hey dude, just spent a week in morocco, and my girlfriend dumped me

May 4, 2009 · Filed under Indonesia · Tagged , , , ,

the fellow sitting next to me was typing that in an email just now. my heart goes out to your lost moroccan love, sir. also, the girl next to me is picking her nose. ok.

now for an informational video on indonesia’s mt bromo. ok, click play.

so much has happened since my last food orgy that i really have no idea where to start, and even though i know i always say this, i am really going to keep it short and to the point.

mexican me!

mexican me!

jake is here! yay. jake doesn’t like big cities, doesn’t like traveling long distances, and didn’t want to plan where we were going ahead of time. this has lead to jake being a sad panda for about a week while we covered 2,500ish miles by land, sea, and air haha.

but before that odyssey there were some other countries. we were in kuala lumpur, the capital of malaysia, as well as singapore for a few days. they were both notable for their cleanliness, i’m sure everyone remembers michael fay! singapore was very strange, no jay walking, western prices, and everyone spoke perfect english. it was just like being in a really really clean and orderly american city(non come to mind for a comparison).

mt bromo

mt bromo

so back to our one week of miles. the whole thing wouldn’t have been such an ordeal if we had planned ahead a bit and just flown straight to the beach instead of wrongly assuming that java was relatively small, it is in fact one of the largest islands in the world and we nearly covered the entire length of it by bus and train(very slowly). part of the problem is the typical bus driver, during our 24 hour travel day(two buses, a train, and a shuttle bus) we experienced what is probably the worst driving in the world. driving so bad that if i tried to explain it you wouldn’t believe me, if you were to watch a movie of it you would applaud the special effects used, and so horrific that the only example of its wretchedness i can give is that after 20 hours on the road, we didn’t sleep more than five minutes on the five hour bus ride. weeeee!

snake fruit

snake fruit

so, jakarta, the capital. we got one hour massages for $6, then jumped on a train for the beaches of pangadaran. rented some scooters without helmets and experienced first hand what driving on the wrong side of the road in a third world country that treats horns like a turn signal and lane markers like the boxes in a game of hop scotch. unfortunately there were no waves, and the beach was crap, but on the last night we feasted on 2.2 pounds of chili prawns for about $10. AWESOME. after that  we headed up to gunan bromo, a super awesome volcano near the east coast of java, drastic and beautiful are words that come to mind, only surpassed by COLD. woah, it was antarctica cold, we were sitting around 8,000 feet and our flip flops and tank tops weren’t cutting it. brrrrr.

streets of bromo

streets of bromo

so we are finally here, at the end of what has become a pretty long trail, nine months, eight countries, and a lot of words. bali is beautiful, in fact the entire country is almost tragically awesome. these are easily the nicest people i have ever met, i feel bad that i am so guarded against scams here(from attempts in cambodia/thailand) that i am almost rude to people who are genuinely trying to help us. there has been a handful of people who we have talked to on buses to pass the time and even given us their food, others who have pointed us in the right direction, and even more who have gone completely out of there way to escort us across cities so that we can find a police station and lie to get motorcycle licenses hah!

tragic

tragic

i really can’t say enough about indonesia, and when i return it will be for far longer than the meager month i have afforded it this time around. oh yeah, the food isn’t thailand but it is ok! so we will be hanging out at the beach for the next three weeks and then flying home to carne asada, in-n-out, and some smiles. there will probably be another bloggity before the flight. happy cinco de mayo!

5 second exposure of a bus ride from hell

5 second exposure of a bus ride from hell

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food, part 12; or, adventures with the prime minister of micronesia

April 20, 2009 · Filed under Malaysia · Tagged , , , , , , , ,

spicy fried squid

spicy fried squid

“hey, everybody! listen up for a second. derek and matilda are hiding ’cause some dudes brainwashed derek to off the prime minister of micronesia.”

warning: i am going to drone on and on about eating in this post. if you do not like food, hate it when all i do is talk about food(todd), or you are on a diet, turn back!

some of you may know that i like food, so much so that i have devoted my entire time in penang, the proclaimed food capital of malaysia, entirely to eating. this has been no easy task; while the quality of food remains high, even by thai standards, the vast ethnic diversity of the area means the sheer amount of things to try is far beyond the scope of my three day binge. but before i get into the craziness i would like to talk about my train ride!!

there is a lady sitting at the computer next to me having a conversation using sign language on a web cam. mind blown.

best friends

best friends

i was pretty bummed to leave thailand, i had gotten very comfortable with the people, food, and culture. for some reason people started talking to me, i met a lady who had lived in florida for the last 40 years and had come back home to thailand to stay for a year or so; a really nice lady who talked to me on the bus and helped me find the train station; and a guitar playing minstrel from the south peninsula who i could barely communicate with, but he did tell me he liked metallica. anyways, i eventually made it to the station and took train 35 to malaysia. woah! i didn’t realize it at the time but depart 1445 and arrive 1245 doesn’t mean around 12 hours, it is in fact almost a full 24 hours, haha. i don’t know why i had the brain fart but let me tell you, i saw a lot of beautiful scenery, met some nice people, and was very glad that i had a bed and a double wide seat on the journey instead of being stuck in a bus seat.

