Cultural Divide: Why Whitey Doesn't Understand South Asia

I have about 15 posts I want to write swimming around in my head, but just haven't had the time to write them. The restaurant is still not open, but each day we are moving a bit closer. Something I touched on very briefly in a previous post was how the cultural divide between Westerners and people here in Nepal is both not as wide as they first think, but at the same time very vast in areas that we at first do not really comprehend. Mostly this is due to some very fundamental assumptions made by westerners that just don't get Asia.

Back in one of my first posts I listed a couple of things I thought would take a long time to get use to (link HERE), and one of them was skin whitening creams and their kind of creepy commercials. These are found in most of Asia, be it India, Nepal, Cambodia, Thailand, China, etc. For us the idea that beauty is dependent on skin color is a bit too close to racism for comfort, and thus we in the west have a hard time often relating to it. But it goes a lot deeper than that. This isn't just a status thing here, many Asians look at dark skinned people the same way we in the west view obese people, just fundamentally unattractive not something that is a slight preference. Most Asians are convinced that westerners have just absolutely terrible taste in woman, mostly because we don't get too distracted by skin tone, for us it's often much more about body shape and facial features. I had a successful friend of mine who was starting to see a guy who was from southern India and somewhat dark, and all her local friends were almost aghast- "he's kind of dark isn't he?". As if surely she could find a more attractive guy with fairer skin, didn't matter that the guy was rather athletic and tall- things most western woman are more interested in. I think they find this equally unsettling as we are so white ourselves.

Asian Opportunity

After my last post there was a short exchange in the comments about how where you live has an effect on how you live and what you can do. While I am the first to recognize that much of what shapes your outlook on life comes with you as mental traits that can be changed in one location just as easy as in any other, I also feel very strongly that opportunities and life style can be strongly shaped by where you choose to live. My thesis is that what I am currently doing, or have been doing could not have been done if I had stayed in the States. I figured I'd make this into a full post because I realized I've never really fully explained much of the differences clearly and have only alluded to them in ways that someone who has never been to Asia might miss. So my response in this way also isn't fully aimed at Rob, who will undoubtedly already be familiar with some of the things I go over, but instead I'm turning it over to a more general accounting to readers in the west who have only some or little experience in the east.

Below are the relevant parts of the previous discussion;


Robert Hartman: Great post, but I tend to think circumstances are a lot like zip codes... I've had a lot of friends move to lots of different places over the past few years, pursuing a lot of different dreams and most seem to be discovering that, "Wherever you go, there you are."

Brian Smith: No doubt that you take yourself with you wherever you go, but to ignore the difference in opportunities that exist in some places over others is to turn a blind eye to the reality of vastly different terrain, economic, cultural, and weather differences. I simply couldn't do the things I'm currently doing in the US, I wouldn't have the time that I have, and the costs are much higher. Ultimately different environments allow for different living habits. Now had I not made a drastic move and just went to some other spot in the US, then I would agree, not enough of a difference to really change the circumstances of what your doing.


Robert Hartman: I don't claim that changing your circumstances can't positively or negatively impact your life. We should all exert all our effort to live the life we want to live... but ultimately if you are satisfied with whatever life you end up with that is a product of how you approach it, regardless of circumstance. In my limited understanding of buddhism, that seems to be a central theme.


One man's exotic locale is just someone else's backyard. I'm glad you are happy where you are, I really am, I'm just saying that if you are willing to put up with a stale fridge and lack of hot water for extra time in the day, you can pretty much do that anywhere.


I work all day with people who made the opposite migration and they see the opportunities in exactly the opposite way. I think there is a grass is always greener element here. Knowing you can always return home and be living in the world's upper middle class within 6 months is very different than having that door permanently closed to you.


Again, I'm not criticizing you personally, I'm just saying that opportunity looks very different depending on where you come from.


Ok, so where to start. First I want to be clear that I agree with almost everything Rob said in the last post, well at least in the first and the last paragraph and I essentially take issue with the two in the center. The issues I want to cover here are costs, opportunities, and finally the education/learning/social aspects of living abroad and how these vary widely from just migrating within the first world and varies considerably from staying within your home country.

