Far Behind

A few weeks after I returned from diving in the Philippines we had a holiday weekend here in Vietnam.  I had, by then, come to realize that not having to go sit at a desk for eight to ten hours five days a week really leaves one with a lot of free time.  So we booked some travel.  The original plan was to fly to Kuala Lampur and then on to a city called Sandakan*, which is in Borneo**.

*When you live in this part of the world, you find yourself flying into places you never heard of.  It's crazy.  I'd never heard of Cebu (Philippines) or Sandakan (Malaysia) or Denpasar (Indonesia) before we moved, but they are all major cities with International Airports.  Suck on that, Topeka.

**I realized after a few short conversations with my American pals that I need to be slightly more specific when discussing destinations in the region.  Kuala Lampur (or KL as people "in the know" call it) is the capital of Malaysia, which is west of Vietnam.  It's also the home of these buildings, which you probably saw on a Discovery Channel show with the word "extreme" or "marvels" in the title.  Borneo, is a large island east of Malaysia, but is still considered part of Malaysia.  Oh, and Singapore is both a city and a country.  Got it?  Good.

You might be asking yourself, "why would they go there?"  Well, it turns out that 2013 is the year we started diving.  I suggested we get certified before we made a trip to Bali (life is hard) in February for Tet.  We did our Confined Water Dives here in Saigon, and finished our Open Water Certifications in Tulamben, Bali.  It was the most spectacular week of my life, and I'm pretty sure Reyna would agree with me.  If you enjoy traveling, stunning mountain vistas, terraced rice paddies, lush rainforest, volcanoes, perfect blue ocean, food, diving, shopping, friendly people, then Bali should be on your bucket list.  I mean we dove a shipwreck while we were getting our certifications.  I have yet to meet anyone else who has done this.  You know, besides the guy who got certified with us.

Anywho...

Armed with our sparkly new certifications we decided that we should go to Sipadam on the long weekend.  It's generally regarded as one of the top diving destinations in the world.  Plus this is the time of year when there are sea turtles in the area.  How could we NOT go?  So we booked the flights and applied to the dive resort.

And then we waited.

Weeks passed and we heard nothing from the resort.  Sipadam is a small island off the coast of Borneo, so it's not like there are hotels on every street corner.  In fact, there are no streets.  There is nothing except one tiny dive resort with room for 50 people.  And the island is protected, so they only provide dive passes for the people staying on the resort.  So forget about staying on the main island and taking a boat out to dive sites.  Finally, after multiple tries we were told that the resort was booked for the dates we wanted (shocker), but if we wanted to stay on such and such available nights, the cost would be in the neighborhood of $2500.  For three nights....  yeah.... 

Reyna and I looked at each other and said, "It's Borneo.  I mean how bad could it possibly be?"  We found a reasonably priced hotel in Sandakan, booked a few nights and flew to KL.

The plan was that we'd arrive in KL on Friday night, spend the day seeing the city, then fly to Sandakan that evening.  Once we got to Sandakan, we'd see if we could find a place that would take us diving.  If not, there were monkeys and other things to see.  Again, it's freakin Borneo people.

We spent the day shopping in KL, which was fun.  We were both completely floored by how big the city is.  It's easy to forget sometimes that there are enormous cities all over the place, and just because a city happens to be in Malaysia, that it can't be as sophisticated as say Chicago.  Wrong.  KL is magical.  We loved it.

Reyna found a three floor H&M, and I probably should have seen this as a sign of potential danger.  At 2:00 I said, "hey we should probably think about heading to the airport."

"Our flight isn't until 6.  We can leave in 30 minutes."
"OK"

You probably know where I'm headed here.

We left the H&M at 2:30 and got on the train back to the hotel to pick up our luggage.  While on the train it started POURING.  Upon exiting the train, we found ourselves on the wrong side of a jam packed eight lane divided highway.  We stood under an overpass and discussed what to do.  Time passed while we hopefully waited for the rain to stop.  It didn't.  We hopefully waited for the traffic to let up so we could scamper across the street.  It didn't.  In the end, we ran to the end of another block and crossed at a pedestrian bridge.  The whole thing took almost 45 minutes.  Not good.

Of course when we got to the hotel there was a line of people checking in.  I sat in the bean bag chairs they had in the lobby (backpackers....yeesh) while Reyna waited to get our bags.  We got them, got back on the train and went to the KL Sentral station, which is where the express train to the airport departs.

Of course we got lost.  We were running through the rain and ended up spending twenty minutes trying to get into the station that we both thought the train was taking us.  Turns out that is not the case.  When we finally found the right place, we were informed that the "express" train only goes to the International Airport.  Since our flight was domestic, we had to take the other train, which would also include a bus ride of indeterminate length.  We bought the tickets and ran down to the platform just in time to see the tail end of the 4:00 train leaving.

