This email was compiled over several one hour session at internet cafes charging 4 to 6 euro an hour. It was written through Venice and Florence, Italy and finished in Split and Hvar, Croatia. Please forgive the unusually long silence but you must understand my reluctance to dump my preciously budgeted money into shoddy internet cafes just so I can recount my minute daily activities. There is a lot to remember about these past few weeks in France and Italy so, again, please forgive the spaces where my memory has failed me. I still have a long story to recount about my short visit to Bombay but that email is saved on my laptop and depending how long it takes to get reasonable internet access again that story may have to wait a while.

Europe! What a relief it was to arrive in Europe! A place where things make sense. Where life is orderly and established and romantic. A place where I am afforded a moment of grace before being branded a foreigner.

After Bombay I had to take a short detour to Germany because of some problems with Air India ( i hate them so much ) but I have to admit it was a tremendous relief to get out of Asia and into some familiar territory. After Frankfurt, Germany I was whisked away on an Air France flight to Paris. As I sat in my first class seat (courtesy of Air India - i hate them so much ) I contemplated the few days of insane travel that were now behind me. The contrast between Paris and India was unbearable and it took a long time to adjust. I really felt it the first time I walked into a cafe and paid 4 euro for a cup of coffee. Coming from Thailand, a place where one dollar buys you a streetside feast, you can imagine just how harsh a transition it was.

I spent my first day in Paris strolling through the Latin Quarter. There I purchased a new Hemingway novel from the fantastic Shakespeare and Co. bookstore and then walked back up Rue de Rivoli to check out the shopping. Then across Pont Neuf and back towards the Louvre to watch the sun set. I dined on a baguette purchased from a bakery across from my hotel on George V, just south of Champs Elysees.

The second day I took my new Hemingway novel for a walk up the Champs Elysees, past the Arc de Triumphe, and down Avenue Hoche towards Parc De Monceau. There I sat down on a bench under a placard commenmorating the place of the first parachute jump in history and ate my favorite strawberry cookies that I had purchased from a grocery store on the way. I began the first chapters of Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls as local Parisians jogged by exhorbed in their morning excercise. Sitting in the calm and quiet of Parc Monceau reminded me of why I love Paris. One day, when I am very wealthy, I would like to purchase a flat that looks out over that magnificent city park. For one that had just come from the monsoon season in Southeast Asia, the cool morning became too chilly quickly and so I got up and moved along towards Saint Augustin church. From there I looped around past Gare Saint Lazare and up towards the Cimetiere de Montmatre. I forgot to tell you, but the previous day I had recieved a replacement camera shipped from America. Here, in the cemetary I made good use of my new camera taking a lot of photos of the elaborate headstones and mossy forgotten graves. After I had my fill of the cemitary I walked back down through Montmatre and to the Opera where I boarded the metro back to my hotel.

At the hotel I picked up my laptop and headed for Pont Neuf. There was a local cafe advertising free internet that I had spied the previous day and I sat for a good hour or two drinking cafe au llet’s and answering emails. As proof of just how hip Paris is, I heard one of my favorite bands, the Arcade Fire, playing over the cafe speakers at least twice. At the cafe I met two French-Canadian girls who stopped by my table to use my computer and check their email. I asked if they had any plans later that night, and after they had said no, we agreed to meet later that night near my hotel.

They dropped by around 7pm with several bottles of wine and some cheeses. We took a short walk down George V, past the monument to Princess Diana, across the Seine, and towards the Tour d’Eiffel where we sat down in the park behind the Tower to enjoy the dusk. I went off to find a few baguettes and when I returned the girls ( their names were Jo and Maude ) had found a new place to sit and, fortunatly, a corkscrew to open the wine. When we were halfway through the third bottle of wine and into a fourth round of conversation the girls made friends with a man who had stopped to ask for a cigarrette. He was from the Ivory Coast of Africa and though he was very friendly at first I guess he got annoying fast because the girls quickly tried to shoo’ him away. During the time he was with us the girls were giving me a French lesson and Kasa, which was the African’s name, threw in his philisophical two cents: “La richesse se repole dam la communication,” which I think roughly tranlates into “communication is wealth”.