Return to Kathmandu- Losing all Focus

So I'm finally back in Kathmandu after a short tour of Cambodia and Thailand. Before I get to the topic of this post I have to give some serious praise to Thai Airways. I've flown them before and they must be one of the best run and most customer friendly airlines I have ever used. While normally US based companies have superior service than overseas competitors, I find our airlines are terrible. Thai airlines have always been very helpful, and their planes are clean, the food isn't bad and their in flight entertainment isn't bad at all. They also don't charge extra for drinks on the planes like some outfits do now. My flight back was with Thai airways to Dhaka in Bangladesh, and then I had a connecting flight through the local carrier to KTM. When I checked in the woman at the counter upgraded me to a direct flight, and it was a flight that departed earlier getting me home three hours early and on a much better plane. So big thanks to them, and I can't recommend them highly enough.

Sometimes it's strange how your perspective of things can change so much in a short time. Before I left for this trip, I'll be honest I wasn't really all that excited about it. Sure I was happy I would finally get to go see Angkor Wat and I was looking forward to being at the ocean again, but mostly I saw it as cutting into a really good rhythm I had gotten myself into that had me writing some of the best stuff I had put together in my life and a running schedule that had put me in some of the best shape of my adult life. Then there was that sync I had finally found with the flow of life in Nepal, picking up supplies, making meals, everything had kind of found its place, so the idea of getting out of that gave me a bit of worry that I might lose a bit of it by the time I returned. This was a well placed concern.

Stepping back into Nepal the other day I couldn't help but feel a bit confused as to what I was actually doing here.  I got home and after unpacking a bit and taking a quick nap I got a chance to Skype Kim back in the states and chat a bit. She asked me, "So what did you miss about Kathmandu?" I was stumped.  kind of stared at her over the screen for a minute while my brain frantically searched for an answer, I stuttered a bit. "I missed running out to Boudha. It will be good to make some more salsa and see people at the market. In the evening before sunset I missed being able to look out at the Himalaya on the horizon. Once it warms up a bit it will be nice to get back out into the mountains, I really do enjoy it out there." But the answers all felt at least a little bit empty.

To be honest what I hadn't missed was the load shedding, the lack of warm water or water at all. I hadn't missed the dark cold nights, the polluted rivers and trash strewn roads. I hadn't missed the dust that covers everything here. I hadn't missed the honking, or the terrible driving habits, or the lack of any shared sense of what common courtesy is. Even though Thailand and Cambodia are extremely different from where I am from, Nepal is another whole dimension.   I hadn't missed the unreliable access to goods, especially certain food, and I hadn't missed the constant hassle that is dealing with everything that is life in Nepal. Coming back home to Nepal, I had completely forgotten why I was here.

I'm now sitting in Imago Dei since my internet isn't working at the house and trying to gain a little focus back. Over the last year I've had a chance to read some of the best, and most important books, I've ever read. Without a doubt I've written the best stuff I've ever written. I've had a  chance to travel to some of the most amazing places I've ever been, and I've interacted with people who I'll never forget. When you look to see where you are geographically and ask why you're there the answer may not always be one of social or practical efficiency. When I really sat and thought about why I was here now, it was mostly because time is cheap and can be purchased at a fraction of the price you get it for in the west. what I missed most about not being in Nepal is the slow rate of wealth depreciation over time, which allows for a stronger focus on the things that you really want to concentrate on and devote energy toward.

I had been so focused before I left that all of the impediments to life that Nepal brings to the fore had melted away as a small cost for what it was allowing me to concentrate on. Now having lost that rhythm, having lost that strong focus the reality of where you are sitting stares you in the face, and without a little mental concentration and a focus on perceptions it's easy to become frustrated with my surroundings. Strangely coming back to Kathmandu I feel further away from it than I have in almost all of my time here. Maybe it's a passing disorientation from my recent trip, maybe it's something more, only time will tell. For now I'm back in Kathmandu, and it's been an awkward homecoming.

No Go-Go: South Asia & South East Asia Are Worlds Apart

While I was in Cambodia I was sitting at an American owned restaurant and overheard a couple of American male expats who essentially summed up that happiness is abandoning woman in the west for those in the east. The argument went something like how eastern woman understand the simple things that men want and appreciate; a focus on family, a certain amount of catering like making a sandwich or getting them a drink when they got home, and apparently a lack of nagging. Later while I was on Ko Samui I overheard a group of what I think were a mix of British/Australian/Canadian woman commenting on all of the men they saw with Thai woman, and how they were all just dirty old men or little boys that couldn't handle strong woman. Somehow I think the truth is lost somewhere between both views, and while there might be a bit to both thoughts neither approaches from the right direction.

