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Let’s kick it off with a quote. “It is clear that with less personal freedom and a bigger and more invasive state comes less personal responsibility and greater lawlessness.” Those words came from an article about the UK fudging crime numbers by deliberately using fuzzy methods to measure malfeasance. So it’s sort of out of context, because I’m not going to talk about crime, but it’s still a good way to begin.

I want you to picture life in America in the 1800’s. The Wild West. There was very little in the way of “consumer protection.” You didn’t have a bunch of fucking laws and the laws you did have were enforced sporadically. What you had was a situation where, if you wanted to stay alive, you had to think for yourself. You had to take full responsibility for your personal safety. That sounds annoying, sure, but consider the flipside. That same lack of law meant freedom! People acted as they felt. Ride around drunk shooting your gun off, load up a wagon so high that it could fall over and kill someone, burn your house down and dance naked in the hot ashes, I mean whatever. Aside from a few dozen unpardonable offenses, you could do so much without looking over your shoulder that some bureaucrat is going to give you a ticket.

Which is what we have now in America. Eric went hunting on my father’s property one fall. As he was pulling onto the road a game warden stopped him and asked to see his muzzle loader (it being illegal to use rifles in this county, nanny state). Well Eric had left the blasting cap in place and Mr. Game Warden gave him a $300 fine for that minor offense. Thanks, nanny state. Trucks are not allowed to carry straps that have fraying beyond 1/8th an inch of the edge. I don’t mean use straps that have a bit of fraying, I mean fucking carry them. If a police officer finds slightly frayed straps on your truck you get fined. Way to go, nanny state. Slip and fall on some ice because it’s fucking winter and ice is slippery and it’s been slippery since the beginning of time, sue the bastards! Thank god we have a nanny state that enables this.

Use Your Head, Bill

The list goes on, of course. It’s just piles and heaps and stacks of regulations and laws and fines, governing your life. Keeping you safe. But really, the way I look at it, it’s keeping you safe but it’s also dulling the mind. It’s lulling a citizenry into a false state of confidence. Unlike the guy in the Wild West, the modern American doesn’t feel as though he has to use his head. He doesn’t have to think about how to take care of himself, the nanny state has that covered. And if he or she gets hurt doing something that could have been avoided with just a bit of thought, he or she can sue. This system works for some people. Although I find it somewhat distasteful I’m not arguing that it should be dismantled because of me, but it is interesting to note that there are alternatives…

In Asia, and in fact many poorer regions of the world, you have a chance to act more recklessly, and with more freedom, than you do in many first world countries. Drive on the wrong side of the road! Use frayed straps! Drive a forklift down the highway! Swim at a beach with no lifeguard! Climb all over that abandoned rusty bridge! It’s all kind of fun, I think. And you might die in some stupid fucking preventable accident that America created a law against 79 years ago, sure. But you don’t get to have your cake and eat it to. If you want that 79 year old law, and 10,000 other ones like it, well those are 10,000 rules to keep you safe, and also a list of 10,000 things you can’t do. Think about it.

I’ve decided to settle down in Bali which is not something I thought I’d ever do. In fact I clearly remember telling family members that Bali is crowded, the traffic is nuts, it’s not at all for me. That was before I discovered surfing. Now that I know this Indonesia island has some of the best waves in the world, well it changes things. Even if you don’t surf it’s worth coming here, but there is a way to do it right so that you get the most out of your trip.

See, the thing with Bali is that there is traffic, trash and tourists, the terrible Ts. But what’s so amazing is that there are also pockets of incredible beauty. There is a hidden beach on the far south end, a “secret” beach that you can find with a quick Google search, which is one of the best if not the best beach I’ve ever been to in my life. And I have dedicated a not insignificant amount of my life to the pursuit of sand and surf.

Bali has some of the coolest houses and apartments you’ll ever find. The best Airbnb I’ve ever been to (I’ve stayed in more than 50) was in Ubud. A studio apartment on the second floor, jutting out into the jungle where I woke up each morning with the sunrise and tropical birds sitting on the railing. Good God! The Balinese have a preternatural ability to create beautiful homes and majestic spaces.

The rice fields, of course, are astounding. Especially when you find the restaurants built into them. This one in Ubud, and this one in Canggu, are two of my favorites. Speaking of rice fields, last time I was in Bali I managed to find a half mile looping path running through one of the largest rice fields I’ve ever seen. No cars, no crazies, just this path through acres of rice fields. Incredible. I’ll keep that place to myself but if you try hard I’m sure you can find it. It’s not so far from that second restaurant I mentioned.

At the beginning of this short post I mentioned that I’d tell you how to get the most out of Bali. Well first off, the farther away you get from Denpasar the better, just as a rule of thumb. But more than that, the key to enjoying Bali is exploration. You have to rent your scooter and go out on an adventure without knowing what you’re looking for. Go down some side roads, follow traffic and see where it takes you, go to Ubud and discover the awesomeness of driving through the vine wrapped tunnel. There are so many beautiful, amazing places in Bali but you’ll never find them if you don’t venture far from your hostel. And if you’re really not into traffic and tourists, try heading to the far south, around Uluwatu. You’ll be close to the beaches and away from most of the bustle. That’s about where I’m staying, maybe I’ll see you there.

This story is part of a collection from my first self-published book, Three Years Abroad. It’s available on Amazon for $8.99 and if you have Prime then the shipping is free. I’d be thrilled if you wanted to pick up a copy. You’ll get this story and others like it, printed up and delivered to your door. Until then, please enjoy the story.

***

Lobitos is a place that you’d never hear about if it wasn’t for surfing. At the northern edge of town is a point break that at least one pundit has called the best surfing in Peru. Under ideal conditions the waves can reach seven feet although commonly they average towards five. The sea is murky, a greenish-brown inshore which lightens to a pleasant blue as the water gets deeper. Occasionally whales surface offshore by the oil derricks which dot the horizon. The town is very remote and I ended up there by accident.

Two months in advance I had reserved a small cabin in Máncora, a chic fishing village on the Peruvian coast. However, four days before my flight my accommodation was canceled. As I’d already bought a plane ticket to this far-flung slice of the globe I had to find somewhere else to stay. The best option was an upstairs room, in Lobitos, with a small balcony and a view to the ocean. Rent was three-hundred a month and the reviews were excellent. I booked it and four days later I was there.

I’d bought beer in town and on my first night I sat on the balcony drinking and eating tuna fish and watching the sun set over the water while surfers rode the last waves and mosquitoes feasted on my legs. The next morning Diego, my host, cornered me.

“What do you do?” He asked. A tall wiry man who smoked Pall Malls and had thick arms and shoulders which I would later come to associate with people who surfed constantly.

“I used to work for a startup in New York but I just quit. Other than that I don’t have a job at the moment.” I was fired with just cause for a gross lack of competence and an overall loose interpretation of what qualified as a working hour. But I didn’t tell people that.

“So what are you doing here?”

“I like the ocean and I wanted to be somewhere close to the beach. I’m also going to write a few things and this seemed like a good place to do it,” I said truthfully.

We were standing outside the small outdoor kitchen which everyone shared. The refrigerators weren’t much colder than a cool day in September and the freezer didn’t freeze as the entire place ran on solar power. The water came from a twenty-five hundred liter tank and was filled up once a month by a large truck. The whole compound could have been sucked into a hurricane and a not a single wire or pipe would have been pulled up from the ground, save for the one that took away the sewage.

Diego nodded. “A writer. We’ve had two writers here. One was a German boy who wrote about surfing. I think he sold many books in Germany.”

“Germans love to travel,” I replied, “they’re crazy. Wherever you go in the world you’ll find a German there.”

