The Smiles Of Angkor

DAY 467: "Are you just as awe-inspired as I am?" Noelle asked me as we stood in front of the Bayon, one of Angkor Park's major temples. Her smile was wide with joy, even in the scorching hot and humid conditions of tropical Cambodia.

"Yeah, this pretty much kicks the pyramids' ass," was my response.

THE SWANKY CAFES, BARS, RESTAURANTS, AND UPMARKET HOTELS in and around Siem Reap (including Le Meridien and Sofitel) sprouted up from what would otherwise be your normal southeast Asian city due to the city's six-kilometer proximity to arguably one of the great man-made wonders of the world, Angkor Wat and its surrounding temples. The UNESCO World Heritage Site draws thousands of tourists a year from countries all around the globe, which inadvertently pump much-needed money into a struggling economy.

The money pumping began when Noelle and I hired Vebol and Louen, two young Cambodian guys in orange t-shirts from our guesthouse who offered their motorbike touring services to us. Noelle and I each hopped on the back of a scooter and soon we were zipping across town and up the road to the entrance of Angkor Park to get our 3-day photo ID passes at the whopping, but well-worth price of $40 (USD). My photo made me look sixteen and my driver Louen was surprised when I told him I was actually thirty and the older one between Noelle and me.

Down the jungle forest road and over the stone guardian demon-studded bridge over a moat, we rode into the Angkor Park complex. We decided to save the main Angkor Wat (Great Temple) for the next day and sped off a little further to Angkor Thom (Great City), which was equally angkor.

ANGKOR THOM WAS THE LAST CAPITAL OF THE KHMER EMPIRE -- the civilization which eventually evolved into present day Cambodia -- and was an ancient city surrounded by stone fortification walls in a perfect square, providing a nine square kilometer area for the priests, officials, and military soldiers who took residence there. The hey-day of Angkor Thom was during the 12th and 13th centuries, when Buddhist King Jayavarman VII ruled the land. In the exact center of his square city was the Bayon temple, the place where our story began.

The splendor of the Bayon temple (reconstructed and maintained today by the Japanese) rivals that of its more famous sibling Angkor Wat to the south built some one hundred years prior. At first glance, the Bayon and Angkor Wat look similar in design, but upon a closer look you see that it is only the Bayon that looks back at you and smiles. In addition to its bas-reliefs, the 12th century temple is known for its unique, 200 odd stone faces carved into its 54 towers. Each face depicts what archaeologists believe are images of Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara, showing the omnipresence of the king. The lips of each carved face are curved upwards, giving it the nickname, "the smile of Angkor" (picture above).

"The carvings are amazing!" Noelle raved with her own smile of Angkor as we toured up and down the temple. Even for "templed out" me, I agreed. My good impression of the temple was not only due to the fine ancient craftsmanship, but the fact that unlike at the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt, there weren't nearly as many people around ruining the ethereal vibe -- nor not as many touts and hawkers for that matter.

The touts and hawkers appeared when we left the Bayon and walked to the food stalls on the north end where our motorbike drivers were. We stopped in to escape the heat and have a quick snack under a shelter where many Pepsi flags with Pink, Britney, Beyonce and Enrique in gladiator clothes were hung up.

"Where are you from?" asked one little boy hawking souvenirs.

"The States," Noelle replied.

"What state?"

"California."

"If I know your capital, then you buy something," the little boy said. "The capital is Sacramento." Noelle was amazed; half the kids in America would have gotten that wrong. "You buy something from me."

"Sorry, I don't have any money," Noelle gave as an alibi.

A little girl named Lai was also there to sell souvenirs. "If I tell you the population of California, you buy something."

These guys were good; most likely they'd have the answer to that one to, so Noelle reciprocated with a stumper: "The population today or yesterday?"

"It's the same."

"No, it's not. Some people are born and some people die."

"No..." little Lai said in disbelief.

"Yeah."

She tried again. "I tell you the population of California and then you buy something."

"The population today or yesterday?"

This went back and forth and Lai's smile started turning into a frown. She changed the subject and asked where I was from.

"I'm from the moon," I said, smirking like a Bayon face.

"Yeah, he's from the moon."

"No..." she said again in disbelief. She was really started to get upset with our shenanigans and her lack of progress in making a sale. "All the people from the United States, they lie to me," she said, laying on the guilt. I made her day though when I bought a ten-pack of postcards from her for a dollar. Noelle did the same, and sent Lai off with a big "smile of Angkor" on her face.

"You want postcards?" asked the next hawking girl down the line.

"We already bought some," we told her. She got angry and blew a minor tantrum, saying it wasn't fair. "You made one girl happy, but not me!" We sighed; you can't make everyone go home with a smile.

NORTH OF THE BAYON FOOD STALLS were more noteworthy temples and structures of Angkor Thom, all accessible by foot. Noelle and I made our way to see them, first to the Baphuon, the 11th century Hindu temple dedicated to Lord Shiva, which wasn't too much to write home about. A temple which was once known as a shimmering Tower of Bronze, it was one of Angkor Park's most damaged temples from the wars over time, but fortunately, it was under a big renovation project led by the French.

Nearby was a temple in much better condition: the Phimeanakas, the 11th century Hindu temple once known as the Tower of Gold -- even though it was made of sandstone. A quick up and down the steep stairs and it was off to see more.

"I DON'T SEE ANY ELEPHANTS," Noelle said at the next stone attraction down the line, the Terrace of the Elephants, the royal terrace first used by King Suryavarman I; all I saw thus far were relief sculptures of demons "holding up" the terrace. It took a while for us to spot the images of pachyderms, but when we did, they were all over, in wall reliefs and in a more three-dimensional form. They were accompanied by relief images of other animals and soldiers, including the image of the king's legendary a five-headed horse. Beyond the Terrace was the 12th century Terrace of the Leper King, which sported a statue of the king that, in a style atypical to its time, sported a smile of Angkor with teeth showing.

"WHAT SHOULD WE DO NOW?" Noelle asked. We were completely sluggish and lethargic from walking around under the pounding heat of the sun.

"Go to the zoo, flip off the monkeys?" I said.

"Huh?"

"It's from Anchorman," I had to explain.

Our post-Angkor Thom festivities didn't involve giving the finger to monkeys, but with less vulgar things at sundown. We joined the hundreds of others climbing up a big hill (instead of taking a pricey elephant ride) to the top where the Phnom Bakheng temple resided, to catch the sunset in the west. Afterwards, Vebol and Louen took us back in Siem Reap.

Noelle and I ended our day with Khmer food (chicken with diced tomato and pineapple) and a wireless internet session back at The Blue Pumpkin. We also went out to get something I had heard many people rave about: massages by blind people, who were supposedly the best in the business. My blind masseuse, a middle-aged woman named Chea who assumed I was Noelle until I spoke in my male voice, laid me out, pushed me, pulled me and beat every knot out of my body. It was an experience that I soon raved about to the others walking in as "the best massage I've ever had" (and at just $3/hr too). I gave Chea a tip when I paid her, happy with her services. Oh, if only she could have seen the smile on my face, she would have seen one greater than the ones at the Bayon temple.

Where Life Imitates Video Games

DAY 468: "It looks like a movie set," I overheard one British girl saying to her friends.

"It is a movie set," her companion replied.

The raîson d'être in the former French-occupied Cambodia is Angkor Wat, the UNESCO World Heritage Site known the world over. The ancient grand Hindu temple is one of the world's great wonders, so great that it was used as a location for the 2001 Hollywood blockbuster Lara Croft Tomb Raider (starring the beautiful bosomy, full-lipped Angelina Jolie), which as everyone knows (or should know) was based on a wildly popular adventure video game of the same name, which featured a bosomy, full-lipped virtual character named Lara Croft.

"WHAT TIME DID YOU WAKE UP?" Louen my motorbike taxi driver asked me in the darkness of the pre-dawn morning.

"Five," I said. "Then I went back to sleep and woke up at 5:10." Ah, the snooze button.

Ten passed five was still "stupid o'clock" in the morning, but waking up at that time was not without a reason: to join the hundreds of others to watch the sun rise over Angkor Wat. We made it there just before the crack of dawn and joined the others with their cameras all pointed eastward, waiting for the display of colors behind the famous temple. It was this vibe that not only attracted the Hollywood crew of Lara Croft Tomb Raider, but of an ultra-low budget independent film crew we saw set up nearby with kitschy costumes and no clapboard.

ANGKOR WAT, THE CENTERPIECE OF ANGKOR PARK, was built during the reign of King Suryavarman II in the 12th century as a funerary temple and a model of the universe. Its perfect symmetrical construction of laterite and sandstone is based on the Hindu legend, The Churning of the Sea of Milk, in which all the gods and deities of Hindu lore got together and used Mount Meru as a churning stick to extract the elixir of immortality out of the sea. They pushed and pulled the churning stick with Sesha, a giant sea snake, until Lord Vishnu recovered the potion, which is a pretty amazing thing to do, even for a Hindu god. The story was depicted not only on a grand-scale in the creation of Angkor Wat, but in a more obvious way on the famous bas-relief on the east wall surrounding the temple towers.

While Noelle was admiring the intricacies of the wall reliefs, I was admiring the fact that Angkor Wat's interior was very reminiscent to scenes in the Tomb Raider video game that spawned the Hollywood movie. (Leave it to me to immediately think of a great worldly temple in terms of PlayStation.) With stone textures that inspired bitmaps and right angles that were in perfect alignment with north, south, east, and west (I brought my compass to confirm), I felt like we were in some sort of adventure video game.

"You have to pose for Tomb Raider pictures," I requested of Noelle.

"Okay."

I posed my Blogreader-turned-travel partner in Tomb Raider-esque areas in Tomb Raider-esque positions (centered in the frame with her back turned at varied distances, picture above), just like I had seen when playing the video game until the wee hours of the morning in the mid 1990s.

"I'm glad I could entertain you," Noelle said. But that wasn't the end of it; it was just the beginning of an entire day of video game-inspired photography.

WE TOURED ANGKOR WAT, inside, outside, through the hallways, up and down the stairs to the other tiers. It was simply amazing -- except for the rooms that reeked of bat guano. We went around more shooting Tomb Raider-inspired photos where they seemed fit, as well as some the regular touristy kind of photos with and without the famous towers that represent Mount Meru.

"What do you suppose this [structure] was for?" Noelle asked me.

"It's a pool. The stairs are over there," I said. "That's what it is in the video game at least."

AFTER A QUICK BREAKFAST OF BREAD AND RAMEN at a nearby food stall, Vebol and Louen took us on the two motorbikes to the other side of the Angkor complex to see more. Passing us on the bikes was a motorcyclist with a live pig strapped to the back of his bike. "Did you get a picture?" Noelle asked me as our bikes rode side by side.

"No." Sitting on the back of a bike didn't really give me easy access to my camera for quick, spontaneous photos like the one I had taken just before of the two naked kids by Angkor Wat. "Catch up to that bike!" I told Louen. "I wanna take a picture of the pig." Louen revved the accelerator towards the pig on the bike, which went not down the road we wanted, but down the road to exit the park. Louen sped down faster before the exit in time for me to snap a semi-decent shot and then turned back to catch up to Vebol and Noelle. Soon, we were stopped by police.

"What, for speeding?" I asked. The cops were already asking for money. It was for backtracking on the one-way road. I gave Louen money to pay off the cops (about 75 cents US) and soon we were back on track to explain our tardiness to the others.

NOELLE AND I WALKED THROUGH THE BAYON-ESQUE GATE OF BANTEAY KDEI, the Buddhist temple of Jayavarman VII with a promenade through the jungle that set itself up for a Tomb Raider-esque series of photos (1 2 3). We wandered in and around the unrestored Banteay Kdei temple, which, unlike in a video game, was "more a spot for calm reflection than active exploration" according to Let's Go book.

From there it was off to Ta Phrohm, the Buddhist temple by Jayavarman VII built in his mother's memory. Let's Go says it "competes with the Bayon and Angkor Wat as the most awe-inspiring of Angkor's treasures and is the most authentic 'jungle' temple." Vebol also said it was what he believed to be "the best one," and I had to agree. A crumbling temple of extreme disrepair, it was the temple that time forgot -- perfect for a level in Tomb Raider -- a mass of crumbling sandstone overridden by giant jungle trees. Surveyors from India were on site to assess a renovation effort, but from what I saw, they would have a long way to go.

While I was off taking a photo of the old man of Ta Phrohm whose claim to fame is being the guy on the cover of the Lonely Planet Cambodia guidebook, Noelle encountered one American tourist who was wondering about the American renovation effort of the Angkor temples.

"'The French are here, the Indians... The Americans have got to be here somewhere'," Noelle restated for me. "Yeah, I don't think so."

One American doing her part (other than the hundreds of tourists paying money) is none other than the real life Lara Croft Tomb Raider herself, Angelina Jolie, who fell in love with Cambodia and its people during the shoot of the first Tomb Raider movie. Since then, she had donated much of her Hollywood A-List money to development projects in the country, and has even adopted Cambodian orphans -- which of course, makes any guy jealous as that kid gets to be fondled near Ms. Jolie's bosom.

VEBOL AND LOUEN HAD ME CONVINCED THAT one nearby temple might be more awe-inspiring than Ta Phrohm, so they took us there. Pre Rup was nice and all, but had no ethereal vibe for me, and with the heat of the pounding sun, I merely fell asleep there. With that said, we were Angkor templed enough, ended on a high note, and rode back into town.

After a day of Tomb Raider-inspired photos in Angkor Park -- including action shots of "Noelle Royer Tomb Raider" attacking and climbing -- it was fitting to have dinner and drinks at The Red Piano, the restaurant/bar in town that was the headquarters for the Hollywood Tomb Raider cast and crew. It was just one of several trendy-looking spots on the corner of the main tourist drag (which included another bar called "Angkor What?"), and it was there that we dined on fine food and cocktails like the "Tomb Raider" (Cointreau, lime, and gin), which was described on the menu as "Lara's favourite" next to a picture of Angelina Jolie.

WITH ALL OF THE DAY'S REFERENCES of the Tomb Raider video game and movie in and around Angkor Wat, it must be noted that Angkor Wat has a striking resemblance to the big temple used in the Mortal Kombat movies, also based on a hugely popular video game series. After I did some research, I discovered that Mortal Kombat and its sequel were not in fact filmed at Angkor Wat -- they were shot at Ayuthaya, the ancient capital of Thailand -- but that didn't stop me from taking another kind of video game-inspired picture.

The DAY 503 Trailer

Click here to view the DAY 503 trailer. Make sure your volume is turned up.

(Flash plug-in required.)

Please R.S.V.P. with your headcount below.

The Ex-Pat Zone

DAY 469: To make up time and to keep ourselves from being oversaturated with temples, Noelle and I decided like many backpackers before us, to skip out on the third day of our three-day Angkor Park pass -- it costs the same as two one-day passes anyway. With that said, you'd think we would have slept in, but no, we were up at "stupid o'clock" again, at 5:30 to get to our boat to Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital city. We had heard that taking the cheaper bus option would involve another unpaved road -- which might have led to another potential murder like that one time -- so we splurged on the $23 fast ferry which would take us along the Tonle Sap river and lake system.

A complimentary minivan service picked us up to take us to the dock in a nearby village about half an hour south. On the way to the boat we befriended a 34-year-old Australian named Shane, who was in Cambodia on business, but had decided to spend his weekend on the cruise to Phnom Penh instead of flying from Siem Reap. Though based out of Sydney, he was an off-and-on ex-pat in Cambodia, working at an NGO that developed the local education system and helped to keep kids from dropping out.

The sun rose (picture above) over the Tonle Sap as we arrived in the little port village, a dusty place that reeked of rotting fish -- the perfect sort of wake-me-up scent in the morning. We were assaulted by dozens of vendors selling bananas, baguettes, and laughing cow cheese since no food would be available on the boat, and purchased accordingly. An hour later we were finally off into Tonle Sap Lake, a lake that has the honor of being the only river/lake system that changes the direction of flow depending on the season. Normally it flows southbound, but in the rainy season it flows north, bloating the Tonle Sap Lake to four times its regular size. Fortunately for us, the current was in our favor, providing a relaxing seven-hour cruise in the air-conditioned cabin our out on the sun deck.

"I was talking to the Australian guy and he said he's staying at some hotel with cable TV and a swimming pool for twenty dollars. And they take credit cards," Noelle reported to me.

"Yeah?"

"Should we splurge?"

Hmm... splurging so soon? I thought. Twenty dollars is a lot, relatively speaking.

"I think I wanna splurge. I'll splurge for [the two of] us."

"Sure." Ha, pull my arm. And just like that, Noelle went from my Blogreader to my guest star on "The Trinidad Show" to my part-time sugar momma.

Shane already had a reservation and a car waiting for him at the dock when we arrived in Phnom Penh, and he was happy to have us tag along for the ride. We rolled into the driveway of the four-star Goldiana Hotel, a fairly new hotel just under two years old where many of the off-and-on ex-pats took temporary residence when they were in town. When we checked in, the receptionist said the rate was not $20 but $40; Shane's rate was pre-arranged between the hotel and his NGO. "Sorry guys," he apologized. Noelle didn't care; a splurge was a splurge and we were there already -- the cheaper backpacker district was far away on the other side of town. Noelle put down her Visa card on the desk and checked us into The Ex-Pat Zone.

JUST SOUTHWEST OF THE INDEPENDENCE MONUMENT, The Ex-Pat Zone was where most of the foreign embassies and houses of foreign ambassadors were located. Along with them were many upscale-looking but affordable restaurants serving indigenous and international cuisine -- not that we tried them right away; we just ate at the hotel restaurant. To fulfill my "at-least-one-Cambodian-dish" quota of the day, I had Cambodian Curry, which was similar to Thai green curry with coconut milk, but had sweet white potatoes and roasted peanuts in the mix for a unique Cambodian taste.

Noelle had the food charged to the room and then went back to the room -- only to be sucked into the movie Little Giants on TV. We managed to take advantage of the pool on the third floor terrace, where we killed time before freshening up to meet up with fellow transient ex-pat Shane for dinner. We walked down the road of The Ex-Pat Zone to Athena's Greek Restaurant, run by an American ex-pat, which served us fine Greek food and beers. Shane shared tales of his life in his pre-ex-pat days when he was simply a young Aussie backpacker wandering around the world. It was nice to hear the life after being a backpacker didn't necessarily have to be in a cube farm; it could still involve travel -- travel with a higher standard of living too. Then again, I suppose any backpacker with a credit card or a sugar momma could upgrade whenever they felt like splurging.

"The Trinidad Show" Live

DAY 470: It's one thing to experience my life on the road via this Blog, but it's another to experience it live, as it happens, as Noelle did that day. Since her first appearance on "The Trinidad Show," she saw things in person that she had only read about on-line, like that blue clamp that holds the logic board of my laptop together tightly. "Ah, the famous clamp," she said when she first saw it.

AFTER COMPLIMENTARY BREAKFAST AT THE GOLDIANA, we walked across town, passed the Independence Monument and more trendy eateries of The Ex-Pat Zone, to the scenic riverfront area on the Tonle Sap River, a district where ex-pats and budget backpackers came together from opposite ends of the city -- along with the taxi touts that come along with the territory. It was there we camped out at an internet cafe for an hour while waiting for the Royal Palace gates to open up to tourists after their mid-day break. We sat at two different computers next to two other foreigners and worked on our Blogs when a young local boy came in trying to sell English-language newspapers. He approached everyone for a sale, and by everyone I mean all the foreigners, except for Cambodian-looking me.

"Did that kid try to sell you a newspaper?" I asked Noelle on our way out.

"Yeah."

"He totally skipped me."

"Yeah, I saw that!"

This was just the latest in a case of mistaken identity that has happened to me in most countries I've gone to; Cambodians take me for Cambodian, Thais for Thai, Peruvians for Peruvian. As Noelle pointed out on one of our walks in Bangkok, "That woman just looked at you [as if to say] 'Hey, you look like me. What are you doing with that white woman?'"

WE WALKED DOWN THE STREET IN PHNOM PENH with the usual stares to the Royal Palace, a.k.a. the "Preah Boram Reach Van Chadomuk Mongkul," which is really a handful to say or write, so it's a good thing we can just call it the "Royal Palace." As the edifice commemorating the intersection of the four rivers in the area (Upper Mekong, Lower Mekong, Tonle Sap, and Tonle Bassak), the Royal Palace was constructed in the late 19th century in the traditional Khmer way under the reign of King Nodorom, who sat in his throne way back then and said things like "It's good to be the king."

With Noelle's rented sarong (since her shorts were too short for admission into the holy area), we wandered the palace and temple grounds, from the gardens and statues to the stupas to the Temple of the Emerald Buddha (picture above), which was all very similar to the Royal Palace complex in Bangkok, except not nearly as crowded. Two main buildings set the Cambodian place apart from the complex in Bangkok: a French-style house built for Napoleon III during the French occupation -- the "N" was for "Noelle" we said -- and the Preah Tineang Tevea Vinichhay, the throne room where the new king Norodom Sihamoni, a former ballet dancer who had only been sworn in October 2004, also sat and said things in Khmer like "It's good to be the king." (Napoleon said a similar thing in his house, but in French.) The royal residences nearby were closed to the public because the king was in town, probably practicing his curtsies and walking around on his tippy-toes.

"[YOU TAKE A LOT OF PICTURES,]" Noelle said to me.

"Yeah, only about [ten percent] make the cut," I said, explaining the way I work with photos for the Blog.

