How do you describe a place as incredible as Cuba?
Warm is an understatement to describe the people I met along the way — the salsa teacher at Plaza Habana who offered to walk me home from the Salsa bar; the friendly and humorous staff at Mercados THE little liquor store in Old Habana; the casa owner Gina who immediately ripped the bed out when I showed her the bed bug bites on my body; Manny the supervisor at the government owned cafe downstairs the hostel where he insisted on cooking me a special omelette even though he had other customers waiting. Manny invited a few of us from the casa to his home to meet his family, savour a three-hour long slow cooked Cuban stew. It was Cuban hospitality at the most unfiltered level. These were people I had known for 10 mins to an hour.
When I told the store manager (in black-red striped shirt) that I was running out of pesos, and needed to go to a money changer, he took my Euros, walked outside to the bank that had a mile long queue, dodged in the back, and came back in a few minutes with the Cuban pesos I needed.
Can I repay your kindness? No no. I left with a round of hugs and kisses on the cheek from him and his staff. I stood there and felt like crying. How were people so warm and giving?
I had entered a world which I’d forgotten even existed. It is a world where people have real face to face conversations, in the park, at the bakery store, not over text or likes on your Facebook. It is a world where people actually know how to converse without looking at their phone every 5 seconds, a world which feels like a time has stopped. Literally. A world that may also exist in other parts of the world, but truly, a paradise that feels surreal.
It is a world where people know how to create connections, whether at the piazza, or port, or simply hovering around another homie with car troubles.
This is a world where the narcissism selfie culture hasn’t yet quite made its mark, where looking at your reflection is seeing a raw, unfiltered version of you in front of the stained mirror. Or the camera in front of you.
In all honesty, I was thrilled to exist in a world where Internet is not the way I usually experience it. I relished in this Internet-free world. It made me more open to everything around me, to making eye contact, to making conversations with my novice Spanish, to living in the moment.
The majority of the population do not wake up to check their IMs, number of likes, +/- on their investment shares or the latest Bieber news. This is a world where Internet is accessible to roughly 20-30% of the population, mostly on the ‘approved list of users’ (government officials, journalists and the likes). The normal Cuban would head to the public Wi-Fi spot to access Internet.
Can you imagine waking up to a world without Internet?
This is a world where women groom and keep themselves looking good because it just feels good to do so, not because they need to meet the international benchmark of beauty. We all want to be desired, but the epitome of beauty in this world is where curves, rough edges and rounded bits are accepted and loved, adored and appreciated. It felt surreal that voluptuousness is so welcomed in this country, and where they consider me tiny, where I’m considered fat in Malaysia.
This is a world where men can dance salsa, bachata to any music playing anywhere, and groove their hips, where men and women dance, a little close, perhaps a little too close at times, but as they say, it’s “the Caribbean heat”.
This is a world where cooking is a five-hour laborious process enjoyed by all 3 generations, where quality time with family is important, on a much higher priority than texting your friends, catching up on the latest football / basketball/baseball scores, or catching up on Kardashian/ Brangelina/ Taylor swift goss.
This is a world where people are highly aware that raising a child is expensive so they have one, and only one – because, as Manny told me, “We know that children are God’s gifts, and want to give nothing but the best to my child.”
This is a world where fathers take pride in dedicating their hard earned money to provide for his family, where raising a child and a family takes precedence over gym memberships and pursuing the life of materialism. For what use is a life of material goods and high ranking status when your child does not remember their childhood with you?
This is a world where malls do not exist, people shop in government owned and themed shops, with sparse varieties. Your kid needs a new toy? Go to the (only) toy shop in town. Need a new fan? Go to the (only) electrical shop in town. I stood in line to get my Moka Pot (my favourite memento) with the other Cubans who were there to get cookers, fans…. if only I had taken a photo of the shop.
This is a world where time stops: people take their time with everything they do. And I mean EVERYTHING. Some fish all day, others knit while chatting with neighbours, while some stop to savour the cigars or inhale some from a friend. They smile because smiling is an innate part of their culture, and is the way they connect, the way they show affection, even to random strangers.
This is a place, a very rare place in the world where I completely trusted strangers in the middle of the night, in the middle of a piazza, letting them guide me to good food and music. As a solo woman traveler, I never once felt my safety was compromised. Cubans are undeniably outrageously flirty, very touchy, and almost tried their advances on me, but never once did I fear they would harm me.
This was a world where you smell romance everywhere, where courtships take place in pizza parlours in front of customers, where lovers (here I saw generally boyfriends) show up at their romantic partner’s work place (I saw one at a pizza parlour, another at a bar) and hang out pretty much their whole shift.
This was a world where a wink at the coffee shop, churro stall, or ice lolly cart at the traffic light, called for a world of possibilities, one beyond Tinder. Oh, and a world where I’ve received the most marriage proposals. I swatted their ‘proposals’ in jest, but wondered how many women actually got married to local men, but most of all, how many Cuban men have managed to leave Cuba through marriages with foreign women?
I felt humbled to be able to travel to a world where people existed in the moment, savouring the little luxuries in life, living the best they can, with all that they have.
After all, this is the only life they know.
NOTE TO MALAYSIAN TRAVELERS: Malaysians can travel to Cuba for 90 days without a tourist visa, provided you have proof of a return ticket and purpose of travel. We are the only Asian country to be part of the 90-day waiver, Singapore is on the 30-day waiver. I would highly Cuba for your next vacation. It tops among the most beautiful memories in my Road Less Traveled. (note : reviewing this 4 years later, the only regret I have is not earmarking more time there).
chroniclesofmadlove 
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