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| I snapped myself at the below monument |
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| Is this a nice shot? |
There
are various reasons behind the travelers’ choice of transportation. It is
pretty hard though to guess why people use the different transportation options; as
I recall, however, student-like appearance travelers who were on board on the
same day with me might have a same reason preferring the bus rather than plane
or train. It is obvious that bus is time consuming, yet this option does not
diminish your passion to enjoy the trip. I would say for sightseeing, bus is a
nice option because you can see different places that you pass by. If you want
to use the bus when traveling for a long distance destination, here the
backpacker basic skills is applicable.
Backpacker
basic skills is needed because most of the American suburbans do not have
public transport system that suits your needs. I would say cities, college towns in
particular where the international students live in are not so convenient. I proved
this in Lawrence, Kansas. My starting point for this time’s traveling was from
here. Within this city, you will find it difficult to access to some places in
time. It tests your patience because you have to wait for about 20 – 30 minutes
every day at each bus stop, and alternatively, somebody must walk to a distance
location on Sunday if there is no choice. Also, importantly but unfortunately
at this time’s traveling, this town’s location is not so strategic
geographically; there is only one intercity bus link which connects the town to
the Kansas City, and with the-only-intercity bus link, I was able to go to Kansas
City in order to catch another bus to Chicago. Otherwise I could have taken a
shuttle which, you know, debilitated my bank’s ability to take care of me after
returning.
Here
is the applicability of the backpacker style in order to address the distance
challenge. We, originally, planned to go straight to Chicago. It takes about 10
hours and a little minutes more to get there directly. The fare is quite
reasonable, yet the distance is freaking far. Given that distance, we came back
to the gist of travelling; seeing more places or the road trip will make us
happy rather than doing a straight go and back travel. So we decided to cut
that time into two parts. St. Louis Missouri was the first half, and the finish
was in Chicago. Some people may argue that US cities are not so different from
each other, and that the must visit cities are only NYC, DC, Chicago, Miami and
few others which hyped by CNN and Hollywood. Yes, that all American cities are
typically spread out, downtowns are in grid shape or laymen would call a big
town as big square separated by lines, and of course concrete or glass buildings
are waving their topes up from the sky. You can see this everywhere in the US.
However, this stereotype might not be able to guess something that is intrinsic the nature has given them. Built-environment in most
American cities may look similar, but remember that each city has its own
characteristics to please the new comers’ curiosity. An identical twin girl may look beautifully
the same, but when you approach them you will see the older one is humble, wiser,
has a birthmark on her sharp nose which you really love it, and the other one
is just nasty. Which one would you like? Of course the older one. You find pleasure from either
because you see each one's differences after having a closer look.
It is the same too that the decision we made to transit in St. Louis was the
best one. We cut that long trip hour into pieces and enjoy the new sights.
But
now one would think that this plan adds up the financial burden, isn’t it? The justification
would be if you transit in a new place, you will need to eat and sleep. Yes, it
is. That’s undebatable because you must eat and sleep in order to keep looking cool
to wowing some passerby sexy girls. But, that is not the only thing of
everything. You still have the backpacker strategy which I brought it up
earlier. Try to set up a night departure schedule so that you can sleep on the
bus. Sleeping on the bus is in lieu of your hotel in the city you are heading
to. What my friend and I did was we departed from Kansas City, and it took us
five hours trip. That five hours became our sleeping time. We assumed that
we used the bus as a transport and as a hotel all at once. We slept “well” on
the bus. Besides of that though another challenge was we still had another four
more hours to see the horizon to become brighter once we got off from the bus.
We did not know where to go, except walking around in the downtown of St. Louis in order to
wait the morning to come. If we had found a hotel, we could have just wasted
our time and money because the hotel staffs would kick our ass off very earlier
at 11 am. That would be a waste of money, right? The cost might have been: we didn’t
get enough sleep plus the sleep could have eaten eat up our time for
sightseeing. So, eventually we just roamed around in downtown until we saw the
light comes out from the St. Louis horizon.
Funny
stories starts from here once we walked towards the downtown area at that night. We were navigated by the google map with a GPS devise in it. Clicked on the
downtown area, and it kept telling us where to go. We finally bumped a street corridor
where most of the night clubs are located. We suddenly saw mobs of men and women
walking in and out the clubs, crossing the street, chanting, yelling, smoking, drinking,
etc. I said “this place will be a right place to spend the rest of the hours.”
Girls started calling us to join them. But, we were too obvious to them that we
are not Americans. We looked so innocent at that night. I guess, our appearance
and the bag packs we carried indicate that to them. Because we carried two big
backpacks, we were not allowed to sit on the street. A parking staff told us “I
know you guys are not from here, please don’t put down your backpacks and sit
here otherwise the cop will come and handcuff you because this is a homeless
free zone.” We were laughing out loud saying “oh gosh they think we are
homeless.” We tried to be submissive at the night. We did not get any trouble
except the heavy backpacks we carried along with us wherever we moved to.
We
were finally tired after walking from the tip to tip of that street. There were
still two hours left. The night was still dark. Almost everybody in the street
started getting drunk and walking towards their cars to go back home. Some drunken
people even yelled at us “Fuck you.” But we just ignored them. We suddenly had
no choice where to go when the street started quiet. We then walked down to a
park. The park looks nice. It has a clean lawn, benches and tables, and a
movable toilet. In the most US cities’ downtowns, Public Parks are usually the
homes for homeless people. But at that night, we did not see any of those good
but unfortunate guys roaming around. We said, “this is a good place to lean our
back while waiting the sun to rise.” We found a bench and we started sitting
down. Another funny thing was, shortly thereafter like about one hour, we
started noticing that some homeless people actually were sleeping on the other side before us. They started moving and erecting their bodies. We felt like they camouflaged
with darkness. We did not notice them there by no
means. We were terrified by that unexpected emergence. One homeless guy started
coming towards us. He sat just right in from of the bench on which we were laying. I told my friend “Bro, wake up, somebody is approaching us, and if I see he
is doing a suspicious motion, running is the best thing to do.” And we must run
as fast as a mature horse because this guy probably has a young horse power
skill.”
Thanks
to God, we found nothing harmful at that night but just a little bit scary. It
was quite an adventurous travel we ever had in St. Loius. The darkness faded
from minutes to minutes. We started seeing the city bus picking up and dropping
of passengers. The city started to begin their hustle bustle activity as it
always happens in a lot of cities anywhere in this world.
We
visited many places after the morning such as the land mark of St. Louis, The
Gateway Arch. We also did many other sightseeing that I can’t tell them all
here. But to sum up, the backpacker’s style that we applied in this city was
cool, but it was challenging as I told our story above. It enables you to visit more places as possible, and save some money, but it also
quite challenging. The important thing is you have to be careful whenever you
are and keep asking help from God.
The
next story will be about the city of Chicago. It will be different as another friend
came on board in St. Louis when we went on to Chicago. Some photos will
come soon afterwards.
Hope
this gives you and inspiration.
