Istanbul, which was a good 20 km out of the main part of the city, but it was closed. When I came back on a day it was open, I was informed that they only accept Turkish passports and that I would have to apply through a travel agency. I went to speak with the travel agency but their offer seemed expensive and required a long wait period, so I declined. This proved to be another example of lacking of foresight on my part. I wasn't exactly sure what to do next. For a while I had been debating whether I should enter Russia through Ukraine or Georgia. I had just decided to go the Georgia route, but this new turn of events, mixed with finally hearing back from a friend in Romania, convinced me to go through Europe. I figured I could apply for the visa in Romania, and since I was applying with a German passport and Romania is part of the EU, I should have no problems.
I quickly sent out a slew of couchsurfing requests to hosts in Bucharest and started planning my trip. On the day I left it was raining so I decided to take the train from Istanbul to the border with Bulgaria and hitchhike from there. The train arrived after 11 at night, and as I was wandering around I couldn't find how to get out of the parking lot or where the path to the border was. Some man working at the station convinced me to stay there and wait for a train. I tried to explain that I didn't want a train but neither of us understood each other very well. I decided it was better to sleep in the station and wait for morning anyway. I got woken up several times to go through immigration and customs as they opened their offices at obscure hours of the night for busloads of tourists. Finally I was brought to a train that would take me over the border. When the conductor told me the price, I politely refused and went back to sleep. About an hour later, it must have been 4 am, I was woken up again by the same man who had been helping me all along. Apparently he had spoken with the train conductor who decided to let me get on the train for free, so I hopped on.
The train was not exactly free. Once we crossed into Bulgaria there was a Bulgarian conductor who claimed they charge separately, but at this point I decided not to argue and just paid him the fare. The rest of the train ride I got to sleep and chat with a group of Gazans who had come to Bulgaria seeking asylum. Conditions were horrifying no matter where they went. They escaped from the dangers of the open air Gaza prison to the restricted open air prison of a Bulgarian refugee camp.
I made only one stop in Bulgaria in a town called Stara Zagora. This was my first exposure in a while to below freezing temperatures. The most striking thing was how much it felt like stereotypical eastern Europe. With cooperation from the weather, everything seemed grey and bleak. There was a latent feeling of neglect hanging around everything but the fanciest areas. And everything seemed pretty empty. Even when the streets that were full felt like they were empty. A highlight of the visit was buying apples for the equivalent of $.30 /kg and falling asleep in a public park. But it was too cold to sleep outside, so I went and slept at the train station, joining several other people who had no place to sleep that night. No one seemed to care; the train station was so cold that I pulled out my sleeping bag and crawled in at some point and no one said anything to me. Early in the morning I caught a train to the border with Romania.
Transportation across the border was really expensive, so I decided to try hitchhiking. But hitchhiking across borders is not so easy because not so many people cross them, and I was too cold and tired to stand around in one place for too long. So I kept walking toward the border, stopping for breaks to try to pick up a ride whenever I reached a spot that seemed promising and then continuing to walk. Two or three hours later I had walked all the way to the border and it was starting to get dark. I got very funny looks from the border guards because the crossing is far from anything, so they don't get many people crossing on foot, but they let me through anyway. Once I was on the Romania side I immediately got a ride with a car full of teenagers who took me to a bus station to go to Bucharest.
My time in Bucharest was very pleasant, albeit wet and cold. I was in a little apartment with a couchsurfer and spent much of my time relaxing and reading, occasionally venturing out to see the streets. It was Hanukkah time so I found a synagogue and attended a Hanukkah service, which was very strange since it was mostly about praying and a quick candle lighting at the end, not what I am used to. But then I made latkas and had another small party with my couchsurfing host. The first time I went to the consular section of the Chinese embassy in Bucharest to try to arrange my visa, I arrived only half an hour before they closed, and was kicked out before I could turn in my papers. When I returned the next day I had some very unhappy news delivered to me by a very angry Chinese man. First, to apply for the visa I indeed needed either a letter of invitation from someone in China or flight and hotel bookings. And second, to apply for a Chinese visa in Romania with a German passport, I needed a Romanian residence permit. I don't know what the requirements for a Romanian residence permit are, and looking back that may have been the easiest route, but I decided that was not an option.
I spent a day or so in a semi depressed stupor trying to figure out what to do next. The thought of abandoning my plans altogether crossed my mind several times. I had no real obligation to go to Thailand. The thought of giving up and buying a flight also occurred to me. But both of these thoughts made me so unhappy that I decided they were untenable. There was only one thing I could do, I had to travel 1,500 km west, away from Thailand, to apply for a visa in Munich.