What is clear is that it's simply a trade off of what men think they want and what woman think they want. For men it's young woman that, at least in the short term, hang on their every word, inflate their egos, and cater to them at all times. For woman it's money, and potentially the easiest way to a huge amount of social mobility. From conversations I had with some people it appears that factory workers outside of Bangkok make roughly 10$/day, for roughly nine hours of work. Now imagine people are visiting your country and they make in one day what many people in your home make in a couple of weeks or months. For many of these girls, landing a western spouse means that they can live abroad and provide serious financial support for family members back home. For western men, it's simply a way to get woman that would otherwise be light-years out of their league, and  for many the perception of a spouse that respects a certain amount of dominant male authority, though I'm skeptical that this exists in practice and is more likely a simple difference in approach. It also highlights that men are far less interested in what woman do for work, or what their earning prospects are, where as that is the primary concern for the flipside of this equation.

Thailand: Back when I was a kid...

When I first started traveling, a decade and a half ago, you would always here people talk about how a place use to be, or how it had changed so much and become so touristy. They lamented the once cheap and plentiful local food had been replaced by dishes catered to tourists tastes at triple the price and the once homey accommodations had been replaced by resorts and those styled for hipster backpackers. They even lamented the type of traveler they had to share their holidays with, adventurous backpackers had been replaced, or at least engulfed by package tourists, or the Lonely Planet crowd. Sentences started something like, "Man, when I was here ten years ago..."

Well now I'm getting older and it's my turn to lament the missing travel destination that I had once known. Thailand, at least what I have seen thus far, is just a shadow of what it once was. In many ways it is a much 'nicer' destination, but that grit and novelty that had been here on my first visit about a decade ago is very much gone. The simple thatched bungalows that once lined the beaches and the sands once full of young backpackers has been replaced by resorts and middle aged package tourists. The simplicity that made, in my oppinion, an almost perfect beach get away is just very hard to find here now.

Although my experience in Cambodia was somewhat mixed, I kind of wish I had looked more into vacationing on some of their coastal beaches or islands, as I'm starting to think that all of old Thailand migrated to Cambodia. In fact as I sit here writing this now I'm at some overly trendy espresso bar, surrounded by people on dive trips that are sipping lattes and talking about how cheap it is here. While some of the prices aren't much higher then they were before in baht, it feels more expensive to me because the US dollar has taken such a dive over the last decade. Food prices aren't bad when you can find local stuff, but most of that has been cramped out in favor of these western style BBQ places and bars that cater exclusively to western tastes.

So to be honest I kind of miss the Thailand of my youth, though I'm sure it's still out there somewhere...I'm just not certain where to look.

Bangkok to Siem Reap Overland

This route is notorious in the region for lots of scams, and things like 'scam vans' and fake consulates are often brought up in its description. It really isn't that bad, in fact it was quite easy compared to anything one might attempt in South Asia. A tiny bit of research (and I mean just doing a minimal amount of homework) and just a dash of travel savvy and anyone could navigate this overland trip. So besides relaying my small adventure, I'll point out some of the basic tips for travel and some scams to avoid along the way. In the end I was able to do the whole trip in just under 11 hours, and it could have been faster if not for some random bad timing instances and an unnecessary snack stop just before Siem Reap.

The route itself takes you from Bankok to the Thai border town of Aranya Prathet where you walk across the border to the Cambodian side of the border to their border town of PoiPet and then it is a short ride to Siem Reap and the Angkor Temples. There are many options for the first leg of the journey including numerous bus services, mini-vans and trains. Scam number one to look out for is that many of the travel agencies hawking bus services will try to sell onward travel on the Cambodian side, and this is almost sure to be rubbish. The Cambodian side is controlled by a state sanctioned private monopoly, and they don't deal with Thai travel agents...it's not like you're going to use someone else when you get to the border so they don't need the business via agents. So if you take a bus just book it as far as Aranya. I've also heard conflicting reports that the vans can be terrible and cause a lot o problems. Some claim that they arrive at places late to force an overnight at the border and other garbage. Others have stated this went off fine. I didn't take the vans so I wouldn't know.

Bangkok- Food is the Real Carnal Pleasure

When you mention Bangkok to many people they often imagine something out of the opening part of the second act of Full Metal Jacket, one that involves a girl in a very short skirt propositioning Joker with the now famous line “Me so horny”. Although the GI presence here during the Vietnam war was the jumping off point for the go-go bars that were at one time famous here, Bangkok has changed considerably in the last few decades and it has shucked off most of its seedy image and emerged as a world class capital city. This is not to say that the lineage of the go-go bars and what came after isn’t still here, I’ve seen plenty of old men with young Thai girls, but it is not nearly as prevalent or in your face as it was even when I was here in 2002 and 2004. Back then any time Kim got more than five steps away from me girls came out of the woodwork with greetings and smiles, now they're hawking only drinks, legitimate message, crafts, or food…at least on Kao San road.

