"When in Rome" isn't just a neat idea

Andy Hill

When sojourning in someone else’s country, try to adopt some of the local norms. It will make whatever you do infinitely easier.

Speaking purely from the subjective perspective of a 30-s something western traveler of Southeast Asia, there are several areas I’ve noticed in which we may enact the axiom “when in Rome, do as the Romans do” with far more aplomb.

Interactions and communication

Humans communicate in many different ways: with our bodies, words, facial expressions, mannerisms, reactions, and in far more subtle ways. And, people in different parts of the world have their own ways of communication.

If you’re in Java, for example, observe how people of all ages act towards one another, their body language, the way they direct their bodies towards one another when talking, and how they stand.

Then, try and be like that.

In some cultures, it is perfectly normal for two people to have a loud, excited, heated exchange in public; in others, this would be intensely frowned upon.

The backpacker clothes

I do not want to sound preachy here, but after five years running around in Southeast Asia, I still cannot believe the clothes that some people wear when traveling.

Westerners can look like the most oafish, unkempt, unwashed, completely uncaring people while travelling.

For instance if you go to parts of Vietnam and Cambodia, it is often the local custom for men to wear long-sleeved, button down shirts, often with the sleeves all the way down. This goes for everyone, even motorbike drivers. And shorts are un-heard of.

So when I got to Hanoi, I looked at my cut off military cargoes and tank top, and all the guys around me wearing long pants and long-sleeved shirts, and decided it was time for a change.

Why?

Respect, I think. When you are in someone else’s country for a sojourn longer than a fortnight, it behooves you to attempt something akin to the local attire.

So, I felt cheesy as hell buying some pair of brown pants and a short sleeved, button down shirt, but started to look more the part. And it felt good. And I quickly took to them.

Girls backpacking in Southeast Asia need to take this on board, as well: try dressing a little like the women around you, when possible. In deeply conservative Laos, for example, where women rarely show their shoulders, you should opt for something more modest than a pair of daisy-dukes and a huge, long-pitted Fool Moon Party tank top which clearly shows your florescent body-painted tits underneath.

Meta House: a bastion of cinema and art in Phnom Penh

Andy Hill

The cinema and gallery Meta House is facilitating and evolving Cambodia’s exciting and budding young art scene

My experience travelling in places usually involves exposing myself to a great many examples of local cultural interests. When I arrive in a new place, one of my favorite things to do is to go to the important museums, a library (of the public as well as the often NGO-sponsored type), art galleries, and events such as Pecha Kucha nights and lectures.

Meta House: cinema, art gallery, bar, and community space

The Meta House of Phnom Penh has been promoting international, but primarily Cambodian and German, art and film since 2007.

Founded by Nicolaus Mesterhern as a makeshift film appreciation society at a house in the city which had a rooftop well-positioned for showing films, it has grown into a major purveyor of new art in this inspiring and fascinating city.

At a typical night, one might find a documentary from Khmer film students about the aftermath of the Pol Pot regime, or any array of documentaries from other young filmmakers from Southeast Asia

Meta House is now in a modern, stylish location on Sothearos Blvd. in the center of the city. The lower level is a gallery featuring work by artists from all around the world.

The upper level has a small theatre in an open-air space that overlooks the city, and a slick but refreshingly comfortable bar at the back provides all the booze and nosh needed for a night out to see a feature documentary or just to grab a light lunch or dinner.

The main purpose of Meta House is to showcase up-and-coming Cambodian artists and filmmakers, as well as those from around the world.

Manager Johannes Kast has been involved with Meta House since 2009, and has watched it flourish through the years, which have been anything but unproductive for the local art scene and Meta House itself.

He expressed that the work Meta House was doing was “more serious, more professional, with expanded horizons.” He said that the ideal situation would be for Cambodians to be operating completely the gallery, cinema and bar/restaurant in the next year.

When asked about contemporary trends he sees in Khmer art at present, he describes a kind of realism, an ‘everyday life’ element to what many up and coming Khmer artists are creating.

As for Meta House’s mission, Kast said “there is always a social and educational element to what we do.”

For more information on Meta House and the work they are doing in Cambodia, please visit their website here: www.meta-house.com

People are cool everywhere

Andy Hill

From my travelling, I have found that people are far more likely to show kindness and help you out of a jam than we are blitzed with in TV and movies.

One thing I’ve noticed about traveling, in all the places I’ve been, is that people are basically nice everywhere. People want to give you a hand or a lift or help out of a jam in most parts of the  globe.