Hitchhiking to Germany
I have hardly ever hitchhiked before. In my last visit to Israel I started hitchhiking on my own for the first time. But in Israel I was going short distances, in warm weather, and I could speak the language. All of the sudden I had decided to hitchhike 1500 km through countries where I didn't speak the language and where the weather was below freezing the whole time. The experience was extremely rewarding.
I began with what I worried was a bad omen for the trip but may have just been my bad trip karma balled up at the beginning. It seemed no one ever checked for tickets on the trolley in Bucharest, and I couldn't figure out where to buy tickets, so I took the trolley out to the edge of the city to catch a ride without paying. I had a choice between two stops where I could get off. I chose the later one, and of course between those two stops inspectors came on, even though I was the only person on the trolley. The fine was not too expensive, 50 RON (about $14) to be paid immediately, and when I showed them I didn't have enough they accepted the 40 something I had. As a result. I started my trip with no cash.
Getting picked up in Romania is extremely easy. I've heard it argued that Romania is the best country for hitchhiking in the world. At the edge of town, people line up to get picked up. And these aren't travelers, most are locals. Some of them were older women coming back from grocery shopping. Hitchhiking in Romania is a supplement to public transportation, and often the only form of non-private transportation available for those not inside city limits. The only tricky part is that most cars will only go to the next town over, and that many drivers expect to be paid, especially truck drivers. The first few hundred km were fine, but then I got into a truck headed for Sibiu. We squeezed 4 people and my bags into the back seat. As everyone got off, the driver invited me to join him up front. He spoke a little bit of German, and using it he asked me to give him money. I tried to explain that all I had were a few cents because the police took all of my money, but he did not seem to take it well, and started yelling, mostly in Romanian so I had no idea what he was saying. Finally he asked me if I had food and so I gave him some candy I got from my last couchsurfing host and a few apples, which seemed to be good enough.
Sibiu itself turned out to be a little difficult. I got dropped off at the edge of town and had to walk almost an hour and a half to the other edge. The area I reached was still not on the main highway, which circled around the town. As a result, none of the cars were going very far. After about half an hour of waiting, passing up a handful of rides that would only take me a few dozen km, it started getting dark and I decided to take a ride to the next town over, even if it was small. By the time I arrived in Sebesh it was completely dark. It turns out that a small town has a few big disadvantages, one of them being that there were no more trains leaving the station due west that night, and that the train station closed at 9 pm, which meant I couldn't sleep there. I wandered around the town a bit, weighing my options and finally decided to try my luck hitchhiking to the next town. I found a good spot that was on the main highway (but at a roundabout, this "main highway" was something like a state high in the US, if even that), and was well lit. I put on all of the clothing I could, made a big sign, and hoped for good luck.
And good luck came. Perhaps in 5 minutes I got picked up by a very nice man, commuting for work. He works for a Spanish company so we were able to communicate in Spanish. It was one of those people who usually don't pick up hitchhikers, but he felt bad for me because it was so dark and cold. I got a pleasant ride in a luxury car, and he even gave me 30 RON (about $9) to buy food when we parted. I had heard about hitchhikers getting money, but I never thought it would happen to me. What a pleasant surprise. By then it was quite late so I just went to the train station, spending the first part of the evening just hanging around and chatting with the homeless people there who spoke enough English, and the second part trying to sleep on the unbelievably uncomfortable plastic seats even though it could not have been warmer than 5 C (40 F) in the station.
I left before it was light out (this is winter, it was already past 7) and walked to the edge of town, where I immediately caught a ride to the last big town before the border from a guy who was very nice but insisted on trying to ask me questions in Romanian. I guess because I could say "I don't speak Romanian" in Romanian he assumed I could speak it. From Arad, I caught a ride to the border from a truck driver that tried to over charge me, but I managed to haggle him down. And then I was in Hungary!
One thing I learned on this trip, the areas right around borders are not good for hitchhiking. I'm not sure why, but I guess when there is not much at the border, cars don't venture there too often. In any case, I stood for almost two hours before finally getting picked up by an off duty police officer. He could only take me to the next town over. By this time it was getting late, I was exhausted, and it was starting to rain. -5 C and snow is fine, I could stand in it for hours if I have some warm clothing. But rain defeats me. Even with all my rain gear on, some parts of me are bound to get soaked, and my bags are sure to get soaked as well. So I caved and bought a bus ticket the rest of the way to Budapest.
Once in Budapest I somehow navigated my way to my friend Umang's apartment. There I had a nice layover, spending two nights, walking around and seeing the city (or the fog that enveloped it pretty much the whole time I was there), and spending time just being warm and eating delicious Indian food that Umang made. It was a great visit. I did some looking into buses to Munich because I didn't know what hitchhiking would be like once I got into Germany and Austria. Reports on
Hitchwiki were not promising. But everything was too expensive, so I decided to hitch out after all.
