davethegrinch.net

Sarah says:

I always felt that in order to maintain any shred of backpacker credibility, I was obliged to apologize for our having purchased passage aboard the Queen Mary 2. Our laundry list of justifications were all, in fact, true statements. We did, over a year ago, make an earnest effort to book passage across the Atlantic on a freighter. All freighters that make the iconic route, Southampton to New York (a necessity for many symbolic reasons) were already booked even back then and much to our astonishment, freighter fare would have been nearly double what we would pay for the worst cabin aboard the QM2. In order to keep our overland dream alive, we begrudgingly booked the cabin. At the time, it sincerely did not fill us with joy and we certainly never considered paying the nominal upgrade fee for the 2nd to worst cabin on the boat much less a window cabin. We were backpackers through and through and wanted our circum-ambulation of the globe to be bohemian, in the spirit of Jack Karouac. Jack would never have crossed on the QM2, probably even if he had had the money, and we felt as though we were committing some sort of betrayal.

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Dave Says:

I want to love Russia. I really do. It however, is stubbornly refusing to love me. In my formative years, tales would race around the playground of how one could become a millionaire by stuffing fifty pairs of jeans in your suitcase and jetting off to Moscow. There the luxury starved Ruskies would pay ten times your wholesale price for a chance to dress like you. Throw in a Beatles cassette and they would treat you like a tsar (when they liked the tsar that is). Well, now the Ruskies don’t need my jeans and I can’t help but think they’re treating me like the tsar when they didn’t like him. Short of me and my family being taken into the basement, shot and then disposed of down a well, our Russian hosts couldn’t be more icy.

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Dave Says:

72 hours on a train from Irkutsk to Moscow is a long time to be doing nothing. There is no TV, only bad Russian radio and usable conversation between us and our Russian “cell-mates” dried up 1724km ago. I have taken to writing - writing rubbish maybe, but, rubbish none-the-less that you, my captive audience, are now honor bound to read. If I am going to spend three days and nights locked in train compartment for your vicarious pleasure then the least you can do is endure a few paragraphs of drivel.

Style note: I’m writing this in my moleskin notebook - by hand! My middle finger is already rubbed raw from the pencil. Could we have devolved our handwriting abilities in just two generations?

Of my fellow passengers, the Mongolians are still trading, the Russians are sleeping and the Western tourists are all feverishly scribbling in notebooks probably also wondering why their middle fingers are hurting so much. Which, in not so neat cursive, brings me to today’s diatribe: Travel Journals - Why, why not and what’s the point.

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Sarah says:

One of the most beautiful aspects of traveling is that moment where you find yourself having arrived upon spot of the world so awe-inspiring and breathtaking, so truly different from anything you have seen before and anything you have at home and it’s all the more special because you know you may never see it again. It’s a feeling of being lucky to be included in the company of people who have had this moment.

I had one of these moments looking out upon the spectacular open countryside of Mongolia. Outside the capitol city is a pristine nothingness like nothing I’ve ever seen before. The landscape is so gentle and fresh and virtually untouched or changed by interfering humans that I’m certain it remains exactly how it was 25,000 years ago. The air is crisp and silent except for the neighing of wild horses. Out there the sun is free to lay a blanket of the most vibrant oranges and purples across the sky in sunsets that stop time. Absolutely nothing in the world could take your eyes off the sky.

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Dave Says:

An important part of any backpackers journey to different cultures is the ubiquitous homestay. This is often the only ‘real’ contact to be had with the non-westernized and often purely indigenous population of those far flung places. However, the cultural homestay is not always the meeting of the two worlds the brochure promised. Firstly the expectations of the tourist are hard to meet. They want the authentic experience but the disappointment with the presence of a constantly blaring TV and the disgust of an overflowing outhouse offers reality, just not the reality they expected or paid for. It must be hard on the hosts too. Here come more backpackers want to experience living as they do but seemly unable to surrender either their iPods or their hand sanitizer.

Communication ranges from tricky to down right boring despite, but probably because of, the handbook of useful phrases provided by the tour company. Interesting gems such as: “My name is… “, “I live in…” and the utterly useless unless you are conversing with a small child: “How old are you?” That last question serving only to highlight the fact these people look a lot older than they are and that there may be some basis to Olay Facial Cream’s ability to visible reduce lines on western faces. I say boring because every tourist has the phrase book and the host family have answered the questions a million times before. Once that initial salvo of questions is over, everyone is left twiddling thumbs staring at the floor. Everyone, that is, apart from the family who have a hundred chores left to do before the sun sets, not the least being to prepare the tourists a meal that both enters and exits their bodies with pleasure and not fear.

Of all the information a tour company may supply their customers with, the most interesting is cultural do’s and don’t list. These are the actions that must be performed to please the family and those that must be avoided lest a large fire is built in the tourist’s honor upon which they will be gently roasted and fed to the entire village.

So, having completed yet another homestay without being served medium rare to the natives, I thought it would be of great service to the reader to document a few cultural rules for suitable for both rural Mongolian and rural North American interaction, should they find themselves homestaying in either locale:

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Dave Says:

Mongolia was just one of those words that I would use in hyperbolic statements such as: “Oh my God, the nearest decent bar might as well be in Mongolia” or “If you don’t live in Seattle you may as well live in Mongolia!” Now I have been to the object of my exaggeration I can tell you three things. Firstly, it doesn’t have any decent bars although the beer is quite yummy, secondly, it is indeed in the middle of absolutely nowhere and lastly and most importantly, it is everything that the middle of nowhere should be when it is the cultural and commercial bridge between Russia and China - two places that are definitely somewhere. I’m sure Sarah will tell you about its beauty, desolation, warmth and humanity so I will tell you about what it’s like to be on a timeless and perpetual frontier between east and west.

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Sarah Says:

If only the word Propaganda began with the letter “C”. Instead we will have to make due with confusing, colliding and competing communist capitalism, censorship and conspiracy, coercion by the former champion chairman and comrades of China. This is The Big C.

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