I have no problems with these rules, though friends back home may suggest that I'm stealthily dodging the last one. 

Flying Out

The only time I've left Nepal in the past year was for a short trip to Tibet back in July. It's funny that now as I get ready to fly to Thailand I feel like I'm leaving home, not just a place I was staying or traveling in. We've had a great year here and though things were sometimes awkward at first I'm really quite comfortable here now. Although Thailand is in many ways much easier to navigate than Nepal, my familiarity here makes it feel like a bit of the reverse.

The other day I went to buy some groceries for a dinner I was going to make for some friends when I opened my wallet and realized I had no debit card. Although we have access to Nepali funds through bank accounts here, that card is my link to US$, which are still very handy to have, especially if you will be in Thailand in a couple of days. Now the good news was that I realized this when I did, and not when I got off the plane and Bangkok to go use an ATM...that would have been a tough scenario. After a little research and some thinking it occurred to me that I may have left the card in an ATM, something that is very absent minded and quite stupid. Nepal being Nepal, I wasn't sure that even if I had done this I would ever see that card again.

For those that don't know, because they've been smart enough to always take their card after a transaction, the ATM machine will claim a card that has been left behind by sucking it into the machine if someone doesn't take it within an allotted period of time. The next morning I went down to the headquarters of Himalayan Bank (the owner of the ATM in question) and inquired about my card. Although helpful they were quick to try and get me to visit their card center in Patan. When I inquired to whether they could call to see if it was there, the guy I was dealing with was very helpful and made the call. Turns out the card was there and they would bring it to this office in a few hours for me to pick up. Crisis averted. I was actually a bit surprised how efficiently the whole process was and how polite the people were, so props to Himalayan Bank for providing services above and beyond what one normally experiences in Nepal.

So with that out of the way Kim and I did some last minute Christmas shopping, stopped by the market (sorry didn't have time to make salsa), and then went with Akshay and Jenara out to an organic farm for lunch and some relaxing scenery. Had a great time and some good food there, and saw the first blueberries, currants, raspberries, blackberries and passion fruit I've seen in Nepal. Cool spot, and we followed it up with dessert at Che Caroline's. Chocolates, apple crumble and macaroons were ordered and we had a good time, thanks a bunch to Akshay and Jenara for a fun day jest before heading south.

The one side note of this was that something somebody ate somewhere has not agreed with people's stomachs. Somehow I seem to have avoided any problems thus far (maybe I have iron guts) but Kim was up quite sick for the better part of the night, which is a terrible way to spend a night before you get ready to fly for 24 hours almost non stop. What particularly unfortunate is that in our year here so far we have not suffered from food poisoning once, so to be struck by it on the eve of departure seems a little cruel. I can only hope that something in my stomach doesn't drop mid flight. Anyway, I'm off to Thailand, and look forward to updating this blog from the road, hopefully with some interesting pictures as well.

Mr. Smith Goes to Thailand & Cambodia

So with my visa running out at the end of the month we were faced with a few different options of what to do. The easiest thing was to leave the country for a few weeks and come back. Due to plenty of things to do for Harilo, Kim was faced with what is essentially a business trip where she gets to see family around Christmas and new year. The cost of flying all the way to the states for both of us is a bit prohibitive and I came all the way out here to not visit Asia not fly back and forth to the US. So I'll be flying to Bangkok on Sunday and will split the next few weeks split between Thailand and Cambodia.

  Map showing the route I'm looking to take.

Mr Smith Goes to Kathmandu- One Year On

So today this blog turns one year old! I had no idea what I would be writing about when I originally put this together, and looking over the posts from the last year it's interesting to me to see how it all shaped up. All in all I've had a great experience over the last year, from the final preparations to come here in December to now when I'm planning to leave Nepal for the first extended period since coming here (I'm heading to Thailand/Cambodia for a short time). While any experience has its ups and downs, this one has been mostly ups and a great experience over all that I'm glad has been a part of my life. Not everything goes as expected, but that is in an ironic way that's something we expect.

So before I left I wrote a post on Why would you want to move to Nepal, and now that it's been a year I thought it would be interesting to revisit some of those thoughts and see what I have done, what I haven't done,how reality matched up with expectations, what I'd still like to accomplish and what was just naive thinking. I'll use Italics to quote the original text.

