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Malaysia

How to make a dream come true

May 11, 2020

First: Make a list of things to do before you die. Realize that you are always inching toward death and still haven’t done a single thing on that list. This is the same thing your mom did; she put things off until it was too late.

Decide to do something about it.

Quit your job. Leave home. Book some flights.

Tell yourself, “If I make it to Ha Long Bay, this trip will be a success.”

Go to Peru. Go to Bolivia. Go to Argentina. Check some things off the list.

Meet a couple of Americans and drive around South Africa with them. Live in a village. Learn to carry buckets of water on your head. Go to Uganda. Ride across the country in a minibus with 24 people and a pregnant goat. Find work as a country-western DJ for the local radio station. Learn to harvest rice.

Go to Rwanda. Spend your days teaching English to genocide survivors. Cry. Teach them to play bingo. Laugh.

Fly to Egypt and immerse yourself in ruins. Find out your grandmother died. Find out your mom is dying, really dying. Fall down a tunnel of darkness. Hole up in a yoga camp on the Red Sea.

Go to your mother’s funeral. Wrap yourself in grief. Return to Egypt on the day a revolution begins. Feel yourself unraveling.

Take a boat to Jordan. Leave when protests begin. Go to Bahrain. Leave when protests begin. Get the nagging feeling that you are creating a trail of destruction around the world.

Go to Ethiopia, an extraordinary country, and plod your way through it. Feel like you’re something less than human.

Go to India, where something in your soul clicks. Love it. Embrace it. Drink in every hot day, every fragrant spice, every bit of eye-popping color. Move into an ashram. Pray.

Go to Thailand. Work with elephants. Meet a friend from home in Bangkok. Travel with her to Cambodia. Stay with more friends. Say goodbye.

Take a bus to Vietnam. Battle Saigon’s scooter-clogged streets and get a feel for the city. Slurp down bowls of noodles. Take a bus north. When the bus breaks down for 12 hours, sleep at a bus station. When the bus works again, it’s the hottest part of the day and the air-conditioning is now broken. Sweat. Make an unplanned stop in a beach town just because you desperately need a shower.

Take more buses. Take a train. Sleep in a dirty train car on soiled sheets. Arrive in Hanoi. Ride on the back of a motorcycle with a man even sweatier than you.

Schedule a boat tour. Pack up. Get picked up at 7 a.m.

Go to Ha Long Bay.

Wake up on a boat in a bay where everything is still. Everything is perfect.

Write that story.

Go to grad school to really dig into it.

Write that story again and again, edit it, excavate it. Work on it in scraps of time between your day job, when you stay up late, when you rise at 4 a.m. to have 20 quiet minutes before the baby wakes.

Sell it.

Have the perfect editor push you where you need it. He makes you laugh, he makes you cry, but most importantly, he makes you better. He reminds you to slow down where it hurts.

And then one day, poof. You have a book.

Your story, between two covers.

It comes out tomorrow.

Enjoy.

Street art in Asia

August 28, 2011

Sometimes I’m embarrassed I can’t see the world the way street artists do.

I don’t look at a metallic sliver of garage door and see a robot. I don’t know how a dark alleyway can transform into a dazzling display. I can’t find the rainbow of colors in concrete.

I don’t have that kind of vision — but thankfully, I can still get a peek.

In search of the world’s smelliest flower

August 27, 2011

I’m a sucker for The World’s Largest Tallest Widest anything.

World’s Largest Basket? Check. World’s Largest Cuckoo Clock? Been there, done that. World’s Tallest Thermometer? Of course.

 

So when I ended up in Cameron Highlands, Malaysia, home of The World’s Largest AND Smelliest Flower, I was ready to hunt down this stinky bloom.

Unfortunately, that’s a little difficult to do without some help. The flower is rare and, thus, protected. It only blooms for 4 to 5 days at a time, and sometimes there aren’t any flowers for months. And since the endangered plant is on native land, only people of the Orang Aslis tribe — or guides educated by the tribe — know where to find it.

That means I had to pay for a tour, which I hate doing, instead of setting out on my own. And so some new friends and I booked a trip.

I knew I was in for a bumpy ride when I was picked up at the hostel in a Land Rover that looked like it had been dipped in caramel. Muddy caramel.

 

The tour guide was a Malaysian man with a slight build and bulbous, jaundiced eyes. He wore a silver marijuana leaf on a chain and had this laminated poem posted above the steering wheel:

Stoners live and stoners die

Fuck the world, let’s get high.

Pot’s a plant, it grows in the ground,

If God didn’t like it, it wouldn’t be around.

So drink 151 and smoke a bowl,

So party hard and rock and roll.

To all you preps who think you’re cool,

Fuck you bitches, stoners rule!


So my guide was a plant lover. That’s all I’m saying.

The drive to the nature preserve took about two hours on teeth-crushing, bone-jarring roads. At one point I hit the roof and bruised my eyeball. Then, at a remarkably unremarkable point in the road, our guide simply hit the brakes and turned off the ignition. He motioned for us to follow him into the jungle.

My friends and I slogged in ankle-deep mud through insect clouds, between prickly plants, across makeshift bridges for more than an hour.

 

Finally, our guide came to a halt. We had arrived! He held out his hand and gestured for us to gaze upon the majestic rafflesia bud.

It looked like a cabbage.

 

A little bit farther away, we finally saw a bloom.

 

The coolest thing about rafflesia is that it has no leaves, stems or true roots. It’s actually an endoparasite that grows within vines. The flower is the only part of the parasite that lives outside the host vine.

The petals are spongy, almost like a mushroom, with dots of fungus around the inside lip of the bloom.

 

And it is big. Here is my size 11 Nike for comparison.

 

Most of all, the rafflesia stinks, which is why it’s known as the corpse flower. Blow gently on this bloom, and you’ll be rewarded with the stench of rotting hamburger.

Now, I know when I say “corpse flower,” you’re probably thinking of this monstrosity.

 

Yes, this putrid plant is also called a corpse flower, and it’s hella huge. But while it is the largest unbranched inflorescence, the rafflesia has the largest single flower of any flowering plant. Got that? Good.

Afterward, my group met a tribe of Orang Asli, indigenous Malaysian people, who used to be headhunters. Now they eat monkeys.

This little guy was scheduled to be that night’s dinner, and he definitely knew it. He poked his hand through the wooden slats and clutched my finger for a long time, looking at me with these huge pleading eyes.

 

I think I’d rather eat a corpse flower.