Moment 3
After I got out of the Navy I decided to take an extended amount of time off. I went to South East Asia for three months with no plan, just a return ticket. I traveled through Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Hong Kong, China, Macau and the Philippines. The goal of the trip was to decompress after five regimented years in the Navy and four at the Naval Academy. I wanted to do nothing, have no place I had to be, and no time deadline to be there. I did a lot of lounging around and reading books in addition to some sight seeing.I started in Bangkok, Thailand. I had been to Thailand, Hong Kong and the Philippines while I was in the Navy and wanted to go back. I had a friend who was staying there, so it seemed like a good place to start. My friend was supposed to be returning from a trip to India two weeks before I was to arrive. When I arrived, she was not there. She had a job teaching English, so I would go by her place of work to see if she had appeared yet. I did that for two weeks. She liked India so much that she stayed for an extra month. Meanwhile I was stewing in my anger. Because I was tied to Bangkok, waiting for her to arrive any day, I saw lots of Bangkok and nothing of the rest of the country.
Soon after her return we went to Malaysia together on the train. We wanted to travel cheap, so we got the mid-level accommodations. The lowest level was just a seat, the highest was a bed with air conditioning. The middle level is a bed without the A/C. It was a noisy and sweaty twenty-two hour ride from Bangkok to Penang, Malaysia. From there we went across the Straits of Malacca to Sumatra, Indonesia. We landed in the city of Medan. We found the city to be dirty and ugly. We left as fast as we could. Some fourteen years later the city would be a major base of operations for the tsunami relief. We traveled down the peninsula to the wonderful city of Parapat, which is on lake Toba. From there my friend made her way back to Bangkok. I continued on. I tried to catch the bus on to the next city, but it didn't show up. So, I paid extra to take the tourist bus, figuring that it would be more reliable. It broke down also, but they got us a substitute, a Mitsubishi mini-van. Well, it was a tight squeeze, but we all got in. After fourteen hours of boredom, annoyance and terror we got out at our destination, Bukittinggi. I loved it there, spending nearly a week. From there I took a short bus ride to Padang. I had to wait there a couple of days until there was a seat on a flight to Singapore. From Singapore I took the train to Kuala Lumpur, nearly the center of Peninsular Malaysia. I then took the train back to Penang. By this time I had read a pile of books. I had read more books than I had brought with me. Books are fairly expensive in Southeast Asia. I was fortunate to have found a used book store in Singapore, and I exchanged some books with other travelers in the hostel there.
I decided to get the train car with air conditioning for the trip to Bangkok. As the train was leaving the station I finished the book I was currently reading, "Two Years Before The Mast: And Twenty-Four Years After." In the "And Twenty-Four Years After" part of the book the author (Richard Henry Dana) recounts his trip around the world, during which he visited the grave of his shipmate in Penang, Malaysia. "Damn!" I screamed in my head. I had just spent many days in Penang and could have visited the grave also, but now it was too late. As you can probably imagine, I really connected with the book. I will go back to Penang some day and will visit the grave.
Map showing trip
route