Amit Sinha's Travelog

Confessions of an Asian World Traveler

Following the uncovering of the London terror plot to blow up planes, life’ s gotten a little more difficult for the average air traveler, and more so for the “middle-eastern looking” ones. While extra security is warranted, a nd even welcome, I do worry about the new “Salem Witch Hunt” that’s emergin g amongst passengers, where passenger paranoia can cause a couple of studen ts on a holiday to be evicted from a plane.

Having traveled by air a fair bit, and across various parts of the world, b ased on my profile, I expect to get additinal scrutiny at airports. I am In dian, and therefore, for the chromatically challenged, I could qualify as ” middle-eastern looking”. I generally travel light, with hand baggage only. Most of my flights are booked last minute, as I generally don’t plan in adv ance. The bulk of my baggage is electronic goods- laptop, cellphone, iPod, voice recorder, three cameras, two lenses, USB card reader, and various wir es, chargers and associated parapharnelia.

I’m used to being checked by security. I was stopped by security just prior to boarding a flight from Istanbul to JFK, and questioned for twenty minut es by security personnel, who finally let me go after scrutinizing all my w ork papers, my business card, and all prior air tickets and hotel reservati ons. In Kunming, China, where I was the only Indian on the plane that came in from Laos, a customs official decided to try using all the skills he’d l earnt in training on me, and scrutinized every single article I owned, and asked me about each and every item he found, why I was in China, how long I planned to be there, etc. etc. I’ve already mentioned in this blog about h ow authorities in Jamaica and Amsterdam convinced me that its better to be clean shaven when traveling.

I don’t complain when stopped. In fact, I feel more confident that security procedures are working, when I am stopped for additional scrutiny. I find it worrying when the security official does NOT ask me to open my laptop or iPod. Or when he opens only the front flap of my camera kitbag, and not bo thering to open the other two flaps where I have another camera, USB card r eader and other stuff stowed away. I would complain, however, if I was boot ed off a plane because the person next to me felt I was suspicious, because I looked different from him, or spoke in Bengali, which being non-European , could be mistaken by the phonetically challenged to be middle eastern as well, to my mother on my cell phone just before the closing of cabin doors, to let her know I was on the flight, or if, my inadvertant gesture of pray er, a casual hand movement from my heart to my head, a mixture of Hindu and Christian gestures that my non-religious sub-conscious mind inculcated as a child, turns out to be a signal for someone of my not-so-holy intention o f blowing myself up.

I know its hard for someone not to harbour such suspicions- its human natur e. I will admit, when the news broke of the students being booted off the f light in Spain because of “dress inappropriate for the environment”, I seri ously considered, for a moment, whether to wear my Hugo Boss suit on the fl ight, instead of my usual summer wear of jeans and kurta. I also felt glad I wasn’t muslim, even though “Amit” and “Ahmad” sound similar to the untrai ned western ear. And then I wondered- if I feel this insecure being non-mus lim and non-middle eastern, what about the travelers who are muslim, and ar e middle eastern, and not terrorists? i.e., a profile that fits 99.9% of mi ddle-eastern, muslim travelers.

Even I have been led to double standards. I will also admit, that when I se e someone young and middle-eastern in line at security or check-in, I do gi ve him more attention. I remember in Bangkok, standing in line at departure , with two young Saudi gentlemen. They wore flashy gold rings, necklaces et c., and had in their hands large stuffed animals. Instead of standing patie ntly in line, they were jumping from one line to another, trying to find th e shortest one. While their trying to find the shortest line was annoying, and they looked horribly out of place holding stuffed animals, neither I, o r any of the other passengers around, felt that we should take the law into our own hands and insist that they be removed. You’ve got to figure that t he security personnel probably have the same fears as you, and will take th e necessary security measures.

Which brings me to the point of this long rambling post- Tightening of secu rity, leading to inconvenience and questioning, is welcome, and maybe even necessary in this world. But passenger paranoi, fed by an over-zealous medi a, only leads to creating an environment of suspicion and fear which leads to nowhere.

I wonder what would happen if the next terrorist to be arrested and convinc ted turned out to be Caucasian or Oriental in appearance?

