As per usual, 2014 has been a year filled with travel and adventure. I am a consultant specializing in gender-based violence in humanitarian crises currently and based in Thailand but on a short term visa so I have to come and go from my apartment in Bangkok every 30 days. Normally, that corresponds with travel for work but sometimes I have to make a “visa run” – which is usually quite nice as Thailand has inexpensive flights, lots of great neighbors, and there are interesting places to go! But the travel is exhausting. If my 25 year old self who dreamed of traveling the world could hear me now, she would probably faint- what do you MEAN that you are tired of traveling?
Here’s a little snapshot of my travels in 2014:
20 trips * 193 days *
131,541 miles * 42 cities *16 countries
I have one more trip left for the new year – I’m off to
Japan for my visa run and I will spend a couple of days in a lovely looking zen
Buddhism retreat to try to gain strength for next year. I hope it will be
restorative!
So last year, I started out the New Year in the USA with my
sister, Alyson. We took a road trip to Florida but sadly that coincided with
the polar vortex so no beach for us. That was fine with me since I live in the
tropics but Alyson was a bit sad. She was also very tolerant as I took over the
social media and liveblogged, tweeted, and instagrammed our road trip.
Although it was cold, we stopped by Amelia Island and Savannah as well as
meeting Winter the dolphin and
seeing some manatees at a power plant.
In February, I went to Bali, Indonesia for an extended trip
trying to sit down and really start writing (something that I’ve been wanting
to do ever since I was a little girl and wrote my first story about the
Princess Sarah and her nemesis, the man in the pickle suit). I found out that
writer’s block is a more powerful nemesis than the man in the pickle suit[1].
Ubud is so lovely and beautiful! I consulted an astro-cartographer, as one does
while in Bali, to find out where in the world I should move to find love… sadly
the answer was Antarctica.
Meh. My friend Kaya, the mathmetician, has disputed that analysis and believes
my love line is actually the line that runs through Addis –Kiev- Beirut. Maybe
in 2015!
I made it back to Washington DC in March to see my dear
friend Diana Prieto marry and I danced so enthusiastically at her wedding that
I managed to rip out my hem of my dress with my high heel during a polka. I also
managed to get trapped on a Qatar Airline flight in a snowstorm sitting at the
gate in Dulles for 12 hours. That was fairly miserable and was compounded by
flying directly from DC to Rakhine
state (via Doha and Yangon) which is a place on the Burma-Bangladesh border
that is caught up in discrimination and displacement of Muslim Rohingya by
chauvinist Buddhists lead by some extremely radical monks. I ended up caught up in the riots
against aid workers in Rakhine State. It was all very tense but in the end,
I was fine and was evacuated back to Yangon where I joined a bunch of other aid
workers in a sparkling wine filled brunch-debrief-argument that helped us all
decompress. From a polka party to a snowstorm to attacks by Buddhist monks!
What a trip!
I took a little break by going to one of the most beautiful
beaches in Thailand – Koh Phangan – and managed to avoid the infamous Full Moon party. I’m
really getting old now, I guess. I preferred hanging out under the actual full
moon and taking a swim alone rather than drinking buckets of beer and watching
people vomit in the sea. YOUTHS!
I then returned to Myanmar where I worked up on the border
with China in a fascinating place called Kachin State where I got to hang out
with my friend Marise from MSF, ride bicycles around the town, get a massage by
a blind man, and visit the “confluence” of the N’mai and Mali rivers
where the Irrawaddy river is born. It’s a very important place for the Kachin
people – a place that may soon disappear due to the
construction of the 7 dam Irrawaddy project. Local people have been forcibly
relocated from around the area and large scale mechanized gold mining and
logging projects have destroyed large areas as well as polluting the Irrawaddy
river. At one point, I was told, the river was so pristine that it was crystal
clear. Not so much anymore but it was a nice day out to a remote spot- luckily
we were not kidnapped like the three government workers who also went to the
confluence that day for a picnic.
I returned back to
Thailand just in time to experience martial law and the Military coup in May!
The Thai military coup was so “Thai” and
so not as dramatic as the news made it out to be. I was getting a pedicure in
the afternoon and preparing to go meet someone to interview them for my
consultancy when we entered into a fashionable coffee shop/chocolate shop. We
ordered and the waiter seemed very agitated and told us we would have to eat
fast and then said MARTIAL LAW MARTIAL LAW! We broke out our smart phones,
found out that martial law had been declared and there was a 10pm curfew so we
finished our lattes and headed home. The Sky Train was completely crowded and
people were swarming the ubiquitous 7-11s to just to stock up on alcohol. My
friend Jordan came up to hang out that night and told me he had been headbutted
by a desperate expat man in the 7-11 trying to get a case of beer. So my
neighbors Rebecca, Jordan and I sat around listening to the cheery nationalistic Siamese
martial music being broadcast on every single tv station and played Cards
Against Humanity while sipping gin and tonics. What a very expat experience. My
first coup (well actualy there was an attempted coup in Darfur when I was there
in 2004 but they didn’t succeed and the only way we knew it had happened is
they took all the sat phones and mobile phones off line).
