Beyond Melancholy Hill

Tags

all we have is now, BE HERE NOW!, Burnout, corona vaccine, Cosmic ordering, depression, gratitude, love, love what you have, make do and mend, marriage, melancholy hill, mental health, mindfulness, Narrowboat, narrowboat life, second hand, the present moment, values, Vegan, Voluntary simplicity, want what you need, Work, writing

On repeat every day

This morning John got up before me and fed the cats and lit the fire and made me a cup of tea, having first gone outside into the engine room to get another box of cat food,* and to the store bin outside to get kindling whilst I dozed in bed. As well as our new-to-us sofa- which even reclines!- we have at last bought a comfortable mattress, having been using a futon mattress ever since we moved onto the boat. After a year of the mattresses of low-budget accommodation of India and Southeast Asia it actually felt comfortable but over recent weeks it has become unbearable. This one is a Silentnight with integral topper, firm yet comfortable, and only slightly hangs off the edge- its 4’ a small double but too thick to fit under the lip in the wall like the futon did, bought from Gumtree for £50, second hand but apparently new. John says this might give him a few more good years!

I got up and we wrote out Christmas cards- just a few to elderly relatives and the kids- and walked to the village shop to post them. John filled up the water while I washed the dishes using the ‘emergency’ five litre bottle we keep in the kitchen. Then he went to work for a late shift- 2pm-10pm- and I did the washing in the twin tub and lit the fire, and settled down to write this. My plan for the rest of the afternoon/evening is to eat Marmite on toast, watch Ashes to Ashes (Season 2-3), eat stollen, perhaps cook something,** and watch more Ashes to Ashes.

I’ve been working hard on reaching an accommodation and acceptance of my current circumstances- I know this is ridiculous, since I live a life that so many people would dream of, but it’s part of my makeup to be striving, pushing; pushing against my natural state of melancholy. Looking to the future and the next big thing, or hoping that one day it will all work out. I’ll get a publishing deal, come into money when all along my life is as it is and I’m missing the moment. Being so focussed on creativity can be just another way to push away the present moment rather than accepting it and then hopefully enjoying its richness. Also from a practical point of view I get a lot of RSI so it’s really good for me to have a typing break when I can.

So I guess this is a kind of gratitude list: my husband John, my anchor and my guide.

There’s so much to be grateful for in terms of us sharing the same outlook that I forget that so many people can’t even find (as they are so rare) a vegan boyfriend or husband. I wouldn’t dream of being with someone who wasn’t vegan, and bearing in mind we only know about three vegans I’d probably be lonely. Above all, I am consistently accepted for and as myself, with absolutely no expectation or pressure to be anything but, even though I’m always changing.

John and The boat & The cats= Home and the perfect home and lifestyle for me

My job/financial circumstances. I qualified as an occupational therapist in 2000, naturally rising up to become Head Occupational Therapist at a secure service from October 2010- February 2018. That job was so involved and me being me that by the end I was pretty burned out. We went travelling March 2018- March 2019. March 2019-July 2019 back in the UK and in a state of shock and finding it hard to imagine ever working again. July 2019 we both started working as Bank (meaning you can pick and choose when to work) Health Care Workers. December 2019 I stopped, feeling the work was too physically demanding. I went to India December 2019- February 2020.

On return I took a deep breath and signed up to an agency to get Occupational Therapy work, which involved making an introductory video interview and going for mandatory training. A job would have probably involved full time work and up to an hour’s commute each way. The night before the training I said out loud, ‘I don’t want to do it, somebody please save me!’ An email from the occupational therapist at the place where I’d done the healthcare job came through saying there’s a three day a week occupational therapy job if you are interested. Although it’s a bit out of my comfort zone as it’s not the clinical area that I’m really confident in, it is fifteen minutes up the road, the people are all really nice, and working at a lower level and only three days means I have enough time and energy to try and build an alternative career- ghostwriting and editing via Upwork and of course editing and pitching my own book.

Agency work, either full time or at a higher level, or both, is still an option, and might be a good idea at some point- we could be here in the UK earning as much money as possible for six months, and in Italy/India/Phnom Penh for the other six months. But for now, whilst we 1. Can’t go anywhere and 2. I want to try and build an alternative career, this is ideal. If I did a job like I did before, with a commute, all my energy would be taken with that. Plus I am a real homebody, and rather lazy, and enjoy nothing more than sleeping in and hanging about on the boat with the cats and the swans.

I’m getting the Corona vaccine tomorrow – as a worker in a care home I am in the first batch, everyone at my work got a link sent to us through which we can book in at the local hospital. So that’s our fun activity for our date day- Fridays are the day John and I always have off together. In January we’re getting eyetests! (not been done since just before we went travelling- I still have my reading glasses and their bright pink/orange case which went everywhere and never got lost, its catch long broken but held closed with a hair elastic…) And I’ve got a £25 M&S voucher from work as a Christmas present as well so I could also go and spend that on yummy Christmas food. Or perhaps a dressing gown. I’m not being sarcastic when I say that truly, my cup runneth over.***

Modest/tentative plans for next year

Focus on eBay and selling the India stuff we bought in Pushkar- a narrowboat really isn’t big enough for a business involving stock!

Go to the Tracey Emin/Edvard Munch exhibition in London and hopefully see my friend Molly at the same time!

Go to Italy to check out property- still thinking about it

Go off for a week on the boat- we have people’s dream holiday beneath our feet yet don’t really use it

Phnom Penh, Cambodia and/or India, are still hoped for for winter ‘21-‘22 but of course who knows?

Go cold turkey on Waitrose Essential Mince Pies and Aldi Holly Lane Marzipan Stollen (both #accidentallyvegan) I haven’t had a drink since August but I have bought Vegan Baileys (from Waitrose), Champagne (from Aldi), Gin and Tonic ready mixed in cans (from Aldi) and Fosters lager for Christmas Day and Boxing Day so will be probably ceasing all that in January too

*The cats have decided that the only food they really like is one particular flavour only of Morrison’s own brand, which involves a special trip to Northampton a half hour away.

**I never did, I just had a bowl of muesli

*** I’d nearly finished when a knocking/tapping sound on the window alerted me to the swans outside wanting food. I rest my case.

Sending you all warmest wishes and lots of love

Thank you for being here

On the way to London last weekend to meet up with John’s kids before Christmas- just in time as London shut down again a few days later

Rachel

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Me, crap photos but real everyday life: thisisrachelhill

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On Awe Walks

Tags

awe, awe walks, buddhism, meditation, mindfulness, nature walk, Self realisation, spiritual awakening

Apparently ‘Awe Walks’ is a thing now, I read about it in an online article suggesting ways to feel better about our current situation and the approaching winter. I thought it seemed strange at first, because my own experiences of experiencing awe during a walk were for me the first step on my ‘spiritual journey,’ rather than an end in themselves. It reminded me of when everyone started getting into mindfulness and businesses started using it for their employees; some Buddhists commented that it was being practised without any underpinning theory or spiritual foundation. But I still think most people would agree that practising mindfulness, with or without anything underpinning it, is a good thing. So I’m supportive of the idea of Awe Walks, however they are conceptualised by the person experiencing them!

This description of my very own Awe Walk is taken from the little book I wrote which documented my spiritual awakening (available super cheap on amazon)

Let’s go for a walk… or, How to find Heaven on Earth

I plant my feet on the ground, about hip width apart, my weight equally balanced on both feet and on the balls and the heels of each foot. I soften my knees, bending them ever so slightly so that the soles of my feet seem to stick to the ground as if I am fixed, rooted to the ground as surely as a tree. Connected. I am connected to the ground, to the Earth.

