Mugged by Seagulls: Stories Told & Lessons Learned Around the World

Mugged by Seagulls

Stories Told & Lessons Learned Around the World

MATTHEW KLEM

Published by Matthew Klem / Magestik Publishing

Copyright © 2021 Matthew Klem / Magestik Publishing

All rights reserved

www.muggedbyseagulls.com

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publisher and author.

Some names and other identifying features of individuals portrayed in this book have been changed. Other individual’s real names are used with explicit permission from them.

Photo credits: Matthew Klem, Ken Arsenault, Tamara Klem

Front and Rear Cover Artwork courtesy of Norm Delaney

Map images provided by Google Maps © 2021 Google, INEGI

Geocaching.com © 2021 Groundspeak Inc.

ISBN: 978-0-9865081-8-9

DEDICATION

To my daughter Megan who said I should dedicate this book to the Thunder Turkey.

ALL HAIL THE THUNDER TURKEY!

Table of Contents

Preface

There’s Always a Story to Tell

From Fields of Wheat to the Drop of a Dime

A Dream Come True

The Empire City

One Guy in a Car For Three Weeks

The Road Less Traveled

Angels and Revelations

The Perils of Frequent Travel

Floating in the Sand

Peaks, Valleys, & Plains

Exploring the Rural-Urban Chaos of India

Life & Death in the Pacific Ocean

Feels Like Home

Mugged by Seagulls

Escapism at Its Finest

Lost in Paradise

Spend Your Life Living,  Not Having

APPENDIX I

Mugged by Seagulls, The Video

The Other Africa Story

Preface

It was a Friday afternoon , and Scott and I were at the airport.  I had been shadowing him all week and was anxious to get back home. After going a whole year without a cancellation, today was going to be that fateful day. The woman at the counter told me the earliest she could get me home was on Sunday. That wasn’t going to cut it. I had a wake to attend that afternoon and had to be home before then. Scott suggested we drive to Toronto from Providence, Rhode Island. Despite the snowstorm, the roads seemed passable by car. The gate agent booked me a return from Toronto to Moncton for Saturday afternoon. We got in the car and made the trek to Pearson airport.

Fast-forward 12 hours, and I finally stepped into terminal 1 at Pearson airport ready to come home. That was until the Air Canada agent told me my flight was tomorrow, not today (Saturday). I nearly popped a gasket as I told her it wasn’t supposed to be for Sunday. The best she could do was put me on standby for later that day. I took her offer and made my way to a hotel. I had been up all night and needed at least a few hours of shut eye.

Upon returning to the airport later that day, they gave me a standby boarding pass. When I got to the gate, they told me it wasn’t likely I could get a seat but to wait and see. As frustrated as I was, I went for a walk through the airport to calm my nerves. I made my way up the escalators and wandered down towards gate 40, which was on the other side of the terminal. About halfway there, I stopped and looked up. And at that moment, something magical happened.

I had my headphones on, and as Chantal Kreviazuk’s Time played, I looked around the airport. From the windows on the ceiling to the passengers walking by, an incredible feeling of contentment overcame me. At that moment, I realized that I had been given a gift: The gift of travel. My job was taking me on adventures to new places that I otherwise would never have experienced. I had been so obsessed and angry about my flight cancellation that everything else had blanked out. At that moment, I realized that I was fortunate to have the chance to travel.

With a deep breath in, I felt a sense of calm fall over me. One way or the other, things would work out as they should. I finished my walk and returned downstairs to an anxious gate agent. They had been paging me over the intercom for several minutes to let me know a seat had become available. The universe had decided I would get to say goodbye to my recently deceased friend after all. Boarding pass in hand, I got on the plane and made it back in time.

Since then, I have had a lot more appreciation for the opportunities that have been given to me when it comes to travel. With inspiration from my friends and family, I decided to sit down and write out the most memorable stories from my excursions around the world. Traveling has not only exposed me to numerous new cultures, but it’s given me insight into my own life. Being pulled out of your own world and dropped into another is a sure-fire way of putting things into perspective.