somehow i got the impression that my 10 hour train ride wouldn’t have any food available so i brought a pack of oreos, a pack of oranges, a half loaf of bread, and three cans of curried chicken. oh man, you should have seen the looks on the people around me eating their meals with forks and other complicated modern implements while i was pouring curry all over white bread and going at it. the border formalities were a delight, none of this taxi from the bus station to the border followed by another taxi to the next bus station. the train stopped at the border, we showed our passports and got right back on. excellent. the only hiccup that occured was when the customs guy was inspecting my bag and asking me if i had anything he should know about. i told him i had the canned chicken, he thought i said i had chickens and was wondering where i kept them. we laughed, then he noticed my feet and asked me what size they were, i told him 13 and he told everyone else in malay, everyone laughed. a very happy introduction to the country!

the scenery on the train is so much nicer than a bus, the highways and congestion have been replaced with ride paddies and palm trees, the massive billboards with huge limestone mountains. everything is planted and it feels like we are floating on a sea of green. the whole thing reminds me of the south island of new zealand, the purest blue and deepest greens in beautiful contrast.

woah, the rapture

woah, the rapture

so here we are now, in the country where jess from south africa told me the food was ‘okay’, and i have been worried ever since. jess from south africa, what in the hell are you talking about??! the food here is not okay, it is not good, it is awesome! maybe i should have noticed she was eating a greek salad in thailand. i have eaten so much in the last two and a half days that i feel guilty. the first day i got here i took it pretty easy, had a bit of ice cream, checked out my surroundings to get an idea of where i was in town, then checked out an amazing indian food shop called sri anada bahwan. most of the good places here are just food hawkers slanging their stuff on the side of the road in carts called gerai(pretty much the same everywhere in se asia). in malaysia they group a bunch of them up into little makeshift restaurants, kind of a food stall co-op. i had never seen 95% of the stuff on the menu so i just ordered randomly: masala chapthi chicken, and some roti canai. the chapthi was almost like an omlette sandwich with chicken in it, and the cool thing about this place was they had free curry sitting on the tables to use on your naan and roti, ahh so good!

after that i went to scope out the local night market/food bazaar that was around the block from my guest house, well, i got stuck. on the way i was convinced into buying roasted chestnuts, delicious! and when i finally arrived not only were they selling ice cream and waffles, but the yankees game was on(not the bad yankees game, the one before it with jeter’s game winner). oh delicious happiness. this was the first time i have watched a baseball game since leaving the states because communist new zealand thinks NETBALL is more important than playoff baseball. suffice to say i was very happy, and woah, the yankees’ new scoreboard is awesome.

if i didn’t have to meet jake on the 22nd in kuala lumpur i would probably stay here for a week so that i might have a proper go at the whole thing. maybe i’ll just give him directions from the airport.

neat wall

neat wall

the next day, and the last day i planned on staying, was devoted to the rumored mecca of gastronomy, gurney plaza. gurney plaza is the centerpiece of the beachfront gurney lane, a massive mall complex with an impressive indoor food court as well as a sea of stalls surrounding it. after sweating for about 30 minutes i finally made it. what a glorious site, in thailand most of the food stalls sell the same thing, here the competition seems to be so stiff that everyone has their own little niche with only one or two people selling the same thing. heaven. i was a little bummed to see that most of the stuff leading up to the mall was more expensive fish and that sort of thing(shark fin soup anyone?) but i stayed strong and headed to the mall’s air conditioned food court, picked up some penang assam laksa(awesome!), and oreo mcflurry, pondered getting bird’s nest soup, but ended up with a chocolate chip and custard filled eclaire ahhh! oh god, terrible mistake, soon after exiting the mall a little bummed by the whole selection i noticed the real food court next door. i was not prepared for this, i had already eaten at least two meals worth of crap inside the mall and here i was confronted with what looked to be the highlight of the region. i quickly braced myself for the shock and sat down at the pasembor stall. the fellow calling the shots there quickly explained to meet what my choices were, handed me some tongs, and told me to go for it. i grabbed some squid, potatoes, and a bunch of fried goodness and thought i was done. oh no, he chopped it all up and added what looked like shredded zucchini and a spicy chili sauce over the entire affair, i added a KICKAPOO juice to the mix and pulled the trigger.

scratch that, if i stayed here for an entire week i would die. i would seriously explode if i bumped into a corner or something, like the gluttony fellow in se7en.

eating a freakin volcano

eating a freakin' volcano

eventually i decided to extend my stay to a third day and went on to destroy 17 different meals in just over 7 sittings, yes, i think that is horrible also. without going into too much more detail i will try and explain a couple of the more memorable eats. curry bowl/loaf, this was exactly like a chowder bowl, except with curry, and the bread was more of a roll; rajuk was chopped up fruit covered in a spicy sweet black sauce that i did not finish; teochew chendu!! this was the best snowcone i have ever had, shaved ice in a bowl covered in a bunch of weird but great flavored sugar syrups, gum drop looking things, red beans, sweet corn and black gummy worms, i have no other way to describe this, very strange and good; rote tissu, a giant conical tortilla covered in honey, this and a chai and i was ready for anything.

