Guadalajara, Mexico
I just turned 52 a few hours ago. That is, when I first wrote that sentence which is/was around a month ago. A fellow student in my professional writing and editing course at RMIT university in Melbourne, reminded me that Woody Allen had said that writing is the process of writing and rewriting, so timeframes are always a bit mixed up. It’s a bit like house renovations. You start with the old house, then you add bits on, sometimes more seamlessly than other times. Like the last house we rented in Brunswick, Melbourne, which had a dodgy extension added on to the back of the house which was falling off the back of the original house to the extent that there was a big gap where the cold, and hot, air, could gush in. I filled the space in with some expanding builders foam from a can before my daughter was born, back in 2002.
This post, chronologically continues on from my around the world trip with my wife which was still last year – now the year before last since the new year started a few weeks ago at the time of writing. The time of writing is a jumbled up world. If I wrote things faster I could probably keep things more under control but I like to spend my time writing and rewriting a bit more now.
Tomorrow, my wife, son and I will do a Tequila tour together. That is a tour to the town of Tequila in the state of Jalisco, Mexico, which involves sampling tours at tequila distilleries. It’s my son’s first visit to Mexico, my 8th or 9th visit, my third time on a tequila tour and the second with my wife.
Numbers: 52, 50th, 1st, 8th or 9th. Tres Mujeres tequila distillery.
Today’s the 15th of December 2024, and we’re just back from Amiga mi Amor, rooftop bar in Guadalajara. One aperol spritz; an Amiga Date Quenta mezcal, tequila and Jamaica cocktail; and most of a mojito which I didn’t enjoy that much but which I got because they had a 2-1 happy hour deal from 5 to 6 and my son wanted one. I should have stuck to the Amiga Date Quentas and spritzes, which are my Christmas drink now. Plus the sprites were two for one. I might even give up grog altogether one day and today I’m getting a tattoo of the Buddha on my shoulder which will remind me that there’s only five precepts in Buddhism and one of them is to avoid intoxicating drinks and drugs – or something like that, I’m not sure what to original wording was, but that was the gist of it, don’t get drunk or stoned.
Before Amiga mi Amor, we had dogos (hot dogs) downstairs. Which I do now in Guadalajara. I like going back to some familiar sites around town, makes me feel more at home in Guadalajara. The places are different every time. Like the Hospicio Cabañas, with the José Clemente Orozco murals on the ceiling (see picture below of Orozco looking up at the ceiling), which I’ve visited every time I’ve come to Guadalajara since I first came in 2015 to experience Dia de Muertos.
That was the year I met my then wife-to-be on a dating app and then at a bar. I didn’t end up staying for the actual Dia de Muertos as my ex-wife got a job at Ikea in Australia and needed to go to Sydney for training, so I had to get back to Australia to look after the kids. I married my wife on my 4th visit to Guadalajara, after getting divorced, selling our house, finding a new rental in Canberra and all those things. I didn’t go back to Mexico until 2017, I wanted to visit the Mayan archaeological site of Calakmal which is in the Mexican state of Campeche. I contacted my wife-to-be and asked if she would like to catch up for a coffee. We started chatting again and we ended up organising a trip together to Guanajuato, Queretaro, Morelia and Mexico City.
My wife usually travels earlier, or stays later, when we come to Guadalajara. Last year on our round the world trip we arrived together and she left about a month after me back to Australia. This time she came about 6 weeks before me.
My son and I travelled together and spent a night in Los Angeles on the way where I thought we may have time to visit the La Brea tar pit museum. Instead we got some birria tacos on our first night, then I bought some weed, legally from a fancy weed shop.
Just a ‘gelato’ joint. My son is only 20 and not old enough to buy weed in California yet, so he had to stand outside while I went and got my single joint which I then later smoked while walking around the streets of West Hollywood, where we were staying.
We’d visited a little Mexican tiendita earlier and I luckily had lots of sweets to get through the munchies, including a blue lemonade; a small glass bottle of Mexican coke with a metal lid that I managed to get off with a pair of scissors (narrowly avoiding stabbing my hand on several occasions); a few packets of Biscoff bikkies (biscuits (or cookies) the ones with two wrapped in plastic); and some Sesame Snaps – the Polish sesame sweets. I’m not confident I’ve put those semi-colons in the right place in the last sentences but hopefully you get the point. I’m scared I’ll get diabetes from all the sweets I have when I’m stoned, luckily it’s not very often. I just get such bad munchies.
I had a few more puffs of the joint the next day on the way to the I met Her at a Bar waffle place which was a 30 minute walk from our AirBnB. Perhaps due to the muncies, they were the best waffles I’ve ever had. They’d want to be for the $74.24 USD we paid (a LOT of Australian dollars for waffles), including coffees, a bowl of berries, and a few yellow marigolds.
As it’s now new year, I feel I should resolve something. The knife story from Luang Prabang, from my 50 year backpacker story. I’ll get to that in a bit.
