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Perhaps the future of the travel book is the travel blog, with all its elisions, colloquial tropes, and chatty stream of consciousness. It is obvious from the circumnavigation of the Australian Jessica Watson that the great advantage of the travel blog – especially one reporting a feat-in-progress – is the way in which anyone with a computer can be in touch. The highs and lows of such a trip can be experienced and shared by the world in real time. What this trip demonstrated was the exuberance, resilience, and modesty of this sixteen-year-old sailor and her successful voyage.

Jessica Watson (born 1993) is the youngest person to have sailed non-stop, alone, and unassisted around the world. She left Sydney, Australia, on October 18, 2009, on Ella’s Pink Lady, thirty-four-foot sailboat, and arrived back on May 15, 2010. Had her trip taken four more days, she would have turned seventeen.

The 24,000-mile trip was very difficult and eventful – six knockdowns (the mast underwater), towering seas (35-foot waves), 70-knot winds, engine failure, torn sails, and occasionally dampened spirits. But Jessica was never out of touch, posting messages most days, and after each of the blog entries she usually received well over a thousand replies from well-wishers. The followers of her blog grew dramatically as she neared her home port. She posted videos, updates, photos, and news; her website even sold merchandise (caps, posters, etc.) online to fund her trip. In the manner of blogging, her circumnavigation had an interactive element, as she chatted back and forth with the people monitoring her progress.

The tone of her blog is so sunny, it is obvious that such a difficult feat can best be achieved by someone with a positive frame of mind, reminding me that difficult travel is essentially a mental challenge.

Here is Jessica, halfway through her trip, in January 2010: “The picture below is of my very cool new t-shirt which was a present from Mum in my latest food bag. I had to share it with you guys as my crew aren’t doing a very good job of sharing my excitement!” And the accompanying photo shows her wearing a T-shirt with the message “”One Tough Cookie.”

On her arrival home, she was greeted by tens of thousands of people, including the prime minister, who called her a hero. Likable to the last, she disagreed, saying she wasn’t a hero, “just an ordinary girl who had a dream and worked hard at it and proved that anything is possible.”

Cambodia

Spicy Green Mango
No. 4A, St. 278, in Golden Star Apartment Building, 12302, Phnom Penh
Nº. 208, Alley West, near old market, Siem Reap
www.spicygreenmango.com
They also have a Facebook site, just search Spicy Green Mango.

Located near the side of the Royal Palace, this shop sells designed by a Ukranian yoga instructor and pre-school teacher living in Phnom Penh. Cool, huh. Her shirts are soft because they are made from yoga cloth, and they last a long time.

Boom Boom Records
Siem Reap (And Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville, it seems)
They also have a Facebook site, just search Boom Boom Records.

Located on one of the main shopping streets of Siem Reap, across the ice cream store with white sofas, this shop sells shirts as well as music.

Nepal

Una Pluma
They also have a Facebook site, just search Una Pluma.

Found this place walking down Paknajol street in Kathmandu. Same yoga shirt quality feel like Spicy Green Mango. Prices were awesome.

Philippines

Team Manila

Probably the most famous of the graphic designed tees of the Philippines, their shirts can be found everywhere. But I particularly like their shop in Power Plant Mall in Rockwell, Makati because it’s done nice.

Analog Soul

Owned by my friend, their shirts have a more edgier design, and in fact, I prefer them over the former, but that’s just me. Their flagship store is in Trinoma.

Electromagnetic Tentacle

http://electromagnetictentacle.blogspot.com/

The new kid on the block, their shirts are just hilarious. They don’t have a shop yet but as usual you can find them on the Facebook or the Google and the website I’ve listed above. You might have to be Filipino to get their jokes… or not.

Well that’s all for now. Sorry I couldn’t give exact addresses of where they are, but I’ll try. I know where they are… in my mind, lol. Hopefully, I’ll find just as “hip” stores in other countries, but these are the ones I feel are the best.

Oh ya, one more, if you want to get a shirt with the Philippine map on it, ala Balikbayan style, the original shirt can be found also in Power Plant in Rockwell, in a shop called C2. You can’t miss it. There’s a huge map of the Philippines engraved in it’s front.