My trip out of Budapest was even more of a blundered mess than my trip out of Bucharest, even though the hitchhiking went great. I stopped to by some food before getting on the buses that would take me to the outskirts of town. When I got on the bus I realized with horror that I did not have my ticket that was in my wallet because my wallet was missing. I searched through all my belonging and became convinced I left it next to the cash register at the spar market, so I ran back there as quickly as I could, and sure enough my wallet was sitting next to the cash register, with nothing inside missing no less. I took a good ten minutes to calm down from that episode. When I got back on the bus, I rode it for a very long time, and got off at the final stop, only to realize that the reason the stop I needed to go to was coincidentally the final stop was because I misread the google directions and copied down the direction the bus was headed instead of the stop I needed to get off at. After a lot of fumbling between buses, I finally made it to my spot only around noon. I was pretty worried because the spot did not look very promising, but I got lucky nevertheless and got a ride in only 15 minutes that took me to a rest stop several dozen km from the border. At the rest stop it seemed my luck had waned though. It began raining and no one would stop for me. It took me over an hour to get a ride, by which time things were quite damp, but it wasn't very cold and my rain gear worked surprisingly well. Best of all, I got into a car that went all the way to Germany! A few short hours after getting in the car, I was dropped off at Regensburg, about 100 kms from Munich.
I spent about two hours trying to get a ride out of Regensburg, but it was dark and my intersection was not ideal. Also I was not going in the preferred direction, I had two or three people stop for me, but none going toward Munich. Finally I gave up, walked to the train station, and took the train. My first real hitchhiking trip with all of its twists and turns, had come to a close.
Munich Couchsurfing Headquarters
But the journey hadn't even reached the halfway point. I had been in touch with a few friends and friends of friends in Munich to try to find a place to stay for my time there, but had not gotten any positive responses. I arrived in the Munich train station at 9 pm and I had no idea where I was going to sleep. But I got lucky, I found some free internet, and had some positive news waiting for me. A friend of a friend of a friend had been contacted on my behalf to see if I could surf his place. This guy, Stefan, was notorious for constantly hosting couchsurfers. I had barely been in touch with him, I don't remember if I sent him anything. But I had his phone number and his address. Of course I had no German SIM, so I spent about an hour trying to find ways to call or text him via internet, but got no response. It was getting later and later so I finally decided to just head over and hope things go well.
When I arrived, a somewhat bewildered Stefan opened the door. There were already 7 other couchsurfers and a friend spending the night at his place. But it was not a problem. Stefan was used to hosting many couchsurfers every week, and his living room had many large couches that put together were enough to hold all of us. Stefan's place was an amazing mix of so many things I loved. As I already mentioned, couchsurfers came through there on the regular. I think I met a good 15-20 in the ten days I spent at Stefan's, and became friends with a handful of those. Stefan was also an avid dumpster diver. There were several great dumpsters close to Stefan's house. As a result he had a fully stocked kitchen teaming with food, dry and fresh. All, those who lived with Stefan and any couchsurfers who came through ate as much as they could, and still there was plenty left over. The stay ended up being truly exceptional, I connected on a deeper level and made lasting friendships such as I didn't at any other point on the trip. In fact I may go to meet Stefan's sister (who was also his neighbor) somewhere here in Southeast Asia while she does her internship in Vietnam. My experience at Stefan's is one of the starkest examples of how the things that went wrong led to the best results. I only got there because of many poorly thought out steps on my behalf, but my journey would have been much for the worst without my visit in Munich.
Aside from dumpster diving and eating the delicious food we found, I spent my time hanging out with the awesome people at the house, exploring the city, watching A Christmas Story for the first time without falling asleep, and after three visits to the visa center and much hassle and drama, getting my Chinese visa. Of course I only got a single entry 30 day visa, meaning if I wanted to return to China after my time in Thailand (the original plan) I needed to work out some extension once I arrived in China. But for the moment, I was just thrilled to have it, and ready to start heading in the right direction again.
Difficulty with the Holidays and Romanian New Year
The same morning I got my visa, December 27th, I packed everything up and headed for the road to begin hitchhiking back to Budapest. I had a hard time finding a good spot out of Munich, but I got lucky and did not have to wait too long. Unfortunately my ride could only take me as far as the first rest stop on the highway. I thought hitchhiking would be easy because the 26th was still a holiday so I figured many people would be driving home from visiting family. I was wrong. All of the cars were completely full because people were going on long trips for winter break. Either cars were full of kids or people somehow filled them up with blankets and camping supplies, or whatever it is they were carrying. It took me four rides and many hours just to get across the border to the outskirts of Salzburg which is only an hour or so drive if you go straight from Munich.