This is a fundamentally human trait. Peter Kropotkin, in his incredible Mutual Aid: a Factor in Evolution, showed that it was cooperation, not competition that seemed to order nature.

Basic anarchistic philosophy, which has flourished from the 19^th century to the present, has this as perhaps its core tenet. The basic idea that humans are basically good, and in the event of catastrophe will look out for one another.

This isn’t usually the view of humans that we get from popular television and movies, where people are constantly conniving, cheating, and murdering their way through each episode.

The average westerner is pumped full of so much violence every night via his TV than would ever happen in a million years on the streets of Phnom Penh.

To the contrary, from my own, subjective experience in Southeast Asia, humans, in their natural environment, are far more often than not to be hospitable, helpful, and generally down to help out everywhere.

Of course in any unit of people there are assholes, but from my experience being here for three years, the ratio of asshole-to-sweet person is the same everywhere. And that ratio is usually extremely low on the asshole side.

I have experienced so many instances of the most genuine hospitality in my travels throughout Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Indonesia that it would take me a week in a cabin with a trash bag full of Ritalin to remember them all.

And people are basically the same everywhere, as well. They all want the same things. To play with their kids, to see them grow up happy and healthy, to have a family that is provided for, to make a living, and enjoy the lives of their families and neighborhoods.  

Civility and politeness are the rules of the game, and I think all humans, regardless of whether they choose to enact it, have a deep and integral understanding of this.

This is all my opinion, which is subjective, my ‘reality tunnel’ as Robert Anton Wilson called it, but it has been my experience that people are basically good, everywhere. 

The 'foreigner price'phenomenon: reasons and solutions

Andy Hill

Many travelers complain of the ‘foreigner price’ they are allegedly extorted when paying for things in foreign places. Here’s why it happens, and how to make it go away

One of the things you hear from travelers about is this ‘foreigner price’ phenomenon; where the woman selling papayas from the back of a truck assumedly, allegedly, ripped you off- because you’re a foreigner.

Why it Happens

In the streets of anywhere in the developing world, a western foreigner can’t expect to be given the same price for things that natives are. It doesn’t need to inspire any kind of xenophobic bias or pattern in your mind about ‘these’ or ‘that’ people. It’s just happens. All over the world. Just because it’s the first time you’ve obviously paid more for something for being a foreigner, doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen all the time, all over the planet.

Plus, if you’re in a developing country, where people might live for $2 a day, don’t make yourself look like you make $500 in a day. That $900 camera hanging around your neck is proof enough that you should pay fifty cents more for a bag of oranges than the local guy in front of you.

How to make yourself (mostly) immune to it  

Learn how to say the numbers 1-100 in the local language. This is far easier than it sounds. Learn also how to say ‘hundred’, ‘thousand’, ‘million’ - whatever you need based on the currency of the place you’re in. Write them down in a special notebook that you always have with you. Pace around in a room, reading them and practicing them. When I was in Bali, I would count my steps in Bahasa Indonesian, and, although at first it was extremely frustrating, I learned the counting system very quickly. And I am lousy with foreign languages.

When you haggle at a market or for a ride somewhere or anything else, it makes a very marked difference if you are comfortable speaking numbers and prices in the local language. Price decreases nearly always occur. So, learn the basic numbers and you’ll fairly quickly be given a price that much more resembles the local one.

The process of haggling varies much from country to country, but the rule of the game (as always) is to always be polite. If you don’t want their price, just thank them (in their language), smile, and walk away.

They’ll probably immediately begin to shout to you at least your price, if not a few pennies more that you can easily overlook.

It's fantastic to be back in Cambodia

Andy Hill

My unexpected jaunt to the kingdom of wonder has been fantastic, as I enjoy fewer places more than the charming metropolis of Phnom Penh

Because of several randomly-timed events in my girlfriend’s life, as well as the need to leave Indonesia because of my visa, and also because it’s perhaps my favorite place in the world, I’ve returned to Cambodia for a short sojourn.

The reasons why I wanted to come back are ephemeral. I like walking around in the Central Market. I like walking down the riverside. I like the simplicity of the currency. I like being able to hop on the back of anyone’s bike and get where I need to in five minutes, for less than a dollar. I like how friendly it is, how gentle it feels. I miss seeing films at the Meta House, and eating insanely good Mexican food at the Alley Cat.

I found a ridiculously cheap flight from Bali which included a night spent convalescing on recliners in front of CNN at the Singapore airport.  