I feel the breeze play on my face, feel the wind lifting and moving my hair. A strand of hair falls across my face, in front of my eyes; lit by the sun, it is tiger eye, spun gold. It is still winter and the sun is white and hazy but I can feel the warmth on my cheek, feel the energy warming me, bringing me back to life.

Everything seems interesting. Almost anything can be of interest if I notice it and pause to observe it. I used to march without pause down the street, across the fields but now I walk steadily and stop often. The sight of tiny leaves of ivy growing up a fence; brown pinecones on a bush silhouetted against a blue sky; a holly bush, impossibly shiny, almost plastic looking; all these and more stop me in my tracks.

The trees… one looks like a peacock, one looks like a creature from Where the Wild Things are, standing guard in front of the village church; one looks like an old man with flowing beard. Best of all I like to stand under their branches and stare at the old ivy limbs winding their way around the trunk, dusty and hairy and beautiful.

Halfway along my walk I come to a stream that runs through a small patch of woodland. I stop, facing along its length. The tall trees are reflected in the water. At the top as far as I can see, the trees disappear down. In the middle, their reflections overlap and join with those of the trees nearest me, giving a sensation of depth. A ripple appears, making the image iridescent with sparkling light. I follow the river down to my feet where the reflections travel into darkness, deeper below than the trees are high above.

I could stare into the river for hours. Even in this ordinary little village, there is so much beauty. The summer evening sunsets. At night, the stars.

Thank you very much for reading

Please feel free to share your awe walk experiences

Self portrait, Pushkar, India 2020

About the author

In 2018 in our forties and fifties my husband and I sold up, gave away most of our possessions, and went travelling for a year, mainly in India, and also to Thailand, Tokyo, Nepal, Cambodia and Vietnam. My personal/spiritual/travel memoir of the year is completed and out with agents. I live on a narrowboat in rural Northamptonshire UK with my husband and two cats.

Follow me on Instagram thisisrachelhill

 

Throwback Thursday: Hearth and Home

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Hearth and home, Magic, Mid life, Midlife awakening, mindfulness, paganism, spiritual awakening, Spiritual journey, Spiritual practice, spirituality

There’s a theory in magic/paganism that there are times for spells and otherworldly things and there are times for just concentrating on ‘hearth and home’.  Neither is considered better than the other, both equally ‘spiritual’.  Like my favourite saying, one foot in the visible and one foot in the invisible, that I used to keep me sane enough or behaving sane enough to not to mess up all my jobs and relationships, but it was at the same time exhausting to do this.

At the yoga class I do at the Buddhist centre sometimes, she gives little slips of paper out about mindfulness and metta in our day to day lives.  I have one at home, one in my car, and one on my monitor at work.  Thinking about it now, all that just made it harder for me:  it was harder for me to manage at work if I was simultaneously trying to hold onto something of what I did outside of work spiritually, it was doing two things at once, which isn’t very mindful, and it didn’t always help.  Whereas hearth and home implies more a switching between states, and doing one or the other, not both at once.

Contrast this with a period just leading up to Christmas, when I was driven with energy and did all the objectives for the year, loads of client contact, staff appraisals, etc, and felt almost like I was on the edge of mania (fear again:  just like when you first tip into  a spiritual journey/awakening and fear that you are going mad, just like when things are going really well and I start worrying about how things could go wrong, this is just  a nasty habit that a bit of the mind, or some say the ego, has a tendency to do) and just was totally immersed in work while I was there, and that was so much better in terms of how I functioned.  If we are on a spiritual path, then isn’t everything we do a spiritual practice?  And isn’t the best way to do a spiritual practice to totally devote oneself to it in the time you are doing it, whether that be meditating or replying to an email?

It’s like when people who are alternative outside of work try and express themselves at work and fight the dress code instead of just going with it. Maybe it’s easier to forget about the other worldly stuff…  Just as I thought this, an outrageously lit up lorry passed me, then immediately after, just in case I hadn’t got the message, another one.  Validation that I am thinking along the right lines, or reminding me that the otherworldly is everywhere, always, whether I think about it or not.  Or even, reminding me that this is the otherworldly…

What is my life’s purpose/mission?  I just want to pray all the time, to drop to the floor and say:  Thank you.  I’m here.  What can I do?

For sensitive people, the smallest things can set you off on the path to growth again.  That’s why you sometimes see those little articles in magazines that suggest things like sleeping up the other way (head to toe not upside-down like a bat) or walking to work a different way.  Even ‘awake’ people can find a seemingly conventional event can do the trick.  In fact, if you are used to thinking unconventionally, maybe the conventional really can knock you sideways.

We got given a red sofa, it had been handmade in Tunbridge Wells, we collected it from a mature, wealthy couple who lived in a huge and breathtakingly expensive looking barn conversion.  They were nice to us and only wanted a donation to the local arts centre, and even invited us to a party they were having.  The sofa had a small cigarette burn in the arm, evidence of a previous party.  We borrowed a friend’s van and got it in with barely an inch to spare.

For a few weeks, no one ate on the sofa, and we somehow kept the rest of the house cleaner too, and even told each other not to sit on it in old clothes, ‘You have to consider we have a middle-class sofa now you know.’  We bought a new carpet after years of living with a filthy one.  (In an insane fit of optimism I had bought a cream carpet when I moved in, with the idea that everyone would ‘step up’ and keep the super smart environment clean.  This didn’t work on a teenager let alone a dog, and the once-cream carpet was stained with blackcurrant juice and years of carelessness.   I said to Anthony, do you think we will look back at the time we got the red sofa as some kind of locator beacon, before and after, that was before, that was after.  Will it mark some kind of change?

But since a sofa is where you sit it’s natural that it is the home of all the big stuff.  My previous sofa was big and blue with removable cotton covers and big squashy cushions.  I had bought it from a man who lived in some very nice riverside retirement flats, it was in immaculate condition and was a very good price.  It came apart so I could fit it all in my little car.  I got a parking ticket but it was still worth it and didn’t dent the happiness I felt.

Scenes from the blue sofa:

Newly in love, lying with each other

‘It doesn’t matter if you’re happy balanced on the edge,’ Anthony- he was actually referring to our position on the sofa

Telling him of my childhood shame; DIY therapy for PTSD

Later when it had completely bottomed out and broken, Anthony took it out into the front garden and chopped it up with an axe. 

This exemplifies/perfectly illustrates our lifestyle: for a few weeks all talk was about The Field, but then that is quickly dropped- when Anthony finishes the book and we begin talking about something else, but also, we don’t always talk about stuff like that- the sofa was almost as much of an event, in some ways.

Photograph: the red sofa a few years later, in the next house. The previous occupant had left behind 1970’s furniture which we kept, and we bought the old black record player from a charity shop. One night we played Are ‘Friends’ Electric by Gary Numan and Tubeway Army and for a few minutes we were transported back to the 1980s. Oh and the cats! You can’t take a cat in a backpack around India (sob).

Thank you very much for reading

Throwback Thursday Hare Krishna

Tags

awareness, Hare krishna, London meditation, Mantra, meditation, mindfulness, Seeking, spiritual awakening, Spiritual experience, Spiritual practice, spirituality

Hare Krishna

On New Year’s Eve 2014 I took my step daughter back to her mum in London and then I had several hours until my return train.  I had no desire to go shopping.  I went to the Hare Krishna Temple near Tottenham Court Road.  It seemed to me like an appropriate thing to do on New Year’s Eve.