After visiting the traditional Khmer wooden house on display, with traditional Khmer musical instruments and masks, we walked passed the Cambodian-Laos-Vietnam Memorial on the way back to the hotel for some pool time and to get sucked into bad made-for-TV sci-fi movies, one starring Antonio Sabato, Jr. and Angie Everhart. Afterwards it was back to the riverfront for dinner at the Happy Herb Pizzeria where we dined over a postcard-writing session. Noelle saw with her own eyes, just how burdensome writing postcards was for me; sure a couple is fine, but twenty-five all in one sitting? I racked my brain trying to figure out what to say on each one.

"You should hear the conversation over here," Noelle told me, referring to the four young Kiwi girls at the next table. "It's just funny."

"What are they talking about?"

"Just boys and stuff," she said. The four girls were obvious teeny-bopper types transplanted in Cambodia.

"Those are the 1981ers I keep talking about." She understood completely.

THE F.C.C. is an acronym I did not make up: the Foreign Correspondents Club. It was there we closed the night off with a carafe of red wine while sitting on the terrace overlooking the river. We sat with our wine, relaxed, and watched the people go by below as a cooling breeze blew by us, knowing very well that traveling for real is far greater the traveling vicariously on a website.

Ouch Was An Understatement

DAY 471: "Okay, make us cry," I said to our tuk-tuk driver after negotiating a day rate for Noelle and me. We instructed him to take us to the darker side of Phnom Penh, the sites where the helpless cries of innocents were silenced, where people were tortured and killed by a ruthless, inhumane dictator -- and within our lifetimes.

JUST ELEVEN DAYS AFTER THE 60th anniversary of Auschwitz, the Nazi prison concentration camp in Poland, my travels brought me to the site of a similar genocidal center, Choeung Ek, more commonly known as the "Killing Fields" after the 1984 movie. It was the site of a turburlent time in Cambodia's history -- the world's history for that matter -- where megalomaniac Communist dictator Pol Pot exterminated 40,000 of the total estimated two million souls of his own Cambodian people, in his efforts to "renew Cambodia" after the French occupation. As a display sign at the Killing Fields put it, "Even in this 20th century... the clique of Pol Pot criminals had committed a heinous genocidal act. They massacred the population with atrocity in a large scale. It was more cruel than the genocidal act committed by the Hitler Fascists, which the world has never met."

Pol Pot, a Cambodian ex-pat who had been living and studying in France, returned to his homeland and was eventually appointed to lead the country. However, in his reign from 1975-1979, he and his fellow ex-patriate intellectuals began political and social reform with his party, the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), more commonly known in the history books as the Khmer Rouge: "Khmer" used as a tie-in with Cambodia's former glory; "Rouge" for the color of blood that the party was fueled by, as stated by the lyrics of the party's anthem. Like Hitler's Nazi party, Khmer Rouge's "glory" depended on the oppression of others and with ultimately their deaths.

Pol Pot's strategy of reform started off rather counter-productively; instead of pumping more resources into industry and education, he simply ceased them, transforming developing urban centers into wastelands. Cambodian citizens had no choice but to flee to the countryside in hopes of a better life, but it was there that many were forced into prison camps and eventually exterminated. There was a definitely police state in the country during Pol Pot's reign; no one could question authority or talk about questioning authority -- anyone doing so would be put to death. Everyone was forcibly brainwashed to support Pol Pot and his murderous ways. The Khmer Rouge leader kept spies at every corner; people soon couldn't even trust their own kin for fear that something might be reported. Khmer Rouge led with a bloody iron fist, and what made it worse was that the United States didn't oppose it; in fact, they considered Khmer Rouge to be the de facto government.

The penalty for opposition against Pol Pot's regime started in prisons in the urban centers, like Tuol Sleng Prison in Phnom Penh, more commonly known in the history books by its no-longer-secret codename, "Security 21" or "S21." S21 was converted from a former high school and each former classroom was transformed into torture chambers, interrogation rooms, or jail cells -- some made of wood, some made of brick. At first glance, the former high school still looked very much like an old high school (or perhaps a motor lodge), but inside its rooms, photos and props showed just how bloody it was in the late 1970s, in more ways than one (1a, 1b; 2a, 2b; 3a, 3b).

Ten of thousands were sent to S21, only to be tortured for their insurrectionist thoughts, from drowning to electric shocks to the really wicked act (no slang intended) of pulling out one's fingernails with pliers and pouring alcohol over the wounds. "Ouch" was an understatement. Those who survived S21 wouldn't survive for long, for they were sent to Choeung Ek, the Killing Fields seventeen kilometers out of town, to meet an even crueler demise.

NOELLE AND I GOT SHAFTED in our tuk-tuk ride to the Killing Fields; for some reason, we managed to get the slowest tuk-tuk in town, one that was passed by every other vehicle on the way, including regular bicycles pedaled by young boys. No matter; going to a genocidal site wasn't exactly something we really wanted to rush to, and we made it there with time to kill, no pun intended.

We decided to hire a guide named Chantheng, who was not only a guide, but our insight into the reign of Pol Pot. His family had fled Phnom Penh and hid in the northern Battambeng province when he was a child. His parents commuted far away to whereever they could find work to provide some sort of livelihood for the family, but only he survived. His two older sisters, ages twelve and fifteen, had been taken and forced into a prison camp and ultimately died of starvation, so Chantheng assumed -- he simply never heard from them again.

Visiting the Killing Fields, like the former concentration camp sites of the Nazis, wasn't exactly a trip to Disney World. It was the site of 86 mass graves burying 8,985 men, women, and children underground discreetly; Pol Pot the intellectual, cleverly buried the innocent near an old Chinese cemetary, so he could blame the stench of dead bodies on the the former Chinese. Chantheng took us around the graves, the teeth still found scattered on the ground, and, what Noelle thought was the most haunting sight, the shreds of old clothes that the people once wore, now lying in the dust.

Death wasn't so easy in Choeung Ek; there were no instantaneous killings with guns. Pol Pot was a penny-pincher as much as he was a murderous dictator, and wished to save all ammunition for the military. Therefore, the victims of the Killing Fields met their demise in ultra-violent ways, by strikes to the skull with sticks or the ends of rifles. For children, strikes to the skull came by the brutal slamming of a head into a Chankiri Tree. According to Chantheng, many people were buried alive after the torture, only to die slowly and painfully six feet under. While all this sound very cruel, the worst torture Chantheng spoke us was the beheadings. No instantaneous French guillotine beheading here -- that would be too expensive for Mr. Pot -- instead, Pol Pot's minions slowly sawed off heads with the saw-like teeth of young palm leaves.

Ouch was definitely and understatment.

The only symbol of hope at the now Choeung Ek historical site wasn't so much a symbol of hope, but a memorial to those who perished there. Seventeen-hundred skulls (picture above) of the 40,000 odd victims of the Killing Fields were placed in a stupa constructed in 1988 -- many of which sported the skull fractures of cruel and intolerable punishment.

IT WASN'T UNTIL 1979 that the murderous reign of Pol Pot came to an end, when the Vietnamese arrived and liberated the Cambodians. After that, Cambodia started its slow and rocky way to recovery, much of that coming from tourism for anyone who could stomach such a story. Although Noelle nor I shed a tear that day, it was completely depressing anyway -- and what better way to cheer up than watching Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, starring Lindsay Lohan, which came on the local "bootleg" channel that broadcasted the feed of some guy putting in DVDs into a Sony DVD player. (You could see him push play and turn on subtitles.) The cheering up continued at dinner when we had amok, a Cambodian fish curry specialty served on a big platter with little individual lids, and after-dinner cocktails at the Heart of Darkness bar, which cheered us up with 1980s music.

While teeny-bopper movies and 1980s music won't make the hurting of Cambodia's past disappear, it was a start. Sort of.

Staring Out The Window

DAY 472 (one week since last Thailand entry): "I think that one of my favorite things is staring out the window," I said, staring out the window of a bus from Phnom Penh to the Cambodian port town of Sihanoukville. Sihanoukville was just one stop on a long two-day overland journey back to Bangkok that we managed to do in one long 18-hour day.

THE MORNING STARTED bright and early at 6:30 when we took our slow tuk-tuk -- the "little tuk-tuk that could" as I called it -- to Phnom Penh's central bus terminal, a fairly organized place where securing two seats on the 7:15 to Sihanoukville was a no brainer. With bottles of water and a supply of baguettes and Laughing Cow cheese, we rode in the comforts of air conditioning through the southern Cambodian countryside. My intention was to use this travel time wisely to catch up on my writing since I was behind, but as usual, I mostly ended up just procrastinating by staring out the window, watching the scenery go by.

Four hours later, I had not as much written as I would have wanted when we arrived on the outskirts of Sihanoukville. It was 11:40, just twenty minutes before the only daily ferry at high noon bound for Koh Kong, the Cambodian border town near Thailand. Outside the window there was a motorcycle taxi driver holding up an English sign that he obviously had someone write for him. He was holding it up towards any white person he could see through the glass, and it wasn't until he saw Noelle in the aisle seat next to me that I got a chance to read the sign when he held it up close: "If you are taking the ferry to Koh Kong, get off here and come with me. Hurry!"

"That's probably true," I told Noelle while staring out the window, knowing that time was running out -- although my mind was thinking another way, wondering if the tout was just being an opportunist. We stayed on the bus anyway until we arrived at the bus terminal so that we could really explore our options, including just staying in Sihanoukville since an overnight somewhere on the way to Bangkok would be inevitable (or so we thought at the time).

"Can we make the boat at twelve?" I asked a guy at the station at nine minutes to twelve. I didn't know how far the ferry port was. Words were exchanged in Khmer amongst a group of Cambodians.

"Okay," said a young motorcycle taxi driver. He and his friend zipped Noelle and I on two bikes, first to a tour agency to buy tickets (for them to most likely get a commission), and then off to the port. We knew there was no time to lose -- in fact we were late -- so we sped by pretty fast across town. I almost fell off the bike, lugging my big bag on my back the entire way.

I should have remembered that nothing in Cambodia really ran on time, and so when we arrived at 12:10, we still had twenty minutes to spare before the boat took off. We cruised the tropical turquoise water while lounging out on the sundeck with the other backpackers. Noelle started reading my copy of Dan Brown's Deception Point while I tried to focus on my work in my illegible chicken scratch writing that only I can read -- but again, I pretty much just spaced out and stared off at the scenery going by.

ABOUT SIX HOURS OF STARING LATER, we arrived into the madness of really aggressive taxi touts trying to get a fare by any means necessary for those needing a lift to the border post. "Taxi to border? Taxi to border? Fifty baht, fifty baht..." and so forth, over and over and over in all directions, by about twenty guys. Some even grabbed bags without consent to bring to their vehicle for a forced fare; I saw one backpacker start to push and shove. It was one of the more maddening touts scenes in my global trip; only the time in Lilongwe, Malawi was probably worse.

Noelle befriended a couple that was willing to share a car taxi, and they had befriended others, and eventually we amassed a group of six to go to the border. Six was too much for one ride so we split off anyway; Noelle and I got our own car for "fifty baht [per person], plus eleven for the bridge toll." Our driver started on his way and reiterated "Fifty baht, fifty baht, one hundred bridge."

"No, you told me eleven!"

"One hundred bridge!"

"No, you said fifty baht for each of us, and eleven for the bridge."

This went back and forth for some time, going nowhere and the border crossing was soon closing. The driver insisted on getting the one hundred for the bridge up front.

"No, I'll hold it. Don't worry, we have it," Noelle told him, knowing some sort of scam was going on. "Just go. I'll give the money when we get there." Sounded like Noelle was getting the handle of independent backpack travel, until the car pulled over before we got on the bridge.

"Fifty baht, fifty baht," he said, pointing to each of us for the fare. He pointed to the bridge. "One hundred baht."

"Okay, we know. Just go."

"You change taxi."

Suddenly another taxi pulled up. Inside was a lone Brit named Adam who had had enough of the tout aggression at the port and just hopped in any old car before the border closed on him. We were pooled together in one car so only one toll would have to be paid. The car pulled into the toll plaza behind one car that wasn't moving, and I expected another to block us from behind in a Godfather sort of way, but nobody went the way of Sonny Corleone. The only drama was that the driver walked over the pay the toll, keeping the actual price of the toll hidden from us. When we finally got the border post, the guys started to play the confusion card again to get more money out of us, but we managed to get away without paying anymore.

EXIT STAMP. ENTRY STAMP. We were welcomed back to the Kingdom of Thailand, home of 7-11 convenience stores. None were in site just yet; we still had to make it to the next town of Trat an hour away for any of that. It was Trat that we were planning on spending the night before continuing to Bangkok, but enough people were around that didn't mind riding another seven hours in a minivan, and so we hired a minivan to take us all the way to Khaosan Road. "We're going to 7-11 tonight!" I exclaimed.

The driver took us on the rural road that turned into a highway towards the capital. The first hour there was still light out for me to work, but again, I just spaced out by staring out the window. I caught Noelle doing the same. "I think that you like staring out the window too."

It was a long, tiring ride to Bangkok and I was amazed how tiring just sitting in a bus, boat, or car doing nothing can be. We paced the journey though with numerous pit stops at gas stations, one of which had a little pug waiting in a nearby sports car. The pug was spacing out and staring out the window (picture above), and I could totally relate.

Whether you are man or mutt, staring out the window is a great, but unproductive way to pass the time. With the look on that pug's face, I'm sure he didn't get much work done that day either.

The Fifth And Final Time

DAY 473: Twelve days before, just two minutes before my introduction of Noelle as a "character" on the Blog in Bangkok, I ran into a recurring character one last time: Paul from Manchester, who I had met on the Everest Trail in Nepal (before my unfortunate near-fatal incident), and again, by chance, in Delhi International Airport en route back to Bangkok. Our third encounter was also by chance, but in a way it was no real surprise.

"All roads lead to Bangkok," I told him.

"Yeah, that's right! I remember you saying that on your website," Paul said. "All roads lead to Bangkok. Really, you can get anything you want here, as long as you have the money."

Bangkok was our southeast Asian hub city as it was for most travelers in the region. This fifth time in Thailand's capital would be my final one, a short layover day to plan and book the next leg of my trip around the world.

AS PAUL SAID, "You can get anything you want here." True; from bootleg movies of films still in the theaters to sex shows involving vaginas smoking cigarettes, it was all available. But what I needed this time were train tickets and I knew they would be easy to come by, even without any advance notice. As predicted, two berths were indeed available for the southbound overnight train to the southern Thai hub town of Surat Thani (air-conditioned car only though) and Noelle and I snagged them that afternoon by booking them at one of numerous tour agencies in the backpacker district.

Nothing really exciting happened that fifth and final time in Bangkok, unless you consider sitting in front of a laptop all afternoon in a Starbucks to work on Blog duties exciting -- although drinking a Grande Rhumba Frappucino was mildly exciting when it gave me a brain freeze. Khaosan Road was the same old scene with its backpackers wandering around in Von Dutch t-shirts and flip-flop sandals. The 7-11 convenience stores were still getting my business every time I went in to get a yogurt drink (a staple of mine since Jack got me into them in Spain). High-speed internet was readily available as always, and it was our gateway to upload the latest for our Blogs.

By six o'clock, Noelle and I were in a taxi to bring us to the train station (picture above). We got to our assigned berths with time to spare so that I could continue to work on Blog duties by hand (after staring out the window for some time) and Noelle could continue and eventually finish reading my copy of Deception Point before switching over to a copy of Entertainment Weekly. We ate dinner later that night, served to us by our flamboyant ladyboy waiter, and shortly afterwards we settled into our respective bunks. The train sped southbound away from Bangkok and towards Surat Thani through the night and straight on until morning.

Bangkok faded away into my travel history for the fifth and final time on my sixteen month trip around the world, but I knew that as long as all roads continued to lead to Bangkok, it was merely my fifth and final time -- for now.

Volunteer Work

DAY 474: "I'm in a Toyota pick-up truck in Thailand!" an excited Noelle said in a Toyota pick-up truck in Thailand. We had just arrived in Krabi's bus terminal after a two-hour bus transport from Surat Thani -- the hub town where the overnight train dropped us off earlier that morning -- and were now headed to Krabi Town, the popular resort town where divers, rock climbers, sea kayakers, and plain old sunbathers came in droves -- that is, before the catastrophic Asian Tsunami of December 26, 2004.

Not every tourist was as enthusiastic about traveling to Krabi province in southern Thailand as Noelle, not even the little dogs in t-shirts. With the overdramatic TV news media playing up the drama as usual, many people had cancelled their travel plans to the Thai tourist meccas of Phuket and Krabi for fear of disease, the "second wave of death" as CNN put it, or another tsunami. I saw beyond this and my intention to journey to Krabi wasn't just to do the touristy things, but to find some hands-on volunteer work, like building a house or something, if it was available. The travel agent in Bangkok who sold us our train tickets told us that volunteer work was still needed in Krabi, and I was psyched that being in Krabi would kill three birds with one stone with my limited travel schedule: diving, rock climbing, and volunteer opportunities.

"IS THERE ANY SORT OF VOLUNTEER WORK AROUND?" I asked a guy at the tour office at the Krabi bus terminal.

"That's finished already. Where were you a month ago?!" he said, but not in a scolding way.

"Uh..." I bashfully stammered. I was sitting on my ass in Manila, Philippines.

The guy told me that most of the repair work had been done already and that the rest of what had to be done was under control. As one Swedish Phuket-based bar owner I met told me, "They work really fast." Phuket was one of the hardest hit in Thailand from the tsunami, but was up and running to some capacity in just a couple of weeks. "Everything is back to normal," the Swede told me. "[They just need tourists to come back.]"

As so, the opportunity to do some hands-on volunteer work washed away with the receding tidal wave. "Well, at least you got my money," I told the guy in Krabi, referring to my donation to UNICEF.

AS MY DUTY AS A "JOURNALIST," I am happy to report and confirm that the fear of disease in southern Thailand is in fact an unwarranted one. Everything is fine, at least from what I saw in Krabi Town and its "nearby" beaches. I put "nearby" in quotes because after we checked into a guesthouse in the center of town, we discovered that Ao Nang beach was not within walking distance like we thought; it was a 15-minute, 20-baht ride away down the road.

Fifteen minutes and forty baht later, we were in the beach town of Ao Nang where businesses were indeed up and running -- and eager for patrons. The Thai people of the region sort of put all their eggs in one basket, becoming completely dependant on visiting foreigners for their livelihoods, and with the tourists at bay, so was the cash flow. Some t-shirt vendors even went as far as to profit off the catastrophic event (much like the t-shirt vendors in New York as early as September 15, 2001). December through April is usually the high tourist season in these parts, but with the remnants of damage still on the shores, tourists in Thailand opted for other beach towns that weren't affected.

From what we saw that day, just five weeks after the tsunami struck, Ao Nang had bounced back to some capacity. Sure, some of the beachfront restaurants were still in a state of disrepair (picture above), but most were fine -- just waiting for people to show up. The row of restaurants on a long deck was practically abandoned -- just five patrons for seating of about a hundred -- and some places had chairs up in the back since they weren't being used.

Knowing that the only way to help out in post-tsunami efforts now in the affected regions of Thailand was to simply pump money into it by being a tourist, Noelle and I bought lunch at one of the beachfront restaurants. The chef there proved that Ao Nang was back in the tourist game by cooking us up a delectable curry prawn dish and a pot of spicy crab. "[It's slow now, huh?]" we asked our waitress.

"Farangs [foreigners] not here," she said. I asked her about her tsunami experience and with limited English she said that she was there, at a bar at the time, at that it was "scary." Water came up from under the deck and then up over the side, tossing and turning everything like a big saltwater washing machine. It all happened in a matter of twelve seconds.

WALKING THE BEACHFRONT STRIP OF AO NANG gave both Noelle and I a mixed feeling of emotion. On one hand, we felt sorry of what had happened there, and that the people were still suffering from it in terms of income. On the other hand, it was sort of nice not to have it swarming with loud and obnoxious Western tourists. Walking down the virtual ghost town, I said, "It's like I own the place."

To help out some more, we "volunteered" to pump more money into the economy by renting a sea kayak for an hour from an office called "Mr. Kayak." Mr. Kayak (who was a woman that day) set us up with a two-person vessel, which we used to row -- often out of sync -- to and from the big limestone cliff formation on the eastern side of the beach. Noelle raved about the schools of jumping fish jumping along side us, while I took pictures of the overhangs. In the distance, we saw that construction was continuing at the far eastern end of the beach; some were building structures bigger and better than before. Soon we were back in town to return the kayak in time for sunset, which we spent swimming and floating in the warmest waters I've ever experienced on any beach (that don't involve volcanic activity).

IT'S NOT JUST THAI BUSINESSES that were affected by the doldrums in tourism; the ex-pat community that had set up business in town to profit from their Western brethren were also suffering. We learned this when we ended up in The Irish Rover, run by (not surprisingly) an Irishman with his Thai wife and family. Said the Irishman, "It's supposed to be the high season now, but it's lower than the low season."

With that said, we helped him and his Thai family out by doing some more "volunteer work," which I put in quotes because I really mean "drink booze." Our continued support of post-tsunami relief came in the form of buying beer and many pints of Strongbow English cider, which not only made them happy, but us drunk.

And so, I implore you Blogreaders out there: while your contributions to UNICEF and the Red Cross were in fact beneficial, what the people of Krabi and Phuket really need now is for you to come on over and start drinking beer. Who wants to volunteer?