I’ve been at the guesthouse I normally stay at on the heavily-backpackered Street 178 for several days and am pleased to say that the city has lost none of its charm, and everything still costs the same amount at all the usual places.

A plate of fat, handmade noodles fried with beef, chili sauce, greens and an egg still costs seventy five cents, and you can still get your tooth extracted for $30 (including the consultation).

I’ll make my way down to the coast soon to see what Otres Beach looks like, and stomp around up at some of my favorite bars in Siem Reap as well. I also intend to see the Phare Ponleu Selpak Circus in Battambang.

On Monday September 2 the bi-monthly “Nerd Night” is happening in Phnom Penh, where people make presentations about things they are passionate or nerdy about. The format comes from the Pecha Kucha system, where presenters have 20 Powerpoint slides to use for twenty seconds each. I will be doing a presentation called “Evoking the Creator Within: What I Learned About the Creative Process by Writing a Book.”

I will also drop in on some old friends, as well as try to do some major promotional work for my book, Mystic Fool (like stumbling around the streets, passing out flyers, and saying ‘hey man- buy this!’)

Ok, I’m off to get a ride down to Toul Tom Poung, a notorious market in the south end of town, just to see what kind of bizarre shit is for sale. 

What it was like to get a tooth removed in Phnom Penh yesterday

Andy Hill

It was a long time coming, and I finally submitted to the pain and got a tooth removed in Phnom Penh

I had had enough. I was completely driven to the tether of my threshold of pain. This malignant force in my mouth, which initially was only a problem when I ate ice cream or drank ice-cold water, had now, months later, overwhelmed me, and I had no choice but to see a specialist in the area. The pain coming from a molar at the back of the left side of my upper jaw had reduced me to a useless, quivering, slobbering, barely verbal, heavily self-medicated specimen by the time I went out to the dentist.

And I wasn’t discriminate. I howled, hunched and slobbering, into the street from the front of my guesthouse, and sobbed and wailed down the street, searching for an end to this infernal agony. My girlfriend’s helpful advice that it wouldn’t ‘fix itself’ was resounding through my mind, and I respectfully took it on board and appreciated it, as I writhed and shrieked from the back of a tuk-tuk taking me ideally to a dentist.

When I finally got there, I pointed at my mouth and made a RAMBO-like grimace, and was slithering into a plastic-covered dental chair in seconds. Over my harping demands for drugs, the 14 year old assistant was able to look at my teeth, scrape them, painfully spray them with water, and take an x-ray. As the medication slowly went through my bloodstream, I went into a more dependent, romantic mode, and nearly held his face as I asked what we could do.

He came back with radiographic evidence that my tooth was indeed fucked.

“Root canal work no.”

“Is it bad?” I squirmed.

“So too bad. We need extract. Take out.”

“Take it out. Get it. Fucking destroy it.”

Another man walked into the room like he was just about to perform his money shot on a porno set. Fumbling around with some instruments, he muttered some things back and forth to the kid who’d been looking at my mouth, and carelessly shot me full of more novocaine. I didn’t complain.

Then he took a pair of pliers in his hands, which I regretfully saw. He stuck them in my mouth and began to wrench the furthest-back molar on the left side of my skull out of its socket. After it creaked and groaned several times, and he even repositioned himself for more fulcrum, it was finally brought free from my long-suffering, now very drug-addled head.

He dropped the pliers on the little steel tray next to him, and went back to the waiting room to watch more of a Khmer soap opera with his extended family.

With my mind blown, and a new, intense life experience to add to my belt-notches, the kid gave me a piece of paper with prescriptions elegantly written across it.

“How mu-?” I verbally staggered.

“Thirty dollars, sir.”

“Oh shit. I’ve got to go to an ATM, bro. Can you hold onto this and...I come back?”

I pulled out my ATM card, and thrust to him the contents of my wallet, which now contained only an old picture of my girlfriend, as collateral. I raced off to find an ATM to pay him for the extraction. He half-smiled and watched me run off.

The amazing thing was that all the pain was actually gone. Between the anesthetics and the removal of the tooth, I felt like a newborn.

I finally found an ATM, and was really excited to know that I’d been paid for various freelance writing jobs that week, raced back, and put the money in his hands as his (probably) grandparents re-wrapped themselves in blankets for another rousing half-hour of television.

“I love you man. Thank you.”

My words were mixed up.

“I love you, sir. Thank you. Eat this in your mouth for the blood.”

I took a plastic bag of gauze from his hand and stumbled out in the street, feeling as redeemed as Saul of Tarsus.

