The End
Well, this is it. We're now back at home in London. I'd certainly recommend travelling to anyone, its a completely different feel when you up sticks and actually pretend to be living somewhere. Its cost about £6000 each, which is a lot, except when compared to rent in England for the same time.
The things I remember most right now are the unexpected connections. After a while, your eyes glaze over temples, mountains, cities etc. Its striking how similar every city was, we went from Seattle to Kyoto to Hannoi and they all had exactly the same grey concrete buildings. Yes, there were different monuments, but 99% of the people lived in very similar places. The shops had the main differences, from the huge supermarkets of America to the identical pristine air conditioned Japanese 7-11's.
Bolivia had millions of individual stalls, e.g. one for watches, one for batteries, one for shampoo, one for conditioner that made it hopeless to try and find something but did employ lots of people.
No one, apart from the British, seem to have any sense of personnal space or queues. OK, maybe the Americans.
South America was different in that we could almost talk to the locals as locals - bit more suntan and spanish lessons would have helped. Watching a pirated copy of Star Wars 3 and hearing the Emperor say "Goooooood" in English and seeing the translated "Bieeeeen" was quite funny. Watching a BBC program on Che Guevara's influence in Burma while in Bolivia right next to where he was caught and executed. The clear mountain air in the Andes and Himalayas was great, there's a serenity there that is hard to find in super concentrated accelerated condensed London.
Geckos and elephants are cool.
The knack is definitely to see yourself as a local, well, as far as that is possible. So you too think that displaying anger is a hilarious loss of face, or that shrugging your shoulders and saying "what to do?" is a course of action, or siesta-ing every afternoon is how it should be. Air con is evil, it makes you believe the midday sun is ludricously hot when everyone else just thinks its normal; for a 2 week holiday, OK, but for longer periods people will just laugh (maybe silently) at that sweaty westerner.
We had some massive journeys like 24 solid hours of travel from Seattle to Kyoto (bus, bus, plane, wait, big plane, walk, bus, walk, collapse) and 30 hours on the train from Goa to Delhi. But if that's the reason why you're there - to travel- it doesn't seem so bad.
You have as much time as you like. We thought we'd read lots of classics, you know the big chunky doorsteps that you never have time for at home. But, after much delay, and procrastination, upon sampling some of the more erudite but susposedly good classics for whit Henry James may be considered by some a good example, we or at least myself, came to this conclusion; sentances should be built to carry points, not to stop elephants.
Anyway, this is it. It was great. Do it. Where's next? Well, we want to go to China but for now, its settle down and get money, jobs and house.
We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time ~T.S. Eliot
Nope, still same old Britain ~Me
The things I remember most right now are the unexpected connections. After a while, your eyes glaze over temples, mountains, cities etc. Its striking how similar every city was, we went from Seattle to Kyoto to Hannoi and they all had exactly the same grey concrete buildings. Yes, there were different monuments, but 99% of the people lived in very similar places. The shops had the main differences, from the huge supermarkets of America to the identical pristine air conditioned Japanese 7-11's.
Bolivia had millions of individual stalls, e.g. one for watches, one for batteries, one for shampoo, one for conditioner that made it hopeless to try and find something but did employ lots of people.
No one, apart from the British, seem to have any sense of personnal space or queues. OK, maybe the Americans.
South America was different in that we could almost talk to the locals as locals - bit more suntan and spanish lessons would have helped. Watching a pirated copy of Star Wars 3 and hearing the Emperor say "Goooooood" in English and seeing the translated "Bieeeeen" was quite funny. Watching a BBC program on Che Guevara's influence in Burma while in Bolivia right next to where he was caught and executed. The clear mountain air in the Andes and Himalayas was great, there's a serenity there that is hard to find in super concentrated accelerated condensed London.
Geckos and elephants are cool.
The knack is definitely to see yourself as a local, well, as far as that is possible. So you too think that displaying anger is a hilarious loss of face, or that shrugging your shoulders and saying "what to do?" is a course of action, or siesta-ing every afternoon is how it should be. Air con is evil, it makes you believe the midday sun is ludricously hot when everyone else just thinks its normal; for a 2 week holiday, OK, but for longer periods people will just laugh (maybe silently) at that sweaty westerner.
We had some massive journeys like 24 solid hours of travel from Seattle to Kyoto (bus, bus, plane, wait, big plane, walk, bus, walk, collapse) and 30 hours on the train from Goa to Delhi. But if that's the reason why you're there - to travel- it doesn't seem so bad.
You have as much time as you like. We thought we'd read lots of classics, you know the big chunky doorsteps that you never have time for at home. But, after much delay, and procrastination, upon sampling some of the more erudite but susposedly good classics for whit Henry James may be considered by some a good example, we or at least myself, came to this conclusion; sentances should be built to carry points, not to stop elephants.
Anyway, this is it. It was great. Do it. Where's next? Well, we want to go to China but for now, its settle down and get money, jobs and house.
We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time ~T.S. Eliot
Nope, still same old Britain ~Me
posted by Matt and Lizzie at
5:36 AM
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