Whether you get to travel or not, I hope the stories you read here inspire you to look at the world differently. It certainly has changed mine.

There’s Always a Story to Tell

Ihad just spent the better part of a day exploring the downtown area. Having never been to this part of the world, I wanted to take in as much as possible, given that I would only be here for a week. Being right there by the water, with the bridge and opera house just behind me, this was as far from home as I could get, yet somehow it seemed familiar. Having spent most of my life in the Atlantic region of Canada, being near a wharf with the smell of the ocean around was as familiar to me as the odor of hotdog carts is to a New Yorker. I sat down at a bench and looked across the quay and thought about getting something to eat but wasn’t in the mood for anything too heavy. I never was a fan of sitting alone at a table in a restaurant. I always felt that the staff was somehow looking at me, feeling bad that I was dining alone. Not that I care what others think, but sometimes you just don’t feel like subjecting yourself to situations where you know people are judging. When I would dine solo, I would always end up with my face buried in my phone, trying to keep myself occupied until the food came. Occasionally I’d strike up a conversation with the waitress. That usually ended with me feeling more uncomfortable as somehow in my head, I’d think I was doing something wrong. So, for this particular night, I opted for something simple, familiar, and less awkward.

I walked into the local version of a McDonald’s and ordered my good ole standby meal. Sure enough, fast food here was no faster than it was back home. After waiting for what felt like forever, I collected my food and went outside. There were tables and chairs near the pier, so I sat down to enjoy my supper among the waves. The sound of the water and the birds was far more appealing than the chatter inside the restaurant. I always revel in people watching when I am in new places. I find it interesting to see that no matter where you travel to, most people, in one way or the other, are more alike than you would think. I often wonder what people are thinking and where they are going and what brought them to the same place I had come to.

I cracked open my bag and snagged a few fries as I looked around. I took my burger out and opened the wrapper. I only got about two or three bites out of the burger before the unthinkable happened. In a flash, as I turned my head to grab a napkin to wipe my face, I experienced my first true petty crime while on the road. My burger was ripped from my hand. It happened so fast, and there was nothing I could do but sit there and try to process the absurdity of what had just ensued. For a moment, I was infuriated by the fact that I was left with no supper to eat after having spent what felt like more than half an hour waiting for a burger. Then as quickly as my dinner had been stolen from me, a surge of uncontrollable laughter struck. It was this moment that would stick with me as one of the highlights of this trip.

You might wonder why someone might burst out laughing after having been mugged. Think about it.  Being mugged for a quarter pounder alone is pretty funny. Add to the fact that it was a seagull that ripped the burger out of my hand and then tried to fly away with it; the story takes on a whole new level of hilarity. I somehow pictured a seagull character from some Pixar movie with a burger in his beak, heading towards some nest filled with little baby birds and his wife. She asks him where the food comes from, and he proceeds to tell a heroic story about how he got the food from some silly foreigner who didn’t know to keep a closer eye on his meal.

I laughed, and I laughed. I laughed so hard that the people around me were starting to look at me and questioning if I was ok. I regained my composure, got up, tossed the remainder of my meal in the trash, and went for a walk. Hell, I was in Sydney, Australia, after all, and I wasn’t about to waste any of my time here. I never did get back to McDonald’s for another burger, so I guess the seagull won that round after all.

That one silly incident Down Under is perhaps the most telling of why I have become so enamored with travel. Australia was a place I had wanted to go to for my entire life. Since my childhood, I had three places I had wanted to visit the most: The Pyramids of Egypt, the Galapagos Islands, and Australia. Here I was in Sydney, and now I had the absolute best story to tell about that place.