I was at big rest station with a hotel and a McDonalds. The first stop in Austria. And I was stuck. I arrived around five, so it was already getting dark, there was not a lot of traffic, and all the cars were full. I went from trying to thumb cars coming out of the drive way to making signs and going up to every single person or group of people and suggestively pointing at my signs. Many people really wanted to help me, I got really close to getting a ride straight to Budapest, but every seat was spoken for. around 7 or 8 I was beginning to lose hope and starting to scout out good sleeping spots. The good thing was it wasn't that cold, only hovering around 0 C. But I figured as long as there were cars and I wasn't exhausted I should keep trying to get a ride. around 9, roughly four hours after arriving, I got my lucky break and some guy on his way to Vienna picked me up. Very nice Austrian man that I had some fun conversations with. I don't know if he was impressed by my trip or mostly just took pity on me, but even though we arrived in Vienna after 11, he was willing to drive all the way to the opposite side of the city to drop me off at a gas station that would be good for hitchhiking to Budapest, and he gave me 20 euro before he left. A terribly slow day turned on itself, one minute things look down, the next everything is different.
I slept in the McDonalds attached to the gas station until, at 1 am, one of the workers came and deeply apologized that they have to close the store (is this real? People are apologizing to me for waking me up and kicking me out of a store after I slept there for an hour without buying anything? Why can't we have more of this in the US?) I ended up setting up outside in a nicely protected space. It was not the warmest or most comfortable night of my life, but it was very manageable, and a new experience - sleeping at a gas station. In the morning I found a ride straight to Budapest, in fact I was dropped off a 20 minute walk from Umang's house, after only waiting 30 minutes.
My second visit to Budapest was a little more diversified and relaxed. I gave myself more time to enjoy the city, Umang had more time to hang out, and the weather was a lot nicer. I even met up with a friend from Boston whose family lives in Budapest and was visiting for break. Nothing too exciting happened, except perhaps for the large quantities of delicious Indian food, but it was again a nice break from the craziness, and a good quality time with a good friend.
because of communication difficulties with my friend Patricia in Romania who I was trying to go visit and spend New Years with, I didn't leave Umang's house until the 31st. This turned out to be another bad day for hitchhiking. There were simply very few cars on the road. Everyone was on holiday. I managed to get a ride outside of the city, where I stood for a long time. The first car to pull over for me was a police car. But they did not give me a ride. According to them, I was walking on the highway I was standing at the exist of a rest stop, but to them that still counted as the highway. I tried to explain to them that I had not walked past the sign that marks the beginning of the highway but they were very uninterested. So I got a 50,000 Fortin ($230) fine. Good thing I'm not Hungarian so they can't do much if I don't pay it.
With some luck and some assertiveness in the form of just going up to drivers who were filling up gas and asking for rides, I managed to get very close to the city of Debrecen, the closest large city to the Romanian border, and met some lovely people along the way. It was already late in the afternoon, and I wanted to get to Cluj in Romania in time to celebrate the New Year, plus I knew that the closer it got to New Years eve the less traffic I would find on the highway. So I gave up hitchhiking for the day, and went with public transit. Public transit options were not plentiful, Hungarian trains are expensive, and any train that crosses a border is particularly expensive. I ended up on a train to Oradea, the first city across the border. I was suppose to arrive in Oradea at 8, and i just hoped I would find my way to Cluj from there. The entire time I was running around, pacing frantically and feeling my heart pounding. I was still amped up from my encounter with the police, and trying to figure out whether or not this ticket was going to cause me any problems. But also, I was seeing visions of myself celebrating New Years somewhere alone and cold, and was very sad by this prospect. New Years is one of my favorite holidays. It has no religious significance and no oppressive historical baggage. I also like having a holiday that is not about spending time with family, since so many of them are. It's simply an excuse for everyone to have work off so we can all get together with friends and have fun. What could be better? I think in other circumstances the prospect of spending New Years alone would not have upset me so much, but compounding everything, the potential troubled me greatly.
But as always seems to happen, something came up when I was in need. When I was switching trains between Debrecen and Oradea, I met Mirka. She was lying on her bags, kind of depressed and tired, and at some point I heard her ask someone in English when the train to Oradea leaves, so I decided to chat with her. I learned that two years ago she did an ERASMUS program (study abroad in Europe) in Oradea. She lived in a house of ERASMUS students, who all got very close to each other. They decided every New Years to find some spot in Europe and all get together so they can spend a few days all together at least once every year. This year they chose to come back to Oradea, so she was on her way there. She was coming from Slovakia and had a crazy mess of buses and trains bringing her there, including one or two that she missed for one reason or another. I told her a little bit about my trip and my mishaps to cheer her up, and we got to my plans for the night. She asked me what I would do if we showed up in Oradea and there were no more trains to Cluj. I half joking, half fishing for an invitation, answered that "I'll just party with you and your friends". She immediately told me I was more than welcome to, there would definitely be room, at least floor space, to sleep, and everyone was super nice. It was such a warm welcome that I decided to completely abandon my low-chance-of-succeed plans of going to Cluj and opted to just celebrate New Years with them.
