When a Budget Lifestyle turns 30
(part 1 of 5)
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| Streets of Bangkok. Great diversity in the vehicles people use for their every day life... |
I will turn 30 in about six weeks, and of all the things good or not-as-good which can be said about finally having the number ‘3’ as the leading digit in one’s age, I would like to pick a few big differences in my day to day life I find worth remembering. I definitely laugh over these things when they do come up, when some obvious differences emerge in day-to-day life showing how I used to do things or when I get a chance to hang around with some people who I have known for the years in between… The reasons for these things changing may come from age, may come from someone's change in location, maybe from wisdom (or complacency) added over the years, probably a mix of all of the above - but its sometimes just fun to write about it. Also, if I'm turning 30, it means many of you are as well (assuming that most people reading this are my friends and classmates :) )
So here it goes - 5 changes in the life of the International Budget-Minded Teacher, growing from age 22, to 30.**
I started writing these thinking of only one story for each, but I was having so much fun writing! I couldn’t pick just one, and each point might be worth its own post. Let me know some of your memories in these areas as well! I think these are far and away the best stories from living abroad, the around-the-home stories, the daily life stories, these things paint such a real picture of modern life in developing countries. Ok, here goes!
1. Getting Around - Transportation.
I don’t take quite as many bus trips as I used to, but oh some good stories are not hard to remember :) These are still my most fond memories from my early time in Thailand - hours and hours, days and days spent hunching, leaning, standing, cramping without being able to change position, bouncing, sweating… Thailand has a very, very extensive bus network. I used buses at least twice daily for the first 18 months in Thailand. When in Bangkok I would travel both to and from work, sometimes as much as 3 hours round-trip, and then often a shorter bus ride to find new areas of street food in the evenings. It is definitely possible to go ANYWHERE in this country by public transportation, whether near or far, and at the age of 23 it was only a question of time.
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In Laos, people use the boats for longer trips, but bring their motos
so that they have transportation when they arrive! Great! |
At 29, it is now very much still a question of time, but the question is now time vs. money, and how much weight does one give to this question - ‘I now from experience just how many things could happen on the way from here to there, it is nearly impossible for things to be as straight-forward as this bus or train schedule claims them to be, is there any way I can pay just a bit more and avoid a few steps in between?”
It happens to everyone (Yes! It has to!), and it is up to us to decide where we draw the line - Different people are on different budgets, sometimes on a tight schedule, concessions for some might even be splurges for others. We should be respectful of these levels of blessing, levels of opportunity, but for the purpose of comparison, I think that sacrifice is still sacrifice, and all sacrifice is worthy of praise - whether you are sacrificing the 5 small cents in order to avoid carrying a 20kg pack with your own hands, or you're turning down a Trans-Atlantic Concorde ticket for that of a normal airplane… :) might sound absurd, but I think it is really still worthy of praise if you do in fact have that amount of resources at your disposal! Think about it, let me know some other opinions - ok, some normal life situations might be...
- Walk today, Take the bus tomorrow (So many times I remember walking up to a full hour, also for exercise, but saving 25 cents was definitely part of it! Eventually we just moved to within walking distance of the school because of the time/money it saved in the end)
- Take a bus half of the week, and allow yourself to sleep in just 1-2 days instead of every day, pay for a Taxi once in awhile (ok, taxis are still incredibly cheap in Thailand, but they are still definitely an increase in the level of comfort, and do cost more than a bus or motorcycle if you share the ride). They usually offer good A/C in this hot environment, there is much less unexpected noise when compared to a public bus, there will be no unexpected detours, well, fewer anyways… :) ) I am also still only talking about Bangkok here, because in the part of Thailand where I live there are definitely no taxis. There are still though, tons of other transportation options to choose from levels of convenience - between motorcycles, tuk-tuks, buses both large and small, and the Rot Song Taew - a converted pickup truck with a covered back-bed, seats along both sides, extremely convenient for travel in the countryside, a single price of ticket of 8B (25 cents), it is still an every choice whether to take a personal or more public mode of transportation.
