Thai photos

https://picasaweb.google.com/100484662617211312075?authkey=Gv1sRgCN7Inp7vnKvyRw

Link for ALL the Thailand (and Cambodia) photos. If you want captions (and all the bad and duplicate photos removed), you'll have to hit up Anna's FB albums.

Back home

2 boxes downs, 8 to go. I'm just now beginning to unpack the boxes of papers, binders, and books from 822. It's amazing the amount of memories stored it an unorganized pile of receipts; I've got a stack of receipts detailing trips to grocery stores (party beer runs), restaurants (dates over the years), and other purchases over 4 years of college, and I'll have to bring myself to throw them away tonight.

Traveling ended abruptly. We returned home on a Friday, and I spent the weekend at home as it was the first time all 5 of us had been together since Easter (my sister left for France before I came home from ND). By Monday, I felt like I had been home forever, not missing a beat (2 weeks home, and Gina just observed we changed one of our outside lamps. These are the changes I don't notice, so perhaps that why everything seems the same).

It's been strange; I don't feel like what I did this summer has really sunk in. My memories are a blur; doing 2 trips back to back, with no rest between because of the passport debacle, certainly didn't help. Sometimes, I'll be telling my friends here in Carmel what I did, and traveling around the world like I did is almost unfathomable for them, while for me it became the new normal, and I can feel the disconnect. My cousin, who had a similar summer, insists the magnitude of what I did will sink in over time. I certainly hope so. I do feel like I learned much more about the world on this trip, and I certainly have a nice cachet of stories to tell. The pictures are still just a pile of things to captions, but I was looking through my photos from my travels while at Oxford, and they brought up nothing but warm memories.

The adventures are certainly not over. I think I will continue to blog, sporadically. But let's look back at the memories:

Boldest thing I did: Go out on a limb, trust my friend Edo, and take a bus down to Prijepolje. Aside from a tense hour waiting at the bus stop, it was a complete success.

Biggest disaster: Losing the Passport. No questions. And, in theory, it's still in Bangkok, in the hands of the State Department. Arg!

Biggest near disaster: Dropping all of Anna's and Sam's valuables off a cliff in a dry-bag. Oops...

Greatest regret: No Tigers. Didn't pet one, didn't see one.

Most frustrating cultural disconnect: Toilets. I don't want to pay for it, and if I'm going to pay for it, don't make me fish through the trash can for paper products.

Most confusing cultural disconnect: No, Turkey, I'm not on my honeymoon. Especially not with my little sister.

Greatest surprise: Taxi ride to Sarajevo. And the beauty of the Balkan mountains in general. 3 straight hours of staring out the window, mouth open in awe, and knuckles white with fear.

Most surprising non-surprise: Couch surfing in Krakow. It was ... easy... and nothing happened. I was almost disappointing nothing strange/unexpected happened.

Greatest discovery: Motorcycles. And how much fun they are to drive.

Greatest food market: The one in Chiang Mai where we bought our ingredients for our cooking class. Home of the Greatest Snack Food Of All Time (GSFOAT), crack peanuts, and the best smoothies I've ever had.

Best decision: Biking around the Angkor complex. Full credit for this one goes to Anna.

The best trip improvisation was the taxi ride and the whole side-trip to Bosnia, but that decision was actually made against my will.

Best decision that sounds like a bad decision: Chiang Mai women's prison. Great full-body massages. [I don't think this made the blog, but Anna and I went 1 day, and Sam another morning]

Strangest food: peanuts. Fresh, raw, moist peanuts straight from the ground, in the hills of Thailand. Banana worms were a disappointment, and none of us had the courage the eat the much larger bugs.

Best Hostel: Hiker's Hostel, Plovdiv.

Worst Hostel: Oriental Hostel, Istanbul. Didn't have a problem, but I never trusted the men at the desk.

Best tour guide: Huan, or whatever his name was.

Best cook: In the hills of Thailand. Spoke no English, no Thai, drank hard alcohol constantly, and cooked on an open fire in a wooden hut. What's not to like?

Best form of transportation: Trains. 2 reasons, smooth ride and free toilets.

Worst form of transportation: Buses. Or maybe bus stations meant I was always grumpy whenever I rode buses.

Most consistently frightening form of transportation: Taxis.

Best nationality: Canadians. Gotta love 'em.

Most Postcard Perfect Location: Koh Nang Yuan. Yes, the beach between the 2 knolls looks exactly like the pictures.

Favorite moment: Sitting on the shores of Srah Srang, looking across the reservoir to the jungle as Cambodian boys splashed around at the base of the platform.