A New Homebase

DAY 475: "This is one case that Let's Go let me down," Noelle said. She had listened to my anti-Lonely Planet rants and brought over the latest Let's Go guidebooks for Southeast Asia and Thailand, and was quite pleased with them -- until she discovered that neither book had maps for Krabi Town or Ao Nang, nor did they really explain how far away they were from each other. Contrary to our thinking, the beach of Ao Nang was miles out from our guesthouse in Krabi Town.

IN DESPERATION FOR CLIENTS, the owners of the Ao Nang Inn, which was above the affiliated Irish Rover pub that we went to the night before, said that they'd give us a daily rate of 500 baht for a room that they usually charged 1500 for during the high season. Seizing the opportunity, Noelle and I packed up our small room in Krabi Town, hopped on a songthaew (shared covered pick-up truck) and rode off to the beachfront town of Ao Nang, a town which completely catered to tourists with its cafes, pizzerias, and souvenir shops -- plus two obligatory 7-11 convenience stores. It was there we made our new home, our base of operations for lunchtime pizzas, Thai food for dinner, and beach time (picture above) in between.

The room in the Ao Nang Inn above The Irish Rover was everything we had been told: a big, clean room with satellite TV, private bathroom, refrigerator, digital safe, and a terrace with a view of the inland greenery -- the only thing missing was a Tivo and a wi-fi connection. Noelle was disappointed was that there was no VH-1 on the TV like they had running on the pub downstairs, but that was just a minor setback to what was otherwise a more than decent place.

Having satellite TV was just one of the niceties reminiscent of the world back at home in America, which, along with the leftover pizza in the fridge, made our new abode very homely. I reverted to my homely electricity-wasting habits, namely having the TV on while working on my computer while listening to music in my headphones. In a way I felt guilty not having an "authentic" Thai experience (otherwise, why go to Thailand?) but on the other hand, it was good to, at least for a while, be "home" with a fellow American with "I'm on vacation" mentality.

As I was working on the Blog on my iBook, one thing did catch my eye on the television as we were flipping around. On the A1 (Adventure One) channel, there was a program that featured daredevils handgliding and paragliding over Machu Picchu in Peru. Immediately I had flashbacks of the time I went there -- not on this trip, but in 2001 with Blogreader oogy -- and I felt like I had been bitten by the travel bug again. "Wow, it kind of makes me feel like I should be traveling," I said, not even joking.

Noelle laughed of course, but I meant what I said; ignoring the TV while working on a laptop and listening to music wasn't exactly "traveling." Not that there's anything wrong with it of course; sometimes you just have to sit back and say, "When in Rome..." -- although I'm sure the Romans didn't waste as much electricity as I did. (At least there was pizza in the fridge.)

The Cliffs Men

DAY 476: "Don't you want to get good at [rock climbing]?" Blogreader/friend Cheryl once asked me in a New Jersey rock gym a couple of months before The Global Trip 2004 began.

"No. If I got any good at it, it wouldn't be funny [to write about]," was my answer.

That was then, this is now. Sixteen months later, I really wanted to embrace rock climbing and get really into shape. Finally, an activity that works out your abdominals in a cool-looking, adventurous way instead of the ridiculous use of an Ab-Roller. Really, using the Ab-Roller just looks silly, like dry humping the carpet, don't you think?

THE KRABI PROVINCE, more specifically Railay Beach, is known around the world as southeast Asia's rock climbing capital. It is the place climbers dream of, the stage for international competition. It was in Krabi that Chinese Spider-Man (Yangshou, China) worked out away from home; it was where "Team Portland" warmed up before scaling up Mount Ama Dablam in Nepal. But you don't have to be a pro to climb in Krabi; there are several rock climbing outfitters that can take anyone with little to no experience up the rock faces of Krabi's signature limestone peaks. Although I'd been rock climbing in the indoor gyms in the States and again in China, I really wanted to "learn the ropes" (pun intended) for real this time, and signed up for a day with the Cliffs Man company, whose slogan was "Nothing Impossible."

Learning rock climbing "for real" meant to learn more technical aspects of rock climbing, from with the all-important creation of the double figure-8 knot (which keeps yourself from plummeting to your death, a pretty good thing) to the proper procedure for belaying. Those are actually the easier aspects of rock climbing; the hard part involves actual climbing.

"You're going to use muscles you didn't know you had," I told my co-climbers Budi and Shwita when we rode a longboat to Railay Beach from Ao Nang. The young Indonesian couple was on a package holiday from their home in Singapore, a long weekend promotion by a tour agency trying to get more tourists back into Thailand. The two had no rock climbing experience whatsoever, and it was evident when Shwita couldn't exactly get the figure-8 knot on first try.

"No, that's not it," said our instructor Tik.

"It's a pretzel," I said.

"Yeah, a pretzel," Budi seconded.

Eventually she got it and the three of us joined the twenty or so other rock climbers of different skill levels scaling the limestone rock faces or rappelling down -- the pros were climbing barefoot or without a safety rope, and I saw one guys fingers start to bleed. We however, started easy with a 5.5 to practice, before moving over to some 5.7s and 5.8s -- not that I know anything about the rating systems of rock faces.

"Okay, my life is in your hands," I told Budi, who belayed me on one climb.

"Yeah, hang in there," he said with a pun I'm not sure was intended or not. He kept the tension in my safety rope nice and tight in the event that I might slip and fall.

I really enjoyed real outdoor climbing as opposed to the indoor kind. Indoors, you are suppose to stick to your designated color-coded trail, even if it's easier to use a hold from another color's trail. In the real world, anything goes -- whatever hold works, works -- as long as your rope (picture above) doesn't snap. My body muscles were already sore from rowing and swimming the days before, which was a good thing because they were primed for strenuous activity instead of pulsating from a period of inactivity. With that said, climbing came easy to me that day, and I kept my momentum up to prevent myself from falling in a slump.

Speaking of falling, one big guy fell at one point with too much slack in his safety rope. He plummeted about ten feet before the rope caught him; it was a case where "giving you some slack" could be harmful to your health.

Shwita belayed me for my ascent up a 5.9. "Okay, don't kill me," I told her.

"Okay." I started my climb like Spider-Man when Toby, one of the other guides at Cliffs Man, pointed out that Shwita was actually giving me slack on the rope instead of tension.

"Uh, that's how you kill me," I said.

She corrected her ways. "You ready?"

"Yeah." Please don't kill me.

The 5.9 was harder but doable and I kept myself motivated with inspiration from none other than Spider-Man. In the trailer for the first movie, Toby McGuire's voiceover says all dramatically, "Who am I? I'm Spider-Man" (right before E.S. Posthumus' "Pompeii" song kicks in, the same music I used in The DAY 503 Trailer.) It was this quote I said over and over to myself at each reach and it eventually got me up to the top. C'mon, you can do it. Don't look down. Oops, I just did. C'mon! Who am I? I'm Spider-Man! I eventually made it, tired but satisfied with a rush of natural endorphins.

"Okay, look at the view! Look at the view!" reminded Toby from below.

Oh right. The view. That's what we do this for.

We continued to go take turns climbing, rapelling, and belaying that morning under the shadows of the cliff, taking in the view at the end of each climb. Budi got the hang of it, but Shwita not so much; on her ascent up the 5.9, she could barely make it, hiding in a little nook so that others could pass her by. She gave up and eventually decided to downgrade from a full-day payment to a half-day one, but tagged along to watch the two of us and take our photos.

"IT'S A LOT HARDER THAN IT LOOKS," Budi said as we sat at the dining table of the restaurant adjacent to the Cliffs Man office for our included lunch of Thai fried rice and Pad Thai. There was a silence at the table, but it wasn't exactly uncomfortable for obvious reasons. "We're so tired, nobody's talking." My muscles were starting to get more sore, which was bad because they were getting sore, but a good thing in a way because I knew they were getting a work out, especially my abs -- and without the silly use of an Ab-Roller.

The guys at Cliffs Man conveniently chose another site for the afternoon in accordance with the position of the sun; again we'd be in the shadows of the cliff instead of directly under the pounding heat rays. The afternoon site attracted a different set of climbers from the morning crowd, ones with a bit more experience for the 5.10s and 5.10A's.

With us were North Americans Susan and Clark from California and Long Island, NY; Kelly from north of Toronto; and Jason, an Oregonian living in Korea to teach English. They all made climbing up the rock face fairly easy, particularly Jason, who had been climbing before and had the physique of an Olympian -- and all without the use of an Ab-Roller I assumed.

"He's so fast. I was hoping to rest some more," Budi said, knowing that he was up next.

For Budi and I, the climbing only got harder and harder as our muscles weakened and weakened. Perhaps it was because the terrain was harder, popping the blisters on my fingers and tearing holes into my climbing shoes. The words from the Cliffs Man instructors below made it seem easier than it was: "Okay, put your right foot where your right knee is." "Reach up your left hand and pull up." And our favorite, "Okay, just go up." Easy for them to say; Toby made belaying look easy too.

Not even my Spider-Man motivational monologue was helping me as I tried to clear this one hump on the 5.10A. It got to the point where my muscles started shaking again, and I totally depended on the tension in the rope to pull myself higher. I fell a couple of times, cursed and almost gave up, but hung in there. Who am I? I'm Spider-Man. Budi kept with it too and made it up the 5.10A, our last climb of the day. Ultimately we were rewarded with complimentary Cliffs Man hats of our choice since they ran out of the usual t-shirts.

"So what are you up to tonight?" Budi asked me on the way back to Ao Nang on a longboat ferry from Railay Beach.

"I don't know. Did you want to meet up?"

"Okay."

NOELLE HAD NO PLANS FOR THE EVENING and tagged along for dinner with me and the Indonesian couple from Singapore. Shwita was actually half-Indonesian/half-Thai and was fluent in the Thai language, which was convenient when we went out for seafood at a fairly swanky place.

"Do people ask if you're Thai?" Noelle asked Budi. She figured someone that looked like him would have the same problem as me.

"No, they just start talking to me in Thai," he answered. "Don't talk to me, talk to her."

"Its like she has superpowers," I said. "You can hear what people are saying about you."

"Yeah!"

We dined that night on a yummy seafood basket of prawns, lobster, fish, and crabs, all over a bottle of red wine and the musical accompaniment of a musical trio that sang to the melodies of an acoustic guitar. We pretty much had the place all to ourselves since the restaurant was secluded from the main strip, and we stayed until we got the hint that they were closing and wanted to go home.

"If you're in Singapore, give me a call," Budi told me. It was their last night in Krabi.

"I'll definitely be in Singapore, so I will."

We closed the night off at another bar for a nightcap and a couple of rounds of the Connect Four game that was on the table. It was the end of a night of working out the stomach region from the inside -- and all without an Ab-Roller too. Really, using those things are just silly, don't you think?

Hit And Miss

DAY 477: "I charred my back and need 1 day to rest it on a moto. :)" Noelle wrote on a note for me to read the day before when she arrived at our room before I did. While I was off rock climbing, she had gone diving and sat out on the upper deck during her surface intervals for too long, and when I saw her I saw the result: her back had cooked red like lobster.

ACCORDING TO THE GUYS AT PHRA NANG DIVERS, Noelle's Ao Nang dive shop of choice, we didn't have to book a snorkel boat tour for a day of R&R; good snorkeling could be done off the shore of Tup Kaek Beach, about 20 km. away from Ao Nang. Getting there was half the fun -- at least for me -- because we got there with a motorbike we rented for $4 all day.

Knowing that I had braved the crazy motorbike traffic of Hanoi, Noelle trusted me at the helm of the motorbike that we rented from J. Mansion, just across the way. "You know how to ride?" asked the owner.

"Yeah," I replied with confidence -- but soon the engine was on and the bike out of my control.

"Back brake, front brake," he pointed out. Oh right. Brakes. They stop the bike from crashing into things. The owner looked a bit concerned turning the bike over to me while Noelle looked pretty terrified.

"Didn't you read [the entry] in the Philippines when I almost crashed into a vending stall?" I asked her.

"Uh, no."

The owner gave me a quick refresher on how to operate the bike (without crashing it) and had me drive around as a sort of test to see if I could handle it. I passed and he smiled. A reluctant Noelle hopped on the back and soon we were off.

MY INHERENT NEED FOR SPEED resurfaced in my mind and soon I zipped us to the nearest gas station so that I could really crank it on a less empty tank. I almost swerved out of control when I made a big U-turn into the station to get near the pump. Noelle wasn't the least bit impressed.

"You wanna wear the helmet [stored under the seat]?" I asked.

"Actually, yes."

The helmet was probably a good idea because soon we were off on the countryside roads at close to 90 km/hr (about 55 mph), which doesn't sound like much, but is when you're on a little motorbike made of aluminum and plastic. It probably didn't instill any more confidence in Noelle every time I mentioned that I really had the urge to find a ramp and jump over a car like I had done numerous times in the video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.

"I'm going to kick your ass," Noelle said from the back, holding on for her life. "It's not a race!"

I slowed down to a normal speed -- until another motorbike passed me from the right. "But that guy's going so much faster than me!" I revved up the throttle to about 100 km/hr, yelping like an idiot and passed him. If there was a ramp, I'm sure we would have gotten some hang-time.

ONE HEART ATTACK LATER, we arrived on the secluded Tup Kaek Beach where no one was around but the construction workers in the back working on building new resorts. "I think I see the reef," Noelle said, pointing to the dark blue patch in the turquoise waters. We geared up in the snorkel gear we borrowed for free from Phra Nang Divers and went in -- but found nothing but dead coral, killed from the Asian Tsunami of 2004.

"He said [it's beyond the dead coral]," Noelle said. We search some more, but couldn't really see far with all the silt in the mix.

"Is this [the right place]?" I asked.

"Well, he said it was near the Sheraton." (We were near the Sheraton, but could have been closer.)

"Even if we found it, we wouldn't be able to see it [with all the silt.]" Looked like the guys at Phra Nang led us to a miss.

We head over back towards the Sheraton and found a small road that led to another resort by a rocky beach. The guy there said the reef was just off the coast and so we parked to gear up. However, the bike was around the bend and out of sight, and with some questionable guys lingering near it, I felt uneasy about leaving it there.

"There are people lingering by the bike," I reported to Noelle.

"Do you want to move it?" she said. "You didn't get halfway around the world if you didn't trust your instincts."

"Yeah."

Eventually I found a safer-looking road closer to the Sheraton that led to a small beachfront restaurant with a parking lot, the perfect place to keep the bike parked with more confidence while sipping on yummy pina coladas. Nearby there was a baby elephant swimming in the water with an owner or trainer around a crowd of tourists (picture above). I asked about three times what it was doing there, but no one gave me an answer.

Noelle and I geared up again to look for the supposed reef mentioned by Phra Nang Divers. Snorkeling around, we found the visibility to be a tad better (but not by much), but again, we saw mostly only dead coral and the occasional fish. It wasn't completely dead; there were some areas of living coral and a few clownfish swimming amidst them, but mostly, the site didn't live up to the hype.

"At least we found Nemo," Noelle said, looking on the bright side.

"And Dumbo."

"Because of the snorkel?"

"Uh, no, because of the elephant."

"Oh right. Sometimes I'm blonde," she said -- it was one of her catch phrases.

The afternoon excursion of diving was sort of a letdown, but speeding back to Ao Nang at 100 km/hr more than made up for it.

REDEMPTION FOR THE GUYS AT PHRA NANG DIVERS came when we took their advice to eat at a seafood restaurant out of town, a place easily accessible with our rental motorbike, even at speeds slower than 100 km/hr. Their directions led us out of town along a dark road (even with the stars out), but we eventually found the place with the headlights on. The place was a great find as it served real Thai food at real Thai prices for primarily real Thai people (as opposed to me). In fact, it was so off the tourist area that the name of the place had no English name, nor was the menu in English. (We just knew to look for the "one with the green awning.") Fortunately our waiter knew some English and instructed us to simply point to any of the fresh seafood sitting in bins nearby and tell him how to prepare it.

We pointed to prawns, crabs, clams, and mussels and asked for green curry, yellow curry, red curry, and ginger (respectively). Soon the live seafood went from this, to this, and eventually to this -- and all for about the third the cost of any place in town.

"This is the best Thai food I've had in Thailand," I said. The Green Awning Restaurant With No English Name was a definite hit in my book, and the suggestions of Phra Nang Divers had been redeemed (so here's a plug). The only thing that could have topped the yummy seafood feast that night would have been to rev the motorbike up a ramp and over a car on the way back to Ao Nang. Man, that would have been sweet -- provided we landed safely of course.

Superday

DAY 478: "The worst day of diving is better than the best day of working," was the saying silk-screened onto a t-shirt that I saw some guy wearing that morning. We were on a boat off the coast of Ao Nang at the beginning of a three-dive day that was sure to be better than one sitting at a desk in a corporate cube farm, indeed.

All the dive shops in Ao Nang call it "Superday," the three-dive day that brought divers to two reef walls and an underwater wreck to see the colorful coral and marine life in the Andaman Sea. This particular "Superday" couldn't have started any better for the sun was shining and the waters were calm. On top of that, we were aboard the Petchmanee, a two-level luxury diving yacht with a carpeted bar area, video room (to show off the resident videographer's daily video), and sun deck.

"It's really the best boat that's out here," said Marie, Noelle's dive instructor and my divemaster for Superday. She would take Noelle on the first of two days in her PADI Advanced Open Water certification course (which I completed in the Red Sea out of Dahab, Egypt). "The bad news is that Noelle is going to navigate [us]," Marie joked.

THE FIRST DIVE OF THE DAY was one I was really looking forward to, for it was to be my first dive exploring a wreck, the "King Cruiser," a former passenger ferry that couldn't exactly continue its service since it now laid at the bottom of the ocean floor. Sunk most likely for insurance reasons in 1997, the boat that used to hold people above water was now an artificial reef that held an ecosystem of marine life, from angelfish, trumpet fish, nudibranches, and lionfish. Less obviously seen were the scorpion fish that almost perfectly blended in the gray coral growth on the metal of the ship -- we had to be wary of them if we need to hold onto or push off the wall.

For Noelle it was her Advanced Open Water "wreck dive," and for me it was just a leisurely dive in and around the ship. I was thoroughly amazed with it all, seeing the "caves" formed from the former halls of the vessel, many filled with huge schools of fish. When our tanks read 60 bar on the gauges, Noelle led Marie and me back to where we first arrived at the ship, over by the toilets that went down without the captain.

THE SECOND DIVE WAS AT "KOH DOC MAI," a reef wall dive around a limestone peak that started at the ocean floor and protruded up out from the surface (picture above). For Noelle it would be her Advanced Open Water "multi-level dive" and for me it would be a really nice drift dive, for the current was really strong and swept me conveniently in the right direction along the wall, as planned by Marie. It was sort of hard to keep from moving on with the current, but I managed to swim against the current when needed be, to see the unique marine life of this second dive of "Superday": boxfish, moray eels, lobsters, and little cleaning shrimp cleaning the particles off one diver's hand. All the usual tropical fish were there too, but one rare one really wowed Marie; for the first time in all of her diving career, she had seen a ghost pipefish, a rare relative to the seahorse.

"NOELLE HAS TO [DO WORK] while the two of us just get to relax," Marie joked in reference to our third and final dive of Superday, which happened after our lunchtime surface interval of chicken and rice. Noelle's "work" was nowhere near the corporate cube farm variety, but was to use an underwater pencil and board to record the names of marine life for her Advanced Open Water "naturalist dive," a sort of scavenger hunt thought up by the people at PADI. This happened at a dive site called "Shark Point," which contrary to its name, had no sharks and therefore were not on Noelle's list of things.

While Noelle was busy doing "work," I leisurely swam around the spectacular reef feeling quite confident in my diving. No longer was I thinking about my buoyancy or my breathing; they had become second nature to me from my "advanced" experience, and I could really just enjoy the dive. There wasn't much I hadn't seen before though, so I sort of spaced out at 17 meteres below sea level. I entertained myself by giving the finger to the friendly creatures of the sea, the same ones Noelle was writing down the names of.

Oh, hello Mr. Eel! Bite on this! (Middle finger here.) And hello Mr. Trumpet Fish! You're an asshole! (Middle finger here.) Hi there Mr. Grouper! Lovely weather we're having, huh? What? Well, fuck you too, buddy! (Middle finger here.)

I was thoroughly amused underwater.

Marie did point out something that made the dive a bit more special for me: a school of about a dozen squid above us -- something I hadn't seen before -- swimming with their pulsating tentacles. It was arguably one of the more amazing sites I'd seen on all of my dives, and I was already up to 31.

BY SUNDOWN, WE WERE HEADED BACK to Ao Nang after a truly "Superday" that lived up to its name. All three dives were great, even that third dive of the day; if it weren't for those squid, my thirty-first overall dive might have been one of my more mediocre ones, but as that guy's shirt said, it still would have been better than the best day of work.

Searching For A Third Nipple

DAY 479: Every tour office and guesthouse in the Krabi province has posters up for the "James Bond Tour," a tour of Ao Phangnga National Park, filming location for scenes in 1974's The Man With The Golden Gun, starring Roger Moore as Agent 007. Although I could have gone diving with Noelle, or rock climbing again, I signed up for these "James Bond Tour" in hopes of getting more interesting writing material for the Blog. (Besides, I'd already been to the location of Octopussy). However, as much as I thought the "James Bond Tour" would bring the region alive with tales of secret agents and the filming of actors playing them, it was a James Bond tour more shameful to Ian Fleming as the U.S. Olympic Basketball Team was to the Olympic Games of Athens 2004.

The day started with me drinking a yogurt drink -- shaken, not stirred -- but it was after that that the lameness of the tour began. Reason in part of the group I was with, three other older German couples, which I normally wouldn't have issues with, but they barely spoke -- and when they did it was in German only. Our guide wasn't exactly Sir Talk-a-lot either when he started the "English speaking" guided tour promised by the ad poster. Like many of the cheap tours I'd been on in the world, he simply brought us to places and pointed out what they were briefly.

