Mar. 25, 1992

Here I am eating my last meal in Israel for a while.  I am sad to be leaving again and don’t feel any happiness in going back to USA (Miami..where I was born and raised.)  I am trying to look at it as a new experience, but really don’t see much good coming of it.

Last night I was at the youth hostel, but 2 nights prior to that, Yosi from the Astor Hotel let me stay at his apartment.  It was really great.  This is the end now. 

12:40am

Here I am on the plane how.  I hate El Al Airlines and will never fly them again.  They have again put me in the 2^nd to last row in the middle seat (4 seats in the middle row.)  This flight is really going to suck.  16 hours of h-ll with Hassidics davening and me having trouble sleeping because I am not against a window to lean on.  There is nobody next to me yet and I just can’t wait to find out what smelly jerk will be put here.

Backpacking the World –Pt.7- Muar and Malacca

Kirsten and I went around Malacca yesterday, we had a good time.  Malaysia is very pretty.  The houses all have beautiful and interesting roofs.  Lots of Buddhist temples and lots of vegetation, especially banana trees and palm trees.  They serve every kind of juice you could think of and more here.

 
In Muar and Malacca, there were men selling snakes or some kind of snake remedy in the streets.  Malacca is very red, all the buildings are made with a red brick, and the town looks like it came out of a picture.

 The night and day in Muar where really interesting, especially since Kirsten and I were able to see things that no tourists are usually able to see.  We were given a tour of the temple there and even saw the ashes (in containers) of the dead worshipers.  We also saw the Sultan’s house.  Being invited into an actually house of someone living there really added to the interest, seeing the inside and spending the night there was fantastic.  We also got to go out for the local food, which I didn’t like.  They eat black eggs and other strange foods.  The one food that I did like though, was the pancake sandwiches that are made on the streets.

Today is the day that I get to see Singapore, now that I have a camera.  The first thing that I did was go to the Chinese Garden via the MRT (underground train.)  Then I went to the science center in Jurong.  I saw a show in the planetarium while I was there.  The first show was “Man, Moon, and Sun” and then there was a show all about the history of Singapore, which was very interesting.  Especially since Singapore had been independent since 1965 only.  Then in the evening I went out with Roland again.  He took me out to Orchard Road for New Years.  The road was closed off to traffic and lots of different groups of people were performing all around us.  I saw Chinese folk dancing, Indian dancing and much more.  The Christmas lights were really amazing!

 Singapore is an amazing city and very clean.  There are fines for loads of things like littering or not flushing a toilet.  The hate groups, such as KKK and Nazis are illegal in Singapore and chewing gum is illegal also (due to the mess it can make.)  The people are really nice and well behaved and even after the evening celebration for New Years, the roads were immediately cleaned and were looking new within an hour.  Singapore seemed to be more modern than United States (where I am originally from.)

 When New Years finished Roland took me up to a mountain where we could see the whole view of Singapore (it is really a small country.)  It was breathtaking!  After than Roland took me to a very fancy Karaoke Club, where people sat on couches and sang, as the microphone was passed to the next singer.  In short, I had a great day and am planning on going to Santosa and then the next day Haw Par Village.

This is part 2 of my backpacking adventures blog.  The first part was the introduction to my journey and how I had decided to try backpacking.  I had forgotten to mention, however that I had two girlfriends who wanted to travel with me, however I decided against going with them.  I thought that they may tie me down and there may be problems on what to do, and I really wanted to travel to where I wanted and not where someone else did.  So in the end, I left for this journey alone with an open mind and lots of excitement.  I also forgot to mention that the wait on the border of Israel/Egypt was for over 3 hours, since it was the day after Christmas and I had been given two Playgirl mags by some friends of mine prior to leaving Israel.

We actually were checked on entry to the border crossing by the Egyptians and they let me continue into the building without bothering me.  However, when it came time to leave the border to enter into Egyptian land, they checked my bag again and saw the Playboys.  The started passing them around themselves and told me that I didn’t need them since everyone was having sex in Thailand anyway.  I made a bit of a scene since the Playboys were bought for me as presents and they were very expensive in Israel.  I could tell that they all wanted to take my mags home to their wives/boyfriends/etc which I would not allow.  I told them that if those mags are illegal in Egypt that I wanted them destroyed before I left the border and I would not relent, until they were torn up and thrown out.  Then, finally I boarded the bus ride from hell, to Cairo. I described the awful bus ride in part 1 of the adventure.

Well, since I am writing this now, 15 years later, you should know that I made it into Cairo. Cairo was also a bit scary for me, since there were so many men with uniforms and guns, sticks and other things.  The other thing about Cairo is the drivers and the traffic, I do not know if they have any rules for driving in Cairo at all.  We came to a traffic circle with lights and it seemed to me that they are lacking driving rules.

So, now there is no turning back.  With my passport in hand and one night in Cairo, I boarded the plane for Bankok in the morning.  I had already met other travelers on the bus to Cairo who were going to Thailand also and had friends that had been there before, so they already knew where backpackers go when they get into Bankok.

Keep reading to hear the rest of the story.

I think there are two things to consider if you want to travel, you need either money or time, to travel.  If you have lots of money and are short on time, then your best choice is going to a hotel and taking day tours, however if you are short on money, but have time then the best option may be backpacking and this is my preferred way of traveling.  In fact, I try to get more time when I travel and think less about the money involved by backpacking.

 In fact, I love backpacking in the real world and the third world life is the most interesting to me.  Being originally from U.S.A., I am accustom to hotels and the first world and that is why the third world is so interesting to me.  There are people all over the world that live in happiness without much of anything which Americans would find satisfactory.  So maybe what we think we need to be happy in America is not really what makes people happy.

 I spent a long time backpacking around the third world countries, mostly in Asia and want to tell the world what I found out about people, the world, customs, rituals, my favorite places to travel and my least favorite.  For example, I really did not like Hong Kong and found the people there very unfriendly and unhelpful, while I loved Indonesia, where the people were warm, friendly, and outgoing.  Jamaica was also a great place to visit, with the clear blue water and the lovely reefs. 

 Since I made lots of time to travel, but really didn’t have much money I originally purchased a really inexpensive ticket to Bangkok.  I first began my backpacking experience while I was staying in Israel and spent some time in a youth hostel in Tel Aviv and was able to meet lots of young travelers from all over the world.  At that time, I was just about to go to a kibbutz (a communal in Israel.)  I had decided before I went to the kibbutz that I was going to backpack after finishing the Ulpan (a Hebrew learning class on kibbutz which is for 5 months.)

 It was December 1991 when I completely the Ulpan and had already purchased my tickets to Bankok and gotten all shots and pills necessary.  On the 26^th of December I got on the bus from Tel Aviv to Cairo.  This was one of the worst experiences of my life, since the bus didn’t have a working toilet and the bus ride was 16 hours.  After crossing the Suez Canal (there is a ferry which takes the bus to the other side of the Canal) and that was the first time since leaving Israel that there was a toilet.  Since there had been some aggression prior to the bus trip, the bus was escorted by cars in front of the bus and in back, and the bus would stop ever so often and the driver would get off and leave us all on the bus without telling us anything.  I was told that this was due to the sections or districts in Egypt, where the escort cars are changed when you come to a new district.  However, sitting on the bus and knowing there had been some problems with terrorism, I felt like a sitting duck and didn’t know if someone would jump on the bus and shoot us all while the driver was gone and the door was left open.  The only other bus ride that I really disliked was in China, where the people were all vomiting on the bus and then getting off and eating only to get back in the bus and vomit more (right on the floor of the bus.)

 Keep reading my blog to hear the rest of the story.