Evidently I’m not the only one who thought of a round-the-world trip for my 50th. At the end of last year my wife, son and daughter went to Mérida, down in Yucatan, Mexico. I was chatting to the owner of the hotel while my son, daughter and I waited for a tour to Chichén Itzá, a cenote, and some town that’s mainly yellow. My wife stayed in Mérida as she’d been to Chichén a few times.
Compared to Uxmal, another Mayan archeological site we visited while in Mérida, Chichén Itzá was a bit disappointing. I knew it would be, that’s why I’d been avoiding going there for years. There’s too many people, it’s all a bit rushed and it just wasn’t as impressive as Uxmal.
The cenote on the Chichén tour was pretty amazing, but it was overrun by tourists. Like hungry zombies, or chapulines (grasshoppers that are often roasted with spices and sold on street corners throughout Mexico) tourists swarmed into the amazing cenote which had tree roots hanging down and beautiful dark and mysterious water, which was all very pretty. The swarms felt like they were engulfing the environment, consuming it. The more I travel to these types of sites, the more I think us humans, and particularly tourists, just consume, suckign the life out of places. We jump out of buses and planes (the latter mostly once they’re parked), snap photos, buy some food and souvenirs (I got a kitschy yellow owl with Chichén Itzá written on it to hang on the wall back in Australia), then they/we jump back on the bus or plane and we’re off home or to our next destination.
Maybe it’s time for us all to slow down, be more like Patrick Leigh Fermor when he walked across Europe in the 1930s.
Well, back to Mérida, waiting for the Chichén Itzá tour, the hotel owner Tom, who, like me, had married a Mexican, told me about his 50th birthday year world tour which he and his wife took a few years earlier which had ended with New Year celebrations in Sydney. I guess when we reach such milestones we like to try and mark them somehow before we die.
Back in Luang Prabang, the year before last now, and the knife story.
We’d booked ourselves on the high speed train from Luang Prabang to the Laos capital, Vientiane. We were told though that we could not bring any knives or sharp objects with us on the train. There was no way to check-in luggage or anything either, so you just couldn’t bring these things on the train with you, at all. I had a hand crafted knife I’d bought in the forest at the Mekong elephant park in Pakbeng and a small Swiss army knife I’d be given by Corinne (with double ‘n’ rather than double ‘r’ from memory), a Swiss woman I’d met when I was living on a farm in Nutfield, Victoria, sort of close to the end of the Hurstbridge railway line, who I’d spent a few weeks travelling around the east coast of Australia with in 1994. There’s a semi-fictional version of that story here.
I mentioned the knife situation to the guy at reception and he suggested I try and mail the knives to myself in Australia. So I wrapped up the two knives and headed down to the post office, which was about 20 minutes walk away from the hotel, in the slightly less extreme morning heat and humidity which still had my clothes drenched within a few blocks, and asked the posities how much it would be to send my parcel to Australia.
They asked what was in the parcel. I said knives. They said they couldn’t mail knives in the post. So, I head back to the hotel with the wrapped up knives. Then the hotel guy had another bright idea and suggested we try and find a private delivery service to send the knives to our hotel in Vietnam where we could collect them. It sounded like a reasonable prospect, so I jump on the back of his motorcycle and start weaving in and out of the Luang Prabang traffic till we get to a private mail/ delivery service. Again they ask what’s in the parcel. I again say knives. Again they say they can’t do it.
But the hotel guy has a Plan C. He knows a bus driver who drives from Luang Prabang to Hanoi, who will be leaving in the next day or so. We could give him the knives, and he could take them on the bus, then we could go to the bus station in Hanoi and pick them up. It all sounded too easy. So, I hand over the knives and my wife and I head to the train station for the train down to Vientiane where we were going to stay two nights before flying over to Hanoi, where we could just go out to the bus station and collect the knives.
Of course that wasn’t the end of the story with the knives, but I feel I should at least briefly mention our time in Vientiane before moving on to the next chapter of the knife story in Hanoi.
The train from Luang Prabang to Vientiane is amazing. It’s a super fancy train built by the Chinese, with money they loaned to the Laotian government, which goes something like 250 kilometers an hour plus, through some pretty lush valleys and past the type of mountain ranges you see in tourist brochures, and through tunnels and rural Lao villages. I can’t remember how many times it stops between Luang Prabang and Vientiane, but it’s not many. It at least stops once at the town of Vang Vieng, a picturesque little town known for its party scene, which includes floating down the river on inner tubes, drunk and or stoned, plus a bunch of nature stuff. Since my wife and I weren’t so much into the party scene we decided it would be too noisy and so decided to skip the place.
The whole journey from Luang Prabang to Vientiane took just a few hours. The station in Luang Prabang, however, is a long way from town, along some windy dirt roads with lots of pot-holes. I think it took at least 30 minutes to get there from the town of Luang Prabang, but perhaps more like an hour. I could go and check, but you can Google it.
On the train, we got chatting to a Buddhist monk. He was on his way to Vientiane to stay at a monastery there. Or perhaps he was on his way back to a monastery in Vientiane having been in Luang Prabang, which has as many temples as Mexico has Oxxos, for a bit. He was a pretty calm dude who wanted to practice his English. We followed protocol and only spoke to him once he’d first asked us a question. He didn’t make eye contact with my wife. Fair enough, one look into her eyes and it could easily have him discard his vows of celibacy. Though perhaps he was getting a bit old for that sort of thing.