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My favorite bike (now I have 3 bikes actually!). Specialized Pitch Comp, 550$. We have been to 21 provinces
together so far, very solid bike. I know from experience that I can trust this company! |
- Think long term, and buy a mode of transportation for yourself, spending more on it to get something of high quality, something which will last many years, therefore saving money in the end. A few years ago I debated between buying a motorbike or a push-bike, and decided to use a bicycle for all trips near or far. I paid 450$ for that bike, a lot for me at that time, but I have very much enjoyed the decision to this day. There are still however, many times when I have to travel for work, sometimes I cannot bring my bicycle, and on these I still have to face the decisions of cost vs. convenience like I did when I was 23…
So. Which will it be? I am looking at a trip from my town, passing through another town where I first must attend a meeting, and then head onwards to the capital city of Bangkok. I will bicycle to the intermediate city, leave my bike with a friend, and then head on - will I go to the bus terminal, the train station, or the airport? This is a question my 23 year-old self would have never asked! For long trips, for work or for the incredible and complex process of a visa run, I thought of only one thing - how little can I spend and still make it in 1 piece. Although I have taken some seriously long trips within this country’s borders, I know I am lucky to say any of them actually included danger in the cost-convenience analysis. Well, maybe I just wasn’t aware of the danger :)
It was all about saving money, and the only prep involved was the mentally preparation for 10+ hours of physical discomfort. One specific but very normal example, sometime around Dec. 2010 I think it was, I took a 14-hour train to ride South to Hat Yai, followed by a 17-hour train ride to Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia). These two tickets cost me 1,100 baht, at the time was about 35$US. I had a padded bench that was exactly 5’ feet 10’’ long (I remember, because I am 6 feet tall :) ) and a fan which would occasionally swing my direction, a broken window (could not open the window, you can imagine the sweat produced when the train stops, no explanation offered, the weather is 39C with high humidity, and the train is also old, therefore only intermittent electricity from the outlets/fans/lights), and we were provided with one meal in the meal car for each leg (so 2 free meals over the 31 hour trip). I took the train for 35$ (70$ Round Trip) because the same trip would have cost 70$ each way by plane (a 90 minute plane flight). Although that sounds bad to me now, ok, yes it was not the most fun ride, I think I may even have hallucinated a bit in the sauna-like environment, but hey it was never at all dangerous! With some patience, I did manage to save myself 70$. At the time, that was huge!
In the same situation however, I know that now I would definitely not hesitate to buy the plane flight. Paying 35$ to save an entire day sitting on some train, then doing the same thing again the next day, after all, in those days I was only going for visa runs anyways, not even sight-seeing besides having time for one awesome lunch and dinner combo of Malaysian Nasi Campur (ok, this really is WELL worth a trip to Malaysia, I might even now consider flying with Mark just for a 48-hour street food session of Malay and Southern Indian curries!!)… but ok, all that to say is that yes - now, about to turn 30, I consider 2 full days to be worth the additional 40$ or so extra dollars to upgrade (35$, plus it costs about 5$ to take a taxi each way to and from the airport). These upgrades are still though, only a move to make oneself more comfortable, and ‘waste’ less time in the getting from here to there. A quick note on that word ‘waste,’ though, does make me remember how much down-time I would have on the long rides, time where one is almost forced to think deeply about one’s life, maybe have a life-changing chat with someone next to you (I wrote an article on this beautiful part of anyone’s life, not just that of a traveler), but - none of these rides involved actual danger.
Which makes me want to remember a few that did! Some famous rides which pop into my mind have to be these:
Savannakhet to Meaung Kong (Southern Laos). A trip with Mark Wiens, when we were still properly budget travelers when visiting any new area in these days, this is one of two trips I can clearly remember where we were ever forced to actually spend more than a split-second when thinking about our own safety after a decision to purchase a 3rd class overnight bus ticket. We also learned the lesson that one should try to SEE the vehicle before purchasing any 3rd class ticket.
