Living traveling, Tripluca.com

Bangkok, July 5, 2007
Asia is an illusion. The mysteries of Asia do not exist. These are just a set of rules invented by the tourism desk ASEAN (the European Union Asian) to create a halo of reverence around some old traditions that do not exist, and thus increase the visitors and their hard cash .
I discovered the other day in a Song Theaw (mini bus) in Laos.
The Lonely Planet you have read it. Although second-hand twenty Euri did you spent. Right?
What was Thailand, Laos, Burma or any Buddhist country even slightly, you will definitely informed of the various taboos, and among all, the immense feet.
The Buddhists have a problem with your feet.
If they could go about in a wheelchair but not to get these lousy feet.
There can not do anything with these foul ends.
We have a woman as a symbol of devilry, thanks to the profound teachings of the Church, they have feet.
We with women at least we make love, with their feet do not you do anything.
One of the taboos of 745 feet is as follows: never, and I say, ever, point them towards someone. And 'the Asian equivalent of the Buddhist-raised middle finger. A nice fuck with a capital T, a more explicit document on stamped paper.
If you sit your ass put them behind, hide for love that I feel like throwing up.
Turning to Laos also occasionally you find yourself in front of a poster for the comic to the barbarians of foreigners, which tells you the "Do and Don'ts in Laos", ie things to do and things to do, beast of Western you are.
The largest sticker covers the feet. There is this stranger, blond and arrogant, who puts his feet up on a chair and pointing them to the Laotians fleeing in horror and cry affront.
The speech bubble says "Never, never point your feet towards someone, the feet are the lower body and the gesture is highly offensive."
Ok, thanks, I hear him say is that years, and now even my feet have become uncomfortable that I carry an object reluctantly below. I also have hairy legs, which does not help.
I often look like a monkey and I know I feel inadequate, belonging to an inferior race that has not yet completed and the evolution of primate hair relic of the past.

A Danish newspaper recently published the cartoons of a Buddha with big feet and all the Danes were killed in Burma.
These Danes are just fucked up.

All this prologue to make people understand that the problem here is not the GDP or inflation.
I am going around quest'Asia also mysterious with the pride of the veteran, a quasi Terzani, convinced that he has assimilated some Astatic, ie have internalized at least a small part of this mystery. Therefore partly to share this view of life from which you Europeans and tourists a few weeks you are hopelessly excluded. And I enjoy.
I climb into a cosiì Song Theaw in Laos, only westerner in the middle, and I'm going to Champusak with Lek, Lek and starts talking with a lady and another listen and I feel at one with Asia, this continent that's always a glass between you and him, and I feel for a moment to be on the other side of the glass and look out and breathe the air of Laos and tell myself that I finally started to understand it, quest'Asia, and to be accepted.
Then I turn inward and everything falls. All.
This fucking old lady, no doubt Laotian so without apology, has supported the foot on the bag of rice in front of me and them to me is pointing at him.
I am amazed. He has not read the Lonely Planet. Maybe he hates me? Maybe I did something wrong? Trembling I turn to Lek and I see the outrage.
She looks at the old lady, do not bat an eyelid and said:
- "Ok, do not worry, it's old and can".
The exception to the rule. And 'around since 2000 and did not know. The old men, with their joints out of warranty, they can put their feet as they wish.
I'm frustrated. Once again I thought I knew and did not know. I feel the glass, cold, inexorable rise between me and all of them, and are again alone, without friends or comfort.
I look at the foot of the old. Of land are dirty and seem to laugh at me. I take the mp3, I close my eyes and I start singing Manu Chao "and hambre comes and goes though the shadows, since maximum Razon."
That's nice, but clear, simple.