How to be a happy traveler

Andy Hill

In the past several years I have learned some of the basic things that are essential for travelling well and being baptized by the divine folly of the universe

I have seen and experienced enough instances of potentially damning situations that can ruin a travel experience, and I think that there is a rather simple way to make sure that it almost never happens. This takes a little inner work, and can be even by viewed as an approach to life in general.

Ditch the guide book

Information is the most important thing in the universe, in a sense, but you don’t need to know all of the places that have a happy hour in a small town in northern Thailand before you get there. Those are the kinds of things you find out about after you wander around the place. Don’t go expecting someone else’s experience: ditch the guidebook, explore, talk to other people, and travelling will be a much more enjoyable experience. It is important to know about recent political history as well as basic characteristics of the culture, but learning where ‘the best shit’ is will never actually happen when being led around by the nose with a Lonely Planet.

Try to be a neophile

Robert Anton Wilson once said that humans were of two basic groups; neophobes, or those afraid of the new and the strange, and neophiles, those who are energized by and drawn to it. When traveling to other countries you will see the different ways that other people eat, go to the bathroom, and use the resources around them. This is a fantastic way to understand one’s own habits and learned worldviews, and provides a powerful opportunity for evolution. There may be a lizard that lives on your ceiling and shits on your bed every day, but learning to think of it fondly is an internal journey worth taking.

Don’t be a dick

Nobody ever got anywhere by being a dick, and this is much more the case in Asian countries than many in the west. Blowing up at someone or showing anger is seen as extremely poor form in many parts of the world, and a goofy smile will always get you nearly anywhere you need to go. Showing a common courtesy, respect, civility, and a natural curiosity towards others will find you friends for life in many parts of the world, and giving the curious abroad a refined display of what ‘your people’ really are like is never a bad idea.   

This all leads to the glorious phenomenon when we all realize that people everywhere are “the same in so many different ways,” or “different in so many similar ways.”

And it never hurts to learn how to say ‘thank you’ and ‘how are you,’ and also the respectful terms for people. People like it when you know how to correctly call them brother, uncle, aunt, sister or friend in their own language.

So, just ditch the guidebook, embrace the strange with playful willingness, engage all as if you’re speaking to your grandmother, and learn how to say ‘thank you.’  Those, in my opinion, are the most important things for being a happy traveler. 

Jogja on my mind: relishing the street art, street food, and street music of Yogyakarta

Andy Hill

What was to be a weekend turned into two months of exploring every side street and coffee stand of the artistically vibrant and historically fascinating cultural capital of Java.

After having soaked up the highly refined and ritualized culture of central Bali for nearly six months, my girlfriend and I made a spontaneous decision to pack a bag and take a weekend trip to Yogyakarta, central Java. Also spelled Jogjakarta and fondly called ‘Jogja’ by residents, this relatively small city is known as the cultural capital of Java, similar to Kyoto in Japan. I knew next to nothing about it besides that there were some ancient temples, Dutch colonial buildings, and interesting local delicacies.

We arrived in the morning at the bus station and got a ride to the area with cheap guesthouses and bars, Sosrowijaya. We wandered into a small network of tiny alleyways and just kept turning corners until we were completely lost amongst the crammed-together book shops, cafes, convenience shops and guesthouses, where children were playing and women seemed to be perpetually sweeping every set of front steps. We turned to each other somewhat aghast, completely unprepared for how charming and pleasant it was.

One of the first things you notice in Jogja is the street art. It seems that every possible square foot of wall in the city is covered with some bright, bizarre, cartoonish, playful piece of technically impressive art. I would never call it ‘graffiti’ or vandalism; those have nothing to do with the resplendent display of artisanship ubiquitous in this capital of creative endeavors. The pieces are never covered over or damaged; residents of Jogja seem to take much pride in the fact that their city is so vibrantly adorned.

 We strolled through and admired the alleys, found a guesthouse for the equivalent of $10, had some lunch, and decided to go out at explore.

I could tell you about the Sultan’s Palace, or the Water Castle, or the ancient temples on the outskirts of Jogja like Borobudur (the biggest Buddhist temple in the world), but you will read about those in every other piece about the place.

What to me crystallizes being in Jogja is spending the day walking through the various neighborhoods of the city, getting countless cups of coffee, sitting at tiny  bakso and soto ayam stands, and chatting with the perennially friendly people there. At night, my favorite thing to do was to stroll along Malioboro, the main shopping street, which comes alive with food stalls selling local dishes such as fried duck and chicken with noodles after the sun goes down.

