2013 Year-Ender: When Travel Turned Into A Black Hole

And I got sucked in.

In 2012, we were armed with all sorts of excuses: Extended honeymoon stage. A break from the mundane. Discounted airfares for tots. "Still saving up for a house (and/or still haven't decided where to buy)". Backpacking while young. Living in the now... The list went on and echoed through the beginning of 2013. 2012, no doubt was a wild child.

2013 on the other hand started out quite prim, then morphed into some bad arse that broke out of its cage named 'settling down'. The call of elsewhere was much too strong and we ran free. Directionless, that we eventually found ourselves in a black hole that is long termish travel (again).

I could make up a bunch of reasons why we're postponing domesticity. But for today I'll use portraits and landscapes to back me up.

Eriyadu Island Resort, North Male Atoll, Maldives.
1. Australia

Clockwise from top left: 1. Bro-in-law's beautiful wedding in Curzon Hall, a sandstone manor built in the 1890s. 2. Bondi Beach, finally, after so many New South Wales visits. 3. Luna's third birthday at ze Persian in-laws' house. 4. Selfeet with  my Bensimon sneakers, Sydney Harbour Bridge.

2. Philippines

Clockwise from top left: 1. Thunderbird Poro Point, San Fernando, La Union for the hubby's birthday. 2. T'nalak Festival, South Cotabato. 3. Tattooed by one of the (there's a protégé) last mambabatoks in Kalinga. 4. Hapao Rice Terraces trek, Ifugao.  

3. Myanmar

Clockwise from top left: 1. Consulting a map at Yangon International Airport (photo by Ron of fliptravels.com). 2. Luna vs. angry birds. Yangon city center walking tour (photo by Ron). 3. Sunrise at Old Bagan. 4. Bare feet and templed-out (photo also by Ron).  

4. Singapore

Clockwise from top left: 1. We love Hotel Re! Nope, not a sponsored post. 2. Catching up with sis. 3. Supertrees Grove. 4. Marina Bay Sands.

5. Laos

Clockwise from top left: 1. Wat Si Saket, Vientiane. 2. Vang Vieng. Party central no more. 3. B-52 bomb crater in Xiangkhouang Province. 4. The mysterious Plain of Jars, also in Xiangkhouang Province.
6. Turkey

Clockwise from top left: 1. Blue Mosque, Istanbul. 2. Goreme Open Air Museum, Cappadocia. 3. Oldest temple in the world, Gobekli Tepe (older than the wheel, they say). 4. Pamukkale or "Cotton Castle". Calcite-covered mountain in Denizli Province.

7.  Armenia

Clockwise from top left: 1. One of our afternoon walks around Armenia's capital, Yerevan. 2. Khor Virap, an Armenian Apostolic Church monastery in Ararat valley. 3. UNESCO World Heritage Site Monastery of Geghard, partially carved out of a mountain. 4. The Armenian Genocide Museum.

8. Georgia (Yes, it's a country!)

Clockwise from top left: 1. Svetitskhoveli Cathedral, Georgian Orthodox cathedral, Mtskheta. 2. Crossing the border by foot to Azerbaijan for Davit Gareji Monastery. 3. Ancient rock-hewn town Uplistsikhe, Eastern Georgia. 4. Former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's house in Gori.

9. Nepal

Clockwise from top left 1. Climbing Fasidega Temple, Bhaktapur Durbar Square. 2. Luna sits in a kindergarten class/day care center for two days. 3. View of Himalayan peaks from our room's balcony in Nagarkot. 4. UNESCO World Heritage Site Boudhanath, Kathmandu.  

10. Malaysia

Clockwise from top left 1. Hotel Puri, a Peranakan ancestral home housed in a gorgeous structure built in the 1800s. 2. Nyonya Laksa. 3. Christ Church, 18th century Anglican church. One of Melaka's well-known landmarks. 4. Walking tour around UNESCO World Heritage Site Melaka.

12. Maldives

 

Clockwise from top left 1. Artificial Hulhumale Island. 2. A Maldivian 'bench'. 3. Eriyadu Island Resort. 4. Chili patties. Or something like that.      If your black hole is this bewitching, will you try to crawl out of it?     

 

This year-ender post is my entry to the Pinoy Travel Bloggers’ Blog Carnival for December 2013 with the theme “The Pinoy Travel Bloggers Closing the Curtains on 2013: Love, Learn and Living”, hosted by Brenna Bustamante of The Philippine Travelogue.




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Vientiane, Laos: Wat Si Saket And Ho Phra Kaew

The oppressive warmth of the late summer rays turned the relatively short stroll into a chore. The occasional sight of drivers sleeping on hammocks hanging in their tuk-tuks made me wish I was also in the middle of a siesta in our Funky Monkey Hostel room — not minding its funky smell.