I have a few minutes to kill at the Madurai airport, and looking
around me, its like a mini replica of San Jose Airport, as it seems
that this place caters only to the NRI community, with the occasional
business traveler. It does make sense, as with the excellent bus
connections, I find it hard to see why someone would take the flight
to Madurai.

I look around me and there are little brats running around with thick
american accents, followed by parents in jeans and salwars and bad
american accents… This could be San jose International Airport,
minus the Spanish!

Transport has been a fascinating experience in the past few weeks
that I have been here in Madurai. Buses are by far the most popular
forms of public transport, available in all shapes, sizes and forms.
From the old rickety ones that serve the suburban and city regions,
to the short-haul buses to places like nearby Karaikudi which have
TVs and show Tamil movie DVDs, with English subtitles!!! The long-
haul buses though, are by far the most interesting. They are full
sleepers, i.e., they have no seats, and instead have comfortable
sleeping berths, lower and upper, much like a train. While the single
ones are comfortable, the doubles can be a little intimidating, as a
single traveler, as you will be spending the night in the same bed
with a stranger! But such issues do not seem to affect the average
traveler, who is most accommodating of the situation.

A note on the airport before I sign off though- It serves only about
eight to ten flights a day, but is extremely clean and neat, with
professional staff and facilities, and what’s more, free Wi-fi, which
scores mega points in my book!

More about my experiences in Madurai when I return to Chennai and get
some time to have my virtual life catch up with reality.

I have just three days to go before I end this phase of travel. On Wednesday I leave Bangkok for Chennai, and will spend the next five or six weeks working for a microcredit organization, following some of the work they’ve done.

Travel is great, and I’ve enjoyed the last five months or so immensly. Its hard to find a better way to know yourself, and the world, really. However, I did realize that there will be more opportunities for me to travel, and I’d rather use the time remaining to do something that I would otherwise not be able to do. And that’s the experience I hope to get in the next month or so, in India.

Unfortunately, that does leave Africa and South America out of my ‘six continents in six months’ scheme, but I have a good idea of what I want to do there, and over the next couple of years, I’ll use my vacation time to experience them.

I head to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand for a couple of days, and then have a few days in Chennai, which I shall use to update my blog, photos and suchlike.

I hate to sound all philosophical, but life truly is a journey, and being on the road, seeing new places, meeting different people, and adjusting to different ways of life, is just an incredible and enjoyable learning experience. It also refreshes you in many ways, and helps clear things a little, as while discovering the world out there, you find out more about yourself.

In the past ten days or so, from walking around the monuments in
Beijing, to buying train tickets, to roaming around Shanghai and
bicycling through Sozhou, I’ve begun to develop an understanding and
appreciation for this part of China, the people, the chaos, the
development, and life out here. While my observations and experiences
here could fill reams of pages, the most striking thing has been how
quickly I’ve picked up the important phrases required to get along here.

When moving out of the touristy realm, finding a place where you can
order from an English menu, or look at pictures and point, can be
difficult. Luckily, the mates I’m traveling with have a working
knowledge of Chinese, as well as a Mandarin phrase book. However,
sometimes even that’s not enough, so tonight I had to walk around the
restaurant and point to dishes that looked attractive and then had
one of the owners who knew about ten words in English, confirm
whether they were chicken, pork or beef, and meat, and not intestines
or abdomens or other interesting body parts that are relished in this
part of the world.

In summer, words you learn very quickly end up related to drink- My
favorite phrase is asking for a bottle of cold beer (bing ping
pijou), and then changing the ‘pijou’ to ‘shwey’ and getting ice cold
water anywhere.

You begin to recognize some Chinese characters, like the symbols for
entry and exit, or more interestingly, the sign for Internet, which
is two crosses in a box. I was pretty excited to make the discovery
today that the sign meant “net”, by seeing it used in a tourist sign
for some place that had a net… I thought that was pretty neat.

I’ve really had a wonderful experience in China, and have tons of
experiences to share. Will share them, as well as post my pictures
very shortly… Its a fascinating country, and I’ve seen so little of
it.

(Written on July 5th, 2006)

Airports in Laos can prove to be venues for really unique
observations and experiences. Firstly, you have to go through
passport control, even for domestic flights. The weighing scales when
you check in, are old manual scales, the kind used to weigh rice and
vegetables in neighborhood markets across Asia. Being small, with
just a few flights every day, the airports have a relaxed, lazy feel,
and the authorities really don’t seem to have much to do.