So we sat for 30 minutes waiting for the next one.  While we sat, we split a bag of Goldfish Crackers.  It's not something I'm proud of, but when something seems overwhelmingly foreign, Goldfish Crackers always make things OK.  I tried desperately and failed to find an Internet signal so that I could check us in to our flight.

The train made four stops before the bus and took about 45 minutes.  Then the bus took a full hour to get to the Domestic Airport.  The bus also just dumped us out.  We had no idea where to go to check in, so we ended up walking on the street for about 10 minutes until we found the "Departures" sign.  I found an Air Aisa kiosk at 5:35 and tried to check us in.  No luck.  We went to the Customer Service counter, where we were informed that we had indeed missed our flight.  They take that "you must check in at least 30 minutes prior to departure" thing pretty seriously, even in Asia.  It had taken us three and a half hours to get to the airport of the same city we spent the night in using public transportation.

The guy at the Service Counter let us know that the next flight to Sandakan didn't leave until 6am the following morning.  We looked at each other and wordlessly lamented the thought of making the 3.5 hour journey back downtown, and then get up at 2am to do it all again the next morning.  We asked about a later flight.  There was one at one o'clock the following afternoon, but the ticket price was $600+ for the two of us.  Dejected, we wheeled our bags away from the counter.

Out in the main terminal area, we were able to find an Internet signal with spotty connectivity and discuss our next move.  Reyna went and bought a couple beers somewhere, and we sat like alcoholic bums who just found an iPad beside the front entrance of the airport and discussed our next move.  We both agreed that taking the train back to the city was less appealing than simply flying someplace else, if we could find a ticket that was reasonable.  Our position was across the room from the big board showing all the arrivals and departures.  My eye fell on a 9:20 flight to Bali.

The tickets were the same price as the next day's flight to our original destination.  We ended up having to eat the tickets we already bought, and the hotel room we'd already booked in Sandakan, but we flew to Bali that night.  We spent the first night in Sanur in one of the worst hotels I've ever encountered.  It was creepier than Skip's Beach Resort in Cebu.  The furnishings were remarkably similar, actually, but this place had mold on the walls and was actually falling down.  I was semi-surprised we were not awoken by either critters or people breaking into our room that night.  I don't think either of us slept.

At breakfast the next morning I called Made, who had been our instructor when we did our Open Water Certification in February.  We'd friended him on Facebook, and both Reyna and I had written glowing reviews for him on Trip Adviser after our first trip.  As luck would have it he was available for the days we'd be in town.  I talked to our server who helped us hire a car to drive us the four hours to Tulamben.  Over the next two days we did five dives.  Reyna got her Advanced Open Water Certification (I did mine in the Philippines) and saw two sea turtles.  We dove the Liberty Shipwreck at night and experienced the stunning reefs for the second time. 

On the night before we left, Made invited us to drink beer with some of his friends.  We met them down the street from our hotel.  We sat outside at a picnic table, drank beer and chatted.  One of the guys had his guitar, so he and Reyna played and sang songs all evening.  I only joined in for the schlockiest tunes, and after several drinks we managed to unleash an only mostly awful rendition of Adele's "Someone Like You."  An Italian couple who had also been diving in the area and knew Made joined us.  They brought an Aquafina bottle of homemade palm liquor* with them, which we passed around as we sang and discussed other diving destinations.

*I use the term "liquor" loosely here.  It was like kerosene.  It might have actually been kerosene.  Even the locals, who I'd assumed grew up drinking the stuff were coughing and choking it down.  But down it went, and after about an hour, they were off finding another bottle.

As the night started to wind down, Reyna and I took a short walk out to the beach and listened to the waves crash on the rocks and look at the full moon.  It was a magical end to a special trip.

Made arranged the car for us to drive back to the airport.  As we turned onto the road to begin our journey home, we saw the Italians from the night before.  We stopped and said hello again.  When we asked them where they were going, they said, "the airport."  So they got in the car with us and together we began the journey home.

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So why is this post called "Far Behind?"  If you listened to the song you're probably wondering how these things are related.  Since we moved we've been able to have so many spectacular experiences, it's difficult to comprehend why we were so afraid to leave America.  In my last post, I included an excerpt of a story I wrote the day I left my job.  After the experience in the Philippines and our second trip to Bali, the pain of the last six years is gone.  I think it's why I didn't write for so long.  I didn't know how to process my feelings.  I spent so long being filled with rage that I didn't know how to write about things that brought me joy in the big sense of the word.  I considered never returning to this blog.

But I recently decided that if I don't continue the blog then they win.  I didn't just keep the blog because it got me through the unending days at my desk, I did it because I liked it.  I still like it.  You have to hold onto the things you like, even if parts of those things remind you of pain and sorrow.  Leave the bad behind, but hold on to what's important.  This blog is important, and I don't particularly care if anyone reads it.  