crazy graffiti

crazy graffiti

ok, so no more food? well there was plenty more but i don’t want to risk getting hungry again! the city itself is fantastic, it is mainly that nifty architecture that reminds me of new orleans, a million different colors and falling apart, but quite beautiful. the sewer and drainage system is completely open and i would not want to be walking down the street drunk at night. the climate is exactly like the rest of coastal asia, hot, humid, and evening rains. for some reason, i think it might even be getting hotter the closer i get to the equator! crazy i tell you. i am pretty sure he would like to meet her haha. the shop keepers try their best though, everyone has the a/c completely maxed out and all of their doors thrown open, walking down the street turns into a kind of ’stay out of the lava’ game that we used to play as kids. instead of jumping from pieces of furniture you are scurrying from spot of shade to open electronics store and then quickly under a tree. the weather isn’t all bad though, i was lucky to meet a fellow named durai tonight, we stuck out a short downpoor together next to a chinese temple. he is a mechanic at the local mercedes dealership and a super nice guy that shook my hand about 20 times and after showing him my pictures, commented on my sisters beauty.

some room art

some room art

and that is it, my tummy hurts and i want to stay longer but i am leaving for the capital tomorrow morning…well, just as soon as i get some dim sum haha.

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meet me at the train station, i will be holding the pink umbrella

April 16, 2009 · Filed under Cambodia, Thailand · Tagged , , , , , , ,

our green ship!

cambodia was great. after taking a bus from siem reap to the capital, phnom penh, we decided to hang around for the night before continuing south to the coast. phnom penh was a pretty interesting place and it was nice to be back in a proper city, unfortunately we didn’t do much aside from eating because most of the sights there have to do with genocide and we weren’t really in the mood to go to the war atrocities or landmine museums. we did find a super good dumpling restaurant that also sold these intense fried bread things for 25 cents each, they were like gigantic twist donuts as big as my forearm and of course we put sugar on them. the next day we boarded the bus for kep without more twists!! because they didn’t start making them until later in the day. the agony.

we were walking down the road and megan stepped on a huge cow pie. i mentioned this to her and she replied, “yeah i saw it, but it was dry so i didn’t care.”

megan is officially a traveling badass.

sweet wall at our guesthouse

there isn’t much to say about the cambodian coast, it was relaxing, cheap, and hot. our rooms ranged in costs from $8-10, were on the sand, and all had cold showers and no tv. oh no! we had a good time, especially in kep, which used to be the next big beach destination for the cambodian elite until the khmer rouge killed everyone there… now it is a sleepy fishing town surrounded by the world famous kampot pepper plantations. we first attempted to visit the plantations by bike, then after megan’s tire went flat and we walked back, by scooter. wooyeah we rode scooters finally, megan has a funny video that i will try and upload later. we also had some of the most amazing crab i have ever had, cooked with the peppers of course, and plenty of it; the waitress didn’t really understand what we were saying and we accidentally ordered two huge plates, it took us about three hours to crack our way through both of them. the picture below is the view from our restaurant, fresh! the weird thing about the coast was the rain, it was a bit like hawaii with an evening downpour or some serious clouds around 8pm, very relaxing when we were eating dinner, not so much when the rain came early and we had to take a thirty minute boat ride back to the mainland in a downpour.

the waitress getting our dinner

so i guess the real story over the last week or two has been bangkok, and after a twelve hour marathon bus trip that took us from the center of cambodia to the center of thailand we arrived, slowly. the riots you have probably heard so much about were the culmination of the last twenty days of protesting, and we had some trouble getting into the city because a lot of the streets were blocked off. our arrival also coincided with the eve of songkran, the buddhist new year, a five day holiday usually celebrated at home with the family, but taken to the streets by the kids and young at heart. of course they take it to khao san road, the backpacker and foreign center of bangkok, and celebrate it with hundreds of pounds of flour and super soaker squirt guns. by mid day there were tens of thousands of people running around in a small area soaked to the bone and covered in flour.

with their tanks and their bombs and their bombs and their guns

most of the crowd was thai even though the majority of people staying in the area were foreigners, but i think they were all hiding in their hotel rooms. it was a pretty impressive thing to see and a very happy time, smiles everywhere and everyone saying hello and happy new years. megan only got to see it for one day, although that is probably more than enough, the four days i was there started dragging on a bit and after a while you just want to sit down without getting water thrown on you. luckily the riots stayed far far away from this scene and the only time we had to deal with them was on the way to the airport.