Sure, I saw the famous Sydney Opera House. I did the Sydney Harbour Bridge climb. I went snorkeling at the Great Barrier Reef. I even did a boat tour and countless other tourist type things that millions do every year. But how many people can say they went all the way to Australia and got mugged by a seagull? That story sets the tone in many ways for all of the travel I have done over the years. It’s not just about being able to say, Hey, I was there! and point out someplace on a map to your friends to tell them you’ve been there. It’s not about taking selfies at every little spot, posting them on Instagram to try and show off to the world. What it’s really about are the stories you tell about these places that matter. Making memories about some new place you visited is what stays with you after all the souvenirs and photos are gone.

When you open a photo album and look at any photo you have from your history, each picture represents a moment in time that you chose to record. The reality is however that the image itself isn’t the story. The experience you had when you took the photo is. Sometimes the story is a funny anecdote about what you saw or what you experienced. Other times it’s a reminder to something more serious that gave you a moment of pause. And yes, there are also those moments where nothing profound comes of it, and it is just a moment of Hey, I was here. When you look back on those experiences, the ones that have great stories behind them are the ones that seem to have more meaning and are easier to remember.

It also makes me a little sad when I realize that the world we are in right now seems to be such that everyone is obsessed with documenting everything we do. Sometimes it’s better to put the camera away and live in that moment. Life would be pretty dull if the only stories told were those of how many photos were taken or how many likes were received on a post. When a year passes, what kind of experiences will you be able to talk about if all you did was take photos and Instagram everything?

The word I am focusing on here is experiences. Countless books, movies, and TV programs always cite, Life is a journey, not a destination. When it comes to traveling the world and seeing all that it offers, I tend to think of a variation on that same quote. Travel is about experiences, not destinations. When I look back at all of the places I have traveled to, of course, I remember the amazing things I have seen. What stands out far more are the experiences I had while I was on the road. From elephants eating trees, sea turtles coming to life, sitting on the set of LOST, and waves crashing against my wife all stick out in my memory because of the experiences I had.

In writing about my travels, I have found myself more interested in sharing those experiences with others, rather than naming off a long list of places I have been to. No one is all that interested in hearing about the fact I’ve been to New York City dozens of times. What people do like hearing are the stories told about what I experienced there. Telling the story about wandering the streets of NYC, seeing a guy dressed so ridiculous that I thought to myself, Man, that guy dresses just like Pauley Shore. Then, as I walk by this person, I give them the head nod that every guy has given some other guy at some point in their life; I realize it actually was Pauley Shore. That story always gets a smile out of everyone I tell it to. Being able to tell that story, among others, feels far more valuable than any souvenir from a gift shop.

This idea of embracing the experience of life has led me to coin a phrase that I think sums up my thoughts perfectly: Spend your life living, not having. With all the places I have been to, and will someday see, I don’t bring home many souvenirs. Instead, I take a deep breath, and just go for it and experience everything I can.

This is the story of how traveling the world has changed my life for the better. And the lessons I have learned along the way.

From Fields of Wheat

to the Drop of a Dime

Iwas born in Edmonton , Alberta, Canada. It's a city just shy of one million people, but for me, it was my entire world. The only time I ever got to see much of anything outside the city was when my parents would pack me in the car on a Sunday, and we'd go for a drive. My dad would get on a back road somewhere and just drive aimlessly. We never really got to see much beyond many fields of farmland, but even then, I enjoyed being somewhere else. Occasionally we'd spot something of interest and slow down. Still, by far and large, it was just the blur of many fields of wheat and other grain farms along the endless backroads that all seemed to lead back to the Yellowhead Highway.

When it came to travel beyond just a country drive in my younger years, there was very little of it. The only memorable experiences I had traveling with my family as a young kid were to Banff and Jasper. We would take summer trips down towards the mountains and stay in a cabin near town. No matter how many times we went, we always ended up with the exact same building. I remember going inside and running to the same room I had slept in the last time we stayed there. It felt like our own home away from home.