I’ve felt like that a lot since.  When asked what would I like most of all, or what would my dream experience be, and when trying to guess what a surprise day experience present was*, I’ve refined it down to this:  To go into a room, like a church but not a church, all alone, with perhaps maybe some kind of a priest or a monk on hand to answer any questions I might have.  That’s it, that’s my dream experience.

The Hare Krishna Temple Room was as beautiful as I had hoped.  A radiant young woman sat next to me, befriended me and gave me books to take away.  There were musicians.  We chanted the Hare Krishna mantra for a long time.  On the way out I picked up a leaflet that said:

Every now and again it’s good to pause in your pursuit of happiness and just be happy.

And so 2015 began with me chanting (in my head) the Hare Krishna Mantra every morning before work, using the beads of a choker my mum had given me for Christmas.  This exemplifies my do-it-yourself, just-do-it-now, no-need-to-shop-for-all-the special-equipment approach I take to spiritual seeking (and to exercise, I will do a yoga class in my work clothes if I haven’t had time to change, and I go to the gym in ancient trainers and any old clothes); as well as my practical approach:  I didn’t have time to do a whole circuit on Japa Mala meditation beads (those long strings of beads that are traditionally used to meditate with) but I did have time to do one or two lengths of the choker.  You do one full recitation of the mantra on each bead, rolling each bead between your fingers and gradually inching your way along the whole string.  The beads help you keep your place as to how many you have done and help keep concentration and focus as well.  (And enable you to time your practice so you aren’t late for work).  The radiant woman at the temple had given me a little card with the Hare Krishna Mantra printed on:

Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare /       Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare.

Chanting a mantra: the idea that you are meditating and praying without actually having to think or do anything other than just say those words over and over, was very attractive and very easy to do and yet it was so purifying, the effects were so strong:

Feeling my lungs expanding and the whole mantra like a wave rising and falling, heading towards the light: We are always heading towards the light; it’s just that dying concentrates the mind so that we notice it.  Dying is the same as living, just keep on heading towards the light.

Noticing the little stillness that lives underneath everything but that is normally buried in my chest under my breathing and in my mind under the chatter of thoughts.  I breathe and I notice it.  It feels good.

Thinking in meditation one morning about how maybe God is an abstract concept like time, something we make up to conceptualise the impossible to conceptualise, something to hang our thoughts on.

I turn over hard decisions or stuff I am stuck with or unsure of to God and/or The Universe, or to Time (maybe they all the same thing) and then later I come up with the answer.  So that in time, inspiration strikes or the way becomes clear.  Could be due to Time, or could be God or The Universe but could equally just be our future selves like in the film Interstellar, or even The Future Itself, presenting the answers as it and them arrive and arise.

How much personal responsibility are we able or willing to take on and credit ourselves with?  Like when we ask God:  ‘Why don’t you do something, why don’t you send someone?’ and God says:  ‘I did send someone, I sent you.’

What did for me with the Hare Krishnas was that to get right into it you start at the bottom as a book distributor, giving out books on the street.  I’m sorry, but I’m not going to do that.  Maybe that’s why I haven’t thus far ever fully signed up to any one particular religion, because I baulk at doing anything that I don’t actually want to do….

Anthony’s sister wants to talk to me about spirituality- strange stuff is happening for her, she has just started meditating.  I reconnected with my friend  from years ago; she said ‘I want to talk to you about spirituality’.   Anthony said, ‘See, you always wanted someone to talk to about that stuff, now you are the person people talk to.’

*it was a flotation tank session, the photo was taken during the trip to London for it

Thank you very much for reading

River as Prayer: Dong Hoi, Vietnam

Tags

awareness, Dong Hoi, escape the matrix, mindfulness, Minimalism, spiritual memoir, Travel, Travel writing, Vietnam, Voluntary simplicity, writing

Photos by my husband Anthony ‘John’ Hill

Draft extract from my travel memoir

We got a taxi from Dong Hoi train station to our place. It was a hostel, with a bar with a pool table downstairs. Our room was up a couple of short flights of stairs and at one end of a long marble corridor. At the other end of the corridor was a small balcony with a view out onto the street below. In the middle divider of the wide empty street were bright pink flower signs, like metal sweets, precise symmetrical cut out flower shapes. Within the row of pink flower signs was a small cube on a pole with screens showing orange and red flowers, maybe advertisements? It was like a much smaller version of the big screen wall of waterfalls and advertisements by the river in Phnom Penh.

We went back to the noodle place and used a translation app to write our order in Vietnamese, vegetarian, for two people, tofu, noodles and vegetables. Two beautiful dishes of food arrived, light, nutritious and delicious, tasty fried tofu and a good variety and plenty of vegetables including spring onions and mushrooms. By pointing to the menu we also ordered peach iced tea. That peach iced tea was probably the most delicious thing we had tasted all year. It came in tall glasses with long spoons, a deliciously sweet cold drink with lots of ice and big slices of slippery tinned peaches, heavenly.

Nearby, between the tofu place and the sea, was an old building which looked a bit like a church, incongruous amongst the mainly utilitarian buildings and plain streets.

Dong Hoi was so quiet, we assumed it was still because of Tet but when we asked the man at the guesthouse he said that no, it was always like this. Only our place seemed busy.

At night the pink flowers became just lights and looked completely different. By day they were pink metal stylised but obvious flower shapes, by night there were no signs of pink or flowers just bright white lights. There was a light dot in the centre of each petal so that in the dark it looked like circle of dots, and one in the middle. Again it looked like it was inspired by the lights of Phnom Penh, a minor version, nice yet a bit incongruous for a quiet street.

There were lots of young tourists and backpackers there, mainly Westerners doing cave tours etc. We watched new arrivals get pounced upon on arrival and organised into booking excursions.

In the evenings we went for walks, looking for places for coffee or beer, sometimes looking at the map for places of interest but mostly just wandering. One time, a big dog followed us and wouldn’t leave us alone. It was more embarrassing than scary, we thought we’d have to go in somewhere and ask them to help us but eventually it left us alone.

Once we walked to the beach, there was nothing there, no shops or stalls, no tourist facilities, it was very different to Cambodia.

By the sea near us there were pretty colourfully painted boats. On the grass near the prom there was a family group, several men, and women and kids sitting on a picnic blanket, with loads of beer cans! And during the day on Sunday and in evenings, there were people relaxing in hammocks slung from the trees there.

Little huts stood on stilts in the river behind raised nets like the Chinese fishing nets of Kochi. We watched a person in a coracle go from the hut to under the centre of the net, check the centre of the net which hung down like nipple above the water. I assumed it had an opening hole for getting the caught fish out and that he was checking that it was closed. Then he went back to the hut and lowered the net into the water, via ropes.

In the river there were blue plates, square or rectangular, a lamp, gold with broken flower glass or shell. Were they put into the river as a prayer? Were they simply discarded or broken? The things shining, beautiful and strange looking in the murky water, and lots of thin plastic bags upside down under the water, floating like jelly fish.

I watched a Vietnamese woman on a bicycle, she had on bright pink trousers, and black bin bags of stuff loaded on her bicycle. It was a typical scene. I thought the same about another woman ahead of me in the street, wearing a Vietnamese hat and a purple velvet top and matching loose slightly cropped purple velvet trousers, a thin plastic carrier bag in each hand. A pure image: traditional cone hat, colourful velvet suit and thin plastic carrier bags.

