A Few Words About Freedom

Freedom is euphoric. This has been a great trip, even considering the crowded and late flights, the questionable hotel, the dehydration and jet lagged lack of sleep. Manila was absolute anarchy marinated in diesel exhaust and feral children in squatter camps but the people we met in Manila had hearts of gold. In Manila we were treated like family, maybe better.

I loved the freedom of the experience and the open ended nature of this trip, how the this trip was planned out through Dubai and Kuala Lumpur with the rest of the time to be made up as we went along through research and inspiration. I loved the breakfasts of simple drip coffee in the hotel room or Nescafe instant, cheese roti, laksa, kwey teow, breakfast at a Pakistani restaurant where I couldn't read the menu or tell you what we ate (but it was good) even Camelicious camel milk. This time we ate tiger prawns, next time I will attempt to find and eat the pissing shrimp.

Have a Camel!

I don't know what I'm eating...

Without freedom none of this would be possible, being off the leash for 3 weeks makes me want more. But first we need to put our leashes back on and slide the rings through our noses. We have a 16 hour time change to slowly digest, to wade though and pay bills and to back to our jobs which makes all of the above and the previous dispatches which you can read below possible.

To some extent my age is making a trip of this nature less possible, it was harder this time to deal with the jet lag and the tropical heat. I didn't sleep much for 5 days and allowed myself to get dehydrated resulting in one day on the DL in the hotel.  I wanted more time to kick back but maybe it's not such a bad idea to stop pushing myself so hard and to act my age.