"On your right, Khao Machu. Looks like a dog."

"Painting. Three thousand years old."

"Sea cave."

At least we got to go through the sea cave.

IN THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN, James Bond, as usual, goes to exotic locals to make out with sexy female agents, from casinos in Macau, to fancy hotels in Hong Kong, to the streets of Bangkok. In the final scenes, he flies a sea plane over the towering limestone cliff formations of Ao Phangnga National Park in Thailand (which for me was reminiscent of the landscape of Halong Bay in Vietnam) even though in the movie, it was suppose to be off the coast of southern China.

Agent 007 lands on the shores of Kao Tapu, the secret island lair of the lucrative assassin Scaramanga (played by Christopher Lee, Saruman of Lord of the Rings) a.k.a. The Man With The Golden Gun. Anyone who's seen the movie knows that not only does he tote a golden pistol, but sports a superfluous mammary gland, i.e. a third nipple.

WE LANDED ON KOH TAPU not by sea plane but by longboat, and not with three nipples but with just two (speaking only for myself of course). The iconic symbol of the island is a phallic-looking rock formation protruding up from the water in the center of a bay (picture above). It was this rock formation that in the movie, held a reflective solar panel that powered a super laser that eventually blew up Mr. Bond's plane.

Koh Tapu is known today, even by the locals, as "James Bond Island," for its former fame, although the secret agent vibe has long died out. Replacing Scaramanga's secret mansion are dozens of vending stalls selling the usual chotchskies but -- to my surprise -- no golden guns, nor stick-on superfluous nipples like James Bond used once to go undercover. No matter, some elements of the movie were still intact, like the beach where Scaramanga first revealed his extra mammary, rock formation known as Kao Phingkan that led to Scaramanga's house, and the nice views of the bay. I wandered around with my fresh new haircut until the novelty of being on "James Bond Island" wore off.

While 007 and sexy secret agent Goodnight escaped from Koh Tapu on a Chinese junkboat just before the island exploded and crumbled into the sea, we simply left peacefully, leaving the island intact for the next boatload of tourists.

THE "JAMES BOND TOUR" CONTINUED to other sites, all not related to James Bond, but for me were more interesting. For a mid-day lunch break we landed at Panyee, a "floating" village of houses on stilts, a community of Muslim fishermen. It was here we had a family-style lunch around a table over an uncomfortable silence -- until Germans started small talk in German, leaving me out of it.

No matter, after lunch I wandered around Panyee, beyond the souvenir stalls yearning for a sale since they too were suffering in the post-tsunami doldrums of tourism. Most people just took it easy on that hot mid-day, so hot it put most people to sleep in hammocks or on the floor -- unless they were praying at the village mosque in the mid-day call to prayer.

I could barely stay awake myself in the heat as we continued on the "James Bond Tour" to two other sites back on the mainland, the Wat Suwankuha, or "Monkey Cave Temple," home of a reclining buddha and a whole lot of monkeys outside, and Tao Thong Waterfall in Tarnboke Koranee National Park. Both sites were mediocre to me -- the park out of Luang Prabang, Laos sported a much grander waterfall -- as no one bared any sort of nipples, in sets of two or of three.

"HOW WAS THE JAMES BOND TOUR?" Noelle asked me back in Ao Nang.

"Uh, it was pretty bad. I thought it would be more about James Bond, but it was a lot of pointing and 'this is this,' 'that is that'."

"I saw a leopard shark!"

At least one of us had a good day. However, I wasn't so jealous because I'd seen one before off the coast of Australia. If she had come to me raving about having seen a leopard shark with three nipples, that would have been another story altogether.

On Tap

DAY 480: Noelle had been taken in by a group of British divers that were on the ship during her two-day PADI Advanced Open Water certification course. The night before she had gone drinking with them for happy hour at nearby Bernie's, while I stayed in and worked, the Blogwriting nerd I am. During happy hour, Noelle had befriended a British couple that invited her to share the cost of a private longtail boat to go snorkeling at some of the five islands off the coast of Ao Nang. I was invited as well, to split the cost four ways instead of three, and gladly accepted. We were to meet the British couple at The Irish Rover in the morning at eleven o'clock.

"Are we being stood up?" Noelle questioned at close to 11:30.

"Yeah, I think so."

The couple never showed, even by noon, but it was no matter; we ventured out on our own, with borrowed snorkel gear from Phra Nang Divers again, and went down to the beach where all the longboat guys desperately tried to get fares. During the non-tsunami high season, the rate should be around 1200 baht, but Dash, the friendly Thai woman of The Irish Rover, said that we could probably get it for 600.

"Longboat?" asked one of the longboat touts as they always did whenever we walked by. This time we actually gave them a positive response.

"How much to go to Chicken Island?"

"Five hundred baht."

"Okay." Wow, that was easy.

Well, it wasn't that easy; the driver took us in his boat to what he said was Chicken Island, but it didn't look like it from the pictures we had seen on the posters. Chicken Island was named for the chicken head-shaped rock formation on one end of the island, which I thought looked more like a turkey. "They should call it Turkey Island," I'd say. After some picture analysis after the fact, it appeared that he took us not to Chicken Island but to Tap Island, which was just as good as Chicken anyway, I assumed.

We landed on Tap and arranged a pick-up time, then picked out a spot on the beach. Noelle and I were just a couple of snorkelers amidst only about a dozen on the secluded island. Noelle felt like the minority in the small group for, "I'm the only one wearing a bikini top," she said. Nearby were two topless British women trying to get rid of their tan lines in the bosom region. For one of them, it wasn't working, she just turned red like a lobster -- with a tan line.

The sand on Tap Island was white and fine and reminiscent of the kind on White Beach in Boracay, Philippines, and it graced the floor of the shallow crystal waters hugging the coast. Underwater there were plenty of tropical fish (picture above) swimming above the rock formations, and they swam around and under me as I took pictures of them with my little spy camera in the clear waterproof AquaPac camera case I bought at Tokyu Hands in Hiroshima. Afterwards I sat on the beach with a pen and notepad to continue my duties as a Blogwriting nerd since I was behind, until I felt asleep under the warm sun.

AFTER OUR AFTERNOON ON TAP, we were back in Ao Nang to check out the scene for it was our last night in Thailand together. After some Pad Thai at a food stall, Noelle went over to Bernie's to see if her English dive group was there again for happy hour like they said they might, but there was no one to be found.

"You got stood up again," I said. No matter, we were redeemed by "tap" again, this time by the drinks on tap at The Irish Rover, namely the Strongbow English ciders they proudly served. Better than that, we simply took our drinks up to our room -- one of the great perks of staying at an inn above an Irish pub -- so that we could veg in with booze while watching music videos on Asia's Channel V (9 p.m. Astro, 8 p.m. Philippines) and The Man With The Golden Gun on bootleg. Normally I wouldn't have bought such an old DVD, but I did it solely for research for that last entry of the Blog.

Didn't I mention I was a Blogwriting nerd? (At least was working with a pint in my hand.)

Back To The Future

DAY 481: "So I'll see you in about a month," Noelle said before boarding a shared songthaew that would take her back to Krabi Town so she could get to her morning northbound flight back to Bangkok to continue her travels with with her backpacking hippie mother.

"Yeah, see you on Five Oh Three," I said, remaining on the sidewalk in Ao Nang. My transport southbound to Malaysia wouldn't come for another hour.

Noelle and I parted ways, thus ending her appearance on "The Trinidad Show" -- at least until the upcoming "one big night" back in New York City on March 5th (save the date and R.S.V.P.!). It wasn't just the end of my travels with her, but with my travels in Thailand for that matter, for I would end my day on Penang Island, the island off the northwest coast of the continental Malaysia.

A MINIVAN PICKED ME UP and brought me to Krabi Town where we picked up other travelers headed south. To my surprise, it wasn't all backpackers -- in fact it was an all-Asian bus. The only other "backpackers" were these two Korean girls who were also making their way all the way across the border.

"In Thailand, 3:15. Malaysia, 4:15," a Thai man that was talking with one of the Korean girls explained. It wasn't until he mentioned it that I realized I'd be driving over a time zone one hour ahead -- one hour into the future, if you will -- a time zone I hadn't been in since the Philippines. We rode about three hours to the southern Thai city of Hatyai to fill out our immigration forms at a tour office (with time zone clocks just slightly off, picture above), then hopped back onto a different minivan to take us across the border into Malaysia and back to the future.

I HAD DEBATED WHETHER OR NOT to go to Penang in northern Malaysia or to go straight to Kuala Lumpur, due to the new reports of the violence on the Thai/Malaysian border that had been bubbling since October 2004, but from what I saw, everything was A OK. (Leave it to TV news to overdramaticize the events.)

Traveling into Malaysia wasn't just going "back to the future" in a time zone sense, but in a technology sense. Modern Malaysia, from what I was seeing thus far on the three-hour road trip to Penang, boasted rest areas and electronic sensor toll plazas. When the driver turned on the radio, I saw that I was also "back to covers of The Village People's 'Y.M.C.A.'."

The sun set in the west as we journeyed at speeds of over 88 km/hr to the mainland town of Butterworth, where we caught the 15-min. passenger car ferry ride to Penang Island. Immediately I saw how Muslim a country I was in when I saw the people in Muslim attire look off to the distance to see the nighttime Penang skyline. I felt a sort of peace again, like I did on the Muslim island of Zanzibar. As I once said before, it's only the Muslim extremists that are crazy; the rest are peaceful, upstanding people.

It was late when we arrived in the backpacker area of Penang's Little India district, but conveniently enough we were dropped off by the guesthouse I was looked up in my guidebook, which was conveniently next to a 7-11 and an internet cafe. Mostly everything was closed already -- not because it was late, but because of the long Chinese New Year weekend -- but that didn't matter because a yummy Halal food street vendor was open nearby. "Back to the future" also meant "back to street meat" for me, a lunchtime favorite during my New York dot-com days.

I had an internet session with a can of Malaysian Kickapoo soda (tastes like Mello Yello), feeling like "the future's so bright I gotta wear shades" -- until a heavy downpour came from the dark sky. And so the future wasn't all that it was cracked up to be -- not a flying car in sight -- but hey, I only went ahead one hour for crying out loud.

From All Over The World

DAY 482: Samuel L. Jackson once said in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, "Personality goes a long way." Although the Olive Spring Hotel where I stayed for my first night in Georgetown, Penang's main city, was colorful and clean, it had no personality -- probably because most of the staff was off for the Chinese New Year long weekend like most of the businesses in town. After shopping around for a new place that morning, I found a place that, although not as colorful, had personality. Personality goes a long way (and so did my money since it was cheaper).

"Have free tea or coffee," said Amy, one of the cheerful owners.

"Have an orange. It's Chinese New Year. For prosperity," said Jimmy, the other owner of the Love Lane Inn, named not for being a honeymoon resort or a motel with an hourly rate, but for being on Love Lane, a street on the outskirts of Georgetown's Little India named after the Chinese matchmakers who once lived there.

"Love Lane" was just one street name based on Penang's history, like most of the others streets in town did. Many streets were named after places from all over the world -- Rangoon, Kensington, China, Madras, for example -- reflecting the multi-cultural past of what was once a popular international trading port for textiles, spices, tea, and other goods.

As explained by the main exhibit at the Penang Museum, "They came to Penang from all over the world." By "they," the museum meant the Nyonyas, Chinese, Eurasians, Indian Muslims, Siamese (Thai), Europeans, Burmese, Malays, Punjabis, Indians, Arabs, and Japanese. This hodgepodge of culture is exemplified in modern Penang through its mix of people, cuisine, and architecture.

Walking around Georgetown (named after the King of England when the British took over in 1760 under command of one Francis Light), I saw the juxtaposition of different architectural styles. Just down Love Lane was the Cathedral of the Assumption, a Catholic church set up by the Eurasians from Keduh in 1786, which was not too far away from some Chinese temples and Muslim mosques. Two blocks away was the Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion -- the UNESCO-recognized former residence of a Mandarin industrialist who hit it big in Penang in the late 19th/early 20th centuries -- a true hodgepodge of architectural styles with Art Nouveau stained glass windows, Venetian shutters, Victorian cast iron work, and Chinese roof elements.

Most of the streets were deserted as I continued to walk around Georgetown; most people had the day off for Chinese New Year and had boarded up shop -- unless they were getting a prosperity blessing from Chinese drummers and traditional lion dancers. Georgetown's usually vibrant Chinatown was pretty much a ghost town; even the Khoo Kongsi Temple in the center was only visited by handful of Western tourists marveling at the intricate craftwork -- craftsmanship that attracted the film crew for 1999's Anna and the King. Walking up the road, I saw where most of the Chinese descendants had gone: to the 19th century Kuan Yin Teng temple to pray to the Goddess of Mercy for good luck and a prosperous new year.

The other neighborhoods weren't so dead, particularly the non-Chinese dominated ones like Little India, a bustling market area that brought me right back to my time in India, with Bollywood hits blasting on speakers, restaurants emitting the smells of curry and roti, and numerous saree stores. The legacy of Hindu Indians was seen not only in culture but also in architecture, as I saw when passing by the Sri Mariamman temple dedicated to Lord Shiva.

Indian Muslims were also represented along with their other brethren of the Nation of Islam. Georgetown boasted many mosques, none more spectacular than the Masjid Kapitan Keling, originally built in 1801 when the East India Company found the presence of a mosque necessary with all the Indian merchants in town. Cauder Mohuddeen, an Indian Muslim merchant nicknamed "Kapitan Keling," proposed to have it built and it soon was -- it is still in service today as evident when I heard the mid-day call to prayer coming from the minaret.

Non-Muslim visitors were not allowed inside, so I hopped on a bus to travel the twenty minutes to see other cultures of Penang represented architecturally, namely the Siamese (Thai) and Burmese (Myanmaran), as seen in two temples across the street from each other. In true Thai style, a huge reclining Buddha was enclosed in the Wat Chayamang Kalaram for tourists to see and devotees to pray with offerings of incense sticks and lotus-shaped candles. Across the street, devotees of Burmese Buddhism prayed to an upright Buddha in the Dhammikarama Temple, the only Burmese-style temple in Malaysia. Burmese architecture differed from Thai a little bit, with a different style of stupa surrounded by a turtle moat, and statues of sacred boys and the Panca-Rupa, Guardian Protectors of the globe (picture above), each with the powerful qualities of the elephant, horse, lion, deer, fish, and bird.

A TOWN NAMED AFTER AN ENGLISH KING is not without its English influence, and England was thoroughly represented architecturally as well in Georgetown, from St. George's Anglican Church, to the Victorian-style Penang City Hall, to the Victoria Memorial Clock Tower. The British settlement on Penang (then called Prince Edward Island) all began at Fort Cornwallis, the military base set up by Francis Light in 1786 to defend the island from the French, the Siamese, the Kedahs, and booty-hunting pirates with cannons pointed out to sea. With the pirates at bay, trade business prospered and European maritime architecture surfaced on the historic and Beach Street.

BUSINESS CONTINUES TODAY in modern Penang. As Let's Go points out, Penang is "more powerhouse than paradise" with multinational corporate offices and five colleges. With that said, the inevitable American influence was also present in Georgetown, with a big modern shopping mall with American products from The Body Shop and Apple computer (iPod Shuffles all sold out!). On the speakers I heard a DJ playing Britney Spears, Eminem, and that Linkin Park/Jay-Z song that I've heard just about everywhere since the Philippines.

The American pop mix came on as I sat with my feet soaking during an ion cleanse, this new treatment to relieve your body of toxins by osmosis through the feet. Different toxins exit your body by some reversal of ions or something that they said was safe (according to American and European doctors), and after a half-hour session, my clear water turned to brown -- mostly from toxins extracted from my liver.

It probably didn't matter that the toxins of my liver cleared out, because I soon just clogged it up again in true American-influenced fashion.

SPEAKING OF FOOD, Penang boasts a very unique cuisine that blends cuisines from all over the world. There were no Penang-specific restaurants in town that I saw or read about; all the Penang-only treats were cooked up in the many groups of food stalls scattered around town. Amongst the Penang specialties that I had that day -- yes, I did venture beyond McDonald's -- was assam laksa, a spicy fish and noodle soup with pineapple, red peppers, ginger and mint leaves (which was complemented a bottle of Skol beer, one I had not had since my days in Brazil); and curry mee, a spicy curry noodle soup. Curry also came in the form of junk food when I had a bag of curry doodles as a snack.

WITH ALL THE DIFFERENT BACKGROUNDS of the people of Penang, there might have been some tension, but there was definitely a unity in diversity on the island. Chinese New Year was celebrated by faces of all backgrounds at a small outdoor concert that I ran into that night, down the pedestrian mall from the fancy Eastern & Oriental. Three Chinese musicians performed for a crowd of Indians, Thais, Chinese, Europeans et al. -- with a cover of Rob Thomas/Santana's "Smooth" of all things.

Yup, with influences from all over the world in Penang, the American influence was bound to come sooner or later.

Like A Frog With No Limbs

DAY 483: On a world map, the island of Penang off the coast of mainland Malaysia at roughly 6° N latitude, 100° E longitude is a mere speck, if it's even there at all. However, when you zoom in on that little speck (by Googling for a better map), you see that not only is the shape of Penang Island that of a frog laid out on its belly with its limbs torn off, but that it is an island with an area of over 90 square miles, a formidable area of land that can't exactly all be covered on foot.

"You have a driver's license?" Jimmy at the Love Lane Inn asked me that morning.

"For a car [not a motorbike]," I replied.

"U.K.?"

"U.S."

"It's okay, [the cops] don't know what it looks like."

Renting a motorbike on Penang wasn't as easy as it was in Krabi, Thailand, but not as hard as it was on Zanzibar, Tanzania (where I had to have motorcycle class on my license in order for me to rent one). At a shop on the main street, I filled out paperwork and showed my American car driver's license, and soon I was handed a helmet and the keys to a Suzuki motorbike to zip around Penang. With a tank full of gas from a Shell station and a stomach full of char kuey teow (a Penang specialty of noodles, bean sprouts and seafood) from a food stall, I was off to see what Penang had to offer outside the main city of Georgetown.

TEMPLE APLENTY GEORGETOWN IS JUST ONE "SCENE" of the many scenes of Penang. I drove out west from the northeastern city -- the "stub of the right arm of the frog-shaped island" -- passed "St. Sanders," and the affluent suburbs, down a road that got more rural the farther I went. The curvy coastal road hugged the northern edge of Penang and led me to Batu Ferringhi at the "head of the limbless frog," the island beach resort district where foreigners came to do beachy things like horseback riding, jet-skiing, parasailing, swimming, or just lounging out and sunbathing. Away from the public beach area (picture above) was a ritzier scene, with resorts by Grand Plaza, Holiday Inn, and Shangri-La taking up plots of the white sand beach for the exclusive use of their guests.

Batu Ferringhi was the most expensive area of Penang; as I continued westbound to the "left arm stub of the frog," I saw that it was all downhill from there -- figuratively speaking of course -- since at the end of the road was Teluk Bahang. The name translates to "The End of the World" since it was the last village the road would go to when the locals were pushed westward after the colonization of Georgetown. Not much has changed over the years; Teluk Bahang is still a humble fishing community of locals and their fishing boats at the rickety piers that I dared not drive on, even though locals were driving their motorbikes on it. West of the piers was less developed; it was the Sungai Tukun Recreational Forest, a 23-hectare reserve of tropical forest for anyone to enjoy, with sitting areas and hiking trails.

THE WEST SIDE OF THE ISLAND (the left side of the "limbless frog") wasn't as developed or as crowded as the east at all and I pretty much had the road to myself -- perfect for my inherent "need for speed." I couldn't go too fast though because there weren't many straight-aways; it was lots of curvy, undulating mountain roads -- U-turns, Z-turns and N-turns. Along the way there were many roadside tourist traps, from orchards and craft villages, and I only stopped and visited one, for it boasted to be the "largest butterfly sanctuary in southeast Asia," the Penang Butterfly Farm.

Not only did it have dozens of varieties of butterflies (hatched from cocoons in incubators) flying all over a big area surrounded by wire mesh, but it was also a scenic garden and miniature zoo with giant millipedes, ducks, oriental whip snakes, water scorpions, geckos, and gift shops.

I revved the engine and maneuvered the curvy southbound road as fast as I could without tipping over -- I had to counterbalance with my legs at times -- and went passed the touristy durian and clove orchards and the waterfalls. I rode and rode passed the palm trees and explored dead ends and saw that Penang was a lot bigger than I had thought. I got lost a couple of times in some of the towns in the south, but eventually found my way (after a near-miss with another motorbike), and stopped at Teluk Kumbar, a humble fishing village at the geographic "rectum of the limbless frog." Thankfully, the limbless frog thing was just a metaphor.

THE AFTERNOON WAS GETTING LATER AND LATER and I kept on getting lost as I sped down the highway back northbound towards Georgetown. There were two must-sees left for me to see that day, which I couldn't exactly find until I got directions from a 7-11 employee. The first of these must-sees was the Kek Lok Si Temple, arguably the showcase temple of all of Penang. The colorful Kek Buddhist temple complex built on many tiers on a hill (linked by funicular) had many pagodas, prayer halls, pavilions, and Buddhist shrines and statues. The main statue was the towering figure of Kuan Yin at the top of the hill, a giant 120-ft. bronze sculpture, the tallest of its kind in the world.