raaaiiinnnn

between the political turmoil and national holiday, megan picked a really bad time to leave the country. the souvenirs we were going to buy for everyone? haha, the only thing we could buy was flour, water, booze, and water guns, every other store was shut down. transportation? that was also out the window, the streets were completely locked down with people so all public buses were shut down for four days, we ended up having to take a taxi that cost about $30 round trip, instead of a bus that would have cost $4. luckily we did get to the airport ok and other than a burning bus fully obscuring the freeway and a few military blockades it was just peachy and as far as i know she is in riverside again.

sunrise, otres beach, i was only awake because our fan died as a result of the generator shutting off

now i am sitting around bored, after experiencing that festival for four days i am tired. strangely enough, i have also been lonely, it is weird traveling solo for seven months and suddenly feeling alone after spending three weeks with my sister. tomorrow i am boarding a second class sleeper train that will arrive in the malaysian border town of butterworth after a twelve hour journey. very excited by that, i really like trains and it seems to be an excellent way to see the thai peninsula. malaysia is an hour ahead of thailand, even though it is directly below it, so i will be another hour in the future!!(+15) jake arrives in six days, and i will have some more stuff to say when i meet him in the capital, kuala lumpur.

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landmines, another fever, border disputes, etc.

April 4, 2009 · Filed under Cambodia, Thailand · Tagged , , , , , , , ,

yes, despite southeast asia’s valiant attempts at killing me i am still here. of course i waited until cambodia(basically the slowest internet in the world) to update this and now there is too much to say, so i will keep it short.

you would think that paying to use a toilet would ensure some paper and a proper flush.

well, shortly after my last post i braved the laos bus system again to get back to thailand and meet my sister, megan, in bangkok. unfortunately automated travel websites are stupid and i got there a day early because 1am is considered the day before on orbitz.com. the next day i picked her up from the airport and five hours later we were on a bus to ko chang, which kinda means elephant island because some guy did a lot of drugs and decided it was shaped like a pachyderm. once we arrived i continued my previous activity of doing absolutely nothing and relaxing. we hung around for five awesome days, rode elephants in the jungle, watched fire twirlers, saw iguanas and monkeys, and sweated our asses off on the beach in the 100 degree heat. i also introduced megan to the booze bucket, haha. the bungalows there were pretty spartan, a bed, mosquito net, cold water shower, and of course the bucket. unfortunately i didn’t get to explain to megs how to use the now infamous device as i had abandoned all hope of the system when i had the hanta butt virus, and of course i never figured out how you were supposed to dry your butt after you splashed(i am currently working on a super-string butt physics theory where water can clean and dry at the same time). of super awesome note was our first nights accommodation where we had a bathroom outside but with walls and a roof over the toilet, sweet!

sunset, lonely beach, ko chang

sunset, lonely beach, ko chang

after that it was back to bangkok to check out some temples, including the spectacular reclining buddha. while we were there it decided to rain, oh man, it poured down rain for about an hour while we were huddled under an entrance gate to the temple with a bunch of thais, a dog, and a cockroach; the water went over the curb and up into the actual gate so there were people standing on chairs while we were rolling up our pant legs. good thing it isn’t the rainy season for a few months? i also took megan by the night market so she could get an idea of all the cool crap you can buy here. fast forward about a week and now we are in cambodia. oh man, let me tell you about a pain in the ass. as soon as we crossed the border it was a different world, everyone is super nice, but i am pretty sure about 60% of the people are trying to scam us. after paying about $20 each to get from the border to siem reap, we were driven about 20 minutes down the road to a “bus stop” where there were four cambodians sitting there with a taxi. the guy then started to tell use that we had to pay another $15 or so to be able to take the taxi, he was quite adamant about the whole thing until i spoke with his boss(whom i had dealt with on the thai side) and told him i would rather forfeit my $25 visa and $20 fare, walk my ass back across the border, and call the thai tourist police and report them for scamming us. we were then quickly shuffled inside a cab and arrived in siem reap in record time! yay.

in addition to the scams there is also a small border dispute between thailand and cambodia where 1-4(depending on what side is telling the story) thai soldiers were killed the other day, hopefully that cools down. i also got another fever, but it was gone in a day and i’m pretty sure it was just due to more food experimenting. of course that is another problem, the food here sucks so far, the only decent food we have had is a pizza and an awesome indian food restaurant(i bought a shirt). other than that(and the landmines which still cover a very large portion of the country) things are awesome. the cities are beautiful, everyone speaks english and smiles, and the temples are amazing. we were going to go to malaysia to see the f1 races but we decided this might be a better idea, good thing, i will probably never see anything like this again and i am happy we made the effort to come out here. plus , our 3 bed room with 3 movie channels is only $8 a night and we got to ride bicycles!!

“excuse me, can i ask you a question”

don’t you hate when people say this?

so tomorrow we are off to phnom penh, we still haven’t figured out how to pronounce it and i feel like an ass because i really haven’t even made the effort to learn any basic khmer(cambodian language) words, partly because whenever we would say hi in khmer to a cambodian they would reply in english, but mainly because it makes my head hurt. the language is really hard to pronounce, they have 33 consonants and 38 vowels, no joke, plus in another week i will need to learn malaysian and all of these languages are starting to blur together ahh!

it is really nice having megan here to talk to, but my notebook that i write stuff down to type out is seriously suffering, if you haven’t noticed the lack of unfunny quotes i normally put in. that is probably a small price to pay for good company and i am looking forward to the week after she leaves when jake gets here.

well, i will try and say some more hellos soon.

