Starting tomorrow, you be able to enjoy a weekly trivia quiz about a destination somewhere in the world. I’ll be making it a bit more in-depth than just some random questions by including photos and interesting facts about places in the world you may want to visit.

Then, beginning Friday I’ll be posting a weekly travel news summary. This won’t be some dreary summary of news headlines, though. I’ll be focusing on things in the news that are humorous or silly or just plain wrong.

Finally, on Sunday you’ll see the return of Brain Drops. I sorted through old bits I’ve scrawled on napkins since the last Brain Drops in March and pulled out enough for a few weeks. Sadly, some are hopelessly out of date, like a reference to Black Swan’s lesbian scene. So those stay in the scrap heap.

Of course, I’ll also start up actual blog columns again. Because I’m not currently traveling, those columns will be about past travels or opinion pieces on travel issues.

The rough schedule will look like:

Sunday: Brain Drops

Tuesday: Travel Trivia

Wednesday: Feature post

Friday: Travel News Wrap-up

I also wanted to give a shout out to a site run by a couple of friends of mine, Dave Dean and Dustin Main: TooManyAdapters.com. It explores the latest in news and information about traveling with technology. I’ll be an occasional contributor to that site, which I kicked off with a review of the Kindle Fire from a traveler’s perspective. Check it out here: http://toomanyadapters.com/kindle-fire-review/ 

As always, thanks for visiting and I hope you enjoy the new features.

Using nature for the purpose of tourism has always been a subject of debate. I’m not going to spend a lot of energy on that at the moment, but I wanted to share my experiences and a few thoughts on the topic.

Our pachydermic day began with a wonderful guide who picked us up at our hotel. Along the way, we learned a lot about him. In addition to working on the family farm and raising the elephants we were going to see, he was also a Muay Thai boxer and former soldier. Not to mention a shameless ladies man, as my friends Sybil and Sarah discovered.

Hearing about his history was important because it put the day in context. We were not going to a tourist attraction created in the last 5 years, we were visiting his family’s home and would be taking care of elephants that he had raised since he was a child.

“You think you care more about the elephants than I do? No, I do not think so.”

Language Lessons

Our first task of the day was to learn Thai. No easy trick, but fortunately we only had to learn the words we would use to give the elephants instruction. This was not a tour that involved sitting in a carriage on some random animal’s back. We would be bareback and directing the elephants ourselves (though thankfully never without a guide nearby).

The most important word we learned was “yut!” aka “stop.” I can remember the rest in my head, but have no idea how to spell them, so I’ll refrain from including a lot of linguistic detail.

We changed into more traditional clothing and popped on straw hats to complete the transformation from Western Tourist to Western Tourist in a hat.

A Tank With a Tail

Once we had a basic grasp of the words we needed to know, we got to greet our elephants. Christina was the first one we had the pleasure of meeting as we each fed her bits of sugar cane. How to feed them was open to personal preference, You could hand the sugar cane to her and let her grab it with her trunk. That was the path for those who were still a bit intimidated by a 6000 pound creature.

The other option was to say “Bon Soong!” which meant “Open up, baby!” Much like her namesake Aguilera, she opened her mouth and awaited the treat we put in her mouth.

It is a wild experience to put your hand in such a massive mouth and place food on a tongue the size of a throw pillow. That was the first of many brain warps that day.

To get them used to us, we fed each of the gentle giants, who were also eating on their own. Unlike many animals, elephants need little sleep, but they eat constantly.

Hides and Peaks

Using our learned commands, we asked the elephant to lift her leg. With that limb acting as step stool, the next order told our new friend to lift higher. The movement of her mass of coarse hide and muscle boosted us up and allowed us access to her back.

Some practice in moving forward, back, left and right and we were ready for lunch.

Once we all ate (the elephants never stopped), we were ready to begin a trek up the hill. As though we were heading onto a wrinkled gray Noah’s Ark, we boarded the elephants in twos. I was at the head, leading the charge. A young French girl sat behind me.