Diego chuckled. “Yes, they like to travel. Do you surf?”

“I’ve never tried it.”

“You should man,” Diego said with enthusiasm. “I have a board here you can use, the big yellow one. You should take it out and try to get some waves.”

In my younger and more vulnerable years I’d thought that I might one day learn to surf but that dream had been dormant for half a decade. I replied noncommittally, “I don’t know, maybe.”

“You should try it,” Diego repeated, “it’s a lot of fun. Surfing is the only reason that I built my house here and it’s the only reason anybody comes to Lobitos.”

“Is everyone here to surf?” I asked, gesturing at the other cabins.

“Yeah man, everyone.”

“Shit. Alright, well maybe I’ll try it tomorrow. Thanks Diego.”

“Hey, no problem man.”

After lunch the next day I put on sunscreen and took the board, which was nine feet long and as nimble as a hearse, down to the ocean. My training was sparse, I had none. My thinking was, as in so many endeavors in life, it is best to get involved with the activity immediately. After you’ve grabbed the bull by the horns and gotten the piss kicked out of you, then you can try to figure out how to do it right.

From noon till two I never came close to standing up on the board, let alone riding a wave. I got tossed and rolled and pushed so far off course that three times I had to get out of the water and walk back up the beach to try again. By the end of two hours my throat hurt from the saltwater I’d swallowed, my papery German skin was torched red and my arms felt like they’d been run over by a fat man on a Harley. I sat on the beach and stared at the surfers and dumbly speculated on what allowed them to catch the waves so elegantly while I floundered around like a whale with brain worms.

“Fucking bastards,” I said loud enough for them not to hear. Then I took the board back to the cabin and asked Diego how much it would cost to rent it for a month.

“For every day?” he asked.

“For every day,” I replied.

***

Save for bear wrestling and bull riding, surfing is the only sport where the medium is trying to kill you. For millions of years the ocean has been the spawning ground of hurricanes and the progenitor of tsunamis. The surfer seeks to tame this wily bastard. The closest approximate to riding a board down a wave is the feeling of stepping quickly down a moving walkway where each step is amplified and an external force drives you forward. Some people say that riding a motorcycle is like being on a roller coaster that you can control. That’s fine, but surfing is like standing on a roller coaster that you can control. It’s twice as satisfying and when you crash you don’t break your bones.

The better the surfer, the smaller the board. Large boards are easier to paddle and stand up on however they are ungainly and ugly compared to the small ones. With a small board a surfer can turn fast, jump waves and indelibly prove how cool he, or she, is. Small boards can also be easily carried on motorcycles, in the back of sedans, or on airplanes.

To learn to surf is to learn to read the water, not all waves are created equal. The white froth of a broken wave can be ridden but is inferior and beneath the dignity of anyone save a beginner. Every surfer who wasn’t born yesterday seeks to ride the curl, the unbroken section just on the edge of where the wave crashes into foam. This is the fasted way to travel and on the largest waves in the world surfers can reach speeds in excess of forty miles an hour.

Unlike skiing, surfing’s primary demand is on the arms, shoulders and back. To catch a wave you have to be in the right position in the water and to get there you have to paddle. Sometimes thirty feet, sometimes hundreds of yards. This is a strain on the triceps in particular and they are the first muscles to go. The back also grows weary as paddling requires the surfer to keep his chest elevated off the board. The muscles strengthen in time but nobody can surf forever.

These are the facts that one picks up along the way. Following my first session I surfed twenty-nine days in a row and went from an unbalanced beginner to a man who was widely recognized as a wave rider. In my third week I accomplished my goal of surfing a wave from one side of the beach to the other and by the end of my fourth week I was doing it consistently. I attribute this to the enthusiasm with which I practiced, and how could it be otherwise? Catching waves is an addiction as real as the bottle. Lobitos is the town where I dominated my first wave and Diego is the man who got me started. When circumstances seat you at the table of life the best thing is to call for whiskey and eat heartily, chance opportunities are the banquets that define a man’s story.

***

Like this story? Want to read more like it? My first self-published book, Three Years Abroad, is now available on Amazon. It’s 10 short stories, including this one, about my time abroad, the people I met and the interesting situations I found myself in. It’s only $8.99 and if you have Prime then shipping is free. I’d love it if you want to pick up a copy. All proceeds will fund future adventures in off the map countries.

This story is part of a collection from my first self-published book, Three Years Abroad. It’s available on Amazon for $8.99 and if you have Prime then the shipping is free. I’d be thrilled if you wanted to pick up a copy. You’ll get this story and others like it, printed up and delivered to your door. Until then, please enjoy the story.

***

If you don’t know where you are going any road can take you there,” said The Cheshire Cat. I didn’t know where I was going so I went to Kochi. I stayed a month, it rained every day, then I went to New Delhi because it was cheaper than flying to Mumbai. My motivation in visiting India was two-fold. In the first case I had romantic ideals of the country, mostly from reading Shantaram. I thought that if I went I might meet my own offbeat Indian guide who would show me the real India. I would fall in love with a beautiful woman and when she refused my advances I’d lose myself in a string of opium dens only to be rescued by a charismatic zealot who would give me a horse, a rifle and a reason to live. I would look up to this man as a father, ride with him to Afghanistan and there we would fight a holy war whose origins dated back a thousand years. Or something like that.

Should this fail to materialize I had a secondary motivation. By eighteen I had in mind five things that I’d like to do with my life. By twenty-six I’d done four of the five, the last on that list was a motorcycle trip in India. To finish the list I had to find a bike. It took me two days. A rental shop the size of a bathroom on the second floor of an industrial complex in downtown New Delhi. The man who rented me the bike had a limp handshake and acted as though we’d known each other for years. The papers I signed said that if anything happened I was responsible and the $200 deposit I left supposedly guaranteed that I’d bring it back. Once the paperwork was in order I was given the keys and set loose on the streets of New Delhi. The ability to operate the bike was taken for granted.

By this time I was aware that everything I knew about driving was wrong. In India things are done differently. Most intersections don’t have a stop sign. Each driver approaches the crossroads and attempts to get through it without stopping. The losing driver, stewing in his cowardice, is the one who stops in order to avoid the accident.

Turn signals are optional. Some drivers will use them when they’re attempting a dramatic maneuver, like crossing four lanes of traffic in six seconds, while others never bother with them. You get the feeling that most car owners, were the turn signal stick to fall off, would not have it replaced. In lieu of signals and courtesy the Indian driver applies the horn. This warns other motorists of your presence and the effect is similar to a bat and his echolocation. A driver who fails to signal his presence with a blast of the horn is liable to be driven into.

Naturally the horn system is infallible and accidents happen. Not as many fatal accidents as one would suspect, looking at the exquisite insanity of the Indian road system, but small ones are common. Automobiles graze each other at walking speeds and the drivers don’t even get out to check the damage. It’s common to see cars with hundreds of scratches and gouges at bumper height. Indian drivers seem to be resigned to this, even the most conscientious driver will be the victim of scrape-and-runs if he does anything other than leave his car in the garage. The thought of driving a Rolls Royce through downtown New Delhi inspires the same feeling as hanging the Mona Lisa in a college dorm.

While teenage Sam hadn’t realized that driving in India was the real life equivalent of Grand Theft Auto, twenty-something Sam didn’t think this justified bailing on ambition. However, concessions were made. Instead of going to the Himalayan mountains, I would instead go to Agra, home city of the Taj Mahal and a mere one-hundred and twenty miles from downtown New Delhi. My bike was a Baja Avenger 220, the cruise edition, and my baggage was my backpack with a few days of clothes, two liters of waters, my laptop, crackers, two charged batteries for my phone and an appreciation of the absurd. I was wearing a lambskin jacked I’d bought special for the trip and in the pocket there was my phone, loaded up with Google Maps and Post Malone.

