Looking Snazz - u - lous...

Thailand has some pretty good tailors...

and more importantly, a fiscal and developmental gap with Canada that means they're pretty reasonable...

Result, Chris is edging towards joining the yuppy scum at the trough...




Don't worry, i'm still a heathen at heart (note the bare feet)

What's the capital of thailand? Bangkok!

Damn, i need Kaleb's cartoon to illustrate this...

Don't worry, i'm still alive, just haven't posted in a little while... Something about not travelling alone anymore, and something about general apathy...

Fled the south where the monsoon returned for one last fling - took a 13 hour overnight bus ride to bangkok, but it was actually very comfortable. For once the super VIP bus lived up to it's name, with easy chairs, free juice boxes, and even a toilet on board (trust me, a very nice thing to have on a 13 hour bus ride in thailand). Bangkok is a completely insane carnival of noise, traffic, pollution, and people.

Having learned from Phuket that the way to cross traffic in Thailand is simply to close your eyes and keep a steady rythm as you cross, allowing the traffic to flow around you like a river, tried to put that into practice on the 16 lane freeways here... After the first change of underwear, I was ok for the rest of the day...

Many more tales of Bangkok to be told, but unfortunately most of them involve rampant consumerism... Getting close enough to home, and christmas, that it seems easier to finish off my remaining travellers cheques to pick up some cheap clothes, presents, DVDs, automatic weapons, etc. in the markets around here, where you can very literally buy almost anything, and at a good price... Also starting to be very comfortable with the bargaining and pressure sales inherent in any purchase in Thailand, or asia for that matter... The tuk-tuks here get free gas, commissions, etc. for every unsuspecting tourist they drop off at a tailor shop or jewelry store - result, motoring around bangkok to see 4 different temples and china town only cost us 20 baht total (60 cents) but 4 different visits to various shops... Tough to cultivate that "i'm actually very interested, but just don't feel like buying today" look.

Anyways, a whirlwind next few days will see a visit to chiang-mai by train, plane, and bus, two days of jungle trekking, and two days of intense thai cooking classes, before a triumphant return to bangkok, then eventually home...

I hear you're whipping up snowstorms and frigid weather to make me feel comfortable when I get back, but i'm homesick enough that I won't mind... for the first 5 minutes or so...

So,

one last hurrah of crazy tourism, then back on the plane in spiffy style for a return to Canada... but not the end of this adventure...

Chris

Sippin from a bucket in phuket...

Now in the sunny climes of Phuket on the andaman coast of Thailand. Spent a few uneventful days on ko phi phi absorbing the sunshine and local bacteria and not really doing much else.

My two overriding impressions from ko phi phi were of the tsunami damage that is still clearly visible and the thai nightlife that I finally experienced. At first I didn't really notice anything as it was just one more strange, slightly rundown, asian town to me, but once I started looking closer I noticed the snapped off palm trees, bent steel beams on the remaining buildings, and the huge empty area in the prime resort space in the centre of the island. Eeriest for me was noticing the tiled floors of three shops just in front of my guesthouse that had been totally swept clean of the stores above. When i was swimming in the bay, the waves rolled in in these perfect, unbroken lines from one of the bay to the other that gave me chills. But, apart from that, the whole island looks like it's bouncing back, and at least my guesthouse was on a hill, so I probably would have survived a tsunami if it reoccured - The most ironic thing is that the cheapest, scummiest accomadation perched on the hills survived the waves, while the exclusive resorts and presidential bungalows right on the beach were completely ravaged.

So, with the eerie feeling in the back of my mind, relaxed on the beach, finally succumbed to the bacterial horrors of cheap hawker food, and relaxed for a couple days. Went out to experience the nightlife with Alex, the british guy in the room next to mine who is a perpetual traveller and stereotypical of a british backpacker. This means he knows where the best places for cheap beer and food are, and eats pretty much nothing but rice to save money for beer. Good times though, as I saw the lady-boy cabaret and some of the crazier bars on the island. The lady boys were actually kind of boring, once you get over the shock that some of them make very convincing women, it's really just someone with poor english skills lip synching to bad english love songs.