It was one of the best New Years I had ever had. Ever since I started celebrating New Years without my parents, most celebrations end in some unpleasant event. I think every year I was in high school the party I went to got broken up by the police, and my senior year I got an MIP at the party, By the time I went to smaller parties and most of us were of age, excessive drinking became an issue. Once my friend got sick and vomited all over me, another time I was sick myself. There have been some quieter ones in between, but those were also less exciting.
This New Years was perfect. Mirka's ERASMUS group (5 people made it out to Oradea) was extremely sweet, friendly, inviting, interesting to talk to. I really enjoyed them simply as people, and felt comfortable with them even though I had only met them a few hours before. We arrived at the club around 1 am and stayed until it closed at 5, dancing almost the entire time. And to top it off, the last song of the night was "The Dog Days are Over" By Florence + the Machine, a song that immediately reminded me of my friend Ellen who I was originally planning on spending this New Years with. What I feared would be disastrous turned into a wonderful night and a group of new friends all around Europe.
The next day I headed out in the afternoon and arrived in Cluj in the evening to be reunited for the first time in four years with Patricia.
Accidental Friends
Patricia and I became friend in December 2008 when we got stuck in Rome together. I was flying back from Israel with Alitalia, and during my layover in Rome, their workers went on strike. I was in a terminal that serviced primarily Alitalia flights, and we were a few days before Christmas, so you can imagine how crazy everything was. Except for the fact that I was missing the precious few days I would have in Portland for my winter break, I found the entire situation hilarious. Spending so much time waiting around, you quickly start talking and making friends with the people around you. I soon met Patricia, a Romanian who was going to visit some friends in Chicago. She had only been out of Romania once, on an organized trip, and had never flown by herself. She did not find the situation nearly as funny as I did and was pretty confused and panicked by the whole situation. I helped her out as much as I could, explaining what was going on whenever I knew. I was also in touch with my parents and they ended up buying replacement tickets for both of us online (which she paid me back for). Since we had some extra time, we spent a day wandering around Rome together. Before parting we exchanged contact info, and I told her that if I'll go to Romania I would come visit her. I finally had an opportunity to make good on my promise.
We hadn't really kept in touch all this time, so I was a little worried about how we would get along. But although we didn't hold any particularly long conversations, we actually got along really well. There was some really pleasant feeling the entire time, a feeling of long lost reunification, even if neither of us actually expected to ever see the other person.
Patricia gave me a full Romanian tour. I spent one night at her place in Cluj, one night at her parents place in a small town, and one night in a tiny village in the mountains. My favorite part about these visits is that the bond is so much stronger now. I may have been skeptical about contacting her before, but now it's clear that we will get in touch if we are in the same place.
Frozen Lands
From the mountain village I took a train to a larger city near the Ukrainian border, preparing to head into Russia. But with my luck, by the time I had arrived in the late afternoon, there were no more trains or buses that crossed the border or even ones that went to the border town. Luckily, when I was at the bus station trying to figure out my options, some man overheard me and said he was waiting for a friend and was driving him to the town right next to the border. He could drop me off and I would just have to hitchhike from the border to the first city in Ukraine. That was an offer I couldn't pass up. Both the man and his friend really enjoyed hearing some of my travel stories and travel plans. We even tried to exchange contact information so they could keep up with my trip, but I never heard back from them. I did, however, pose for pictures with them. I was a little worried of hitchhiking at the Ukrainian border, especially after dark. I already told you how bad hitchhiking at borders tends to be. But I got lucky and was picked up by a very friendly truck driver in mere minutes.
In Ukraine, communication was a much more complicated game. The level of English of many of the people around me ranged from enough for getting the basics across to only hello and no. After lots of signaling and such with the truck driver, I explained I was trying to take a train to Kiev that same night. He realized I would have a hard time navigating the way myself, so he parked, took me to a bus stop, and asked people at the bus stop to tell me what bus to get on and tell the driver to drop me off at the train station. Since I didn't have any Ukrainian money yet, he even paid my bus fair. Another unbelievably generous person on this trip.
At the train station I learned there were no more trains leaving for Kiev that night. The attendants spoke only a few words of English and were not interested in trying to understand my questions or to help me understand their answers. I tried to figure out why there were no trains, why the trains that were listed weren't running, and what my other options were, but they would just give me these ugly looks and tell me long answers in Ukrainian that I of course understood nothing of. Luckily I ran across a small group of young Ukrainians who saw my confused look and my repeated failed attempts to get information and offered to help. It turns out all the trains listed were running but the tickets were sold out. I had arrived for the weekend of Eastern Orthodox Christmas when everyone was going to see their family (and would later be trying to go back to where they live). I had the most amazing luck with holidays during this trip, always travelling at the worst time possible.