This setup worked well and on the morning of my departure it took me only an hour to reach the outskirts of New Delhi, a barren place overrun with uninhabited fifty-story apartment buildings, power plants and empty stadiums. It was ninety-five degrees and sunny, a beautiful day for riding. I covered thirty miles and as the buildings gave way to fields my confidence grew. The highway was three lanes wide, only a light spattering of traffic and I hit the throttle till I was doing forty. The countryside was a blur, for forty is quite fast in India where a 600cc bike is considered massive, when I drove over a screw.

The rear tire popped and the back of the bike started to flop like a landed fish. This terrifying sensation was so unexpected it took me several seconds to take proper action. Ease on the front brake, hold the handlebars straight, put down my legs to keep the bike balanced. Fifty feet later I was at a dead stop. My heart was working overtime and my body electrified with adrenaline. My hands were shaking, my breathing shallow and I felt lucky to have not left my skin on the road. I shut down the bike, took off my helmet and looked around. What I saw hit me twice as hard as the almost-accident I’d just survived.

The highway was built on an embankment and afforded a view over the surrounding flatland. Down the slope and parallel to the highway ran a dirt road. A dust cloud followed a man sitting on a wooden cart whipping a donkey. In the distance a half dozen farmers worked a pale green field which, to my untrained eye, looked inhospitable to vegetation. Further down the road three kids rode bicycles and shouted in Hindi. Of everything I saw, nothing suggested that the industrial revolution had reached where I was now stranded. Cold fear gripped me and I felt sick to my stomach. That moment, as the gravity of my situation sunk in, was the most alone I’d ever felt in my life.

I called the rental shop and was told to call a different number. I called that number and was given a different number. I called that number and the man said he didn’t know anyone that far out of New Delhi who could help. He kindly reminded me that per our agreement it was my responsibility to deal with burst tires and suggested I try talking to people. I hung up. If I waited by the side of the road I would wait until I died. I wrapped up my headphones, left my backpack by the bike and squeezed under the barbed wire fence. There was a road fifty feet away and I walked towards it. The upside to my situation, I reminded myself, was that most people in India speak English. Occasionally their accents are so fantastic that it’s impossible to understand what they’re saying but at least they can understand you. Down the road I only walked a hundred feet before a man on a motorcycle made eye contact with me and, as I was possibly the first foreigner to ever set foot on that desolate road since the time of Buddha, he stopped his bike to stare at me. I waved him over.

“Hello,” I said.

“Hello. How are you?” He asked.

Overwhelmed and frightened, angry that my bike had failed after only an hour of driving, I replied dishonestly, “I’m fine. How are you?”

“Oh things are going well, very well. Why are you here?”

I pointed at my bike, just visible on the highway above us. “Punctured tire. Do you know where I can get it fixed?”

The man on the motorcycle said something in Hindi to the guy sitting behind him who nodded. He turned back to me. “Yes, OK. Get on.”

“Where, here?” I asked, gesturing at the gas tank.

“No, there,” he replied, pointing at the back. His passenger scooted forward, I got on the last three inches of the bike and the three of us drove down the dirt road, through a dusty field to a small town where the most imposing building was two stories and made of concrete. We stopped to admire a hand-driven water pump.

“The best water in India,” my driver claimed, before we continued.

We passed naked children and dozens of buildings made from straw and mud. The mechanic had a garage at the end of town and didn’t seem surprised to see us. He was working on another motorcycle and shouted at my driver in Hindi who translated for me.

“He will be done soon. We can wait.”

“OK, that’s fine.” I looked around at the village which was really just a row of houses along the main drag. “Do you live here?” I asked.

“I grew up here but I live in New Delhi now. I visiting my parents this weekend.”

“Cool. What do you do in Delhi?”

“I play professional cricket,” he replied.

“Are you good?”

He smiled, “I very good. You come see me to play sometime.”

“Sure, why not,” I said. The situation was so surreal that I would have nodded and agreed if he’d asked me to be the honorary ambassador to Ecuador.

The mechanic finished his work and we drove back to my bike where in twenty minutes he took the back wheel off, pulled the screw out of the tire with pliers, patched the hole in the tube and put the whole thing back together. It cost $8 and although I was sure that I’d been had I gave him $10. I thanked my driver, we took a selfie and then I put on my leather jacket helmet and music and accelerated through the gears feeling very cocky. I’d been put into an unenviable situation, kicked the shit out of it and now I was off again, hardly an hour after I’d come to an unplanned stop. I made it ten miles.

The second time my back tire blew out was so unexpected it hit me like a teenager texting and driving. While I managed to wrestle the bike to the side of the road unharmed I did not escape unscathed, emotionally a toll was collected. For an unknown reason the second blowout sent a wave of terror through my brain where it became lodged. In one second an unbreakable association was formed between motorcycles and death and no amount of further introspection has ever successfully fixed it. And why should it? The connection is logical. It was as though my last five years of riding I had been blissfully ignorant and then after the second blowout I finally woke up to the truth, a motorcycle can kill you. I felt shell shocked and incapable of action. I sat down and looked out at the brown empty fields.

That I was so mentally impaired was not so good. I was still on the side of a highway in rural India, halfway between New Delhi and Agra, and I had nobody to call. I wish I’d never done this, I thought. I would give anything to just be a normal person who wouldn’t even consider doing this type of stupid shit. Why am I fucking like this? When this speculation failed to lead to a solution I decided the only thing to do was get on with it.

My immediate concern was the disturbing déjà vu of finding myself, again, on the side of the highway next to a dirt road without a town in sight. This time, however, there was no man with a donkey or friendly local on a motorcycle. Just empty fields and far off in the distance a row of mud huts. I put my helmet and bag on the bike, slid under the barbed wire fence and walked to the road just as a man was driving past. I waved at him but he shook his head and kept driving. I walked further and came to an underpass where two kids on bikes were talking to a pair of homeless men sitting on a tarp. They were unshaven and passing back and forth a jug.

“Hello,” I said to all four of them as I approached. They stopped talking and stared, they looked at me like I was the Prime Minister of India. What the hell, they must have been wondering, was a white foreigner doing under their bridge? I addressed the two homeless men first as I thought they might speak better English. “I had a tire puncture, is there a mechanic here?”

I might have had better luck speaking Mandarin. I tried a different approach. “Motorcycle, tire puncture.” I spoke slowly and tapped the back tire of one of the boy’s bikes. Both of the boys faces lit up.

“Tire puncture!” They said together, repeating it several times. “Mechanic, yes?”

“Yes,” I nodded. “Where. Is. Town?”

They ignored me and talked quickly in Hindi. The homeless men, who had been silent, joined in the conversation. This lasted thirty seconds then the taller of the two boys spoke. “I go town.”

“Awesome, thanks,” I replied. Selfishly I’d hoped one of them might make that offer, it wasn’t one I was planning to turn down. “I will wait here.”

“What?”

“OK!” I said with a smile and gave a thumbs up sign. He took off towards town. The homeless men cleared a place on their mat and I sat down. The conversation was limited as I didn’t know Hindi and their English was no better but when I took out my phone they were fascinated. They looked at it, pointed and said things I didn’t understand. I held it out but they wouldn’t touch it. The kid sat on his bicycle and gave me candy and used every word of English he knew which was very few.

The boy who’d gone to town came back after twenty minutes sweaty and satisfied and five minutes later the mechanic arrived on a beat up Enfield. In fifteen minutes he replaced the tube instead of patching it and I felt much better about my chances of making it to Agra. I thanked him the way I thought he might like best, with money, then I started the bike and everyone waved as I drove away.