One evening there was a big storm, lots of rain, thunder and lightning. After it finished we stepped out, from our room, through the noisy hostel bar and out into the street and flowers, maybe chrysanthemums, they were yellow and smelled a bit like ragwort but nice, strong, permeating the air.  It reminded me of the first rains of the pre monsoon and the smell after.  I love rain. Well, in the heat anyway.

We watched the film The Lady in the Van which was very timely given how much time and energy we spent worrying about The Future. Anthony said, ‘But she was okay, she lived in a van, in the end, rich or poor, everyone dies.’ The point being that lack of security didn’t really matter, she lived anyway, and no amount of security can stop you getting ill and dying.

The curtain pole in our room in Dong Hoi looked as though it were made of silver hologram wrapping paper. The white pole had a serrated curved and curled finish, as if it had been twisted, and with the light it sparkled like glitter. I briefly thought about just photographing things like this rather than writing about them.

Thank you very much for reading

About the author

Sold house, left career, gave away almost everything else.  With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India.   Here are my India highlights.  Now back in the UK, living on a narrowboat, and writing a book about the trip, a spiritual/travel memoir, extracts from which appear regularly on this blog.

Opposite the clouds: SaPa, Vietnam Part Two

Tags

awareness, mindfulness, Sapa, TaVan, Travel, Travel memoir, Travel writing, Vegan, Vietnam, writing

Draft extract from my travel memoir

One day on my own in the restaurant I watched someone kill a fish at the side of the road. I wasn’t sure what I was seeing at first- was he just chopping it up, or did it move? I watched the next one fully- he lifted a fish out of a covered container attached to the side of his moped- ingenious- a fish tank attached to his moped- and hit it over the head. People stopped, he reached under the cover, got out a fish, killed it, weighed it, cut it up, put the pieces in the ubiquitous thin plastic bags, like you get at independent grocers or market stalls, thin flimsy plastic, blue, often, or other colours. The fish I watched struggled, tried to escape, he pulled it back and hit it again, its gills still moving on the weighing scale, then he cut it up and put it in a bag.

When all the customers had stopped, or he’d run out of fish, he packed away his things and left. A short while later a woman walked past where he’d been standing, a plastic bag of groceries in one hand, and a live duck in a bag in the other, one of its feet pushed through a hole in the thin blue plastic, paddling frantically, its head and beak sticking out the top of the bag as she walked on down the road. But its not as bad as factory farming*, or slaughterhouses.*

On the fourth day, the last day, it was not foggy. I went for a walk a different way. It got busy with tourists and a few people selling but up until then it was quiet.

A puppy with a curled tail was chained up. A big Doberman style of dog was loose, dragging its own chain behind it. The puppy was barking, excited. They started to play. Round and round, the big dog’s chain got caught up. For a moment I wondered if it would tether itself. Both dogs ran around and around each other and their chains. The puppy rolled on its back, submissive, the big dog must have nipped it as it yelped.

Near the puppy was another dog, a small white dog, loose, a little involved with the barking at first but outside the playing. A pigeon was watching from the corrugated roof, it flew down as if to take a closer look. The big dog saw and chased it and went to catch it, the pigeon escaped, the big dog went after it barking and lost interest in the puppy.  The puppy was barking as if calling to the big dog to come back and play, the puppy chained up, the big dog free and gone.

In the quiet area I went past a cafe. I thought I saw a television screen of mountains. I looked again, and thought it was a lit up picture. Then a mirror reflecting a picture of mountains. But it was actually a hole in the wall. Outside beyond the hole was a blue crumpled tarpaulin with a covering of grey dust, blue-grey in the light. The light must have caught it just right, for me to see it as a luminous mountain scene.

I saw chickens with little chicks, and chickens and ducks in round wire cages. I saw a black pig with black piglets and a big pregnant pig trying to eat food near the chicken pen; people shooed her away. Her teats and belly were hanging and touching or almost touching the ground.

I stopped for coffee and to write everything down. I’d numbered the things in my head, 3-pigs and piglets, 2- the screen, 1- the dogs. Again it was like those overwhelming insights or too much beauty. Those three things kept slipping away even as I was writing them. They were so special, so important to capture and yet so slippery. Unusual for me, usually I can remember things, especially if I count them. It was hard but so powerful especially the light screen/television thing.

‘Grey houses made colourful by washing.’ I was thinking of my favourite Kolkata line and at same time I saw grey dwellings/outbuildings with washing, opposite where I was having coffee and writing.  Or did I see them first and that sparked the line, without me noticing consciously? But I had been saying that line to myself so much that day and the day before it was not that surprising. Still, it was a nice touch to be seated opposite a pictorial version of it!

The cafe was wooden with a low wall beyond which was a river. Outside there was a waterfall, or river over rocks anyway. There were swallows outside and swallows inside- I could see a nest. The roof was made of frosted glass like tin foil, the same as the restaurant roof at the accommodation. Writing and coffee. My coffee came in a glass, a metal percolator and saucer forming a lid on top.

Why do I so often deny myself when to stop somewhere and write with coffee is so nice? The activity, and the coffee same, but the view, the table and chairs, the percolator/cup a little different each time. Most days I didn’t even take money, when I did, I walked past places, making excuses not to go in. Shy? Social anxiety? Money? But maybe I stop at the right places and appreciate it because I don’t do it so often and I find the right place?

On the way back, the puppy and the little white dog were asleep, the white dog lying flush against the chained puppy, even though the white dog was free, unchained.

I paused to look at the view: little wooden shacks, rice terraces, hills. I saw one of the strange grey animals, like a very big pig or a yak, with their baby snuggled beside them. If you pause, even for a moment with intention, you see. Further on I didn’t even pause but saw anyway, a big beautiful orange-brown moth on an orange-brown door frame.

Sitting at the cafe with coffee, writing, looking at the waterfall. This feeling, not high happiness per se, perhaps it is better than that. Maybe the aim is to feel in power again, like the best most powerful version of me. Walk first, alone, coffee, writing, calm. Recharging self. Simple. Don’t forget to do.

For pics and more about SaPa see blog post with photos

Thank you very much for reading

About the author

Sold house, left career, gave away almost everything else.  With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India.   Here are my India highlights.  Now back in the UK, living on a narrowboat, and writing a book about the trip, a spiritual/travel memoir, extracts from which appear regularly on this blog.

* What’s wrong with slaughterhouses and factory farming? Watch Earthlings on Netflix. If you are in the UK or Europe and think ‘that doesn’t happen here/that’s only in the USA’, watch Land of Hope and Glory on YouTube (film from 100 UK facilities including ‘organic’ ‘free range’ and ‘RSPCA approved’)

‘Be someone you would look up to’ Hanoi, Vietnam Part two

Tags

anxiety, Chickens, Circle K, Factory farming, Hanoi, mindfulness, Tet, The Little House, Travel, Travel health, Travel writing, Vietnam, Vietnamese hospitality

Draft extract from my travel memoir

The next day the guesthouse woman very kindly walked me to an open supermarket, Circle K, waited for me whilst I shopped, and then walked me to an open pharmacy.  I paid attention so as to learn the way, she pointed out the sign to the hotel alley; I took note of a place selling car oil, a corner with a closed shop, an outdoor gym, and a big bright blue building- a military school, she said.  She told me that she opened the guesthouse ten years ago so that her son and daughter could learn English.  At the pharmacy she translated so I could get some medicine for Anthony.  On the ground in between the pharmacy and the guesthouse were multicoloured shiny pieces of paper from Tet, rough squares like cut up homemade children’s decorations, like confetti.

