Wabi-Sabi Travels

21/02/2018

After a week of having the sound of the sea as the only background noise and the endless blue-emerald horizon as the only view, the honking and screaming of Hanoi streets, the crowds and the claustrophobic absence of any horizon at all in this crazy city feels like waking up from a dream into a nightmare :)

20/02/2018

I know this is a pretty weird photo to post, but it will help shed light on the intricacies of the transportation system in Thailand.

I was traveling from one of the small islands to Bangkok, which is a combined boat and bus journey. First, you buy the ticket at the booking office in the village and you get a piece of handwritten paper that costs 40$. Then you come to the pier from where the boats leave and need to check-in. This time you get a printed ticket and the white sticker, "Madam, this on your t-shirt please".

Then you embark on the boat and get the white ribbon, " Madam, this on your hand please". Then on the boat in addition to making announcements about the trip on the loudspeaker, a member of staff walks along the isles, differentiates passengers by the ribbon color and repeats the announcements relevant for each destination to each passenger!

Then the boat arrives at the next destination where you are supposed to take a bus. Here you need to check in again, and get the green sticker. And the buses are announced not by destination but by sticker color! All passengers with green stickers please approach bus number 3.

Streamlining processes Thai-style ;)

Sawasdeekaaa from the land of emerald sea and proper spicy food :)

21/01/2018

Big cities always mean noise. Big cities in Asia mean so much noise that you just have to switch off your brain and get used to the constant traffic and honking and construction becoming the background soundtrack of your daily life.

But big cities also have miraculous oases where the noise no longer follows you, and there the silence becomes so loud, your own thoughts seem to echo in your head.

The Temple of Literature in Hanoi is the place to go to breathe out the stress of a hectic day in the city.

17/01/2018

Even Hello Kitty rides a bike in Vietnam 😊

16/01/2018

Life in the streets of Ha Noi - street vendors taking an afternoon nap

11/01/2018

The Train street in Hanoi is only ten minutes walking from the city’s bustling center. Yet it’s such a huge contrast to the busy streets of the touristic Old Quarter or the business districts of the West Lake area. Here people live literally on the train tracks. Life goes on as usual right on the railway with families doing their laundry, cooking or just walking with the kids. Then suddenly everything and everyone disappears from the tracks and a fraction of a second later you hear the roaring of the approaching train.

And before you can get back your breath from hardly managing to jump out of the tracks because of the unexpected closeness, people emerge back on the tracks and the life goes on as if nothing happened.

20/09/2017

Exploring some caves in Ha Long Bay.

Though I should say I am not a fan of intervening into the nature like this. For me, nature is always best enjoyed in its purity and wilderness with no traces of humans around, which unfortunately cannot always be an option. In any case, the cave system, even with the bizarre illumination and concrete pathways built inside, was still super impressive with many huge halls and weirdly shaped stalactites and stalagmites.

14/09/2017

The backstreets of Ha Long, any city is best experienced where there are no tourists :).

07/09/2017

When I was at school, we had this traditional assignment of writing an essay on the topic of "How I spent my summer holidays" every year when we were back to school in September. I have always been a summer person and always loved summers (couldn't stand writing the essay about the summer though...).

This year, for the first time since university years, I had the full summer to myself. How did I spend it? Fast, very fast. Enjoying beautiful Yerevan, which in summer becomes a mosaic of bright colors spiced up with the smell of tea-coffee-wine, meeting people I had not seen for a long time, going to the mountains, discovering new places and just indulging in being able to take life slow and easy.

While the summer is formally over in Armenia, I am going back to beautiful Vietnam where it is almost always summer (+18 will never count as winter for me! :) ).

18/07/2017

Out of 20 countries where I have lived or traveled so far, my absolute top 3 list is the following:

INDIA, the one and only, a country that shatters all your previous knowledge and convictions and alters your perspective on everything. A country that is so diverse and incredible that it leaves you yearning to go back and re-discover it again and again. A country where every single day passes like a colorful Bollywood movie. A country from where no one can return unchanged.

VIETNAM, the land of most awesome and friendly people and easiest travelling experiences. A country that has the drive and ambition of development while also strangely throwing you back to your post-Soviet 90’s childhood. A country that hosted me for the greatest experiment in my life so far and helped me realize my childhood dream of becoming a teacher.

