Where the Gypsies go to Blog

Top Albums of 2012

Regardless of your situation, good music transports us to a better place. Whether I was jet-setting, cruising on a 12 hour boat ride, strolling through a crumbling city, or dancing the night away, the following albums made my year that much better. You can get the full albums on my Spotify playlist “2012 Top Albums”. Enjoy!

I take many things for granted when living my day to day life in the states. I currently reside in San Francisco, an extremely liberal city, birthplace of the Grateful Dead, medical marijuana and a land of protests. Walking through the hood and witnessing one of these protests is commonplace, whether it be regarding same sex marriage issues, police brutality or nudist rights (done in the nude of course). What I didn’t quite wrap my head around was the power of these protests, but more so the power of our freedom of speech. For instance, in Myanmar up until a couple years ago, peaceful  protestors would be shot down dead, whenever they would stand up and fight for their rights.

I was both lucky and unlucky to be in Myanmar at the time I was. My trip randomly coincided with Obama’s historic visit (it was the first time that a US President officially visited Myanmar). Also it was less than a year after Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the national league for democracy and “mother” of Burma, gave her blessings for The country to open up its doors to tourists. Because of this new validation, there were more tourists than the country had ever seen. Thus, accommodation was fairly hard to come by in some areas. There is simply not enough infrastructure for this new rush of tourists. This provided us with many opportunities for adventurous travel (ex. sleeping on the floor of a monastery for days).

On the day that Obama landed in Myanmar, I happened to be in the same city, Yangon. People were buzzing and for the first time in my travels, people were actually stoked on America. Out of the hundreds of smiles you receive upon walking past strangers, many yell out, “which country!?” and upon your reply of, “USA!” they yell, “ahhhh OBAMAS!” During his speech at Yangon University (a historic site, particularly due to the fact that dozens of students were shot and killed in 1988, as part off the 8888 uprising), Obama addressed  many of the pressing issues (the fighting between the Buddhists and Muslims in the Rakhine state) as well as supporting Myanmar as a more democratic country.

During the time, I was watching in a tiny village, live on a rustic tv screen, with several Burmese monks I had spent the day with. Everyone was plastered to the screen and after his closing issues I was able to sit down to lunch with the monks. Chet, the younger of the two monks, explained how just 2 years ago, he wouldn’t dare talk about any political issues.

In the past, the government utilized spy’s across the country, whom would arrest and put anyone speaking against the regime in jail (Myanmar currently hundreds political prisoners still imprisoned). Chet remembers the clash at Yangon University and how much fear that instilled in his day to day life, one wrong word and death was around the corner. He asked my about my country, I told him about my life. I also brought up the many protests in San Francisco and he looked at me in disbelief. “Your life must be so different,” he replied.

One thing that I’ve learned through my travels is that, there are some lessons that you can’t get out of a book. They are waiting for you at the other end of a flight. While studying history, political science and social issues of the world is important, nothing makes it relative, makes it personal like experiencing it for yourself; actively living it. As Americans, we have many freedoms that we underutilize. Part of living in the “land of the free” is that we have the freedom to leave our country and explore the world.

Unlike many countries, in most cases our government doesn’t control where we can or can’t go. I hear people say, “why leave America, when you have so much here?” Well that may be true, but you should leave because you can…you have the freedom to do so. Explore, see how other people live, build relationships, get weird in another country and I promise it will give new meaning to your life. There is only one world that we know, get out there and experience it to the fullest!

You know how I know that I’m a kook? I’m writing a blog on my first time getting barreled! Forget this fact for a second though and if you are a seasoned barrel slayer, I apologize for my amateur descriptions.