There are roving bands of young people with guitars, fiddles, and banjoes, and the occasional transvestite with microphone and speaker, serenading the throngs of people walking with friends, family and lovers through the balmy night.

Eventually we got on a train and rumbled across Java for twelve hours, to hop on a ferry back over to Bali. But when I close my eyes, I can still see the motion-picture of otherworldly creatures painted in murals on every surface, as I remember them rushing past from the back of a motorbike through the streets of Jogja.

The sea beast: enduring a sea cucumber in Shandong Province

Andy Hill

Although this dish is a delicacy in many parts of China, for me, it was the opportunity to stare into an abyss of absolute terror. And survive.

A coworker of mine at the school, David (his English name), asked me to come to dinner with him, his family, and best friend. With his wife and daughter in the backseat, we slowly cruised through town to “the best restaurant.” I didn’t ask if that meant the tiny town we were in, or the whole world. Arriving at the restaurant, we were greeted by his friend and his family, and ushered briskly off to a private room.

I’m not a culinary adventurer. I always find some things I like wherever I go, but I’m not one of those people that can eat just anything. This is my weakness, and it has caused some discomfort before, but I will gag and vomit all over the table if I put a duck tongue in my mouth, chew it, and swallow it. 

So, it was not with an intrepid, warrior-like fervor that I was filled when told that the grand culmination of the meal was sea cucumber. If you’ve never seen one, Google it. It looks like something that evolved in such a way as to never be touched, or even seen, by any other living being. It must be one of nature’s most anti-social creatures. But they are a cherished delicacy in many parts of China.

We continued to chain smoke and chatted while glass after glass of white liquor was poured.

Waiting for the sea cucumber, I was going clammy, and cold flashes were coming in waves over my skin. My stomach was knotted. It was like an experience of what the Hebrews call kadosh; the awful otherness of God.

With aplomb fit for an emperor, the dreaded sea-beast was brought in. My companions were beaming from ear to ear, less able to contain their excitement than children running down the stairs on Christmas morning. It had been cut into small sections, but my terror was whole and looming.

I was genuinely afraid that I would embarrass my hosts and sour their spirits, being a poor cultural diplomat in the face of their hospitality, but far more terrorized by the faintest idea of putting that thing in my mouth and swallowing it.

This was not going to be good for anyone.

I grinned with the dishonesty of a televangelist and sucked with abandon at a cigarette. It was an abhorrent sight, and childhood fears at seeing the movie Tremors came back from their repression. I was getting tunnel vision, swaying slightly in my chair, my energy centers struggling to not volcanically send everything back up onto this prized monster that my coworker most likely spent half a week’s pay on.

David gingerly took a quivering slice of the sea cucumber from the platter and placed it on my plate. With shaking hands I put it in the hot pot broth and closed my eyes momentarily, thinking of the moment when my car had flipped years ago, remembering that I had been through more difficult times before. That I would muscle up and just do this.

After it cooked momentarily I tried to invoke the fearlessness of a berzerker, got a hold of its slimy surface with my chopsticks, and noticed that the children and women had momentarily dropped their cell phones, to see the look of sheer bliss that would come over my face as I ingested this Chinese epicurean delight.

I put it in my mouth quickly and tried to think of being shot out of a cannon, or plunged underwater; anything to take my consciousness violently away. I chewed and didn’t even have enough time to chomp twice (although the moment lasted an eternity) before a drill seargeant in my mind screamed “SWALLOW IT, YOU TWIT!”

I conjured all of the methods of abstaining from puking that I’d ever had to use before, finishing bottles of rotgut whiskey in public places. Somehow, by the infinite grace of the intelligent matrix of energy that pervades the universe, what some call God, it slowly assumed its baneful way down into my guts without violence.

I think what made that moment remotely bearable was how ecstatic everyone else was that I evidentally appeared as if I loved it. It was because of that that slowly my stomach settled and with some deep, intensive breaths, I was able to calm the tempest of disgust from within that had threatened to overwhelm me.

Everyone was so proud and gaily began dishing some up for themselves. Of course David put another large piece on my plate, but in the course of the rest of the meal, I was able to surreptitiously break it apart and hide the pieces amongst more cabbage and tofu I’d put on my plate, and no one noticed. With the worst of the trembling in my loins subsided, I chainsmoked and picked at a few other odds and ends, relieved it was over.     

We soon piled back in David’s car and shuddered through the cold back to my hotel, where I thanked him and his family profusely for their hospitality and generosity. I smiled and bowed repeatedly, beaming until they were out of the parking lot.

