MEH (mē’)

1. (n.) A multi-purpose response, primarily used to imply a degree of indifference.

2. (n.) Vietnam, a country of southeast Asia in eastern Indochina on the South China Sea.

My posts on this blog have been less than prolific in recent months, I know. That’s not to say that much hasn’t been happening in this time. To the contrary, it has — I simply haven’t written about it.

This can be blamed on the fact that I’ve become obsessed with finding a full-time paying gig in Thailand and/or Singapore, which admittedly does take up a lot of my time. However, the ‘truthier’ reason is that I simply haven’t had anything all that stunning to write about.

Don’t get me wrong, over the past several months, I’ve taken a trip back to Sri Lanka, I’ve moved from Bali back to Bangkok, I’m heading back to the States in a few days for the first time in a couple years, and I’m currently in Saigon helping out a friend.

But all of this has been done before, nothing has pissed me off significantly where I felt the need to write about it, and nothing else has happened warranting a full-fledged blog post. Rather, over the past several months, I find that everything I have to say can be said with a 1-line status report on Facebook.

That being said, being back in Saigon has finally piqued my vitriolic creative juices again.

I’ve been to this country three (3) times now, and even not including the times when I had my money grifted at the border crossing and my digital camera stolen from my bag, I STILL have yet to find anything even remotely redeeming about this place.

It’s not so bad that I actively dislike the place, it’s just that, in relation to all the other countries in the region, Vietnam is a Southeast Asian version of Carnival Cruise Lines — on paper, it appears just as good as … say, Thailand or Laos or even Indonesia. But then, when you actually get there, you find out the other passengers are trashier, the cabins are dingier, the food less tasty, the daiquiris watered down, the cruise overbooked, and the crew less accommodating than other cruise lines. And sure, the pool LOOKS great, but there’s a lingering feeling the entire crew has been surreptitiously pissing in the pool every time your back in turned.

The total effect of all this is to leave a nasty aftertaste in your soul, despite any efforts to the contrary.

Maybe my problem (if it can be called that) is that I’ve grown to love Thailand and Laos to such an extent that everything else pales in comparison (even Indonesia, which I also like). As a result, as it now stands, I’d rather hang out in my hotel room surfing the net rather than go outside, dodge traffic, and otherwise watch the locals piss in my pool.

It’ll be interesting to see how I react upon my return to America next week.

The Indonesian Army on Saturday finally reached some of the areas worst hit by Wednesday’s earthquake, bringing two desperately needed tractors to unearth people and houses buried in landslides that swept away entire villages here. One of the tractors promptly broke down.

–New York Times, reporting on the extremely slow Indonesian response to the 7.6 magnitude earthquake that hit Sumatra last week (United Nations currently estimates the death toll at more than 1,000, with thousands more still missing).

[S]ome people feel it was sort of weird for Barack Obama to throw himself into the fight with such ardor. They may have a point. But if the president is going to take a flier on an improbable and possibly delusional quest, I would prefer that it involve lobbying the Olympic committee rather than, say, invading a country.

-Gail Collins, on President Obama’s failure to persuade the International Olympic Commitee to allow Chicago to host the 2016 Olympics

So, it’s been a whole year since I moved to Bali. Looking back, I can still (barely) remember my reasoning for doing so:

At the time, I was basing myself out of Bangkok, but throughout the extensive (Northern Hemisphere) summer, I was only staying there 2-3 weeks every other month and spending most of my other time jockeying around the Indonesian archipelago, looking for surf.

It was costing my heaps of money in terms of running back and forth to Bangkok for visa runs, to pick up clothes, pay bills, and other random crap. Plus, at the time, there were no inexpensive direct flights from Bangkok to Bali (which Air Asia now has), and I was spending additional moneys heading through Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, and elsewhere — most of the time heading to, or through, Bali for surf supplies before heading to another destination.

So, although I had never been a fan of Southern Bali (the over-commercialized center of the Indonesian tourist/surf scene), I decided to give it a go in the hopes the island would grow on me — I’d practice my Indonesian, be able to surf on a more regular basis, and save some much needed money.

One year later and, despite all I’ve learned in terms of Indonesian culture, the international surf scene, and my own surfing abilities … I am, quite possibly, less of a fan of Bali than I was before I moved here last year.

The main reason for that is (apparently) indicated in the Taylor Steele movie I referenced in my last post — now that I’ve been here and I’ve been able to get a feel for some areas still untouched by tourism, it puts into sharp contrast the tourist nightmare that exists everywhere else on the island. And the greed, crowds, and incongruous stress that has become indicative of life here.

It used to be a lovely island, a tropical paradise. But no longer. That era is long gone.

It’s getting far too tiring to live here. The positives no longer outweigh the negatives. And it’s time for me to go.