The second blowout hadn’t rattled my nerves it had broken them. I was now jumpy and unhappy. Every few minutes I thought the tire was going to explode so that in the next couple of hours, twenty or thirty times I brought the bike to a stop on the side of the road. Before I could start again I had to slap my helmet like a quarterback psyching himself up for a third and tenth, then scream like a Celtic warrior going into battle. Only then did I get back on the road and rarely for more than a few miles. It took me four hours to drive forty miles.

By the time I reached Agra the sun was low in the sky and a routine three hour trip had taken me nine. I had made it though by God! My phone took me to within a block of my house where I could take a shower, eat dinner then take as much sleep as my body would allow. After one-hundred and twenty miles the last stretch should have been easy, just find the narrow alley marked with the blue sign, drive a hundred feet and shut off the bike because I’d arrived. Instead, I drove into a slum. Pigs rooting in silver-colored sewage that ran in six inch channels in front of the patchwork homes and piles of garbage burning gray sulfur smoke. It had taken only three wrong turns and I was engulfed in a poverty which would make any American trailer park look like a gated Malibu community. How had I angered Krishna enough to deserve this?

I drove in shapes for twenty minutes. When I passed the same noxious pig barn for a third time I was forced to admit I was lost. I shut off the bike and considered giving up on life. Whatever the world was planning to force upon me, it could be no worse than what I’d already done to myself. Laying down to die had its merits but I thought I had at least one more chance. I put the bike on its stand, walked up to a gaggle of kids and asked them how to get out. They laughed at me being there and told me in surprisingly good English to take this left and that right and when I followed their advice I found the main road in three minutes flat. An hour later I was having dinner at a rooftop restaurant watching the sun set over the Taj Mahal.

***

The highway I’d taken to Agra was different than what you’d find in America. Every mile or two was a pile of broken automobile glass, usually on the shoulder, sometimes well into the lane. That cleaning up these piles of glass might be an inexpensive way to improve the safety of their highways has apparently not occurred to anyone in India.

About half of the tolls, for reasons unclear to me, were only for cars. The bikes drove onto the dirt shoulder in order to avoid paying. There was no speed limit and if there were police they never showed any concern about the behavior of motorists. Barbed wire ran the length of the highway, from Agra to Delhi, and its purpose was to keep animals off the highway as well as stop people from using the road without paying. A fallible system, near the end of my drive I’d stopped to help two men pick up a motorcycle and shove it over the fence.

My reason for going to Agra had been to visit the Taj Mahal. On the morning after my trip from hell I walked to the entrance gate and read the sign. A ticket for Indians was 40 Rupees and a ticket for foreigners was 1,000. The thought of submitting to this injustice was inconceivable. On the principle that I had come to dislike India and refused to give them my money, I chose not to pay. Instead I had lunch on top of a tall hotel and enjoyed the Taj remotely.

After lunch I returned to my room and passed the day in a state of anxiety, nervous at having to once again drive the bike. I speculated about the feasibility of paying someone with a truck to drive me and the bike back to New Delhi but I had no way to set this up and I thought it would cost more than I could afford. Abandoning the bike in Agra, taking a bus back to New Delhi and leaving India on the next flight out also appeared as an option, but an unwise one at that. I was going to have to drive back.

The morning of my departure I ate toast with strawberry jam, a banana and black coffee. A fast shower then I sat cross legged on my bed and made a deal with the universe. If you just let me get back to Delhi safe, I promise I will never again rent a motorcycle in a third world country.

When I tried to start the bike the battery was dead. Two men pushed me till the engine turned over and exhaust shot out the back. I thanked them, drove to the gas station and then got onto the highway. I drove for an hour and then violently slammed my feet into the ground to keep from falling over. For those of you counting, it was the third time the rear tire had blown out. My hands were steady my pulse at resting rate. I had expected to be betrayed. At this point cursing the bike would have been like getting angry at a crying baby. My only wish, as I pushed that wretched son of a bitch onto the shoulder, was that soon it would be dismantled by indolent teenagers, melted down and made into a septic tank.

While I had grown accustomed to getting tires fixed in odd places, this time when I looked at the countryside I didn’t see anybody on the dirt roads or in the fields that stretched for acres by the dozen. There was no overpass with men sleeping under it. My best choice was a rest stop two miles away. I put the bike into first gear and it ran perfectly at walking speed while I walked next to it, my right arm stretched across the gas tank to reach the throttle and the flat tire going thwack thwack thwack on the pavement. It was a cloudless ninety-nine degrees and the sweat poured off so it looked like I’d been rained on. When I had just a quarter mile to go I had to stop and rest in the shade, so strong was the feeling that heat stroke was imminent. I rested for ten minutes, almost but for some reason didn’t puke, drank the last of my water then stood up and finished the walk at a brisk pace. Pushing the bike two miles had taken fifty minutes and in that time no person had stopped to see if I needed help.

At the tire repair shop I poured water over myself and lay sprawled on a filthy couch while three incompetent adolescents removed the rear tire and replaced the tube. Without confidence they reassembled the bike by trying parts in one position and then another. When the head mechanic finished he took the bike off its stand and asked me for more money.

“I want 800,” he said.

“We said 600! You agreed to that before,” I replied angrily.

“Yes but there are three of us, we need more money!”

I looked at the three guys. One had done all the work, another had watched and the third had gone to the pharmacy and gotten prescription pills which I doubted he had a prescription for. We were quibbling over $3, more money than the average Indian worker will earn in a day, but it was the principle God dammit! We stared at each other. He won. I handed over the money, walked over to the convenience store and drank a liter of water then got back on the bike which was hotter than a vinyl car seat in August. I felt good about the prospect of making it back. I saw it as highly unlikely that the tire would go flat again. Four tire blowouts in two-hundred and forty miles seemed improbable, even on the glass strewn highway. You chose this shit, nobody forced it on you, I reminded myself as if it made anything better. Then I started the bike and drove fifteen miles an hour until I got to my apartment in New Delhi seven hours later.

I was so dehydrated that I had a freshman’s hangover the next day but it didn’t matter, I had completed a motorcycle trip in India and with mixed feelings I realized that at twenty-six I had now done everything teenage Sam had ever hoped to achieve. A motorcycle trip in India, the final strike on the list that ended my adolescent dreaming.

***

The home I returned to in New Delhi was a single large room that had a balcony and air conditioning. My landlord described the neighborhood as posh although down the road was the burnt shell of a car and past that a public toilet you could smell from thirty feet. Next to the toilet a man sat on the sidewalk with his scissors barber’s chair and a torn robe. He would cut your hair for fifty cents or give you a shave for thirty. Other men had restaurants on the sidewalk and after you finished eating they’d slosh your dishes in tepid water and then somebody else would use them. I ate at such establishments often.

When I took a taxi and we stopped at intersections it was not unusual for beggars to tap on the windows, holding their hands out for money. Some beggars were women or transsexual men, it was difficult to tell which, done up in garish makeup. Others were waifish girls of eight or ten carrying infants on their shoulders. Their faces smeared with dirt, they made scooping motions with their hands that terminated at their mouths. If you gave money they yelled out and other children would come so that two or three sets of hands were reaching through the window and you felt overwhelmed and sad and wanted the light to change so that you could drive away and not have to think about it anymore.

People dumped their rubbish wherever was convenient. A man on the street in front of me was surprised when a bag of garbage landed on his head, a woman from a second story apartment had carelessly dropped it on him. The dropped garbage ended up in piles and the piles ended up in the water. The water in India was, in every case I saw, polluted black as Hitler’s soul. There was trash on the banks, stuck against concrete bulwarks and floating around in eddies. Sometimes I couldn’t smell the water and other times it reeked like capitalism’s hangover. Oily sewage the color of mercury ran in crevices between buildings and drained into rivers and canals.

