Expectations

With four days to go until we have to shed our dirty backpacker skins I am starting to dread having to give a thought to anything that does not involve transport, food and fun. From what I recall there are other things one does have to worry about (haircuts? paying rent?) or maybe one worries about those unnecessarily. I shall find out. 

I am having a hard time not wanting to write up to do lists that would scare the besus out of me. God knows there have been a million issues involving every public and private institution in three countries that we have been blissfully ignoring, unable to get our heart rate up enough to create the kind of care or concern that would possibly induce action. 

What does get my heart rate up however is the thought of how our lives will be once in Singapore, or really, lets be honest, what my life will look like. 

First off, fancy and I will be separated. I don't think him and I have not been sitting directly next to each other for more than maybe four hours (and that is an outlier) in the past three months. I like to think myself an independent person, but I have gotten awfully used to backing every major step (buy green or red dolphin sarong?) with a nod from him. I got used to wasting endless hours sitting by the ocean sipping mango drinks, reading the exact same books, meeting the exact same people, listening to all the same conversations, spending an identical day so that we are pretty much the same person. 

So lets presume I can manage to survive all on my own without developing phobias or anxiety attacks and manage to make my very own decisions about breakfast choices, the next big issue is, what do I do with the rest of the day? I am torn between two conflicting visions of my free-lance Singapore life. 

After spending an amazing day on the beach or on a boat, filled with nothing but happy endorphins I envisions this amazing life of mine as follows: getting up, going for a swim in our luxurious condo (haha! real estate prices are not quite there yet!), making myself that mango lassi, working at home during the noon heat, meeting some lunching lady for well, lunch, with a glass of chilled chardonnay, working a bit more, going for a swim in the afternoon and soon enough the weekend will roll around when we will go to Thailand or Indonesia or Malaysia for beach fun.  On the side I will dapple in photography, building up an impressive fashion-y portfolio that will then make the first part of the day redundant - the work bit, not the mango bit. 

On less optimistic days I wonder why on earth I thought it would be a good idea to move to a city where I know nobody except possibly the girl I was mean to when I lived there during 9th grade (and her two baby sons cause yay I love babies), in order to work at home, give up any contact with colleagues and clients except the odd instance when I will fly out to meet the team in some obscure location in the Middle East, give up any motivation to further my career via being stimulated by being around other people, only to spend weekends on a tropical island that lacks even a decent beach and boasts cocktail prices about the same level as London. 

Which one will it be?

Euphorically 'Narked"

I have finally reached the point where diving is more fun than terrifying and where I am more relaxed and enjoying the underwater waddle than in constant readiness to spring into a panic. Diving IS relaxing but all the tubes flowing around me, the swishing sound of breathing bottled air, the thought of those vital tubes disconnecting or me running out of air or being left behind or last but not least the possibility of an underwater creatures dragging me down into their dark holes has kept my heart rate up until now. 

Yesterday fancy and I completed our advanced open water dive course and in the process I got to love all the things I had anticipated with a bit of fearful dread: deep dives and night dives. Maybe nitrogen narcosis is real at 30m but in any case, I felt completely at ease maybe even a mild bit euphoric as we slowly make our way past colorful fishies gently hanging out sideways in the current and even the thought of encountering shark, in my book a dreaded event but somehow hailed by most divers as the ultimate goal of a dive, no longer freaked me out. And the evil suckers stayed away. Hallelujah. 

I felt so fabulous about the whole thing that I singed up to do it five more times over the next week. Yes, we really did abandon the whole travel thing and decided to stay our last two weeks in one single place, vacationing. The idea of making it to the Andaman side of Thailand has been abandoned due to reports of bad weather but mostly due to our unwillingness to pack and shoulder our bags again. It's pretty perfect right here. 

Full Mooners

She done dancing and she is DONE dancing and dancing done her. 

A little pre-dancing snorkel had done in her sinuses which she then numbed with some chuck a buck whisky bucket, which held her over to admire the highlights of the full moon party: 18 year olds everywhere, 18 year old humping in the water, 18 year olds being dragged out of the water where they passed out while vomiting, 18 year olds climbing up scaffolding that hosted the various sound stages, 18 year olds as far as the eye could see. 