It's only 5:25; I've got time, I thought, looking at my watch. Before leaving Penang I'd see all of it from above at the top of Penang Hill, just down the road from Kek Lok Si. My plan was to go up and down via cable car and then get back to the guesthouse at the suggested time of 8 p.m., which would give me ample time to get to back to the mainland to catch my overnight train to Kuala Lumpur.

The 5:30 cable car was booked solid and I had to waste half an hour for the six. Another half hour was "wasted" after that since the cable car didn't exactly have a "need for speed" desire like me. It took fifteen minutes to get to the mid-way point for a car transfer and another fifteen to reach the summit at over 700m. ASL. You had to book a time to go down, and I really needed to get the next one down, which was listed as 6:45.

The people ahead of me were getting timeslots of 8:00 and when I got there, I was to be the first 8:30. Shit. "Is that the earliest?"

"Eight thirty."

"Is there anything earlier? I have to catch a train."

"Seven or seven thirty."

"I'll take the seven." The guy manually wrote it down since it was just me -- one advantage of traveling solo.

In my half hour on the top of Penang Hill I wandered around and took in the view of Georgetown at the northeastern "right arm stub of the limbless frog" below. The summit provided more than a view; it had a huge park that definitely warranted more than thirty minutes, with several lodges, walking trails, a mosque, and Hindu temple. I only saw them briefly before hopping on the 7:00 down, which took forty minutes to descend because there was a delay at the mid-point station.

My "need for speed" because just that, a need instead of a desire. I strapped on the helmet, hopped back on the bike, and sped back towards Georgetown, hoping I'd still have time to maybe eat some dinner before leaving. However, I didn't factor in Georgetown rush hour traffic. There was a sea of red brake lights as I head back into town, and I did my best to weave in and out of cars in true motorbike chase form -- and managed to do it without getting killed. I made it back to the shop a little passed eight and ran to the Love Lane Inn to get my bags. Fortunately for me, Jimmy the owner gave me a ride to the ferry. I was in the mainland town of Butterworth by nine; fortunately, the ferry port was right next to the train station.

I made my 9:30 train with just a little to spare, sweating like a dog from the mad rush. If only the cable car went a little faster, I would have had the time for a final Penang culinary specialty -- I wanted a curry mee bad -- but it was slow as a frog without its limbs. It's not easy being green -- and having your legs and arms torn off.

V Day in K.L.

DAY 484: Huh? Where are we? I wondered, all groggy-eyed when I woke up on a motionless train in my sleeper berth. Everyone was getting off the Kuala Lumpur-bound train at 6:40 in the morning. Are we there yet? We're not supposed to get there for another half hour. The train continued its state of inertia, and so I just disembarked. We had in fact arrived at KL Sentral station ahead of schedule.

KUALA LUMPUR, WHICH EVERYONE JUST CALLS "K.L." (like the way people call Los Angeles, "L.A."), was a city I was really looking forward to visiting. For some reason, it wasn't just another big modern Asian city to me; it emitted a certain allure, a je ne sais quoi, since I had seen it on The Amazing Race, 24, and, more prominently, in the movie Entrapment. Yup, the streets of Malaysia's capital metropolis had been graced with the presence of Sean Connery and -- even better -- Catherine Zeta-Jones. Ah, Cathy Zee... If you only knew how many guys like me paused the DVD in that laser beam training scene to bask in the glory of your Spandex outfit...

I had no real agenda in K.L. despite my attraction to its cosmopolitan vibe -- that is, until I checked my e-mail at the internet cafe of the Red Dragon Hostel in K.L.'s Chinatown, where I had snagged a room that morning.

From Vivian (former SBR): Any chance you might be in KL? How long will you be in M'sia for? If you need any help, just email me. It'll be great if I can see you in person! Hope to hear from you soon.

How about that? I thought. I've been in K.L. for only about an hour and already I have people here. God bless the Blog. I wrote her back, informing her that I had just arrived in K.L., and asked for her phone number so that we might get together that night for dinner and/or drinks. It was February 14th -- V Day -- and I had a potential date for Valentine's in K.L.

It wasn't until late afternoon that I got a reply from Vivian, but in the interim, I spent the day seeing the sites of a city I had an infatuation with, from modern towers to old temples and the things in between.

THE MAJORITY OF BUDGET ACCOMMODATIONS in K.L. were in and around Chinatown, a culturally rich neighborhood that was conveniently right next to the long distance bus station and two intracity LRT (Light Rail Transit) stations. It was also the place to get the best Chinese food in town, some of which had evolved into "Malaysian food." Before heading out to see sights, I filled up at Restoran Nam Heong, a local culinary institution serving "the original Hainanese Chicken Rice since 1938." My Let's Go book said it had "an almost historic reputation for having the most authentic chicken rice in town (it sells out by midafternoon!)" With that said, I skipped out on the humble food stalls and gave it a whirl, and it definitely lived up to the hype -- definitely the best Hainanese rice (rice steamed in chicken broth and ginger) I'd had to date, served with roasted chicken pieces and a cup of broth.

Chinatown had no shortage of temples, from the Chinese Kuan Ti Temple and Sin Sze Ya Temple (both over a century old), and even a Hindu one, the Sri Maha Mariamman Temple, "the center of Kuala Lumpur's Hindu community... in the heart of Chinatown." Chinatown's main drag of shops, Petaling Street, was covered with a huge block-long awning for protection from the rain -- although it wasn't necessary that sunny afternoon for the Chinese lions and their accompanying drummers who were marching and dancing around Chinatown for more of the 15-day Chinese New Year festivities.

ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SUNGAI KELANG RIVER, which hugged west edge of Chinatown, was a less Buddhist and Hindu, and more Muslim. It was home to the Islamic Arts museum; the proud, modern-looking Masjid Negara (National Mosque); the Moorish Sultan Abdul Samad Building (now the High Court building); and the Masjid Jamek, a grand mosque on the delta where the Kelang and Gombak Rivers meet, built in 1909 by the same Moor/Arab-influenced British architect who did the Old Railway Station.

Nearby was Merdeka Square (Freedom Square), a former cricket field-turned-symbol of Malaysian independence. It was there that in 1957 that Malaysia declared its independence after a centuries-long history of colonization and occupation from the Portuguese, Dutch, British, and Japanese. Numerous Malaysian flags waved in the air, including the huge one atop the tallest flagpole in the country.

SPEAKING OF TALL STRUCTURES, no visit to K.L. is complete without seeing the iconic Petronas Twin Towers (picture above), a modern double skyscraper modeled after stupas. It was just four stops away on the LRT to the KLCC stop, where I got off and was immediately dwarfed by the 452 meter-tall structure -- the fourth largest building in the world. It was here that in 1999's Entrapment that Catherine Zeta-Jones and Sean Connery masterminded a heist during a Y2K computer routine, traveling between the two towers via the SkyBridge in between. Unfortunately it was Monday, the day the SkyBridge was closed for maintenance, and so I could only wander the posh Suria shoppingmall at the base of the towers. No matter, at least I got to see Catherine Zeta-Jones there -- sort of.

"HELLO, IS THIS VIVIAN?" I asked through the payphone across the street from the Red Dragon Hostel that afternoon. She had finally replied to my e-mail with her mobile phone number.

"Is this Erik?! Oh my God!" said the voice on the other end more excitedly than one coming from the hundredth caller on a radio call-in contest. I love it when my reputation preceeds me. Vivian was ecstatic to hear from me -- a definite TGTG (The Global Trip Groupie) -- and couldn't believe her ears. She wouldn't believe her eyes soon enough after we planned to meet up that night. Score.

"Do you have any plans for the night?" she asked me.

"No. I've got nothing to do."

"Any friends here?"

"Nope, you're the only one I know in K.L."

"Any plans tomorrow?"

"Nope." I'm all yours.

"Oh, maybe my dad can show you around."

Dad? Did my potential Malaysian Valentine live her parents still? I wondered. No matter; it's common for Asians to live at home much longer than Westerners. Vivian was thrilled to meet up with one of her idols -- a "celebrity" if you will -- and planned to meet me in front of the hostel at 9:30 in a couple of hours. "Are you going to wear The Global Trip shirt?" she asked, wondering how to pick me out amidst similar-looking people.

"Yeah, I'll wear it for you."

THE DOWNPOUR THAT CAME DOWN THAT EARLY EVENING cleared up just in time for 9:30 and soon I was waiting around by the curb. Many cars passed and I looked at each one, wondering which one would be for me. There was definitely a sort of blind date anxiety there -- you never know what you're gonna get. Is this her? Is that her? No one was recognizing the blue and green swirly sphere logo on my chest -- until I heard a voice call my name from a pick-up truck.

"Erik!" cried the voice of the girl running towards me with a wide smile.

"Hey!"

"Oh, let me give you a hug!" The young Malaysian woman wrapped her arms around me and I reciprocated. I hopped into the cab of the truck where her father Geow was at the wheel. It was always great to make a local connection whereever I went, and Vivian and Geow were it in K.L. What I didn't expect was that Geow was actually playing chaperone, as I soon found out.

"So what do you do?" I asked Vivian as we rode down the city street.

"I just finished school," she answered. School, huh? So she's a college grad then. She continued, "I'm just bumming around [until university in Thailand]." Oh, high school.

Further down the conversation I learned that she was seventeen -- "jailbait" as they say in the States -- but was definitely in the exception to my philosophy that everyone born in and after 1981 was annoying. She was excited that we had common interests (i.e. travel), interests that most of her friends didn't share. For example, when she showed off the "Would You?" trailer to her friends, they wondered, "What's so good about this?" Most of them were homebodies, staying in Malaysia for university; Vivian was in the minority of people yearned to get out and see the world, even if it was just in the neighboring country.

"Oh, how's your leg?" Vivian asked, remembering the operation I had in India. An avid reader of The Blog, she recalled different episodes of "The Trinidad Show" and explained them to her father. She recognized the wallet that I used in my experiment in Tokyo.

"What are you going to do when you get back?" her father asked me.

"I don't know."

"You'll just go where the winds take you," Vivian said, quoting me again. She was a true TGTG, just a bit on the young side -- not that there was anything wrong with it, just that my "V Day" would most likely not end with a certain encounter with a female body part starting with that letter.

OUR V DAY EVENING FESTIVITIES took place in Bangsar, the trendy neighborhood outside central K.L., filled with clubs and bars, two Starbucks within a block of each other, and guys in sports cars driving around the block trying to look cool. "It's where many of the ex-patriates go," Geow mentioned. "They have many international food here."

"Oh, like McDonald's," I joked, pointing to the golden arches at the corner.

"The American embassy," Vivian said, quoting me with the nickname I gave the American fast food chain. Wow, she really knows her TGT Blog.

We circled around and looked for free parking, which presented itself after only two rounds. We parked and walked passed K.L.'s trend set of ex-pats and native cosmopotlitan K.L.ers.

"It's the place to be seen," Vivian added.

However, we skipped out on the fancy bar and clubs playing the standard American club songs, not only because Vivian was under the legal drinking age, but to have a more authentic Malaysian experience. "Malaysians love to eat," Geow said. "You never go hungry here [with the 24 hour service.]" We ended up snacking at one of many 24-hour eateries with chicken satays, Indian dosais and chais, and got to know each other. Vivian was still in awe to meet me in person, and it felt pretty cool. I was happy to oblige a Blogreader, regardless of age.

As she mentioned in a previous comment, I had inspired her to take the bus by herself to Singapore -- something she might not have had the courage to do if not for reading about my going around the world solo. She told me all about her first "big trip" to Singapore, where she went to the premiere of The Spongebob Squarepants Movie by winning tickets in a contest. This event was only followed by her first club experience in cosmo Singapore, which will remain a secret as long as this Blog is public. Ah, the new experiences of adolescence.

For Vivian it wasn't exactly a school night anymore, but we called it an early night anyway, for I was invited by her father to wake up bright and early at "stupid o'clock" (5:30 a.m.) the next morning to visit the Genting Highlands outside K.L., where he worked as a horticulturalist at some fancy resort. It amazed me that he had taken me in and trusted me so quickly -- Wasn't I just a stranger off the internet? -- but Vivian said that she had always raved about me to her friends and family, always showing them the photos I took, and tried to get them into the Blog. However, I don't think any of them was as enthusiastic about it as she was.

And so, my V Day would be extended another day. V for Vivian, that is.

In-Flight Entertainment

DAY 485: "When you go to Los Angeles, you go to Universal Studios or Disneyland," Geow the CalPoly-grad told me in the truck as we drove in the pre-dawn darkness of 6:30 a.m. "When you go to K.L., you go to Genting Highlands."

The Genting Highlands was not in my Let's Go guidebook, nor was it on the standard tourist trail for Western budget backpackers in southeast Asia. Reason being, it's a rather pricey place, a huge tourist mecca targeted for Malaysians, as well as other midde- to upper-class Asian tourists in the region. Not only was it a getaway from the hustle and bustle of mundane modern life, but an escape from the hot tropical temperatures; at up to 6000 ft. ASL, the temperature was about ten degrees cooler than at sea level.

Encompassing 11,000 acres of land, the Genting Highlands is a self-proclaimed "City of Entertainment," a self-sufficient commercial complex akin to Disney World or Universal Studios, with six resort hotels, theme parks, restaurants, exhibition and concert space, casinos -- even its own police force and fire department. Geow was one of the head horticulturalists there, where he had served with a green thumb for twenty years.

With that said, I had a sort of unique inside look at the Genting Highlands resort scene, which started at Geow's company-given apartment that he still kept even though he and his family now lived in a house in the K.L. suburbs. It was there that his daughter (and my faithful Blogreader) Vivian was born and raised, attended early school, and learned to ride horses at the resorts' horse ranch. We stopped in at the apartment for a quick coffee and Milo before heading out to one of the local restaurants that catered to the estimated 7,000 employees that lived and worked on the grounds.

"They were asking me where you were from," Geow told me. The regulars recognized Vivian as Geow's daughter but were wondering about the new guy. He told them I was from the States.

"You should have told them Malay," Vivian said, knowing quite well that I blended in with her fellow people. Malaysian was just another nationality of mistaken identity for my list; in fact more cases were to come that day, none of the Filipino.

"IF YOU FALL, DON'T WORRY," Geow told us. "It's all rainforest. You don't have to worry about food, a tiger will come for you... if you're lucky," he joked when he dropped Vivian and me off at the lower station of the Genting SkyWay, which brought people from the golf courses of the mid-highlands to the upper-highlands at 6,000 ft. ASL. Using complimentary employee guest tickets, we took the "fastest and longest mono cable car in southeast Asia" for free, over the huge expanse of tropical forest, half of which was under Geow's jurisdiction. As we soared in our first of many "flight simulations" that day, Vivian pointed out things below of the inner workings of the resort complex, like the maintenance trails and the pumping station, until we arrived at the City of Entertainment in the clouds.

The Genting Highlands Resort complex was like Las Vegas in some respects, not just for its casinos, but its huge family entertainment and dining pavilions -- think New York, New York meets The Venetian. It was still pretty early when Vivian and I wandered around; nothing was open yet and the staff was still just getting to their daily posts. We wandered the hotel lobby and then killed time at the video arcade and strip of carnival games.

After redeeming our 80 collective points for a key chain and bookmark, we got what we were waiting for: employee passes for complimentary wristbands that let us into the outdoor Genting Theme Park where our day of flight simulation really began. Vivian, like myself, was a thrill-seeker and roller coaster enthusiast, and Genting Theme Park was our perfect playground.

"Let's start off easy," she suggested. There was no line for the small Cyclone coaster and since I was taller than the minimum height requirement, we climbed aboard. The short minute-long ride primed us for arguably the most terrifying ride of the whole park, the Space Shot, which took people strapped in chairs up to the highest point of the highlands and dropped them in freefall before catching them at the last second. It was a heart-pounding scream machine as seen in this video (4 MB Quicktime).

IT WAS A FULL ACTION-PACKED DAY of flying through the sky, from the three-loops-in-a-row Corkscrew, to the new Flying Coaster that twisted us upside-down while lying down, to the runaway Rolling Thunder mine train coaster. It was a weekday so there weren't many lines at all; in fact we did the Space Shot and Corkscrew twice -- although the second Corkscrew ride went faulty and that was enough of that.

It wasn't all flying coasters all day; it was a theme park with many attractions after all, from Dinosaur Land, to the dress-up characters, to the indoor Chinese New Year concerts, to the Super Toboggan Slide, to the Spinner, to motion simulator rides -- all staffed by people assuming I was Malaysian. "He was talking to you in Malay," Vivian pointed out at one point. "Add that to your list of nationalities."

There was also a "Pirate Train" funhouse, which turned out to be really lame with all its lame props. (That's not to say pirates are lame; pirates rule! Yaaaarrr!) Rounding out the fun was the biggest Coca-Cola can in Malaysia. "We have to take a picture with this!" I said, falling into the hype.

"Okay."

AFTER THE COMPLIMENTARY LUNCH of Pizza a'la Malaysian Chicken Curry (thanks to Geow's employee food debit card), it was time for a real flight simulator, so "real" that a warning sign was posted outside explaining that it was not a ride but an adventure sport. It was the Genting Sky Venture, a sky diving training simulator where you literally flew above a big fan blowing up winds of up to 193 km/hr. There was a special going on -- just 38 ringgit (about $10 USD) instead of the usual 50 -- and since it wasn't included on our wristband package, Vivian wooed me by paying the tab for me to brag that it was her that paid for my skydiving simulation. I was excited about it all, mostly because I wanted to end my Global Trip in New Zealand and do a real sky-dive there, but due to money and time constraints (mostly money), New Zealand had to be cut out of the itinerary. I signed up for the 1:30 session, while Vivian waited outside behind the glass.

With me in the session were the only two Caucasian guys we saw that day, Pascal and Michael from Switzerland, who thought they were going with a local Malaysian until they heard me say something.

"I heard your American English," Michael said. "We've been with many English people and their English is..." He mumbled something incomprehensible.

"Really, the English always tell me that British English is the real English."

"Bah! American English is much better."

Our Malaysian instructor, who also spoke English, was Mokhtar, and he gave us each a jumpsuit and helmet and led us not to the wind chamber but to a briefing room to learn about sky diving; on the board was a list of rules and a chart of hand signals. Great, I thought. Another adventure sport with another set of rules and signals I have to learn. Apparently there was more to freefall than knowing that one square yard of drag is enough to slow a falling body by twenty percent. Mokhtar had each of us learn to balance on this weird-looking massage table, and I learned that keeping balance in freefall was much more work than I thought. It is an abdominal muscle workout where you must remain on your abs and keep the rest of your body arched like a "U."

"I can't hear anything!" I said.

"What?!" Pascal said. We had just put in our earplugs, goggles and helmets and were all set to enter the wind chamber. The motor from beneath began to whirr and the airlock door opened for us to enter.

Mokhtar entered the chamber and was immediately in flight as the powerful winds blew him up into a state of zero gravity. He demonstrated how we should push off the wall with our hands and feet if we bumped into them and reminded us not to grab the grate on the floor if we hit the bottom. He showed us how to maneuver with simple tweaks of our appendages -- for example, looking up made you descend because more wind passed through at a steeper angle.

Michael had his two minutes, then Pascal, and then it was my turn. "Just go in?" I asked, but Mokhtar couldn't hear me with the motor on and earplugs in. I fell in forward and was immediately caught by the winds.

Woohoo! I'm flying! Peter Pan can kiss my ass! No pixie dust here; you just need an industrial wind turbine machine!

The good feelings only lasted so long because I was soon bouncing up and down, left and right like a lottery ball. Okay, concentrate. Looking up goes down. Looking down goes up. Up is down and down is up. Got it. I managed to stabilize my elevation, but my lateral motion wasn't so great. Soon I was spinning out of control like I was in the eye of a tornado. Luckily during the whole two minutes, Mokhtar would jump in and grab me for readjustments.

THE SWISS-GERMANS AND I SAT and watched as Mokhtar went into the chamber again solo to demonstrate to each of us what we were doing wrong. He was quite the expert at it as he could do head-spins and stunts that made him look like he was in The Matrix. For me, I had to learn to use my palms more to turn, and when it was time for my two minutes again, I really started to get the hang of it (picture above). With my arms extended and palms down like Superman flying, the slight tilting of my palms would turn me left or right. So this is how Superman maneuvers left and right! Amazing.

Outside the window I saw Vivian cheering me on with a handful of other spectators. Two Chinese people were pointing at me curiously; later Vivian told me that with my cheeks pushed into my face, they mistook me for some famous Taiwanese actor. (Add Taiwanese to my list of mistaken identities.)

"FILIPINO? I WOULDN'T HAVE GUESSED FILIPINO," Geow's other visiting friends from America said. "I thought you were some sort of interracial mix."

Back at the flat in the mid-highlands, Vivian and I rejoined her father, who was entertaining three other guests from the States, from Portland, OR and San Jose, CA. They were jokingly waiting for me to come back to share the wealth of big winnings from the casino -- however, I couldn't get into them without a collared shirt.

The seven of us hopped into either Geow's pick-up or a hired taxi for the two-hour ride back to their home in Subang Jaya, a K.L. suburb with new housing developments. Their house was a big one, with a living room, dining room, many pets, a younger 14-year-old brother named Villy, and a housekeeper who thought I was Indian. (She was looking for a dot on my forehead.)

It was at the house in Subang Jaya that I spent my final night in K.L. having dinner family style with my new K.L. friends, before using their broadband-enabled computer to check my e-mail and the latest from the Blog comments. My URL was already in the history of the browser.

"Look here," Vivian said. In the favorites, the URL was there as well.

