It feels great to be back, nevertheless in these 2 years, the world of travels has been subjected to so many changes that I am now asking myself how long it will take before traveling becomes a mass recreation: low cost flights and air traffic in general has risen above unthinkable levels, the number of backpackers is consequently growing and with technology, the speed of social networking is making connections happening from one side of the globe to the other in a blink of an eye. Specializations, certifications, new schools and job rotations have largely increased so that today everyone seems to be constantly on the move.
Traveling is becoming too easy. Just few years ago you were struggling communicating in different languages in order to ask simple information; you had to walk around and sweat your shirt to find locations, a phone booth, a cheaper transportation or a meal. Nowadays every damn punk wannabe backpacker with an iphone can find everything at any time, translate any language, never get lost using a gps or find thousands of hints, tips and reviews in a matter of second on the net. Traveling and getting around truly required some set of skills, spirit, motivation and a certain dosage of smartness…nowadays any idiot with a smartphone can travel…proving again that the smartphone is better than him.
It’s going to get worse, obviously, and what I can say is that you’ll most probably need to go back to basics and find another intellectual stimulation to elevate yourself to a new level, perhaps by being able to travel without even having to step out of your house. I let you figure out how to do that. Ultimately, by using technology for having better access to further abstract refining, and not for the sole physical enrichment.
Before I leave you to your own considerations, I have a question for the average backpacker: I’ve seen so many punk backpackers looking like trash, pretentiously playing the hippies, yet, they have huge backpacks which are so damn heavy and bigger than them… Now, I’d really like to know, what the heck are you carrying inside!?
Nosham's traveling handbook
I had written the 80% of this handbook during 2007, being seldom committed to this work, but had a good draft by the end of the same year. The following 2008 has just been adding the remaining 20%, reviewing and changing 10 times my mind about what to write and what not to write. The main issue was that most of what I wrote that time, turned out to be kind of outdated compared to my experience of few months after or so. I had to keep on changing and re-reviewing to re-adapt it to my “new” me, until now, when I got tired and I had to make a choice. To continue my slow and constant modification until undefined time or just publish my manuak the way it is at now, with the opened option of adding further improvements and chapters when the time comes. In the meantime you can enjoy the version 1.0, buying it now for the very cheap price of 1 Euro only (in .PDF file, download of 13mb black and white or 130 for color, as it will contain some pictures as well). Buying the guide will entitle you to receive free updates in case of any further improvement. Available in english only of course, but if anyone feels to collaborate and transalte it into different languages I will be glad to offer full assistance. By the way, some months ago Ive sent a beta version of this script to quite few people who vowed to read it and reply with constructive feedbacks and comments. Unpleasantly they all turned me down except one person: her name is Laura from Italy (in2out.it): today I would officially like to thank her for being so supportive regarding this project. Jump to my books page ——->HERE. Email me for any suggestion or comment.
From today I’ll be again in front of the usual junction wondering which path to follow. Should I go to Australia, to Indonesia or Korea? All these possible scenarios (from my very first trip until now) keep on bouncing inside my head driving me confused about the so called “parallel universes”. Every choice might lead to very singular consequences and I have no gift to foresee them. A friend of mine used to tell me that smart people often make smart choices because they are able to see themselves in a future in which they either made the right or the wrong choice. On the other hand I add, smart people often learn from their mistakes (precisely from their wrong choices). A parallel universe has nothing to do with all the above as it is a world where you cannot imagine yourself making the right or the wrong choice because it is not about right or wrong but about a surrounding where you simply took a “different” chance in life. There are generally few times in life where we are in front a such complex intersection (about me, I just had few more times because in the law of the big numbers I increased my chances by following the “webby” tangle of being an “adventurer”). Rationality has in some occasions, no role at all in the “parallel universe thinking”: it would be as good as throwing a coin in the air take your chances… gear up buddy.
I can’t keep track of the hundred times I spoke about this topic with a friend of mine who is also traveling around the world since he was 16. We usually end up agreeing that there is actually no place left for us to go to, no matter if we have seen 20 or 30 countries, no matter if we keep doing this for 10 or 20 years more, the result wont change at the moment. We couldn’t find our eclectic place, the place that holds our standard of beauty, our standard of civic education, of culture, of technology, climate and so forth. We found beauty but along with unbearable weather conditions, we found culture but along with brainwashing governments, we found smiles but along with ignorance… and so on… It took me 6 years of travels to realize that i dont like traveling (if you can understand what I mean, then you’re one step ahead of the mass). What’s left then, he says we should wait for the interstellar traveling and explore other planets but in the meanwhile live long enough to live till that time (again if u know what im talking about, you’re one step ahead of the average dumbass). But me, Im not sure if I can make it till then, therefore I had proposed to find a compromise for the place to be, but right after I had the feeling that this could throw me into another tunnel of 10 years cruising with the difference of a rather new “unblurred” target. I do not exclude either taking a long break from my trips or creating bunch of bases for a quite long term plan of generating a decent income (even though i’ll not be applying for a job but most probably setting up my own biz). On the other hand, I am (because my friend doesnt believe anymore in such things) still surfing the wave in the eclectical-ideal-woman search all the way. Anyways, I think we sowed (Im still sowing) quite some seeds, the time to mow will come, sooner or later…
Im in a place somewhere around the center/south part of thailand, I took a night train from Hua Hin, a 3rd class ticket for a hundred baht and I ended up getting free whiskey shots and drunk together with 2 workers from the countryside of Yala. The 3rd class was smelly and dirty with instects on the floor, we were all crumpled against each other and I forced myself to stay awake in order to take care of my little backpack. Walked all around this town and decided to continue my trip to Koh Samui, so I got something to eat, actually a complete meal, some thai noodles with soup, vegetables, soy and chopped chicken, for the price of 25baht (0.40 cent$) in one of those lolcal places set up like it was a camp site. I then opened my small diary and wrote few notes, walked other couple of kilometers and consumed 1 liter of water (sweating so much that i didnt even had to take a pee) to find an internet cafe where in the end I couldnt even plug my laptop online. Then Im now using their crap pc, updating my blog manually: I open the ftp site, drag the index.html file onto the desktop and open it with a notepad application, seek into the code and start writing <p class”alignjustify”> which make sense according to the css coding style page, I add these notes, some other html code, save the index file, close the session and thank the lady in charge of the shop who let me use their pc for free (I told her Im a vagabund which she obviously believed by seeing the size of my bag and the condition of the clothes i was wearing on me). I’ll now go to the train station and continue to south. This was me again, Alan Rooster.