NEPAL, a country I knew nothing about except for the mountains that seemed so unattainable when I was reading books about them or watching movies. A country that hosted me for 3 weeks of non-stop mind-blowing views and experiences. A country with wonderful mountain people and controversial history. A country where I hope to return for some more self-limits-pushing experiences.

PS. Armenia is not on the top 3 list because it is naturally out of any competition :)

17/07/2017

During the Everest trekking, one of the guys in our team was smoking and we were trying to convince him not to smoke as the trek was quite tough. He said he would stop smoking when we reached 4,000m. Then at that altitude he was feeling well so he said he would quit at 5,000. At 5,000, too, he felt very well so he smoked all the way. And all the time we were making jokes about it and trying to convince him to quit.

On our last day in Lukla airport, I was waiting for the boarding, and he was smoking in the smoking area. He returned with a broad smile, “You know, I met this guy in the smoking room, I told him I wanted to quit but then smoked all the way on the trek till 5,500m. You know what he answered?” “What?” I asked feeling from his tone that something interesting had happened. “Well, he said he had smoked all the way to 8,000m!” Turned out that man had just summited Mt. Everest.

Of course we couldn’t miss the opportunity and went back to the smoking room to meet him. When we entered the room, we saw a Korean man of about 45 who greeted us with a friendly smile instantly radiating positive vibes all around him. He had got down from the summit of Mt. Everest 4 days ago and was now heading back to Kathmandu. The conversation flowed easily as it always does between travelers even if they have just met a minute ago. It was his 4th attempt, the previous 3 had failed because of bad weather, or worsening health conditions, and the last one because of the avalanche and earthquake in 2015.

He told us about his preparations for the summit, the expedition itself which was the 6th summit out of the 7 Summits project he was doing (climbing the highest peaks on all continents). He was one of the strongest, most inspiring and yet utterly modest people I have met in my life. We spoke for about half an hour but we carried the positive energy of that meeting for many days afterwards.

In the end, I asked him what the toughest thing on the Mountain had been for him. He paused for a moment and then smiled back. “The toughest thing is not on the mountain,” he said. “The toughest thing is always going on in your mind. You sort that out and you can climb any mountains you want.”

04/07/2017

During the trek in the Himalayas we had a reserve day we could use in case of bad weather. For the whole trek we were very lucky with the weather so we did not use the extra day, but on the way back, the weather started getting worse, and we were running the risk of catching non-flight weather in Lukla airport, a highly undesirable situation as one of the guys in our group had his flight back home from Kathmandu in 2 days after we got back down. So we walked about 19km on the last day to go down to Lukla early to have a reserve day for the flight.

I have already told about the airport in Lukla. It is one of the most dangerous airports in the world. Seeing it sunk in thick fog with the surrounding mountains completely covered with a hopeless white curtain and listening to the non-stop pounding of the rain on the metal roof of the lodge was not reassuring at all. The day we got down to Lukla there were not flights – zero visibility and heavy rain. The forecast did not promise anything good for the next day either. We were told to wait for a call from the airport – if we were lucky, we might be able to fly early next morning.

We had all our things packed, had breakfast and were sitting in the lodge waiting for the call from 6 am the next day. At around 3 pm our guide told us we should go to the airport as there was “20% chance” that we would fly on that day. At the airport, no one was able to tell for sure whether there would be any flights, but they took our luggage and gave us boarding passes, to which our guide commented, “60% chance now!” After checking the luggage in we passed security control and entered the boarding area where the passengers of 3 different flights were all sitting hoping for good weather. At this point our guide said, “90% chance for you now!”

We saw the airport staff take out our backpacks to the area where the planes were parked to start loading them into the plane. “99% chance now,” I thought looking at the fog and trying not to think about how close the now invisible mountains were. A minute later a man entered the hall and told us our flight was cancelled. “Maybe tomorrow,” he said and told us to go and take our bags from the area near the runway. We spent the rest of the day in the lodge drinking tea and mentally returning from the mountains.