The movements were slow and deliberate. These guys do not move forward without sure footing. It certainly helps that they know the route extremely well. The elephants are given rest days, but still do similar trips a few times each week.

Left, right, forward, slow down, stop. We gave the commands we had learned, but Dumbo’s kin knew far more about what they were doing than we did.

Because we were riding bareback, there were a host of challenges: staying balanced with legs spread enough to cover the breadth of her back, sitting on a spine that felt like straddling a copper pipe, being poked by the prickly cactus hair on her head and holding on for dear life as she moved up and down steep mountainsides. Her footing may have been solid, but our grips on her bulk were far less assured.

Le Chapeau

After a break and additional feeding time, we continued on our way. It was at this point that we were witness to the most remarkable incident of a remarkable day. Like a horrifically clumsy version of Hannibal’s army, there were 12 of us traveling downhill in a gray convoy. My two friends were on an elephant directly behind us, snapping photos whenever the terrain didn’t require a double grip.

As the wind whipped through the mountains and valleys, my French partner’s straw hat flew off, landing on the ground behind her. Without missing a beat, the elephant behind us reached down with her trunk, picked up the hat and handed it to my friends.

I was stunned. Had it not been for her shriek, I wouldn’t even have noticed that the hat had taken flight. This giant “beast of burden” not only saw it happen, but had the presence of mind and intelligence to pick it up and return it. It was astonishing, to say the least.

Rub-a-Dub in the Poo Tub

Once we reached the bottom, it was time to bathe the elephants. Having watched the pee geysers and the tree stumps of poo coming out of their ass, I wasn’t in any hurry to get that close. Sitting on her back was one thing, bathing implied far greater contact.

It didn’t get better when the elephants got into the river and began to let loose with their bodily functions.

Sybil and I looked at each other, simultaneously saying “I am NOT going in that water.” It was just NOT gonna happen. Sarah, the more adventurous member of our group, ran down like a child on Christmas day, shouting back at us, “Come on, when else are you going to be able to play with elephants?”

After much internal debate, I ended up in the water. For a recovering germophobe, this was a huge step.

Here’s where it gets crazy.

We scrubbed the big guy for a while and then it was play time. Minutes after vowing not to go anywhere NEAR that water, we were having a “Human vs. Elephant” Splashdown water battle. We kicked, splashed and threw full buckets at them. They responded by stomping around and splashing, while water-filled trunks sprayed directly at our faces.

The elephants were ecstatic. You could see the joy in their faces. They were having a ball. And so were we, poo water and all.

The Swimmin’ Hole

Our final adventure of the day was a brief walk to a larger reservoir. It was time to swim. We again made the trek up onto our elephants’ backs, then they began to descend into the lake.

As was the case throughout the day, I had incorrect assumptions.

I believed that the elephants were going to get into water that reached about halfway up their body and we’d ride them as they enjoyed their version of a wading pool. Nope. Swimming was not an exaggeration. They descended into the water until nothing but their trunk was in the open air.

So, let’s not forget that I am still on his back. And immersed up to my neck before he rose up again. Like an indecisive submarine, he bobbed up and down. Above the water level, below the water level, above again. All with me hoping that he never went deep enough that I would be completely submerged. And praying that my thigh strength didn’t wane enough to lose the grip on his hide.

We made a loop around the lake and slowly lumbered out at the same point we entered.

It was the end of the elephants’ work day and they went back to refuel, leaving us with nothing but memories and dirty feet.

A Few Final Thoughts

Am I concerned about the treatment of elephants as they’re used for tourist attractions? Certainly. As a matter of fact, my friends and I chose not to attend a popular Thai show that had elephant performances in it. That decision, however, was a direct result of the day we spent getting to better know the creatures in a way few people ever do.

You can argue the validity of these types of experiences. Some are doubtless better than others and, sadly, some can be considered torture. But my life was enriched by the experience I had, in ways I never would have expected.

Should circus acts with animals be banned? Should zoos? That’s not a debate I really want to jump into because there are too many sides and considerations – a solid assessment would take far more research and understanding than I’d care to undertake.