Dog Days Are Over

Yep it's been three months...

It's 7pm.  I'm sitting at my kitchen table-cum-computer desk listening to the alternating sounds of Backstreet Boys Greatest Hits (I Want It That Way, et al.) and an angle grinder, eating re-purposed spaghetti sauce on noodles for dinner while Reyna is tutoring.  And while I heartiningly carried a journal around with me most places over the past nine weeks, these are the first words I've actually written.  When there's no Man to stick it to, I'm less motivated.

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I'm sure you've been waiting breathlessly to hear how the job actually ended up.  You might have noticed, if you're a serious devotee of The Tatveg, that my last post was dated one day BEFORE I actually stopped having a job.  On my actual last day, I awoke with dreams of writing an epic post;  one in which I skewered all the things I hadn't already.  The post where I bit my thumb at my oppressors and skipped out the door giving the finger behind me all the way to a waiting taxi cab.

What actually happened was that I laid in bed until ten o'clock, before mustering the energy to ride the elevator downstairs and eat at the Sofitel breakfast buffet*.  From there, I went back to bed and finished my book.  Then I went to the hotel bar and drank beer until it was time to go to the airport.  It was how I imagine CEO's spend their final day at "work" before jumping out of their corner office window with a golden parachute.

*The Manila Sofitel Breakfast Buffet is a destination in itself.  It was an orgy of food.  If you find yourself hungry for breakfast and you happen to be in Manila....well you know what I'm getting at.  

But I didn't go to the International Airport.  I went to the Domestic Airport and checked into a flight to Cebu, Philippines.  In roughly thirty minutes I went from a top floor delux room at the Manila Sofitel to ass-sweating through my shorts in a metal chair at the Domestic Departures Terminal in Manila.*"  Clearly a CEO, I am/was not.  As I sat in the front seat of the taxi I noted that 5pm came and went without my phone ringing or a friendly clap on the back.  The taxi driver didn't break into song or turn and say "FIVE O'CLOCK FRIDAY BEE-YOTCH!  YOU JUST QUIT YOUR JOB! LET'S PARTY!"  The reality is that I just felt my Pad Thai and half-dozen Hoegaardens (which I happily expensed to The Company) churn in my stomach.

*Dear America, 
Have you ever considered that when you live in a country like the Philippines that 99% of the time you get on a plane you are flying internationally?  Because it's true.  What does this mean for you?  It means that when you fly domestically, you are in the tiny, crappy, only occasionally used sector of the airport. This does not mean it is empty.  Oh no.  It's packed like a feed lot.  There was a sign in front of the airport suggesting, not demanding mind you, that travelers lock their guns in a locker before departure.  I walked through the metal detector with my iPad in my hand.  If you think the security measures at a US airport are kind of ridiculous, try doing it after a year of domestic Asian travel.  You'll consider setting the place on fire, I promise. **

**This also explains the confused looks and generally slow footedness of foreign travelers in line when they learn they have to take half their clothes off to get through the security checkpoint.  The shit does not happen anywhere but America, Land of the Free, Home of the Paranoid.  So let's cool it with the sighing, muttering and eye-rolling when the non-English-speaking, elderly Asian man is holding up the front of the line.  He's not being stupid, you are being an insensitive jerk.  Repeat after me, "I am checked in, the plane is not leaving without me."

Upon arrival in Cebu I met a tiny, smiling man whose name I have forgotten.  He and his pal put me and my things in the back of the world's most uncomfortable van.  We left the airport and I rolled around in the backseat for over three hours.  It rained the entire time.  From the van window, I watched scenes of the Filipino late night roll by:  shirtless bros slouching around pool tables, people riding bicycles and holding umbrellas at the same time.  You know, the usual.  No words were spoken until the driver turned to me and handed me his cell phone.  The voice on the other end of the line informed me that the bay was too rough for me to cross to the hotel I'd booked, so the driver was going to take me to a similar place on the island, and that I could then ferry across to the resort in the morning.  I didn't have a choice, so I agreed.

Shortly after, we turned onto a dirt road and passed a sign which read "Skip's Beach Resort."  The lady working the desk, who I later learned was Mrs. Skip, showed me to my room.  It consisted of a bed, chair-less table and a circa 1988 television*.  She flipped on the air-con unit in the window.  To refer to it as a "window rattler" would conjure thoughts of a trailer in the woods.  This was much much worse.  Again, I reasoned that I didn't have a choice, and it would be a king-dick move to be all, "this won't do" after these guys had just driven me across the entire island at one in the morning to get me there.  So I thanked them, shut the door and drank in my surroundings.