Another thing they have here is a bar which gives you a free bucket from midnight to 12:10 every night - contents of the bucket (like a child's sand bucket) include samsung (cheap thai whiskey), red bull, coke, and ice. Needless to say, a couple of those and your recollection of what you did that night starts to get really blurry. The bar next door had a muay thai ring right in the centre with thai fighters giving a demonstration and fighting a few bouts. If you climb into the ring and fight the thais, you get two free buckets... unfortunately, it's basically suicide, as the muay thai fighters are ridiculously fast and love to teach stupid foreigners respect for the martial arts.

Anyways, in phuket now, looking around at maybe doing some scuba diving here, and otherwise continuing my laid back progress around Thailand. Actually was fairly homesick for the last several days, aggravated by being sick in a strange country and constantly wondering what it was that poisoned you in the first place. Bought a new toothbrush and spent a couple days eating nice, bland, food, and eventually pulled through, but wasn't the most pleasant couple days.... You know it's bad when you start to wish for a kitchen you could just make your own food in, or a toilet that actually flushes when you press a button, rather than needing a bucket of water.

I'm still alive and kicking though, and on the plus side my hotel tonight comes with a chamber pot, so I can try some really rustic "historical" pooping.

Happy trails,

Rai Ley + ko phi phi photos

Thailand! At long last in the land of smiles...

Sunset on the water, Rai Ley Beach

Crossing the border seemed to lighten the sky and bring joy into my heart again... Not to oversell this, but I was getting tired of the surliness and big city impersonality of Malaysia, and just crossing into southern thailand put a smile on my face within minutes. Stopped at a hole in the wall bus station to change buses from Hat Yai to Krabi and had a rushed lunch at the restaurant next door, pad thai, price: 2 dollar canadian, so good there wasn't a scrap left on the plate after 10 minutes. Perhaps because of my choice of restaurants in Malaysia, or perhaps my choice of dishes, I can't remember a meal I wasn't at least partially wary of the contents of - Chicken curries marred by the thought of bird flu, Mee Goreng with gristle for added flavour, Roti Canai from a stall swarming with flies - switching to seafood, or thai food in general, has given me new confidence in what i'm eating.

Got to rai ley beach after dark aboard a longtailed boat (see above) and with enough time to follow a really nice new zealand couple down the beach past the expensive resorts to the cheap places - that can only be reached at certain points in the tide :) Nothing introduces you to a place like scrambling through waist deep water and over SHARP limestone boulders with a heavy backpack full of frivolous (and expensive) electronic devices. Slowed down on the second half of the crossing to help the guy behind me who'd tripped in the dark and broken his finger (a 90 degree bend in the wrong direction!) and guide him with my flashlight...

Rai Ley, or more specifically tonsai (the cheap section), beach is so beautiful I can't really describe it... limestone cliffs plunging into warm water, world class rock climbing and cheap meals on the beachfront, tiny bamboo bungalows perched on the hillsides. My 150 baht per night hut has a queen size bed, mosquito net, and an outdoor (no roof) toilet and shower. I went rock climbing today and prayed, swore, and scrabbled my way up the cliffs bathed in sweat - half from fear and half from the temperature.

At the end of the day i wandered back through the treacherous rock passage of the night before, but now at low tide, to change some traveller's cheques at the main resort and got caught in a massive thunderstorm which blew through. Lighting strikes, booming horizon to horizon thunder, and torrential rain - Sheltering under a rock overhang with the same new zealand couple from before, we realized that the heat of the rock face turned the freezing rain into warm rivulets and spent the time "showering" in the hot water.

I'm totally worn out, and a little lonely at having a huge empty queen size bed to myself, but things are pretty sweet down here in southern thailand.

The internet here is based on generators which power the island after dark, so probably no more posts until I hit Ko Phi Phi or Phuket, my next major destinations, but my plan now is for more of the same, more beautiful beaches, more outdoor activities, and more fabulous food...