The party was fabulous and grand but if you are not 18 and if you have traveled alone before or lived in Miami or if you have stayed out all night before (like, totally all night without like a curfew) or if you have been to beach parties before, then maybe there is that little part of you that says, this was cool but no, I won't be telling my grandchildren all about it. And actually that is a nice feeling:  this one is now happy to relax on the beach and she won't be crying for more and more and more dancing for a little while.  

The fabulous side effect of our last crazy bash was that now we are friends with everyone from our little island (Koh Tao) who took the boat with us to and from the party - the return journey at 5am deafening affair of Puff Daddy and Madonna. 

Most everyone also took a souvenir back home from Koh Phangan: some guys a black eye, someone a gash on their arm, me and fancy a cold and then there are the numerous multi day hangovers to cure. Now we are sitting first row beach side during the day, commiserating about the toughness of life and at night wander down along the beach visiting the various establishments that offer fire shows and candle lit beach dinners. 

Tomorrow the diving will begin. 

She Will Dance

Full Moon Party, Thailand
Originally uploaded by Brendan H

The past three months I have been living the tragic life of a a Broadway musical lead character. She scrubs the floors, she smiles and bows at her evil step sisters, she works day and night for a fat mean uncle who tries to seduce her, and all that because she always wanted to be a dancer. However, her path is littered with obstacles, reasons why she cannot dance, things she must overcome and disappointments she must learn to accept gracefully.

Maybe a slight exaggeration you say? Hardly. Until now there have been many obstacles cutting short my dancing career.

Sometimes there is no dancing because there is no electricity. Sometimes there is no dancing because there are no people. Sometimes there is no dancing because her beloved husband is nursing a peg leg.
Sometimes there is no dancing because there are curfews, strikes or blackouts.
Sometimes there is no dancing because she showed up too early or too late or not at all.
Sometimes there is no dancing because she is too tired to dance.
Other times there is a little bit of dancing but she still goes home wanting to dance more.

But as the 11th hour nears, she will dance like she has never danced before. She will be danced into the ground by many a pill popping nineteen year old, she will be tired and she will be cursing the dancing, but there will be sand, people, electricity and there will be music. All night. Every night.

Full Moon Party August 2008. Here we come.

No, I will not post a picture of my fists...

"Whatever keeps my skin the purest white" is the slogan of the wealthy woman in Thailand. Luxurious lily whiteness much like the Mom in "Little House on the Prairie" preaches is still all the rage. I suppose with most of the population living in the country side, working manual jobs and with urbanization a relatively new phenomena, whiteness is power, whiteness is luxury, whiteness means you have AC. I am searching the pharmacies in vain for some face cream that does not also have a bleaching agent. People, why do you think I sit and suffer in the scorching sun for? Maybe I should be grateful for the reminder that a leather face is not attractive ever. So given our next permanent residency's proximity to the equator, maybe I should lap up the spf 50+.

As you can tell, our hard core travel has ended and now we are on vacation. We sleep till noon, we plan lunch while we eat breakfast, we shop for fake Rolexes, we nap, we drink, we observe big white guys getting it on with petite Thai girls. We rest a lot. And we are not the only ones.

Sleeping unashamedly in public is a very sanctioned activity in general. This includes sleeping on your desk at work even while visible through the all glass store front from the street, it includes sleeping in a brand new Mercedes in the show room, even if visible from the street, it includes sleeping on the sidewalk on top of all your "same, same, but different" t-shirts you are trying to sell. Sleeping is always ok. As long as it is in the shade. See above.
The city of angels has once again created a wholesomely happy existence for us with none of the perversions and skankiness that we had hoped for readily coming our way. So, thank you Defender74RAB for your creepy request via flickr which I'll ignore but only after sharing it with the world.  Watch yo'self:

Truck Stuck Mud

DSC12130 - Sawngthaew truck stuck in mud (Laos)
Originally uploaded by loupiote (Old Skool)

If you type "truck, stuck, mud" into flickr, the first shots that come up are all from Laos and there is a reason why!