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laos, the most perfectly boring place in the world

March 16, 2009 · Filed under Laos · Tagged , , , ,

laos, or the democratic people’s republic of laos as it is officially known, is a landlocked, communist country in southeast asia. to the north is china, south is cambodia, west is thailand, and it’s eastern border with vietnam is still covered in unexploded ordinance dropped by the US in what is known as the ‘american war’.

made a finger puppet with a french mustache to amuse myself. every time i grab my beer a little part of him dies. brilliant.

update: woke up to find the finger puppet dead, he was on my left hand…

it is nice here, people are genuinely friendly, they don’t try and sell you something every time you walk by, and the beer tastes awesome. no really, my main reason for coming here was because i had heard you can rent an inner tube and float down a river where there are bars conveniently located along the entire length. yes, my entire reason for coming here was to float on a river and drink beer. little did i know that there was also gigantic monkey death swings!

well that was all just loads of fun and all until the next day when i woke up with a fever, headache, body aches, and a bit of gi trouble(eww). so i was stuck in bed for 2 days but now i think i am ok and shouldn’t die of malaria or anything. sweet.

PEOPLE!! please refridgerate your mayonaisse. freak me out.

ok ok, back to the swing, after i felt a little better i headed right back to the river because i had to get some more swing action. these things are just amazing, the platform itself is probably 40 feet above the water and the swing is connected to this brilliant piece of laos engineering(a bunch of wood haphazardly nailed together) about 60 feet up! what a thrill! it is like being a kid again when you first went on the ‘big swings’. of course half the fun of anything is the possibility of death or permanent damage and this is no exception, there were quite a few belly and back flops from those who were too drunk or uncoordinated to put their feet into the water first, and i didn’t have to ask the girl i saw this morning why she had gauze taped to her ear, ouch. the guys who work at the bars are even crazier, and if it didn’t take me an hour to upload one video i would post some crazy laos acrobatic shots, i will when i get back to thailand, promise!

the river wraps itself around a small rise forming an island, on this island sit a number of cheap all night bars, the kids are bathed in a neon glow of some drunk’s vision of apocalypse now. i’ve distanced myself from the mayhem, enjoying my bia lao in a hammock, watching the madness unfold  with some easy listening in the background. i don’t have to drink much to imagine the random banter of the bar scene i am watching silenced by a well-placed grenade.

that’s about it. like i said, the most perfectly boring place in the world. life happens, slowly, cows walk down the street, and the locals have wedding parties on the airstrip behind my guesthouse, the most physically demanding thing you can do is swim from one bar to another. i want to take so many pictures but most of them come out bad, they burn trash so the sky is always a kinda funky haze. apparently it is a lot prettier during the monsoon later in the year, much greener and clearer.  i was going to go further into the country, check out some smaller villages and temples, but after losing two days to the hanta butt virus i think i could stand staying here for a few more days, doing absolutely nothing.

a major theme of my conversation with alex today was money, specifically, what do you do with more money when life can be enjoyed with relatively nothing. it has occured to me that all paths eventually lead to NZ, what i mean by that is eventually the dream becomes more monotonous than the grind. i was doing what i had always wanted to do, hiking in one of the most beautiful places in the world. there was nobody to answer to, no schedule, just me and my backpack. but after five months, it became boring, now it could be that i just got tired of seeing the same scenery or maybe even that wasn’t what i really wanted to do, but i don’t think so. for some reason a lot of us just need to work, it isn’t for the money specifically, most have the money to enjoy themselves and they don’t need any more, but without work, how can you enjoy your time off?

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a month ago i wrote an essay titled why i don’t like talking to people

March 7, 2009 · Filed under Thailand · Tagged , , , , , ,

…to sum it up, most people are not worth talking to.

love your life, love your dream

in the immortal words of my idol, keanu reeves, woah! thailand is crazy, the best way i could probably describe it is being in a mexico, with trees, populated by transvestites and disease carrying insects, with 100% humidity. yeah, that about sums it up. the flight here was pretty basic, decent food and a lot of sleep. i lost 6 hours but it didn’t bother me too much and once i landed in bangkok i was off exploring. of course i had to find a place to stay first, at midnight, but like most big cities everything is open around the clock and within the hour i had a nice(if you can call a bed inside a closet nice) little room with a/c and cable. CABLE! i am talking hbo and discovery channel here. this probably doesn’t sound like much, but in nz i had a total of 4 channels at every single hostel i stayed at(a joke from flight of the conchords, but totally true). all of this for ฿320, like $10, pretty sweet.

the bus ride from the airport to the infamous khao san was a crash course in bangkok survival taught by our bus conductor. “say ‘no thank you’ to the touts or they will do things to you.” we had no idea what these things were, but i learned how to say mai chai krub really fast.