The next morning – fog, rain and waiting in uncertainty for the call from the airport. We walked to the airport again, checked in the luggage, passed security control. I remember looking out of the window and secretly hoping for the flight to be cancelled. When we landed in Lukla on our first day I was thinking the pilots flying those planes in the mountains were super-human, but no matter how much I admired their mastery, the perspective of flying in what looked like very bad visibility was not exciting at all.

After some more waiting, we boarded the plane and finally flew to Kathmandu. As soon as I got to the hotel in Kathmandu I got a message telling that the same plane which we had just taken to get to Kathmandu, had returned to Lukla thirty minutes later and crashed when landing. Apparently, the visibility was not good and the plane had crashed into the hill right below the runway. Luckily, because it was the end of the mountain season, the plane was flying with cargo and had no passengers, only the crew members were on board. Only the captain died in the crash. As the newspapers were saying later, the weather was still so bad that there were no flights from Lukla for 3 days after the accident so that they could not even fly the injured crew members to Kathmandu for several days...

26/06/2017

As they say in Nepal, "Dal Bhat power, 24 hour!"

Dal Bhat is one of the most popular dishes in Nepal. Bhat is the boiled/steamed rice, Dal is the soup-like sauce made with lentils. It is served with spinach, 1-2 types of vegetable (or meat) curry, spicy sauce, pickles, sometimes yogurt. Of course, everything is super spicy! To make it extra delicious, Dal Bhat should be eaten with hands :) The portion is huge as it is, and to make things even worse, the tradition is to add extra portions of any of the Dal Bhat components as you finish it :)

20/06/2017

Just as you start feeling proud of yourself for reaching your goal at 5,500m, the giant peaks around gaze down at you leniently and all your pride momentarily changes into humble gratitude for the opportunity of being there, seeing all the beauty and feeling the power and serenity of the mountains.

18/06/2017

Having Tibetan bread with honey - the most delicious breakfast at 5,360m with a sunrise view of the Himalayas.

We climbed Gokyo Ri to catch the sunrise, this was another night hike from Gokyo Lake where we stayed in one of the lodges. The sun was rising right from behind Mt. Everest and the gorgeous view included 4 out of 14 8,000m peaks - Mt. Cho Oyu (8,201m), Mt. Everest (8,848m), Mt. Lhotse (8,516m), Mt. Makalu (8,485m).

14/06/2017

For me one of the most irrelevant questions in the world is "Why would people subject themselves to all sorts of risks, inconveniences and difficulties just to go to the mountains?" And kind of naturally, I have never been able to find any common grounds with people who ask that question :)

Being in the mountains is the best way of expanding your own limits, getting to see people's true selves (including your own) and feeling the unity with nature.

13/06/2017

Being in the mountains always gives you a feeling of freedom, almost like flying :) Somewhere at around 4,900m.

08/06/2017

Crossing the Cho La Pass to go to the Gokyo Lakes was one of the absolute highlights of the Nepal trekking experience. The trail ran through a rocky terrain continuing on a glacier and finishing at the highest point at 5,420m. All the way up the pass we were surrounded by the giant 7 and 8 thousand meters high peaks. It was an unbelievable feeling to be there and see all those legendary mountains I had been reading about or seeing in movies.

This was day 9 of our journey and our third day above 5,000m. The pass was probably the most difficult part of the trek, but it definitely had some of the most spectacular views...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sV7I6ZzGjiY

Cho La Pass

01/06/2017

Nothing gives a sense of an adventure better than a backpack and an airplane boarding pass!

This time our adventure started with the landing in the airport in the small town of Lukla in Nepal. The Tenzing-Hillary Airport named so after Sherpa Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary, the first people who summitted Mt.Everest in 1953, is located in the mountains at an altitude of 2,845m. It is considered one of the most dangerous airports in the world – the take-off/landing runway is only 500m long and has an incline of 12%, so when an airplane is landing it goes uphill on the runway. When approaching the airport, the plane was flying so close to the mountains that it felt you could stick your hand out of the window and touch the tops of the trees. And because it was also very cloudy and turbulent, the flight was really like driving in an old Niva on a bumpy road somewhere in the mountains of Syunik, well except that the G-force was periodically turning it into a crazy rollercoaster ride.