New Mexico

Within 12 hours of my arrival in Chicago, I was back on a plane, flying to the Albuquerque Sunport for the Martinez Family Reunion. My mom's mom was born in Cebolla, NM, as the 5th of 10 kids. Cebolla is a tiny town, but 3 generations later the Martinez clans is enormous and far-flung. The reunion was in the old school house where my grandmother had primary school (now a community center). I had been to New Mexico 3 summers before with my family to see family, so many of the sights were familiar, and it was good to see many relatives, most of whom I had only seen once before, if ever.
On Friday, we immediately headed to the Frontier, a delicious establishment across from U of NM, to meet family and good food. On Saturday, we went kayaking with some young cousins (once removed), and then Saturday evening we had the reunion dinner, followed by drinking and dancing. On Sunday, we had Mass at the old Martinez ranch above Cebolla, which now has a different owner who has converted the land into the Sacred Heart of Jesus Immaculate Heart of Mary Oratory, which is a collection of beautiful bronze statues laid around the grounds, primarily a stations of the cross. Mass was done by Monseigneur Jerome, the first priest from this family in hundreds of years (according to Jerry), assisted by my brother, soon to the the second priest from the family. Afterwards were much picture taking, then goodbyes; thereafter the McGauley family vacation began, with my mom, Gina, my brother Alex, and myself.

On Sunday night, we got a call from our horseback-outfitter for the next day saying he was dealing with a horse’s injury and had to cancel on us, so we had to scramble to find a new outfitter; usually McGauley vacations are thoroughly planned and don’t involve much scrambling, but after two months of daily planning/scrambling*, I suppose it was only natural to continue the tradition.

* During debriefing after we had gotten back to the States, one of Gina’s complaints was that she wished we hadn’t wasted so much time scrambling to figure stuff out each time we got to a new city. Scrambling? Gina, that’s called planning. I just do it the day of arrival...

On Monday, the horseback ride ended up being quite good. Though we didn’t go as high up in the mountains as we originally planned, it was a good trail, and we had a good guide with whom I talked at length about huntin’. I didn't realize that there was such a big difference between hunting deer, elk, bear, mountain lion, and so forth, and that the rules are different for each animal (for the predators, bear, cat, and bobcat, hunting season is a quota (say, 6 cats for a region), whereas for deer, elk, sheep, and so forth it’s a set time duration).

We passed the anticlimatic Continental Divide on US 84 on our way north into Colorado and had lunch in Pagossa Springs, Colorado, where I continued to unnecessarily stuff myself with greasy Spanish-American food (Beef! Chiles! Beans!). We drove to Durango, CO where we spent a long time wandering around the pretty town, checking out old hotels, art galleries, and stores. I expanded my small leather collection, and my brother bought a cowboy hat that actually looks pretty good on him. Dinner was in Cortez, CO where we spent the night.

The following day we explored Mesa Verde National Park, which is filled with archeological sites from the ancient Classical Pueblo Indians. It was interesting to see the parallels btw the cliff dwellings in MVNP and the cliff dwellings in Cappadocia, Turkey. We then drove on to Four Corners National Monument, which was recently rebuilt (2010) and actually looked pretty nice. It was interesting to read about how far off the surveyors from the 1890s and 1900s were from the correct latitude and longitude, but the courts and Congress (and Prez T.R.) ruled that the USGS marker is what marks the official spot, correctness be damned. The Four Corners region is perhaps the most desolate part of the world I have ever been in, but it has a stark, almost grim beauty. It’s not mindboggling flat as I assume the western Great Plains are, as there are attractive rock formations that break up the landscape, but the land just feels so empty and devoid of anything but shrubbery.

On Wednesday, after spending the night in Chinle, we took a jeep tour of Canyon de Chelly, AZ. The jeep was an open top truck that sat 24 (or 12 when you are carrying the Pittsburgh Steelers, true story), and we drove down 1 main branch of the canyon and then the other. This took pretty much the whole day as every 15 min or so, Ron the guide* would stop the truck, get out, and talk about something interesting, usually one of the many ruins of the ancient Classical Pueblo native Americans, and then around every hour we could get out and walk around, usually conveniently next to a few stands where residents** were selling their wares. At one of the stops we purchased a CD from Travis Terry, who is apparently famous (if you google image him, he's the Navajo one) and definitely loquacious (learned lots of cool stuff about how Hollywood studios choose their sound, from Gladiator to The Eagle, and how slightly different choices in flutes can affect the mood/setting)

*Ron’s first language is Navajo, so it was interesting to listen to him talk. Not as much an accent as a different cadence to his speech. Similar (but not as strong) for our Acoma guide at Sky City.