All around were big new buildings, high rise blocks, dense housing, hotels and offices.  One further away building had a spiral bit like Tokyo, like Phnom Penh and amongst all these a tiny old traditional house like a pagoda with a triangle roof, surrounded on all sides by these upstarts.  It reminded me of the book The Little House, where a dear little once loved house in the country becomes surrounded by busy roads and new buildings and is forgotten.  The house falls into sadness and disrepair, until one day someone falls in love with it and moves it out of the city and lovingly restores it.

Even though it was unlikely, we got scared that Anthony might have malaria.  We were more scared about health now we were not in India.  After seven months there altogether, India was more familiar, and many more people spoke English.  But I just thought, there’s loads of ex pats and foreigners in Hanoi, what do they do, and looked up online, found a hospital popular with Westerners and saved the details.  They were open twenty four hours and had an ambulance service.  Then I felt better, which is probably why people say to research and note down the details of local hospitals and doctors when travelling.

The family cooked us rice and vegetables, brought up on a tray to our room, huge bowls of steamed rice and lots of lovely fresh chunky vegetables; broccoli, carrots and cauliflower.  It was healthy but very plain, maybe the sauces etc had meat in them.  Once we had noodles with bits of meat in which we had to leave.

The second day I went to a big supermarket we’d found online, alone, I took so long crossing the road that people stopped and asked if I wanted a taxi.  I was anxious, not used to going out alone, anxious about Anthony, and about making decisions- even simple ones like what to buy to eat.  A man in the queue behind me actually packed up my bags for me, he didn’t speak any English.  It was so nice of him.  Back at the guesthouse I asked if they could make us tea, they brought it up in pretty china cups, it felt like such an achievement to ask and get, and we had French stick from the supermarket and oranges with it.

Our guesthouse was down an alleyway, with other houses either side.  On the opposite side of the alley were chicken cages, one presumably belonging to the guesthouse, the other to the house next door.   The first cage was two tier with no floor, just criss crossed steel bars that I thought looked uncomfortable for their feet.  I saw a big plump brown hen sitting down.  The hen had a red comb and looked healthy enough.  I stood in front, pushed down my sorrow and sent them some love.   I told myself the eggs in our supermarkets or the KFC chickens are no better, probably worse off.  Sometimes you hear stories of workers in intensive farm settings or slaughterhouses torturing birds (and animals) for fun.  Not here, these belonged to the family.  The next cage had a solid floor with dirt on it not bars, plus lots of fresh greens and a feeder of corn.  lt looked like it had a second tier but it was actually a perch, which chickens like.  Better, good, in comparison to the first one.

One day when I was returning to the guesthouse I saw a small fawn and cream coloured cat sitting on the roof of the chicken hut eating some meat.  I called to it but it ran away, startled.   The next day I was at the desk speaking to the man.  In the alley outside the chicken huts was a little handbag sized dog on a chain beside a cardboard box.  Later I saw the dog and the cat both inside the box, the dog chained, the cat free, the cat smooching the dog.  ‘Friends,’ I said to the man.

Anthony felt slightly better and fed up with being in the room, and we both went to Circle K to eat.  It was a small supermarket with a few tables at one end beside the freezers and the drinks cabinets, and served a few simple dishes as well as coffee and tea.  I was impressed that it provided a cheap place for people to sit down and eat or even have a beer.  We ordered plain noodles and Thai ice tea, one of each kind, one green and one brown, the tea tasted strange to us, and I who will drink and eat anything ended up having both of them.

We walked up to the main road, after Circle K, past new and half built buildings, one covered in mesh, like the buildings in Sihanoukeville.  There was no building going on thankfully, presumably due to Tet.  When I went out alone, I orientated myself by the big tall new buildings beyond the main road, many with neon names, some snazzy and done, some just a metal frame shell but still kind of beautiful, and beyond them, the pink sky.

On day four Anthony was getting better and I felt comfortable going for a walk and leaving him for longer.  I did a few loops of our local area, past a smart looking college with inspirational quotes on boards;  ‘Be someone you’d look up to,’ ‘Go wherever you want,’ ‘Question the answer,’ ‘Why ask why.’  There was a nice little coffee place nearby.  I had seen it the day before but it was closing.  I went for a walk down to the main road with the huge new buildings, and off down a side street, with old buildings, washing hung up, the balcony and rooftops caged in.  I went down another road, looking to see what was open, everything still closed, except the same little coffee place from the back.  This was day four, Saturday, Tet started on Tue, and aside from Circle K this was the only one, and this the only proper coffee cafe.

My coffee came in a dear little brown earthenware cup and saucer with a metal percolator on top- a metal ‘saucer’ on top of the cup, on top of that a metal cup with a lid, perfect to draw, if I could draw.  It dripped out one drop at a time, an exercise in patience.  Coffee with sugar, the tiny coffee cold by the time it had gone through but still nice.  They also gave me a glass of water, it was a hot day and I drank half before I remembered I shouldn’t drink the water and spat the last mouthful back discreetly.  I sat outside, the garden area had a brown wooden fence, brown tables and chairs.   Each table had a big square umbrella sunshade, much bigger than the table and chairs, that would really cover everyone even with seats spread out.  I saw a white butterfly, red flags and crazy wires.  A thread from my black scarf got caught on my bracelet and I made it into an imperfect bracelet, finger knitting, one loose end, mis-tied.  I asked if they had cake.  No. We have fruit.  Fruit salad?  No, just fruit.  No then.  They came back, we can do fruit salad, fifteen mins.  I shouldn’t have complicated it, but I had fruit at home and imagined them just bringing fruit, but then of course it would have been prepared? Control freak…  Or not; they brought me chopped fruit covered in mayonnaise, I ate it all.  When I told Anthony later he said, ‘You ate it?’!  ‘Of course,’ I said, ‘I just thought of Waldorf salad.  Afterwards they asked me, we have never made fruit salad before, was it okay?  Usually I would just say yes, but then I thought what if another Westerner came and asked for fruit salad and got that, so I said, it was very nice, but for Westerners, it’s okay to do it without sauce, just fruit.  Which may well have been what they would have given me had I said nothing… probably everyone was more confused by the end.

Later the same day we went out together to see if anywhere else was open, or if not to go to Circle K for noodles, or my place for coffee and fruit salad.  A restaurant/cafe looked like it might be opening, there was a super cute puppy poking through the fence, and a man in the garden.  We used the translate app on the phone to ask if it was open later, No, he said.  A Vietnamese family walked past, using sign language, empty hands, we said to each other nowhere open, ‘Coffee?’ They asked.  ‘Yes, anything,’ I said.  They beckoned to us to follow.  We just followed them and went where they showed us.  We followed them all the way around the block again, them looking around and showing us which way, past bushes and plants in wide shallow stone pots on the pavement, past a woman’s garden with bonsai and lily pads, and coriander, the smell delicious.  They took us to somewhere we hadn’t noticed but had probably walked past.  We said thank you, and went in.

A woman greeted us warmly and said she could make us noodles, which were served nicely in a white bowl on a big white plate.  Beauty in simplicity; my coffee earlier with its tiny apparatus on top of the tiny cup, and the necessary patience.  The instant noodles made beautiful with coriander; beside the white bowl a little leaf green oval dish with two pieces of lime to squeeze.  Chilli sauce, chop sticks, a spoon, and coffee and tea.  The glow from the people’s kindness who had taken us there and the friendliness of the woman, and the relief of Anthony getting better.  We made a list of all the Netflix shows we watched on the trip and tried to remember where we were when we watched them; some powerful place links such as watching Wild Wild Country (about Osho) in Kerala then coming across Oshos guesthouse, some we struggled to remember where we were when we saw them, we stayed in so many places…  Link to blog about everywhere we stayed on the year long trip.   Link to Everything we watched on Netflix blog

I wished I’d done better- done better shopping, gone out alone more, gone to the ATM by myself, done all the booking, been more capable, made decisions, not leant on Anthony at all, been in total charge when he was ill- but I didn’t, my mind disintegrating under stress plus not used to it.   But as they say in AA, all you can do is ‘Do the next right thing.’

