A brief interlude

After we finished in Guarija, I took a bus to Santa Marta to wait for my flight to Leticia via Bogota. On the road, I needed to pick up my kindle that I forgot in the previous hostel. I had to explain to the bus driver to wait for me for 5 minutes on the side of the road until I had fetched my kindle. That went pretty smooth and I was really glad it worked out that way.

At Santa Marta, I just wanted to read a bit and catch up with blog posts as well. So mainly I did nothing touristic.

I met one American guy from California who mentioned a girl from shanghai that seemed to be pretty cool. But his only argument was that she liked to drink. If that is his only way to see whether someone is cool or not …

There was also Rebecca from NY who studied in Shanghai and was travelling. Most of the times she was very nervous about anything (even very small things) that she is gonna decide. Also she was not able to pay attention for long. In the end I feel like it was not too easy to communicate with her. We had dinner together once but I can’t remember what we all talked about, it was sort of jumping from topic to topic.

I also met some French dudes the last night. One guy was celebrating his birthday. They were easy to get to know and I had a beer with then on the rooftop. The bday boy was traveling for more than a year now and his 2 friends joined him here. One studies in Canada and the other one works in Paris. The bday boy was saying how he would like to get some girls for his bday, well good luck to him.

At the airport of Santa Marta, I also quickly saw the 2 hungover Alejandro and Jan and met a girl I saw on the square in Cartagena. She was easy to remember because of her short hair. We only had a chat and parted our ways.

At Leticia I stayed at a guesthouse / hostel with good reviews about the owner. That’s never a bad choice. Luisa is super nice. She is a 50-ish woman who you can feel is very kind from the inside. Just like Kate in Tainan. Her stories were quite interesting too. Apparently, the only reason she opened a hostel in the Amazonas was that one day her daughter asked her: “mommy, what is going on in the Amazonas in the night?” She replied: “I don’t know, let’s go find out.”

That night, I booked the 3 day Amazonas tour and got to know the Dutch couple who will be joining me as well. Dirven and Malinda, are both nurses. Dirven used to be fairly good football player (2nd league I believe) and is very easy to talk to. Malinda is half indonesian and seems very relaxed and easy going with the jokes that Dirven makes with her. In the jungle, we got to know each other a bit as well but I wouldn’t say that we got close. It was really fun doing things with them because they are relaxed and funny. They skipped the last day actually and went back earlier because Dirven is still feeling some pain from his middle ear infection from diving.

The first day, we met Lucho and Saoul who are from the community. Lucho was our jungle guide and he was roaming around the jungle since he was 13. He only spoke Spanish so mostly I was translating as much as I could to Dirven and Malinda. Lucho is very calm and going with him actually made us feel very safe. At the night Safari, he would always check very carefully for snakes on open spots and is very cautious and focused on the road.

Saoul was back at the house and took care of the lunch and dinner. After the night safari, we sat down and talked about just anything. Lucho showed us some different music on his phone. There were bachata, salsa and other kinds of music. Dirven got excited when we found some dutch dj music on Lucho Huawei phone. Jokes were also made with cachaca, a brazilian alcohol. Apparently, Lucho did not like the life in Leticia even though he likes to dance a lot. In the end, I just can’t describe the details of the conversations but it was fun talking to both of the guys.

Saoul’s family lives in the community as well. We very briefly visited his house before heading to the next spot the second day. Lucho is separated with his wife and they live now somewhere else.

The second stop was Puerto Nariño, where Miguel picked us up. Compare to Lucho and Saoul, he doesn’t smile a lot. He is somewhere around 22 and has a one year old baby already.

At the lake side of Tarapoto, he was building his own hostel. He got the land from his father but has been working on this project since almost a year now. He would save money and buy the materials needed for the house. The wood is expensive and he has to dry the 1500 banana leaves that are required for the roof himself. I have to say, this is quite impressive for his age, taking care of the family, and trying to establish his business.

Overall, Miguel is a very kind guy. When we were kayaking the third day, he would also pick up all the plastic trashes he sees on the way. I also quickly met his wife and her dad. She is working every 2 day and on her free day, she would hang around the port and stay there with people she knows.

When I got back to Leticia, I met a few more people. Short encounters but interesting stories.

There was Martial, who is travelling to Cusco where he will be working with a trekking company.

Arnold, is French as well and studied in Bogota. He went to Venezuela with his dad on a private tour. This tour was led by a French guy who lived there for more than 10 years. Apparently, you need to get picked up in Caracas at the terminal because if you wanted to switch terminals, there are already high chances that you will get robbed. They stayed in their car for the whole trip and never stepped out when there are a lot people around. The tourist sides are empty and you can only stay in the best 5 star hotels (others are all out of business already). In the street, people are waiting for food to arrived to the stores and one there are food, the lines are huge. With the hyper inflation, something would cost doubled the second day. I really can’t imagine how people survive there. Arnold said that rumors are around for something will happen soon there.

