My 1973 Monte Carlo waiting for me after I returned from my trip around the world in the first week of February 1977.
The first time I heard about going around the world was from my girlfriend. Donna Easson had already taken a big step when she left Saskatoon with her girlfriend, Beverly, after completing five years of nursing school to join the nursing staff at Stanford University Hospital in 1966. As I was climbing the stairs to the second floor apartment that I shared with three other Stanford master's degree students, I saw her in the little cedar fenced-in patio outside her apartment crying.
I met Bev in the common entertainment room where we could watch TV and play pool. But Donna did not appear. When I asked Bev why her roommate was crying, Bev told that she was very homesick. Bev and I weren't homesick at all, just blowing off steam from her high-powered job and my high-powered studies. And most of all, we came to socialize, to meet others in the apartment at the pool or in the entertainment room.
We were all newcomers to this new apartment and California, just getting to know one another.
But it wasn't until after Christmas and the second trimester when I had moved from my two-bedroom apartment totally unable to relate to my three roommates who liked to play classical music turned up loud while I was trying to solve difficult engineering problems, that I first met Donna, moving in with a transfer Stanford student, sharing his studio apartment.
Jim was a rich kid from Oklahoma City. He had a new convertible. We both wanted to take in the Chinese New Year. So I asked Bev if she and her roommate would go with us. Donna joined Jim in the front seat, and Bev sat with me in the back. We drove up to San Francisco and enjoyed a second floor dinner overlooking Grant Avenue and the Chinese New Year. On the street, colorful dragons came through with firecrackers and drums blocking out any way of talking. We had drinks later on one of the waterfront piers, and then finally, we took in the midnight movies showing some of the most avant-garde films I've ever seen before or since.
After that, Jim took up with a young daughter of a Puerto Rican lawyer immigrant, and I started dating Donna. Always sleep deprived, our dates often ended with her falling asleep. I didn't pay attention until later that she was working in the Heart Ward at Stanford Hospital. Probably working with the development of transplant surgery and unable to talk about her work. She never did with me and I never asked.
I completed my master's degree in May 1967 and started work in a local telecommunications company, GTE Lenkurt, named for the two Stanford graduate founders. For the next year and a half we dated and while we had no marriage plans, I was quite fond of her. During the August two week plant shutdown, I offered to drive her back to Saskatoon, but she told me that would not be proper for her to arrive traveling with an unmarried man. Her parents had divorced and she was raised by her grandmother, so she was quite sensitive and concerned about what they would think back home. She was no hippiee
Out of the blue one day, Donna told me that she was going back home and going to take a working nursing trip around the world taking up to a year. She already had her ticket and would go with another nursing friend. I had no plans to hold her back and encouraged her. But I did miss her greatly when she was gone.
After being home in Saskatoon for a while, Donna and her friend boarded a cruise ship in Vancouver and arrived in San Francisco. Bev and I met them at the dock and Donna spent that night with me before going on to Los Angeles by ship the next day. They were in Los Angeles over Halloween and went trick-or-treating in Hollywood. Donna wrote that they knocked on her door and Lucille Ball-Arnez greeted them and gave them squirt guns!
Later, Donna wrote of her arrival in Hong Kong and sent me a small silk coin purse. And then, I heard that she was in a quarantine station for a month overlooking Sydney Bay tending patients. When I sent her a confessional letter with my usual poem, she tore it up and threw it in Sydney Bay and I never heard from her again. Although Bev kept track of her and told me that she spent time in Thailand, India and finally, gave me the address of a doctor in Scotland where my letters were never returned.
Bev stayed in the Bay Area, married well, to an aerospace engineer. They became landlords, owning apartment houses. Donna returned to Saskatchewan and married a schoolteacher, according to Bev. But Donna's exotic trip intrigued me. Wondered if I could do it with my busy working life and career commitment.
When I returned to West Virginia University as coordinator of research for The Program for the Study of Technology in the fall of 1976 after earning my doctorate there in 1974, I quickly bought a two bedroom 1928 cottage 8 miles from town on Cheat Lake from an elderly couple retiring to Florida. Ideal for a bachelor like me, but a bit dangerous driving icy mountain roads every day to and from campus in the winter. Almost all of the 11 owners in the community told me they had car accidents. Some very serious, leaving the road or having head-ons.
Right away, I started taking in roommates from our department. First, there was a guy getting his doctorate from North Dakota State at Fargo. He stayed with me about a month while finishing his dissertation and defense. And then later, another guy from Mankato State in Minnesota did the same thing. I had many roommates before and these two married guys and I got along great. I charged them no rent while we shared grocery expenses cooking and cleaning.
In the fall of 1977, Vitoon Upathamp arrived from Edmonton, Alberta, where he had been finishing his master's degree with the support of his government, Thailand. Enterprising as Vitoon was, he had decided, against his country's wishes, to slip into the United States and get a doctorate as well before returning home.
The university got him a room with a Chinese student on the main campus more than 2 miles from where our offices were. Even with the People Mover in operation and the buses between the two campuses, it wasn't working out very well. I offered Vitoon the opportunity to stay with me like I had the others, and he accepted.
Vitoon bought packages of chicken wings when they were something like $0.20 a pound and made a quick and tasty chicken soup, as well as stir fry dishes. I asked him where he learned to cook and he told me, "The Chinese guy that I roomed with." In Thailand, he always had his sisters, his wife (he confessed that he was divorced), his girlfriends, and hired servants to cook for him.