At Luang Prabhang, the x-ray machine at security check was out of
order. Next to it, the security officer sat nonchalantly, waving
passengers through without nothing more than a cursory check.
Meanwhile a female assistant of his, in police uniform, stood by his
side and was either massaging his head, or looking for lice, I wasn’t
really sure.

Experiences such as these just add more to the charm of a place I am
already sad to leave. Luang Prabhang, is truly charming, and the
experiences I’ve had here have been wonderful. From trying to change
British Pounds at 8am, trekking through jungles, hanging out with
tribals, meeting an elephant, kayaking down-river to the city,
haircut by a beautiful Lao girl and a Gay guy, spending an evening
with charming British girls, all in the course of a day.

At 8am, just minutes before I was to head out for my trek, I realized
that I did not have enough money on me to pay for my trip. ATMs are
still foreign to this town, and luckily I had some British Pounds
tucked away in my backpack somewhere. Grabbing a fistful of pounds, I
headed to the main street to find a place that would change it into
liquid currency like the Kip, or the almighty dollar. of course, at
8am, the options for International Finance in the bustling trading
center of Luang Prabhang’s pretty limited. The first place I went to
just did not recognize the Queen, while the second tried to buy them
from me for $1.10, trying to convince me that it was Euros that I had
on me. By now I was getting dangerously close to missing my ride to
the Trek, and took my chances by stepping into what looked like a
high-end handicrafts store. The lady inside spoke no English, but
took a look at my notes, and then started talking to her cell-phone,
and then surprisingly agreed to change my pounds for a relatively
decent rate!

The trek was truly magnificent, and educational. For about three
hours, we trudged through dense forests, walked on river-beds, went
up and down hills, and witnessed some spectacular views. At various
points, we would find clearings in the forest, and farmers growing
sticky rice. My guide mentioned that the increased farming was
leading to erosion, water problems and depletion of the forests. The
government had therefore initiated a program to resettle some of the
villagers in Luang Prabhang, promising them compensation and jobs.
The guide, who was pretty frank, felt it was a good idea, as that
would provide children with access to schools, as now hardly any
existed in the villages up in the hills.

After a couple of hours, we made our way to a village populated by
the Khmu tribe. While I was having a simple lunch of fried rice, corn
and bananas at the local store, the store-owner, a young lady,
brought some papers over to my guide and they had an animated
conversation for several minutes. She did not seem to happy with what
my guide had to say. Apparently, a few weeks ago, a group of men came
to the village, selected seven women, and she was one of them, and
told them that high paying jobs could be arranged for them in
Thailand. They had to sign some papers, and within a month, the men
would have their work permits and passports ready. My guide tried to
tell her that its not easy to find jobs in Thailand, especially if
you are uneducated, and that in most likelihood, they would end up
working in bars, or worse. Plus, its took six months to officially
obtain a passport in Laos, so he was not sure how these men were
going to get all paperwork done in a month. Its unfortunately a story
that’s repeated across the countryside in Indochina.

After a brief stop at an Elephant sanctuary, we hopped on kayaks and
made our way back to Luang Prabhang over a nice leisurely three
hours. Whenever the heat got too much, a short dip in the waters
cooled you down. On the way we passed fisherman casting their nets
and setting their traps, little kids swimming and playing in the
water. It felt like miles away from anything.

On the way back to the guest house, I stopped by a hairdresser to get
a haircut at a place that I was attracted to by this absolutely
charming and beautiful Laotian young woman, and then a little more
than a tad bit disappointed when it was her gay colleague who ended
up giving me the hair cut!

The rest of the evening was spent with three charming young women I
met at my guest house. Cathy and Phillipa are teachers in Thailand,
and Cathy’s sister Tess was over visiting from England. They were
traveling around Lao by bus and train, and it was fabulous chatting
about their experiences, backgrounds, and just talking about the
world in general. Having grown up in very multi-cultural backgrounds,
and having traveled extensively, their perspective on life and the
world was truly refreshing, and I found myself quite enjoying their
company and listening to them talk.