There was Alejandro, a bit older, who is born in Mexico, but currently lives in Texas and is teaching Spanish at a community college in Forth Worth. He has been travelling to all the spanish speaking countires to document different festivals. He is a lucky one who got funding from the school. All he needs to do is to publish a book in the end. He also plays underwater hockey and apparently played for the Swiss team as well (even the national teams are allowed to have certain number of foreign players)

There were 2  French guys. Martial, who studied tourism, was travelling onto his working destination Cusco where he will be working in a trekking office.

Arnold is studying in bogota and is just spending some days in the jungle before going back. Interesting story he told was that he went to Venezuela with his dad for 10 days. They found some French guy who was living there for more than 10 years. They got picked up at the terminal (Apparently chances are very high that you got robbed between terminal) and drove around. Some rules are: never leave the car, stay only at the best hotels (Actually only good ones were able to stay in business). There arr apparently short food supplies. Hyperinflation where things cost double the next day. Local people say, soon, something will happen.

David was a 21 year old young Dutch guy who tried the ayaguasca (a halluscinating substance from some tree). retreat thingy in Iquitos. People usually react bad to that and have to puke for a few days after. There were 3 trials and he did not feel a thing in the first two so he went all out on the 3rd. He was not really able to describe anything and even though other people were sharing stories, he can’t say much. I would interested to listen to other stories too. But all he says was it was awesome… And he got bitten by a dog in a jungle area where he was not supposed to be and lost wallet 2 times when drunk. Sometimes brave and stupid are just one step apart.

There was also an australian girl moving to london coz all friends are moving out of brisbane. This is aplarently a thing there.

Parrots. They are crazy at santander park. Google it. Youtube it. I am too lazy too describe coz I am athe airport typing on cellphone :p.

Some pictures again for the last.

The small boat ride when we were entering the jungle

The Santa Sofia community from far:

Lake Tarapoto where we swam and saw some dolphins

Me, in La Paz again after the Uyuni trip, now it is winding down and prepare for the real life.

Finishing up at el dorado airport in bogota before heading home

We sort of hitch hiked a bus to Riohacha. We were successful in sticking to the price the hostel owner mentioned, that felt quite good. The bus guy was trying to sell for 20k, but we sticked to the 15k.

Riohacha feels not touristic at all. In the streets, nobody wants to sell you anything and everybody just minds their own business. The houses were not too shabby and the streets not too messed up. Mango trees grow everywhere and occasionally, you find some mangos on the streets too. (Homeless guys pick mangos to eat as well)=

At the hostel, which used to be a very nice villa, we met Kate and Max. Kate, who is majoring in psychology, is doing her year abroad with half a year teaching English at Galapagos, and half a year volunteering in Bogota to help local women stepping out of the Gang business. Max is her boyfriend and they are travelling together. We seem to be able to have conversations easily about sort of anything and cooked dinner together as well (Wout had a recipe for some pasta with white wine). The rooftop of the terrace is particularly nice where you can enjoy the wind, play some music and have a nice cold beer. The wind in riohacha is in general very strong and staying inside did not feel too hot at all. This was also the reason why it is a good kite surfing spot.

We got lucky with our Guajira tour. The one we initially wanted to book was not able to provide us with free spots but the hostel was able to organize us another one just the day before. (Kate and Max was on that company tour actually, but in the end they were 6 in one 4×4 and the dutch people got pissed since they were not anticipating other people in their van and had a huge complaint with the company in front of Kate and Max).

Our guide, Vikor, is from Venezuela. He escaped 7 years ago and tries to maintain his life here. On the tour, we got to know more about the fucked up situation in Venezuela. Somethings worth 5 pesos 7 years ago, costs today 5 millions. This is how bad the hyper inflation is. Almost all his friends have left the country. One of them works in Siemens, and he is going to visit them later this year.

Along with us there were 2 more young guys. Alejandro is from Bogotá and is travelling with his German buddy Jan (I can’t recall his name though, that was how close we got). These 2 met each other close to Cologne, where Alejandra studied for a year. He went to a German school in Bogota and the last year is in Germany.  He was staying with a host family but was not happy with it. And then he met Jan and got acquainted. To be honest, Alejandra sounded like a Turkish guy when he spoke German, that was quite funny. Both of them are quite young, who are 20 and 21. But Alejandra seemed to pursue his interests (designing backpacks) and seemed to be interested in politics as well.

The second day at Cabo de la vela, Viktor also picked up 2 chicks from Cali to travel with us. I think they worked in the real estate business and they mostly had conversations with Alejandro in Spanish, Wout was able to understand many things but I was struggling. The other night they were teaching us Salsa and puh, did I suck.

One particular interesting point was listening to Alejandro to explain things to the 2 Cali chicks. Even though I did not understand everything, it felt calm and the explanation was step by step so that they understood his point of view (I am not necessarily saying that I always agree with what he says). It is a pity that I was not able to follow step by step.

The last lunch we had, Viktor, Alejandro and Jan were messing around. I think the main starting point was that Jan wanted to prove that he is a cool guy. Then Alejandro mentioned that people call him the machine back at home. They messaged a good friend of Jan and wanted to confirm that via facetime. After seeing some pictures (which I did not want and ask to see), viktor was nodding his head.

