So THIS is why I left Kauai

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They say pain creates growth and I suppose it's way more fun to read about misadventures than someones travelogue containing menu items and the great deals obtained after bargaining for fake Rolexes. Haven't written in a few days because of the latter. Visiting Kuala Lumpur was a highlight (as was the jungle at Taman Negara) of the journey. My first visit to a big Asian city and I loved it. I could write about all the food, the shopping and the great people, but refer to the above sentence and visit/experience this great, hot, humid, teeming, chaotic, stinky, crazy beautiful city on your own (you can see why I didn't go into sales professionally, but trust me KL is amazing). The Petronas Towers...maybeee the most beautiful buildings (OK modern buildings) in the world. "Used to be the tallest buildings in the world" doesn't sound as impressive as "the tallest" but they are stunning none the less. Apparently each tower was built by a different contractor racing to finish first for a completion bonus (which begs the questions concerning quality control) but while standing at the base gawking for hours nothing appeared to fall off. They do look like they tilt a bit inwards but that is just an optical illusion of scale...it's hard to wrap your head around just how big they really are.
I didn't even ride my bike to KL as I decided to take a bus from Jerantut. In a city where even walking is a negotiation of hawker stalls, chestnut roasters, mysterious but brightly colored icey drink containers, mopeds, the ubiquitous junk on the street, and oh yeah millions of people, I knew I had made the right call to travel at the speed of light... or 80km/hr after riding a bike for 3 1/2 weeks. It's been a week now without cycling: the crotch rot healed, no aching muscles, butt back to normal...so what then is blog worthy? What can I write about? Oh I know... the ways I create my own misery even when misery doesn't exist... like this:
Walking down a misty humid jungle path alone in the worlds oldest rain forest with the sounds of strange bird calls and far-off monkeys I was noticed the trail under foot wriggling. Upon further inspection I saw that the movement came from leeches...a lot of leeches, sticking their pointy ends up in the air. When they triangulated just where I was standing, through smell or my body temperature or ground vibration I know not, they began inch worming (LEECHES INCHWORM!) toward my sandles...my open toed sandles. If I sound like a girl here (and I wish I did because all the women I met had the telltale bites on their legs...tic-tac sized circular and hickey colored marks...yet they seemed not bothered in the least...saying things like "leeches just fall off after 20 minutes or so when they are full of blood) it's because I have a phobia of leeches. Not too irrational really and I think most people would give me a lot of lattitude here. But my thoughts, in the midst of this walk, weren't just that there were a few leeches on the path and that I might get bit once or twice. My thoughts were more like "LLEEEEEECHES!!!" All I could think about was leeches. All I could see was leeches or twigs that looked like leeches or leaves that looked like leeches. Momories of Humphry bogart and Kathryn Hepburn from African Queen pulling huge leeches off of each other came to mind. I no longer was in a beautiful rain forest but in a hell of my own creation. There weren't that many leeches after all and big deal if you get bit. But I wasn't thinking that at the time and really that is the point of this blog entry. Suddenly, I hated being there and left the trail after a short distance and returned to the river side park headquarters.
Later that night I was lying in bed and heard a rat chewing through the wall about a foot from my head. As I began to grab my earplugs, I started hating this trip and the experience I was having. I lie there in a misery of hatred. Hatred of rats, leeches, filth, humidity, humanity and ultimately of myself. I mean what a pathetic person I had become as I realized that I spend most of my time hating whatever it is I'm doing and wherever I am. Whether at work or in traffic or in a remote jungle in a remote corner of the world. Whether cycling or not cycling it didn't seem to matter and I understood more deeply than ever how much energy I waste trying to hide from the present experience and dream of the future or past. A deep sadness hit as I thought of the many amazing experiences I've had and the amazing people I've been around. Sad because I didn't really even have those experiences or really know those people as I wasn't present to them...I was always thinking of the next moment or the next thing.
I stopped reaching for my ear plugs at that moment and really listened to the rat. I stopped running from the unpleasant and just experienced that moment. It really wasn't that bad after all. A bit of gnawing here and a bit of chewing there really. So I relaxed into it and after a while fell asleep with a greater understanding of James. I understand more now why I have a constant low grade toothache desire for something else... always something else. What I want is unattainable...I want the next moment when all I have is this one.