It wasn’t the first time that I’d visited a poor country, Cambodia especially was polluted dirty and impoverished. However, India threw everything in my face with a previously unknown intensity. On a five minute walk in downtown New Delhi you could pass an outdoor toilet, begging children, piles of trash, a group of men who would unabashedly stare at you, every minute a horn blast so loud you wished you had ear plugs, water so foul it couldn’t technically be called water and then as you were about to walk in your front door some crazed maniac would come within inches of running you over. Also, it was one-hundred and two degrees so that any walk, even down the block to the bakery, meant sweating through your shirt. On this point, however, I reasoned it was still better than dealing with snow.

The highlight was the food which was, almost without exception, delicious. When I arrived in India I had no clue what any of the dishes were. As the menus rarely offered a description I would ask for something not spicy, the waiter would point at a name I didn’t know and I’d order it. If it was good I’d remember what he pointed at. Chicken mughlai, mutton shahi korma and butter chicken were my favorite dishes and I ate them with parotta and raita.

I have a friend, the smartest man I know, who enjoyed his time in India and I asked him why. He said he, “liked that everyone is sharing in the experience with each other.” I thought this a fine way of putting it. India is a tough country that’s ludicrously hot, overcrowded and extremely poor. People struggle daily to eat and the safety net is death. Yet the struggle is shared and anyone can turn his head and see millions of others living no better or worse than himself. It’s the bleeding edge, water splashed over crusty eyes, the illusion shattering truth of what life is like on the precipice.

Curiouser and curiouser!” cried Alice.

***

Like this story? Want to read more like it? My first self-published book, Three Years Abroad, is now available on Amazon. It’s 10 short stories, including this one, about my time abroad, the people I met and the interesting situations I found myself in. It’s only $8.99 and if you have Prime then shipping is free. I’d love it if you want to pick up a copy. All proceeds will fund future adventures in off the map countries.

Bogota appeared very unusual from the airplane. From the window I saw long stretches of land, flat as a cutting board, permeated here and there by land masses too large to be hills and too small to be mountains. These were extremely unusual in that they broke out of the land abruptly without transition. As large nails pounded through the cutting board. Total flat, then scattershot mountains, a unique combination. I was on the wrong side of the airplane to see most of the city.

When I finally got my Uber my driver yelled at me for waving my phone around and getting into the back seat. “It’s illegal here!” We drove several hundred feet then he made me get into the front seat and promise I wouldn’t hail people with my phone in my hand. I agreed. The roads from the airport to downtown were excellent. In India people honk for no reason, they enjoy the soothing gasp of the horn. In Bogota a bus cut us off and my driver didn’t honk. Surprised, I asked, “Is that illegal?” And pointed to the horn. “No, no, but he saw us anyways.” Lord save me, heaven.

In the morning I walked to the grocery store. Noteworthy, small mountains off to the right. Except for a few bare patches they are covered in trees, thick lush forest. Strange because almost everywhere else the city spreads and dissolves into the country over many miles. Here at least in this particular part of Bogota, there are apartment buildings then nothing, green. An extremely abrupt transition, very unusual. Strikes the senses as wrong, somehow. Can’t look away.

The coffee, sampled from Cafe Colo. Brilliant, a circus on the tongue, flavor for days. Small hints of electricity balanced with a fruity aroma. For the New Yorkers out there, it’s as good as Blue Bottle but a cup costs $1.40 not $32,839. How many bags can fit into my backpack?

In a way I can’t put into words Bogota reminds me of Kiev. Subdued but professional. A current of tension running through the affairs. I’ve been here twelves hours and I like it. With few exceptions the cities that I’ve liked immediately have stayed in my good graces for life and those that have drawn displeasure have never redeemed themselves. Except for maybe Bangkok, which I hated immediately but now feel ambivalent about. My recommendation, come to Bogota. I do not recommend the same for every city I visit.

Travel is one of the coolest things that you can do with your life and I’m thankful for every place that I’ve visited. I talk about this all the time though which is why I should mention a few of the disadvantages. Notably, these downsides are mostly associated with longer 6+ month trips, not two week vacations.

Relationships 

Friendships are like plants, they require water. If you go abroad for a year you might come back and find out that you’ve lost your social circle. A lot will have happened and you’ll be left trying to play catch up. Also, you’ll have less in common with your friends. You spent the last two months in Cambodia driving around a used scooter and getting tan. Your friends have been up to the usual and you’ve missed it.

Also, you might find that you’re not as interested in hanging out with your old friends. You tell them about how cool Spain is, they nod and smile but there’s no spark. You say that you should all buy some plane tickets and go to Colombia for a few weeks in the winter. They look at you like you’re crazy.

Family relationships can also suffer. When you spend a significant amount of time abroad you can fall out of step with what’s happening. Cousins get married, people move, drama ensues, etc. All that happens while you’re listening to techno in Berlin, questioning whether you’ll have any hearing left when you’re 50.

Temporary Friendships 

You’ll meet cool people who believe in adventure, have great spirit and think that Colombia in the winter sounds like a blast. Unfortunately, this person who you have so much in common with is going home in two weeks and they live 4,600 miles from you. You can keep in contact but it’s damn difficult to build a virtual relationship. It’s not impossible, but for any given person the chances that a deep and meaningful relationship form are slim.

Do it While You’re Young

These things happen but screw it. I combat it with a few simple things, like making an active effort to hang out with my friends when I’m home. I stay in contact with my family and keep them in the loop. When I go abroad I always try to visit a few international friends. I’m still an outlier in terms of normal lifestyle, but I make an effort to mitigate that.

All that being said, I think the most important thing to remember is this. If you’re traveling and you find it lonely you can always come home, you’ll have the rest of your life to enjoy long relationships. However, it’s much harder to settle down, create a life and then leave it all behind to travel for a year.

I decided to take the train into Hungary because to hell with flying. I’m disgusted with standing in long security lines, stripping the belt and shoes, then getting molested by some tattooed guy who thought that eleventh grade was “really hard”. All of that and the reward is getting corrective knee surgery from the seat while a the budget airline stewardess offers to sell me a can of Coke for $6. Thanks, I’m not thirsty.

So I stayed at Watergate in Berlin till 6am, got my bags, took the Metro to the station, and got on the 9am train to Budapest. I would arrive eleven and a half hours later, well past sunset and starving. Getting off the train and walking through the station I was struck by its opulence and size. Admittedly I’ve been to fewer train stations than airports, but I’ve never seen one larger than Budapest’s Keleti station.

Stepping Into the City

Before arriving, the only thing that I knew about Hungary is that they had an influx of immigrants. Hungary is one of the first EU countries that immigrants encounter after leaving Turkey, and there are some thought provoking pictures of the result. However, by the time I arrived on the second to last day of September in 2016, the country had returned to normal.

I didn’t have a strong initial reaction to Budapest the way I did to Kiev (Love it, wish I had more than three days), London (can I afford to spend a whole summer here?) or Bangkok (Help, get me the hell out of here!). Budapest seemed sort of like Krakow, sort of like Prague, sort of like some city that you might find in Ohio that starts with the letter C. The buses are neither old nor new, the streets are well paved but there are few bike lanes, and the civilian traffic lights will nearly get you killed.

Hungarian Parliament building

The Hungarian Parliament Building.