Some like it Spicy

There is this strange perception that goes around that white folk don't like spicy food, or can't handle it. As someone who has spent most of my adult life sustained almost entirely on spicy foods and bothered to order a gallon of Frank's Hot Sauce from the States, because I miss good hot sauce, this perception can be rather annoying. I first encountered it when travelling in Thailand back in 02'. I'd order Thai food and get this tasteless crappy version that was clearly prepared for that portion of the white population that prefers mayonnaise to Tabasco. Sure you could add spiced oil and red pepper flakes, but it usually wasn't as good as when the chilies are cooked into the dish. We encountered similar silliness in Nepal, India and Mexico as well, and I spend an awful lot of time convincing the people at the restaurants that, yes I really do want my food prepared hot and spicy. Half the time it still comes out and isn't that hot.

This kind of treatment normally gets me into a bit of a huff, and I find myself wanting to challenge the poor waiter to a contest of who can eat the spiciest food. "I'll bury you pal!" is the accompanying thought. seriously, I've happily consumed meals that when they touch your skin it turns a bit red from irritation...I can put down some seriously hot stuff. Since I've been in Nepal I've found that many Nepali people don't think westerners like spicy food, or that we can't handle too many hot peppers. When I first moved here one of the first foods I went ahead and tried to make was Mexican style chili, and my hosts thought it was intriguing that not only a man was cooking, but that I had bought chilies. The dish calls for not only chopped up chillies but I also added a fair amount of chili powder, which made my host question why I was making it so hot. Because, some westerners do indeed like it hot, in fact hotter than my host would have liked it.

Technology & Travel

My first big trip was back in 1999, it was a 2 and a half month backpacking trip around Europe. back then there wasn't much in the way of communicating with people back home. Internet cafes though were just becoming common and it was definitely nice to be able to send some e-mails back home in order to let everyone know where you were and that things were going well. I suppose you also had phones, but calls overseas were quite expensive and I have always traveled as a budget traveler even when I've had plenty of money...it's the only way I know to travel.

Fast forward to 2001/2002 and Kim and I are traveling fully around the planet for about 9 months or so. The internet has become a much more communal resource that even my parents are using quite often at this point. Digital cameras are also now commonly available allowing us to share our adventures with people back home in pictures and not just words. Another big development was the proto-blog sites, ones that allowed us to put up stories and post our pictures and our friends to post comments or messages to us as we traveled. All of this really made it easy to stay in touch with family and friends as we moved from one region to another.

Remembering 9/11

So today is the 9th anniversary of the September 11th attacks on the US back in 2001. It may seem like an odd post to talk about, considering this is a blog about Nepal, but there is a connection. Like everyone else in the U.S. I remember what I was doing that day, and it's possible I may have been one of the last people to know what was going on. At the time I was working for a company that arranged wholesale car rental services to Americans that traveled to Europe. I was part of our crew that was on shift to work European time, which meant late nights. I went to bed at about 7:30 AM that morning, and no one bothered to wake me up, until Kim stopped by sometime around 1:30 in the afternoon.

On September 9th I had just booked a package of ten flights that would take us around the world, the list of countries on that itinerary included; Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Nepal, India, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Israel, Turkey, and Greece before flying back to the US via Switzerland. Kim and I had been planning the trip for about a year at that point, and I had even moved into some dingy basement apartment and sold my car to raise cash for the trip.

Of course I wasn't even thinking about this as the events of that day unfolded. I went with Kim over to her Dad's house to watch TV, as I didn't have one at the time. That night was supposed to be my day off, but with air traffic shut down I knew we would have lots of stranded customers so I offered to go in to work. I arrived and spoke with some other people in management that had talked to the president of the company earlier, there was something like 2 million dollars worth of cancelled trips. That night I took a lot of calls from Americans stuck in Europe that not only wanted to sort out their car rental, most were just wanting to talk with someone back in the States, there were lots of rumors at that point still, and a lot of uneasy people not only at home but stuck abroad as well.

Our departure date was set for October 12th out of Boston's Logan Airport. It turned out that two of the conspirators, including Mohammad Atta had flown out of my home town of Portland Maine, and then one of the flights that hit the towers originated from Boston. This was a bit creepy, and made many people in our family uncomfortable about us traveling. After the initial shock of the event subsided a bit, there was still a lot of uncertainty, as everyone knew the world was about to change, but nobody knew exactly how. After a short discussion Kim and I decided that we would indeed go ahead with our travel plans, to the dismay of some people in our family. My dad, who was a chief in the fire department, just assumed I wouldn't be going.