Some pictures again to finish:

Copa de la vela

Punte gallinas

Most northern point

At the coast

With some sand dunes

Me, having 2 or 3 days in La Paz to prepare for Uyuni salt flats, the last sight of my trip …

 

We arrived in Santa Marta after a 4-hour bus ride. The city itself seemed quite ugly and fucked up. There were mostly chaos on the main street, nothing going on the side street. The walls have posters, or remaining of the posters, or some ugly letters. The Republica hostel is a courtyard hostel with pool in the middle. It did not feel personal to be honest. When we arrived, everyone was sort of doing something on their and not minding anything else. But maybe we were judging too quickly.

After checking some options for the Lost City trek, we decided that we will move on to the next spot for the next day, namely, Parque Tayrona. The trek itself is very expensive (roughly 900k pesos – 360$ at least) and after finding out that you actually hike to reach the top and just listen to the guide telling you the story of the indigenous, it did not seem worth it to go for the trek.

At night, there was a pool party. We shortly talked to a Chilenean girl who was traveling upwards from Chile all the way to Canada/US. Somehow, with her friends, they decided to stay in this hostel and help out a bit until they get some others things fixed. I was wondering what made her want to stay that long, but she was not able to come up with a convincing answer.

Once we arrived at the bus terminal of Santa Marta, we got onto a bus very quick, almost too quick. We got hailed over by some guys and promptly we got some bus tickets. Another guy hurried us to the main road since the bus just left the terminal. We got on and are squeezed into some seats with locals. At Parque Tayrona, we stayed in a rather hippie-ish hostel. It was 1 km away from the entrance of the park and we had to tell the bus driver where to let us off.

The hostel has got some open bungalows on the hill side. The view was really nice with the jungle in front of you. And it was still quite hot in the night and in the shower, there were beetles accompanying us and also on the mosquito nets, they were hanging out there when you go to bed. Some Swedish guys made jokes about having to hold your butt tight when you go shower.

There were some people “volunteering” at the hostel. They help out to construct a new part of the hostel and get a place to stay and get food for free. At this point I was wondering whether this is volunteering or just exploitation of free work force. But if there are people willing to do that, then well, good for them.

So at the hostel, we met an Australian guy travelling with 2 UK girls. I was not able to tell whether he is with one of them or not, or even with both of them together? At night, we played some cards against humanity together with another Canadian couple. Even though we got along well, I can’t say that we feel connected in any ways. So, very naturally, we parted ways the next day without wanting to stay in contact. Also the UK girls had the same converstaional pattern I mentioned in the Myanmar trip, with the “I” perspective.

There were also some Swedish guys. You really do feel that they were really young looking at them. The conversation never went further than the Dutch team not participating in the World Cup and some other jokes. But in the end, they were considerate in the rooms and are trying to be quiet even though I did not expect them to be the considerate types.

The park itself is quite nice with a rocky climb, a bit jungle feeling with monkeys and a tiny snake. On the way, I got to know Wout a bit better as well. On the topic of regret, we have actually the same view that regret is a stupid thing. It does not help at all and you should rather focus on further solutions to get yourself out of the situation. He mentioned that one thing that he actually regrets is that he did not say anything when a friend of him mentioned some suicidal thoughts. But I told him (thanks to the books I read on the road and people I talked to) that you did not know better. For the next time you know that such signals are worth mentioning. Hence, back to the theory, regret is still not helpful. On the other hand, being 22, wout does not look like 22, and this somehow confirms my story of someone looking like who has got a story to tell.

I took also notes of the dogs and other people who worked there, but at this point in time, I really don’t feel like to write about them anymore.

Hence, some picture to conclude this chapter:

The view onto the sierra nevada

Ant highway in the park

And some beach side views

Me, drafted this in Arequipa, and finishing up in La paz

I decided not to extend my Spanish lessons. Otherwise I would not be going around much and practicing is something you can doing during the trip as well.

On Saturday, I went to Sante Fe de Antioquia with the school. There was Anderson, who was managing the school and playing the guide that day. Cristina also went along, who was new in the school in Bogotá and was getting to know how the school in Medellín worked. She would occasionally take some pictures and actually spoke a bit of German. Anderson did actually our introduction and he seems to be a very steady guy. He always talks calmly and without much “ehms” or “aehs”. This was very satisfying to listen to.

Sasha, Robert, Marco and Jimmy joined the trip. Actually, I promised Sasha that I would take him with me with the Uber. And Friday we went out with Wout, Sasha and Paul together to Calle Setenta. Others went on to the bars and clubs at the park of El Poblado and I went home instead. And of course Sasha was not able to wake up and I had to tell the guards to call the family to wake him up. In the end, we were like 25 minutes late. Robert is a guy from Australia with a strong Gringo accent. He works as a contractor for tunnel systems and is traveling before finding a job in London (I believe).