Anyway, they took me to the bus station and got me on a bus to Kiev that evening. The trains from Kiev to Moscow were sold out or prohibitively expensive, so I took a train to a town near the border in the afternoon and spent the morning strolling around the city. Once at the border town, I once again experienced the extreme generosity and willingness of people to help me. A young woman went to the bus station with me to translate and help me buy my next tickets. I discovered I could not get across the border until the next morning. I spent the night in the bus station, almost missed my bus in the morning, but by the next afternoon, I had arrived in Kursk.
If communicating in Ukraine was difficult, it was even worse in Russia. But I managed to snag on to someone who took the bus with me and had a long lay over in the Kursk train station. He didn't really speak any English either, but he was willing to patiently gesture, draw, and use his limited vocabulary to explain to me what was going on. He also shared some food with me, showed me pictures, and tried a couple of times to start a conversation.
When we arrived in Kursk, all the cheap train tickets to Moscow had already sold out. He helped me find a night bus that was still somewhat affordable. And realizing how easily things sold out, I decided to by my onward ticket from Moscow to Novosibirsk. Buses and trains in Russia were not that expensive, and I decided that hitchhiking vast distances in -20 C to -30 C with such short days when I was already so behind schedule was not a good idea.
This final pleasant encounter set me thinking about all the amazing generosity I had experienced from the people around me. I compared this trek with my long string of bus rides through South and Central America. In Latin America I met much fewer people, got a lot less help, and no one really went out of their way to help me. I'm still not sure what causes this discrepancy. Culture could certainly play a role. And because I was so lost all the time I also asked for a lot more help. But even when I asked for help in Latin America, it almost never came in such amazing generous quantities, people simply answered my questions. I think much this difference could be attributed to my relative position. In Latin America, where I had a strong command of Spanish, I was an independent and capable individual, just new to town. Also, I was one of dozens of tourists any individual I spoke to was likely to see that day. In Ukraine and Russia however, I was a helpless dependent child, barely able to hold my own without the help of whoever I was talking to, and such a helpless tourist was probably a phenomenon they did not see everyday. I think people are inspired to be more generous and give more when it is clear that the person in front of them needs more.
I arrived in Moscow in the morning and my train wasn't until the afternoon. Moscow was particularly warm that day, I think it actually went above freezing at one point, so I went and walked around the Kremlin. Then I simply returned to the station and got excited for several days of relaxing on trains.
And relax I did. The trains are kept unbelievably hot for a reason not so clear to me. I spent the entire time in pajamas and barefoot, and I was still sweating. I got really lucky on the first train ride, the compartment next to me was full a guys who were very friendly, and one who spoke impressively conversation English. The guys were fascinated by me and conducted group conversations translated by our English speaking friend. I really enjoyed sitting around and chatting with them, and actually ended up Facebook friends with a couple of them. They also felt a need to take care of me and constantly gave me food and tried to help me out. I think everyone thought it was weird that I was only eating bread. Russians bring a lot of food onto their train and spend the entire time eating. It is amazing where one can make friends and find community. Another highlight of the train ride was a deaf couple that was in the double bunk across the isle from my compartment. Their way of interacting with each other was so endearing, that although I was worried I was being creepy, I loved just sitting and watching them.That was a 49 hour train.
The second jaunt to Uland Ude was much less eventful and only 39 hours, but equally relaxing. Once I got out at Ulan Ude, I was back to confusion and trying to figure out how to advance. I kept getting conflicting information about how and when I could catch a bus that would take me straight to Ulaanbaator, the capitol of Mongolia, but everyone said it would only leave the next morning, and I could not find a station that would sell me a ticket, so I decided I didn't trust it. After playing a little in their ice sculpture park, I caught an evening bus to Kyachta, the town right on the border with Mongolia. Kyachta had nothing. It was a few streets with houses. Luckily some guy who got off the mini bus with me was looking for a hotel because I would have never found one myself. I probably would have had to go door knocking and hope someone would take me in.
After many language barrier issues, money problems, and other miscommunications, I was checked into a room with this other guy, the first bed I had in a week. There were no buses, it turned out, that crossed into Mongolia, so I joined a shared taxi. The driver kept trying to drop me off at the border to wait for a bus, claiming that the first city along the way, Sukhanbaator, would not have any buses to Ulaanbaator. I didn't want to wait for some expensive international bus, instead I had him drop me off at the intersection outside and tried to hitchhike. It was -30 C outside but the sun was shining and except for my numb feet I felt fine. After 15 minutes, some guy led me to the "bus station" which indeed had no buses but were collective taxis gathered and I could get a collective taxi chain to Ulaanbaator for a reasonable price. I'm sad to say this man did not lead me out of a desire to help, but because he wanted to swindle some money from me, which he succeeded at doing, to the tune of $8-9.