I had a 20 minute walk from the train station to my hostel and I took advantage of that. Walking through Budapest at night felt nice enough and I appreciated the laidback vibe and lack strangers offering to sell me drugs; a serious annoyance in Berlin. As a side tangent, don’t buy drugs from street lurkers. All health and moral points aside, I came out of the club one morning and saw a guy pouring powdered sugar into a drug baggie. We made eye contact, and then he tried to sell me the bag of “drugs”. Seriously. Anyone who is this unintelligent is as likely to buy rat poison to fill up the bags as powdered sugar. Don’t risk it.

Back in Budapest, halfway to my hostel, I found a small square with several dozen immigrants, the first signs I had seen of the influx of Syrian refugees. However, it was less than fifty people, hardly a drop in the hundreds of thousands of people who have fled towns like Aleppo and Damascus. Maybe the refugees have been dispersed throughout Europe, or they’re concentrated in different areas in Budapest, but on my 2km walk from the train to the hostel I saw scant evidence of the crisis that was making the news last year.

Touring Budapest

The next day I left my two backpacks (my entire life for more than a year) and started a self-guided walking tour of Budapest. Unlike people who go on guided walking tours, I get to see more and stay longer at the places that interest me. Also unlike the people who go on walking tours, a majority of the time I have no fucking idea what I’m looking at. This can be seen in my firm belief that that Hungarian Parliament Building was actually a church.

A bridge in Budapest

Getting a good view of this bridge requires a hell of a climb.

The next thing I wanted to see was Liberty Statue, which is also on top of a large hill. The mistake is in thinking that once you’ve climbed the hill to Budapest Castle you’re done. This is not the case. To get to Liberty Statue I walked back down to water level, to this ornate bridge, and then started climbing. With the occasional rest and picture break, it took fifteen minutes to reach the top. I was sweaty but the view was worth it. Budapest was sprawled out below and Liberty Statue was connected to the sky above. I sat for a while, took some pictures and then started back down the hill. It was close to 4 and Kenny was already on the way to Budapest to pick me up.

Discovering Papa

I have more in common with Kenny than any other person I’ve ever met. We both come from one-stoplight-towns 15 miles apart, we both went to the same college and had the same Russian teacher, we both lived in Moscow and speak fluent Russian. We both love to travel, we’ve visited about the same number of countries, and we both foresee a not-so-unlikely future where we end up living in Europe. It’s like meeting a carbon copy of yourself, and naturally we have a blast together. Kenny stayed with me in New York for a few days, and now it was time for me to return the favor.

He got to my hostel around 5 and we shook hands. Then we bought some snacks, the bags got loaded, sunglasses donned, and we drove out of Budapest to the setting sun. Kenny drifted into the position of English teacher in the rural town of Papa and that’s where we were headed. Along the way it was interesting to see that with the fields and rolling hills, the countryside of Hungary could have been easily mistaken for Western New York where we grew up.

kenny-with-champagne

$2 for a bottle of champagne, it’s a good thing.

Arriving safely in Papa, we visited the local supermarket and spent $20 on booze for the weekend, including this surprisingly adequate $2 bottle of champagne. Then we drove back home, turned the couch into a bed, and popped the cork on the champagne. In the morning Kenny woke me up at noon and I scolded him for the early alarm.

Several hours and cups of coffee later we climbed the bell tower for a scenic view of the town. Then we toured the Esterházy family palace which was impressive. It’s the type of thing I would be unlikely to do alone, but was enjoyable to do with Kenny and his Hungarian friend. I admit it’s interesting to see the rich history of European towns, and to think that my own country’s most famous buildings are merely children compared to some of the structures in Europe.

Later, Kenny’s friend bought Unicum, the national liquor of Hungary, and we toasted to the final night together in Hungary. The next morning I said goodbye to Kenny, both knowing that we’ll see each other again. Then the smallest train I’ve ever seen in my life pulled into the station, I claimed a seat and was back in Budapest several hours later.

The Drinking Culture

Unless Kenny had told me, I wouldn’t have guessed that Hungary has a large “drinking culture”. Places like Russia, Ireland, and Ukraine are well known for their alcoholic tendencies. In a place like Germany, where you can drink on the street, there’s evidence all around of alcohol consumption and it’s hard to imagine the nation as one that admires sobriety over a good night of fun. But the intoxicating fact is that Hungary ranks right up near the top for per-person alcohol consumption. Depending on whether you want to believe this source, or this one, Hungary is either the 10th highest consumer of alcohol, just ahead of Russia. Or the 8th highest consumer, 4 places below Russia.

It may be tempting to blame this on the bargain-bucket priced alcohol, but that doesn’t tell the whole truth. A salary of $800 a month is considered high. So while alcohol is cheap, relative to an average salary it’s still a decent chunk of change.

What causes the drinking culture then? I think one of Kenny’s students put it well when he said “There’s nothing here for us. We all just want to graduate and move somewhere else.” Often in countries where this is the sentiment you’ll find excessive alcohol consumption. Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Belarus, and so on. There are plenty of people who would trade all the beer and and vodka in the world for an American, Australia, English, or Canadian passport.

Should we make it easier for people who want to emigrate to do so? Currently the opinion seems to be that we shouldn’t. I’m not sure whether that’s the correct decision or not, as there are so many factors to weigh. But I think it’s worth remembering that the people who have the audacity to leave their country and go struggle to establish themselves in a brand new culture, tend to be hardworking, courageous, and success orientated.

The Standard of Living

Papa is old and beautiful.

Papa is old and beautiful.

Despite the drinking statistics, as far as I can tell people in Hungary have a good standard of living. Most of the trains are modern, the roads are well paved, and the cars are on average much nicer than what you can expect to find in Ukraine or Russia. People also live in nice houses and apartments. You won’t find the behemoth, Soviet Style apartment buildings anywhere in Hungary the way you will in Kiev or Moscow. People are also more friendly and say hi to one another on the street, something that happens only infrequently in the aforementioned countries.

So all in all I enjoyed my time in Hungary. Papa, while not a sprawling metropolis, has a rich history and wonderful old buildings. Budapest is beautiful and affordable, which aren’t two adjectives that always go together. Would I come back? I don’t think so, as there are other places that I still have to cross off my list. Would I tell my friends to come? Yes and no. If you’ve already visited some well known cities like Prague, Berlin, Venice, London, Kiev, Moscow, Madrid, France or Krakow, and you’re looking for something a bit different, Budapest may be just the ticket! But if it’s your first foray into Europe, maybe you should check out some of the big names first, and then come to Budapest. The city has been here for hundreds of years and it’s not going anywhere soon.

I came to London prepared to not like it. I strive to keep an open mind when going somewhere, but I’ve heard enough ridiculous things about English culture that I was biased from the beginning. Example; you can’t say “blackboard” because that may be construed as racist.  Even though it’s a board. And it’s black, a color that existed before humans were even a little squirt of DNA, oozing in primordial muck. Example; CCTV cameras everywhere, an Orwellian future come to life. Example; when travelling the loudest, drunkest, most disrespectful-of-the-local-culture chaps are usually the Brits.

Then again, the United States started the Iraq war and is on the cusp of electing a moron…

So with rather low expectations I left the club in Berlin (at 3am), got on the wrong bus to the airport (twice), gave up and took a taxi, savored the worst flight of my life on Ryanair, got glared at by the custom’s official because I meet the exact standard of a no-good backpacker with too many stamps in his passport, and then took a bus from the airport to downtown London.

A Sunny Day in the City

Tower Bridge in London

When you’ve seen something in the movies so many times, it’s cool to see it in person

Getting off the bus with my backpack, the first thing on my mind wasn’t sleep. It was food, and I was damn well determined I wasn’t going to eat anything but fish in chips. If all the fish and chips shops were closed I would have had no choice but to starve.

