Final Dispatch

It was inevitable.  I knew it would come and I wasn’t surprised.  I’ve traveled long enough to expect it at some point.  If it didn’t come I would have been more surprised.  I’m talking about the end of the journey.  More specifically, the end that comes in the mind before the final geographic destination is reached.  It is signaled by many things, mostly a sort of hyper-saturation of experiences that signals the final onslaught of malaise before the journey concludes.  After countless days of new experiences on the road you’re left shell-shocked, incapable of being impressed by anything else.  Another ancient temple, big deal.  The most impressive Buddha in the world, I’ve already seen it.  Nothing is left to see that can make an impression larger than what came before.  This is a sign that the end of the journey is near.  If one continues further it can only lead to a pointless sort of wandering, an empty stare where once there was the face of delight.  That’s how I felt coming into Malaysia.  The end of the journey was still a couple of weeks away but I already felt it inside.


I knew it wasn’t fair.  It’s not in the true spirit of travel and adventure and discovery to feel this way.  And yet, there it was staring me plainly in the face – my own inability to be further impressed by anything I could encounter.  And then I met him, the Charcoal Man.


If you told me previously that I would listen to somebody talk about charcoal for two hours and be impressed I would have thought you were crazy.  But that’s what happened.  On the way to Penang in Malaysia we stopped at a factory where mangrove trees are cut into pieces and loaded into kilns for drying.  At some point they are removed and processed further.  The end result is a type of extremely clean burning charcoal that is exported around the world.  The Japanese buy lots of it for cooking because of the clean, pure blue flame that it produces.  While this may sound ordinary enough, the man who showed us this little operation was anything but ordinary.  His passion for charcoal was unbelievable, and his enthusiasm contagious.  For two hours we wandered around this rustic facility taking pictures of his operation and listening to him excitedly tell us everything there was to know about his business. I really can’t describe his enthusiasm with enough of my own, but it was there.  A simple man with a simple plan, but a great delivery.


I was reignited with a sense of wonder and realized that it’s not what we see that is important but how we see it.  From one angle, anything out there can be just another sight that fails to make an impression.  But from another angle, looked at with fresh eyes and enthusiasm, even charcoal can be interesting enough.  It was then that I found the strength to continue.  I shouldered my camera for the thousandth time and started taking pictures again, believing and feeling that I was seeing the world again with fresh eyes.



Greetings,

Sterling Noren

Seattle (home) is on the horizon.


We have reached our destination of Singapore and it's time to ship the bikes and fly home.  It has been an incredible 2 month journey through six countries.


Our travels have taken us through the rubber plantations and shrimp farms of southern Thailand and into Malaysia and finally Singapore since the last update.  Before we departed Thailand we stopped at a Monkey School, not for classes but to see how they train monkeys to harvest coconuts.


Helge and I can't believe how easy the border crossing from Thailand into Malaysia is.  We check out of Thailand and show our passports to immigration in Malaysia, then pause at customs with nothing to declare.  And we have entered Malaysia.  We have 2 nights in Penang to check out the sights but we are anxious to get to the mountains.  The Cameron Highlands are beautiful with lots of green tea plantations.


Our next stop is the jungle.  Taman Negara is the oldest rain forest on the planet. It was unaffected by the ice ages and has no volcanic activity so there are very old and huge trees growing there.  We have to take a ferry across the river to get to Taman Negara - it is a national park and the river is it's boundry.  We go on a hike through the jungle to reach the Canopy Walk.  They have a walkway suspended in the tree tops - it's about 30-40 meters high and 300 meters long.  Very neat.  After descending we go for a  boat ride to meet a Batek tribe.  They are a native people that live in the jungle.  We have to crawl up the river bank to get to where they are camped.   After we arrive a couple of the men demonstrate their skills at making and using blowdarts.


From the rain forest jungle we head to the urban jungle of Kuala Lumpur.  It is a big modern city.  The Petronas Towers are very impressive. At 452m high they were the tallest buildings in the world until a couple years ago.  They are covered in stainless steel and seem to change color with every angle.

The old port city of Melaka is our final stop in Malaysia.  It is a city with a rich and colorful past.  Sterling, Helge and I celebrate our last night in Malaysia with a rickshaw ride through the streets.  We cross over the border to Singapore the next day.  This border crossing was a snap also, easy deal.


Now is the time for goodbyes and thanks to everyone for coming along on our adventure.  I hope to see you on and off the roads of our world again very soon!


Take care and Ciao for now,

Chris