That night in the hotel, after Alex went to the pool, I decided to try to swim some laps to work off all the good food I'd been eating, but I nearly got sick afterwards because of the altitude and not being in shape.

**Though the land is a National Monument, it is also in the middle of the Navajo nation. Therefore, the park rangers there protect the ruins and enforce no one trespasses on the archaeological sites, but the rangers have 0 control over how the Navajo use the land, so the rest of the canyon is home to families practicing dry farming (no irrigation b/c the dirt filling the bottom of the canyon quickly silts up any attempted irrigation system). Therefore we saw lots of horses and cows and a few orchards and fields.

On our tour was a former graduate of ND ('99), who had done ACE in Brownsville, where I have a few friends heading soon, and French family with an absolutely adorable little girl.

On Thursday, went to Uranium museum in Grants (the capital of U mining in the USA in the 70s), where we had spent the night, then a tour of Acoma Sky City, lunch in really nice visitor center (nice mix of looking modern and traditional), then onwards to Albuquerque. We had dinner on the old plaza, and I had huevos rancheros because hadn't had any yet this trip and to go to NM without eatin huevos racheros would be unacceptable. (and it was perhaps best meal of trip). We watched Flamenco dancing on the Old Town gazebo. There was a little girl in a traditional flamenco dress standing behind the gazebo (so away from the audience) who was watching the dancers and trying to mimic them, spinning her dress around and stomping her feet. I enjoyed watching her and wished I could have gotten a good picture showing both her and the adults dancing, showing the transmission of culture across generations.

Culture across generations. I'm going to close this post with reflections from Monseigneur Jerome's (cousin Jerry to my mom) homily from the Mass at the Family Reunion. He talked about 3 things - past, present, and future. He spoke about the struggles of my ancestors on this unforgiving land (in NM since 1608), the importance of love between current members of the family, and the importance of passing on the family's stories to future generations, such as my own. I'm beginning to learn these stories, and beginning to understand NM as the land of my fathers (well, Mother's). Perhaps because my mom speaks of it so, I feel a strong connection to the land of NM, a connection I never felt when I visited Ireland. My last name is Irish, but I think the culture that has the strongest imprint on me is Spanish. Central Indiana is my home, but New Mexico is the home of my ancestors.

Job

One chapter ends, the next immediately begins. Today, I arrived home in Carmel, putting a final end to the 60 odd days of travel. Sitting in my inbox when I logged on tonight was my official start date and location. I start work October 17, in Wilmington, NC. The date was later and the location warmer than I expected. This will keep me looking forward, as I always am.

I have 3 blog posts in the works - Poland, Hungary, and New Mexico. Now that I'm home and no longer traveling, I should have all 3 of those up next week, plus probably a long rambling post wrapping up the whole trip.

AJ

Flight home

Thankfully, we had zero travel difficulties returning to the States. We go to the Budapest airport so early we couldn’t even check in yet as it was more than 2 hours before the flight. Gina and I spent the first flight, Budapest to Heathrow, game planning on the in-flight magazine which movies we were going to watch on the transatlantic flight*. In a near disaster, we found ourselves flying next on a 737, which meant we were stuck watching whatever NBC thought the entire plane would enjoy. Thankfully, they chose Rango and Wall Street II, with some TV comedy mixed in. I was completely surprised with Rango and thoroughly enjoyed it.

*traveling east-west across the Atlantic is super-easy for jet-lag, as long as it is not a red-eye. You don’t sleep on the flight, and your body just thinks you are staying up late and then “sleeps in” the following morning.

We were picked up at O’Hare by my mom, in elephant pants, and my aunt. We drove to my aunt’s, ate, did laundry, slept, and departed the following morning for Albuquerque via Midway airport for the final leg of my travels, the Martinze Family Reunion and subsequent tour of the Four Corners region.

Budapest, Hungary

We found our hostel* in Budapest by listening to a girl who had hopped on the train somewhere before Budapest and who was going from cabin to cabin, bike in hand, handing out maps and asking if anyone needed assistance finding a hostel. Despite her cheery demeanor, Gina and I were very distrustful of what was basically a tout, so we talked to her three times before conceding that she was representing the hostel group that our guidebook recommended for Budapest, and we might has well book through her. I think she found our reticence bizarre, but she ultimately got her booking.