I then walked briskly back to my room, opened a beer, and exhaustedly put my hands up on the edge of the sink, sighing with dejected laboriousness like Philip Marlowe after finishing a case, staring deep into my own eyes.

Nearly shipwrecked on the way to Nusa Lembongan

Andy Hill

It was with a capricious, naive abandon that my girlfriend and I hopped onto a boat to go see our friends on the island of Nusa Lembongan off of Bali.

It was a more or less clear day on the island of Gili Trawangan as my girlfriend and I enjoyed our English breakfast on the beach and waited for our boat to begin to take passengers. We were heading off to the island of Nusa Lembongan, whose cultural affiliations lie with its nearby Bali whereas the Gilis are tied to Lombok.

We’d had a marvelous time on Trawangan, doing little more than shuffling about from guesthouse to bar to beach chair and back, jumping out of the way of horse-drawn carts (there are no motorized vehicles in the Gilis) and eating more prawns than we’d ever know how to catch.

We were waved towards an arriving boat, paid our check, and ecstatically presented our ticket to the man taking care of the boat business. Two of our dear friends were meeting us in Lembongan with two of their friends we’d never met and we were looking forward excitedly to three or four days of much mirth.

We claimed our little hard plastic bench towards the back of the boat and grinned at one another, stoked to be on another boat, glowing. The motor started up and off we were.

Something bizarre and unexpected then happened. What had looked like a serene sea while we were eating breakfast on the beach had become progressively worse until we were deep in the nightmarish tumult of an incensed sea-demon’s rage.

While rocking violently, the bottom of the boat was smacking the water every time it came back down from going over a swell. There was so much water being sprayed against the windows that it was impossible to see out.

Our fellow passengers looked increasingly terrified, and although I usually have quite a bit of good natured faith in these things, I began looking about for something to smash the window beside us in case the boat flipped.

And then, people began to wretch.

Soon a girl who worked for the boat company was walking around with an armful of thin, black, plastic bags for everyone, some grabbing at them quickly, desperately.  

The smell of vomit began to permeate the cabin. I couldn’t look at anyone who was about to vomit, in the process of vomiting, or had just vomited because then I would have vomited. My girlfriend was clutching my arm like a vice and I almost got up so we could stand near the edge in case the thing flipped.

I thought about all the times I’d read about these kinds of boats, specifically in Indonesia, capsizing, sinking, or catching fire. I was getting ready for the big one.

Someone missed their bag and vomit went all over the floor of the aisle near my foot. The boat boomed as it crashed back down to the water after going over a wave. 

Children screamed. 

A woman began crying. 

I thought of how many months had gone by since I’d spoken to my family, and the dreams I had of being old and happy with my girlfriend. 

Someone else ralphed just behind me. The air was thick with terror and barf and grief. 

And then, as automatically as it had started, the waves had calmed, the tempest had subsided, sea water stopped spraying against the windows, and the sun seemed to come out. We could see our destination, and it was comfortingly close, probably enough to swim.

The barf bag lady came around to collect them, disgustingly, in a large cardboard box, and tried to comfort us by saying “today not bad. Last week bad.”

Nyepi, an island-wide exorcism

Andy Hill

At the New Year in Bali, I was entranced by phantasmagoric effigies, the effluence of cultural panache, and the idea that the entire island might be rightfully cleansed of evil and banality.

As the afternoon lingered on I started to hear more cacophony from outside my bungalow window in Ubud, hunched over my laptop, pecking out more of my manuscript. As the peal of bells, gongs, and wooden chimes from roving Balinese orchestras finally ciphoned away all of my interest in writing for the day, I closed my laptop, locked the ornately-carved wooden doors, and trotted down to the street to see what this thing was going to look like.

It was the day before Nyepi, which is the Balinese New Year. On Nyepi, no one leaves their house, and at night, the curtains are kept shut lest the evil spirits travelling over the island see the light from below, and decide to take up residence thereby for the next year. 

Nyepi is the quiet day. No electricity, no lighting of fires, no cooking, and very little (if any) talking. Even non-Balinese such as myself are gently steered back to their guesthouses in the event that they ignorantly wander outside. At night on Nyepi it is very, very quiet, and very, very dark.

It is oddly similar to the British keeping blackouts so that the Nazi luftwaffen (another kind of evil demon) wouldn’t know where to drop their bombs during WWII.

