Lingbo Li
What to Pack for a Southeast Asia Backpacking Trip
After 2 months of backpacking through Southeast Asia, I have my luggage down to a science.
The most important part of packing is to not pack anything. It’s too easy to just hear this statement and just go “yeah yeah yeah, I’m going to bring my travel-size hair dryer and travel-size hairspray and only 4 pairs of shoes because everyone needs their slutty pair of heels.”
No.
Put all your crap into your backpack. God forbid you bring a suitcase. Have you tried arriving at an island in a rickety wooden longboat, wading through waist-deep water, and then trekking for half a mile across a beach with a suitcase? Because I have.
Do you see those little boats in the water? And how they aren’t directly on the shore? You have to walk through that water.
Then go to the gym, turn off the A/C, and go for a brisk walk on the treadmill for 1 hour straight while sweaty weightlifters beat you up, mosquitoes attack you, and someone blasts ABBA in the background. (This is a frighteningly accurate depiction of arriving in a new city.) See how much you want your travel-size hairdryer then.
These are the clothes you should bring, and the ONLY clothes you should bring for Southeast Asia (list tailored for females):
- – 2 tshirts
- – 2 tank tops
- – 1 pair of shorts
- – 1 pair of light pants
- – 7 pairs of underwear
- – 2 pairs of socks
- – 2-3 bras
- – 2 bikinis
- – 1 pair of flip flops
- – 1 pair of sneakers
- – 1 black convertible pencil dress from American Apparel
Don’t even THINK about bringing anything else.
Once you’re there, you should purchase:
- – 2 sarongs
A sarong will save your life. A sarong is the most versatile and amazing thing in the world. It’s more awesome than Santa Claus covered in rainbow sprinkles.
That’s me, rocking a sarong on laundry day at the beach in Ko Lanta, Thailand.
You can wear a sarong as a flowing tube top. Or a halter dress. Or a skirt. You use it as a bag. If your sheets are kinda gross, you can lay it on top and not fear catching yet another weird skin disease. It’s a fantastic beach towel, head wrap, modesty shawl for temples, pillow case, and blanket for chilly bus rides. You can fold it up and prop your head on a windowsill. It is amazing, dries quick, packs light, and the possibilities are limited only by your imagination and manual dexterity.
Don’t forget to bring a first aid kit and sunscreen (sunscreen is not cheaper in Asia than at home). You can always buy this upon arrival at a 7-Eleven, but it’s convenient to have. Every single scratch and cut gets infected with alarming speed in the tropics.
I never really paid attention to cuts back home – they inevitably healed up without my intervention. But I’ve become an iodine nazi now, swabbing antibiotics every 2 hours and changing bandages twice a day. Because infected cuts ain’t fun!!
Equally important is HOW you pack your backpack. Remember this: plastic bags are your friend.
Put your tops and dress in one bag. Put your bottoms in another. Bring another plastic bag for dirty clothes. Bring zip-locks for your chargers, USB, makeup, first aid kit, and other miscellaneous items. When you arrive in your ganky-ass hostel, this will save you from having to dig up the entire contents of your backpack to find your swimsuit, only to repack it hastily upon departure. Just remove the plastic bags and put them back in once you have to go. Easy!
Now you are ready to go on an adventure.*
*And by adventure, I mean hanging out with drunken British teenagers on their gap year.
How to Make Apple Pie For the First Time
When I do something for the first time, I usually do a bit of research to make sure I’m doing it right. My first foray in pie-making – hell, baking in general – was great because I realized that baking isn’t some scary, landmine-ridden challenge. Somehow, people build it up to be a lot more intimidating than it actually is.
Making a pie is fairly involved (a lot of letting things chill in the fridge), but if you follow a few basic tricks and rules of thumb, the end product ends up totally agreeable. The most important is to keep the butter and/or shortening cold, and to not overwork the dough. This is to preserve those little lumps of fat streaked throughout, which will melt in the oven and result in that coveted tender/flaky pie crust.