For Vivian it was her one last time on "The Trinidad Show," and The Global Trip Groupie thanked me by doing the teenage, but very thoughtful thing of burning me a CD of music that she plays to remind her of me. The playlist was of a bit suggestive in nature -- "Lean Back," "Let's Get Married" -- and retorting in nature -- "It's Tricky," "No Woman, No Cry." I thanked her for the CD before we hopped back in the truck for her father to bring me back to my hostel in Chinatown.

"When you come again you can bunk at our house," Geow invited. I reciprocated the invite to the metro New York area.

Vivian and I hugged goodbye before I got out of the truck and walked back to my single room. Vivian's appearance on "The Trinidad Show" was over, but perhaps she'd be back in one day in the future if I came back to K.L. -- when she was finally of legal drinking age -- not only for beers, but for more "in-flight entertainment" with a faithful fan of my work. Some fans blow you up into zero gravity, but some fans are just plain fun.

Where It All Began

DAY 486: "Visit Historic Melaka means Visit Malaysia," says one of the tourism slogans for the former capital of Malaysia. As another tourism slogan goes, Melaka is "Where It All Began."

BEFORE MY TIME IN MELAKA BEGAN, I had to get there from K.L., which was an easy task since there were two or three buses leaving every hour from the main bus station. I rode the two and a half hours in style in an inexpensive but spacious air-conditioned coach with reclining chairs that I pretty much had all to myself. (There were only two people on the bus.) I checked into the Let's Go-recommended Travellers Inn in the Taman Melaka Raya district, which was truthfully a great find; a nice Muslim family-run place with a friendly staff, a roof garden, a Japanese-style sitting lounge, nightly movies, and a clean room for only 18 ringgit (about $4.75 USD) per night. It was within walking distance of the historical core of the city, a city which was no where near as big as K.L. -- it was more like a big modern American suburb, with a commercial downtown area and a mall nearby.

BEFORE THE MODERN ERA, MELAKA WAS "WHERE IT ALL BEGAN," and its roots started growing when a Sumatran prince named Paremaswara was exiled from his home and landed in what would later evolve into the Melaka empire. In 1400, he founded the port in a region of orang-orang or "straits people," Malay fishing villagers who lived along the coasts of the strait between Malay Peninsula and Sumatra (now known today as the Strait of Melaka). News of Melaka spread and soon Paremaswara wooed the Chinese with goods, which the Chinese embraced and found worth reciprocating. Relations with the Chinese were a good and profitable one for many generations, and a new "race" evolved, the Peranakan, or Chinese Malays. Also, it was around this time that Islam was spreading, which Arab traders introduced to Melaka. Ultimately the Melaka empire embraced Islam and expanded to most of the Malay Peninsula and over half of Sumatra as a Muslim civilization -- although many foreign traders like the Chinese and Indians kept their own religions.

So everything was AOK in Melaka -- until the inevitable arrival of the Europeans having their "Age of Exploration," which began when some European guy woke up and said, "Let's go have an Age of Exploration" before going to the bathroom like many guys do in the morning after waking up. It was the Portuguese who managed to arrive first in Melaka with their European things in the Flora del Mar -- the real old one, not the replica at the Maritime Museum -- and they soon settled in with their baggage and Western weapons, built the A' Famosa fort and Christian churches like Nosa Senhora (Our Lady of the Hill) atop a hill, and cooked a lot of yummy seafood. Melaka became an important port for trade for the Portuguese during a time when all the other European nations were scrambling for ports in Asia. The next chapter in Melaka's history should come as no surprise; after some bloodshed, the Portuguese lost Melaka to the Dutch, who probably beat them to death with wooden shoes whilst they were inebriated on sangria. The Dutch took over and began their era, renaming the Portuguese Nosa Senhosa church to St. Paul's Church in the process. At least the Portuguese still had Macau for a trading port in Asia.

AND SO, THE DUTCH ERA BEGAN. Walking around Melaka, I saw that the mark of the Dutch still remains, from the Amsterdam canal-looking Melaka River, to the Heineken signs on buildings. The Dutch constructed many of Melaka's current tourist sites, like the central and iconic 18th century Christ Church (picture above) and Clock Tower, both across the street from the Stadthuys, the "statehouse" where the Dutch governor lived, now a history museum where most of the historical research for this entry was done. It was also an exhibition of the different types of people that had lived in Melaka, from the Malays to the Peranakan (Chinese Malays), to the Chitty people, Indian traders with Malay wives and their offspring.

The Dutch era only lasted so long. It was around this time in the late 18th century that a famous, but now outdated saying began, "The sun never sets in the British Empire." The Brits were forcibly settling ports halfway around the world from home base, from Penang to Hong Kong, and in some trade agreement that didn't involve bloodshed, the Dutch simply handed Melaka over to the English. Union Jack was hoisted on flagpoles and the long era of British rule began. The Brits were a bit boorish in their settlement; instead of renaming the former Portuguese church-turned-Dutch church on the hill for their own religious use, they used it as a armory for weapons and even obstructed its front facade with a lighthouse.

DURING THE CENTURIES OF EUROPEAN COLONIAL RULE, the original Melakan settlers of Paremaswara continued to strive, living under the oppression of white guys from Europe. The Chinese still had a major presence in Melaka -- in fact, the largest Chinese cemetery outside of China was in town -- and Chinatown still remained very Chinese with its Cheng Hoon Teng Temple, the oldest functioning temple in Malaysia today. The other groups were also represented in this non-European dominated area, including the Hindus with their Sri Poyyatha Venayager Moorthi temple, and the Muslims and their Masjid Kampung Hulu and Kampung Kling mosques, which were designed and built with the multi-cultural influence of the past. I wandered to these Old Melaka temples on foot, reverting to a time of Melaka's pre-colonial past, which was still pretty behind in one respect: when I went to get cash at an ATM to pay for my traditional Nyonya lunch of Chinese- and Malay-fused food at family-run Jonkers Melaka, the machine only took cards on the Visa network and I had to go to modern Melaka to withdraw from my MasterCard/Cirrus Citibank card.

Anyway, the original people of Melaka soon got fed up with colonial rule and there were many violent uprisings against the British. The British oppressed them of course with their guns, but were no match for the coming of the Japanese invasion of WWII. The Brits were out and the Japanese were in from 1942-1945, but the original Malaysians hung in there and formed the United Malay National Organization. When the Japanese left and Britain tried to come back, Malay nationalism was strong, and in 1957 the Federation of Malaya that unified the peninsula (including what later became Singapore) was born. That didn't hold though with the clash of different opinions. Ethnic riots began on top of the violence from Communist insurgents who tried to take over. It wasn't until 1963 that "Malaysia" was finally formed as an independent country with support of the U.K. in a moving ceremony at what later became known as Merdeka Square in Kuala Lumpur.

THE ENTIRE ROCKY HISTORY OF MALAYSIA was reiterated to me again that night in a "Light and Sound Spectacular" in the center of town, which I thought might be on par with the one at the pyramids in Giza, Egypt but turned out to be extremely lame. Basically, I sat in a seat in an big amphitheater built for two hundred more people than the amount that actually showed up and watched different buildings simply light up as an 45-minute audio history presentation with sound effects played on a speaker. I should have just spent the night looking at the nighttime sky from the Travellers Inn roofdeck.

As I walked back to the guesthouse that night I noticed that plans for a huge resort complex (with roller coaster) in the center of town were well under way. And so, I recalled the one thing that I did get out of the "Light and Sound Spectacular," the quote, "Times change. History goes on." History does go on in Malaysia, but it all began in a place called Melaka. As long as "Visit Historic Melaka means Visit Malaysia," Melaka will always preserve the story Malaysia's history. Now if only Old Melaka could be on the Cirrus/MasterCard network...

The Freeloaders

DAY 487: If you're like me, you've probably read through the past couple of entries in the category "Malaysia" and are thinking (in italics of course), Is this all there is to Malaysia? Old colonial port towns, a big modern metropolis, and an amusement park? What the hell? Isn't this supposed to be a developing southeast Asian country with like, villagers and stuff?

The answers to these ponderings came to me like a ton of bricks when I was sitting on the toilet bowl taking a dump at the Travellers Inn in Melaka. No, it wasn't another mind dump like when I contemplating Darwin's Theory of Evolution in the Galapagos; conveniently placed on the door in front of me was a wordy but catchy flyer for an eco bike tour to the outer villages for those wishing to see a more authentic Malaysia in the countryside away from the standard tourist sites of the city.

And so, I washed my hands, booked the tour, and wiped my ass -- not necessarily in that order.

IT WAS A PARTY OF FIVE that day: Pierre and Sara from France, James and Katie from the U.K., and stag Filipino-American me. Leading us was stag Alias, a quirky Singaporean ex-pat who had served in the Singaporean army before moving to Melaka to start the only bike tour business in town, as far as I knew. He picked us up at the Travellers Inn and by 8:30 we were off to a roadside food stall for free breakfast -- the first of many free meals that day -- and then his house in the more rural areas outside of Melaka. It was there that he gave us each a bottle of water and a mountain bike before leading us to see the "real Malaysia": the village towns, the plantations and orchards, and everything in between. Little did we know at the time that we'd be leeching off of it all.

"IT'S THE BEST EXERCISE FOR ARM WRESTLING," Alias told us as we rode through a huge palm seed plantation (picture above). Nearby, a plantation worker was sawing off some palm seed bunches with a long sickle on a stick with all the might of his arm muscles, until a huge bunch of palm seeds fell to the ground like a sack of potatoes. "If you get lost in a plantation, look to the sides and to the center, you see palm," the former survival specialist told us. Not only did palm seeds provide multipurpose oils, but also its fruit could be consumed -- although Alias hated the avocado/apricot-like taste.

"It's not bad," I said, nibbling on a piece.

"I quite like it," said Katie.

While Alias didn't like the taste of palm seeds, he did rather enjoy the taste of the pungent durian fruit (which I first encountered in Zanzibar), with an odor so bad people have called it the fruit that "tastes like heaven, but smells like hell."

"If you eat too much, your breath, your burp, your fart smells like durian," Alias said. Although the big prickly-on-the-outside fruits weren't in season, a local farmer brought two over to us when he noticed us riding by.

"It looks like garlic but tastes like onion," Sara the French fille said.

"Yeah, that's the taste," I said. I couldn't place it until she mentioned it. "Sweet onion."

"It's not so good. It's not the season," Alias said defensively. With the texture of soft cheese, the durian fruit didn't go so well with us foreigners. Alias on the other hand, couldn't get enough of it and went for more. "I thought you French like good food."

"It's good diet food," Sara said. "[Because] you don't eat it at all."

Alias loved it though, even in its off-season taste, and packed the second fruit into his bag. It was the first acceptance of many free offerings that day. Soon we were in some guy's yard picking spice leaves off the trees to sample until a man with his family pulled up in a car. They recognized Alias right away and greeted their neighbor, and then invited him and his tour group to come over.

We rode down the block to the Muslim family's house, where they made a living producing fermented cakes of soybean, rice, and tapioca. We discovered the visit wasn't just an invitation to see how they lived and worked, but for free food. Soon we were sitting with the man on his front porch, who served us fresh hot rose syrup drinks and freshly fried fermented soybean cakes for us to try -- there was more than enough to go around, and it was true "Malaysian hospitality" as Alias said. In return we gave the children quite possibly their first glimpse with foreigners, which they gazed upon with curiosity.

"Do you go there all the time?" was the question everybody had after the fact as we rode away from the family after thanking them.

"No, that was the first time I went there," Alias replied. "That was probably the first time they saw white people." Escaping the hot sun, he parked us all under the shade of a tree to explain his philosophy to seldom do the same biking route all the time, so that you are always a fresh face not seen in a long time to be invited in by locals. "If I went there everyday, they would probably start charging me money," he said. "[I'm a] freeloader, but I have common sense."

The freeloading continued as we rode through more villages, passed traditional houses, and through plantations and orchards. We stopped by a rubber plantation to leech off the rubber sap of the trees -- "condom trees" as Alias called them -- to make rubber bouncy balls. Alias justified the taking of it without permission because rubber was the only cash crop that was produced naturally everyday; taking a one-day strand of pure rubber wouldn't hurt.

"You make the ball and bounce it. If it goes straight up, rubber ball. If it goes to the side, unpredicta-ball."

Free rubber balls were just one of the toys that our guide had growing up as a child in pre-developed Singapore. Others included a rattle made from a banana leaf stalk, spinning rubber seed shells, and collectable faces on palm seed pits. "I will put those in Happy Meals and become a rich man," he dreamed. Until that day, he'd be running his eco bike tour outside of Melaka -- a quite popular tour that would be featured in a television news special the following day -- in a landscape that reminded him of the one of his days growing up "in Singapore in the 70s," he said. "[Here, it's like I go] back in time like Michael J. Fox."

AS WE CONTINUED TO RIDE in the countryside under the shade of tree whenever it was available, Alias kept on bumping into more people in the neighborhood that he knew to say hello. Another guy invited us to come in and see how he and his wife lived -- and to ultimately offer us free food. The man and his family were in the belinjo-processing business, taking the bitter-tasting nuts, roasting them, grinding them and ultimately making them into yummy snack chips that went well with chili sauce and the iced rose tea that they served to us.

"More food," I said. We didn't say no.

Before our bike 'n food tour ended, we went out to leech more rubber from a different rubber plantation that wouldn't recognized us from the first time that day. Alias picked off the strands of daily rubber so that we could each have a free souvenir ball to take home. Soon after we were back where we started, at his home to get our "free ride" back into town via minivan.

THAT WAS THE END of my freeloading that day. The rest of the afternoon I toured some sights I hadn't seen yet in the historical area. I even paid for the admission costs of two museums and an art gallery, even though they didn't provide any good material for this entry -- or adequate enough air conditioning for that matter. And so, I escaped the pounding heat of the day walking through the air-conditioned shopping mall, and the even colder Melaka International Light & Ice Sculpture Wonderland, a local version of the annual Harbin Ice Festival in northern China. It was a colorful sub-zero temperature exhibition with big ice versions of Malaysian monuments and Chinese animals, which I paid a relatively steep price for. (Well, at least the much-needed winter coat rental was free.)

Freeloading was over; that evening, for the first time that day, I actually paid for a meal when I went out for dinner at the former Portuguese settlement three kilometers out of the city center. It was an area still retaining its Portuguese past, from architecture, to Portuguese street names, to Christianity, to the yummy Portuguese-baked seafood stalls surrounding Portuguese Square. I had paid a bus fare to get there and was planning to pay one again on my way back into town, but I just walked back instead since it was a nice night for a stroll with a slight ocean breeze for a change. Sometimes the best things in life are free after all -- unless you're a freeloader with common sense like Alias of course, and most things in life are free.

A Fine City

DAY 488: Singapore, the island off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, was once a part of Malaysia. However, the former English colonial port seceded from Malaysia in 1965 and went their own way due to "creative differences;" apparently the Singaporeans were a lot more uptight than the rest of the country. They soon developed a modern city state with a reputation for being boring, clean-cut, and above all, very anal retentive, so much that locals, ex-pats and tourists alike jokingly started calling it "a fine city," a pun pertaining to the many steep fines imposed for really benign offenses: littering, jaywalking, spitting, carrying durian fruit, and even chewing gum. (Concurrently, less benign offences result in the death penalty; everyone knows the story of the Australian backpacker who was executed for possession of marijuana a couple of years back.)

In efforts for some interesting writing material, I didn't dare try to bring in capital punishment-worthy drugs, nor a stinky durian fruit for that matter, but harmless packs of gum. I had heard that if customs found gum in your bag at the border, you'd automatically be fined something like $1000 (SGD, about $600 USD) and have to serve time. And so, before leaving on my express bus from Melaka to Singapore City, I made sure I bought some gum, three packs to be exact, with ten pieces each. Quite the rebel, huh? To be on the safe side, I got "soothing relief gum" with "Vitamin C" so that I could claim it was medicinal if I got caught, although I was unsure if that was an accepted alibi.

GETTING TO THE BORDER WAS EASY; I rode with the Delima Express bus company, which left Melaka promptly at 9 a.m. Around noon we arrived at the border crossing at the bridge that linked the mainland with Singapore Island. Exit formalities on the Malaysian side were a breeze, and we hopped back on the bus for the short ride to the Singaporean entry formalities. The busload of Malaysians, a few Singaporeans, and me got our bags and went up to immigration and I was the only one going to the foreigners' line away from the others. It took me a good ten minutes to clear immigration -- it was just a lot of waiting on line -- and soon I was led to wait on the customs line. I figured I'd get by at customs with "nothing to declare" -- plus my gum was well hidden in an inner pocket -- until I saw that bags had to under go an X-ray.

Oh man. This is it. Am I going to get busted for gum? Is it really that much of a criminal offense? Look at me, I'm actually a bit nervous. Over gum. Insane.

There was nothing to worry about though; I got by fine and fine-free and went back downstairs to catch the bus. There were dozens of express buses doing the same trip and the platform was crowded with different people looking for the bus they came in on. I looked all over for the Delima bus and figured it was still clearing customs itself. Plus there were about twenty-five other people on the bus; perhaps they all hadn't cleared customs yet.

I waited and waited and waited. Half an hour went by. Where's that old Muslim guy I sat next to on the bus? I wondered. Nothing. I was convinced it was because the bus was still clearing customs, until I noticed that the other bus lines were just zipping along every couple of minutes.

"I'm looking for the Delima bus," I asked a platform manager.

"Delima? They're long gone."

"Would they just leave without me?" I asked, but the guy didn't respond. After some analysis, I figured the locals simply got through with not much paperwork and were ready to leave with the bus in five minutes. They probably assumed I just disappeared somewhere on a public bus since I looked Malaysian and didn't even think to think that I might be held up on the line with all the white people.

"You can take the one seventy to Queen Street," the platform guy said in broken English.

"Is there an ATM? I don't have any Singapore dollars." There was none. No matter, he offered to change money out of his pocket for me. I got $15 SGD for 50 Malaysian ringgit, not knowing exactly if that was a good rate or not. I didn't have a choice though and simply hopped on the next 170 public bus into Singapore City with my new currency.

And so, for a city-state with a reputation for being boring, Singapore gave me a little adventure right from the get-go.

MOST TRAVELERS I HAD MET had all agreed that Singapore was a boring place compared to the rest of southeast Asia, which could be seen in just two days. However, I would have a different experience than the average backpacker because I was once employed there, virtually. In 2003, I was approached via e-mail by a producer to be the weekly travelogue columnist for the Lycos Network (the Singapore-based Asian counterpart of the American portal site) to provide my quirky off-beat travel stories from "The Global Trip One: Seeing the World Two Weeks At A Time" to the English-speaking market in Asia. Unfortunately, the weekly column only lasted two weeks for Lycos-Asia soon also fell victim to the Internet bubble burst. My producer was laid off, as well as the rest of the Lycos-Asia staff. The company was soon bought out by Singapore Telecom for a dollar and liquidated of its assets.

Getting fired from Lycos wasn't a total loss; not only did it give me an extra writing credit on my CV, but contacts in Singapore. I had kept in contact with my former producer there, Carol, who was anticipating my arrival so that she could show me around. The former Lycos employee had moved on to another telecommunications company, and did freelance programming on the side (at an affordable price) for numerous clients, one of which was a brand new hostel in a convenient part of town, near an MRT station. With Carol's referral, I made my way to the Walkers' Inn to check in with the reservation I made with the on-line booking form she did in PHP. I was one of the first persons to know of the budget accommodation; Walkers' Inn had only just begun advertising.

Jean, a smiling Singaporean greeted me at the brand new hostel, so new the paint was still fresh. What she had just converted from the office of a failed dot com business was a very nice, very clean, very brightly-painted backpackers' inn with a big dorm room, lockers, a high-speed internet computer lab, a TV lounge, kitchen, roof terrace, hot water, air-conditioning, laundry facilities, and electronic keycard entry. Perfect place; the only thing missing was people.

"Am I the first person to stay here?"

"Uh, yeah," she told me with a smile. She was a bit nervous to actually have a first customer -- especially one that would be all alone -- but I was easy to deal with, especially after she told me I could use the internet for free. With the Walkers' Inn all to myself, it felt like I had just moved into a new house and that I actually lived in Singapore instead of just being a guest. Jean even had a fresh load of groceries in the fridge for me, and I took full advantage of being the only guest by "accidentally" getting peanut butter in the jar of jam.

"I'm going out tonight. It's Friday night," Jean told me. "I'll see you tomorrow."

Not only was I the only guest there, but I would be left all alone like it really was my own pad to come and go as I wished. I continued to take full advantage of the situation by walking around in my underwear, spreading my things whereever I pleased, and leaving the toilet seat up. This rocks, I thought, scratching my ass. What a fine city -- and I mean that in the good way.

AFTER SETTLING INTO MY NEW HOME, I went out to meet Carol at one of her boyfriend's restaurants in the center of town (that's multiple restaurants, not multiple boyfriends), the Moon St. Cafe adjacent to his Japanese curry-serving Curry Favor, one of the hottest restaurants in town off the main strip. "It's great to finally meet you!" I greeted Carol when I finally saw her in person for the first time in the cafe, sitting in the back with her laptop working on programming for another freelance client. Carol, a native Singaporean, introduced me to her restaurant entrepreneur boyfriend Zac, a Wisconsin-born Singaporean who had relocated to the country of his roots to get into the restaurant business after college. I also met his business partner Yewei, another Singaporean-American from Pittsburgh, a wisecrack that prided himself on doing magic -- "They're not tricks, it's magic!" -- who was thrilled that I had actually heard of Falling Water, the famous Frank Lloyd Wright building outside his hometown.