Mistreatment of animals is inexcusable and efforts should always be made to improve the life of the creatures involved. But I am curious how many leaders in animal care and conservation were inspired by the education provided by a zoo visit at a young age.

It’s a very blurry line and there aren’t easy answers that apply to all situations.

Within that blur, we each draw a solid line that segments our personal comfort zone. Everyone’s line is in a different place and, over time, education and experience can move it. I can unequivocally tell you that my day with elephants was well within my own lines.

The word “orphan” really needs to be retired and replaced, because that image doesn’t do justice to the reality of things. The truth is that there are more than 15 million children in the world who have been orphaned due to AIDS.

If all 15 million lived in the same place in the United States, it would be the 5th largest state in the nation. That’s more people than the populations of West Virginia, Nebraska, Idaho, New Hampshire, Maine, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Montana, Delaware, South Dakota, Alaska, North Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming COMBINED.

If they were their own state, a whopping 24 electoral votes would get them a steady stream of attention from Presidential candidates and the news media. That’s not how it is, though, so we make do and spread the word how we can.

Monica Wong, who runs the travel blog A Pair of Panties and Boxers, is volunteering her exceptional social media skills to work with FXB International and raise awareness of World AIDS Orphans Day, a grassroots campaign to draw attention to and advocate on behalf of the children orphaned by AIDS. World AIDS Orphans Day is commemorated every year on May 7th.

How You Can Help:

One of the key activities is an online charity auction by NextAid.org.

They’re currently looking for donations to include in the auction, in the following categories:

• Good Goods (green retail, fair trade items, organic goods, beauty products)
• Treat Yourself LA, SF, and NY (restaurants, activities, fitness, spa)
• Call in Sick (hotels, flights, cruises, travel, activities)

More details about the auction are at NextAid’s auction page

How ELSE You Can Help:

Okay. So, let’s just say you were a total slacker and didn’t click on any of the links above, then you MUST DO THIS:

Raise awareness by joining the Facebook page for World Aids Orphans Day to spread the word around to people you know. All it takes is a couple mouse clicks.

If you can blow time playing Farmville, then it would be pretty sad  if you couldn’t at least do THAT much. Don’t make me create “Orphanville” just to get your attention.

I must have been sucked through some weird dimensional time warp at some point because when I looked at that list yesterday, I realized that my trip was already a success.

Isn't it nicer when the road to success is downhill?

Here are some of the ways my travel plans are awesome RIGHT NOW:

1. Simplification – When you get out of school, life is a cute little goldfish and it’s easy to care for, but then you shove it into bigger and bigger tanks, it eats everything in sight until it eventually turns into a big, ugly carp. I can’t keep up the fish metaphor forever, so let’s just say I’ve thrown away a lot of shit.
2. Frugal living – Last year, I stopped blowing money on stuff I never use. I’m sure Reader’s Digest is still a wonderful magazine but really, they should have lost my loyalty when they stopped sending me letters telling me I had already won a million dollars. It may have been a lie, but I used to feel like they cared.
3. Personal assessment – Prepping for extended travel gave me the incentive to look inside myself and be honest about what I wanted in my life. Amongst other things, I want to go to my grave after living a life that is extraordinary. I mean, not… you know… soon with the whole “grave” thing. But someday.
4. Getting in shape – It hasn’t been easy, but increasing my riding has finally enabled me to counteract the free snacks at work. I know, technically I still shouldn’t eat an entire bag of Oreos in one sitting but I’ve never been much for rules. Or even principles of common decency.
5. Goals & renewed sense of purpose – Setting a date and working toward something meaningful has lifted my mood tremendously, even though the final outcome is a big unknown. Mysteries are great motivators. I mean, look at Scooby Doo and the gang. They always seemed to get a kick out of traveling aimlessly and pursuing mysteries, but that might be because they were all high.
6. Connecting with old friends – Leaving Los Angeles, perhaps for many years, sparked me to catch up with people I haven’t seen in months. Facebook is great for keeping in touch with far away friends, but when it takes the place of real contact with people who live in the same town, it’s a problem. Knowing you’re going to leave is like a pleasurable form of being given 6 months to live. It’s time to catch up, to laugh about the past, even tidy up unfinished business.
7. Writing again – for fun! My first few blog posts were oozing with business-speak and CYA as though someone might get pissed if I didn’t leave myself weasel room. It was all “the outcome is most likely to be x” and “I would imagine that y might happen.” Now I can write whatever the Hell is on my mind and only worry about people telling me it sucks. And screw them, anyway.
   

   mmmm...giant donut...