The town itself is very colonial and not too shabby. We went to some squares, a museum, and a bridge before heading to a restaurant to chill or watch the Champions League final. There was a girl who was playing Chopin on the piano in the courtyard of the museum and we sticked there to listen. We actually met these guys afterwards again at the main square and Jimmy went straight up to talk to them. It was just a small chat about what they do but the attitude of Jimmy is quite awesome of just initiating discussions of things that interest him. And the 2 were happy to talk to us. They were actually some music students who were practicing for their concert tonight.

One sight on the main square:

After this, we wanted to go to Guatepe on Sunday and we ended up making plans to take the bus at 9 the next day with Robert, Jimmy and Marco. Robert sent a picture around where we can meet but it resulted in some major misunderstanding. Long story short, we were waiting half an hour on 2 different spots and ended up taking different buses to Guatape. I felt a bit guilty since I anticipated this could happen but did not try my best to find the other spot.

Jimmy, his main objective is to learn Spanish on his trip. So he was trying every opportunities to do that. Even though our level do not match, I tried to do that as well, but others would retreat to English once it gets too complicated. Robert’s and Marco’s level are even worse than mine. Jimmy was even trying to enforce this a little bit as soon as the others tried to speak English. But at the same time, he gets annoyed by Robert’s gringo accent. For me, there are people who are just not good with pronunciations so you should be a bit more tolerant.

And more and more, I feel like Robert is a bit like an adult child. He was not taking any responsibility or was not realizing that he could have done better for the meet up. Also, when we wanted to go for a boat trip, he asked something and wanted to do that and was trying to call us to his spot. But he was not even discussing with us what we wanted to do. He would neither pay attention sometimes and would get himself into confused situations.

I also talked to Jimmy a little more on the bus ride home. He finished his biology Bachelor degrees at Stanford and is about to study at the Med School at Stanford. The motivation is cool that he wants to help more people. But when we talked about my university I was getting a feeling of him judging people based on their education. We talked a bit about the jobs in Switzerland, and about how my job could also be done by someone from a less famous university if he does well at interviews. For me, the personal skills or attitudes are way more important. But the American system, or even maybe the modern education system has shaped our thinking into this way. I remember talking to a Chinese friend about this who graduated from QingHua (the best in China). She said that she knew that this is not good but amongst the millions of people in China, this provided the quickest way to find out whether your thinking would fit with your opposite.

But the view in Guatape is amazing:

I also went to Parque Arví with Wout and got my Yellow Fever shot since I wanted to go to the Amazons and head further on to Peru afterwards. Me and Wout decided to go to Cartagena together and also later maybe doing the Lost City trek and go to the most northern point of Colombia.

Also at the dinner table, we talked about divorce rate. In Colombia, we noticed that many families are separated and people seem to act normal about it. Simón’s parents are divorced and Angela confirmed this as well. But for Angela’s case, her husband died a few years ago. After we checked as well that well developed countries have way higher divorce rate (almost 50%) and in Colombia it is actually lower. But Angela said that it is very expensive to get a divorce here so people just live separately. I would really like to know a bit more about the reasons. To me, the ultimate commitment is sort of the best romance.

And here is also a picture of Medellín. I quite liked the city. It also had parts which remembered me of the hill side on HongKong island. And the setup in the valley just amazes you everytime.

Me, enjoying the sun in Cusco.

 

We stayed in One Day hostel in Getsemani which is a really cool area with colorful walls in the streets. At night we got to talk to Jonas, where Wout just very simply asked the question: where are you from, and the conversation flows from there.

Jonas is a German mechanical engineering student who is travelling between semesters. Students are usually on a tight budget and when we were talking about dinner options, he opted for the cheaper pizza place where Wout and I went to a restaurant he used to go to. It was a good fit that Wout is actually willing to spend some more money on food. This is also something I came to realize that travelling in Backpacking hostels sometimes indicates that people are short on budget. After working for 2 years, spending a bit more money on comfort and food is actually not a problem anymore.

The restaurant was also quite cool which is called Las Indias. You can get lunch for 15k COP with amazing food. The owner himself actually went to Barcelona and a lot of places in Europe. That was also why we were able to talk a lot about different kind of topics such as cultures around the coast area. Maybe have been travelling does make people more open in some ways.

We also got to talk to Josh, who is from Australia. He will be traveling for a while and currently, he is collecting stories to write a book, I believe. Compared to the girl I met in Don Det, this sounds like a better motivation and he is also meeting his friends here as well. Funny enough when he talked to a short haired girl, I met this girl on my flight from Bogota to Leticia afterwards as well. (But this was just a 5 minute talk and she disappeared in Leticia again)

I also briefly remember a short conversation with a German medical student who spent like 4 months in Azaibaidjan studying some toxology I believe. I thought she was quite brave to go all by herself in Colombia.

Then there was also this Scottish girl called Kate. We had like a conversation of 10 minutes. We introduced ourselves and somehow started to make jokes already. Wout sent me a video and I was saying aloud that, Did you just send me a video wout? She went: wuh, that is really inappropriate. I said back: you know what is really inappropriate? let me open this video and play it in front of everybody. Well, we wanted to meet for another beer actually but in the end, we got stuck at Plaza del Trinidad again so we did not talk again.