There was also another thing that made people uneasy; we were passing through a number of Muslim countries, or countries like India who many thought could quickly become in conflict with Pakistan along with the US over what took place. To be somewhat fair to those concerns at least 4 places that we visited during our trip were the target of terrorist attacks in the years following our visit; Bali's Kuta Beach, Mumbai (you can see our hostel in some of the pictures of the 2003 bombing images), Dahab on Egypt's Sinai peninsula and Istanbul Turkey. We decided though that though these kind of events tend to turn countries and people inward, this was not the time or the solution to this kind of event.

The events of 9/11 colored so much of that trip. Tourism dropped plunged world wide that year, and every where we went we were some of the only tourists, and almost always the only Americans. Because of this many of the guest house and people that worked in tourism gave you a little extra attention, and when the fact that we were American came up it always got condolences passed on to us. I even remember a man in Fiji who couldn't speak English, he just mimed with his hands, one vertical and one horizontal, having the horizontal hand crash into the vertical one and topple it over. After this he hung his head and shook it to show sadness. There were also the uneasy moments, which were much less frequent, like seeing an Osama Bin Laden silhouette sticker on a pick up truck in Malaysia or a picture of OBL imposed on the burning towers on the shirt of some kid in southern Thailand.

The most memorable moment though was when we arrived in Jordan and went to our hotel in Wadi Musa we sat down to have tea with the hotel owner and some of his family as well as our fellow travelers. When the subject of our nationalities came up it went around in a circle; British, Argentina, and then us the two Americans. Upon hearing this one of the men at the table stood up reached across the table and kissed our foreheads saying, "Thank God you people are traveling again! We have all been so afraid that you all thought we were like Bin Laden." This happened in less dramatic fashion constantly. People everywhere are just people, with essentially the same aspirations and wants in life. People completely filled with hatred for other people are fortunately  a rare breed world wide it seemed.

That is the thing about actually traveling to places, is that you get to actually meet and talk to people and form informed opinions about places and the people there without relying on the distorted images that are fed to us through major media groups. While 9/11 was indeed a great tragedy, a greater one was that in the end, America has turned inward and we gave up some of the freedom that defined us as a country in order to achieve an illusion of safety. It has reinforced the notion that everything beyond the edges of the first world are scary and full of people that hate us "because we're free". A quick trip around the world and a little interaction with the vast majority of people out there will reveal that most people are just like us, and it's not such a scary place after all.

Buddhism & Greek Philosophy

Many people who travel to Kathmandu at least have a passing curiosity in the Buddhism that they encounter here. My first trip here in 2002 was my first real exposure to it, following up on the month I had spent looking at Buddhist temples in Thailand. My view of Buddhism then was rather clouded by what I had learned about it via Hollywood and New Age garbage. As someone whose two least favorite actors include Leonardo DiCaprio and Richard Gere their speaking up for it didn't increase my interest any. On top of all of that the pop-culture fetish in the US with Buddhism and especially phony causes like Beastie Boys and the whole Free Tibet thing did nothing more to kindle my interest. In fact all of this worked to create a bias in me that would keep me from seeing Buddhism as it should be seen, on its own terms as a serious philosophy.

My trips through Buddhist countries in Asia did very little to change my opinion either. To an outsider, the forms of cultural Buddhism that are practiced through Asia can seem rather odd. Be it offerings of beer and whiskey to divine protectors, or the thousands of divine entities that are present in Tibetan Buddhism all of this works against  seeing Buddhism as a rational philosophy of life, at least it does to me. Touts and hawkers in the tourist districts of these countries don't help any either as they try and "sell" Buddhism through the trinkets that western patrons will buy, be it prayer wheels, crystals, thanka paintings, beads, even whole monk outfits. Some of this can be relevant to philosophical Buddhism, like the thanka paintings, and some can be nonsense, such as the crystals. More importantly though, because tourists regions sell what westerns want to buy, the things that they already think Buddhism consists of, your view of it is unlikely to change passing through these regions.

So strangely my introduction to Buddhism came to me through the Greeks. I have a long standing interest in Alexander the Great, as is evident in some previous posts. That interest lead me to study what happened to the far Eastern Greek Kingdoms after his death, especially the regions of Bactria (present day Afghanistan) and Greek India (essentially modern Pakistan). Many people are unaware that the Greeks and Greek influence would have a major role in this region for about the next three hundred plus years. These years include the rise of the Indian King Ashoka who is credited with being one of the greatest Buddhist proselytizers, as well as the fall of the Maurya dynasty only fifty years later to the Sungas. In fact many beleive that the Greek conquest of India that happened under the Bactrian King Demetrius and later Menander (Who is featured as King Malinda in the Buddhist Malinda Panha) were done on the grounds of defending Buddhists from their new Hindu rulers.