Life under the
military regime has not been very different. We all panicked when they
threatened to tighten immigration and we became very sad when they closed up
all the VW Bus/bars that
lined Soi 11 near my house at night. Apparently you can’t eat a sandwich in
public or read George Orwell as it’s a protest now and in very Thai style, the three finger salute
from the Hunger Games is now used in protest. But other than that – the non-stop
unbridled capitalism, hedonism, and eating continues apace.
After I finished my
work in Myanmar, I managed to win an 8 month contract with the UN that was
home-based so I hoped it would help me stay home a bit more. Wrong! I was
immediately brought to NYC for a meeting, which was nice as New York in May is
wonderful! I also flew from NYC via Abu Dhabi to London for a big summit
to end sexual violence in conflict in London where I got to finally meet
Angelina Jolie! The best part of the whole conference was that I was quoted in US
Weekly about Brad Pitt! From there I flew to Qatar where I waited for a
visa for my next crazy adventure – teaching about gender and disasters to the
Saudi Red Crescent!
Well, now you can
guess where my Xmas photo was taken. Luckily, my college roommate, Ann-Michelle
lives in Doha and I got to hang out with her and her fantastic husband and kids
for 10 days and she loaned me an abaya
– the mandatory long black coat that all women in Saudi Arabia wear with a
headscarf. What you can’t really tell in the photo is how beautifully it is
embroidered with black sequins and thread. Every single woman wears a very
different abaya and I found myself checking them out to see their fashion sense. Saudi Arabia
was a very interesting experience. The people that I met were both incredibly
hospitable and sweet to me but I also faced some of the worst sexism I’ve had
to experience in my life (which thankfully has not been very much). The
highlight of the trip was the flight out of Riyadh back to Doha. It was the last
day before Ramadan and all of the domestic workers were all rushing home for
holiday. It was like boarding the last flight out of Saigon as
hundreds of Filipino, Pakistan, Bangladeshi, Indian, and African workers pushed
and shoved their way onto the fully booked Dreamliner in desperation. I got
caught up in the hysteria as several waist-high women used me as a battering
ram to push us onto the plane. I have never been so happy to land in Doha. It
looked like a desert oasis after the run down, dusty Riyadh. I felt like I
might have overdone it that night for Ann-Michelle’s birthday as I chowed down
on pork, drank champagne, and danced in a minidress until sunrise. That’s what
Saudi does to you though…
I returned to Europe
for my summer vacation – finally facing the dreaded task of clearing out my
storage unit in Amsterdam (which true to form, I procrastinated on until the
very last day before I had to fly back) and celebrated a spectacular birthday
in Berlin and Poland with my bestie Mike Dumiak before heading to the gorgeous chateau in the Loire Valley with
a group of friends for non stop wine tasting (a repeat from 2011)…
I finished up the year
by returning to the US in October to visit my cousin Catherine who is ill in
Topeka, Kansas and it was nice to spend even a few days with her and Emil in
America’s heartland. I returned to NYC to run a workshop and then Alyson and I
met up in Toronto, Canada where we visited Niagara Falls – a place both of us
have always wanted to see! I was thrilled to be able to ride on the “Horatio Hornblower” and
get completely soaking wet by the power of the falls.
The end of the year
was a blur of travel to Malaysia, Philippines, Myanmar, and work work work. I
made a couple of short trips to the gorgeous Thai beaches of Koh Samet and
Railay beach and cooked and consumed some amazing meals. I’ve been privileged
to see so much of the world this year – and to have the love of family and
friends. 2014 gave us the war in Gaza, the massacres in Pakistan, the ebola
epidemic, the crashes of the Malaysia airline flights, the kidnapping of young
women by Boko Haram in Nigeria, the sinking of the ferry in Korea, the horrible
beheadings by ISIL, and the horrific murders of children in Pakistan. But I
hope my silly stories of my adventures around the world can give a little laugh
at the end of the year. I still believe in universal human rights, speaking truth
to power, fighting for justice and gender equality and the power of a good
bottle of red wine and an
Ottolenghi cookbook to change the world.
I wish you and your
loved ones an adventuresome, peaceful, tasty, and loving 2015!
[1] my father, incidentally