That was actually it in Cartagena. We shortly visited the Nueva Lengua there as well. Quickly said hi to Anael and Naty, that was about it.

Some pictures:

Oh and the plankton tour. This was so magical and the most beautiful thing I have seen so far in my trip. If you want to do anything in Cartagena, please, do this.

Ah and on this boat I got into conversation with some girls from Chile, and 3 guys from NY who are going to start some accounting program at PWC.

Me, spending the last day in Arequipa, not sure when I will find another computer to use in the next weeks.

The first day in Bogotá, I have organized my one week Spanish school in Medellín. There was not much to do in Bogotá, so I chose Medellín since it would be a good base to go around too. I learned Spanish as a tentative course back in my last year (or was it 2 years?) of high school. We had basic conversations and watched movies from time to time. After 10 years, I really don’t remember much. So hopefully, with this week, I will be able to recap some Spanish, learn some more and be able to travel the rest with it.

I chose to stay with a host family since this is the better option to learn Spanish and considering that I have never done this before, it is cool to try out.

The flight is rather short and the taxi ride to the family took actually longer. Also, given the situation with Medellin, I was still a bit nervous when I was sitting the cab. The driver spoke some English and was telling me some things on the way. The road is usually bi-directional, but Sunday afternoon, all the people who went away for the weekend came back and it becomes uni-directional for some time. He also met another driver he knew and waved at him. He told me that this guy is always smiling but if you take his taxi, he will try to charge you way more. So behind his smiles, there were a hidden judgement just like in the rest of the world.

At the house, I met Andrea together with a Dutch guy who was staying in the same family. I did not expect that but why not. When I talked to Andrea, I realized that my Spanish is so bad that I couldn’t understand anything at all … I then got to meet Angela who is the host and Andrea’s mom and she cooked dinner for us. I can’t remember what we talked about in all those evenings but I will try to summarize in the end.

I can’t really describe all the people I met in Medellin here but I will try to list a few key people.

Sasha is a German mechanical engineering student. I went to the museum with him the first afternoon and the next day again since the attempt on the Monday afternoon turned out to be unsuccessful. He has a very (very) strong German accent when he is speaking Spanish. With 4 years of Spanish course, he was not bad at all. But the German accent killed him. The uber driver nor other people can understand him well. In this short period of time, I can’t say special things about him since he is quite typically German. Maybe only thing that was funny is that he is chatting on Tinder all the time.

Then there was Jimmy. He is an ABC whose family is from Shanghai as well. He grew up somewhere close to San Fransisco and got accepted to Stanford medical school for the next semester. He spoke already very well Spanish since he was learning a lot with an Argentinian private teacher back in the states. He is usually very pushy about speaking Spanish, so basically every conversation that we were having, was in Spanish. This is really helpful when you want to improve. But some things later in the second chapter.

There was also Paul, another German guy who was staying within a shared apartment. He is going to study in Lisbon and wanted to improve his Spanish before heading down there and start with another language. He tried different things in Medellin already such as language exchanges and stayed in hostels for a while too. We did not talk that much actually so the only thing more was that he likes to drink aguadiente.

And there was Marco, a Swiss guy from Bern who had almost no knowledge in Spanish. I was paired with him in the same class with Simón, our teacher for the week. I got to know Marco a bit better since we were having classes together and also conversation classes where we would talk about anything. It turned out to be more in English since he really wanted to express his opinions on some matters. He quited his job as an asset manager in BKW (a power plant company of Bern) and found this new job for some regulations in the government. Between these 2 jobs, he is trying to learn some Spanish but I think one of the reasons was also the last breakup in his relationship with this lawyer girl whom he met on Tinder.

So we ended up having vocabulary and grammar classes with Simón and conversation classes with Estuban.

Simón is actually very young (23) and is still studying some thing lcose to linguistic. He seemed to be a very bright person and patient in explaining things to us. He also spoke very slowly to let us hear all the words.

Estuban looked more like a personal trainer form the Gym. It turned out, Picking up women is actually one of his passionate topics and he read all the stuff from Mystery to the Game. I remember this PUA thing to be very popular back in the days and I read actually the Game as well. It compelled to me to certain extent because in the beginning I was not that conversational with women. But the end of the book of the Game, which actually I liked a lot, is actually about the motives why some people try out PUA. Many guys are insecure and need to be successful with women to prove their worth, or maybe rather, they want to get the girl in bed and feel proud about themselves after as a hunter who just caught his prey. In Spanish actually, it is quite funny that they use “conquer” when it is about going out. Actually this is a bigger topic to talk about and I will not write more here. Back to Estuban, who is almost 40 years old and still lives with his mom. So, other female students in the school mentioned this topic too and felt rather molested from him (maybe molest is a too strong word). But from the conversational classes, I can say that Estuban really wants to be good in picking up women.