We got one, but then waited almost 90 minutes before the bus had even moved. For space, we had one and a half seats between us, the leg space full as it was completely taken up by bags of rice, all positioned around the bus before anyone was allowed to get on, and while the sitting position available was not literally knees-to-chest for 11 hours, it was about 4 inches from that. It was an overnight ride, and the roads we were taking were mostly local (unlit) roads. Not many street lights, and with such an old bus, but then of course the headlights were only half-working as well. After half the ride I just sat on my bag in the aisle, oh yeah, we both still had our bags on our laps due to all the rice also taking up every inch of storage in the back of the bus. When we started to drive through heavy rains, intense amounts of lightning, actually quite beautiful at first looking out the window because the lightning was just that intense!, a storm, which continued from midnight to about 3am, helped us to learn that the windows were open not just to allow breeze but because most of them were broken. They were jammed open because it was better open than closed… in someone’s opinion. Needless to say, we got wet (I wonder how happy the guy with the rice was!), and everyone else was gritting their teeth just as we were, it was obvious though that they were prepared, and we were the ones who should have thought twice about what might lie ahead…
As we got wet inside the bus however, the roads were also getting more and more treacherous, and the few times we could see some impending bit of danger ahead, we were definitely clutching at our seats. Sharp turns in the road, places where half the road was washed out and the neither our bus, nor the oncoming rare bus heading the other way wanted to slow down (speaking of, how does it always seem to happen where the only 10 meters of narrow squeeze on a 100 kilometer stretch of empty road have it happen where the only other car/bus on the road hits that same 10 meter narrow spot exactly when you do!?!? I have tried to think of some scientific explanation, I am still a bit stumped). Anyways, after making it through a few of these (the other passengers either asleep or smiling back at us when we wildly looked around, wondering how the present situation was to be accepted without complaint… :) ), we make it through the storm and the bus stopped to refuel. I think I remember that I dazedly limped off the bus and laid down on the first thing I saw just to straighten my back. When they almost left me there (yes I actually ran to catch the bus as it honked while slowly leaving the gas depot), I very nearly didn’t care, knowing what madness I might be returning to. Oh, adventures weren’t over yet because this bus also had to take a ferry for part of the way, across the wide and brown Mae Kong River. Thank God that they waited until dawn to try and get the overloaded bus onto the wooden raft which would ship us across the roughly 1km wide river (7th largest river in the world). During the wait to board the ferry though (the bus drove on but some of us had to get off and stand around it, maybe for safety reasons?), I had a chat with the ticket taker who said that he ran this route somewhere between 5 and 7 times per week. Unreal. Suddenly I smiled, I stopped complaining, obviously we were going to make it through just fine if he did this day in and day out, and I know have this as one of the best (absolute worst) bus trip memories :)
I think that the ticket cost us 70,000kip each (8.50$), for this “Overnight Sleeper Bus” hahahaha… We boarded the bus at 7pm (but left at around 9pm), arrived just after 6am, and I think the total distance was around 250km. Impressive average speed! Most of it was on hard-packed dirt roads, and the rare bits that were actually well-paved were in the few small cities along the way, but so few paved roads that these actually had small traffic jams even in the country of Laos with a population of 6.5 million people :) Awesome country by the way, nice food and incredibly gracious people, definitely top of my list as far as a place to just go with no expectations and be 100% assured of a lovely time in the hands of the #1 most relaxed culture in the world. Oh, another worthwhile statistic from this trip is that we stayed in a double room for 4 nights/5 days at the solid price of $4 per night. 2$ each! This included a room with its own bathroom, a working fan, a clean bed, and a lunch each day of one HUGE plate of Laos style fried rice and vegetables made by a hugely friendly, wide-smiling Laos man who proudly used his 10-word English vocabulary to make us feel as welcome as could be. Aside from the bus ride, this was a lovely week-long adventure to Southern Laos. Unfortunately though, I would not recommend going there, as we were probably near the end of the years of the time where the tourist destinations in Laos were filled with at least somewhat ‘normal’ guests. This area (Si Pan Don, Muang Kong) in South Laos, as well as Vang Vieng (North-Central Laos), has been no so over-run by people wanting to get into ‘less-legal activities,’ that police investigations, corruption in and among the hotels in the area, petty theft, and an overall just less-than-respectful treatment of the local people and their homes and culture, have turned these areas into places just like any other area completely over-saturated by backpacking tourism in South-East Asia.
Ok, like with any adventure the misfortunes, inconvenience, and discomfort are forgotten immediately when it comes time to tell stories, and even though I am writing to admit how unlikely it will be to ever find myself in a situation like this again, I must also be thankful for the chances I have had to make such memories! As I always say to myself, the comparisons are what make learning possible. Someone who only takes the safe option might A) risk their lives on far fewer occasion, but also, B) be far less appreciative of the highly-efficient, well-maintained, much-higher-safety-rating mode of transportation available when one is willing to spend more than an absolute minimum for transportation.