I left California earlier this week, and am cooking in my friend’s mom’s kitchen out in the ‘burbs of Buffalo, NY. It is a somewhat improbable place to go on my year off, but has done wonders for skills cooking American classics (my friend Nick is wary of Asian dishes) and maintaining my San Francisco time difference. I just took a pie out of the oven at 2:30am and am blogging this at 3:15 am.
I had dinner at Nick’s friend’s house tonight. She served us a lovely California Cabernet and beef bourguignon over egg white noodles with freshly baked popovers. Her mother was a whippersnapper of an 81 year old who still ran her own business and gave many tips on baking the perfect pie.
I used a vodka pie crust recipe from America’s Test Kitchen, using a pastry cutter rather than a food processor. (Check out their new blog, America’s Test Kitchen Feed!) I precooked the filling (recipe) based on the pie expert’s advice, since the apples were a bit tart, but wished I had cooked them a few minutes less. I threw in brown sugar and extra cinnamon, just because. The filling ended up very soft while the crust browned too fast on top and remained a tad undercooked.
Still, I’m pretty proud of the finished product. The kitchen smells delicious, my friend Jason gave it his programmer’s grunt of approval from behind his setup of monitors, and it’s not bad for Pie Numero Uno.
Burning Man 2011: Or, I Can’t Believe This is Happening
I spent a week in the desert for Burning Man 2011.
Burning Man, by its nature, is hard to describe. It’s a festival of 50,000 people in the desert, where participants leave no trace and commerce or advertising is not allowed. It’s not a barter economy, but a gift economy – people give things away, ranging from food, to alcohol, to performances, to trinkets, with no expectation of receiving anything in return. The only things you can buy there is coffee and ice – you have to bring all your own food, water, and camping supplies with you, and all your trash out at the end of the week.
It’s a farmer’s market, for free, in the desert. Duh.
One of the most incredible things is how fully-realized “Black Rock City” is. There’s a post office, 3 publications (BRC Weekly, The Shroom, some other one), street names, villages, and police. One camp set up a farmer’s market, where they gave away fruits and vegetables, as well as serving up homemade chai and hand salads. Improbable, interactive art structures dot the landscape, inviting you to climb or contribute. There are incredible parties that happen at all hours of the day (whether it’s 3am or 10am). This is the land where drinks are free (just bring your own cup); the dubstep blasts at top volume; the people are gorgeous; and everyone’s respectful of your personal space. I felt a lot safer here at night than walking around around Boston during the day.
The environment is intense. The hot, dry air immediately wicks away moisture, which proved hellish for my skin. They recommend you drink at least a gallon of water a day, which isn’t an exaggeration. You have to carry goggles and a bandanna at all times in case a dust storm kicks up, reducing visibility to 10 feet.
The temple, before being burned
The temple, in a choreographed burn.
Conversely, it’s also some of the most beautiful landscape I’ve seen. Biking around the playa as the sun sets is breath taking: the gasoline-slick of sky slipping behind the mountains, bikers in fantastical outfits criss-crossing the desert while white dust rises like fog. Look around, and you’ll see a stunning two-story temple built out of wood (which will be artfully burned to ashes at the end of the week), a Trojan horse, and of course, The Man – a wooden effigy that is burned on Saturday night after a frenetic fireworks display and 200 foot-high mushrooming green flames, putting every action movie to shame. At night, the playa lights up in all directions, a cross between an amusement park and an acid trip’s rendering of Vegas.
Photo by Bruce Miles
Imagine all this, while art cars – moving vehicles you dance on, ranging from sharks to yachts to octopi – blast their best dance music around a screaming throng of thousands. Some art cars carry giant propane tanks so they can spew 30 foot high flames into the night sky while they serve you drinks. The heat from the flames is actually somewhat painful, reminding you that yes, this is actually happening.
———
Photo by Bruce Miles
I ended up at Burning Man on total whim. A friend of mine from Harvard was organizing a theme camp and described it as an “art festival in the desert.” I was looking for things to do in my year off after college, so I shrugged and figured going with her was a good bet. It wasn’t until after I bought my ticket that I had this conversation:
Me: So, uh, what about running water?
Natalie: Well, you bring all your own with you.
Me: Oh. So what about showers?
Natalie: There aren’t really any, but we’re going to have a solar shower for the camp!
Me: But there’s electricity, right?