Back at home, I got to know Wout a bit better. He is a geology student who finished his bachelors and worked 7 months and now wants to travel south America for 1.5 years. He is also learning Spanish in the beginning and was in Cartagena for 7 weeks already. But now the school does not have sufficient materials for him so he shortened his booking from 21 weeks to 12 weeks. He seemed very rational about everything (actually many Dutch people are like that) and when discussing about things, always comes up with facts and so on to argue.

Angela is the centre mother figure and cares about you like your family member. The first afternoon when I got back from the center, she was so concerned. The centre (parque barrio) is not somewhere they would normally go because it is not safe (yes there are weird people standing around and looking at you). At dinner table, we sometimes talk about politics since the election is going on. Also we would talk about some Chinese culture since this is not something people get to know in Colombia. Also, one of the first questions you get is whether you have a girlfriend, or you are married or how many kids you have. She was also so nice to organize the yellow fever shot for me.

Andrea works in a transportation company as a manager. I think she coordinates certain things and sometimes she gets quite busy. There was one night when a very good friend visited. She started to get emotional and they started to talk about certain topics they triggered her to cry. It was in general about being a human being and some morals but it felt a bit weird with me and Wout sitting beside on the sofa. Wout said they were in general being like everything will turn out fine and they start to get to the spiritual part. Wout is a very rational person and tends to think only toward solutions and does not want unnecessary emotions. But going through some things myself I know it is difficult to cope with thoughts.

Carolina is the older daughter of the family and works in a vet clinic as an assistant. Her ringtone is indeed a horse screaming. I don’t really know much about her since she is living only next door. But her family does not like her boyfriend much because he is obviously lying sometimes.

There was also a funny encounter with Angela’s sister. Most people in Colombia are religious and when she was saying goodbye, she said “god bless you”, to which I replied “thank you”. Lolz. I had a good chuckle as well afterwards.

There were some more students at the school, but we just had very short small talks. I went to the Casa de la memoria, a football match of Nacional which had great atmosphere and surprisingly a lot of women. Other than that, that concludes the first 5 days at school.

Me, drafted this along the road maybe in Lima as well, but finishing up in Cuzco

It was early morning when I arrived in Bogotá. Actually, I was feeling a bit anxious considering what you hear about the security situation in Colombia. You are not supposed to walk alone in the night, take a taxi to go anywhere etc. So even when I stepped out of the airport to look for a taxi, I was watching left and right to see whether there were any suspicious people or not. Even standing in line and watch what kind of taxi comes next became a bit stressful.

But of course, I arrived at Reto’s without problems. The bricky building were fun to watch and the streets are not as bad as I imagined. Reto, with whom I worked with in CS quited his job after 2 years and came to Colombia to study. Not that the universities here are famous, but rather his amor is from Colombia. It is great to see that this worked out for him considering the distance.

So the interesting thing in Bogota is actually, that smaller blocks are categorized from 1-6. 1 basically means that it is a homeless area, starting from 3, things get better. Chapinero, where Reto stays, is a 4. We went after briefly to a square where you can pass by areas of 6. Actually 4s already came with security guards so I don’t really know what the standard for 6 is.

With 13 hours of difference, it is difficult for me to be awake around late evening. The first day I fell a sleep at 8 and couldn’t sleep after 3 or 4. So it is good that I got a place to adjust my jetlag.

In the end, I only met a few university friends from Reto on Saturday when they celebrated the end of the semester. They are mostly working part time already and are quite nice people. Reto’s girlfriend was telling cultural differences when she met Reto (at least I thought so) and we ended up doing drinking games. Before we left for the club, some were quite drunk already and the night turned out to be short for Reto (again).

It was fun to observe in the club. People are dancing mostly in pairs and I have heard already that dancing with strangers with very close body contact does not mean anything here. But nevertheless I was surprised to see someone just simply pull over a girl and danced with her for like half an hour.

Bogotá itself does not provide much things to see. I was on the monserrate hill, museo del oro, museo botero and did a graffiti tour which was recommended by a friend. The graffiti tour turned out to be really great. Bogotá is actually a place where doing graffiti is either legal nor illegal. You don’t have to go to jail if you get caught. But yea, do the tour yourself if you can, the artwork is beautiful.

Some pics to the end:

Some graffitis

Me, last night in Iquitos before heading to Lima，finishing up in cuzco, fucking cold here in the night

One of the initial reasons to travel is to see other cultures because I was in doubt on certain things. I have seen Southeast Asia, which is still relatable to other Asian cultures, and that leaves me either with Africa or South America (other I consider western cultures, but now thinking about it, Maori would be an interesting one. Considering the health conditions, I chose South America and also because I have a friend in Bogota). So from Singapore, it does not really matter in which direction I go in order to reach South America. To see some more families and friends, I decided to quickly go home.

Shanghai, a place I call home but sometimes does not feel like home. Since 15 years, I have mostly been living at my aunt/cousins place when I go back. But every time when I am back, except visiting, there is not really many things to do in Shanghai. Maybe I can visit some museums, go for some shopping, but that is mostly it. After 4,5 days, it gets boring. I guess feeling home also means to have some routines and feeling of belongingness when you can find a place where you are needed.