If my life has improved this much just from planning to travel, then I’m looking forward to the marshmallow clouds, lollipop trees and ice cream gardens out on the road. And the virgins. There’d better be virgins.

There’s a ton of free software on the market, a lot of it total crap or loaded with malware. If you’ve just picked up a new netbook and are ready to head out on the road, here are the free (and spyware-free) gems I use almost daily. A couple are iPhone specific, so my apologies to anyone who can’t find a version that works with their mobile device.

www.icanhascheezburger.com (cut me some slack, I was desperate)

For writing:

For blogging:

• WordPress.org: duh. The standard for bloggers wanting to grow and have flexibility (and your own ads). You need to get away from a hosted blog and self-host eventually -  start early.
• Audacity: an audio editor that works wonderfully for creating podcasts and audio files. Even if you don’t want to do a regular podcast, there may be times when you want people to hear your words directly from the source. How about a man-on-the-street interview?
• Picasa: it’s not going to be your go-to for heavy duty photo editing, but it has the easiest to use albums and is great for basic edits & resizing in bulk.

To manage your mobility:

Photo credit: moorpheuss

• Dropbox/Mozy/Skydrive: you need some sort of online backup in case your computer crashes or is stolen. For more detail on your options: http://matadorgoods.com/remote-data-storage-options-for-travelers/
• Skype: make international calls for pennies
• Remember the Milk: a free task manager that updates and sends alerts via e-mail, phone, and anything else you’re near. Rumor is that they’ll soon be able to send alerts through your margarita blender.
• Mint: keep track of all your personal finances in one place without breaking your bank.

Do you have favorites I missed? Let me know what software you can’t travel without.

The Carnival celebration in Rio is arguably the greatest celebration in the world. I was expecting to witness debauchery like Mardi Gras, but on a grander scale. What I discovered was anything but that. There was certainly alcohol flowing freely – beer and caipirinhas were available every 4 feet – but in Rio, Carnival is about music, dancing, celebration and, above all, joy. Contrary to popular belief, it’s not about beads and throwing up on your shoes.

Some of the incredibly elaborate floats in the Samba parade

A few things I learned about the annual celebration:

1) You don’t have to be a spectator. One of the most unique and wonderful experiences of my life was joining one of the Samba schools and being IN the parade. Some smaller schools do not have enough members to make a good showing (they need between 3000 and 5000 participants) so they raise funds by selling spots to join in the extravaganza. There is nothing I’ve ever experienced that compares to the exhilaration of dancing through the Sambadrome to the cheers of 90,000 spectators. If you’re interested, check out:

http://www.rio-carnival.net/rio_carnival/rio_carnival_costumes.php
http://www.carnivalservice.com/rio-carnival-costumes.php

2) It IS a competitive sport. The Sambadrome is a 90,000 capacity stadium built along a one mile stretch of road, specifically for the annual event. The annual parade is a week of celebration, but on the two “Special Group nights” 6 groups per night perform in heated competition. Each group has a maximum of 75 minutes to complete their show or they are penalized by the 40 judges grading the performances.

3) Not all costumes require you to be nearly naked, but you DO have to be comfortable in your own skin. If Liberace and the Scarecrow from Wizard of Oz had a lovechild, that was me in my costume. But all feelings of insecurity are washed away when you’re dancing and singing with 5000 others and tens of thousands are showing their adoration.

4) Beer vendors are ingenious. While waiting for the parade to begin, we were inside a gigantic corral with 20 foot billboard-covered walls around us. Vendors climbed to the top of the outside walls and dropped coolers to our level with a rope. Throw a few reais into a basket (also on a rope), they haul up the cash and you take a beer.