Natalie: No. But some people do have generators!
Me: Wifi? Cell reception?
Natalie: Nope.
Me: AM I GOING TO DIE?
Natalie: No.
Me: [hysterical] I’M GOING TO DIE. AM I GOING TO DIE?
I haven’t gone camping in over ten years. I was more nervous than excited as I rolled onto the playa in an overloaded sedan with Natalie’s friends from Berkley, CA.
The car engine immediately broke into pieces. We fretted for a few minutes, then the 5 of us pushed the car for 3 hours until we reached will call to pick up our tickets. They wouldn’t let us push the car the last two miles, so we hooked up the sedan, all of our luggage, and all 5 of us to the back of a Budget truck with nothing more than nylon rope thinner than my pinky finger. Miraculously, it held.
It was an inauspicious beginning, and my first full day on the playa beat me up physically. Scorching dry heat and high altitudes make you feel like crap. I drank some water, wandered around, went to bed early. My tiny tent and sleeping bag that night felt more luxurious than any 4 star hotel.
The hardest part to deal with is not the heat. It is the superfine, alkaline white dust. It coats everything and stays there, even if you rinse off your hands with water. Your fingers are perpetually chalky, and you’ve never had a worse hair day. There’s a coating of dust on your cooking supplies, dust sneaks into your sleeping bag, and dust grinds in your contact lenses.
My skin revolted, my feet ached, my hair felt like plastic. I gave up on makeup.
To my surprise, I didn’t die.
——–
I normally wrestle with a perpetual baseline of anxiety. Sometimes I’m aware it’s there, sometimes I can’t even perceive it. Like many others, I’m always attempting to control the world around me, and sorely disappointed when it fails to comply. Friends flake despite followup emails; it rains during a barbecue; my taxi sits in traffic before an important meeting.
Time exists fragmentally at Burning Man. Few bother with clocks. There are no cell phones, so you can’t text someone demanding to know where and when they’ll show up. Strip away the controls, and you find that social machinery still churns, with even more life and verve than before. I met the most incredible people by accident, and soon, accident became fate. People there, as a rule, are incredibly friendly and helpful.
At the same time, Burning Man only exists a week a year. The entire city is transient, burned or carried away with beauty and sullen efficiency. I caught myself pining for certain moments to be extended. It’s strange. So often, I feel saddest when I’m happy, because I’m thinking about how that particular source of happiness will end. That’s what I took away from the eponymous burning man at the end of the week: that beauty exists for a certain finite period in time. Its end is inevitable, even desirable. It is a gift to experience happiness, and it is wisdom to let it go.
A Belated Fourth of July Update
Warning: bodily functions ahead.
I am skeptical of Large Group Things. Like concerts, movie openings, and crowded clubs. Something so many people like must not actually be very good, my logic goes.
I am not sure where my logic comes from, but that is another story.
This is before all the doom and disaster happened. Just finish reading this post.
Anyway, my friend Evan decided he wanted to float down the Charles River to watch the Fourth of July fireworks. I gamely agreed. Meanwhile, my brain was thinking: “WTF. How lame. Fireworks and a boat? I’ll fall asleep and get shit on by a bird.”
Evan carrying the boating equipment
But it ended up being surprisingly fun. First we blew up the boat using an air pump. Then I practiced my rowing skills.
So skilled! Yah.
Evan and his Olin College alum friends waved to some fellow Oliners floating down the Charles on… couches. Don’t ask me how they got couches to float. It’s those crazy engineering students.
Bad things were about to happen.
The sunset was beautiful – and there’s nothing like a sunset that totally surrounds you and reflects off the water. I paddled along, careful not to get overturned by the wake of larger boats.
Meanwhile, I wondered if I was incredibly boring. Evan was not replying to any comments I made. Occasionally, I’d crack a joke and he’d just be silent.
My questions were answered about half an hour into our journey. The two of us were crammed onto a tiny, inflatable boat, so it was very obvious when leaned over the side and began vomiting the contents of his stomach.
I patted him awkwardly on the back, and dug frantically through my tote bag for tissues and mints. He continued throwing up, then washed off his mouth with some of the lake water, looking pale and fragile.