Except the ones I saw in Singapore, I also visited other aunties and grandpa. But really, the relationships between generations in China is somewhat a bit weird. It never feels like a real conversation and maybe I am just too used to the old way where relatives ask you questions and you just try to answer. Maybe there should be more things coming back from me.

Friends. This is something that you can choose. I used to meet the childhood friends from Secondary school where we used to play together. But this time, I decided not to say anything. It would have been a good thing to catch up, but it just feels weird that I am expected to invite them every time … So I only met with Nana, who is running a tattoo shop now, Tao, whom I met already in ShenZhen and JingWeng with whom I travel sometimes. Besides, I also quickly met up with the girl in the bus from NanNing to Hanoi. That was actually a quite funny encounter again. She studies at the sports academy and showed me around the campus. Apparently, the PingPong facility is super rich and has its own hotel facility (the champions mostly come from here).

There is not many pictures to show from Shanghai. I guess the Bike rental business is going out of control and see below …

The roastery is quite nice and considering Shanghai’s reputation, it is actually on par with New York, London and etc.

Los Angeles.

I opted for the more expensive flight to change only once in LA. The option is to change once in Dallas, once in Fort Lauderdale (close to Miami) and each has a layover of 9+ hours. No, I should treat myself a bit better and save the troubles.

The airport is quite weird with 7 terminals. The united flights were in one and I needed to go out of the airport to transfer. Well, then consider I did LA this time as well.

I actually needed to buy an outward flight ticket for Colombia and this is what made the 5h layover less boring. I went for a ticket from Bogotá to Zurich around end of July since it is one of the cheapest airports apparently in South America.

Me, just arrived in Iquitos after a 14 hour long boat ride on the Amazonas, and surprisingly found a computer in the hostel and acceptable internet connection. And 1:1 BRA-SUI wopwop.

Initially I was not sure whether I will be crossing Singapore at the right time or not because I considered it as a starting point of my trip. But I dedcided to make the effort to be there because family is family. Also, I have some friends in Singapore I can visit, plus, some ex work colleagues for CS.

The first 2 nights I stayed at Val’s place, a university friend of mine. He has been doing his PhD in Singapore since 3 years already. Cool to catch up again and get to know some funny stories about the local people from a Swiss guy’s perspective. Later I also met a Chinese friend who used to study in Zurich, someone I met in London with whom we played football together.

Meeting family is always fun. The cousin who is getting married actually left Shanghai roughly at the same time as I did. In those 15 years, we met only once, which was 10 years ago. We used to visit grandma together and I often went to the oldest cousin’s place because we lived close to each other. Well I don’t want to turn this into a tale of my family tree and you can find out more about the general Singapore attrations in other places too.

The other day I also wento to EXPO to visit the CS office so that I can meet some of my ex colleagues who I never saw face to face. When you only see the profile pictures and hear their voices, you have a certain picture of someone and when you actually meet them, things get mlre interesting. Some got thinner, some turned out to be older, some turned out to be cooler. It is somewhat like a Shroedingers box, you are so curious to find out what is in the box and once you know what is beneath, the magic is sort of gone.

After the wedding, a Swiss friend visited so we went to explore Singapore as well. We also made a day trip to Bintan Islands on the other side of Singapore which was pretty neat.

Otherwise, I did not meet any new people except the ones from the wedding. On that very short hectic day there was not much interactions going on since everybody was sort of busy preparing things and we, from a remote place, are not much of a help.

I do want to say that the Singapore wedding is way more chilled than the ones from Shanghai. The couple wouldn’t end up tired as fuck when everybody has left.

Now picture time

Ah some seafood. Large crab from Sri Lanka

The left is the oldest, other is the one who is getting married

The money shot, the one I like the most.

That actually shortly concludes the 12 days I spent in Singapore. Very densely packed post, good for catching up. And really these days in Singapore felt like living in a normal city. Modern transportation, meeting friends here and there.

Me, last night in Santa Marta, I feel pretty good to finish 3 posts, although the pictures seem to be gone, which I directly copy pasted. Now I am only 4 weeks behind! Publishing at the airport actually.

Ventiane is the capital of Laos and most people say there is not much to do there, so I decided to take an early bus and just have an afternoon there before heading to the 4000 islands with a night bus.

One Swiss girl was with me on the bus and she is travelling before her next job in another canton. I believe that she is doing something in psychology and has been travelling 3 weeks (?). It is funny that I remembered this conversation as easy going but can’t remember too many details of it. She travelled with an organized tour in Myanmar where she met also a broadway actor who was able to entertain her. There was also someone who has been travelling for many many years (more than 20 I think, but again, details are fading). She stayed in a treehouse in the north of Laos as well which she recommended (zip lining between the trees in order to reach them was particularly cool) but for the 10 days that I have, there is not enough time for me to explore the north as well (but other people have suggested that to me too).