In the land of smiles, mine is becoming one of the biggest...

Chris

A pictures worth a thousand words...

No really, in the time it took me to upload these, I could have written 500 posts... Oh well, enjoy... soon it's off to Thailand, so the Malaysia gallery is good to go...

Malaysia

Chris

$$%@!!#$!@!#$@!!!!!!

Had a very entertaining and informative post all lined up and the $#%#!!~@$!! malaysian internet decided to blank my screen... so... No humourous posts for anyone!

In Penang now, seeing some temples and sweating my ass off... More information to come... up the coast to Krabi in Thailand as soon as possible... probably thursday...

Chris

Into the heart of darkness...

Arrived in Cameron Highlands a couple days ago in Tanah Rata. It took a four hour bus ride up terrifying mountain roads barely wide enough to let the two trucks pass (and slowing down is a sign of weakness to truck drivers here). Survived that though, and arrived at the new hostel, picked by intuition, that turned out to be probably the best place in town: Father's guest house, just in time for the daily 2:00pm torrential rain storm.

The highlands looks like a japanese watercolour painting of terraced hills (rising to 2000m), tea plantations, and mist rolling through the mountains. The biggest local activity is trekking through the jungle, and I took my first foray yesterday - in true backpacker style, at first we intended to do a short walk, so i left all the paranoid gear, drinking water, sensible clothing, etc. at the hostel and went into the jungle with my shorts, t-shirt, and 30 Ringits on me :)

By the time we got out of the jungle, it was actually a relief to fall on my ass and roll down a muddy slope into a vegetable garden... at least we made it back to civilization. We made it to the main road and hitchhiked back into town with a dutch family, who must have though we were idiots when there questions like "do you have a map?" "did you bring drinking water?" "did you know where you were going?" were answered with blank stares or laughter. Anyways, it wasn't as bad as it sounds, more like a walk through an overgrown endowment lands in Vancouver that just happens to have pit vipers and 5 cm long hornets in it.

We actually managed to make it back to the hostel just before the skies opened at 2:00pm right on schedule and sat drinking hot chocolate and watching the rain come down... all in all a good day out, with some interesting sights, that makes me feel less guilty about sitting around eating cheap food and drinking beer chang the rest of the time.

Hopefully some photos and more to come, although things are pretty relaxed here, so it might come "mon yana" instead...

Until then,

Chris

Friday Prayers and Friendliness...

Had my last day of wandering Kuala Lumpur yesterday, and felt more comfortable than any day yet in Asia. Basically I set out to do and see all the things that I was too anxious or lazy for the day before.

I started out wandering little india in hopes of some good food for lunch, but arrived just as most of the bazaar was shutting down for friday prayers. Little India borders the Masjid Jamek mosque in central K.L and the streets outside were turned into spaces to pray - I didn't get a good shot of it, but there was an office building across the street where the elevators and lobby were stopped dead so people could lay out their prayer rugs. Also, I was taking most of the shots while trying to hide my camera as I had a totally unreasonable fear that they might not like me taking pictures of them kneeling in prayer... anyways,

I kept wandering along until finally I decided to stop, as much from fatigue as anything, at a hawker stall for indian food - result, probably some of the best curry i've had and awesome roti canai (flatbreads) - price RM1.40 - yeah, that's about 40 cents. Also tried some local fruit drink of some kind, which i was pretty sure at the time would give me some tropical disease... I felt kind of wierd for a while, but I survived the local food from the humblest of vendors with little to no GI distress...

