Hello from a lovely little library in Tenerife! I’ve settled into one of my classic lazy periods so it’s feeling like pulling teeth to sit down and write this, which is all the more reason to knuckle down (I had a moment of doubt about this phrase and googled it—turns out both knuckle and buckle are valid?) and get this update out, hopefully kickstarting myself back into action more generally.

We left off a few days before my Agung hike and I have good news team—we did it! I got picked up at 10:30pm to drive over to the temple that I was going to start hiking from. We started around midnight, with the idea being to be at the summit for sunrise. I didn’t have exact details on the hike but had heard somewhat variable accounts—several people told me how incredibly hard it was, while a friend who’s spent a lot of time in the mountains said it was pretty whatever, and would only take a few hours to get up. I didn’t want to be the cocky idiot who says he can go fast and then misses the sunrise, but on the other hand I didn’t really want to sit in the cold windy darkness at the top for a few hours waiting for the sunrise.

The midnight start turned out, unsurprisingly, to be a lowest common denominator approach to the wide variety of people who sign up for this hike. The approach was to hike slowly, with several groups, and take extremely frequent breaks, where the guides would pull out their phones and scroll through tiktok or whatever. This was not exactly the experience I was hoping for, so after the second stop in the span of 45 minutes I asked my guide if we could just keep going and hike at my rhythm. She seemed mildly annoyed but eventually assented, and then was off like a shot. This turned out to be perfect—I hiked alone and at my own pace, but with a light off in the distance making sure I wouldn’t stray off track.

The trail is very short, less than 4.5km, but quite steep throughout. You pretty quickly get up above the treeline, and as you get closer to the top there is more and more loose rock/scree to clamber through. We had been hiking steadily for a few hours with one nice break, and I was just looking at my watch, thinking that it was about time for another break, when my guide said “OK, we’re here”. “Here” was a little indentation in the mountain face where we would make a campfire and make ourselves as comfortable as possible on the jagged volcanic rocks to wait for the sunrise. It was 3:50am—sunrise was at 6am.

Not ideal! I didn’t have a thermometer but it was cold as hell up there, with howling wind. The campfire did its best but there wasn’t really a good balance to be found of warmth vs smoke inhalation, so I mostly just sat there, cramped and freezing, for a good hour. The other groups then made it up and there was a bit more conversation and some breakfast, though there was also less room to stretch my legs out by the time there were 6 of us crowded around this tiny campfire.

Finally, a bit after 5:30am, we roused ourselves for the last ten minute push to be at the summit for sunrise. This was absolutely spectacular. The summit is actually several hundred meters above the crater, and as the dawn rose it was a positively dizzying sight looking over the edge to the crater below, with a small vent smoking away on one side of it. There was a small band of haze on the horizon, and it was beautiful seeing the blood red sun slowly peek out. Not only that but Mt Rinjani, the towering volcano on the neighboring island of Lombok, stuck its head out of the clouds next to the rising sun. Vibes at the top were great—there were a fair few people but it wasn’t overly crowded, and everyone shared that peculiar giddiness you get from lack of sleep, a long hike, and a truly awe-inspiring view.

And then it was time to head down. Several people had cautioned me that the way down was actually harder, as it was easy to slip in all the loose rocks, and it was murder on your knees. I certainly found it to be a brutal quad workout, but luckily not much worse than that, though I did slip and catch myself plenty of times. My guide seemed quite eager to get down and presumably get some sleep before her next climb, judging by the fact that once we got down around the tree line she started running most of the sections. I, being a good little boy, followed suit for a long while before finally realizing “What the hell am I doing? This is making it way harder for me and not only am I not in a rush but this is actually the exact opposite of what I’d like, which is to take my time and savor this beautiful landscape.” Unfortunately it took me a while to get to this realization, but I still managed to savor a bit of the descent.