The only thing I visited was the COPE centre. It makes prosthetic legs for victims of the remaining bombs in Laos. The first section of the exhibition tells you that Laos was the most bombed country during the Vietnam war actually because that was the supply lines into Vietnam. I can’t remember the exact numbers but a lot more than what was dropped in Vietnam. The second part consists of stories of different victims and people that got help from the center. It remembers me of that helper in ThaBarWa center who lost his leg due to a bomb.

Back at the bus company, I met 2 UK girls who are also going to Don Det. One looked a bit nordic and has a very beautiful body. But again, the conversation with them seem very typical where it is mostly “I centric” just like the ones I had during the Kalaw trek. It was raining cats and dogs when we were in the pickup van and luckily the rest of the way was more or less covered. I was also told that sleeping buses (not all) in Laos have bed spots for 2 and this was actually what I got. Luckily, during the whole trip, nobody wanted to share it with me. Uff. Otherwise, it is actuallly quite comfortable and I woke up quite rested in Pakse where a smaller bus took us to the boat terminal to go onto the island.

The sleeping bus. (and there was thunder and lightening everywhere when we departed)

There are not a lot of hostels on the island and I chose the Happy Bar Backpackers. As the name suggests and the review revealed as well, it was quite a hippie place. Manni is from UK and has been staying on the island for 7  years or so. Initially he was just travelling there and just got stuck because it is so nice to chill out there. He is easy going and really chills the fuck out. There were also a guy named Chris and some other more-or-less permanent guests over there and they enjoy smoking a joint from time to time (within the same day). Also occasionally (once during my stay), Manni gets a delivery of a tupperware full of mushrooms.

The hostel and the mushrooms. (no i did not try)

At kayaking (again), I met some other people. At breakfast, I got to know Luzi, Sami and Davi. I believe Luzi and Davi are Dutch and Sami tagged along with them in Cambodia. Luzi had this pun which went: Been There, Don Det (lolz). And Davi had a tattoo on the leg for a good friend of his who passed away in an accident. This was the way to remember him with his group of friends. There was a French couple (or friends, not sure) who are travelling in Laos together, but travelling elsewhere after Laos. They seem very easy going and I met them again the next day when I was riding the bike so we spent the day together again. The guy (I think his name was Jo) prefers to practice his English and the girls has worked in Basel as well. On the bike road, we also met some people from French Polynesia. When we were looking for another water fall, we picked up a German student and had dinner together as well. Ah, and the two British girls were at the kayaking tour as well and along other young people as well. I remember once that we needed to help others to put up the kayak onto the truck and you can see exactly who is helping and who is still in the water taking a bath (the men at least).

The night when I came back from the kayaking, I ran into Manni and everyone from the hostel at a billiard place. I stopped for a beer and talked to a petite Aussie girl. She is trying to figure out what she wants to do and ideally become a writer or something like a blogger. Of course she is on budget too and need to see how she can bridge the days without spending much money. This is somewhat typical for the hippie people just trying to get by the days. They seem to not to look into the future or just are justing trying to think about it. This is something that just doesn’t align with my attitude. I prefer to face the problems and running away is just not an option. Sometimes, travelling feels a little bit like running away to me because you are not living the normal life. Also meeting people during this time is such a short termed relationship where you don’t need to invest a lot. If you don’t like someone, if something does not fit, you simply choose other ones or move on by yourself. Life is full of compromises and I still believe, in order to maintain a good relationship, you need to make sacrifices. But (!), what I also learned is that, there is a bottom line which can not be crossed. This brings the topic back to balance. Too much of anything is never good and this is somehow very true in many perspectives of our lives. Ah yah, this was also the night where Chris got drunk pretty early and started to become loud and somewhat of a duche.

There was also topics about weed farms in the US and Canada. There were 2 people in the hostel where on has rented a farm to grow weed and the other one had worked on a weed farm to earn some money. There was also a Turkish animal doctor who is working with horses. I think he had worked in Australia or something and is now heading to another place, or vice versa. Can’t remember …

The last night, it rained heavily and one lightening struck right above our head. You know that was fucking close when the thunder was synchronous. And all the light went out after that … what thunder was really something.

There was also this cook from Tirol who quited his job to travel a bit. The next morning I did not recognize him which made things a bit awkward (for me at least) and he is not a guy with many words. We met again during the return trip to Pakse and actually flew to Bangkok with the same plane.

Oh Bangkok again. I had 5 hours transit time to change from BKK to DMK for my flight to Singapore. I wanted to do another fitting at the tailor but the taxi driver was not the most sincere guy and I think he made a big detour. The traffic was not helping so mid way, I decided to go straight to DMK. (And going on the high ways cost you money and you need to pay that as well)

Some more pictures to the end:

the view from the hostel balkony

small waterfall

big water fall (the biggestin southeast asia)

somewhere on an island in cambodia where we tried to watch some river dolphins. some saw the fins and jaws, i did not see shit

Me, on a lazy Sunday afternoon in Santa Marta, no barber shops open unfortunately.