After arriving in Ulaanbaator I managed to get some random person at a bus stop to led me to the train station, and bought a ticket for the night train to the border with China. The man who shared my compartment gave me some useful advice about how to cross the border but unfortunately I didn't really understand some of the suggestion, so I missed the three buses that cross, the only buses that day. Cars charge a lot of money for the crossing, and I actually didn't have very much cash on me, so I waited until I could find someone who would take me for the amount of money I had.
I found someone. the car we got in, which was the same type of car many of the people took, may have actually been a car 30 or 40 years ago. At this point it was a box on wheels. The back hatch was nailed shut, and the doors were held shut with rope. We weren't driving anywhere far, only about 10 kms total on slow roads, so that was not a problem. What was a problem is that we had to wait in lines, sometimes for an hour or two, first to go through immigration out of Mongolia, and then to go through immigration into China. There were lines in the cars and then lines on foot. Being on foot was fine. But in the car, there was no heating whatsoever, the temperature outside hovered around -25 C.and we were shaded from the sun. I was cold, but most of my body could handle it. My problem was my feet. They went from kind of numb to feeling like they are big heavy squarish blocks at the bottom of my legs. I didn't really mind that either, but then they started hurting. Unbelievable stinging and muscular aches. It was the longest and by far the most excruciating border crossing I have experienced. On the other side of the border our "car" ran out of gas and got towed by a rope for a while.
I arrived in China, and all the rules changed. I could talk.
Beijing
My original plan after crossing the border into China was to take the first most direct route to Kunming, the capitol of Yunnan which sits a mere night bus ride away from the border with Laos, and to try to work out my Chinese visa extension there. But the holidays continued to follow me. Although it was only mid January, and the Spring festival was not until February 10th, the tickets were sold out for the next few days. It turns out people begin returning home from Beijing as early as a month before the holidays.
Change plans. I decided to go to Beijing, work out my visa issues there, and then head straight for Thailand. This turned out to be a very lucky turn of events. I began emailing all of my friends in Beijing and scheduling when I would meet them, and sent a barrage of couchsurfing requests. One of the couchsurfing requests worked and I spent almost my entire time in Beijing with a very interesting Chinese woman who just finished a four year program in England. She was very eccentric and used a sharp tongue when discussing many subjects, including me. She was one of the few people who would blatantly and strongly criticize my Chinese abilities. But she was also very generous and genuinely interested in helping me and being my friend.
By some amazing magic, I was able to squeeze in meeting with everyone I knew in Beijing (5-6 different people) in only 4 days. I was running around every day trying to see everybody, but it was wonderful to catch up, to practice my Chinese, and to see what everyone has been doing since I last left them.
The visa part was less successful. As seemed to be a recurring pattern, I was not able to submit my application on the first day. I think I visited offices for managing Chinese visas more than ten times during this journey. In any case, the next day I was informed all they could give me was an additional thirty days beginning immediately, an extension completely useless to me considering the situation I was in. After absorbing the shock, I simply decided to extended my stay in Beijing another couple of days and not return to China this time around. It would have to wait until I could be better prepared with documents to provide me with a better visa.
I absolutely loved being in Beijing. I got many concerned emails because I arrived the day after international news freaked out over Beijing hitting record high pollution levels (
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/science/earth/beijing-air-pollution-off-the-charts.html?_r=0) (an event that happens every year), but it really didn't bother me. I was so enthralled with everything around me. The wonderful food, the complex writing, the familiar language and sounds. Most of all I loved walking through the streets and seeing the chaos. Chaos is not the right word for it, because in its own way everything is very organized, but it has a sense of being so chaotic. Some people have their rooms/desks/closets/workshops in a state of complete mess, it looks like everything is just in big random piles, but if they have to find anything they can do it in seconds, sometimes faster than someone with a neat and organized space. That's what it feels like. From an outside perspective everything is a mess, and many individuals, stalls, shops, streets, carts, all looks like random articles strewn around haphazardly But the interactions were well maintained, so everything worked around everything else in harmony. The pieces fit. I think what was so exciting for me was recognizing that I am familiar enough, I'm not sure with what, maybe with China, maybe with chaos, maybe with connections, but whatever it was, I was familiar and comfortable enough, to see the harmony weaved through the chaos. The result was that I would just start smiling big or laughing at random times while walking down the street because I was so happy to be there. What an amazing country!