Thank you very much for reading

About the author

Sold house, left career, gave away almost everything else.  With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India.   Here are my India highlights.  Now back in the UK, living on a narrowboat, and writing a book about the trip, a spiritual/travel memoir, extracts from which appear regularly on this blog.

‘Be someone you would look up to’ Hanoi, Vietnam

Tags

Dairy cows, Hanoi, Indian hospitality, mindfulness, spiritual memoir, Tet, Travel, Travel memoir, Vegan, Vietnam, writing

Draft extract from my travel memoir

On the plane from Cambodia to Vietnam we sat next to an Indian man, a Sikh from the Punjab.  He was very friendly and keen to chat.  He told us about himself and asked us what our experience of India had been like.  We told him the places we’d visited and about how friendly and helpful Indian people had been.  I told him about the train from Kolkata to Varanasi, about how a whole family came to chat to us; and about us being called Grandma and Grandfather not Auntie and Uncle.  ‘It’s a natural stage of life’ he said.  ‘I know, if we’re lucky,’ I said.

In the taxi from the airport I saw lights like fairy lights or Christmas lights decorating narrow houses, and chrome banisters like the peachy orange house in Siem Reap.  The narrow houses got narrower and narrower from bottom to top; fascinating.  There were hotels with lots of chrome.  I saw a woman holding a white dog, the dog was fluffy and furry like a toy.  Just after that I saw a woman wearing a white woollen jacket with three buttons in the centre, the material dense and furry like the dog.

The driver took us through back streets, dusty like Chennai, with nail bars in the front rooms of houses, and red flags with yellow stars (the flag of Vietnam.)  He stopped the car and said we were there.  It was the wrong place, no guesthouses in sight; he must have wondered why we would be going there.

Near our place, we saw a blue house the paint faded, next door a faded orange-yellow house with wrought iron.  In the morning we walked over the moped bridge to the old town and the market.  It wasn’t for the faint hearted, there were gaps in the floor and on the outside one rail and beyond a big wide river.  The traffic was relentless and the pollution was unpleasant; like most of the riders, we wore thick fabric masks.  Many mopeds had big bunches of flowers, or branches with flowers or even trees in pots on the back for Tet.  Below there was so much green, and lots of fruit trees, wrapped in plastic to protect them.  A woman went past in a beautiful gown-like red velvet dress.  At the end of the bridge, we saw a group of tourists taking selfies on the rail track.

We walked through small streets, a market area.  It had a feel of Kathmandu with small shops and eating places, and a bit like where we stayed in Kolkata but less faded, with lots of bright yellow.  Then we came to the tourist area and suddenly lots of white people, and lots of North Face, like Nepal, which is made in Vietnam, and loads of coffee places.  We stopped for coffee and coconuts; really great coffee.  Cambodia and Vietnam were great for coffee and baguettes, in Otres Village in Cambodia Rupa said, re the baguettes, ‘There’ll be the undoing of me trying to lose weight.’  Furniture shops sold cheap veneer, in contrast to  the heavy carved antique looking mirrors of Cambodia, but there were also lots of antique shops.  A wedding dress in a shop window, the mannequin like a slumped teenager, reminded me of a cover of a punk-pop 80s album like Transvision Vamp.

We had a rest at home and returned later to see the night market.  Balloons, branches of yellow flowers, orange trees in pots, flowers everywhere, TET decorations, new year cards, lanterns, pigs, lots of red, pinks and gold.  Glassware, oil swirled, gold, like Venetian or my grandmother’s; cake stands, tea sets, trays, all piled up on the pavement.  There was lots of street food, most of it was meat but we did get thick handmade crisps on a stick.  We ate them whilst we walked along.  People on mopeds cruised slowly past stalls; they got in the way of the pedestrians and brought noise and exhaust fumes.  It was easy to get irritated.  At the front of a rack of clothes on a stall was a jumper embroidered with the words:  ‘Venture out of your comfort zone, the rewards are worth it.’  I held my wooden stick from the crisps until we went down a side street, where there were small piles of rubbish at the edges of pavements near the road, mostly from street stalls.  It was clearly a rubbish pile, and would be burned or otherwise dealt with later, but I still found it hard to throw things on the street.  Outside street stalls or just sitting in the street, were young guys with good haircuts dressed in smart cool clothes, black with silver zips.  People wore silver chain handbags.  We saw some people let off big party popper streamers; cut up pieces of gold sparkly paper landed on the ground.  As Anthony said, it was ‘the biggest assault on the senses since India.’  

The day after Anthony got ill, presumably due to getting too much pollution from being out all day and evening.  It started as fatigue and a tight chest and then got more like flu, with him sweating and shaking uncontrollably.  We were booked to do a twelve hour overnight journey but he could barely get out of bed.  As much as we wanted to get out of Hanoi, we couldn’t leave.  We sat in bed and cancelled the train and the guesthouse we’d booked, and tried to think what to do next.  The trains in Vietnam were also heavily booked and we had to plan ahead and decide what we wanted to do in advance rather than just going with the flow.  We had around three of four different options and struggled to make a decision; Anthony feeling too ill and me feeling too anxious.  I had relied on him to do all the booking and suddenly faced with it I felt overwhelmed and anxious.  Oscillating between anxiety and peace- it’s amazing how quickly that can happen.  We decided to go to SaPa and booked a bus for five days away and somewhere to stay in Hanoi until then- we had to leave the current place the next day whatever.

That evening there were fireworks, people celebrating Tet.  I love fireworks but I didn’t really enjoy them.  It was hard to enjoy them in my anxiety, and also, being acutely aware that they were only adding to the pollution.

I hadn’t bought enough orange juice, the only thing it turned out Anthony wanted.  The next day I went out, there were a couple of tiny little shops open in people’s houses, a few items on a cabinet, no orange juice at the first one, but then I came to a woman with a fridge full of cans of juice.  I bought a pack of eight cans of gloriously cold pure orange juice.  She invited me in.  I automatically slipped off my flip flops but she pointed at my feet looking horrified, maybe like in Thailand feet are disliked?  She offered me tea or some kind of drink but I didn’t stop, wanting to get back to Anthony.  I asked how much in Vietnamese (bon you); that and hello (zin chow), and vegetarian (an chay), was all I knew.

The next day we left.  It was hard to get a cab, standing by the busy road with our bags, conscious of the pollution.  There were very few cabs about, fewer stopped, and sometimes those that did were taken by other people.  After a while Anthony got one, the cab driver used a translate on his phone app to tell us not many cabs, ‘they are at home with their families for Tet.

We’d booked a double deluxe room that looked very nice on the photograph but on arrival we quickly realised we couldn’t stay there, even though it felt as though Anthony couldn’t move anywhere.  The room was barely bigger than the double bed, and made from a partition off the landing, with the tops of the partition open, so there was no protection from mosquitoes, and no fan.  A window at the end of the bed faced the dorm next door and we could see into the dorm.  No privacy, no space, and no fan.  I went to take a look along the road, to ask if there were anywhere else nearby, another homestay, but they were closed.  Outside one of the houses was a big guard dog in a cage barking at me as I went past.  It filled the cage.  Dogs tied in cages was sad, but again I reminded myself about dairy cows.  Farm animals are no different in their suffering it’s just us that feels it differently.  Anthony lay on the bed, simultaneously not being able to stay and not feeling like moving, and looked for somewhere else.