I headed back to the petronas towers to see if I could get a ticket for the observation deck, but ended up settling for a movie ticket to see Dragon Squad, the latest ridiculous Hong-Kong police film. It was kind of cool, within the space of about 20 minutes while waiting for the movie to start I got into conversations with 3 of the locals and even got invited back to meet this one woman's family for dinner. It was kind of strange, but I think my conclusion was that Malaysians are just really friendly (I know what the cynical would say about going back to meet some strange woman's family in an unknown part of the city, but she was with her brother at the time) I got offered a place to stay anytime i'm in Sabah (in Malaysian Borneo, next to the highest mountain there) and I think I ended up promising to help the brother find work in Canada - but hey, it was cool to actually meet some of the locals and have a conversation that wasn't about being irish, drinking, or finding the best teen prostitutes in Thailand.

Also had the guy behind the counter at the juice place notice my "by a thread" t-shirt and got into a long conversation about metal, emo, etc. Turns out he had seen them, or thought he had, at Metalcore, and he introduced me to some Malaysian Hardcore band his friend was in that was touring in Europe at the time. I was actually disappointed by the time I had to see the movie as it meant breaking off my conversations, but it was nice to feel a little more at home - the usual experience with locals is the tourist trade where they quite clearly just want your money...

Anyways, hope that doesn't sound too pretentious, and I'm off to the cameron highlands today, where you can have a cup of tea that's just been cut off the bush!

Ok, maybe i'm the only one who's excited, until next time,

Chris

A retrospective : My trip so far in pictures

Malaysia - Petronas towers...

interesting side note, in the local culture, the feet are the dirtiest object on the body, hence, showing the bottom of your shoe to someone is like giving them the finger and calling their mother a whore at the same time - second side note, the petronas towers are designed to represent the five pillars of islam - so basically, I had to be real quick about this as I was saying some very nasty things about Islam with body language, and we all know how those angry muslims take a joke...




Cape Byron Lighthouse, Byron Bay - the easternmost point of Australia, also the cluster of rocks that seperates two of the nicest surfing beaches in Australia...




Yeah, ok, it's just sand... Me standing in the soaking rain on fraser island... The good thing was it's a sand island, so I got to live for about three days without wearing shoes...




On Board the atlantic clipper - best live aboard dive vessel on the great barrier reef...





Great Ocean Road - Australia

Note the artistic placement of shrubbery...

In conclusion, i'm a very small minded wierdo with an obsession for certain anatomical objects...

Backlog of photos...

So here's a bunch of photos i haven't had the time or inclination to upload yet... No captions yet, i'll see what i can do about that as the internet here is cheap! (like the budgie!)

Airlie Beach and Fraser Island

Byron Bay and Nimbin (Surf Paradise)

Sydney and Singapore

Escape From the Prison Planet!

Break Free! Escape from the prison planet!

(courtesy of clutch)

I made my escape from Singapore, considering myself lucky to have only lost $300 Singapore dollars in the electronics store... Went looking for an Ipod Nano, came out confused, scratching my head, and with a different mp3 player i didn't even want a half hour later... Apparently they saw me coming...

Anyways, i did get a good deal on a creative zen mp3 player, but it was more the fact that I got sucked into the "one time sale" that had to happen now that irked me... Conclusion, get the hell out of Singapore with one hand on my wallet...

Took the overnight train to Kuala Lumpur Sentral Station, with periodic stops to have my papers checked at 3 border crossing points... I think the guy looked at my passport long enough to see Canada then stamped it and waved me forward with a shiny new 30 day visa - gotta love being a non-threatening country.

Woke up in a Muslim country with a stranger language than Singapore and my first real sights of "authentic asia" - the armless beggar outside the train station, the subway so packed you had to take a running start to squeeze in the door, the buses with no mufflers or catalytic convertors... For some reason I feel much more at home in Malaysia than Singapore, despite the dirtiness and more apparent poverty.

Subconciously, it probably has to do with the fact that i've moved up another social class overnight - no longer the scrubby backpacker shunned by the business elite of Singapore, i'm now the scrubby backpacker scammed by the criminal elite of Malaysia : ) The average person may not like me, but at least they pretend to seperate me from money - ah, good to be cynical...