After the lights on the Eiffel Tower had gone off and sparkled for the third or fourth time ( which is does every hour from 8pm to 2am ) we got up and walked across to the Military school which sits on the hill across the Seine and has a breakthtaking view of the tower. There we met two guys from Turkey who were living in Paris and trying very hard to pick up on the French-Canadians. Fortunatly both of them spoke english so that I wasn’t left out of any conversations. Once the last round of lights had sparkled on the Tower we agreed to go out with the Turks who had a car parked in the plaza below. I had never been driving in Paris and it was really nice to see the city from this new perspective. They took us to Le Bastille where we had one drink at a bar before they kicked us out and closed the doors for the night. The Turks started to realize that they weren’t going to get anything from the girls and before things turned bitter I suggested that they drive me back to my hotel. They were very nice guys if not just a bit sketchy and the one from Ankarra really enjoyed our discussion about why African Americans are so angry at the world. I don’t have any sort of answer of course and I only mention it because it is a topic of great interest to Europeans and always seems to pop up when anyone mentions rap music. Thus concluded the night.

The next morning I woke late and checked out of my hotel. I didn’t have a place to sleep for my last night in Paris so I took the suggestion of Jo, the French Canadian girl from the night before, and took a walk in Montmatre to find a hostel dorm called Woodstocks. It took a while to find but that was alright and I enjoyed my walk in eclectic Montmatre besides. The hostel was super-hippy and as proof had half a VW bug hanging on one wall with a mural of the Beatles painted on the door. The rooms were decent and psychadelically painted like the rest of the place and though I had to share a room with 14 other guys, at 22 euro, it was definatly the cheapest accomidation I could find last minute in Paris.

I took a looong nap through the middle of the day and was awoken late in the afternoon by one of my roommates who was playing on his classical guitar. He turned out to be a cool guy and was a good companion for the remainder of my time in Paris. His name was Sebastian and he was from Sweden. Shortly after we had introduced ourselves and I had checked out the swanky new silk vest he had purchased from La Defense he was off to meet a family friend for a drink. I went out to walk the streets of Montmatre, took a peak at the Sacre Cour through the tiny Paris alleyways, only a minute’s walk from the hostel. I even took a metro ride out to the end of line 1 at La Defense to find the same vest that Sebastian had purchased. But by the time I got there all the shops were closing for the night. I went back to the hostel, purchased a baguette with some ham from a bakery across the street and went back to my room at Woodstocks to eat it. There I met more interesting people. Some Turks, a Japanese guy, some Germans, and Italian girls, all were exteremly nice young people passing through Europe on a budget as I was. Despite everyone’s insistance that I come with them to the cabaret show at Moulin Rouge I went to sleep early that night.

The next morning I woke up and ventured out into Montmatre again. This time I tackled the steep steps up to the Sacre Cour and sat down to read for a little bit under its shadow. Later I met up with Sebastian and we went thrift store shopping. I didn’t purchase anything but they did have a fantastic selection of leather coats. Afterwards Sebastian and I ventured out to La Defense again to find that silk vest but the shops were closed for Sunday just as they are everywhere else in Europe. I decided it would be best to go out to find my bus to Beauvois Airport early, I was leaving for Italy that day.

I had arrived much too early for the bus so I wandered around with my heavy backpack until I found a bakery. I bought some more baguettes as well as some chocolate and sat in the bus parking lot awaiting the shuttle to the Ryan Air airport. The next several hours were spent in transit to Trieste, Italy the airport an hour outside of Venice. The only interesting portion of the whole trip was meeting two Italian girls of my age who I sat next to on the plane. Between my spanish and english and their Italian we were able to converse relatively well. The plane arrived at 7 or 8pm and then I took a train with the girls to the train station at Mestre. In Mestre I caught the next train to Padova where I was to meet Andrea, my Italian friend who I had met while he was an exchange student at UCI.