Today we saw a new variation of the truck stuck mud phenomena. Our optimistically named VIP vehicle called King Bus came to a screetching halt about three hours into the journey behind a line of other vehicles which I am estimating represent about half of all vehicles driving around in Laos. In other words, maybe about 15. It turns out we had a double attraction. A giant truck carrying a bulldozer got stuck, which pushed a minivan to try to pass said truck, in turn also getting stuck, balancing near the drop off that begins about 2 feet away from the road and leads down into the rainforest. Nobody was hurt but the clusterfuck of the van and truck were blocking the entire mud bath road. Always clever, the driver of the truck decided to drive the brand spankign new bulldozer off a make shift ramp off his truck to lighten the load. It did not appear that he had ever done such a thing and a took a good hour for him to lift the shovels, play with the engine and work up the courage to go ahead with the plan. With some effort he managed to plunge the bulldozer off the truck, manuever the vehicle through the lake of mud past the truck, attached his own truck and pulled himself out of the mud. In the meantime about 20 people had managed to get the minibus unstuck by vigorously shaking it and simultaniously pushing it away from the drop off that it was hanging out on and within two hours we were back on our merry way to Vang Vien.

I was upset that unlike the way one would expect it in India no little lady had set up a sandwich or curry stand to capitalize off the gauking crowds, tourists and locals alike.

Minus some AC drip in the latter part of the ride and having the dubious honor to sit bitch in the last row on what is known to be a motion sickness inducing road, we have no complaints or accidents to report.

Vang Vien is rich in so called "happy" shakes, "happy" pizzas (and no they don't mean extra pineapple) and other "poppy seed" infused items. Given my big plan for tubing tomorrow I may have to pass. Girl's got to get her priorities straight and I hear Laon jails aren't so hot, or rather they are pretty hot but not so well equipped with food and things like that.

Afternoon Near Death Experience

So, today we decided to set off for some waterfall action and thus we made our way down the main street of Luang Prubang to find the suitable rickshaw driver to take us. He was promptly located and we started off on the 30km drive into the country side. As we were rolling away we were talking about why don't we take rickshaws all the way to Vang Vien, 150km away, a drive that will take another nine hours due to random stoppage and other inexplicable events. After the drive both of us also admitted also thinking in private just how shit it would be to get into an accident with a vehicle like that regardless how fast and freeing the travel may be. Maybe hindsight is always 20:20 or maybe the driver was more crap than the average, leaning hard into the turns and swerving all over the road, giving us a good intuitive idea of what was to come.

Sure enough, 25km into the drive we came upon a vehicle parked on the side of the road. We came a bit closer, and a bit closer, as someone on the back of a glorified pickup one would and we did pay attention to the road and both kept staring at that parked truck coming closer and closer. As we got just to that point where one is close enough to start thinking about swerving out off the way, I saw the driver drop a tissue out of the window of his little cabin and I thought to myself, oh that is littering, bohoo! Three split seconds I had a whole different dilemma on my mind. There was still this pickup truck parked on the road and we were getting closer, definitely now having arrived at the moment where now one has to crank the wheel hard to avoid a nice little crash, an unnerving situation as a passenger. Does the driver dude really not see this truck? It turns out, he does not. He must still be hanging out the window blowing snot or littering or who knows, because we keep going, going, going, straight for it, all of a sudden it's not longer, holy shit, we are getting too close, it's fucking hell, we are crashing right into it and there is nothing we can do in our little metal cage to prevent it. There are bars stopping me from flying straight off the truck and there are bars holding up a rain cover in the middle of the truck and shit, which ones do I hold on to first?

As we slam into the truck, there is that scary second where I think we are going to slip and flip and then the driver wakes up and manuevers us into a ditch, thankfully without a drop off into any major abyss. We come to a halt. A giant piece of metal had come loose from the truck that we hit and cut up the entire side where newly acquired husband is sitting, slicing the seat he was on in half, without cutting him. He too apparently opted to hold on to the middle rail as had I. I only have a mark on my arm where I must have slammed into the railing and newly acquired husband is miraculaously completely uninjured, but both of us and mostly the driver are a mess. Not that anything happened, it's more the realization of how close we came to flipping over and flying out of a truck in a rural, poor, isolated country that has not a single medical facility up to snuff and just how fast fun and games and adventures can turn into a medical disaster. God knows we have ridden on a multitude of unsafe, overloaded vehicles cruising into night and fog without lights or seat belts to comfort one and it has been fun all the way.

With slightly shaky legs we were climbed into a new tuck tuck already loaded high with tourists which drove us to the amazing waterfalls where we wallowed in icy floods slightly shell shocked at how closely we diverted disaster. Our tuck tuck man deserted back to the city to bemoan his scratched and dented up vehicle.

We just had one more beer Laos and booked ourselves on a bus ride to Vang Vien on a VIP bus in hopes that that somehow means an increase in the safety precautions. Funny how it only takes a little jolt to remind one of one's own mortality.