That was pretty much it for big news out of Bali. I have to give myself a pat on the back for how well I managed my last weeks. I started getting rid of things early, started saying goodbyes early, and ultimately managed to get everything done with truly the minimum possible amount of stress. A whole new Phil? Only time will tell…

And then, Paris! I got to Paris in absolutely fine form considering I had an overnight in the Kuala Lumpur airport and three flights total. My welcome to Parisian life took place right at the airport—while I was waiting for a taxi a couple of the drivers got into a full on, strip off my t-shirt, let’s take it outside (they were already outside) fight. I didn’t follow what sparked it but evidently it was some friction between a driver in the official taxis line and another driver trying to intercept people and get them into his taxi instead. I let out a desperate chuckle when the official driver yelled “I’m calling the cops, we’re shutting this whole thing down!”. Always funny to be reminded of the Parisian worker’s pride and willingness to shut things down at the slightest provocation, but also after thirty hours of travel and no sleep I was really hoping to get a taxi. Luckily the line kept moving while he stayed at the front waiting for the cops.

My week in Paris was just exactly what the doctor ordered. My family in Paris are my mom’s cousins and their various children and grandchildren. As you can imagine we haven’t had the occasion to spend a huuuuge amount of time together over the years. But being with them was a great reminder of the impact of shared culture and being around your kinds of people. After years in Bali feeling out of place and struggling, in particular, to connect and joke around with people, my time in Paris was a balm for the soul. Lots and lots of laughs, truly insane quantities of delicious food (the bread! the cheese! the fruit!), and just generally feeling wrapped up in love, was absolutely perfect. My mom’s cousins split the burden of housing me so that I got to spend quality time with both, and I managed to fit in 4 meals with different combinations of family members, so that I was really able to get in some great chats with everybody. I was also lucky enough to be there for the Wednesday afternoon tradition of picking up the grandkids from school and eating/playing with them/hectoring them to do their homework, which was lots of fun.

Besides family time I also took the chance to go visit a couple of important sites from my Parisian childhood. One was the school I used to attend which, I have to admit, I didn’t even really recognize, hidden as it was behind a wall and with its new modern building attached. I did, however, recognize the bistro I used to meet my mom at for lunch during my terrible second grade year with the meanest teacher in the world. The other place I visited was the Racing Club, the incredibly fancy country club in the middle of the Bois de Boulogne where I used to go for tennis lessons with the French Tennis Federation. I couldn’t get inside but just peeking in the entrance at the big clubhouse building brought some memories back.

I spent a fair amount of my time in Paris musing about memory. We moved there when I was two and left a month before my ninth birthday. This is obviously old enough for me to have strong memories of it, but also a good long time ago. I can’t remember (hah) if I’ve talked about my aphantasia on here before (if not I highly recommend looking that up, or asking me about it), but one of the effects is that I think my autobiographical memories fade a lot faster/more profoundly than most people’s. The experience in Paris was interesting in this regard—there were very few things that I really specifically recognized, but Paris has a very distinct visual feel, and being there gave me a surprisingly visceral generalized reminder of the really happy, uncomplicated part of my childhood before friggin Milwaukee and my parents’ divorce made things more difficult. Impossible to say how much of this was really memory, as opposed to a general feeling of well-being at moving on from Bali and catching up with family, but either way it was a lovely time.

And now I’m here in Tenerife! The week in Paris flew by, the trip down to Tenerife was smooth and easy, and today marks one week since I got here. I moved straight into a shared apartment with a guy who I turned out to get along with really well—a world traveling Argentinean who’s also a freediving instructor. I also had a contact for another freediver, a friend of a friend who’d already helped me out a ton answering questions about Tenerife and even went to check out my apartment in person to make sure it wasn’t a scam. It was great getting to know these guys, but unfortunately they’ve now both left the island for the duration of my time here, so it’s back to square one. I also came down with a cold a few days ago so have been laying low, but I’m now on the upswing and in a couple of days will be ready to take on the world!

My place is in a cute little vacation/retirement-y town, right across the street from the ocean. There’s a nice promenade where I’ve already started taking lots of walks, and I’m excited to finally start jogging again after a several year hiatus. It is a very small town here though, so I’m also really stoked to get out exploring other parts of the island. Tenerife has a huge volcano in the middle of it and many distinct microclimates, depending on the altitude and whether you’re in the rain shadow. I’m on the desert side, where it seems to be hot and sunny pretty much every day—a nice reminder of the good ole days in southern California. In another couple of days I’m going to get out and visit the freediving school here, and then just start taking the bus to random other parts of the island to see what’s up and hopefully take advantage of some of the many hiking trails. So stay tuned!