By the time Andrea picked me up from the train station in his car it was getting late in the late. He took me for a short tour of Padova while we ate Gelato purchased from a square near the clocktower. Padova surprised me with its history and quaint European streets. A half hour inland from Venice, it is certainly a place to put on the itinerary if you ever have a few days in the area. Not only is it is the home to the second oldest University in the world and the infamous frescos of Giotto but the old town is full of beautiful churches, markets, bars, and Erasmus students looking for a good time. I was quite tired from my day of travel in Paris metros, airport shuttles, budget airlines, trains, and cars and so Andrea and I went back to his parents home just outside of the city center. They have a very nice place, an actual house, which is rare for European cities and gave me a bedroom downstairs to sleep in.

Monday morning I woke up to explore Padova with Andrea on bicycles. I learned that I had come to visit at a rather unfortunate time. Andrea was in the middle of a deadline to finish his Master’s thesis and his parents were just finishing their month long vacations. But regardless they were beautifully kind and I let Andrea alone to work in his University’s computer lab while I went to visit the church of Saint Anthony. They have the actual remains of Saint Anthony at the church and even have a special shrine for his tongue and fingernails. A short walk from the church is the second largest square in Europe, next to one in Saint Petersburg, Russia. I rode my bike around the old town for a while before meeting back up with Andrea at the University. We rode our bikes back to his home where we ate lunch with his parents. His mother had made Bigolli for us, a thick noodle spaghetti that is from the Venice region. After lunch I took a nap while Andrea worked some more on his thesis.

That night we met up with Andrea’s friend Matteo in the old town to drink a round of the traditional Spritz di Padova before dinner. I was careful to ask how to make the spritz for later but I was stupid and didnt get it written down so now I have forgotten. It is a very sweat orange-pinkish alcoholic drink that is traditionally taken by young Northern Italians before dinner. We hung outside of the bar in the tiny cobblestone street drinking. Andrea and Matteo had a lot of friends to meet with and I listened poilitelty straining to understand their rapid slang Italian. Afterwards we left towards the town center and Matteo explained to me why the clock tower always displays the wrong time. Its a very complicated Astrological Tower that displays Month, Date, Year, Zodiac and all other manner of time. Apparently, the designer had been cheated by the person who was paying him and so he made his zodiac sign, Scorpio, twice as long as all the others, thus disturbing the clock’s balance and setting it off time. We left Matteo shortly after his explanation of the clock and met up with some more of Andrea’s friends. We drove out to someone’s flat in the suburbs of Padova and ate homemade pizza. All of Andrea’s friends were extremely good natured and had no problem including me into all of their conversations. I understood as best I could and used Spanish whenever English wouldn’t work. We stayed late until the parents arrived. The father was a professor of geology and even though I had no idea what he was saying he insisted on showing me his ginormous collection of text books and scientific journals. He was very proud to show the American journals his work had been published in and occasionally would stop and point out a word in a book as if to ask its English pronunciation. We left shortly after.

When I awoke the next day I ate breakfast with Andrea’s parents and then Andrea and I rode bikes to the train station where I caught a train to Venice alone so that Andrea could work on his thesis. Oh my, Venice is beautiful. But beautiful alone cannot describe it. And for a moment, if you could only hold the laughter for one moment and let me use this cheesy analogy I think you might understand. Venice is like a beautful woman. Walking through her streets is like falling in love. Yes, its a cheesy analogy but its so true. I was in quiet shock and wondered awe the entire time. Each curve of the street, every quaint bridge, each hidden alleyway and walkway that would dead end into a private canal, and even the cliche gondola handlers in their black and white stripped outfits and straw hats was perfection. Absolute perfection. There is not a camera in the world that can capture her beauty. I took my time getting lost in the maze of dead-end water flooded streets, circled Piazi di Sant Marco square and its gorgeous palace, took a ferry to Lido Island to walk its endless tourist covered beaches, and then came back just in time to catch the sunset cascading over the island. I left that day feeling fresh and alive, yet hungry, oh so hungry.