During one excursion near Canmore, dad decided we should go for a drive and explore the area. He opted to take some weird back road to go for a ride, and as we were driving, we began to notice that the road kept winding and turning in as we progressed along the way. Eventually, we got along far enough that a sign said that it was recommended we turn around or proceed at your own risk. My dad wanted to continue, but my mother insisted we stop and turn around. The road went up the side of a mountain, so we stopped at the warning sign, got out, and looked around. The town was barely visible from where we were, and we stood there wondering how we had gotten so far up and away. I remember looking down on Canmore and being amazed by how far up we were, but there was also something else there that I couldn't quite put my finger on. As a kid, you don't really appreciate the beauty or scope of things until you look back on it later in life, and this was just such an occasion. I knew there was something special about looking down on the town and seeing the beauty of everything set in the mountains. Still, I just was too young to really know how to process it all.

There's a photo somewhere in an old album in my mother's basement that shows me in a green and yellow hoodie, sitting on a rock on the edge of Lake Louise. When I took my wife out to Alberta to meet my dad and tell him he would be a new grandfather, I took a photo of her in a very similar spot. Until this very moment, I never realized that I had unknowingly re-created an image from my own childhood with my wife in my place. Unlike my childhood memories, she at least wasn't feeding candy to the squirrels.

My first experience with air travel consisted of a trip to Moncton in 1983. Mom's sister was getting married, so we flew from Edmonton to Moncton for the wedding. I've flown hundreds of times over the years, but the first time on an aircraft is always quite an experience. Add to that, taking it all the way across Canada was something else. A few years ago, my wife and I took my kids to New York City, and they experienced their first airplane ride, train ride, and subway ride all on the same day.  I remember sitting on the plane with them, recalling my own first time flying and wondered if they would remember theirs when they got to be my age.

For that first trip to Moncton though, flying was something else entirely. In those days, people smoked on airplanes, and it was always a larger aircraft that took you everywhere. I remember part of the trip sleeping across three or four seats in the middle of the plane on my way to Moncton, but now you'd be hard-pressed to see a flight with more than four spots across the body. It's also rare now for kids to see the cockpit or meet the captain. Of all things I remember from that first experience on an airplane was the bright boxy orange buttons on the panel above the seats, which turned the lights on or paged the flight attendant. I once got on a flight in the US, sat down, looked up, saw the same orange buttons, and smiled. I then wondered how old the plane was and if this would be my last flight ever.

When we were in Moncton, I got comfortable with the city and even made a friend who lived across the street. There wasn't anything monumental that happened during that first trip. In fact, the things that I did take away or discover there were so small and insignificant that it seems funny to recall them now. Everything from bacon-flavored chips to sales tax and even how the traffic lights were set up seemed new and different. Shortly after the wedding, we flew back to Edmonton, and I never gave Moncton a second thought until we moved there in the summer of 1985. After that, the only travel I experienced for several years was the occasional 30-minute drive down to Parlee Beach to visit my grandparents. It wasn't until the summer after my college graduation in 1993 when the first inkling of travel struck.

Unlike most teenagers, I didn't get my driver's license when I turned 16. I got my beginners, but it expired before I got to take my road test. I never bothered to get licensed until after I turned 19. After I moved back home from college, I opted to take up my grandparent's offer of giving me a car if I got my license. A 1989 AMC Concord station wagon had been parked in my mom's backyard, and no one was driving it. This was the car that was destined to be mine. It was about as uncool as you could get. As someone who at the time really didn't care what others thought of me, I took the car and made it my own. Green with wood panel lining the sides, it was the ugliest thing you could picture, but it was mine, and I would drive it to the limits. I got three years out of that car before the frame quit, so I certainly pushed the boundaries on what old beaters can do.

In the early years of having my own transportation, I found myself picking up a few friends and just getting in the car and driving somewhere. Sometimes it was across town then up and down Main Street a few times, and other times it was to an entirely new province. On more than one occasion, we'd get in the car and drive to a new city just to get a coffee. We went to Springhill, Nova Scotia, because we had been told it was a great place to party. We found no parties there but did manage to steal a No Parking sign off the back of a convenience store in Amherst. On another trip, we drove to Saint