Introductions were brief because soon Carol and Zac took me out to dinner. We hopped in Carol's little car and drove off. She handed me a package of candy.

"Is this gum?!" I said.

"He knows," Zac said.

But Carol the Singaporean intrinsically wasn't much of a rule-breaker; the "gum" was not gum, but a Starburst-like candy that was swallowed. Close call. No fines.

We went not to Curry Favor, but to a place a bit more authentically Singaporean, the Gold Coast East Coast Seafood Restaurant in East Coast Park claiming the "best seafood" in town -- coincidentally owned by a close family uncle-type friend who had mentored Zac in the restaurant business. "It's in the seaside area, but it's not so nice," Carol told me. True, there were so many ships off in the horizon it looked like another skyline.

"So it's the ghetto of Singapore?"

"No, there is no ghetto in Singapore," Zac said. This was attributed to Singapore's squeaky clean philosophy of modernization. Most old buildings were torn down for new ones; historical buildings were converted for modern use, and there was even a law that storefronts had to be freshly-painted every five years so that nothing looked rundown. With that said, local Singaporeans found their homeland to be quite boring -- I recalled journalist Nirmal (Bangkok) once describing Singapore as a place "with no buzz" -- but the real "excitement" of Singapore life came from food. "Basically Singapore is all about food," Zac said.

We sat down at the busy seafood restaurant and met up with Carol's friend Lydia, another former Lycos-Asia employee, who was now programming for an ad agency. In a way it was a Lycos reunion and introduction at the same time. With Lydia was her boyfriend Michael, who reiterated the general opinion that Singapore was boring.

"Yeah, I heard. Singabore," I said.

Michael, like Lydia and most native Singaporeans, felt claustrophobic on the island and had studied overseas to "get out" away from the mundane scene of Singapore. He was considering getting his commercial pilot's license so that he could get farther away.

Our meal started with the traditional auspicious salad of shredded carrots and radish, a traditional dish served during Chinese New Year for good luck. The server piled on different sauces, oils and peanuts, and each of us had to mix the center platter with our chopsticks by taking a pile and raising it up in the air and dropping it down. Supposedly the higher you raised the salad, the more prosperity you got, but really it was just an excuse for people to play with their food. "And I thought you said Singapore was boring," I teased Michael.

Salad was followed by the main course. "Chili crab. Very Singaporean," Carol told me. A huge platter of big succulent Sri Lankan crabs smothered in an egg and chili sauce was put in the table, and it was everything that Carol had raved about. They were all amazed that I could actually twist the body and uncover body meat "like the old people," something they couldn't really do. Alas, when the shoe fits... We dined on crab and fried prawns until we were stuffed, and washed it all down with beer.

SPEAKING OF BEER, alcohol is one thing that Singaporeans do allow, and much of it followed that night. Carol and Zac were busy the remainder of the night, but no matter; they drove me back into the city and dropped me off at Chijmes, the former orphanage, school, and Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus, now repurposed as a mecca of bars, cafes, and nightclubs. It was there I was to meet up with my other friends in Singapore.

"Who would have thought in Krabi that we'd be sitting here having drinks?" asked Budi. The Indonesian corporate-working ex-pat and part-time male model had met me for a night of drinking my first night in town. His wife Shwita was unfortunately sick at home, leaving more booze for the two of us.

"Heineken," he ordered from the waiter. "And you?"

"Singapore Sling." Not my usual cocktail, but sometimes you just gotta say When in Rome...

Budi and I caught up on the latest over drinks, and I asked him about the gum laws. "No, you can chew it, you just can't spit it out," he told me. The penalty for that wasn't a $1000 SGD fine and time served as was rumored, just $100 SGD. Oh, is that all? Sixty U.S. for gum. Yeah, that's still insane.

It had only been eleven days since we had first met as fellow novice rock climbers in Thailand, and he was already back into the grind of Corporate Singapore, itching to get out again. He too thought Singapore was quite boring, but at least there was alcohol. More of it was served to us when we took to the nighttime streets (picture above), passed the Parliament building, to meet his circle of ex-pat friends not in the trendy Boat Quay district, but in the trendy Clarke Quay district just across the way. Clarke Quay was home of the solitary Singapore Slingshot ride and a whole lot more bars, clubs, and restaurants catering to the Singapore trend-set (including the "delightfully tacky, yet unrefined" Hooters). We ended up at Sahara for beers, cocktails and hookah puffs, where I was integrated into his ex-pat club of French, German, Dutch, and one Korean-American who just so happened to have lived in the neighboring metro New York Hudson River-side town of Hoboken. "Hey, we're PATH train buddies!"

Janneke, a Dutch girl (and ex-roommate of Shwita) had only been living and working in Singapore for a couple of months, and was quite happy with it. "Yeah, everyone's been telling me that Singapore's so boring, but I've been having a really good time here," I told her.

"Yeah, [it's a good place, I like it here.]"

The night of partying ended with me taking a cab back to "my house" near the Jalan Besar Stadium, and passing out around 3:30 a.m. or so. All in all, it was a good night out after a great first day in a city-state that didn't really live up to its boring reputation. Singapore, a fine city indeed -- no pun intended at all.

Uniquely Singapore

DAY 489: Singapore is a hodge-podge of other cultures -- Malay, Chinese, Indian, British -- all masked by a sleek façade of modernization. The city-state has often been criticized, even by its own people, of having no real Singaporean identity. While Carol's boyfriend Zac described Singapore culture as "like Malaysia, just more Chinese," Singapore struggles to find its unique place on the world culture stage, other than its regular reputation of being a boringly clean haven for multinational corporations with business in Asia.

If you look for it, Singapore does have its own unique charm. Leading the charge to maintaining Singapore identity is the tourism board with their official tourism slogan, "Uniquely Singapore." In a TV commercial I saw in Ao Nang, Thailand, a spokesman for the "Uniquely Singapore" campaign defended the criticism that Singapore boorishly gets rid of the old to make way for the new; he said something to the effect that that is what Singapore is all about -- being a dynamic, ever-changing society.

One thing in Singapore that hasn't changed is its food. Carol's food tour continued that Saturday morning when she picked me up after my quiet morning of solitude in my home at the Walkers' Inn. Being of Cantonese descent, my native Singaporean former producer took me to her roots in Chinatown, a district that was just as spotless as the rest of the city. Carol poked the holes of her parking meter tickets to display in the dashboard, and soon we were off to explore her unique Singapore.

"Have you had laksa?" Carol asked me.

"I had it already. In Penang."

"No, it's different here."

"Okay."

She bought me a bowl for me to sample -- yet another meal she graciously paid the tab for. "Oh, it is different," I commented. There was different seafood and more coconut milk.

"It's uniquely Singaporean," she said. We rounded of the local cuisine with more dishes, from ji kwee to the famous Singaporean "mixed pig organ soup."

The cleanliness of Chinatown continued to amaze me as we wandered the neighborhood, passed the vendors selling things like dried sea horses, to Yee Wei's mom's shop (to use the toilet), to the resident Sri Mariamman Hindu temple, to the Chinese Heritage Museum where Carol traced her roots by family name. A visit to the Thian Hock Keng Temple and some more samplings of Chinese delicacies like heng yen wu (a soupy almond pudding) rounded out the Chinatown tour -- which was understandably more "Chinese" than "Singaporean;" Singapore was once a haven for Chinese refugees looking for a better life.

I WENT FROM THE LEGACY OF CHINESE HISTORY to the modern world of Singapore when Carol dropped me off at the Singapore Art Museum, proudly presenting the current exhibition, the portfolio of Singapore's own Russel Wong, celebrated international fashion and celebrity photographer of Hollywood glitterati, sponsored in part by the "Uniquely Singapore" campaign. The show was one main component in the tourism board's attempt to set the Singaporean identity apart from other places.

Walking from the museum through the downtown Colonial District -- home of many English colonial buildings like the classically fancy Raffles Hotel, named after Sir Stamford Raffles, the English "founder" of Singapore in 1819 -- I was on a mission to find other things that made Singapore live up to its tourism slogan. Many times I saw that Singapore was just like most places, but just a little different. For example, Singaporean teens hung out to do tricks and stunts with their BMX bikes, only instead of doing it outside, they (wisely) did it in the air-conditioned sub-passages of the city. Air-conditioned shopping malls in Singapore were more or less the same as anywhere else, but one mall, Suntec City, boasted the world's largest Fountain of Wealth, which invited people to circle it three times with their hands in the water for good luck.

While the memorial to victims of the Japanese occupation (1942-45) was not a unique concept at all -- most southeast Asian nations had been occupied by the power-hungry Japanese in WWII and had similar monuments -- the statue of the Mer-lion was. The half-fish, half-lion statue was conjured up by the tourism board and erected in 1972 to commemorate the harbor, but most likely it was invented so that chocolate makers had a shape to mold candies into and sell to Japanese tourists. (Concurrently, tourists posing like they were holding up the statue probably seemed like a unique idea to them; but I'd seen that behavior at the Leaning Tower of Pisa.)

Perhaps the iconic structure unique to Singapore was the new Esplanade theater (picture above), just opened in 2002. Since it's inception, the tourism authority has been pushing it to be the country's architectural icon, just like France's Eiffel Tower and Australia's Sydney Opera House, featuring it prominently in brochures and ad campaigns for outsiders to start making the association. However, just like with the initial introduction of the Eiffel Tower, the construction of the Esplanade was not a favored one by locals; everyone still wonders why the government would fund a big ugly looking thing that resembled a stinky durian fruit.

Only time will tell the popularity of the Esplanade; for now it has started its run as the architectural symbol of Singapore for touristy harborside photos, which I bought into.

"IS THIS HA EUN?" I asked over a payphone to the girl on the other line.

"Yes."

"This is Erik from Jersey. Do you remember meeting me last night?" It was questionable if the Korean-American girl who had once lived in Hoboken, New Jersey was too drunk the night before to recall anything.

"Yeah," she said, sounding out of it. "I haven't gone home yet. I'm still wearing the clothes I wore last night."

Ha Eun, Budi's "crazy" ex-pat friend that I met the night before, had given me her phone number to contact her to meet up that night at the Chingay Festival 2005, yet another obvious attempt of the Singapore tourism board to set the country apart from others. Billed as the "Parade of DreamS" [sic], the made-up Chingay is Singapore's big flashy street parade marking their made-up pinnacle of the fifteen-day Chinese New Year -- although from what I saw, they merely tried to rip off Brazil's Carnaval with many costumes and even a samba-sounding soundtrack. Chingay was of course a very toned down PG version of the rambunctious Brazilian Carnaval, but at least it provided Singaporeans with, if only for one night in the year, an opportunity to "go wild" -- by jaywalking and littering.

Big cocks celebrating The Year of The Cock (Rooster) rolled down the parade route on Orchard Street, which was normally crowded with people shopping at fashionable trendy shopping malls, but was now overcrowded with mostly everyone in town. It took a while for me to find Ha Eun and her ex-pat Hamburger boyfriend -- that's Hamburg, Germany, silly -- but I eventually found them with the help of a payphone.

"Woooo!" Ha Eun cheered out to the floats going by; she was a bit more "wild" than the rest of the people, rating the people going by if they were hot or not. However, the floats got to be a bit repetitive and very corporate -- a float to promote canned abalone? -- and with our tired legs from standing so long, we just gave up and left like many others.

My "Uniquely Singapore" night ended up being a Nude one, and by that I mean with dinner and drinks at the trendy Nude restaurant nearby. Dining with the ex-pats I saw that there was nothing really uniquely Singaporean about being at Nude -- it could have been anywhere -- until I ordered a really good Singapore Sling cocktail. Ah, the Singapore Sling; a cocktail named after the country couldn't have been more Uniquely Singapore. Well, it was more fun than a durian fruit-looking opera house anyway.

Friends From Little India to Indonesia

DAY 490: The city-state of Singapore is small enough that one can see all of its points-of-interest in just two or three days, and this being my third day in town, it was time to wrap things up before heading off to Indonesia that night to catch up with my old friend Henricus. However, before catching up with an old friend, there was still time to make a new one.

"You feel like going out for coffee or something?" I asked Jean, the lone Singaporean manager/owner of the brand new Walkers' Inn at 147 A/B Tyrwhitt Rd., conveniently located near 24-hr food centers and the Lavender St. MRT train station. Without much advertising or gratuitous plugs just yet, I figured she had nothing to do in the office but sit and watch the paint dry -- literally.

"Okay," she answered.

Between "coffee or something" it was the latter we chose, "something" being a personally-guided walking tour of the Little India district nearby. And so, Jean transformed from my host into my friendly neighborhood guide.

UNLESS YOU'RE A COMPLETE IDIOT, you've probably figured out that Little India (picture above) has a high concentration of Indian descendants. Its growth came about during the late 19th century during the immigration boom from India when many people looking for work got jobs in construction. Little India grew and grew into a prosperous cultural haven, but still retained the label of being "little."

Little India still exists today with a pre-dominantly Indian population that works, lives, prays, and shops in the area. Many people, Indians, non-Indians, and even tourists, journey there to go to the Mustafa Center, a huge 24-hour retail complex selling everything from PDAs to those sneakers kids wear with the wheels in the soles. Jean led me there so I could cash a travelers' check into American cash for my visa-on-arrival purchase in Indonesia later that night, and so we could just wander around in the air-conditioning. Unfortunately for me, the sneakers with the wheels in the soles were sold out.

Walking down Serangoon Road led us passed many centers of Indian life; Muslims flocked to the Angulla Mosque while Hindu devotees of the Hindu goddess Kali prayed at the Sri Veerama Kali Amman Temple. Most of the strip was full of retail stores, many of them gold stores run by Indians but owned by Chinese, according to Jean. Near the end of the strip was one of the many food hawker stall centers of Singapore -- no one in Singapore really cooks because food centers are cheap and omnipresent -- where Jean treated me to a uniquely Singaporean/Malay Indian dish, the Roti John, made with a baguette and not the usual Indian roti batter.

TO ESCAPE THE UNSEASONABLE HEAT, we wandered around the air-conditioned Sim Lim computer mall before heading back into a Chinese zone, where devotees were still praying for prosperity in the long Chinese New Year holiday. Jean brought me to the Kwan Im Thong Hood Cho Temple, a busy center of faith with many people doing the traditional Buddhist ritual of getting a fortune in accordance with "randomness." Jean explained to me the shaking of sticks ritual I'd seen many times before with no comprehension. I shook a can of numbered sticks until one of them fell to the ground -- that one corresponded to a fortune that I got from the counter.

"That's probably the worst fortune anyone flying today could get," I said. The fortune was pretty bad, even using the phrases "likely to crash and get hurt" and "no more journeys to travel as a result." Clearly this was not your happy-go-lucky fortune cookie fortune; I mean, there were no winning lottery numbers on the back, nor was there a Chinese word of the day.

"You can burn it," she told me. She said it was what people did if they received a bad fortune in order to ward it off. I put it in the burning urn of incense with the other bad fortunes and hoped for a safe flight later that day.

I ACTUALLY PAID ATTENTION to the hackneyed pre-flight safety video that evening at the airport, after dinner with Carol and Zac at an award-winning food stall serving the yummy uniquely Singaporean, Chinese-Muslim nasi lemuk otah dish in Changi Village. They dropped me off at Changi International Airport for me to board my Cathay Pacific flight bound for Jakarta, Indonesia, where I strapped in for a questionably safe flight.

The exits are there, there, and there. Check. Safety vest strap around the back. Gotcha. Lean forward with head tucked in, in the "unlikely event" the pilot yells "Brace! Brace!" on the P.A. system. Yeah, okay.

Nothing disastrous happened on the flight though -- everything went smooth -- although one unexpected thing did surprise me: the southeast-bound flight took me back a time zone instead of ahead one like logic would tell you. Crazy time zones, or was it a weird Daylight Savings Time period? Either way, my 80-minute flight to Jakarta would take me back in time...

"SILICON ALLEY," NEW YORK CITY, THE YEAR 2000. It was the best of times, it was the even-better-than-best of times. Working for an internet company during the rise of the dot coms was the ultimate Corporate American high. It was a time when the conventions of stuffy ties and suits were thrown out the window to make room for jeans and sneakers, a time when then co-worker LovePenny hooked up his new X-Box on the big plasma monitor in the conference room for "interface research." It was a time of over-the-top company parties, "team-building" corporate outings, and industry conventions with performances by Run D.M.C. It was a time when you could call in sick with the truthful excuse that you're "hungover," only to get a reply from your boss to the effect of, "Okay, just 'work at home,' I'm hungover too but I have to be here because I'm the boss." (Most likely, he was out drinking you the night before.)

You know the movie Office Space? Well, working in NYC's Silicon Alley from 1999-2001 was the exact opposite of that.

I was working for HyperTV on 19th and Park Ave. South, the interactive television entertainment division of ACTV (an acronym that didn't stand for anything I may add), and it was everything you've probably read about or seen in documentaries, and then some. At our prime, we had a luxurious two-level penthouse office (once featured in an episode of Law and Order: SVU) overlooking Union Square with an in-house gym, a home theater lounge with a PlayStation 2 for our daily lunchtime Tekken tournaments, and even a guy who came in whose only duty was to make us sandwiches. At the age of 26, I was actually one of the older guys in the creative department; most people were right out of college and had hopped on the internet wagon to work by day and stay in the office late by night to play round after round of multi-player Unreal Tournament.

Working at HyperTV wasn't all fun and games; we did work for our bloated salaries after all, designing interactive components for clients like MTV, the WWE, Turner Broadcasting, and Playboy. One of us designers was an Indonesian guy by the name of Henricus, arguably the best designer of us all (although not many people would argue it though) and a formidable Tekken player who often kicked my ass. "You're so dead, maan!" he'd always say before a match -- it soon became one of his catch phrases.

Originally from the Indonesian island of Java (see where this is going?), Henricus had no choice but to leave New York after getting laid off in the "burst of the internet bubble" since ACTV had been his sponsor to be in the U.S.A. I kept in contact with him though; since his departure from New York in the summer of 2001, he had landed a job in Singapore -- which only lasted a few months -- got laid off again, traveled around southeast Asia for a bit and got his PADI Open Water diving certification, relocated back to Indonesia, and got married. However, as I was soon to find out, he still continued to be the always smiling, top notch designer everyone in New York remembered him as.

"ERIK!" CALLED A FAMILIAR VOICE from the mob of mostly unfamiliar people waiting outside the arrivals gate at Jakarta's Soekarno-Hatta International Airport. Henricus spotted me right away and greeted me with his signature smile.

"Hey, Henri!" We were reunited again after a three and a half year hiatus, for I had finally made my way to Jakarta with the sole intention of visiting him not only for my benefit, but for all the former ACTV alumni back in the States.

Henricus introduced me to his wife Linda, coincidentally also from Henricus' Javanese hometown of Bandung (about two hours from Jakarta), and the three of us hopped into his new sleek-looking Toyota minivan that still had its new car smell. "Did you get a new car or is this a rental?" I asked.

"It's new. I heard that you were coming so I bought a new car," he joked. Having a car was a must in Jakarta with the lack of a decent mass transit system, although it was the plethora of cars that contributed to Jakarta's legendary daily traffic pile-ups. We drove down the highway towards town and Jakarta immediately reminded me of Manila; it too was a huge city where poverty-stricken shacks were juxtaposed to many cosmopolitan modern skyscrapers and shopping malls, each one designed to be gaudier than the other.

"Jakarta. It's a shitty city," Henricus told me, playing the honest tour guide. Like most people in the world, he had a conflicted interest with the place he resided.

"It doesn't look so bad," I told him; the streets were empty and clear.

"It's nighttime. In the daytime it's crazy."

Taking advantage of the nighttime calm, we drove to the uppity central district surrounding Medan Merdeka (Freedom Square), home of the one touristy national monument Henricus knew about, dubbed "Monas." In the center of Monas was the 132-meter-tall "Sukarno's Last Erection" representing the "strength, freedom, and fertility of the nation" (says Let's Go) and Henricus stopped the car outside the closed entry gate for me to get a picture.

"Okay, that's it. You've seen all of Jakarta," he joked.

The rest of Jakarta, as far as he knew, was all about restaurants, shopping malls, and restaurants in shopping malls. Most of them were closed around that time, so we sat down at a nearby Starbucks, proudly boasting it was the first 24-hour establishment in Jakarta, for cappuccinos, desserts, and shelter from the short downpour that soon passed through. I learned that Henricus' wife Linda was quite an eater, although you would never tell because she was so slender.

I was excited about getting a coffee in that particular Starbucks for some reason. "This should be the best Starbucks. This is [Java,] where all this coffee came from."

"It tastes the same," he put it bluntly. It did.

TO SOUTHERN JAKARTA WE DROVE, to Henricus' and Linda's high-rise apartment complex just next to the Australian embassy that had been bombed in 2004 -- construction of a new entry gate was still in the works. We parked the car in the garage after the security checkpoint and took the elevator up to the third floor in Tower Three. When the door opened, I saw that the apartment was "very Henri," with modern furniture and a clean, minimal look. To the side of the living room was space allotted for his home office with a new iMac and his old PowerBook G4 that I remember him buying back in New York (still running OS9). Apartment 3G was clearly the pad of a designer -- even the portraits on display of man and wife were graphic designed instead of being just run-of-the-mill photos.

All sleekness aside, Henricus was still his video game-playing self like most of the male ACTV alumni, and we ended the night reliving our golden days of Silicon Alley by playing Tekken on his PS2.

"Erik, you're so dead."