Dinner at Andrea’s was of meatballs and a rare yellow spongy cake like dish that tasted a bit like cornmeal and bacon. I ate everything and was still wanted. One thing wrong with Venice is its prices. Everything is too expensive. I am starting to see how difficult it is to stay within my budget in Europe. Grocery stores and streetside food vendors have become my restaurants and I still manage to spend more than I can afford.

The next day I left Andrea to work once again and took the three hour train south to Firenze (Florence). Florence is like a grown up Italian city. It still has all the charm and culture of the smaller towns but its ancient stone buildings are stacked thick and high to create rather dominating city streets. It also contains some of the most beautiful white, red, and green painted cathedrals I have ever seen. There I had only several hours before taking the train back to Padova, but I made good use of my tired legs once again and forged ahead through old town, cross the river towards the large park and castle, and then back in again to the town center. When I got back into Padova that night I got lost heading back to Andrea’s place on the bike. But fortunatly Andrea came looking for me and in a good hour I was back at his parent’s home where there was more wonderful food to eat and a clean familiar bed to sleep in. The following morning I decided it was best to leave Italy and begin my exploration of Central-Eastern Europe.

Thus ends my travels in France and Italy and this tremendously long and poorly constructed email. Well, at least the framework of it is all down and spelled out so that you know what I have been up to for the past while. I am in the works of uploading some more photos so keep your eyes peeled on the website. Tales of my travels through Central Europe and into Croatia are on the horizon. If you’ve lasted this far through the email and not fallen asleep or died of boredom then I thank you for being such a faithful friend.

My last days in Thailand were fantastic ones indeed. In fact, they were the best of the entire trip so far. After my last email from the beach in Cha-am I decided to head south by local bus and visit another more popular beach town called Hua Hin. After reading the local bus schedule and deciding it would be too difficult to get back to Petchaburi or Kanchanaburi that day I made up my mind to stay the night in Hua Hin. I think it turned out to be a good descision. I looked around for a cheap guest house and found one for a very reasonable 250 Bhat (~$6) that had a fan, a bed, a blanket, and a pillow in the center of a depressing room at the top of a six story building. The town of Hua Hin is more immediatly appealing than Cha-am and I had a good time looking around. There must be a lot of Italian and German visitors to the city because nearly every other restaurant was either an Italian pizza place or a German beer garden.
The beach was a lot better than Cha-am too. Small boulders dotted the wide beach that jutted out like a peninsula from the town. When you stand on the very edge near the shallow blueish water you get a nice view of both sides of the long beach. The sand had fantastic star -like patterns layed across like a blanket. I spent a little bit of time looking down at the millions of teeny-tiny crabs who were hard at work rolling bits of sand in their mouth and then spitting them out to form the sand constellations. As you walk across the sand they scatter from your feet in a near perfect two foot radius so that it looks as if you are floating across the sand in a cloud. As you can tell, I really enjoyed my stroll across the beach that afternoon.
After a Franziskaner and a pizza I took a long nap and probably would have slept through the entire night if it weren’t for all the night time commotion going on outside. I lay in that rickety bed deciding whether or not to get up for the longest time before the noise coming through the window convinced me I wouldn’t be getting back to sleep with too much ease. I’m glad I woke because Hua Hin at night time is even more beautiful than during the day. As I daftly predicted the streets were crawling with Germans and Italians and all manner of other European guests. I walked around for a good two hours or so before deciding to get back to sleep. And two hours after that I was.