It was a long journey, as we neared there was lots of building, and we worried it was another poor choice of place.  There was a big dog chained up outside the hotel, the chain not long enough for it to get to us over at the counter, but we waited for the man to hold it anyway before stepping forward.  I was a bit daunted at first, my first impression was negative, but the young man at the desk knew our names and was expecting us, and the woman owner came straight away and greeted us and was very friendly.  She was wearing a red velvet knee length dress for Tet.  The room was nice, big, with our own bathroom, a duvet, pillows, and clean.

Just as we were settling in, the woman came up to our room and brought her son up to introduce him to us; they brought us packets of ‘Lucky money,’ for Tet.  They told us all the restaurants were closed but that they would cook for us.  Later, the young guy from the desk took our order, carefully explaining the prices, and checking the ingredients of the instant noodles for us.  ‘Taste of beef but no beef in it,’ he said.  ‘That’s fine,’ we said.  He brought us instant noodles with added home cooked vegetables.

There was a small desk where we ate and I mostly did my writing there.  The bed was comfortable.  There was a big window but no view, it faced only a concrete wall and we kept the curtains closed.  Beside the bed was a big stained glass window with lots of fish, it faced out to the landing.  During the day natural light came through it, and at night the lights on the landing lit it right up.  It had curtains but I often left them open and lay in bed looking at the fish wall glowing in the dark.  The window in the bathroom stayed open a little and we had to watch out for mosquitoes if we had the bathroom light on.  The bathroom window at night was a cracked mosaic of blues and purples, the light through the coloured glass broken up by leaves from a tree that pressed against the window.

Part two on Sunday

Thank you very much for reading

About the author

Sold house, left career, gave away almost everything else.  With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India.   Here are my India highlights.  Now back in the UK, living on a narrowboat, and writing a book about the trip, a spiritual/travel memoir, extracts from which appear regularly on this blog.

‘Order beer with your breakfast we won’t judge you’ Siem Reap Cambodia

Tags

Cambodia, Mindful travel, mindfulness, Siem Reap, Slow travel, Travel, Travel fatigue, Travel writing, Traveling, Travelling

Extract from my (draft) travel memoir

Even from the road the hotel looked good: shiny, clean and smart with a cream facade and at the front a blue swimming pool; to our eyes it was like a pop star’s luxury residence.  The outside was neatly paved, with pots of bright pink and orange flowers, and lots of pretty summer shoes outside the entrance.  As it was early our room wasn’t ready so we waited at the bar/restaurant: fruit salad, baguette and jam, and lots of coffee.  We met two women sitting at the next table, one from South Africa, one, younger, from England, they’d met on a previous trip and decided to do a trip together.  We went on about India and how great it was.  The younger woman didn’t like India, she said she’d got hassle from men.  She was the only person we’d met who hadn’t liked India.  But of course there’s a flipside to every country, no point pretending otherwise.

The reception staff, young men with good haircuts, were lovely and friendly, they did us a hand drawn map of directions to the barbers for Anthony and a place that did proper massage for me.  ‘Not like-’ he mimed someone giving a very lazy massage and chatting- ‘Ten dollars please.’

The room was big and clean, painted white with its own bathroom with a hot shower and towels provided.  The bed had white sheets, duvet and pillows.  The headboard was solid wood, shiny and carved, mid colour wood not pine not mahogany but sturdy and heavy.  At the other end of the room was a wardrobe with double sliding mirror doors, it was like having my own private yoga studio!  A desk and chair, two bedside tables, and everything so clean and polished and shiny.  That room, although no more expensive than our average, felt luxurious.

I had read about travel fatigue in someone’s Instagram post.  As well as the normal missing friends and family, dealing with the stresses and strains- unfamiliar foods, new places- of travel; some people also over schedule, moving from place to place too fast, packing the days with long tours, and over photographing everything.  There was no danger of us doing that but we still got tired sometimes, especially when ill in Delhi, hence why we cut our plan to travel around Rajasthan down to a month in Pushkar.

Nearby the hotel were smaller restaurants, cycle hire places and travel agencies.  A short walk away was the main food area with lots of restaurants, pubs and an indoor market which we had a look around.  I became temporarily enamoured with glazed and decorated bowls made from coconuts, elephant purses and checked scarves, the prices going down as I looked without me doing or saying anything.  Other than a pair of sunglasses to replace my ones from Phnom Penh which had broken, I didn’t buy anything, and the feeling of wanting things soon wore off.

That first night we had tofu, pad Thai, ‘no fish sauce,’ staff familiar with vegetarians which was good, and fresh mango juice, thick and gloopy, ‘sexy in the mouth’ like the noodles of the first night in Bangkok and then later our first night in Cambodia in Phnom Penh.

There were lots of big Westernised bars and restaurants as well as street stalls with small plastic tables and chairs on the pavement, stalls on the back of motorbikes, plugging into power supplies installed on trees.

The room in Siem Reap represented real comfort and luxury; especially after a week in a tent, with everything sandy.  On the polished wood bedside table, my lipbalm, my kohl eyeliner, my earrings, a charcoal face pack I was excited to buy from the 7/11, and my new glamorous (but cheap) black mirror sunglasses which I always kept there, the ceiling fan reflected in them.

We’d noticed shrines in Koh Rong, here there was a big one in the hotel foyer, and another big one in the restaurant we went to most often.  Every day fresh; two cans of coke; a can of drink, cups of coffee, a cup of tea in a glass cup; two glass cups of hot drink; two apples; a bunch of bananas; a basket/bowl of all sorts of fruit; fruit and veg; stacks of money; a bunch of incense, something new every day.  It was like the morning rituals we watched in Pushkar, shop keepers sprinkling water and lighting incense before the working day began.

I wondered if we should do it at home, make a shrine, have a morning ritual, make a tea for the shrine, light incense, set an intention, not directly from or connected to a recognised religion.  Anthony said religious practices look like a kind of OCD sometimes; he once had a friend who used to walk around the room fifteen times before he went out, everyone thought it was a big problem but Anthony always wondered why was it a problem, why not just accept that it was something that he did, like a kind of ritual.  Like I could change my OCD checking of the taps before I go out into a mini ritual, say thank you for having water.

The restaurant where we ate regularly was open to the street, we watched people going past on motorbikes and scooters and parking outside.  I liked looking at people’s clothes, a lot of the women looked quite glamorous in lacy dresses and one day we saw a woman with astonishingly long hair.  On the opposite side of the road there were shops, I saw a bird going in and out of an electrical box, a small box on a pole with a slit; I saw that in front of the shops next to it there were also boxes with birds nesting in.

At the restaurant, I was excited to notice that there were fans reflected in my sunglasses again, just like in the room.  Anthony pointed out that I put them on the table facing up, and fans are on the ceiling… Another time, in the market, I saw my sunglasses reflected in two big blocks of ice.