Vientiane, although a capital city, is unhurried right to the very core. And this pace easily grew on us.

Wat Si Saket is famous for its cloister wall that houses thousands of tiny Buddha images.

It was already our fourth day in the country, yet it was only the first day that we bothered seeing the sights. On our map were attractions within a two-kilometer radius and we didn't intend to go further afield. We also allotted a mere couple of hours for our roaming (after which we hit the hay again). That's life for us in Laos.

Wat Si Saket, Vientiane's oldest surviving temple.  

We found Wat Si Saket's entrance unclogged at three in the afternoon. The seller yawned as she accepted our 5,000 kip admission fee payment. Inside, there was only one group of visitors, following their guide like a brood of chicks following a hen. None went astray. It was the perfect opportunity for us to soak up the solemn atmosphere, at least for a while.

  To a monk's amusement, Luna volunteered to sweep the wat's surroundings.  

While we looked at the thousands of Buddhas surrounding the wat up close, Luna found a broom resting by a post and swept the temple grounds. Much to a monk's amusement. Wat Si Saket is Vientiane's oldest surviving temple, and was built in Siamese-style architecture — which could have saved it from being destroyed in the Siamese-Lao war.

"Oh no! No more heads!", Luna. Buddha images destroyed during the bombing of Laos in the Vietnam War.

As more tourists trickled in, we started heading for the exit, with a brief peek inside the temple hall. 

Outside Wat Si Saket, we quickly consulted our map once more and slowly walked to the direction of Ho Phra Kaew. We allowed ourselves to be engulfed by a small stream of tour groups trudging a foot path. They eventually led us to our destination, which was their destination too.

 Ho Phra Kaew in the heart of a well-manicured garden.

Unlike Wat Si Saket's entrance, Ho Phra Kaew's was bustling. There were more local pilgrims than foreign visitors. Admission's also a cheap 5,000 kip. The wat, built in 1565, used to house the Emerald Buddha (now in Bangkok). It is no longer used for religious purposes, and is now utilized as a museum. Oh and apparently, a hangout spot for Lao youngsters.
 

 Ho Phra Kaew's bronze Buddha statues and afternoon shadows.

We rushed through the museum, just enough to catch a glimpse of palm-leaf manuscripts and Buddhist stone tablets for we preferred to stay longer at its veranda. To watch the garden's leaves dance with the wind. To watch the afternoon shadows slowly shift.

And to watch monks take photos of Buddhas with their tablets.

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In Sickness And In Stress

An eye infection, X-ray test for pneumonia, and high fever in the middle of the desert. Each a horror in its own right. When one of these happens to your toddler while on the road, it will surely make you swear off long term travel (though deep down you know you'll soon eat your words when the tot gets better).

You'll go to great lengths, as far as paying with your soul, just to find a cure. I know I did. Okay, maybe not the 'paying with your soul' part. Not yet.

1. Mongolia  

For one whole week we endured bumpy, unpaved roads (even the paved ones are a mess) aboard a hired badass Delica in the Gobi Desert with a European couple we met through Couchsurfing. And during the first five, Luna vomited everyday. Hubby puked on the sixth. The ride was that wild.

Not your usual stop in Gobi Desert.  

Then there's the infamous desert climate that seems to possess a multiple personality disorder — which was an entirely different challenge. Even with the lack of clothing, we sweat like pigs in our van-turned-sauna during the day. While at night, we froze like porkchops in our ger-turned-fridge.

So it wasn't surprising that on the fifth day, Luna contracted a fever. Thanks to our Mongolian driver Ganba, we found a hospital in one of the remote towns. The two-story hospital was as deserted as the Gobi. Luna was given pills that we had to slice in halves because it's too strong for her age, suppositories, and vitamins that looked like Airsoft pellets (which in my opinion should come with a "choking hazard" warning). We never gave her the pellets. I mean, the vitamins.

2. Laos

On our last days in Laos (where we traveled for three weeks last March), Luna had an eye infection and we were totally clueless where she caught it. A sign of such infection, by the way, is having a yellow watery discharge from the eye. Hubby and I searched for eye drops in a bunch of convenience stores but found none.

We were supposed to visit Pha That Luang the day before our flight out of Vientiane. We saved the best for last. However this didn't push through for we stumbled upon an ophthalmologist's clinic while we were walking towards it. The clinic's business hours run from 5:00PM to 8:00PM only, so we thought, might as well stick around and wait for it to open.

The ophthalmologist did not speak much English (he proudly mentioned that he speaks fluent French though) but managed to say "bacteria". Not a comforting word to hear but at least he seemed to know what's going on. He gave us three bottles of eye drops, and struggled to explain the doses. Cost us a whopping $20.