I woke from a rough nights sleep with a mission. The night before while I was walking through the night-time scenes of Hua Hin I had recieved a call from Scott inviting me back to Kanchanaburi to stay with his host family for my last night in Thailand. I was thrilled to accept their offer but because no direct public transportation exists between southern Thailand and the North Western jungle city I was forced to wake early to make a day long trek back to Bangkok to catch a transfer bus. It was an agonizing ride of the six hours of total bus rides. The second bus from Bangkok was really old and it felt like I was riding in a washing machine the entire way.
Scott’s mobile phone had broken the previous week and so with careful and primitive coordination we somehow managed to meet at the hospital he works at just outside of Kanchanaburi. It is a strange hospital. Despite its small size, cluttered waiting room, and seemingly disorganized in-patient facilities it is very functional and manages to serve its community well. I arrived on diabetes day, tuesday, when people from the surrounding area would come to deal with all manner of low blood sugar aches and pains. While Scott finished his work I went across the street to eat at the fast food street vendors.
Whenever in doubt of what to order in Thailand, just say “Phad Thai” and you are bound to find something wonderful to eat on your plate. Its not always consistant (sometimes fried rice and chicken, sometimes friend spicy noodle with tofu) but its always tasty.
After Scott finished work and I had finished my plate of Phad Thai - this time egg, friend rice, and pork - we hopped on his loaned motorbike and buzzed off to visit one of the most amazing Temples I have had the priviledge of seeing. Wat Tham Sua (pronounced Tom Sooya) rests like a large orange pine cone turned on its head on one of the highest peaks in Kanchanaburi. Alongside is a humongous resting Buddha looking over the dense landscape. Beneath, florescent rice fields stretch for miles before dissolving into deeply forrested mountains. It is breathtaking. Figuratively, breathtaking. I highly recomend a visit if you are ever in the region. The only thing that befouled the experience were the Chinese people who got off their tour bus shortly after we arrived and started crawling over and pounding on everything. They made a terrible racket and were totally oblivious to the beauty they were disturbing. As we climbed the pine cone towers luminous rain clouds were beginning to settle on the horizon and we decided we should soon leave.
The ride to Scott’s host family’s house was a good solid hour of motorbiking. I think two white men on a motorcycle in Kanchanaburi made an interesting spectacle because we got a lot of strange looks and waves from random people. I wanted to wave back each time but I was warry to return the affection so I could hang on to the back of the small 150cc bike. We only had one helmet between the two of us after all. The countryside became ever more remote jungle until finally we arrived at an unpaved road next to a small clearing which contained a white building. A little further past and we arrived at the home of Mr Ratchen and Mrs Mulwany, Scott’s hosts.
For people with a house made of discarded sheet metal, chicken wire, and linoleum over a dirt floor, they lived pretty well. In fact, I learned Thai houses are pretty decieving. Inside was a nice comforable home complete with all sorts of electronic gadgetry, modern kitchen appliances, and quality stereo equiptment. In the driveway was even a new toyota pick up truck. I began to wonder why they didnt decide to spend their money differently by building a solid wall for their house instead of purchasing the latest mobile phones, but then, to each his own. It was certainly a cultural awakening.
They threw a small party in celebration of my visit to their home. Mrs Mulwany and Mr Ratchen are both school teachers and they invited a few of their teacher friends over for the party. We all sat on the floor in a big circle around the plates of steamed muscles, fried fish, spicy soups, and mushroom pork laughing the whole night. It turns out they all had a great sense of humor and despite the somewhat deep language barrier we all had a great time communicating and sharing funny stories. They so enjoyed our company that once they even asked us to thank George W Bush for sending them such a wonderful school intern (Scott) and for allowing his friend to visit. Judging from their tone of voice and expressions I think they were only partly joking. So, thank you George Bush. I hope you’re reading this email.
That night I slept on a futon-like thing on the downstairs floor of the house. Outside the crickets and multitude of flying insects buzzed loudly.