things are a bit different here than nz, life moves about 1000x faster, i have no idea how, because every time i try to keep up i nearly pass out from heat exhaustion. yet, the thais do everything i do and more in jeans and don’t even break a sweat. every citizen seems to be selling something, you can’t walk more than 20 feet down a street without being asked to come in and be fit for a suit or try out some awesome fresh squeezed oj. so when i heard about the local market scene i was pretty excited, i could only imagine what things were like in an organized setting.

my ฿8 bus ride was worth every penny, it was like being in the thunder dome with han solo piloting our crusher. he would rev his engines as old ladies got off, then chirp the tires as soon as they had a foot on the sidewalk, swerving in and out of traffic in a 2 ton death machine has never been so fun!

after telling the local tourist information guy my life story, they don’t meet people from california very often, i was off on bus 44 for the chatuchak weekend market. this was the craziest thing i have ever seen, ever. every person reading this should experience this madness once in their life, i would say a trip to bangkok would be worth it just to come to this 2 day a week affair. 32 acres, and 20,000 stalls selling anything you could possibly think of. huge statues of buddha, flying squirrels, any food you can think of, chickens(and a cock fighting ring to test them out!), art, rugs, trinkets, odds & ends, umbrellas, i’m sure somewhere in the bowels of that place they were selling children and space ships. ahhh, i am still stunned. of course, i will be going back with megan and she is taking an extra bag of stuff back to california with her.

like most big cities i was quickly overwhelmed with the madness and decided to get out, i picked the closest beach and here i am, hua hin. home of the king and tourist destination for a billion thais, swiss, and of course, ze germans. now i have been warned, i read the literature, i saw the movie, and michelle told me of such nonsense as well, but i was not ready for it. yes, i have finally arrived in a part of the world where instead of a handle on the toilet, there is a bowl of water, and instead of toilet paper, you have your hand. i am still working out the physics of the situation:

given: a=one hose with nozzle, one bucket of water with scoop

b=toilet, no flush, no toilet paper

c=a clean butt

a+b=c, solve for c, the solution must fit the constraints of a typical bathroom, i.e. no microwaves or carburetors.

and to make things even more complicated,if given a spoon and fork/chopsticks you always use the spoon to feed yourself and always use your right hand to do so, the reason being that you use your left hand to wipe your butt. this wasn’t a problem until i ordered a noodle dish and realized i had to relearn the use of chopsticks with my left hand.

my room here is way nicer, once i got rid of the bed bugs…no seriously. but, it is way larger, has an en suite bathroom, complete with bucket of water, and a freakin’ balcony, all for about $1 less than my tuna can of a room in bangkok. with all of the tourists here there aren’t many people to talk to, most of them are in large family groups and stick to themselves, but it is the people watching that keeps me entertained. there are basically six types of people walking the streets of hua hin: the sex tourist, usually some old fart with a young thai girl hanging on his arm; the expat, another old fart white guy with a thai lady, but she is usually a lot closer to his age and probably his wife; the typical european tourists; ordinary thais; the thai call girls/hookers/masseuses; and of course, the transvestites, call girls with any combination of large hands, adam’s apples, or big boobs.

i overheard a conversation going on behind me, i couldn’t really understand what was being said, but the guy had a distinct australian accent. when i turned around the aussie was in fact an old thai guy. yes, the australian accent is that bad.

so other than sitting on the beach all day long for the past five days i have been making a strong effort to go out and meet people, the longest conversation i have had was about 5 minutes with some german girls who graciously put sunblock on my back(one of the perils of traveling alone is a burnt back). but every bar i can find(and i have been looking for 5 nights) consists of about 20 call girls asking me if i want a massage, and like 5 dirty old men. i do not know where everyone is hiding, but i am getting a little tired of it. so the next stop, is somewhere quiet where i can have an interesting conversation with a normal person, drink my cheap local beer, and not have to fight off hordes of hookers trying to grab my ass. unfortunately i am honor-bound to the local ice cream parlor to complete my buy 5 get 1 free waffle cone card, and until then, i am stuck here. delicious responsibilities, life could certainly be worse.

the leader of the local communist party invited me to join in on one of their rallies, i of course declined, i don’t play soccer.

i figure i have two more days until my tan is complete and i boogie to the mekong delta and internet-less laos. until then i am going to thoroughly enjoy my remaining time in hua hin, land of boiled egg on a stick, cabaret, combination irish bar/mexican grills, meat on a stick, ambidextrous chopsticks, and pederasts. live your life, love your dream, don’t let the mosquitoes bite you.

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clouds like islands on a sea ablaze

February 25, 2009 · Filed under New Zealand, Wellington · Tagged , , , ,

you can tell i am ready to get on the airplane when i start making strange comments on sunsets, but seriously, the last hike and the best sunset. awesome.

‘i had a very sexual experience with a swan.’