I also got a first hand experience of how massive Beijing is. My couchsurfing host lived in the far corner of the city, and the subways there were not well connected so that I usually had to switch twice to go anywhere. I had to ride four different lines and travel over 20 km to get to the train station. Somehow I didn't calculate how long everything would take when I left for the train, and I missed it. Since it was the holidays, the next train was three days later. I was very angry with myself, but it turned out alright. My host let me stay at her place the extra three days, and I just laid low trying to catch up on work and reading books. For my next train I made sure to show up two hours early.
The Final Stretch
I knew the trip from Beijing to Thailand would be a relatively easy trip. I was excited that I was finally on the last little run, and doing a trip that I had done before, where I would be more or less familiar with the different steps. It started with a 38 hours train ride to Kunming, a ride for which I had no seat. In China, in the hard seat cars, once the seats sell out they offer a limited number of no seat tickets. Everyone I told I was going to Kunming with a no seat ticket thought I was crazy, but I was not too worried, and it in fact it did not turn out to be much of a problem. For the first part of the trip, when the train was packed and full of people with no seats, I simply laid my bag down in the isle at the end of the car and sat on top of it, sharing the other half with a couple that also did not have seats. As we went farther from Beijing, the number of standing people thinned out a bit, although the train was pretty full the whole ride. But then we started switching, people with seats would give people without seats turns, or people would sit three or four to a two person seat. I got to spend plenty of time sitting, be it on my bag or on someone's seat, and even got a decent amount of sleep. In between I got to chat with my neighbors. I didn't make any new best friends, but it helped to pass the time.
Kunming was warm. I could walk around without a jacket, days after being in Beijing and less than two weeks after leaving frozen Siberia. It was a great relief. I arrived in Mengla in the evening without any buses to take me farther. I wandered the streets until around midnight, at which point I went to the highway and began trying to hitchhike. I didn't have much else to do, since I had no intention of checking into a hotel, even the budget ones, and a local I spoke with thought my chances of getting a ride were decent. But by that hour there were maybe two or three cars passing every ten minutes, if even that. I lay down on the little patch of grass next to the highway and kept my eyes open for headlights indicating a possible ride. At about 1:30 I woke up and decided to move to a slightly more sheltered spot, so I laid down behind a planter in the parking lot of the bus station, until I woke up at 5 am, too cold to fall back asleep. I went to an internet bar and tried to get online, but they told me I needed a Chinese ID. I must have looked not so great though, because the guy invited me to just sit and rest in the internet bar and gave me some water. That's where I slept till the sun came up.
I caught one of the first mini buses to Mohan, and it was early enough that I was practically the only person getting the ride, so it went much more quickly. There was a bus where I got dropped off offering to take me straight to Huay Xai, the crossing with Thailand, but I didn't like their prices, so I decided to walk across the border and take domestic buses in Laos. This is how I did it when I did this trip in 2009. At the border I regretted my decision. I realized I could get into Thailand that same day if I took the bus, and would probably only arrive the next day if I stuck to domestic buses. I caught up with the bus and hopped on.
Later that afternoon I crossed into Thailand.
What an enormous relief. 55 days on the road and finally I had arrived. Of course I still had to get to Chiang Mai, and soon discovered I would only arrive around 10 at night, but my awesome couchsurfing host said it was not a problem and came to pick me up at the bus station. I slept in a wonderful bed that night, in a beautiful room next to the main house. The journey to Thailand was over, and my adventure in Thailand had begun.
Reflections
A lot more could have gone wrong in this journey, but I think it had enough twists and turns as it is. I don't think I would embark on a journey like this again unless I had a more flexible deadline. The hardest part of the whole trip was feeling like I was constantly late for something. But ultimately the journey was amazing. Most impressive was that the luckiest and most memorable moments, the best connections and most enjoyable experiences, happened as a result of something "going wrong". I learned quickly that I just wasn't capable of knowing enough about the future, past, or even the present, to determine whether some outcome or circumstance was "good" or "bad". I just gave up on judging. I decided that every time I made a decision, I was not choosing the experience that I believed it would produce or that I thought possible but choosing the experience that it would lead to, whatever that may be. I knew that experience would be valuable. There was no longer anything to regret. No decision was wrong, no outcome was even really wrong, it was just different compared with my expectations. I also practiced embracing everything, loving every moment. I can still get much better at that, but trying to love a lot of moments that seemed so awful and having them turn out so wonderful allowed me to greatly improve that capability. Ultimately I think that is my greatest take away from this trek, learning to regret nothing and to love everything.
The Current Plan
That story leaves off more than a month ago. I have clearly been very lazy in writing these updates. Hopefully I can get the energy together soon to tell you about the last month. For now, I can tell you that I had a wonderful time exploring Thailand with my parents, that I will be in Chiang May until mid April, then spend a month staying at two temples, and on May 17th I'll arrive in Los Angeles. If you want to visit me in Thailand, the time is now.
Good luck with your own journeys