Vitoon was the head of the technology program for Thailand. He had written many small books on various technical subjects with illustrations. He had only learned English when coming to Canada. Although It was hard because he was at least in his fifties and I never asked, he was picking up the language very quickly. Learning from me daily. For example, my word for stir fry was "stuff." I stir fried stuff using many meats and vegetables applied to rice the way, Vitoon made it… A bit brown and crunchy. Much better than the one Chinese fast food restaurant in Morgantown. A hole in the wall of a brick building with walk-up service.
He gave me his master's degree thesis to edit. It was brilliantly written, but I found that every sentence was turned around in such a way that I had to it for him. After over a month of editing, he was able to send it back to Edmonton to get his degree completed. I was so worn out rewriting for free I told him that he needed to get a professional editor for his dissertation. I edited my own, rather badly, but was able to hire a very good typist for the final copy. But my many errors remain.
Vitoon was on the fast track and he had enough credit so that he could complete all of the coursework requirements in one semester. It took me a year. After submitting his program plan, his advisor, my boss and the department head, allowed him to return home to complete the dissertation. The oldest Thai student on campus, he became a mentor for some.
When the University had an International Night with a guest speaker from the Thai Embassy in Washington, Vitoon attended but hid in the shadows, afraid that the official would spot him and send him back home.
Somewhere during that semester, Vitoon suggested that he had to buy an engine or a car in Europe and get it to Bangkok. Since I had been offered to acquire a German car by my German boss back in California in 1968, I was intrigued. I hatched the idea of flying to Germany, buying a Volkswagen Scirocco (desert wind), and then driving it to Bangkok.
I had heard that driving through Bulgaria was very dangerous. Not only the mountainous roads, but gangs that would descend upon travelers. But I was willing to risk it. Vitoon explained that Burma (Miramar) was a closed country, so he would have the car shipped from Bombay to Bangkok. I was willing to go through with that plan, but abandoned it along the way. Still deciding, when Vitoon left for home, I would go with him.
We went to the local travel agency and found while they had many tours, they had nothing that would take us around the world. Vitoon had a travel agent friend in Bangkok, so we got a Pakistan International Airways flight schedule. From that, planned our trip and Vitoon had his guy get us "cheap" tickets to Bangkok via Europe and the Middle East with some alternate routes and stopovers averaging four days.
I had already acquired a Bicentennial 1776-1976 US passport, so was ready to go, except for visas where required in the countries we were going to. In order to get those visas, we drove to Washington DC in late November. Vitoon took his passport to the Thai Embassy and they took it, promising to give him all the visas that he needed and would send it back.
I looked over my itinerary and decided that the most difficult visas would be Iran and Bangladesh. The European countries would not be a problem. Vitoon could get me into Thailand if there was a problem there, and most countries gave two week tourist visas upon arrival. We stopped at the Iranian Embassy first. I was immediately ushered into the large office filled with Iranian family of the Ambassador.
He looked at me and said, "You are a teacher. We love teachers in my country. Welcome." I was ushered out with my passport stamped with a visa. At the Bangladesh Embassy, I was required to leave my passport. I worried for a couple of weeks, but it returned by mail with the requested visa on it. I didn't have all the visas that I wanted. Vitoon had many. But he assured me that I would be all right.
I went to a department store and bought two soft side bags. Both of them plastic, but durable. The first was briefcase-sized and would carry all of my paperwork, my hand splint, tickets, passport and some clothing for my carry-on bag. The second was a large suitcase that would carry my clothing. I could not carry the weight of the suitcase by the handle because it would slip out of my left grip if more than 30 pounds.
To solve that problem, I went to the surplus store in town and bought military straps with click on ends that could be easily removed--but I never had to. Throwing the long strap with the suitcase over my shoulder, I could carry it on my hip fully loaded. The briefcase, with a smaller and shorter strap, hung from the same shoulder and over the top of the suitcase, worked well too. Both of them anchored me and I could walk rather quickly in a waddling, duck like fashion. Swinging the suitcase as I walked.
On the bottom, in case of need, I placed a suit. I also wore one and packed another, Levi leisure suits that were all the rage at the time. Easy to launder and required no ironing. I packed underwear and socks. A couple of ties and left space for my trenchcoat with its fake fur interlining zipped in because it was winter in northern climes. I also hid additional money. Separating what I had of travelers checks.
I went to the local bank and with my accounts there, got many $20 travelers checks. Knowing that I would have to buy my tickets home from Bangkok, I got one cashiers check for $1000 to do that. I also ordered a Federal Express card but didn't receive it before leaving. It was inadvisable to carry any cash.
Vitoon went shopping and bought a metal trunk. He bought a small red-orange lastly TV that he said he bought just for the colorful case and not for the electronics inside. He filled the trunk full of papers and other items he had purchased. He planned to ship them to Bangkok from New York City.
I left my furnace on so the water pipes would not freeze and we left on December 20 1976. First, we drove to my twin brother, Roger's place in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania. And then, on the morning of the 21st, our birthday, Roger joined us and we drove to a pier in Brooklyn and Vitoon turned over the metal trunk for shipment by boat to Bangkok. We then, returned to Kennedy Airport a couple of hours before our 4 pm flight to England where we expected to stay over for four days.
Roger took my car back with him and we began checking in for our flight.
Copyright 2020 © Ronald W. Hull
10/22/20