Euro Snobbery

I realize how Americanized I have become when I get angry at the Euro snobbery that in principle I too am guilty of. There is this attitude in Europe, especially the old west (Germany, France, Spain, Italy...) that somehow the European system is a bit superior to the American one. After all, everyone has health care and we are not some money and power hungry capitalist system, letting it's weakest members rot in the gutter while bombing the shit out of the rest of the world.

Of course it is the same people who like to come visit America, bitch about the shitty system, American superficiality and stupidity and lack of worldliness (is it true only 5% of Americans have passport? Is it true Americans can't even find Americn on a map?) but then are too cheap to tip their non-healh insured waiter who has never had the privilege of travel or study abroad while they are trying to split a bill of four coca colas (with endless refills) that allowed them to sit in some cafe for hours thus depriving the creature they pity so much of his income. Apparently it is the Euro view that the state is somehow responsible for taking care of people and they often refuse to take any individual action.

Traveling, there are a lot of beer induced discussions with other travelers about the world system and how things are here and there and everywhere. Interestingly it is usually those nice middle class European kids, who have nice parents, who bough them nice little cars, helped them pay the rent and those who at the age of 28 have never worked a day in their life while studying social sciences and philosophy who complain about the US. If they ever held a job then it's to supplement their drinking or travel budget but at the same time they seem to think that this luxury life of theirs should and could be available to everyone. Sure, that would be nice but they are missing the point: The reason they can have what they have is that other people work for nothing, the reason they can take their nice vacations is because other people are poor. I am not saying that is right or good, but it is hypocrisy to believe one above all that just because one is a socialist at heart. It's the same person who won't pay 1 dollar to that rickshaw guy and who will haggle over 2 cents when buying snacks from the market lady who believes himself or herself a bleeding heart liberal.

Also there is usually an American kid at the table who at 13 or 14 has been put to work in his pop's friend's restaurant or truck rental and not to get himself a boost to his allowance, but in order to pay rent for the family house. This kid is exactly the uninsured poor bastard who did not go to college or enjoy any of the Euro perks. However, he already got street wise, knows how to negotiate with the locals, can communicate even with the language barrier, smiles while crammed into a small overheated minibus with 30 other smelly people and knows to survive on bread and rice without complaining. Also this person has by the age of 20 figured out some business, usually very blue collar and unsexy that involves getting your hands dirty that allows him to travel in his own dime, and surely in 10 years from now that kid will be a huge success while us Euro snobs will still debate the merits of socialism and how unfair the wold is to the poor while we order another cocktail in a poor rural country with the money that the strong Euro and daddy's bank account afforded us.

Maybe we won't. Maybe the Euro snobbery will end soon as there is less and less money to divide up between more and more people who feel entitled to it without pulling their own weight. And of course not everyone in Europe grows up rich, by no means, but more often than not it's the true poverty and scrappyness of those poor uninsured American (and of course also European, Asian etc) bastards that gets them motivated and ultimately successful, uncomplaining of their lot, but instead getting ahead and out of their situation while not loosing their ability to live cheaply and show consideration towards other people who are struggling.

So maybe this middle class Euro snob has learned to appreciate at least one aspect of American culture: the ability to take responsibility of one's own life and the knowledge that life will not be served up on a silver platter. Do I think everyone should enjoy a happy life with free health care and education and throw in some vacations for good measure? I do, I do, but do I think that is in the cards? No. So maybe the greatest thing to learn is not to rely on some ever present nanny state but instead get busy helping more people help themselves instead of propagating that things should be free.

Maybe I am getting excited to get back to work and actually DO something again, not just talk about it. That said, there are some reasons why I am thinking the new freelance situation I had worked out may turn out not to be the golden opportunity I had anticipated but for now I will stick with it. Well, actually for now I am still lazing the day away in pretty Luang Prabang with some river tubing and waterfalling on the agenda for the next few days.