3. Turkey

Our limited time in Turkey (no thanks to my fifteen-day visa) pushed us to fly six times in two weeks. Every three nights we changed hotels. And we did sightseeing almost daily. Luna's health gave in after she climbed Pamukkale's "Cotton Castle" twice. The freezing water streaming down the travertines partnered with the strong gust of equally cold wind must have been the culprits for her cough-cold-fever combo.

 Intoxicating cocktail.

Five days after and about a thousand kilometers away from Pamukkale, our hostel's owner in Şanlıurfa walked the hubby and Luna to a public hospital. Şanlıurfa Province shares a border with Syria, and the culture is evidently more Middle-Eastern than European. Arabic is widely spoken and only a few people speak English. Suffice it to say that the owner Mustafa had to accompany them in the hospital to explain the situation.

Mustafa assured us that he "knows everybody". And true enough, even if Luna's a foreigner, she was given a free injection for her fever. The doctor prescribed about five bottles of meds and were surprisingly cheap. In case you missed it... Five bottles!

4. U.S.A.

Ahhh. U.S. Health Care System. Why on earth did we have to deal with you? Five wee hours of waiting in line with a baby who hasn't eaten nor drank the whole day. 

Okay, to be fair, the doctors were able to give her the right treatment. With just one pill, Luna started craving for milk in an instant (had that not worked, they would have given her the drip). We were never told what caused her loss of appetite.

Total damage... And I mean DAMAGE... Almost $700 + trauma. Closest we got to paying with our souls.

5. Brazil 

I've seen hubby cry only three times in our life together (he cried several times while watching Naruto but he was good at concealing tears). During a hospital visit in Brazil's one of 'em.

What caused our rush to the hospital: Luna's struggle to breathe from twilight to dawn.

At seven in the morn, we asked pharmacists in a drug store a few blocks from our hostel for a nearby hospital. They only spoke Portuguese. One of them pointed at their staff who was sweeping the parking lot and exclaimed, "Spanish!", as if it was the biggest light bulb moment in her life.

I took the directions in a language I barely understand, a language that the Brazilian actually barely speaks!

Bubba breaks down.  

Miraculously, we found the hospital after walking for more than a kilometer toward the town center. And as expected, nobody spoke English at the hospital's front desk. They were able to call in someone who does though and I couldn't tell if she's a nurse or a doctor or a beauty queen in costume from the way she's dressed. She was wearing an ensemble that's similar to a nursing student's white uniform, accessorized with huge, dangling gold earrings. She sashayed the hospital's hallways in five inch heels and chewed gum. Even with all the panic, the gum annoyed me in an indescribable way.

She served as our translator the whole time we were with the doctor. When he mentioned that Luna will undergo an X-ray test for pneumonia, hubby and I both silently broke down. It was one of the scariest moments of my life. Like, up there with giving birth and losing Luna in a department store for five whole damn minutes.

We picked up the result ourselves from the X-ray room then handed it to the doctor in his office. The translator soon followed. There was a quick conversation between the two, then we were told that the result was negative. Apparently, it was just too much mucus. Doctor gave us a prescription for meds then signaled with the classic Brazilian thumbs-up sign.


Have you been in a similar situation? If you don't have kids, have you had any serious health issues while on the road? How did you confront it?

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2013 Thus Far: The First Quarter

Three months down, many more moons to go.

2013's first quarter was a mixed bag of family huddles, waiting games, bittersweet reveries and whirlwind peregrinations. And oh, tons of toddler sobs. We stepped foot on six countries with a so-called scheme that's jotted on sand. Its course we paved as we went, depending on our temperament and the pennies in our pockets. 

The first quarter of the year we planned to settle down was intense, to say the least.

Ban Tajok Hmong Village, Xieng Khouang Province, Laos.
Here's the year thus far in chronological order... I think. May contain random shiznit.

Two days into 2013, we hired a car for only $5 a day in Sydney for our New South Wales-Queensland roadtrip. The catch? It should be delivered to the company's Brisbane Airport branch in five days.

Floorsurfed for two weeks in Queensland. At least the floor's carpeted.

Luna turned on the keyless ignition of a rented Holden Cruz (Thanks, rental company, for the free upgrade.).

The following three weeks (Two weeks of which, the hubby was in U.S. for a business trip.), we shacked in a Brisbane self contained studio on the seventh floor of a building full of frequently inebriated college students. On one of the nights during our stay, I was awoken by a fire alarm  and an evacuation announcement.

We were stuck for days in the same studio when ex-tropical cyclone Oswald barreled through southeast Queensland. Luna and I celebrated our first Australia Day indoors.

Attended a gorgeous Sydney wedding held in a 1900s sandstone manor.

Flew back to the Philippines to eat my mom's pinakbet again. Too much of it, actually.

Was invited to a sneak preview of the Philippine Travel Tour Expo 2013. Also attended the Philippine International Hot Air Balloon Fiesta 2013 Presscon at The Manila Peninsula.