In my quest I got to see the electric shaver building, the dildo building, the HMS Belfast, London Bridge, and Tower Bridge. I loved it because I’ve noticed these monuments in movies and seeing the sights in person was great! Tower Bridge in particular. It must be like seeing the Hollywood sign for the first time after years of being exposed to it on a screen.

The Feeling

Every city has a feeling. My hometown of 3,000 people feels inviting, safe, and dull. New York City feels insane and electric. Bangkok feels like a place that I never want to go again.

Big Ben in London

Big Ben on a dreary day in London

London feels good. I’m sure there are other adjectives a native Londoner would use, but I’ve only been here a handful of days. I like the combination of old and new. Flashy buildings next to churches that were around when people enjoyed jousting and mutton. The streets are clean, the river Thames is filthy, and the public transit system works great.

I also enjoy going to clubs, and London has some great choices. The Ministry of Sound is known by EDM fans worldwide and it didn’t disappoint. Four areas, four DJ’s, four times the fun. I also had a blast at XOYO, which fully deserves its spot on the Top 100 Clubs list. While I’ve decided to not drink on this trip, I got a kick out of learning where the word “Pub” comes from. In London there are places called “Public Houses” which are sort of like bars with better atmosphere and a place to sit down and read a book. Brilliant! Shorten “Public House” and you get “Pub”.

The Resolve

I wrote all of the words above while sitting in a coffee shop in an upscale hotel in London, looking out at Big Ben. Pro tip, if you ever need to sit somewhere for a few hours with a great atmosphere and comfortable seating, go to a hotel lobby. These tend to have great lounges, awesome chairs, fast WiFi, and nobody is going to bug you.

As for the resolve, I can definitely see myself spending a month or two in London. It costs about the same as New York and it offers many of the same benefits. Lots of people, great parks, good public transport, and cool clubs. When I go back to England I’d also like to get out of London and see some castles and other famed towns like Manchester or Liverpool. I get a kick out of visiting places whose name I’ve only ever heard about on TV.

So it is that I wrap up this post on London. I came, I saw, I didn’t conquer because the UK has already done enough of that in the last 500 years. If you’d like to check out London I recommend it, and if done carefully you can probably get by on about 40 pounds a day. If done very carefully, maybe even 30. For example, you can save 5 pounds a day by buying a day pass for the bus, then using it over and over again by covering up the date with your thumb and flashing it at the apathetic driver. But don’t tell the British I said to do that, I’d like to be allowed back into the UK one day.

Hostels have been around forever, my parents call them Youth Hostels which I think is adorable. Airbnb on the other hand is the newer option. While it definitely has some solid benefits, I think that it’s popularity is a bit over-hyped. So in this short article I’m going to look at the benefits and drawbacks of staying at a hostel or Airbnb, so that it’s easier to make the best decision.

Benefits of Hostels

-It’s so easy to meet people. If you stay in a dorm you’ll probably meet some of the people you’re staying with. And even if you don’t, you can just go to the common area and see what’s happening.

-Dorms are the cheapest option and can make travelling on a budget doable.

-Hostels often have cool benefits like cheap happy hours, free breakfast, free entry to clubs, free walking tours, and other discounts.

Benefits of Airbnb

-You get your own room and you don’t have to worry about a drunk Spanish guy coming in at 3am and aggressively rolling his Rrrrrrsss. This is great if you want to get some solid sleep, or if you’re travelling with someone and you can split the cost of the room.

-If you have the cash and you want to splurge you can rent an entire apartment for a few days. This is something that was difficult to do before Airbnb, especially in a foreign city where you don’t speak the language.

-If you rent a room you’ll get to meet someone who will probably have some good advice about the city.

Drawbacks of Hostels

-Sleeping in a 8 or 10 bed dorm is precarious. Even with ear plugs in you still may be woken up.

-You have to keep track of all your stuff and possibly pay for a locker. If you’re worried about theft, hostels aren’t that secure. That being said, I’ve spent 6 months of my life living in hostels and never had anything but a pair of socks stolen.

-Sometimes the WiFi is crap, especially in South East Asia. Not a big deal if you’re writing emails, definitely a big deal when you’re trying to get work done.

Drawbacks of Airbnb

-It’s expensive! You’ll often end up paying a premium price to get that room for a few days. This is true of longer rentals too. You’ll end up paying plenty more than a roommate normally would.

-Not nearly as easy to meet local people.

-Limited check in times. You can arrive at a hostel at the funniest hours, it doesn’t usually matter. Showing up to your Airbnb at 1am may not be cool.

What’s the Best Choice?

I only use Airbnb are when I’m going to be staying somewhere for more than a week. When that happens it’s nice to have a room where you can leave your stuff laying around. It’s worth the extra money, especially if you’re travelling with someone.

Most of the time though, hostels! They’re fun, they’re social, and they’re cheap. Many of them also have private rooms if you want to pay for them. Regardless of where you choose to stay, make travel a priority. Check out the hostels and Airbnb rooms in your favorite city, make a booking, and start an awesome adventure today.

Ernest Hemingway had Paris. I have Copenhagen. If I ever want to retreat somewhere to write, or ponder, or pursue enlightenment, I’ll come to Copenhagen. I’ve never been anywhere like it. I have yet to walk along a road that doesn’t have a bike lane on either side. Nor have I paid less than $3 for anything. The whole country works brilliantly, and charges you for the convenience. An amazing building in CopenhagenDanish prices make New York seem thrifty. But hey, I’ve got the cash, so why not splurge. Copenhagen is beautiful, stunning, and it’s the greenest, most well taken care of city that I’ve ever been to in my life.

And yet…

Copenhagen is where I’ll come one day to write a book, it’s not where I want to spend my twenties. It’s where I’d like to raise a kid, not celebrate my forthcoming, semi-midlife crisis. There’s not enough adrenaline here for me. When I’m in Copenhagen I don’t feel the intense energy that enlivens New York. Nor do I smell garbage or hear the honking of one million pissed off taxi drivers. So while it might not be perfect, there are definitely some big advantages of living in this coastal city. Here are a few of the things that I enjoy the most.

The Bike Lanes

A bike parking lot in CopenhagenThe Danes love to ride their bikes. 50% of people in Copenhagen commute to work by bicycle, and that figure includes members of the Danish parliament, and their sharply dressed secretaries. Internet statistics tell me that there are more bikes than people in Copenhagen, which makes sense when you see a picture like this one. Forget about parking lots for oversized Americans to park their oversized SUV’s. A small amount of sidewalk can hold a massive number of bicycles, which is a far more efficient use of space.

I’ve walked 10 or 15 km in the last two days, and I’ve failed to find a single road of any respectable size that doesn’t have a bike lane running along it. Bikers have their own designated lanes, separate from pedestrians and cars. It’s brilliant! Why sit in traffic when you can zoom past and get your daily exercise. Which leads us to…

The Incredibly Fit People

Come to downtown Copenhagen and find me three overweight people in less than five minutes. I’ll wager $10 you can’t do it. If we changed overweight to obese, I would wager $1,000 you can’t do it. Go to any American city and I wouldn’t wager a dime even if you only had 30 seconds.

The Danish are very fit people. I don’t know whether it’s the diet or all the bike riding, but it’s very rare to see someone who is genuinely out of shape. What a breathe of fresh air. Where I come from having a belly and a cabinet full of blood pressure medicine is the norm. I love seeing that other countries are different. Which reminds me of…

The Parks

A cool old building in CopenhagenCopenhagen doesn’t have parks, it has lush, well maintained gardens of glory. They’re beautiful, perfectly manicured, and I love them. When you get lost in a Copenhagen park it’s easy to forget that you’re downtown in a nation’s capital. Leaves soak up the noise, and rows of trimmed hedges promote a feeling of seclusion.