*I would have couchsurfed again in Budapest but regrettably Kyle actually had stuff to do at work and wasn’t able to do the preliminary search like he did in Krakow, and we never had regular, free internet access after we left Turkey.

We booked the cheapest option, which ended up having a pretty solid location as it wasn’t too far of a walk but still far enough that we were removed from the pricey, touristy area for food. The building was a university dorm that gets converted into a hostel during the summer. No AC and a large unisex bathroom (the unisex showers worried Gina until we figure out you could lock the door). There was a group of a dozen-ish German(?) friends who shared our floor, but we simply awkwardly passed each other in the bathrooms and kitchen and never spoke to each other.

We built our time in Budapest around 2 free (yay!) tours, done by the same company and working on the same tip-only basis as others. The first was a general informational/historical tour by a girl near-ish my age. This tour had an enormous group, as it included twenty-odd future MBA students from Columbia University on their "networking/bonding/bacchanal" pre-MBA trip. The second trip was a fastinating "Communist Tour" given by a lady in her forties who spoke about the differences between life under communism and life now. She was appropriately nuanced, explaining how some things have gotten better, and somethings worse, confirming my belief that one system of government isn't absolutely better than the other, but each has their strengths and weaknesses*. An excellent example was education. College education is infinitely better, as admissions are no longer dictated by how active/loyal you were in the Party, but now by merit. In contrast, the quality of primary and secondary education has plummeted as budgets have been cut, salaries slashed, and kids no long spend their entire day in school.
*Don't worry, my vote is still for capitalism

What was most interesting about this was that the guides were far more negative on their country than most tours. Like my tour in Sofia, the guides were natives, but they were very harsh on their current leaders and the current state of their country. For example, the older guide stressed that the Hungarian parliament was only 20 years old, not yet a real parliament worthy of their magnificent home. She thought Hungarian was very much a post-communist state, not yet a liberal, capitalist democracy like most of the EU. She talked about the systemic corruption in the state medical service - doctors are grossly underpaid, so while medical care is legally free, it is necessary to bribe doctors if you want any sort of treatment, or to be treated as a human. This led to an interesting observation by an Estonian (Latvian?) girl on the tour that said there is no such corruption in Estonian medicine, perhaps because bribery wasn't established under communism.

Another interesting episode of negativity, our younger guide of the first day is studying international law, and planning on leaving for England or Germany once she gets a degree (brain drain) so she can actually make money. She decided to not study EU law because she did not have faith EU will stick around much longer. I mentioned the inertia EU has, and another guy on the tour replied, "Yes, [EU] is like a machine. It is the Borg"

On the first day we also did a tour of the Parliment building. Our guide was a very grumpy old lady. but it was a majestic building. On the second day, we spent the morning in the National museum, sheltering from the rain. The National Museum scored major points for organizing itself chronologically, having a geopolitical map of Europe at the entrance of each room for reference, and focusing on war and politics, putting silly things like culture and art in the periphery.

Food: For our first lunch, we picked a random restaurant and ordered the two set menus without having the slightest idea of what we were eating. Ended up my meatloaf was good, but Gina's mystery meat (liver?) was only OK. For dinner, Gina got goulash (yummy) and and I got vegetarian surprise. The second day we had breakfast and lunch at the large Central Market right next to our hostel. My breakfast was a mistakenly ordered poppy seed pastry (rather dry) along with a very Hungarian stuffed paprika pepper, and for lunch I got a wonderfully greasy Hungarian burger, complete with cole slaw and bacon piled within.

Service was consistently slow, which was frequently frustrating, but the waitresses were always polite and attentive, whenever they actually made it over to our table.

Poland

In Krakow, Gina and I decided* to try something new: Couchsurfing!

Basically, couchsurfing is an online network where people allow out-of-towners to crash on their couch/spare bed/floor for free, in theory so they can meet people. I saw it as a winning combination of a way to meet locals (something I struggle with while traveling) and free lodging. So my cousin back home did some online screening for possible hosts in Krakow, and then while in Turkey I messaged the 3 that seemed the least sketchy. We got a response from 1, who agreed to host us and offered to meet us at the train station.