-rodrigo, drunk, while being destroyed!! in chess by me

well, the last few days have been a blast. i met up with rodrigo, a brazilian hiker who shares an interest in drinking, california, and eating good food when we aren’t on the trail. he introduced me to marie, and mikhaila, two cool girls who also share our passion for the awesome. together we have been storming all over wellington, the capital of new zealand, and having a blast. the other day was the cuba street festival, it was a carnival-esque parade and music festival in the famed cuba street area of central wellington. it was a pretty cool get together, a few of the bands were playing buena vista and the whole city was there to have good, clean fun.

‘my grandma experiments with chemicals’

-me, drunk, explaining how my grandma gets stains out of clothes…

the weather has been nothing but awesome for the majority of the week i have spent here, sothere has been quite a bit of walking around and seeing the city. the one day we had bad weather turned out to be an excellent day to see the national museum, te papa. it was a pretty impressive museum, the only one in the world with a collossal squid specimen! i know, not so exciting, but it was actually pretty cool, and most of the other exhibits were impressive.

convinced mikhaila of the existence of a dehydrated water product for camping, you just add water. no, really.

today we all went to see the monet exhibit at the museum, the largest of it’s kind, on loan from a museum in boston. i have never seen monet in person, and it was a pretty short(for $15), but interesting experience, who would have thought that water lillies could be so pretty? the rest of the week has been a semi-coherent blur of chess, drinking, and women’s clothing, but man have i had fun. it is so nice to be around people with shared interests again, something i haven’t really had since wanaka. three of us are on our way out of the country so i think we were all living a bit above what we normally would, which made every experience that much more memorable. for the rest of my life, spoons will make me smile.

‘to the sun, to the sky, to the spoon…’

a few of the many toasts

and that’s it. i wake up at 3:30am tomorrow for a 6:40 flight to australia, after a 9 hour layover i fly to bangkok for the next adventure. sleep deprived and high on the events of the last five months i can’t help but be excited. i will experience six different languages in as many countries, visit the largest muslim population country in the world, and have the privelege of eating so much good food that i might not come home. i really have no idea what i am going to do when i get into thailand at 11:30pm with no hotel reservation or any clue where i am going, but i survived the snowing passes and flooded rivers of new zealand, so a little malaria and political unrest should be no problem. see you all on the other side.

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red door, yellow floor.

February 20, 2009 · Filed under New Zealand, Wellington · Tagged , , ,

in the second grade i forgot if my name was spelled ‘ae’ or ‘ea’, i had to ask mrs. hawkins how it was supposed to be spelt(thats how you spell ’spelled’ if you are from nz. i know, right?), she let me know, then went on to tell me that her son had the same problem sometimes! this whole line of thought made me sad, because now i am wondering if she is even still alive anymore.

boy have i not been busy! as you could probably tell by my last ‘post’ i have been lazing around a bit lately. the hikes were starting to drag into one another because i think i was getting a bit tired of hiking every week. luckily i am ending on a good note! first i did a seven day trip to nelson lakes, it was probably my second favorite walk so far and i had a blast. along the way i met a few characters: there was the auckland uni tramping club, 4 australian, a couple from auckland, and a french guy who tours the world picking up trash(which was crazy because i just read an article about him). it was strange because they all had masters or phds, i was the dumb american. the conversation was the interesting part of the trip though, the hot tasmanian volcanologist in particular had some pretty cool stuff to say about new zealand geology…and i did mention she was really attractive, right?

‘you gotta be prepared to go out there man!’

-the nazi tazy

so i cruised back to nelson after what was probably my most enjoyable hike as far as overall awesome-ness goes. when i got back to the hostel, my good friend, the smelly french guy was waiting for me. this guy comes to new zealand every year to vacation, not shower, and walk around in dirty clothes. luckily for me, i stayed in the same room as him on three seperate occasions. and while it is easy to ridicule him because he smelled like dirty underwear, it was his incessant talking that drove me mad. he was one of these people who talk and talk and talk, not to conversate, because they never let you in, but just to think out loud. anyways, that is smelly french guy, at least he was good motivation to get outside.

did scientist call the stuff ‘dark matter’ because we can’t see it, to make it sound like it was from star wars, or because they secretly knew if it was called ’secret invisible stuff’ that religious folk would say it was god?

well, the internet cafe is closing an hour early apparently…so i will finish the rest of this off in a future post!

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forest fire, part 1

February 17, 2009 · Filed under Nelson, New Zealand · Tagged , , , , ,

so i am a bit short on time, because the internet cafe closes in an hour, so i am going to cheat and give you something to look at. both of these videos were shot a couple of days ago while i was lazing about in the richmond range, they are pretty big, so it might take a moment to load. the first is from atop rocks hut, where i spent four uneventful but beautiful nights…

the second video is from a high point near the hut, i went up there to see how close the fire was to consuming me, it turns out that the ’smoke’ was low lying fog of a strange color. i don’t actually say anything and it is super windy so you should probably turn the volume way down for this one, or blast some pink floyd like i was doing, ‘time’ seemed to work pretty well…

anyways, since i cheated and all, i will type some stuff out in the next couple of days, stay tuned!