Today I sat in the SMK art museum, staring out of massive glass windows at a beautiful pond surrounded by trees. As Copenhagen grew up incredible care was taken to preserve the natural feel of the area, and that shows through to this day. Central Park in Manhattan is amazing, but it feels forced. A shock transition from steel and concrete to grass and dirt. The parks in Copenhagen blend in with the city and compliment the natural order.

The Upkeep

The Dane’s sacrifice about 40% of their salary to taxes, but they get a lot in return. The roads are in great condition, especially compared to the acne-pocked abominations we have the US. The trains are quiet and the WiFi works great. The bike lanes are paved smooth and in excellent repair. The parks are perfectly mowed, the gardens weeded, the bushes and trees, trimmed and pruned. There’s rarely an overflowing garbage bin, and trash on the streets is the exception not the rule. Everything obviously receives a lot of love and positive attention. New York is a lot cleaner today than it was 20 years ago, but it has a light-year step to even be in the same ballpark as Copenhagen.

The Open Culture

A communal apartment in CopenhagenWhen people rides scooters (Asia) or bikes (Denmark), it’s an open experience. You’re not hidden behind tons of metal and glass, encapsulated in a bubble of polyester and talk radio. You’re out there for the world to see, and you can see it right back. In Copenhagen I’ve noticed that it goes even further, as there are many outdoor cafes and even the smallest places usually have one or two tables with two or four chairs directly on the narrow sidewalk. In America nobody would sit there, they would feel to exposed to the eyes of strangers. Here, people take advantage of those seats all the time.

I think this open way of living is an overlooked aspect of what makes Danes so happy. Humans for hundreds of thousands of years lived in a social group where nobody could hide much from anyone else. Now, with the invention of fences and cars, it’s possible to block out your neighbor from existence. But just because you can, does that mean that you should?

The Conclusion

These are the reasons that one day I’d like to come to Copenhagen, answer no email for a month, and just write. It’s a beautiful city to exist in. However, while I’m focused on massive personal growth and pushing the envelope, I know that Copenhagen isn’t the best choice. Too tame and restrained. Wonderful for raising a child, but not a 24 year old aspiring success story. So I’ll leave Copenhagen tomorrow and I will miss it a lot more than I expected to. But I’ll know that this gem will always be waiting for me. Once I’ve gotten the crazy out of my system I’ll be ready to learn more about the culture, and find out exactly why the Danes are considered among the earth’s happiest people.

I see people break these common sense rules all the time (looking at you Americans!) and it really sucks because it makes everyone’s experience worse. If you’re staying in a dorm you know what you’re getting yourself into, but it’s still disappointing when people aren’t courteous. So with that in mind, here are 10 things that I wish everyone would keep in mind when they stay in a hostel.

Though Shall Not…

1. Come in late and turn the light on

Seriously, this is a no-brainer right? It’s a dorm for people to sleep in, don’t come in at midnight and turn on the large overhead light. I know you just arrived, but use your cellphone or unpack your shit in the hall.

2. Leave your cellphone on

If you’re holding your cellphone in your sausage-link fingers, do you really need a noise to alert you every time you get a new text from your mom?

3. Have a conversation in the middle of the night

I don’t care what language it’s in, having a conversation at 1am in a dorm is not cool.

4. Hook up with people

If you’re planning on having lots of hot hostel sex, get a private. Or use the shower. Nobody wants to wake up at 2am because the person on the bunk underneath them is trying to spawn a new human.

5. Slam the door

Sometimes I think people are retarded. Or they just don’t care? If you come in at 3am and everyone is sleeping, I’ll bet you can find a way to not close the door with the strength of an Olympic athlete.

6. Eat in bed

It’s got to be the Americans right? Who else brings a sandwich and a bag of chips into bed?

7. Snore

I get it, you can’t control it. This is wishful thinking, but I’ll continue to dream.

8. Do this

Bed MonsterSo you’ve studied carpentry and you have a keen interest in the disassembly of beds, that’s swell. I’d be grateful if you could find other constructive outlets to keep you busy though.

9. Get hammered, shitfaced, wasted, pissed, drunk-off-your-ass

If you can do 15 shots of Captain Morgan and still find your way to your bed, more power to you. Some people simply aren’t designed to handle alcohol though, and if you can’t even find your bed that’s a good sign you’ve had too much.

Though Shall….

10. Break every single one of these rules

Seriously, it’s a hostel. People know what to expect when they choose the dorm option. Buy earplugs, listen to music, or get a private room if you can’t deal. Communal living has lots of drawbacks and your sleep schedule tends to suffer, but it’s also really fun. It’s easy to meet people, it’s cheap, and it’s usually a good time. I’ve met lots of awesome friends at hostels and I wouldn’t trade all the missed sleep in the world for that. Check out what the folks at Hostelworld are offering in your favorite city!

I didn’t have a good picture of Denmark before arriving. I was surprised then that it looks like my mental idea of England. Semi-manicured lawns, houses from a fairy-tale illustration, roads that look funny for unknown reasons. Maybe they’re in too good of repair. Obviously Denmark is a country that receives lots of love. Most things appear to be in their place and law and order (or social norms) ensure an easy atmosphere. Which is why I thought it would be interesting to compare it to another country that I’ve actually spent more than 48 hours in.

You can get a ticket for walking on the wrong side of the road in Denmark. On the highway in Russia you can drive on the shoulder of the road at suspension-busting speeds. In Denmark the trains are so quiet you can hear two men talking in hushed voices across the aisle. In Russia you can hold the outer doors of the train open to get a breeze, or just for the hell of it. In Denmark most people speak English like they grew up in a part of Canada that I’ve never been too. In Russia you never doubt whom you’re talking to.

The comparisons go on, but the conclusion is the same. Neither country is for me. Life in Russia is too chaotic and dark, but Denmark is too tame and restrained. That being said, my friend Asger is in love with Denmark. He says that although he’s going to continue to travel, he’ll always be a Dane at heart. I spent two days with him at his home in Middelfart. An unfortunate name in English, but I’ve learned that in Danish “fart” means speed.

It’s a hell of a town. Sort of like where I grew up, if only everything was beautiful, expensive, and people drove small cars instead of pickups. The town cascades into a beautiful lake, and Asger’s dream is to live in one of the million-dollar-view homes that overlooks the water. That the cost of the home will almost match the value of the view doesn’t seem to faze him. “Denmark is a very expensive country, but our wages are very good”, I’ve been told. One dollar is 6.65 Kroner, which seems simple enough but when you’re in a store the math doesn’t come naturally.

One thing I have done the math on is $50 for a two hour train ride. It’s the nicest train I’ve ever been on in my life, but $25 an hour seems awfully high. When I went to Obirek in Ukraine, I paid $4 for a three hour train ride. The men who sat in between the train cars and bribed the ticket collector paid less than $1.

Making International Friends

Working on a train in DenmarkThe story of how I ended up in Asger’s living room in a small Danish town that I’d never heard of is a good one. Joanna had met him on the message board 4chan, although she’d never seen him in real life. She invited him to meet up with us in Bangkok and he agreed. After a few days in that polluted town we took a bus to Pai, rented motorcycles and had a blast. At our parting he offered an invitation to his place in Denmark. It took me six months but I made it. I’m thrilled to be here, regardless of how much the train ticket costs. It’s awesome to have friends in a country to help explain the culture and lifestyle.

So even though I’ve discovered that Denmark isn’t a country where I want to spend my life, it’s still a great experience. The more places that I go, the more confident I feel in decreeing which countries and cultures I like the best. I’ll end with that. Writing these words on a train, going through beautiful countryside, using WiFi that doesn’t cut out every five minutes. Although Denmark might not be right for me, it sure is a hell of a country.