With the excitement and adrenaline of the landing still pumping in our hearts, we started the trek. The first two days we hiked through forest covered hills with a couple of small villages dotting the green scenery. Because the weather was cloudy, we did not have any views of the “big” mountains and had no idea that the hills we were climbing were in fact surrounded by some of the Himalaya’s legends.

The first destination on the trek was the village of Namche Bazaar, located at 3,440m. The village is mainly comprised of a number of lodges (or “tea houses” as they are also called) housing mountaineers on the way up. The infrastructure is limited to water from the mountains, electricity generated through solar panels and heating with stoves burning yak manure. Yaks and mules are the main means of transporting food and other supplies along the treks here. Because the agricultural land is rather scarce at this altitude and the climate is too harsh to grow anything on a large scale, mountaineering and supporting services are the main source of income for the local people.

With the sunrise in Namche Bazaar on the next day, we got the first glimpse of the “real” mountains and the whole trip to the Himalayas which I had been dreaming about for the past 4 years gradually started feeling real…

27/05/2017

Back to the civilization, alive and extremely happy. Dreams do come true, one step at a time.

Mt. Everest Base Camp 5,364m, Mt. Kala Patthar 5,550m, Chola Pass 5,420m, Gokyo Ri 5,360m.

15 unbelievable days in the Himalayas that passed like a dream you don't want to wake up from. 7 days above 4,000m of which 4 days above 5,000m - this was a new personal challenge for me as I had never been that high for that long.

As much as I love Vietnam, living there for more than a year has been an overdose of flat horizons with no mountains and no snow. So being back to the mountains after such a long break was completely overwhelming - constantly having to adjust your sense of scale to the magnitude of the giant peaks around, mobilizing all your resources to reach the goal, the absolute happiness and lightness despite physical exhaustion at the end of the long day, all the mountain-feelings were back with the very start of the ascent.

I'll post more stories and photos about this adventure as I sort out my impressions. In the meantime, as always, I am grateful to the Mountains for accepting us to reach our goals.

Namaste! 🙏🙏🙏

09/05/2017

To be able to survive in the crazy traffic of Ha Noi you should start riding a bike as soon as you can hold your milk bottle :)

03/05/2017

When I just arrived in Vietnam, I didn’t know anything about the country, well apart from the stuff you see in war movies, and the quite useless stuff you learn about a country in a post-Soviet school. And for this particular trip I didn’t want to do any prior research, thinking or planning as I needed it to be a complete exploration-and-discovery type of experience. And out of all the numerous discoveries I have made for myself during my life in Vietnam, the awesome people of this country are the most important one!

My first introduction to Vietnamese people was my very first host family – I booked a random homestay through Airbnb when I just arrived to Ho Chi Minh city. During my week long stay, my host’s mother was cooking the most delicious breakfast for me every day no matter how early I had to leave, and she was making a new dish every day so that I would have a chance to try as many different Vietnamese dishes as I could during my stay. Her father was meeting me at the bus stop when I returned late so that I wouldn’t have to walk alone in the dark street. My host was working crazy hours to support her family, but no matter how late she got home and how tired she was, she always found time to talk to me and tell me something interesting about her wonderful country.

After that I’ve had total strangers helping me with housing, or driving me places when I was lost, or helping me figure out the mysteries of public transportation, or not less mysteries of local fruits and vegetables. I had a landlord bringing me fruits and vegetables all the time because he was worried that I wasn’t eating anything. I had a guesthouse landlady who kicked out her husband from their bedroom and made him sleep in the kitchen so that I had a place to stay and did not even want to listen about taking money - a big family had booked out the whole place and my reservation was somehow lost, and they didn’t even want to hear about me going to another place to stay.

After living here for a bit longer, I have had students and friends who let me into their families showing genuine hospitality and care like my own family would do, and making my stay in this wonderful country even more enjoyable.

No matter where you travel, no matter how beautiful the places you visit are, people you meet on your journey are the most essential part of any travel experience, and I am so grateful for having met the most amazing people in this amazing country!

20/04/2017

The summer is finally back and the travel mode is on again! A short day trip exploring the beautiful Ha Long Bay in the North of Vietnam.