I did start writing this, and I intend to finish, by reflecting not on the one-in-a-hundred travel stories, but more on the day to day life stories as well, but ok, one more good bus trip is still on my mind:
Kandy to Jaffna (Central to Northern Sri Lanka). Another trip with Mark, I haven’t yet been to India, Mark says it is even cheaper to travel there, so for me Sri Lanka is still the cheapest country I have yet to visit. Definitely my favorite trip ever, we were able to go for almost 4 weeks, I clearly remember that I spent 287$ for the ENTIRE trip here (and we traveled to 7 different cities, definitely did not just sit in one place saving every penny!) I highly recommend a visit here if you ever have the chance, beautiful people, beautiful food… but ok - make no mistake! The transportation in Sri Lanka is just insane. NO safe-guards whatsoever. Anyone who cares for their own safety would do well to just never board a bus, maybe not even take any transportation here at all if you have your well-being as the #1 concern… but I would disagree with you here on the point that learning about other cultures, further than that, learning about the lives of normal and average working-class members in all the world’s countries, this is the reason I travel at all. Picking a higher, more safe, more secluded mode of transportation directly goes against this, then, and therefore maybe someone with this mindset could not honestly visit Sri Lanka (or Laos, or many other beautiful and amazing countries in the world, at all! In my opinion :) In my 23 year old opinion AND in my 29 year old opinion. Ok back to the story…)
We did figure out though, somewhere amongst the hanging and tight spaces all our bus rides, that a
t least our bus was more likely the larger vehicle to be involved, should we ever crash, we were at least more likely to do damage instead of receive… a mild concession while we were sometimes seeing REAL games of chicken played with buses, sometimes a smaller car sandwiched in-between, both buses leaning on their horns, the road being used nowhere close to wide enough to accommodate both buses... my pulse is going up right now just remembering this month. Another 'special' travel moment, later in the week I was present for the first time I actually saw someone roll end-over-end, head over heels down the aisle of a bus. The passenger picked themselves up while the bus driver still did NOT stop, she yelled at the driver in Singhala for about 15 seconds before the driver stopped, told her to get off the bus, and then left her in the dust somewhere between towns. On the 10-hour ride from Kandy to Jaffna, the high speeds combined with the old bus’ suspension, we were more comfortable standing in the front of the bus for the final 3-4 hours of the ride (really saying something considering that this was also an overnight bus). Looking back occasionally, I was able to glimpse a man riding with one arm raised above his child’s head, the other above his own, because when the bus hit a bump hard enough, the man and his child were literally hitting the ceiling, flying out of the seat far enough that I saw air under them before they slammed back down. After an incredible amount of patience, the man and his family joined us to stand at the front of the bus.
I remember this ticket costing 295 Rupees, about 2.80$ when we visited in 2010, and the trip distance was around 400km. Now that’s a cheap bus ticket!! An amazing thing about Sri Lanka was that all the buses were the same! A bus from the other side of the country entering the city would then still make stops on a set route, round the city once or twice, pick up regular passengers on their daily work commutes, and then head back out of town on a cross-country 200-kilometer drive. The bus numbers were pretty complex, as were the routes the buses took, but I thought this was amazing.
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| Train in Sri Lanka |
I am a huge fan of public transport, my idea is that every community should be allowed only a certain number vehicles based on the town size, these should all be trucks and those involved in work needing these vehicles can have a rotation similar to what happens in London (different cars are only allowed certain days to drive, and people plan their work schedules accordingly). Each family member should have their own bicycles for mandatory inner-city use. There would be a tram operating in its own lane for all members of society too old to use a bicycle. Towns could develop rain covers if necessary, or build bike highways even (which is happening now in Germany), and then increase flights, flight safety regulations, airport safety but also convenience, build airports of standardized quality, and have every type of travel be either bicycle, bus/tram, train, or airplane. Yeah, I don't like cars :) even though they are amazing machines, they are the cause of so much grief, for so many reasons. Finally, how many people realize that this machine you drive every day transports you at 100 kilometers per hour?! Try to run that fast, bike that fast, do anything that fast. It is SO fast, people talking on phones, doing their make-up, glancing occasionally at where they are going... it is literally insane how this has become so normal.
Well, still in the real world here, I find myself in similar situations of comfort as these days in Sri Lanka, if not quite the level of danger, at least daily over the early years in and around Thailand, and now just writing that I stop to wonder, “How did I never learn my lesson? Why did I/we not just pay the [extra 3 dollars] to save such hassle?”
Immediately I can answer though, were it not for these memories, I would not nearly appreciate the niceties I have, nor would I understand what so many people experience on a day-to-day basis. These trips may have been dangerous in my own mind, but for many these were the only bus tickets even remotely affordable, and the dangers are just implicit when having to travel long distances in developing countries. I might be glad that I can’t remember many more bus trips in Africa in the early ‘90s, without a doubt these would make the 2 above-mentioned stories seem totally normal by comparison!!