Yes, I was in one of these costumes.

5) The community effort behind the Samba parade is enviable. A samba school’s planning starts in March and lasts nearly a year. Some of the poorest neighborhoods in Rio band together and work tirelessly on nights and weekends to create everything necessary to have a good performance for their area of the city.  They choose the theme, the music is written, costumes are created, floats are built, and the designer puts together the choreography. Rehearsals begin in December and by Christmas, the sambas are recorded and released to record shops so the entire community can learn the songs and sing along during the parade.

6) Brazilians don’t sleep during Carnival. The parade begins around 9pm and with each group taking close to 90 minutes, it lasts until 4am or later each night. Then the party begins.

7) The Samba parade is taken more seriously than you can imagine. For a resident of Rio, it is second only to the World Cup in the passion it generates. After working for a year, the emotional investment and sense of community creates an intensity and fervor when the results are announced the following week. During the announcement in a Copacabana pub, the room was alternately cheering and sobbing throughout the afternoon. One of the indelible images I have of my time in Rio is that of a young women sobbing hysterically at a table, while her friends worked to comfort her.

Despite the disappointment that my group came in 7th out of 12, the joy and passion for life I experienced during Carnival was inspirational, unforgettable and one hell of a lot of fun.

Bom Carnaval!!

Oops. Wrong quote.

The book that changed my life is not a book, it happens to be a play. Plays and scripts make great reading since they don’t have all those pesky paragraphs. Or adjectives. Or frankly, so damned many words. I’ve never seen Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot performed, and yet it created a fork at a time when my life was moving along a knife.

Vladimir: Let us not waste our time in idle discourse! Let us do something, while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed. But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it, before it is too late!

The themes of Waiting for Godot are open to interpretation which, as an existentialist absurdist tragicomedy play, is the whole point of it. What the Hell? Am I about to go all pseudo-intellectual on your ass? Nah. Don’t worry. I may be a big freaking nerd, but I’m not a pretentious, elitist nerd. Unless you want to start debating Kirk vs. Picard.

Here’s the basic concept that guides my own philosophy – there is no higher meaning to life beyond what you put into it. A person has to create value by living, not by simply talking about it or thinking about it. When I was a fresh-faced college student, that realization shook me out of the complacency and confusion I had about the next steps in my life and pushed me to pursue what made me happy.

Estragon: Let’s go.
Vladimir: We can’t.
Estragon: Why not?
Vladimir: We’re waiting for Godot.

The other theme that spoke to me, as indicated by the title, is that of waiting. Godot is the tale of two men who never act and never change. They while away their days and years waiting for a man who never arrives. They aren’t sure who he is, when he’s coming or even why they’re waiting.

Waiting sucks. Waiting holds us back. Waiting stalls our life. Waiting is in the title of a crappy Richard Marx song. Although honestly, the only thing Richard Marx should have stopped waiting for was a trip to the barber.

image credit: gpssue

By far, the #1 most hated thing about going to theme parks is waiting. Yet when it comes to our lives, we always find reasons to wait. We wait until we have more money, we wait until we have vacation time saved up. We wait until the kids are grown, the house is paid off, we retire. As I’ve mentioned, I waited with the hopes that I would get laid off from my job and I waited for a severance check that never came.

Estragon: Don’t let’s do anything. It’s safer.
Vladimir: Let’s wait and see what he says.
Estragon: Who?
Vladimir: Godot.

The tragedy of Vladimir and Estragon is that they never do anything. For over 50 years, they follow the same routine. Their lives are on auto pilot to such an extent that they barely remember yesterday, because every day is the same. During the whirlwind of travel and adventure, time may run together and you might mix up what you did and when, but you’re never lacking in memories.

There are always reasons to wait. Inertia is incredibly powerful, but the nice thing about inertia is that once you get that object moving, it tends to keep moving. What does that mean to me? It means that going with the flow has had me going in circles, so it’s again time to hop into a new flow.