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why don’t we just throw toenails into the evolutionary trashcan?

January 31, 2009 · Filed under Christchurch, New Zealand · Tagged , , , , ,

i mean seriously, why do we have toenails still? all ten of them should take advantage of our present racial revolution in america and march on washington along with their third-class citizen bretheren, the apendixes, and demand their freedom.

so arthur’s pass, population 50, turned out to be population 25. no joke. all 25 of them were super nice though, especially the doc employees. this fella named patty was kind enough to give me a lift back to town from the end of the trail…25kms away. good thing too, that would have added about 4 hours onto my day.  another doc employee was ultra-keen on everything, he even authored the mountaineering guide for the park. so when i got it through my head that i should hike up avalanche peak at 2am to catch the sunrise, the owner of the hostel gave him a call. not only did he get back to me, but he actually drove over to the hostel and talked to me about it, how cool is that?? of course, those of you that know me well will realize right away that there was no way in hell that i was actually going to wake up at 2am and hike up a mountain.

the actual hiking in the park was pretty rough, it is basically a series of valleys running parallel to each  other with giant mountains in between, these mountains are covered at the base with thick bush that will eat you. you might have noticed that i walk in valleys a lot, they are really pretty and you can fish in them, but they are also pretty boring after a while. i mean, there is only so many variations of a winding stream in between two hills, so after my first valley walk i decided to have a go at one of these peaks. oh man. the problem with getting out of the valleys is that you usually have to climb, because the ski lifts don’t operate in the summer here. no really, there were ski lifts, my hike started at the base of temple basin, which is a pretty legendary snowboarding hill out here. after climbing 700 meters of scree(2 steps up, 1 slide down the whole way up), i got up to temple col. that was when i entered tiger country. i have never fought through bush like this before, i was basically sidle-swimming through shoulder high spiky and pointy crap for 3 hours. all the while mindful of the gorge i always ended up near as well as various ravines slicing through the hillside. good god, my plans to bush bash up to the next ridge line the following day were quickly abandoned.

day 1: the view from temple col is outstanding, but calling this an accomplishment is akin to bragging about having the world record in ‘number of times you can get punched in the face without losing consciousness.’

when i finally arrived at the hut, bruised, bleeding, and defeated, i was greeted by a group of 7 red cross workers who walked for 12 hours on the track in preparation for the upcoming coast to coast race. the  event itself is a 151 mile death march from the east coast to the west coast, the record is a little over 10 hours, and the kiwi who did it is a legend. as far as the volunteers go, well it took them 12 hours to walk a 6 hour trail, their packs looked to have a weeks worth of stuff for an overnight trip and most of them looked like they hadn’t even walked the dog in a few years.  i mean, don’t get me wrong, good effort on their part and it is awesome they are volunteering, i’m just saying it’s a good thing they are being helicoptered in for the actual event.  the bad thing was that most of them smelled really bad after their ordeal in the sticks and snored, so i had a rough time getting to bed. this of course doesn’t hold a light to my folly, apparently i left the tap on overnight and i woke up to an empty 2,000 liter water tank. the karma police got me the next day and i ripped my shirt on a tree branch. oh man.

then i met janet, she was also a doc worker bee, her job was to walk around the park and observe people, checking to see if there were any guides operating illegally. we talked it up a lot and had a few beers, then she offered to give me a ride back to christchurch, how sweet is that, saved me about $40. excellent. while i was in christchurch i picked up a hep a/thypoid vaccination and some anti-malarial pills that wikipedia tells me also serve to help alleviate montezuma’s revenge, and only $20 for a 3 months supply! when i was in arthur’s pass i met some canadiens who had the poo pretty bad, apparently they picked up crypto somewhere in the south island and were stuck in a hospital for 2 weeks, now they filter and uv sterilize all of their drinking water. i guess i don’t blame them, but it sure seemed like a lot of hassle.

well after getting poked with a needle and told to put on plenty of bug juice so i don’t get japanese encephalitis i got on a bus for nelson, the supposed promised land of good weather and beaches. as soon as i stepped off the bus i could see palm trees and smell the salt in the air, i was actually homesick for the first time since i went to ymca camp when i was like 7. oh man, i miss the beach. there was a time when i used to say i wanted to move here, this of course was before i actually bothered to fly to nz and check it out, but honestly, america’s finest city is still the nicest place i have ever been. the sad thing about the beaches here is that as nice as they are, and they are pretty sweet in nelson, you really can’t just go and lay out on the sand. the world health organization set up a standard scale, from 1-11+, for measuring the uv levels. every day i have been in nelson, it has been 13. go go skin cancer!

that’s it for now, i only have about 7 more weeks left in this part of tomorrow and then i am off to bangkok. megan has decided to meet me out there, i am super excited about that, it is going to be a blast. i found this pretty sweet poem by barry smith in one of the huts, and i would like to share it with you now.,.,

high in a valley

night drags slow

quick and as sharp

as a passing meteor

you discover

the wealth of a man

resides under the eaves

of his tent

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