The Buddhism of Laos was something that really resonated with me. I could easily go back for a few weeks and just spend time at the temples there in Luang Prabang. Perhaps at a much cooler and less smokey time of year than what we’d experienced in April.
Vientiane, Laos (the subheading to help me continue with this story before I get too distracted with other things)
I haven’t got a lot to say about Vientiane. It was, and probably still is, a big city. Not at all like lovely little Luang Prabang. In reference to my earlier reference about tourists being zombie hordes and chapulines, I hope it’s not completely ruined by tourists, and keeps its traditional charm, at least not before I can visit again. I know it will change though, as Buddhism has taught me, change is inevitable and happening all the time.
In Vientiane, I got a nice haircut at some sort of London inspired barber. We visited some night markets by the river, which were big but had mostly cheap (though not really that cheap) stuff with generic character, nothing much with local character like we’d seen in Luang Prabang, and nothing we really wanted to buy, especially since I was still actually backpacking. Well I was using a backpack, so that counts, even though we’d not much stayed in backpacker style accommodation, and my wife was certainly more of a maleta (Spanish for suitcase/ luggage/ non-backpack travelling stuff) woman.
On what was our only full day in Vientiane, we set off on foot to visit the temple which once held the famous Emerald Buddha we’d seen at Wat Phra Kaew, in Bangkok, a few weeks earlier. The Thais had taken it away when their empire extended over that part of modern day Laos. You weren’t allowed to take photos in the area where the Emerald Buddha is now housed, at Wat Phra Kaew, Bangkok. It was one of the few areas of the Grand Palace where you could just sit and meditate without having some German tourist, fresh from the cruise ship, tripping over you while they film with their video cameras hours of footage I doubt they’ll ever have time to look at again.
They should ban us chapulines (though we’re more like locusts than the little chapuline grasshoppers) tourists from taking photos in more spots around the world. It might help a little to calm the voracious consumption us tourists have of culture and sites. I mean, what’s the point of being able to take a selfie with the Mona Lisa at the Louvre (not sure if they still allow this, but they did in 1995 last time I was there) or with a Van Gough at the Musée d’Orsay. It’s funny that such an advanced species needs to be restrained from being such culture vultures. I even think we should be restricted from going to some places altogether, but I fear then only the rich would get to enjoy the more popular sites like Rome, Paris and the like. Though all of us who travel are rich enough to travel, with high income earners naturally making up the bulk of tourists.
To finish with the mixed species comparisons I think perhaps us tourists are both the grasshoppers who consume all that’s living and growing and we are the vultures who come and pick the bones of what’s left of what we first came to see. Perhaps we’ll find the right balance one day.
The temple area in Vientiane, where the Emerald Buddha once sat, is nice enough, but again, having just come from Luang Prabang, with all its vibrant temples, it was just nice.
We also walked to some archway which looked impressive when we saw it on the way from the train station to our hotel, but which on closer inspection was dilapidated, but not in a good, ancient site dilapidated way, more a no-one-really-looks after it sort of way.
The hotel we stayed at in Vientiane was very average. One little window that looked out onto a wall a few metres away. Ok for a few nights.
There was a great family run restaurant just down stairs and next door. After visiting the disappointing archway we walked back to our hotel. I was starving so I raced into the restaurant as soon as we got back, while my wife went upstairs to use the toilet.
I ordered something very spicy, and suffered through it. When my wife came down she had the brilliant idea of asking them to put less spice in – she is very clever and practical in that way – which we managed to do in Laotian from Google translate. They deserve a special mention. The family restaurant, not Google, who get enough mentions, and who frankly are destroying the internet by making me scroll through half a dozen sponsored links before I find the information I need. One day even Google will get their comeuppance and an even more powerful internet beast will take them on. I think it’ll have something to do with AI.
And while I’m complaining about the internet, which is a highly appropriate pursuit for someone in their 50s, I’m tired of looking at web pages with all these bloody ads! That is why I refuse to put any ads on my blog, or write anything that will be popular enough to warrant putting ads on. Maybe one day I’ll finish this story, get it published with a good old analogue paper book and whoever is interested can buy it and read it in bed.
But back to Vientiane, my previous subheading not having helped a lot to keep me on track.
In the balmy evening, in Vientiane, far from the internet, we enjoyed a warm Lao beer, with ice in it – which I always find odd, but better than warm beer – at a make-shift alleyway bar where I finally got to sit on one of those seats with the beer holders in the arms! This has been a dream of mine for many years and perhaps one day I’ll get to own one myself!
And that was about it for Vietieane. The next day we headed to the airport to go over to Hanoi.
And now, here in Mexico, before the new year has progressed too much more. I do feel some sense of achievement that I’ve managed to finish this post and the Laos leg of our journey. It makes my 50 years on Earth seem so much more productive.
And with the next post I can start Vietnam, our 3rd country on the 50 year backpacker trip. And finish my knife story.