Dien Bien Phu and into the Wild

Last Friday we made our way to Dien Bien Phu, where most notably the French lost Vietnam before the Americans tried a few decades later with the same results. It's a beautiful little town in the hills and rain forest where we promptly got stuck for a day because of our usual lack of planning. We had intended to take a taxi to the border to Laos and then maybe hitch a ride from there. Thankfully we were not able to negotiate the taxi price down enough for our liking which really was a blessing because it turns out there is nothing near that border and even catching a ride with a moto or a truck would have been an unlikely scenario. Instead we wondered around town in our new colorful plastic bag ponchos (the monsoon has really started now) in search of mosquito spray. I have learned that one can buy anything and everything is SE Asia, but the only items to bring from home are a) malarone b) mosquito spray and c) a device to purify water that does not give you silver cloride poisoning.

In the end we found our mosquito spray and booked ourselves a seat on a mini bus that is really more of a cargo truck that was due to leave at 5:30 am the next morning.

In the pouring rain in pitch black country side darkness we hiked to the bus station to be met by the angriest man in Vietnamese history. He ripped up our ticket, threw them on the counter, yelled and stomped around, finally pretty much dragging me onto the bus my my hair and shoving me onto some rice bags that had been piled near and far onto the seats, the floor, the roof and were hanging out the windows. All of this because we were five minutes late. I have never truly appreciated just how much cargo can fit into a minibus and how into physical abuse rural non-gentlemen can be. We were 25 people or so, perching with our knees slung over our shoulders or by our chins on anything and everything large and poky that one might want to transport. Five minutes into the ride, the angry man stopped the bus and we took a one hour break. This pattern set the tone for the rest of the trip. Extreme excitement, shoving, driving off in a hurry and then stopping, sometimes for hours for no discernable reason.

We found our non beaten trek alright. Against the advice we had received in Hanoi, one can cross the border at Dien Bien Phu without getting a prior Laos visa. In my case getting that visa ahead of time was a bit of a mistake because I got it in my German passport because that is cheaper, however I had traveled on my American passport in Vietnam and the border guards did not look kindly upon that situation and tried to convince me to buy a new visa for 37 USD which is what it costs to get the visa at the border. Thankfully the angry bus driver decided to take what turned into a four hour break for a nap at the border and that was enough time to convince the border guys to let me through.

We had picked up a few other felangs (gringos around here) on the way and now our cargo truck machine turned into a party bus - everyone trying to make the best out of the crammed, delayed affair. In the end it took us 12 hours to move a full 88 km. But what fun we had. The countryside is spectacular and the roads are spectacular rivers. More than once did the bus begin to lean dangerously towards the drop off that separated us from the jungly basin below and as the locals started scurrying off the bus, so did we, watching in awe as our overloaded machine balanced along the abyss. Trucks stuck in the mud had to be pushed and pulled out on numerous occasions to let us pass and by the time we arrived in Muang Kua we had made good friends with the now 8 man strong Spanish, British and American posse. Everyone on this group ironically had tried to get away from the masses only to find each other and accordingly everyone was fun, adventurous and took the debacles in good humor.

The last stop on our way to a cold Beer Laos was a precarious river crossing in motorboat that had to go full power upstream to deliver us to our landing point straight across. A small hike along the muddy river bank and we descended up a bamboo latter and voila, clean little huts and cold drinks abound.

Sometimes the best part of traveling really is the travel. I did't see any reason to stay in Muang Kua for very long, but just getting there got us an amazing view of the northern Laos country side, transport system and people. Also we learned to never ever ever set off without a bag full of goodies because it turns out there is nothing, absolutely nothing in terms of a town or a stand or a hut out there in the boonies. At 9:45 the electricity was cut and after some candle light salsa lessons by the Spanish couple we called it quits, killed a few spiders in our hut and went to bed.

The next morning we failed in our negotiation with a boating man to take us down river to Luang Prabang, so we all piled back in a bus, which to everyone's large surprise sort of kept driving most of the time without any four hours stops and the driver seemed to be in very good humor, blasting some awesome Laos pop on repeat. And here we are: back in the land of chocolate croissants and paved roads.

This is how we roll

This is how we roll
Originally uploaded by Christiane B

Over the past two months I have noticed just how wide the beaten path around SE Asia really is. It's a paved highway packed with gap years, summer tourists, pensioners and midlife crisis folks (just like us? Just when does a quarter life crisis turn half life?) trudging contently between Phnom Penh's "breezy balconies" to Battambang's "creamiest shake shop" and onto Saigon's authentic northern Italian corner shop run by the friendly Mr. Z, learning worlds like "local brew" before their hello's and thank you's. It is done by clutching tightly their yellow SE Asia on a shoestring Lonely Planet guide if they are long timers; short timers hold individual LP books having granted one single county enough visiting credit to warrant an entire vacation.