In the morning Ms Wulwany had prepared a feast of a breakfast for us. A thai breakfast is exactly like every other Thai meal. Spicy soups, spicy friend porks, wok’ed noodles, and rice. I asked what the difference was between dinner and breakfast and they told me that it was the same only less spicy food. Well, not too much less. I tried to eat as much as possible, but it was such a hearty and spicy assortment of food that Scott and I didn’t eat half of what was on the table. Besides, my stomach was still trying to figure out and sort the meal from the night before.
After breakfast and we had seen our hosts off for work at the school Scott and I loaded onto the motorbike and spent a good hour driving through the scenic jungle countryside towards a temple he wanted to show me. I think I enjoyed the ride almost as I enjoyed the secluded jungle temple. When we arrived to the Chinese-Buddhist Wat we were greeted by a very enthusiastic monk dressed in typical orange robes. He gave us a personal tour of his temple, describing each Buddha we passed in as great of detail as his broken english would allow. It took Scott and I a while to figure out why he was so happy to show us around but we eventually decided that it was just because he wanted to practice his english. He even invited us to breakfast. We graciously declined because Scott had to get back to the school to teach an english class. The visit to the temple was made ten times better because of our monk tour guide.
We left the Wat in a hurry back to the school next to Scott’s host’s house. The school was pretty typical. A white square two-level building with an inner courtyard. It was in decent shape but definatly could use some attention. The windows were dirty and there were random piles of rubish lying about the uncut grass. The school’s creed was plastered everywhere across the halls. I don’t remember the whole thing, but the middle is “Living to Learn, Earning to Live”.
I was really lucky to be able to accompany Scott to his class. We taught an English class on Emotions to a small group of respectful Thai high school students. There was no lesson plan at all so we basically just talked about how we were feeling that day. I knew I was in the right place when one of the students stood up and said in broken english, “I am happy because I have met my new friend Gabriel.” Scott did a good job of communicating to the students and I did my best to chime in when it felt necessary. No one could believe that two people from California were actually at their school. Teaching english in a remote jungle in Kanchanaburi, Thailand is certainly a specialized calling. But what a way to end a three week stay in Thailand. I was so lucky, sooo lucky, to be a part of that experience. Scott ended the class early because I had to be rushed to the bus station a half hour away in town.
I bought my 94 Bhat, two hour bus ride ticket back to Bangkok and said goodbye to Scott. Traffic from the bus station was horrible as usual and I was really worried that my taxi wouldnt make it in time to the airport. It took a ridiculous two hours to get 20 km into the center of the city and it looked like it wasn’t going to be any faster to the airport. I abandoned the cab once we got to Sukhumvit road and took the skytrain to the end of the line towards the airport then hopped in another cab. I barely made it to the airport an hour before my flight to learn that the flight had been cancelled. Cancelled to Bombay! Not only had my flight been cancelled, but apparently there had been a mix up with my plane ticket and I was booked on a flight that never existed! I was at a complete loss of what to do. The woman at the desk told me that she might be able to get me out on a flight at 2am on friday, but that meant I would miss my flight from Bombay to Paris and be stuck in Bombay for two weeks. Unacceptable. I was on a tight schedule and none of this was going to work.
Fortunatly, I ran into the right person at the right time. The manager for Air India also happened to be the manager for Thai airways in Bangkok (?) and with a snap of his fingers he booked me on a new Thai Air flight to Bombay leaving in the next hour. It was a nice flight that I was extremely lucky to be on. An hour before I had been almost entirely certain that my trip would be ruined. The flight took seven hours, which was seven hours less than I had expected and arrived earlier than the Air India flight would have it had not been cancelled. And thus began my seven hour extravaganza in Mumbai, India.

I am writing you this short email to assure you all that I am alive and well in Paris. These past few days have been an absolute whirlwind. There are several long emails in the works describing my adventures in the jungles on Kanchanburi, last minute arrangements to Mumbai, a memorable cab ride through the streets of Bombay, horrible experiences with the Mumbai International airport, a slight diversion to Germany, and the beauty of Paris in the summer time. In the meantime please enjoy the new pictures I have posted. There are many more coming. I noticed Café Pont Neuf is advertising free wireless internet. I think I’ll go take advantage of that later tonight. Right now I am off for some shopping on Reu de Rivoli. My clothes are disgusting.

Your faithful world traveler,
Gabe