Anyway the mix is not only historically interesting (at least to me) but it also allowed for the transmission of ideas to flow even more readily than they did before between east and west. Historical texts are very clear that many Greek settlers in this region converted to Buddhism, and some texts suggest that the Greeks sent many ethnic Greek Buddhist monks to Sri Lanka and others as far north as the Tarim Basin. No doubt some also traveled back to the Mediterranean to Anatolia, Greece, and Egypt.

It was while reading about some of these transactions that I came across text that showed philosophical Buddhism to be the serious work that it really is. I began to see that there were very strong connections between what it prescribed as a way of dealing with the world around us, and what the Greek stoics taught. In the most basic sense both philosophies teach that since we can not always change the world around us, we must change what we can, which is our opinion and perception of a thing. Both the Greeks and the Buddhists saw that we are not offended by a thing if we remove from ourselves the sense of offence. This got me interested enough to do a good amount of reading to see where Buddhism stands on its own. My misconceptions of Buddhism were plentiful, and this post is long enough without going into full detail.

All of the preceding text was to get to one of the books I just recently read which is one of the better I have read in a long time; Pyrrhonism: How the Ancient Greeks Reinvented Buddhism. Now I was vaguely familiar with Greek Pyrrhonist philosophy, but I had always thought it was very similar to the other schools of Greek Skepticism. The excerpts I had seen were from Sextus Empiricus and usually his arguments against the dogmatic beliefs of the stoics. Although i am often a fan of much in stoic thought, the line of attack from Sextus was usually demolishing some part of their line of thinking that I was also not a fan of, such as their teleological outlook or some other claim about nature.

This book shows clearly why Pyrrhonism is not just another branch of Academic Skepticism and instead expounded a philosophy that does not infer the negative from those things we deduce that can not currently be known but instead advises a suspension in judgement about all things non-evident. The parallels with early Buddhism are quite striking, and one could easily view Pyrrhonism as an adaptation of a western form of Buddhism. As someone who has always struggled with epistemology in philosophy as the more problematic field that derailed just about any philosophical endeavor, section three of this book on things evident and non-evident was a real joy to read, and gave me one of those rare "aha!" moments that make the world seem just a little more clearer.

As a quick example, in the west when we experience an apple, we take it that underneath all of our perceptions is a form that actually is an apple. It is from this form that exists in the "real" world that the "real" apple transmits to us the look, touch, taste, and sound (if you tap it) and smell of an apple. The Pyrrhonists (and Buddhists alike) do not assume that there is anything beyond experience itself, that what we experience as an apple is merely a bundle of sensations that are consistently correlated, there is nothing in anyone of them that dictates to the others a sense of "appleness". Put another way if you were blind, you could not infer a visual apple from a tactile, or audible apple. Basically there is no common quality that one can observe in which all these modes of sensation adhere, no underlying substance or form.

Another book that has made it on to my reading list because of this book is Buddhism Without Belief, which seems to be very much in line with Pyrrhonist thinking. Although this will have to wait until I finish A New Stoicism which at this point I unfortunately can not recommend all that highly. While it is a well argued book the author has a way of making even interesting topics excruciatingly boring. It's written in a format that is the result of a terrible habit of spending too much time talking and debating with people only in academia.

A Flaming Disaster Isn't The Worst That Can Happen

Sometimes we go through life and we really don't pay it much attention. You go to work, you eat meals, chat with friends, complain about that pebble in your shoe. Once in a while you do some things that really make you realize how little opportunity there is to get out there and really take part in life, you do have a finite number of years after all. Sometimes when we don't pay attention you end up just pissing precious time away.

I spent my 25th birthday sailing down the Nile River on a boat with a bunch of people from around the world that prior to that ride I had never met. We were getting toward the end of a ten month trip that Kim and had spent travelling around the world. Our past travels had brought us through the south pacific, over NZ and OZ over through Indonesia and up the Thai Peninsula, over to Nepal down through India and over to Egypt. After my birthday we would go on to Jordan, Turkey and Greece, and after a brief stint in the states we would spend over three weeks in Peru. Ever since this trip I have without pause listed it as the best thing I ever did with my life.