The by-product is that those breezy cafes "meant to linger" or oddly even the "best linoleum covered" hotels with a "backpacker vibe" are always packed while their neighbors with the identical breeze and linoleum stay empty. With many travelers virtually living by "the bible" every time you stumble upon a bible recommended haunt, even if by accident, you see people you first met on a different continent two months earlier. That's actually quite nice. It is also laughable what cattle we are, us independent travelers, too cool for the package tours, we created our own that spans entire continents.

I have been composing a letter to Lonely Planet in my head for a while and it's quit difficult to figure out what to say. It is not so much LP's doing, but rather what people make of it that creates this wide wide beaten path. Ten years ago I did not notice the ghettorization of so called independent travelers. Maybe I was younger and more in need to guidance or maybe there were less LP toting tourists with most students sticking to Paris and Rome for their semester abroad and older people being more of a Frommer's crowd. Now if LP speaks of a quite cave, 2 years after the edition went to print, there is an internet cafe, a hostel , cold beer and a scooter stand where there once was a quiet cave. That is a huge impact of a few written words. The local economy is rallying around the Lonely Planet, creating a right and a wrong way of traveling. The right way to "do"Angkor Wat for example is to rent a rickshaw guy who you will pay 12 dollars for the day. This is what is says in the bible and thus you will not get a ride for cheaper and the thought of doing a half day confuses the rickshaw guy and well, while you may be asked to pay more, in the end, everyone let you negotiate the price back down to 12 dollars. That is the law. Everyone knows that.

The right way to "do" Halong Bay is to go to Hanoi, check into an independent hostel and there book an independent tour which puts you on a boat with every other independent traveler. As we found out, anything else is not sanctioned. It took a nudge and some Vietnamese flash cards from our hotel owner to get a taxi driver to take us to the bus stop in Hanoi, a bribe to the bus driver to Haiphong to take us there and finally a stick figure drawing of a boat and us on it and a nice optitian and his pregnant wife to convince a cabbie in Haiphong to take us to the ferry, where we more or less easily got ourselves a ticket to Cat Ba. There clearly is a gentlemen agreement in effect to protect the local tour agencies, who as we found out are all owned by the same few guys who own the boats.

So we did go alone in the end and it was not difficult just time consuming. I have to admit - the tour would have been better: same price, less time wasted, better food (better than bus stop meat on a bun that is), more time looking out on the bay but the price of course is your independence. You cannot choose when to eat, when to swim, when to sleep, when to pick your nose in peace. So with plenty of time for nose picking we rented a motorcycle and lived out our freedom by cruising around Cat Ba island before, you guessed it, we had to join a tour for a few hours in order to get to see the actual bay area.

So what would my advice to Lonely Plant be. It's hard to give constructive advice because the LP really is a great resource. There is a reason why it's in everyone's backpack. And despite my annoyance at being that wide path cattle I have not thrown it off the highly recommended slow boat on the Mekong Riverbecause I love the quick history and cultural background lessons, I love that it promotes ethical and as much as that is possible sustainable tourism. It is full of valuable advice on medical things, on scams to avoid, on border crossings, cities that boast ATMs and those that don't. I would not want to miss that.

So maybe the answer is to make the path even wider. One option would be to eliminate specific recommendations of anything. Simple pointers and maps where to find bus stations, train stations and cross streets with cheap hotels or restaurants. Maybe in order to force people to choose their own path and find their own unique experience, it could be the setup of a scavenger hunt: Go to the local market located here and talk to three local people in sign language and by pointing and drawing; find out three great things to do in that city, do one of them, then ask other locals for their favorite food, make them write it down for you, go to the river/beach/food part of town and try to find that dish. And so it goes.

Else, maybe recommendations can be made less glowing. It IS nice to have a specific name of a hotel when you arrive in a town at 3 am, tired with your luggage and an upset stomach. Maybe recommendation can be only names and directions without the beautiful adjectives. I am personally very susceptible to a recommendation that sounds like a scene out of a novel involving fruity beverages, breeze, music, specific mention of just how wonderful and cool it is, how authentic the lighting and how one really would miss out by missing out, let alone not experience the "wow, where did the time go" sentiment that the writer himself experienced. Pathetically maybe we do all like to be told what to do, including when and how to loose track of time.