Forgive me, dear reader, for the glib title of this post. Titles are hard, and for some reason my mind always goes to alliteration. You’ll also have to forgive me if there are a few unnecessary flourishes throughout this one (like the “dear reader” above, eye roll)—I’ve been reading a lot of Sherlock Holmes recently, and I find that whatever I’m reading tends to creep into my writing voice.

Anyway, we’re here to talk about Chiang Mai. Chiang Mai is a lovely city in the north of Thailand, with a perfectly square old city surrounded by a moat and some remnants of ancient walls at its center. The old city is the focus of the tourist action, with more modern sprawl expanding outside it, and the whole thing is surrounded by lush green mountains. My plan was not to have too much of a plan, just to show up, eat lots of good food, partake in the devil’s lettuce (legal in Thailand, in stark contrast to Indonesia), stroll around, and see some national parks. And that’s what I did!

One surprising thing about Chiang Mai is that jazz clubs are something of A Thing there. I had no idea about this, but by pure chance the first place I stayed was right across the moat from one of the better ones. My very first night I was strolling around after dinner and came across a big crowd spilling out onto the sidewalk. I went to see what the fuss was about and found myself captivated by a rollicking jazz band. I’m by no means a jazz aficionado, but watching live was really fun. I found that I could concentrate better on the separate parts the musicians were playing and their impressive improvisation when I could watch them, and the whole atmosphere enhanced the experience. I also got a firsthand appreciation for the term “jazz cigarette”—it truly is a match made in heaven. I ended up coming back five or six times throughout the trip. My opinion of the different bands varied, and I found I wasn’t as into the ones that were more straight rock, but luckily I ended on a high note, seeing my favorite band of the lot on the last night I went.

The quality of the food in Chiang Mai, on the other hand, was no surprise at all. The food in Thailand is generally excellent across the board, with delicious and varied cuisine but also just really tasty fruits and vegetables. On top of that, Chiang Mai and the north of Thailand are famous for their regional cuisine, with Khao Soi, a noodle soup/curry situation (I was too lazy to actually look it up, forgive my blasphemous description Khao Soi purists) as the star attraction. There is also a lot of Chinese influence, and Chinese Thai cuisine can be found everywhere. I gorged myself on Khao Soi, stewed pork leg (!!), roti (!!), fish ball noodle soup, congee, skewers, pad see ewe, fresh fruit smoothies, and of course mango sticky rice. Heavenly. I also took advantage of the highly developed cafe culture and drank lots and lots of coffee.

Chiang Mai (and all of Thailand) is also famous for its Buddhist temples. They are absolutely all over the place, with impressive high roofs, golden buddhas of all sizes, and generally all kinds of colorful and glittery decorations. I wandered into a few but, without meaning any disrespect, if you’re not there to pray they all start to look quite similar after a while.

I had hoped to find some art galleries or museums like I had in Yogyakarta but I didn’t end up having much luck there. So the first week mostly consisted of me packing up my waterproof backpack and just heading out to wander around. The weather confined most of my wandering to the mornings—when the sun was out it was hot hot hot and, since it was rainy season, pretty much every afternoon featured an hour or three of steady rain if not torrential downpour.

My first national park venture was to Doi Suthep, which actually abuts the western edge of the city, just a short ride away perched looming on the back of some poor Thai’s scooter. The main attraction in Doi Suthep is the huge temple complex on top, and as seems to be common enough in Thailand, there’s a road right to the top and the temple is surrounded by a whole neighborhood of restaurants and souvenir vendors. It’s a slightly different national park vibe from what I prefer, but hey, these are the joys of travel and discovery. Luckily Doi Suthep does actually have a hiking trail you can take, climbing up through the woods, called the Monk’s Trail. This was the only real hike I got to do on this trip, and it was an absolute delight! As far as the temple on top, the standout feature for me (besides the views) was the jade buddhas. I hadn’t seen these before and thought they were quite beautiful, with their deep green skin wrapped in shiny gold or silver clothes.

