Oaxaca is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, like Luang Prabang in Laos and Hoi An in Vietnam. I’m not sure what this means exactly, or how the title is awarded, but World Heritage Sites have much in common:

1. Prices are twice as high than anywhere else.
2. Restaurant owners demand payment before you eat—unheard of in rest of the country.
3. Waitstaff are surly as they slap down nursery-food versions of the national cuisine.
4. The local economy is based around t-shirt sales, Internet cafes, begging, and stores selling ‘Real Folcart’.
5. You can’t buy local coffee, though these are coffee-producing countries. Latte or cappuccino only.
6. Foreign visitors are bored and sunburnt. Heritage is hard work.
7. It’s always too hot.

If you find yourself stuck in a World Cappuccino Heritage Site, here’s what to do: Stop plodding around the cathedrals and temples. Buy some streetfood—a bag of mango slices, a taco al arabe, nothing fancy. Take it to the main square and sit under a tree. Put your guidebook away, and be quiet for a while.

The t-shirt seller, you notice, is reading a biography of Che Guevara. A patient ten-year-old leads his blind grandmother on begging rounds. Hothouse schoolgirls strain their uniform blouses, just like Salma Hayek in Frida. A baby tied to his mother’s back in a shawl peers down at a fellow baby in a state-of-the-art stroller. A small family passes, kids in jeans and sneakers followed by a barefoot granny with gray braids.

A bigshot in a tight suit, polished boots, and sunglasses instructs his cellphone. Somebody is singing. Somebody else is playing guitar.

Six Zocalo boys in cowboy hats and baseball caps appraise the passing women. They’re at least three hundred years old between them, and so is the tree that shades them.

Life goes on.

Southeast Asia:
‘When used regularly, NIVEA Whitening Cream makes your skin smoother and fairer and protecting it against further darkening.’

Mexico:
‘NAIR. For totally touchable skin.’

Over seven months in Southeast Asia, my assumptions unraveled just enough to glimpse how much I still don’t understand.

How did they cope, I wondered in Burma, where not just whole families but whole communities lived in single-room ‘long houses’? How did husbands and wives, young lovers, and kids, manage private lives when thirty people ate, slept, and bathed together? But as they quizzed me in pidgin English, I began to understand they did not mind their lack of privacy. They did not see themselves as separate from others, as I did. And then slowly it dawned—over months—that they felt sympathy, not envy, for my cherished independence.

For the first time, I met people who had almost nothing. They lived in mud huts not even graced by a chair. Poor things, I thought, as another part of my brain fretted about the storage costs for my stuff in New York. I missed my New York furniture sometimes. But as I sat cross-legged, aching, and fidgety, I began to notice that these folks had the stomach, back, and calf muscles that Pilates queens dream of. They sat regally on packed-earth floors for hours. My body was atrophied from years of school and office chairs, in which I sat to pay for more chairs. How nice to have strong sitting muscles, in place of strong wanting muscles.

I watched people give to monks on daily alms rounds. The monks smiled, the donors bowed and said thank you. I thought this was daft and hierarchical at first. But then, in village after village, people gave freely to this rich tourist with obvious pleasure. Giving, in poor Buddhist countries, is not a duty but a joy. It is an investment in karma for which the recipient should be thanked. I was humbled by—and envious of—this sense of abundance, and no longer sure which of us was rich.

Unaccountably, the Iranian Embassy in Bangkok is not as excited as I am about my plans to travel solo around their beautiful country. Which leaves Plan B, courtesy of my patient travel agent.

On January 29th, I fly to New York, where I will faint at the price of a sandwich and wear flip-flops in the snow. I shall recover in Mexico City, and then head to Bolivia by Chicken Bus. I’ll peer down from the Andes to see if Tierra Del Fuego looks manageable. It’ll be a trip. Anyone coming?

Other updates: I’ll be offline for the next while, in Buddha Bootcamp (a ten-day retreat). When I get back, my hand should be healed and I’ll post all my pent-up ramblings. In the meantime, I’ve added a Comments feature, so please—comment.

My field study of Southeast Asian medical care continues. There was that tiny falang clinic in Saigon, whose proceeds sponsored the heart hospital next door. There was the Phnom Penh hospital run by a stretched, dedicated staff, where they hesitated on Christmas Day before unwrapping an expensive 3M cast for me, after the previous one disintegrated in days. I liked the 3M cast very much, though it was clearly the wrong shape. It glowed in the dark, and I lay in bed pretending it was a Light Saber.

And then there’s Bumrungrad Hospital in Bangkok, which boasts a King’s Award for Export for pioneering ‘medical tourism’. On New Year’s Eve the lobby was full of prosperous looking Arabs, who no longer wish to go to the US for treatment. Within minutes of arriving—dodging limos in the car park—I had a laminated, barcoded identity card and a chic escort to the orthopedics wing. I had no appointment, and they were busy, so the nurse on duty offered me a complimentary voucher for the inhouse Starbucks or Au Bon Pain. Or perhaps I’d like to schedule a massage or a facial? Some Botox?

My broken hand hurt and I vaguely hoped I’d need an operation, since it was the only way I could afford such a plush hotel. Instead, the doctor clicked his tongue at my latest cast and told me it had been set wrongly again. He’d put another cast on—my fourth!—and said in four weeks we’d see about an operation to undo my well-meaning Cambodian care.
   ‘Next time come to Bangkok first.’