5 Things that may take some getting use to in Nepal

I take pride in being a fairly adaptive person, I can eat lots of different foods, get use to many different customs, and acclimate to various degrees of cleanliness with ease. That said, all places have a few things that take a bit more time to get use to. Here are my top 5 for Nepal;

5- Cows in the Road: I don't know why exactly, but this always surprises me every time I turn a corner and there is a cow or bull hanging around the trash or staring at me. Chickens? Goats? Lambs? All these I can get use to in an urban setting but cows throw me for a loop every time. Maybe it's just their size, but for some reason, despite having seen many, they always seem unexpected.

4- Steamed Rice: I can eat almost any food (save for fried bugs and durian fruit in Thailand), but eating the same thing over and over again is somewhat hard for me. I constantly felt ungratefulwhile staying with Pradip and Sabita's because after a few meals of dahl baht (steamed rice with lentils and curried vegetables) I began to eat about half of what everyone else was eating. It wasn't that I didn't like it, I did, but after a while I would just feel satisfied with what I had eaten and was full enough that I really didn't want to eat too much more. On several occasions I tried to eat until I was really stuffed to be polite, but no one seemed to believe me that I was full. The upside is that I know what I can eat to just feel full now.

3- Driving, Walking & Traffic: Traffic goes on the left side of the road in theory, but really it just goes where it can. Most roads here are about 15'+/- wide, and this forces you to drive a little differently. In the US the system is top down, we are all told the rules and we are all expected to follow them or someone will fine you. It doesn't matter that no one is coming for 15 miles at the stop sign, you need to stop. Here they don't bother putting the traffic lights on, you just move and meld with what you have in front of you. It takes some getting use to the constant horns (used to identify where you are, not to notify of anger) and just moving into traffic and expecting other people to adjust. It will take some getting use to, but the more I experience it, the more I understand how it works, and works well for Kathmandu.

2- Swastikas: With roots as an Eastern symbol used in various religions including Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, the swastika has a very different meaning here as to what it conjures up in the Western mind. We are so ingrained with the symbol as being the ultimate evil of Hitler's Germany showing hatred and racism that is hard to adjust to a culture that uses it as a symbol for luck, wealth and good fortune. My landlords, who are the nicest people, have one just above the entryway to the house. Strikes me a little odd every time, though I know the cultural difference.

1- Skin Lightening Cream: In the subcontinent apparently they prefer them fair, and marketers aren't afraid of filling that niche with a product. I've seen similar products in South East Asia. Two products that I can recall are Fair and Handsome (for men) and Fair and Beautiful (for woman). Coming from a country that is so sensitive about issues of skin color and taught to be proud of what ever you are, these ads and commercials just don't sit quite right with me. In one commercial a guy is playing volleyball, he makes a play, but all the girls kind of laugh him off because he's dark (apparently). I can't understand what is being said, so in my mind I just hear, "No one wants you darky! lololololololol!" Maybe it isn't that bad. He then uses the advertised product, gets lighter skin, sees one of those chicks that laughed at him while riding his manly scooter, and she's like, "Wow! You are totally doable now that you aint so dark!" Or something to that effect in Hindi. They then ride off into the sunset. Praying on peoples insecurities is nothing new in marketing, so I don't know why it bothers me so much, but ya, it just sits awkward with me.

Honorable Mentions (or the things that aren't as bad as they sound)

-Power going out for long intervals during the day. Aside from keeping us from the internet to do work, I actually don't mind it too much. Sure electricity is nice, but so is reading a book and not feeling guilty that you could be more productive.

-Undrinkable tap water. Sure you can't drink from the tap, but after getting a water cooler (that heats or cools at least when we have power) it isn't that big a deal. The deposit for a full 5 gallon container was like 280 (NRS about 4$) and to fill it with water is like 60 NRS.

-Dirty Streets. Yeah trash collection isn't Kathmandu's strong suit, but really a little burning trash here and there is easy to ignore. Even the streams and rivers that double as open sewers don't really bother me all that much, though I won't be going swimming in them any time soon. The trick is to see that it works in it's own way, and the US had many similar kind of locals less than a hundred years ago as far as sanitation.

Since much of this post sounds kind of negative about Nepal, I'll try and end on a positive note. The weather here has been great. Due to the type of climate all the buildings have these awesome flat roofs where you can sit out, soak up some sun, see some mountains and read a good book. Although the city is somewhat chaotic, it feels very free. That all by itself is worth every bit of the things that may take some getting use to, and much more.

Final Note: Kim and I will be hiking in the Langtang region for the next two weeks, so this blog will be lacking updates. Please check back when we get back! I promise to have some kick ass pictures!!