Anyways, i'm posting up a lot of photos from the past weeks as internet time is only RM $3 an hour here - about 90 cents canadian - i'll also be abusing the webcam, and hopefully skype service here... yay technology, as Thomas Friedman would say, the great flattener of our earth...

Until next time,

Chris

Singapore - the true urban wasteland

Wow...

Arrived in Singapore at 3:30 this morning (singapore time) and sat in the airport waiting until the rapid transit started up (6:00 am). Then it was a surprisingly stress free trip on the train to the new 7th story hotel, the nearest, cheapest hotel around. I slept for a couple hours after meeting my new roommate Casper (like the friendly? ghost) who coincedentally is from B.C as well, and apparently worked selling things on wreck beach for a while...

I woke up, and my quick trip to get something to eat and find an internet cafe turned into an 8 hour odyssey of endless tall buildings and malls... You can literally walk the streets of singapore without ever having to take more than two steps from one airconditioned building to the next. Food was an interesting question, as I was kind of determined to find something with local flavour, meaning I had to bypass, while extremely hungry, pretty much every outpost of western fast food you can dream of... I eventually found some fresh papaya juice and pork cutlet noodles in a mall foodcourt, which were fairly satisfying - the juice more than the noodles. By the end of the day I was tired enough that I just ended up getting a Mos Burger for a snack, which I rationalized cause it's at least a japanese fast food chain...

Now, what the preceding paragraph should prove to you is that things can get pretty dull when you're travelling alone, and also that one of the ways to make people think you're not crazy is to write in small notebooks or sit on the internet in a basement for hours -

I had culture shock when I arrived in Singapore, not because it's some exotic asian culture and i'm out of my depth, but because I was suddenly cast adrift in a giant shopping mall that spans a city, with everyone going their own way and doing their own things. Everything is pretty much in english here, right down to the Milo and English breakfast tea they sell at the coffee shops. Kind of takes me back to grade 8, the things you do to look busy while everyone around ignores you...

Conclusion: i've got to get the hell out of singapore as soon as possible, cause I don't have enough money to have fun shopping for luxury goods for four days.

I think my antidote will be going to little india for a good meal tonight, seeing Changi Prison Camp tomorrow, then taking the next train or bus to Kuala Lumpur. No guarantees that that large impersonal city will be any better, but the closer I get to Thailand, the closer I am to all those Irish, British, and German backpackers I spurned in Australia... Ah for familiar surroundings...

I have a few photos of random things, mostly tall buildings and pollution, and i'll try and put them up when I can...

Until then,

Chris.

Photos?

It could be me surfing, i'm not sure, it might be digital trickery...

Noosa, I think... once i get my hands on a higher rez copy I might be able to blow it up so you can actually see the face, but hey... how much effort do i really want to spend on Vanity... oh wait, I have a blog, obviously a lot :)

Chris

I am goon man!

Life continues in a laid back way in Byron Bay - still surfing by day and relaxing by night, with plenty of 25 cent noodles to fill the gaps. It's only 5 days until I board a plane for thailand, but i'm in full on denial, getting settled into the rythms of Byron and the surfing life.

The other day, the 31st in fact, there was a halloween barbeque at our hostel for the mass of North American and British tourists there (halloween is pretty much unknown in Australia, except for the candy companies). You might ask yourselves, what could you do for a costume if all you have is the meagre backpack you travel with? -Goon man to the rescue!

The BBQ came with unlimited meat and box wine, so as the crowd finished off each box (with a little help from yours truly) i'd inflate the bag and tape it to myself. Hey Presto - a cross between the Michelin man and a giant foil bag of mystery... I ended up winning the costume contest at the bar accross the street, due to the allure of box wine, and got myself a 3 day 2 night kayaking trip in Noosa, unfortunately 5 hours north of where i am right now... but hey, it's nice to be recognized...

Anyways, a few more days of denial, then i'm off to sydney to prepare for some slightly scary solo travels in Asia... how do you say "please return my valuables and testicles" in malaysian?

Happy trails,

Chris

Also, more photos from Rob's collection at:

Rob? get some photos!