So, no diving, no massage course, no yoga, no cooking class. (I realize this may not seem like hardship to you, but you probably have a paycheck to console you.) Four more sweaty weeks of one-handed typing and dictation bribes. Still, at least I got a coffee out of it this time.

Almost as soon as I left the hospital, I tipped a bowl of som tum salad into my new cast. Some of the key ingredients of som tum—which is delicious—include fish sauce, fermented crabs and chilis. It’s been ripening unpleasantly since. Combined with the fact that this new cast doesn’t glow in the dark to my satisfaction, I may yet be forced to chew my arm off at the elbow, coyote-style.

Andie Miller sent me a link to Motionsickness web site. The archive is limited, but has given me an appetite for a print copy of the magazine. I especially liked this:

Read the whole thing here. I suspect that Paul Theroux fans buy his books in order to confirm that they were right not to leave home.

On this trip, my subconscious, which is not particularly politically correct or subtle, has provided me with a theme jingle for each new country. In Thailand, it was:

‘Bangkok! Oriental city…
One night in Bangkok makes a grown man crumble
Can’t be too careful with your company
I can feel the devil lying next to me’

In Vietnam, I was plagued by two snippets:

In World War Two, the average age of the combat soldier was 26
In Vietnam, it was nineteen
N-n-n-n-nineteen.’

and, courtesy of Mr. Lou Reed:

‘Those gooks were fierce and fearless
That’s the price you pay when you invade
There’s no Christmas in February
No matter how hard you try’.

With Cambodia, I’ve reached a new low. ‘God forgive me,’ is how Irish people over thirty preface subversive or blasphemous remarks, even when they’re not sure which God they’re addressing. It’s how Orla Mulcahy used to punctuate her huge collection of jokes at the back of French class when we were twelve. The class favorite, by a long way, was:

‘Q: How do you starve a Cambodian?
A: Pick his nose while he’s asleep.

It beats like a drum in the back of my mind in Phnom Penh. God forgive me.

Hand is still broken. Grr. My soap-opera French doctor patted my shoulder and handsomely bit his lip as the orthopedist set the bone, but it was no compensation for this sweaty cast.

Leaving Saigon for Cambodia tomorrow. We island-dwellers never get over the novelty of driving to a whole other country. I wish I could put Vietnam in my pocket and sneak it out with me.

I finished Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance last week, just fifteen years after I’d first started it and five months since I lugged it from Brooklyn to Bangkok. I have finally earned my backpacker stripes.

It’s somewhat embarrassing to be caught with that battered purple cover at 30, but nevertheless I enjoyed it. I like people who think before they speak, who make things, who care about elegant solutions, though I have none of these characteristics myself. That’s why I’ve always sought the company of engineers, to the point of finagling a career in software despite being academically qualified only to parse medieval Spanish poetry.

When I tried to trade my Zen, the Tam Tam Caf&eacute stood in my way. ‘One for one, same or better quality’ said the notice explaining their book exchange policy. I wanted a Rick Moody, which was in better shape, so I offered a Stendhal as well. No, said the woman at the desk. She held up the Rick Moody.

    ‘We only trade one for one. And have to be same size. This book is more big than your book.’ She showed me that neither of my books was as tall or as thick as hers.
    ‘But I want give you two books in exchange! And mine are in good condition.’
She was adamant. ‘No. Have to be one book, same-same size of big.’

Dammit, Pirsig was right. Nobody understands Quality.

British girls’ comics used to offer paper dress-up dolls. They may still, for all I know. You were supposed to paste Bunty, in her modest underwear, to ‘a piece of thin card’, then cut carefully around the outline and stand her up. Her outfits were printed on the same page, with tabs to be folded around the cardboard figure. A couple of scissors strokes and some careful folds, and Bunty was ready for the office, or the disco (this was the Seventies). I have little manual dexterity and no patience with fiddly tasks, so I usually lopped off the tabs accidentally. But I loved the idea that Bunty could transform her career, her whole persona, simply by wearing a new paper costume.

This is why, when I get lonely on the road, I think about my wardrobe in storage in New York. It’s not that I miss the garments themselves; there were plenty of mornings when not a single one begged to be worn. But they’re the costumes I wore for roles played in another life, and as such they’re shorthand for the people and places I miss.

There’s Iceskating Dervala, in a black turtleneck, woolly hat, and gloves (I hate iceskating, but that’s not the point.) There’s SoHo Dervala, in Miu Miu boots and a pink fake fur collar. There’s Brooklyn Dervala, in yoga pants and tank top. There’s November-in-the-office Dervala: red Chaiken pants and a long-sleeved tee, on which I’d compare notes with Tricia and Carrie in the kitchen. And there’s Lounge Party Dervala, precariously unused to high heels and a sleek black dress.

This clothing obsession explains why it still bothers me that I didn’t quite get the travel wardrobe right.
   ‘I’m thinking sexy, I’m thinking intrepid, I’m thinking tough babe, Lara-Croft-meets-Martha-Gellhorn,’ said the camp fashion stylist who controls a good chunk of my brain.
   ‘I’m thinking beige, I’m thinking soccer-mom-on-vacation, I’m thinking fat-assed-tourist-who-won’t-eat-spicy-food,’ said the camping equipment web site where I bought my pants.

No wonder I’m homesick for New York. I’ve been wearing bad pants for 100 days straight.