*Seriously.  I never saw a remote for the TV and it had dials.  DIALS!

When I was a kid, I remember my brother going for an entire year without washing his sheets.  At the end of the year, they were so threadbare you could clearly see the mattress underneath.  This was exactly the same, except instead of a mattress, there was a foam rubber pad.  You know, the kind that if your skin touches you immediately start sweating and itching at the same time?  That kind.  The pillow was the same, and felt like placing your head on a bookshelf. 

"No matter," I thought.  I'm dead tired and it's just for the night.

I turned out the light, lay in "hotel dark*" and listened to the rain fall on the tin roof.  I took a deep breath and said out loud, "It's Over."

*You know that dark that's so dark you can't tell the difference between what you see when your eyes are open or closed?  Hotel Dark.

In the morning I woke up early.  And by woke up early I mean, I never really fell asleep.  I wandered around on the rocky beach, and said things to myself like, "this is so great" despite the fact that it was chilly, cloudy and the beach was trashy.  Later Mrs. Skip asked me if I'd like a ride to the ferry station.  I said yes, but not before she presented me with the bill for my stay.  I was busy admiring a framed 8x10 glossy of a heavy set white man with a voluminous mullet when she handed it over.  $45. 

"Do you take credit cards?" I asked, already knowing the answer.
[Giving me a quizzical look as if to say, "did you see the room you spent the night in?"] "No."
"All I have is Vietnamese money.  If you take me to an ATM I can get money."
"The closest ATM is one hour away."
"Can I pay you in Vietnamese money?"
"If that's all you have, then yes."

I paid her $10 extra, feeling like a complete ass.

We chatted as she drove me in an even more beat van to the ferry.  I learned that the wonderous mullet in the restaurant/front desk was Skip, her husband.  Skip had died five years earlier, and she told me keeping up the place had gotten tougher since she'd been on her own.  Did I say I felt like a complete ass yet?

When I arrived at the resort, I had a few hours to kill before my first dive.  That was the last time I wrote anything before this here post.  I will share a small exerpt of what I wrote that day:

I wish I could tell you that I stood up and yelled “I CAN’T TAKE THIS SHIT ANY MORE” while throwing a stack of drawings into the walkway and storming out into a spectacularly sunny Vegas afternoon.  I wish I could say that, because it’s exactly how I felt.  But sitting behind a desk for four years can do funny things to you.  Do not believe for a moment that you can shake off a day in which 25 people lose their jobs, even when you are spared, with a cocktail and a blowjob.   The shock of seeing your friends packing up their desks at 2pm, when three hours earlier it was just Tuesday, secretes The Fear into your soul. Tomorrow it could be me.

And The Company loves The Fear.  It feeds and thrives and has romantic dinners with The Fear. The Fear keeps its employees coming back every day to be worked like pack mules; to be forced to share a toilet with 50 other men that is only cleaned twice a week without complaint; to never ever be thanked or told you did a good job.  A confident work force could leave and find another, less crap job.  A work force languishing under The Fear is a slave.  The Fear is like a drug without the fun part in the beginning –that initial love affair when you dropped Oxy the first few times and it was mind-altering and life changing.  The Fear makes you an instant junkie.  You are powerless against it and you hate it.  Every. Single. Day.

People said, “Why don’t you quit?”  But it’s not that simple.  It’s like saying the same thing to that kid who tried Oxy after a couple years of serious abuse.   In his mind there is no life beyond the next fix.  Even sucking dick for it is preferable to not having the fix.  The illness that sweeps you away when you detox is the essence of The Fear.  Even though you know the drug (or the job) is bad, or it’s going to send you to a premature grave, the thought of NOT doing that thing is too overwhelming.  It’s the same for the cubicle slave.  You know the escape is out there, but it feels so foreign and frightening, it’s not really worth looking for.

I love how raw I was.  I cranked out seven single spaced pages in under two hours.  It was beautiful.

 The next three days I spent diving at the Malapascua Dive Resort in Cebu.  It is one of the only places in the world where you can see Thresher Sharks in the wild.  I also dove the Dona Marilyn Shipwreck, which was spooky and sad.  For three full days I went barefoot, rode on boats until I felt seasick on dry land and dove.  The thought of not wearing shoes for that long struck me as perfectly poetic after nearly six years of abject misery behind a desk.  Think about it.  Have you ever gone for three days without shoes and not felt like a completely lazy fuck?  I didn't feel like a lazy fuck.  I didn't even think about turning on my television, slept like a dead person and thought about how lucky I am to be in a place where I can experience three special days. 

Then I got shingles and was sick for three weeks.  You win some, you lose some.  I have a bunch of stuff I want to write about, so let's hope this is the first of a flurry of blog posts in the coming days and weeks.  It's good to be back!