Had a much needed catch up with mom over vegan food, scraped dead skin, and Androids on mute in the luxurious The Farm At San Benito, Lipa City.

Celebrated hubby's birthday in Thunderbird Poro Point, San Fernando, La Union. The El Mundo Villa is the second most expensive room we booked ever (First placer is a simple double room in Rio De Janeiro during Carnival season.) and its WiFi sucked.

Backpacked with Luna and fellow Pinoy travel bloggers in Myanmar for almost a week. All of us were manhandled by our tour guide in Yangon, which only Luna enjoyed. Ron of Flip Travels is scarred for life.

Did a temple run in Bagan and witnessed one of the most stunning sunsets I've seen in my existence.

Visited Singapore and met up with my sister who I haven't seen in five months. Gorged on char siew and kaya toast like there's no tomorrow, lah!

Finally made it to Laos. Now I've completed all of Southeast Asia's countries! 

In a Vientiane hostel room, hubby and I endured two sleepless nights and collected a variety of furious next-door neighbors because we weaned Luna off the bottle.

Also in Vientiane, we saw an orange moon for the first time.

Luna said "I love you" (More like, awabyu.) back for the first time at some Vang Vieng restaurant.

Where we are now...

Currently checked in a dirt cheap hostel in Phonsavan, Xieng Khouang Province, Laos. Yesterday we visited the mysterious Plain Of Jars site and trudged in bomb craters. Day after tomorrow, we head back to Vang Vieng, then Vientiane.

We're flying out sooner than expected because we thwarted our own intents.

The "future" — spanning a mere three months — lies in the hands of a visa application.


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We're not running away, we're running towards adventure!

"We've only just Bagan.", Ron of Flip'n Travels playfully coined, referring to our whirlwind Myanmar jaunt. For me and my two-year-old daughter Luna, it was indeed a beginning — it was also our longest journey together without the hubby. Myanmar commenced another family backpacking trip with unknown destinations and an unplanned schedule.

Bagan. Where it all began.

Here We Go Again

Our round-the-world trip back in 2011-2012 garnered a bunch of raised eyebrows, mostly from our respective families and random conventional parents. Who in their right minds would travel around the world with a toddler? Well, first and foremost, we're a married couple who are not known for acting with our "right minds". Second, because the countdown to domesticity was pounding in our ears. Time is of the essence, and if we didn't chase our dream then, when will we?

So we followed our gut. And for 280 days, we saw the world from our chosen perspective.

Day by day we unveiled snapshots that depict our experiences, and this made non-believers somehow understand this once-in-a-lifetime journey. But now that we're doing it all over again, skeptics assume that our immature selves are simply running away.

But we're not running away. We're running towards adventure!

Towards spontaneity. Towards more learning. Towards freedom.

Plan B

We actually attempted to design our lives in a more ordinary fashion right after our round-the-world trip concluded. Yah know, I want to have a food processor. I want to tend my own herb garden. And I also want to build a cubby house for Luna. I looked forward to achieving these wants this 2013, the year we thought we're finally settling down.

When 2012 was about to end, however, I found myself restless. And compiling Pinay Travel Junkie's Year-Ender last December aggravated the situation. I knew I was not ready to be chained in one place. I confessed this to the hubby.

He confessed the same. And right then and there, we agreed to hit the road again.

Newborn Challenges

This trip, as mentioned earlier, started in Myanmar where Luna and I joined fellow Filipino travel bloggers. After six exhausting, action/dust-packed days (slash sleepless nights), we reunited with the hubby in Singapore where we visited my sister. Stayed there for two-and-a-half days, long enough to catch up on sleep and gorge on char siew and kaya toast.

Currently, I'm swearing in our dingy Vientiane hostel room because of its patchy in-room WiFi access. I already feel beaten up and a little uninspired, and this work obstacle is certainly driving me nuts. I also lack sleep yet again. Last night, for the first time, we didn't give Luna bottled milk. She's now two years and six months old, and we're making her slowly wean off the bottle. This shall prepare her for potty training. How the heck do we do that while constantly moving around? I don't know yet, but we'll eventually work that out.

Then there's this other uhm, issue, that surely requires a bit of planning. The hubby and I think it's time for a second bub. Luna seems to suggest it every time she steals a toddler from unknowing parents. I am terrified of being pregnant again, but if that's what it takes to have another adorable backpacking buddy, then I'll get my act together.

You Can Run But You Can't Hide 

You see, like "normal" folks, we're caught up in the same predicaments. We know there's no escaping them, so instead we deal with things differently. And during such process, we choose to have world heritage sites and national landmarks as our backdrop. That's where our adventure lies. And we're running towards that.

If there's one thing we'd like to run away from, that would be a closed mind. But even that follows as around.

How would you define travels? Were/are you running away or running towards something? 

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