Pakse, June 29, 2007,
It's raining here in the coffee lands of Laos.
I'm sitting on the bed of the guest house at 3 Euros and breathe the smoke of wood fires burning beneath the blackened pots (from the smoke of the fire) on the side of the matriarch. The door is open and I see the garden.
Mighty and present, feel the flow of Sedong the house.
There is a terrace nearby, where you can sit and watch the Sedong, this river to the cafe au lait, slow and wide, which passes over a bridge and the bridge, which run every time the orange-robed monks.
I never go on that terrace. Why? Perhaps because of my eyes.
Ie are slightly short-sighted and wide open spaces I always leave with a sense of incomplete and inaccurate.
I look and I do not see well, the details escape me and I feel inadequate to grasp the immensity of the immense sedong therefore seems to me like a river unlucky enough to see the color brown, and even if they spend a couple of monks already imagine them with my phone and a Playboy magazine hidden under his tunic.
In other words, no poetry.
Then I put on my glasses, and suddenly everything is too precise, my gaze lingers on the details, like butterflies-pound bag or a plastic float that first seemed like a great white lotus flower. Still less poetry.
This happens to me everywhere: on the seven apostles in Australia, to Machu Picchu in Peru, the Perito Moreno glacier in Patagonia and the new square in Martock.
And 'as if being at the center of energy is not allowed me to overtake.
Then he pulls a little more. I pretend to be looking for a laptop wireless signal in the most suitable (one day I will give a Nobel Prize for these metaphors) and usually am always a little outside the center.
Where?
The Seven Apostles, down to the beach, watching a surfer in the waves, a couple of apostles, without looking sti Azzo of apostles, but knowing that there are.
At Machu Picchu, making a movie idiot and killing a virgin for a while popularizing a religious place, then grasp, but clearly for a moment, spirituality leave.
The Perito Moreno Glacier, going and hearing the sound of ice falling behind me while I go down the path. Immense.
The Eiffel Tower (it was not in the list above, but it has come to mind right now), when walking through the neighborhood, I see by chance between the buildings and I take full grandeur.
At Martock. Never.

And here, from this room, I feel the Sedong flow, without seeing it, however, distinctly perceiving it, day and night.
It 'nice to have a river below the house.

This report was sponsored by Dao Coffee which has provided me the inspiration needed to caffeine.

Savannaketh, June 24, 2007
Yesterday afternoon we returned to the main street of Savannaketh.
We went, of course, to the Internet.
A Savannaketh there is little or nothing to see, and a few dilapidated building legacy of French colonial past, a square empty and benches, and a Catholic church today, probably used for satanic rituals or oven for baguettes.
So we went to the internet walking along the Champs Elysées these Laotians who have nothing to offer but a few shops of clothes imported from China, small restaurants, a lot of photocopying shops (!), A couple of internet cafes and bakeries.
We had seen the version of "daily", about two o'clock in the afternoon, warm, sleeping, and abandoned as a small village Venezuelan border.
Then we had courses in the evening, with the fresh air, the shops open, the lights, the people that came out of hibernation in the afternoon to devote to the most diverse activities: toast the baguette, selling fruit, playing in the street and dart scooter.
But it's yesterday afternoon, to the cinq de la tarde (5 pm), I have communicated the divine message.
I had the classic "joiyciana epiphany" moment of awareness that is above average, which allows you to see things with greater clarity.
And 'an intense feeling that makes you a promise that in other words would sound more or less like a "do not worry, it's all here, look ....".
And you, for 5 seconds, watch and see. Then the curtain closes and returns to the fog.
Now before you accuse me of wanting to start a new religion and make money with adsense clicks on the ads on the site www.tripreligion.org, think again and see what happens to you. There are moments, and we tend to forget in a hurry, but they are quite common.
In reality we live in varying states of consciousness. Buii oscillate from moments, those in which we do not know exactly what we are doing to the more clear when we take the purpose of our actions and our choices (or we realize that the purpose is missing).
And in the midst of everyday life, but there is the greatest enemy, when we act like automatons, without asking questions, but simply following a pattern.
Watch out, this applies to everyone, not just for those who have a regular life but also for travelers, criminals and heroes. Simply enter their routines.

But what I saw yesterday in my flash?
The sky was tinged with red (in obvious ode to the socialist government of the people) and people started to look out to the street.
Lek and I left the side street to enter the main one (you have to imagine everything as in a movie in slow motion).
My eye has covered all the way through to the end, then taking the full picture of what could be a painting entitled "glimpses of life in Laos."
Then, the feeling. It 'hard to explain in words. I could probably say that I understood what draws us in Laos.
Here, in this border town, desperately trying to promote as a crumbling colonial architecture of the houses on the one hand, and become rich and other consumer such as Thailand, I tried something like envy.
Do you remember when you were 15 years, taken from the whirlwind of emotions involved in the transition to adolescence, in full hormonal storm, desperate to understand what you were becoming frightened of the future, unable to handle this ... and you were playing in front of children ?
Did you hear that cry in you: "cazzooo, I want to go baby! Do not take it anymore! ". Nostalgic of a recent past, the most simple and innocent?
Here, perhaps, is this.
I saw the Laotians, yet simple, that want to grow and become like other modern countries, but do not know what it is, it must pass through many sufferings and then maybe want to go back, it will be too late, as it is for us .

And seeing them, I could also see us in Europe. We can not go back. We can not go this way. And we are in crisis.
We are looking for a breakthrough, but it does not exist. We've tried everything.
Yet I believe we are closer to the solution of any people "backward," because we've already tried everything.
You do not need revolutions, we must find a new balance.
With Laos, now I can become Prime Minister and bring Italy in the 4 millennium.