I’m done waiting. My timeline may say that June 30th is my departure date, but until then I know what I’ll be doing. I’ll be planning, I’ll be preparing, I’ll be sharing. I won’t be waiting.

(Side note: Waiting for Godot has nothing to do track cycling, but in researching this post, I found a bit of history that Beckett himself did wait for French cyclist Roger Godeau outside the velodrome in Roubaix. The fact that cycling is another of my passions just makes me love this play that much more).

These days my job involves a lot of travel, especially to Asia. I thought perhaps that would cause my travel bug to scamper back under the refrigerator, but it’s had the opposite effect. There’s far too much of the world left to see and I’m only getting little slices of it at a time in between having my soul chipped away by the corporate artisans.

After a few weeks in Singapore last year, I settled on getting out into the world for an extended journey. Not that I recommend spending a lot of time in Singapore, or as I call it, “the Asia flavored dietary substitute.” But there’s a lot more to the world than that.

How I’m doing it:

• Twelve countries in 12 months – wherein I don’t just travel, but I LIVE in various areas around the world. I would love to extend that to 24 countries in 24 months or 36 countries in 36 months, but 12 is where I’m starting.
• Focusing first on Europe. Ultimately, my travel list is comprised of anywhere that has a cheese named after it.
• Get a rented room for a month in each region. Avoid the expense of hotels and take advantage of hostels only in between stops or on side trips.
• Use that room as a base of operations, a place to keep my stuff while I ride off into the surrounding areas to explore. A place to shower and rest my head at night after a long day of visiting nearby towns.
• Cycle around the area. With bike/train combos and a few overnight stays, I can hit a radius of about 200 miles without killing myself.

What I want:

• A deep dive into the countries I’m visiting. Absorb the language, the culture and even the food. Believe me, I am more afraid of snails than they are of me, but I vow to eat something other than crepes.
• Spend meaningful time in my adopted “home town” – frequenting particular cafes, shops and restaurants that I find appealing.
• Meet new people. One of the regular features here is the “person of the week” where I will find one person each week to talk to, get to know and write up a short profile of him or her.

What I’m avoiding:

• Going rustic. After a camping trip through Washington and some disturbing encounters with public restrooms, I realized I need a space to call my own.
• “Seeing” things. I want to experience them. I want to be part of other cultures.
• Sitting on the outside looking in. I want to be squirming through to be “inside-ish” looking in. Walking through town on cobblestones, shopping for groceries, saying hello to the lady with all the cats.
• Constantly “passing through.” I plan to ride to other towns 3 or 4 days a week, leaving me with time to get to know my adopted town fairly well the rest of the week.

Will the plans change? Oh yeah, I have no doubts that no matter what kind of detailed thought I put into this, it’ll never turn out like I imagine. And that’s just how I like it – planned to the furthest extent possible, then wing it when the time comes.

As I started to research how to set up a good travel blog, it became apparent that what I am planning is not unique. It may be special and unusual, but it is not unique. That’s a good thing. There’s a tremendous amount of material out there to help guide people along their own individual paths. There are Twitter groups (such as #rtwsoon), travel blogs and sites dedicated not only to travel, but to travel writing.  There’s a virtual stampede of people who are taking time out to travel the world on their own terms, rather than on the terms of a limited company vacation.

I’ve included a short list of fellow travelers on this page and will expand upon that over time, including brief reviews and a short description of what the blog’s focus is.

And not surprisingly, it makes me even more intent on ensuring my little blog has a unique voice that develops a bit more once I get the nuts and bolts down!

• In China, they aren’t called fortune cookies. Evidently they’re called “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
• Comparing different cuisines in Asia: the McDonald’s in Singapore is far superior to McDonald’s in Seoul
• Chinese New Year is the time of year that Chinatown vendors put aside their cheap tourist crap and bring out their cheap New Years themed crap
• Singapore doesn’t subscribe to the philosophy of measure twice, cut once. They skip the measuring and then hack the shit out of things until they more or less fit.
• The Merlion is an ancient Singaporean mythological creature that dates back to a time 20 years ago when Singaporeans decided they needed some ancient mythology.