The Bay area has about 2,000 islands, mostly limestone, and some of them have absolutely incredible cave systems.

Though it's one of Vietnam's top touristic destinations even more popularized after the last King Kong movie, the Bay has still preserved its natural beauty with some surreal landscapes both over the sea and inside the caves.

https://www.facebook.com/pg/wabisabitravels/photos/?tab=album&album_id=768927099924801

10/04/2017

After weeks of rains and gloomy weather, looks like the summer is finally here! And when the sun is out there is nothing better than finding a nice coffee shop with the perfect view and super-strong and delicious Vietnamese coffee :)

28/03/2017

Almost one year in Vietnam! When I just arrived here, everything was completely different from what I was used to, and every day was (and still is in many respects) a discovery. But then many things that were causing a cultural shock in the beginning gradually became life as usual.

Here are some of those things: you know you’ve been living in Vietnam for a long time when…

You are no longer startled by total strangers you meet for the first time asking you personal questions.

You learn to guess people’s age, well, sort of … with an accuracy of ten years.

You accept the fact that +19C means winter and start wearing a winter jacket.

You not only have your favorite song from the public bus playlist but even catch yourself singing along from time to time.

You realize that you give and take everything holding it with both hands.

"Trời ơi!" (pronounced as ‘zoi ooooi’) becomes your default reaction when you want to express surprise, fear, anger, amusement and a range of other emotions.

The “seven dish” dinners no longer knock you out because of the amount of food and variety of dishes that keep coming to the table

You get used to strangers in the street, in the bus or other public places staring at you, smiling, waving or saying hello.

So far I’ve had a fantastic journey in this awesome country, and I'm sure many more discoveries are still to come!

19/03/2017

Haven't had much traveling recently - the rainy season and work have been the main themes of the past several weeks. But I don't really mind as long as work is with a view like this. Not bad for a coffee shop turned into an "office", isn't it? :)

23/02/2017

Pagodas are an important part of Vietnam’s rich cultural heritage. Every region boasts its own pagodas which compete in their architectural beauty, uniqueness of the ornaments and picturesque locations.

Linh Phuoc Pagoda in Da Lat is one of the most impressive pagodas I have visited in Vietnam.

The large complex is comprised of several pagodas, all elaborately decorated from top to bottom – and most of the decorations are made of broken pieces of bottles, ceramic plates and other pottery.
The massive praying halls have enormous gilded Buddha statues and walls and columns fully decorated in the same manner using tiny pieces of broken ceramics.

Though it is quite far from the city’s main tourist areas, it is definitely worth taking a detour through the hilly landscapes and vast strawberry fields surrounding the city of Da Lat to admire this great pagoda and immerse in the peace and serenity of the meditation halls.

06/02/2017

What I greatly enjoy about Vietnam is how easy it is to start a conversation with people you don’t know despite the fact that the person may not know English at all (and my Vietnamese is limited to a very basic set of survival phrases which I cannot pronounce correctly most of the time…). People are generally very curious to speak to foreigners and use any English they have to start a conversation – doesn’t matter if it is the lady selling pineapples in the market, or the hotel guard, or the bus driver.

The above said, if you are a foreigner living in Vietnam, you need to learn to answer these questions, up to ten times a day. The full list of questions depends on the speaker’s English language abilities, but when abilities allow, the questions are asked in full set, and almost always in the below order :)
- What’s your name?
- Where are you from?
- America?
- Euuuu? Roooop? What?
- America?
- How old are you? (After about the 7th time you may want to pretend that you heard the question wrong and try to answer it as if they asked “How are you?” because these two are mostly pronounced exactly the same way, but rest assured that you will be asked the question as many times as needed to get the right answer.)
- Are you married?
- Why?
- Do you have children?
- Why?
- How old are you?
- What’s your job?
- America?
- You don’t have a motorbike?
- Why?

The rest of the conversation will depend on the context and circumstances, but these questions are asked as an absolute minimum, no matter who you are talking to and in what context :)

PS. Met the kids on the picture in a fishing village. We played frisbee on the beach, then their mom invited me to their house for dinner. And of course, asked all those questions :)