The girl, Julia, met us at the train station, and our adventure began… and it was safe and uneventful. While 2 free nights and no mishaps is recorded as a complete success, it would have been nice to have had a more lively host. Julia, however, had just had a grandparent pass away and was in the midst of trying to shake up new roommates for her apartment as her previous roommates were graduating, so I believe she did the best she could. We did go out to eat with her the last night we were in Krakow, and I had an interesting conversation with her about languages* and culture** another night. She had an apartment about 20 min from the station and 5 minutes from the center square. Her roommates were gone so Gina and I got beds, and we shared a bathroom (After 2 nights in Dresden and 2 nights in Krakow, Gina and I never figured out how to shower in a bathroom with no shower curtain).
*and confirmed that I cannot tell the difference between Polish or Belorussian. Interesting that Slavs can tell the difference between Romance and Germanic languages, but we (not just Americans) typically cannot tell the difference between various Slavic languages.
**Julia is Belorussian, not Polish, and made a few comments that suggested that, as a minority, she occasionally gets irked by Polish nationalism. I asked if she had ever been up to Wawel, and she was like, "nope, nothing there interests me. That's not my history."

Poland is still a very Catholic place, and in Krakow I saw an interesting phenomenon I have only seen before in Rome – nuns on the loose! Seeing nuns in full habit going about their business is almost a strange as seeing the monks in Thailand out and about, though sadly there were not as many nuns. The second day in Krakow, Gina and I had a friendly competition to see who could spot the most nuns, with myself edging Gina 15 nuns to 14 nuns. The only rule of the game was that you had to call the nun first. This led to an awkward moment when we were walking across Stare Miasto, the main square, with Julia, and I shouted, "nun!," notching a point but then having to explain to Julia what we were doing.

We came to Krakow for 3 reasons. 1, I thought it would be on the way from Dresden to Budapest (nope). 2 and 3 were the Wieliczka Salt Mines, a priority for Gina, and Auschwitz-Birkenau. Because we had lost a day traveling from Dresden to Krakow, we decided to book organized tours instead of trying to navigate public transit for both of these sites.

On the first day we booked an afternoon tour of the salt mines and spent the morning checking out Wawel Hill, the home of Poland's national cathedral and old royal castle. That afternoon we went down the Wieliczka salt mines, following a centuries old tourist trail through the mine, complete with informational displays carved out of salt. An elevator at the end is a recent addition, but you begin by climbing 54 flights of stairs straight down, eventually getting 130m below ground. The chapels carved out of the salt were stunning and a testament to man's artistic prowess (I believe the famous chapel of St Kinga was carved primarily by miners, not professional artists).

The following day we took a full day tour of the Oswiecim (Auschwitz) concentration camps. Auschwitz I, the best preserved and the home of an excellent museum and collection of artifacts, was very informative, but wasn't as emotional as I was expecting. As Sophia had warned me, the Holocaust is so terrible and inhumane that it is almost impossible to grasp. I was most moved at one of the first displays, a small collection of Jewish prayer shawls recovered from the collection of Nazi contraband. The collections of clothes, suitcases, eye glasses, shoes, and so forth were of such large scale it was beyond comprehension. At Auschwitz II, more commonly known as Birkenau, was where most of the murder took place. This camp was of staggering size and scale, especially b/c only 2/3 of the land is preserved, and it did well to physically demonstrate the scale of Nazi evil and the industrial efficiency with which the Nazi went about exterminating people. For the former, there are rows upon rows of brick chimneys, standing as silent vigils marking where 200 humans apiece were stored, awaiting destruction. Polish refugees, returning after the war, had stripped away all of the wood in the camp to rebuild their villages. For the later, I was reminded of the comment about evils of "progress for progress sake" made at commencement by Sister Mary Scullion, the Laetare Medal recipient . The camp was enormous, yet 70% of all arrivals were exterminated within a day of arrival. The crematoriums could burn ~1300 bodies a day, yet the 6(?) crematoriums at the camp couldn't keep up with demands at its peak, so the Nazi's resorted to burning bodies in an open field behind the camp, and pictures of this burning survive.

A quote in the museum reminded me why I came to Poland, "The one who does not remember history is bound to live through it again" ~George Santayana.

The monument in Birkenua said, "For ever let this place be a cry of despair / And a warning to Humanity, where the Nazis murder about one and half million men, women, and children, mainly Jews, from various countries of Europe"

***

We went back to Julie’s apartment, grabbed dinner with Julie at a nearby resteraunt that she liked, and then scurried over to the train station to catch our train. The first ride was uneventful, but we were a bit confused waiting for our night train in Kattowice. Ultimately the train came and we slept. The train took an odd route – we arrived at Prague at 7am before Budapest a bit after 8 – and I think we spent a few hours just sitting in a train station somewhere in Poland or Czech Republic just killing time so that we would arrive at our destinations at a reasonable hour.