We talked a lot over meals at the restaurant.  I noticed that we were able to discuss things like politics better without annoying each other or getting annoyed.  It’s not so much that we disagree on big picture stuff, more that the way we approach things is different and used to cause conflict during discussions.  Each difficulty this year has moved us forward in terms of how we handle discussions, personal issues and the way we are together….  Part two on Sunday

Thank you very much for reading

Otres Village, Cambodia

Tags

awareness, Cambodia, Cosmic recognition, mindfulness, Osho, Otres Village, Personal growth, Pune, Sihanoukville, Spiritual experience, Sungazing, Travel

Extracts from draft chapter about our time in Cambodia in January

We got the boat to the mainland.  Again, it was touristy and busy.  There was the occasional pretty sight; a navy umbrella with silver edges, a burgundy shirt with sequins, the sun catching and making them sparkle.  We went to get a tuk tuk to Otres Village where we were staying, straight away.

I had read about the development in Sihanoukeville, largely Chinese led, in an expats magazine in Phnom Penh.  Khmer owned small shops and restaurants were being sold to Chinese developers and the land redeveloped for hotels and casinos.  Westerners were selling up and moving out, fed up with living beside constant building work, and bemoaning the loss of familiar restaurants, bars and shops, and that the disappearance of the old shop fronts was changing the character.

Sihanoukville was as ‘bad’ as we had feared; one large building site, but fascinating; huge hotels half built, and so many, some covered in green netting.  Others almost done and we could see through the windows to big dormitories of beds; we passed developments of small huts with little space in between, a different standard of personal space to that of Westerners.

In the tuk tuk, the road long and dusty, building work all around, my main concern was dust after so much pollution on the trip.  Luckily, where we were staying was something of an oasis, down a side street and down a path off that.  It had changed names and hands, and was in between style wise.  The huts were wooden and the shower room walls were decorated with wildlife murals.  The toilets must have previously been compost ones, the instructions still painted on the wall although they were now ordinary ones.  There were signs for an alternative pharmacy, now closed.  In contrast the restaurant area looked recently done up, with new metal furniture and cushions, glass topped tables, and a smart looking cream printed menu.

Our wooden hut with beams was open in places, with slight gaps in the ceiling and walls but with a reassuring mosquito net.  On a beam above the door was a bag of weed, some papers and a lighter, left by the previous occupants for the next ones, probably they were taking a flight.

The huts had balconies with chairs, with little bushes in front and dotted around the garden.  Staff looked like they were working on the garden which was half scrubby half beds of bushes.  Everything was in the process of changing.  We saw Khmer people, at our place and in the street, carrying so much, thick bamboo, firewood, poles, long pieces of wood, balanced on one shoulder.

One day I hung my bag on the hook on the back of the shower door, when I took it off I saw that there was a little frog perched right on the end of the hook, luckily I hadn’t touched it with my bag.  I called Anthony to come and look.  ‘We should move it, in case it gets hurt,’ Anthony said.  I moved a bin underneath so it wouldn’t have so far if it jumped down to the floor.  As soon as we went near, it jumped, not down but across and stuck to the door, legs outstretched, feet sticking to the wood.  It was like something out of a David Attenborough programme.

There were three kittens around the restaurant who would play, sit on laps, eat noodles and curl up to sleep beside you.  Not all the guests liked them around them while they were eating though, and sometimes they would be shut in a box at meal times.

There was a tree just beside the restaurant that the kittens used to play in, it had a hole at the bottom.  One kitten was braver and would jump from the restaurant wall into the tree; the others watched but didn’t jump.  The three kittens were very similar size but that one was more well muscled, so it could do more, or was it because it did more?  One day I was sitting on my own in the restaurant having breakfast, coffee, huge chunks of French bread and jam.  One of the kittens was on a nearby table playing with an arrangement of fake flowers, those ones where the heads will pull off the stems, the kitten seemed to know this and managed to pull one of the heads off… so fun.

On the main road were shops, travel agencies and small supermarkets.  Also wooden buildings, bars and restaurants, many owned by Westerners, and almost all with for sale or to let signs up.  We saw a Western woman, blonde, skinny, with dreadlocks, be dropped off by a man on a motorbike.  She had a bloodied face, and her expression and walk made her look like a zombie; we wondered whether she was on Ketamine, which was freely available to buy in the pharmacies.  We watched her for a while, saw that she went into a pharmacy, hopefully for some first aid…  We saw a vegan street stall selling, unbelievably, homemade Vegan Snickers.  Vegan Snickers!  He was a young Westerner.  We asked him what he was going to do.  He said he was thinking about going to the Anderman Islands…

Sitting outside on our balcony I saw a woman walk past our hut a couple of times.  ‘Friend’ I said to myself, and resolved to speak to her next time she passed.  It was the same for her, she said she’d wanted to speak to us too.  Of course at first it’s the outside things:  our kind of age, kind of hippyish in a natural way, no makeup, loose natural hair, a printed cotton smock.

R was Spanish.  As a young woman she had left home and gone off to Osho’s ashram in Pune, India, which explained why my husband ‘recognised’ her; he has known several sannyasins.  She runs workshops in Italy and Spain on family relationships and consciousness raising.  She created a life totally her own that was nothing like her parents’ lives or their expectations for her.  When her mother became ill she returned home to care for her.  She decided to just be herself, ‘Here I am, I run these workshops, I am a teacher,’ rather than try to ‘fit in’ by being inauthentic.  She said it was very hard, going back.  Back, ‘In the collective,’ she called it, the fear comes; security, pensions, savings, all those things she had happily not worried about for years.

We all spoke about our times in more tourist/holiday maker areas.  ‘You can have your own experience even in a party place,’ R said.

I liked watching how R made decisions.  She was going somewhere, then the flight was cancelled, so she thought about it and decided to get a bus instead, break up the journey and go and visit somewhere else halfway.  Travelling alone, living alone, making her own work, collaborating with others, using what she had learned at Osho’s and all learning since, always reading and learning new things too.  People in different venues invite her and if something is put on, people will come, she is known.  ‘I should really work out money,’ she said, describing that she just kind of spends it, treats it with a light touch, it comes and goes.

We often had dinner or lunch together, sometimes at the onsite restaurant but mainly we ate on the main road at a cheaper place, and with lovely staff.  ‘You are an angel,’ R said to our regular waiter on the last day.  ‘You have come down from heaven, an angel.’  She expressed herself so easily, like Renate in Varkala, India who when we said goodbye had said to me, ‘If I’d had a daughter like you, we’d have had such fun,’ whereas I sometimes find my English reserve gets the better of me.

R had a light, a treatment light, like sungazing.  After multiple reassurances that it was safe to do so, I went and had a go.  ‘Don’t rush back, take your time and rest afterwards,’ she said.  I did it in the hut and sat still there afterwards for a while.  The light caused visuals, both behind and in front of my eyes, and afterwards, ideas, a burst of energy, I even felt inspired to do a job search of potential employers near the boat.  A little while later I went for a walk to the beach.  On the road leading to the beach was an insane mini funfair with small rides, stalls of garish plastic toys and brightly coloured balloons.  At a canned drink stall a woman in a pretty dress was semi asleep, she woke and we caught eyes and smiled.  I’d not brought any money so I couldn’t buy anything.  At the beach the vegan man was there but I went past him, I didn’t feel like speaking to anyone.

It was unusual for me to go out alone, and unusual for me to go off and not say anything, the appeal of a bit of interstitial time, unknown, unexplained.  I stood on the beach facing the sea.  There was a big hotel block almost like a skyscraper to the right of me, lit up.  The beach was busy with people.  It was the end of the day, lights coming on, the sea looked pretty.  I was in the moment then.

About the author

Sold house, left job, gave away almost everything else.  With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India.   Here are my India highlights.  Now back in the UK, living on a narrowboat, and writing a book about the trip, a spiritual/travel memoir, extracts from which appear regularly on this blog.