“You must feel so much better!” I said, filled with optimism. “I’m sure you’ll be fine now!”
“Yeah,” he said, not sounding convinced. “A little bit.”
Half an hour later, we were floating in between giant boats, the periphery of where the fireworks were going to go off.
He leaned over and began retching again, except this time, it was just dry heaves.
The very nice lady on a neighboring boat offered us some Coke.
We decided, at that point, to paddle over to the dock. It was around 9pm and the banks of the Charles were teeming with tens of thousands of spectators. The teenaged Asian girl, who must have staked out her spot hours before, tried to chase us away.
“You’re not allowed to bring boats here,” she said.
I almost believed her, especially when I heard a police boat yell at someone on a megaphone to move away. “Is that at us?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
Evan, poor soul, had his eyes closed and was doing breathing exercises.
I figured out she was lying, and ignored her. Evan and I sat on the edge of the dock for another hour until the show started. We had stolen front row seats, thanks to our water route. He no longer felt seasick, and the fireworks were indeed incredible. Especially since they timed them to Katy Perry.
After the show, the streets of Boston looked like the zombie apocalypse had hit. People were climbing over barricades and spilling across the crosswalks. The streets were littered in trash. Evan and I packed up the boat and decided to have some dinner at a sushi place in Back Bay.
The sushi ("pink lady" roll) was not that good, so the restaurant is not being named for lack of remarkability.
I am proud to report I neither fell asleep, nor was soiled by a wild animal.
Why Being An Artist is Uncreative
I received an interesting message from a reader about my How to be Your Own Tiger Mother post.
Ronald asks:
I found myself surprised by the end of the article. I agreed with it all the way until the very end, when you said “that it’s not about picking the most creative field. It’s about being the most creative one in your field.”
To me, that sounds like justifying a less intrinsic life route. That makes me question, are you willing to negotiate your true passions to appease what society tells you? Or were your passions too flimsy to withstand the test of time (it doesn’t matter what your teacher said, if you love art, you love art; that’s the way my experiences have been at least).
My response:
“Creative” fields can be paradoxically uninventive. You might love fashion and want to pursue it… but find that the vast majority of all designers actually copy higher end brands who have done all the creative thinking beforehand. Working in film may seem creative, but chances are, you’ll be executing someone else’s vision down to the letter if you’re not the head honcho. And even if you are at the top, it’s not necessarily “creative” – the nature of creative fields is that they’re still businesses that need to be run profitably, and this means that risk taking if often cast aside in favor of another reality show or formulaic action flick. Yes, you might find smaller opportunities to be creative – a buckle here, a piece of a scene there – or the work fulfilling, but the point I’m trying to make is that the gross distinction between “creative” and “noncreative” fields is somewhat illusory.
For the record, I’m glad I never pursued a fine art degree. Yet, I still love to doodle on my iPad during class. (All the illustrations were drawn in iPad’s ArtStudio and Doodle whilst in computer science class.)
Let me relate a story: a friend of mine once wanted to be a novelist. He majored in literature, worked as a journalist for many years, published a biography, and even obtained a masters in creative writing. Finally, he had a novel he began shopping around with a top agent. The marketing people at publishing houses turned it down, saying it wouldn’t appeal to women (who buy 80% of books). Disillusioned, he got into a top law school and began practicing law, figuring he’d still write on the side. To his surprise, he loved it. It challenged him and fulfilled him. Maybe he’ll write that novel one day, but for now, he’s perfectly happy.
Which is why I don’t believe that just working in the field of your purest creative passion is necessarily the right career choice. I believe that you should always pursue that passion in some form or another, but for many, navigating the networking/marketing/financial realities of a creative field will distract or ruin a perfectly good thing.
And you know what? I’m now working as a web designer. I have freelance work up to the gills, and I love it.
I think my creativity is not in web design (which I don’t plan on doing in 30 years time), but in constructing empty spaces in my life for creative projects to grow. The future is awash in planned uncertainty, and I refuse to compromise on that point.
Lana Lingbo Li
I'm a world traveler / enthusiastic eater who's now blogging and producing videos over at HelloLana.com. Visit me there!
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