However, the day before Nyepi is an entirely different set of circumstances. For the weeks leading up to the special day, neighborhood groups construct sometimes meters-high effigies of demons and other evil entities called ogoh ogoh, which are then paraded about the villages and towns, to be finally destroyed by fire at the end of the night in a chaotic and feverish island-wide exorcism. 

On my recent daily roaming and rambling through town I had been seeing these macabre and masterfully-created creatures, some small, some large, but all equally pored over by the young and old charged with their rendering.  

So it was with baited breath that I had been waiting until that evening, at around dusk, when these monuments of malevolence would be ushered about town in a literally magical parade.

Hundreds of tourists were already beginning to line up and down each street, iPhones in hand, charged for the spectacle. I found a well-placed perch in front of a shop and made excited conversation with several others around when the clanging of various gamelans came into earshot, and the throngs of witnesses began to cling tighter to the edge of the street.

It could first be seen over the heads of the crowds, approaching from over a hundred meters down the main road- a three meter high, flying, bearded, red-faced, furious, snarling demon bouncing gently back and forth as the lumbering teenage boys carrying it on a cross-hatched bamboo platform struggled to keep it straight. A fully mobile gamelan orchestra marched in front, announcing the approach of this foul-faced malignity.

The energy in the crowd was palpable, fun, expectant. As the being approached, looming ever larger, children quieted, adults held glowing cameras in the air, and applause erupted as it passed in front of us. There were more to be seen on the horizon down Jalan Raya, and I crouched and watched as several others bobbed and menaced past the mesmerized crowds.

The sun was beginning to creep past that liminal and strange stage of twilight into darkness, and I hopped to my feet to see what was going on in the football field in the center of town, where many ogoh ogoh were to be eventually gathered.

I grabbed a bottle of Bintang off of an old toothless woman selling them from a cooler on the sidewalk, jog-walking through the crowd’s crevices towards the pitch. Many more of the beastly figures with their attendant walking orchestras were slowly lumbering down each street big enough to fit them, with several men on either side carrying long, upright bamboo poles in order to escort each ogoh ogoh under each low-hanging tangle of power lines strung across the road.

When I got close to the football field, the crowds had gotten dense, and I could see that many of the evil effigies I had seen travelling down Jalan Raya had ended up there. Thousands of people milled about, aghast at the towering implements of this ceremonial seance, under the lapis-lidded South pacific sky.  

My favorite ogoh ogoh was a gigantic slobbering bull, standing perhaps four meters high, replete with speakers bellowing horrific snorting and squealing sounds, flashing red eyes, paper-maiche ejaculate dripping between its legs, and steam pouring out of its snout in petulant bursts. It was a symphony of psychosis sent south- the demonic direction towards which the evil spirits were being coaxed.

After many of the ogoh ogoh in the village were arraigned in the football field, they were impossibly herded back out through the packed streets, twenty-piece gamelans and all, towards another large open area across Jalan Raya where they were ritually destroyed in a pyre while thousands cheered and jeered their symbolic cleansing from this small, peaceful island.

It was with exponentially more fascination for Balinese people and culture that I finally wandered back to my room, made sure to extinguish every light, and slumbered off to a expectantly evil-free New Year. 

Temple steps and backstreets: a few days in Luang Prabang

Andy Hill

For me, Luang Prabang was backstreets, used books on front stoops, and waking up surrounded by protective stray dogs on the steps of temples.   

I was at the farm a few more days before getting down to the last allowed by my visa. Wresting myself from its bucolic environs, I hitched up to Luang Prabang. I would remaining three days of my Laos visa there.

Luang Prabang is known as one of the most spiritual places in Southeast Asia. Many would say the world, and for good reason. There are Buddhist temples everywhere, and one of its most iconic images is the early morning procession of monks through the center of town to receive alms and rice from villagers, chanting hypnotic blessings upon them. It is these elements of the very traditional and very Buddhist Laotian culture which bring people to Luang Prabang, and however this may affect it in the future, its vibration must evoke appreciation from even the most foam-mouthed atheist. It is arrestingly peaceful.

I wasn’t in the most peaceful of inner straits, however. Several different things had happened which had creates a perfect=enough storm within me, that I had spiralled into a fairrly heavy existential funk. At the bottom of it all was the fact that I did not want to go back to America. After the way of living that I had witnessed over that past year rambling around Southeast Asia, it seemed like the States were a death trap for my soul, that if I returned to reside there I would be miserable beyond repair. It may sound hyperbolic, but I couldn’t help it.

The problem was that I was close to running out of money, and it was getting easier to smother the sharper edges of these fears in Tiger Whiskey, only to wake up to more of them in the morning.