By this point I was ready to hit the road. Northern Thailand is famous for moto tourism—there are a couple of loops that wind through mountains and rice fields which absolutely teem with tourists during the dry season. This, though, was the rainy season, and driving a scooter around in the rain is a lot less fun, not to mention safe, than in the dry. I hemmed and hawed and in the end got some good waterproofing for my bags, made sure my bike had good brakes and tires, and went for it. My destination was Doi Inthanon National Park, about two hours southwest of Chiang Mai, whose claim to fame is Doi Inthanon, the tallest mountain in Thailand.

In spite of the rain the drive was a breeze—the roads in Thailand are in decidedly better shape than in Indonesia (one of several manifestations of the fact that Thailand is noticeably more developed than Indonesia, which I found interesting), which you really feel on a scooter. The plan was to spend a few nights at a cute little place in the national park which I could use as a base of exploration. Unfortunately Doi Inthanon doesn’t really seem to have hikes in the way that I think of them. There are one or two few hour long walks where you have to hire a guide, the most famous of which is closed for the rainy season. The summit is, once again, accessible by road, and this time there is no monk’s trail option, just a short boardwalk loop near the top. This was still cool—it’s a cloud forest up there, and strolling through the fog in a forest covered with moss and lichen is dreamily beautiful. Besides that I also went to check out a few of the many waterfalls in the area, which gave me the chance to scramble around some trails, if briefly.

After my short trip to the summit I took the scooter and just went driving. This immediately made it clear to me why moto touring is such a big thing there. It is, to put it simply, stunning. The roads wind up through jungle covered mountains, with occasional breaks in the cover affording sweeping views across the landscape. You might turn a corner and suddenly see the vista change from dense forest to beautiful fields of rice, corn, and all kinds of other crops I couldn’t name. You can pull over at a little shack on a ridge and pay two bucks to slurp up some noodle soup with a view to infinity, then get back on the road and find yourself plunging down into a valley, with the thermometer climbing crazily to mark your descent. The few hours I spent just driving around, capped by a stop at a market for northern thai pork sausage, chicken skewers, persimmons, and longan, was easily the best part of my trip to the park.

Inspired by the previous day’s driving, I decided to take the very scenic way back to Chiang Mai, looping hugely out of the way and just soaking up the scenery (and the rain). This was a fantastic decision. I also tacked on a last minute visit to another national park (there are bushels of national parks in northern Thailand, all right next to each other, delimited and organized according to a system I cannot begin to fathom), Ob Khan. This park is smaller and much less visited, with the main attraction being a beautiful gorge of multicolored stone reaching some 20+ meters tall at points. Through some combination of the day’s scenic drive, the near-total emptiness of this park, the chance to scramble around some rocks, and the picturesque river winding down from the mountains and through the gorge, this was the happiest I was on the whole trip. Delightful!

The trip wrapped up with an uneventful last week back in the city. I hung out and went to the jazz club with a friend from Amed, and went almost every day to a cafe with an astonishingly beautiful jungle garden, waterfall included. And of course I gorged myself on tasty food.

Since I lugged my camera all the way to Thailand and hadn’t used it a single time, I also decided to take an afternoon strolling around taking Artsy Photos, so you’ll have to indulge me below. The ones with my reflection are an homage to Vivian Maier, whom I cannot recommend highly enough.

And then it was time to head back! I’ve been back in Amed for a week now, picking up my hiking and swimming, and slowly building up the mental energy to actually start getting rid of things and packing up. I have to say, I’m planning to try to get rid of a ton of stuff here before I go, and I could not be more excited. At this point I’ve got probably over 70kg/150lb of luggage spread between two ludicrously large duffel bags and my backpack. I don’t want to go too Fight Club Boy Philosopher here, but when I think about the things I want to do (get around Paris, bounce between different areas of Tenerife, fly all over the US visiting all my loved ones), I can viscerally feel all that Stuff weighing me down. It is going to feel so good to shed some crap.

So there we are. I’ve got two more weeks here in Amed before this chapter comes to a close. The main thing I want to do before I go is to finally climb Mt Agung, the towering volcano that looms over Bali. I just set things up to climb it this weekend, so wish me luck. Besides that it’ll just be a blur of packing and goodbyes and then on to the next stop, a week of catching up with family and stuffing my face in Paris, which I’m very excited for. After that I’ll have 5 weeks in Tenerife to see what I think and then I’ll head back to visit the US and catch up with everyone after two years (!!) away.