Anyways, to show some difference in my attitude now, just last week I flew to Bangkok one-way, and only took the bus back, instead of bus-ing both directions (actually, at age 23 though I would have taken the train both directions. 3rd-class train here is even cheaper than 2nd-class bus, and even though the train takes even 2-3 more hours than the 8 hour bus ride, it was still totally worth it to save 4$ each way, and I used to do this trip more than 1 time per month).
The plane flights in Thailand are in fact, pretty cheap compared to some other countries, the plane ticket cost me 799B while the bus ticket cost 479B. Ah! I used the word ‘cheap’ there, but the point I am writing this in the first place is to show myself that the word ‘cheap’ is so totally subjective! Not even just from person-to-person, but even for myself to myself!! My 23-year old self would think of a ticket that costs 2 times more than the cheapest mode of travel as absurd, totally out of the question, while my 29-year old self even considered taking the plane flight both ways! Great. Well maybe not awesome, but very interesting! :)
Saving myself 8 hours on a bus these days, now I obviously consider it a worth-while expense to pay the difference of 7$. Five years ago, the thought would not even have entered my mind. Literally, the price of the ticket was the only factor I saw. I also have to give a huge kudos to those who never give in, I know there must be some people who travel the world never upgrading, never allowing comfort to come before money saved, and wow… I definitely have had enough experiences to know how worthy of praise this small group of travelers are, but I am honestly no longer able to deal with the thought of an overnight 3rd class train ride when the 2nd class train ride (one which at least guarantees you won’t have to stand for any portion of the trip) costs approximately 3$ more. :) To consistently travel in the same way which the lower classes of your respective country’s travelers do travel, not using one’s higher salary to increase one’s comfort… well its just a huge way in which we who live abroad can try understand the day to day lives of those around us.
I realize its not only comfort, also the time saved depending on your choice of transportation, but this thought I am just considering time to be a part of comfort, as in, its quite comfortable to be able to arrive places in a timely manner, not have to give excuses to anyone, you will be less sore on arrival, you do not have to inconvenience anyone picking you up, dropping you off, carrying things… all grouped into the term ‘comfort’ :)
Ok, time to get back to work! Have a great day everyone! Work hard, do good, and enjoy the down time when it comes. God bless, Peace
-Joel
**I pick the numbers 22-30 for me, and not 20-30, because it was at 22 that I purchased a One-Way ticket to Thailand. At 20 I was still very much in the College kid mindset, and I definitely mean to use the word ‘kid!’ I think that so many people want to talk about all the changes one will experience between the ages of 17-23, I guess the extreme ends of age at which one could finish high school and finish university… From my own experience though, and I have not found anyone who convincingly argues me out of this viewpoint, I think that those changes are quite small compared to the changes that happen between the ages of 24-29. The changes from 17-23 seemed to all be more selfish changes, things that changed while I learned to take care of myself, just starting to learn that other people in the world matter, that I don’t matter as much to the world as I like to think I do… those kinds of things. All still very self-centered bits of learning. From 24-29 though, wow. Of course my changing of country-of-residence complicated again by several moves within the new country, this would have added immensely to my argument for how much more life changed for me during these years - but I still think that in our modern time, a lot more growing is done in the latter half of one’s 20’s as opposed to the earlier half.
I can tell a lot of stories from my few years of traveling, most of the funny ones from any traveler usually have to do with trips, adventures, new sights and sounds, FOOD… but I think the far more interesting stories come from day to day life. This is where one can gain insight to the differences in culture that are under the surface, learning about the processes of thoughts from different backgrounds - at times not the most vivid story material, but they can also be fun! You might be surprised at what impact the most simple and bare-bones differences can have on the overall picture of life in another country.
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Photo Favorite from 2009: Back of a moto on Ko Jam, an island in Southern Thailand. I don't know
what this island looks like now, but at that time there were a few bungalows on one end, and a fishing
village at the other. We had walked to the village to find some food, and met these guys hunting along
the way. They had this lizard, and they invited us to their place for dinner! |
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Photo Favorite from 2012 - I haven't see a driver who lets kids hang off the back like this, maybe it was
their relative or a friend... but there were 9 people on this tuk tuk and they were NOT driving slowly. They passed
us on this main road near Victory Monument. Looks like a teenager's idea of fun, for sure!
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