I would walk along the markets and the river, contemplating how I could return to my native country, how I could perhaps work in another restaurant, another bar, another office. It didn’t seem to be very evolutionary. I wanted heaven and hell, not 9 to 5.

I would spend the afternoons in a small used bookstore called L’estranger, which would allow me to sit and read books all day on their front porch.

In the evenings I would find the smaller side streets, away from the tourist throng, sipping Beerlaos on the front steps of living room-cum-convenience stores.

The environment around me was so bright, so life-affirming, so radiant. I tried to suck as much of it up as I could, to mimic that presence, but internally I was torn and smothered in grief and the worst kinds of uncertainty. I felt myself far out to sea with no boat, no harbor, no lights, nothing. And I felt a sadness of oceanic proportions that the people I love the most couldn’t be with me.

I decided that to save some cash, I would just kind of very politely trespass, and sleep at one of the many temples in the town. I found one back away from the main roads, crept up the steps at the entrance, and fell asleep easily, my head on my bag, trying to absorb a little of my enlightened surroundings as I slumbered off.

I woke up at dawn. It was strange at first, but I came to appreciate the fact that about a dozen stray dogs had gathered in a circle around me while I had slept. It made me feel like a very loved and protected bum. I looked around and a monk who was sweeping nearby smiled at me, put down his broom, disappeared inside, and came out with a small cushion for me.

These small actions; the dogs keeping me company while I slept, the monk, going to get something for me to put my head on, coalesced within me as an almost unbearable kindness. It was probably the perpetually-intoxicated sadness I had been stewing in for days, but I almost started crying.

I got up, put my backpack on, and bowed to the monk, who had resumed sweeping, stooped over, one hand behind his back. I wanted to stay and join him. Unfortunately, my visa was up in a matter of hours.

We smiled at one another, I patted the dogs on the head, and slowly descended back to the street.

I got a bus to northern Thailand. I figured I had a couple weeks there to figure out what the hell I was going to do with my life.

The time I got absurdly healthy in Pai

Andy Hill

I once spent several days with a woman in the idyllic, bohemian environs of Pai in northern Thailand, scrubbing the toxins from my blood, and the bitterness from my soul.

It was time for a change. It had been a great past several months, and I wouldn’t have taken a single second of it back, but my body was absolutely destroyed. I was grizzled, addled, bamboozled. I might as well have been shot out of a cannon.

I was cursed with the ability to somehow keep it going, able to wake up and begin knocking back rotgut whiskey, read seven books, write ten stories, meet five new friends, smoke two packs of cigarettes, and get five hours of sleep before getting up to do it all over again, every single day.

However, I knew it was time to flush out the system, to reset the dials, to find out what it was like to have a normal human being’s nervous system again, if only just for a little while.

These were my physiological concerns when I arrived in the small, verdant, tranquil, and bohemian town of Pai in northern Thailand. And, I couldn’t have been in a better place to get back up in the saddle of the healthy horse.

I was with a woman I’d just met a few days earlier in Bangkok, and she was just as keen as I to detoxify herself, although unlike me her sweat didn’t smell of toxic waste, and her daily hygienic practices were at a more sophisticated echelon than mine.

The night we got in, we found a small, bustling teahouse/cafe/library along one of the main roads, and binged on salads with brown rice, tofu, chilies, almonds, steamed leafy greens and flax seeds. We drank a pot each of a tea which proposed to make our livers like new, and went for a long, refreshing walk in the brisk, revivifying, nearly alpine air.

That night we gave each other brutal massages in order to free all of the toxins in our muscles, and I showed her how to do some intensive yogic breathing exercises that I’d picked up years before.

The next day, after a breakfast of yogurt, fruit and granola, while sauntering through the town we found a place with a sweat room where you could sit for an hour and sweat your loins out while breathing in a cornucopia of traditional healing herbs.

Next up it was a trip on a motorbike down to some hot springs, where we relaxed, thought healthy thoughts, and soaked up what we assured each other were some seriously detoxifying minerals in the water.

Cruising around rice paddies, through farms, over rivers and throughout one another’s life stories, I began to realize that my emotional centers seemed to be detoxing as well, to my shock and surprise.

I hadn’t felt anything like that in years. I thought to myself “Jesus- I think I might be in love with this woman!”

That night we attended a free meditation session and returned to our room to examine one another’s natal charts. What I longed to divine in the compatabilities therein somehow came true, because that was two years ago, and we’ve been together ever since.