Pole to Pole by Michael Palin
The Tao of Travel by Paul Theroux
The Serpent and (the Snake, no, just kidding) The Rainbow by Wade Davis

Twenty years later, Palin is still hustling on ships and seeing the world, and now I’ve finally read his book. And what do you know, it’s good. I just put down Around the World in 80 Days just a few seconds ago, and I liked it. Most of it was about him traveling on dhows, freighters, and trains but in the end that is what it was about and it was good.

I’ve read Theroux, Dalrymple, and now Palin. Which means I have a whole slew of books ahead of me to read by Dalrymple and Palin and this brings a smile to my face because this means I have so much to read.

We only have so much time in this world and so must always read the good books first.

I’d just like to mention one more thing. I was talking to my older sister the other day, and she knew Michael Palin as the global traveler. She couldn’t give a damn or even know what a Python is. It just shows that one can keep on changing one’s job description until the end of one’s time.

In Delhi we went to the Full Circle bookshop in Khan Market with equally delightful Cafe Turtle on top of it. Here I met an at first surly book clerk who warmed up to me when I began to show interest in a book on Farsis. Also in Delhi I went to the Daryaganj which I mentioned in an earlier post.

In Calcutta we went to the Oxford bookstore which was also well-stocked.

And the most important thing about Indian bookstores is that they are cheap. It seems that India has it’s own branches of publishing houses which might account for it’s cheap books. What would cost 500 pesos in Manila would be only 300 pesos here. Had we known that sooner we might have bought more books. But then how would we have shipped it home?

When the Hindus cremate their dead, they use fragrant wood which cost at least 250 Rs per kilo (for the banyan wood) or you could buy the more expensive sandalwood. Not everybody is cremated though. Priests, pregnant women, children, lepers, and animals are not cremated. They are tied to a stone and sunk to the bottom of the river. There is also a log that has been lit for the last 3,500 years which relatives use to light the crematory fires. Only men and boys are allowed to the cremations because there is a fear that wives might throw themselves into the fire. There is something about the father, the oldest son, and second oldest son shaving their head depending on which female family member died, but I don’t remember it. There I’ve ruined my karma I guess, but I don’t want to pay for something I wasn’t informed beforehand to pay for in the first place. Humph.

One last tip, there is Nepali temple near Meer Ghat. It’s worth a look-see, because there are Kamasutra type wood sculptures on the temple and real monks meditate there, whether or not there are tourists. There is an entrance fee with real tickets. I can’t remember the price though.

We arrived in New Delhi on the Shabtadi Express. We took an expensive cab ride to our hotel, The Broadway Hotel. Though the facilities were good, I wouldn’t recommend this place because it is in Old Delhi, which isn’t very nice. The reason why we chose this place is because it is smackdab in the middle of the Darya Ganj Sunday book market. This is a once a week book market that sells all kinds of secondhand books but mostly textbooks. It’s really just more of a marvel of the Indian’s love of books.

Next we walked to Red Fort. We paid 250 Rs which might have covered the price to entering Humayun’s Tomb too on the other side of Delhi, but probably not. We then walked to the Umaid Mosque (closed on Friday due to prayers, just like the Taj) where you can go up a minaret and literally see all of Delhi. But before that we ate in Karim’s, in front of the mosque, down a back street. Back at the mosque we each paid 200 Rs to enter and 100 Rs more each to climb to the top of the minaret. We paid a “guide” 100 Rs and he pointed out to us all the building of New Delhi. We then took a manual rickshaw to the Chandi Chowk Metro station. From there we rode the underground to Rajiv station (formerly Connaught Place). This place will clearly be the shopping/commercial center of New Delhi but it was being upgraded when we were there. There was a McDonalds, Kentuck Fried Chicken, and a Fab India.

We then took an auto rickshaw (tuk-tuk) to Humayun’s tomb. We paid 70 Rs based on the kilometers travelled chart found in any auto rickshaw in Delhi. We paid 250 Rs to enter and watched the sunset from Humayun’s tomb. We then took another auto rickshaw to Khan’s Market which had a small but surprisingly complete Green Turtle bookstore and coffeeshop. There is also a small grocery in this “mall” which was also well-stocked. We also shopped in Fab India.