He kicked my ass of course. In Jakarta, halfway around the world from New York City, some things never change.

Indonesia In A Day

DAY 491: "You should see the outside," Henricus said to me in the living room, which had been converted to a guest room with the simple folding out of the futon.

"Yeah, I know," I said without looking away from the television screen. I was fully enthralled playing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas on his PlayStation 2 since the night before. Between that and Metal Gear Solid 3 (which I had been itching to play since Tokyo Game Show 2004), I was fully entertained just being in the apartment. However, it made sense to take advantage of the fact that Henricus had no work to do that day in his life as a freelance designer. And so, I turned off the PS2, took a shower, and got ready to see Indonesia.

INDONESIA, WITH OVER 17,000 ISLANDS, is of course way too big to cover in the time I had allotted: just four days. My intention to journey to Indonesia for such a stupid amount of time wasn't a tourist one; on my immigration form for Purpose Of Stay, I checked not "Tourist/Holiday" but "Visit Friends/Relatives," for I just planned on seeing Henricus for a few days since I was in the region, and to see the few sights he'd care to take me to in the greater metropolitan Jakarta area. (If you noticed, the category of this entry is "Jakarta," not "Indonesia," just like it's "Buenos Aires" and not "Argentina.")

However, Henricus told me that I could actually see "all of Indonesia in a day," at Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, an Indonesia-inspired theme park which brought all of the country's many diverse cultures in one place, separated into different "lands" like at Disney World. (Similar parks have also been created in Thailand and the Philippines.)

"[Linda's] excited," Henricus told me as we drove down the highway towards "mini Indonesia." Both he and his wife had been to the park before, but not in over twenty years; "mini Indonesia" was a popular destination for grammar school field trips. We arrived after about a forty-minute ride through metro Jakarta, only to find out it wouldn't be as exciting as they remembered.

"It's closed on Mondays," Henricus informed me after the entry gate guard told him first. "[He says] we can see it, but just the outside."

"Okay."

It wasn't completely closed though; mostly everything was open, just the interiors of the mock edifices wouldn't be accessible, nor would there be any people wandering around in traditional garb for tourists to take photos with.

"It's Disneyland," said Henricus said as we rode on the cable car skyway over the different areas of the park. That statement was sort of true; in the center of the different lands was a big non-Indonesian, European-style fairy-tale castle that served as the front entrance for a pool.

We toured each "land" via ground transport (Henricus' car) and in just about an hour, we covered a lot of Indonesian ground (since each land was separated often times by merely a thin fence): the stone statues and temples of Bali; arch-shaped houses of West Nusa Tenggara; the brightly-painted houses (picture above) and tombs of south Sulawesi; the red-roofs of southeast Sulawesi; the statues and houses of Java's Yogyakarta; and the totem poles, primitive straw huts, and fake fishermen of Papua. Keeping with the "mini" theme, there was even a miniature scale model of the famous behemoth temple, the Barabudur.

Rounding out the rushed "Indonesia in a day" experience was a sampling of what Let's Go called the national dish, nasi goreng which every Indonesian I met laughed at -- What's so nationalistic about their commonplace fried rice dish? Kerupak, prawn crackers were another local fave.

INDONESIA BOASTS MANY CUISINES AND CULTURES, but it is also a place of natural wonder untainted by man. Indonesia has a variety of indigenous flora and fauna, including monkeys, deer, and many species of birds that we saw in an aviary -- peacocks, cucaks, and others. A guy working the grounds there spared some time to show us a particularly big horned-billed bird that freaked out Linda, and perched it on Henricus' arm so that I could take a photo. Now if I could just get this auto-focus to lock on...

"Hurry!" he cried. The bird was digging its claws into his skin.

From birds we saw bats, not at Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, but at the Bogor Botanical Gardens about 90 minutes away on the other side of Jakarta. The bats were a part of a bigger rainforest ecosystem in the complex of many plants and trees, both big and small, including the "stinky flower" (as Henricus and Linda called it), also known as the Carcass Flower, named after the fact that reeked like a dead body every three years when it bloomed.

"OFF ROAD! IT'S LIKE WE'RE IN THE JUNGLE," said Henricus as Linda took to the steering wheel and zipped across the park, passed small roaring rivers. Without the skyscrapers of Jakarta in sight, you could squint and pretend you were in some remote jungle in Borneo or something, which was the best thing that one trying to see "Indonesia in a day' could do. Our afternoon jungle experience was made complete with a swing on a woody vine like Tarzan; and our day-long pan-Indonesian excursion was made complete with afternoon tea at the botanical gardens cafe (not too far from the Bogor Mansion).

"This is refreshing for us," Henricus said, sitting down for tea. "We'd just be inside all day [if you didn't come over]. And the gallery is so small."

THE GALLERY HE WAS REFERRING TO was Artnivora, an art gallery he had just opened in the Kemang district in central Jakarta, a district once swarming with foreign ex-pats until they cleared out after the economic crisis of 1998. After our day of seeing what the tourist traps the suburbs had to offer, we drove back into the hustle, bustle, and traffic of the city to visit the gallery.

Created more as a hobby than a profit-making business, Henricus and Linda had spent two months building up an easily-rented space into the Artnivora gallery and opened its doors on the fifth of January 2005. Curator Henricus' first show was "Anton Huang On Paper," a collection of works by the Indonesian-born international painter Anton Huang -- known locally as "Anton Kustia Widjaja" -- which Henricus' father had acquired over the years without a real place to put them all.

Henricus was quite into the arts scene in Jakarta and wanted to do what he could to push it to another level -- any level for that matter. It was evident that the city was more concerned with commercial shopping malls than the arts, and Henricus wanted to change all that. "Have you talked with the Ministry of Arts at all?" I asked him.

"There is no Ministry of Arts," he replied. "It's going to be me."

Henricus' freelance design duties would always come first though, for they paid the bills and supported his wife -- and his guests from the States for that matter, since he insisted on graciously paying for everything for me. The dinner tab was ultimately picked up by him when we went out for fried fish at a restaurant where Henricus had a short meeting that night with a business client.

Henricus got work to do out of that meeting, but in the meantime, his dreams of being "Minister of the Arts" would continue -- and he had the creative genius and perseverence to make it happen. I knew that he would achieve his goal sooner than later. I mean, if you can see all of Indonesia in a day, there's no telling how fast things could develop.

(Anyone interested in going partner with Henricus to globalize the "Artnivora" brand should contact me or him. It is the perfect opportunity for aspiring art history students or contemporary art lovers yearning to get into the gallery scene.)

All Work And No Play Makes Erik A Dull Boy

DAY 492: "We can't go to Bandung," Henricus, my friend and host in Jakarta told me. "I have work to do now."

We had toyed with the idea of taking a drive down to Henricus' and Linda's hometown two hours away, but after the freelance meeting the night before, Henricus had to get a presentation all set for the brochure design of an Islamic university in town. "We'll just go the next time you visit."

"That's okay," I told him. "I have work to do too."

I was behind on the Blog as always and desperately wanted to catch up. However, like in 1980's The Shining, when Jack Nicholson tries to sit down and write only to be distracted by demons calling him to write nothing but "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," I was distracted by my own demons calling me to pick up the PS2 game controller and play Metal Gear Solid 3. I compromised with my demons and did a little of both to keep my day from being too dull, while Henricus slaved away on his PowerBook in the corner (picture above).

"See you later," Linda said as she left the house after serving me breakfast. As Henricus' freelance project manager, she went to the office at Artnivora to make some calls since her regular phone wasn't working. She had waken up that morning early, showered and got dressed for the day way before her husband rolled out of bed and moseyed over to his computer with his sleeping shorts on to work.

"So this is a regular day for you?" I asked him.

"Yeah. I stay in while my wife goes out and works."

"It's a good life, huh?"

I managed to get another entry up before the demons called me to pick up the game controller again. Henricus finished his work by early afternoon, got off his ass and hopped in the shower. He was to have a meeting with the ad agency managing the Islamic university, after lunch at Plaza Indonesia: padang, a on-the-table buffet of many Indonesian dishes, including cow brain in coconut milk and dried cow lung. (The former was tastier than the latter.) Linda dropped Henricus at the ad agency for his meeting, leaving the rest of the day to wander around Jakarta with me.

"You want to go to the mall?" she asked me as I sat in the front passenger seat on the left side of the car.

Great, another mall, I thought. Malls are starting to become routine, almost like going to a work office. And all work and no play makes Erik a dull boy. Red rum, red rum. For a change of scenery and postponement of the "dull," I suggested going elsewhere, even though I would have been perfectly content on just going back to the apartment to play Metal Gear Solid 3 like my demons were telling me.

"Let's see what my guidebook says," I said, pulling out from my pocket the pages torn out from the inside of my Let's Go. All the museums had closed by early afternoon, but one place mentioned caught my attention. "Can we go to Sunda Kelapa?" It was the old Dutch harbor area in the northern part of the city, where it was rumored schooners would be around. Schooners mean pirates and the opportunity "play pirate" by going around talking like one. "Yaaar! Shiver me timbers! Walk de plank, ye landlubber! Yaaaarrrrr!"

I didn't mention the pirate idea but Linda entertained my suggestion to go to Sunda Kelapa anyway, even though she had never been there before. In fact, she wasn't exactly sure where it was -- as a resident of Jakarta, she didn't know any of the touristy parts -- and had to ask for directions three times. It turned out Sunda Kelapa was sort of out of the way -- even more so when Linda accidentally took a wrong turn and ended up on a tolled highway that led us out of town. There wasn't an opportunity for a U-turn for quite a while and by the time we were able to turn back the other way we came, the traffic had already started building up for the early evening rush hour. If Henricus called for a pick-up, we'd be hours away from him if we lingered around that area.

"I think it's better if we just go back and go to the mall [near the ad agency]," Linda said.

"Yeah, okay. Whatever's easier."

We pulled into yet another one of Jakarta's gaudy shopping malls, Taman Anggrek, a big place with exhibition space for a car show, many chic stores, and even an ice rink. I wandered the mall's multiple floors while Linda went off to a salon to get her hair done. Then I sat down at a Starbucks to work again on Blog duties with a pen and the new notebook I bought at a stationery store. It was pretty dull, but what I saw next wasn't.

"Wow, very nice," I complimented Linda when she showed off her new do.

"[It looks like] Betty Boop," Henricus teased her when we picked him up later that evening, after his long and tiring meeting with clients. "I work hard and my wife goes to the salon," Henricus said, sitting in the back seat of his car for the first time. "Don't get married, Erik," he joked in front of Linda.

ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES HENRICUS A DULL BOY, and with no pressing work to do, it was all play for the rest of the night. Henricus called up his friend to go out with us, Ian, a Dutch-born Indonesian who had lived in the California bay area before relocating to Jakarta to settle down and start a family. "It's the next phase of life. Having kids and getting fat," he said in his Bay Area accent.

"I'm just getting fat," I said.

Linda called up her friend and neighbor Astrid who lived on the 23rd floor of their building, who helped them out at Artnivora. Later that evening we were joined by their Indonesian friend Stella who was in town on business from her life and job in K.L.

Playtime that evening involved going out for Chinese and then drinking Indonesian Bintang beers and Long Island Ice Teas at several bars in town. Ultimately, we ended up not at the Hard Rock Cafe Jakarta but two bars down at the newly-opened f-bar, as in the Fashion Bar, the international chain affiliated with Fashion TV -- coincidentally on the eve of FTV's International Fashion Awards in Jakarta.

At the end of the day, it hadn't been such a dull day at all with our balancing acts of work and play. Of course, before hitting the sack that night I tipped the scales in play's favor with some Metal Gear Solid 3 action, but that should probably go without say.

Red rum, red rum...

Cops And Comparisons

DAY 493: If there's anything I got out of my short stay in Jakarta with Henricus Linggawidjaja thus far, it's that I was definitely finding comparisons between Indonesia and the Philippines: both are archipelago nations inhabited by Christians and Muslims; both have resort islands (Indonesia has Bali, the Philippines has Boracay); and the urban capitals are similar -- Jakarta and Manila both have legendary traffic pile-ups, extravagant big shopping malls, and similar-looking people. The two countries are very similar, although perhaps surnames in the Philippines are a bit easier pronounce. Go ahead, try and say, "Linggawidjaja" three times faster than saying "Trinidad" three times.

Both Indonesia and the Philippines get the bad reputation of being dangerously swarming with Muslim extremists bent on kidnapping tourists -- but for the most part, both are inhabited with a much higher majority of friendly people -- albeit a couple of bad seeds that is.

"They're crooks!" said Henricus. "It's terrible."

We had been driving down one of Jakarta's main highways, only to be pulled over by a cop (picture above). The reason to pull us over was that we had crossed over a painted divider line pattern used between two merging lanes -- a common thing that you've probably done yourself.

"[Driver's license,]" the cop asked in Indonesian (a language very similar to Malay with just slight tweaks and different slang). His name patch told us he was Officer Sukarimin of the Jakarta Polisi. (Go ahead, try saying "Sukarimin" three times fast.)

Henricus knew what the guy was up to, but complied with the request. It checked out of course, but the cop started to write up a ticket anyway. Linda sat up front looking concerned and a little angry; Henricus was just angry. "What's he doing?" I asked her.

"He's trying to get money." Apparently the bribe trap was a common thing in Indonesia.

Henricus popped his head into the car to ask for some cash from his wife to pay off the cop. In one swift move, he slipped the old and ugly-looking cop the bills and was handed his license back scott free. Henricus got back in the driver's seat and drove off into the regular traffic, feeling quite pissed off.

"How much did you give him?" I asked.

"Twenty thousand."

"How much is that?"

"About two [American] dollars."

"He wanted a hundred thousand," he said. "[Make sure when you write about this], you say he was old and ugly-looking."

Sure.

HENRICUS HAD A QUICK FREELANCE MEETING that afternoon back at the ad agency; Linda and I hung around the area to get the car washed and check out the nearby food stalls to sample more authentic Indonesian food: mie baro, batagor, and es cendol. It wasn't long before we saw Henricus again; he used the fact that it was his guest's last day in town to skip out and soon we were off to explore a more touristy area of the city, one they had not been to before.

ANOTHER PARALLEL BETWEEN THE PHILIPPINES AND INDONESIA is the fact that, like many developing nations in the world, they had succumbed to European colonialists in their quest for trading port in southeast Asia. Manila fell under the rule of the Spanish while Jakarta fell under the rule of the Dutch. Like Intramuros in Manila, remnants of European colonialism still stand in Fatahillah Square, the old plaza surrounded by many Dutch colonial government and residential buildings, all repurposed in post-colonial Jakarta for museum or commercial space.

Although all the museums were closed by the time we got there, one "freelance guide" approached us with an offer to sneak into the museums anyway. I thought it was pretty sketchy.

"Is it open?" I asked Henricus as we snuck through a gate that led into the inner courtyard of the Jakarta History Museum, the former State House of the Dutch governor.

"He's just an outsider. We're helping him out."

"[But] are we breaking and entering?"

"He's going to ask to borrow the key. I think it's common."

Nothing happened when we toured around the dark and closed mansion -- no old and ugly-looking cops around -- although it did feel a bit spooky being there when the lights weren't on, like something out of an episode of Scooby-Doo. Maruwei the guide turned out to be legit after all, although he spoke mostly in Indonesian -- Henricus translated for me. He led us through the different rooms of the house, each with Dutch colonial furniture, most carved out of teakwood in the 19th century in Batavia (Jakarta's former name). A balcony looked out to the main square where the governor once announced public executions.

Our guide led us across the street to "break into" another museum, the Wayang Museum, which was primarily full of different kinds of puppets. Puppets had become an art form and political tool during the development of the country; most puppet shows were of a satirical subject, taking on political issues with puppets made in the likeness of figures in history. The museum also showcased puppets from around the world, from life-sized freaky looking ones, to smaller freaky-looking ones; familiar Vietnamese water puppets and one French one that reminded me of Lady Elaine Fairchild from Mister Rogers' Land of Make Believe.

Before leaving Fatahillah Square, we entered an old colonial building in the plaza that we didn't have to break into, the Cafe Batavia, an old 19th-century residential house made of teakwood revamped to be a jazz club that emitted a vibe of 1930s Hollywood. Rated one of "the world's best bars" by Newsweek in 1994 and 1996, the place was a total ex-pat hangout -- but not exclusively -- a place where you could look like a high-roller by talking on your mobile phone, a place where the drinks were served at Western prices. Luckily for us, it was happy hour.

FOR MY LAST NIGHT IN JAKARTA -- my last night with my "Indonesian brother" Henricus for that matter -- we went out for sushi as a bit of nostalgia; it was something we had done in New York frequently. One time in New York we went out to this place that had made-to-order all-you-can-eat sushi for about twenty bucks and we completely gorged ourselves on handrolls until we couldn't move. Seriously, I felt my stomach was so full, it had been backed up and clumps of rice and fish were piling up my esophagus.

We didn't have nearly as much sushi and sashimi that final night in Jakarta -- to save more room for sake -- and to be able to move at least our fingers on a game controller. My visit with Henricus ended nostalgically with about two straight hours of Soul Caliber II on his PlayStation 2.

"You have to stay longer next time. See more of Indonesia," Henricus told me.

"Yeah, I know. I'll be back. I only just came [for a few days] because I'd hate myself if I was in the area and didn't come to visit."

"Yeah, I'd be mad too."

LIKE MY DEPARTURE FROM THE PHILIPPINES, I was up the next morning at "stupid o'clock" (5 a.m.) for Henricus to beat the morning rush hour on the way to the airport. There was no traffic on the roads, which was a good thing, and we arrived at Soekarno-Hatta International way ahead of schedule.

"Thanks for everything," I said. "Tell Linda I said goodbye and thanks."

"Okay. Send my regards to everyone in New York."

"Okay."

I entered the terminal and eventually got on my plane bound back to Singapore while Henricus drove home in the darkness of the pre-dawn morning. I assumed he got home bribe-free since on the way to the airport I saw not a cop in sight, not one old, ugly-looking or otherwise.

The Beginning Of The End

DAY 494 (4 days since last Singapore entry): Flying across the equator from Jakarta back to Singapore was just one leg in a long gradual journey back home. However, there were still ten days left until The Return To New York, and I had no intention of letting the fun of travel let up just yet.

"Welcome back," Jean greeted me back at the Walkers' Inn, my home away from home in Singapore.

"Hey, how is everything?"

"Okay."

I had arrived back at my usual place where I was the first, second, and only customer, and again I had the entire inn all to myself -- the big dorm, the TV lounge, roof garden, kitchen, and computer lab. I made myself at home and scattered my stuff around, walked around in my socks, and then plugged my iBook into the internet to work the rest of the afternoon with Jean in the office.

It wasn't a dull all-work day though; we took a couple of breaks together, first out for lunch (chicken rice balls), then out later for a walk down to the post office so that I could mail back Henricus' (Jakarta) cell phone charger that accidentally got mixed up with my computer cables. We stopped in at a locally famous food stall selling ah balling peanut soup, a hot dessert soup with peanuts and sweet filling-filled pastry balls. It tied me over until dinner later that night.

"So do you have any suggestions [on what to change or improve about the Walkers' Inn]?" Jean asked me before I head out for dinner that evening.

I thought. "Just posters. And you should have a bulletin board."

"Oh yeah, I got one already."

"Hmmm... I can't think of anything. I was here and I didn't need anything."

"Yeah, but you're easy."

"Yeah, I know." (She had me at "Hello... the internet is free.") As usual, she'd go home and trust the inn to me until I left early the next morning.

"Have fun on your last night," she said before my departure from the last time we'd see each other as far as we knew.

"Yeah, last night in Asia."

Whoa, last night in Asia, I thought after saying it out loud. Suddenly the realization of the inevitable end of my Global Trip sunk in. It set me into an anxious and melancholy mood, an almost suffocating feeling I hadn't felt since the night of Day Zero, the night before I started this crazy adventure.

I bid Jean farewell and good luck, walked down the stairs, and closed the door behind me.

THE BEGINNING OF THE END continued in the company of more Singapore residents; I was scheduled to meet up with Budi (who I met in Krabi) again, this time with his no-longer-sick wife Shwita. "Hey there," I called to them as I noticed them cross the street from our meeting point near City Hall.

"Oh, hey!" they said. The pair was dressed up to party and I knew my last night in Asia would be fun-filled.

We started off dining at Zac's restaurant, Curry Favor, not only for yummy Japanese curry dishes, but to briefly meet up with Zac and my former Lycos producer Carol, who had a gift for me: do-it-yourself mix for Singaporean laksa and chili crab so that I could take the "Uniquely Singaporean" culinary experience home. The Singaporean couple couldn't stay long for they had a previous engagement to attend to, leaving me with the Indonesian ex-patriate couple for "Last night out in Asia," Budi said. "How does it feel?"

"It feels pretty weird." Every time I was reminded of the end, I started to get that "sinking in" feeling again.

"Don't worry, your last night in Asia is going to be a blast."

Blast off of my last night in Asia began at the Long Bar, where there was hardly an Asian face to be seen; the place was "tourist central" where busloads of foreign tourists continued pouring in that evening as they did every. The reason being: the Long Bar was where the original Singapore Sling cocktail was invented, and from what we saw, it seemed to still be the top seller; almost every table we saw in the bar (including ours) had ordered them. Seeing the angmo (foreigners) with the same cocktail wasn't so shocking though; the thing that was shocking was the fact that there was litter everywhere. Peanuts were complimentary and the shells were all over the floor in piles. Very un-Singaporean.

Next door was the Raffles Hotel and Arcade, which wasn't an arcade in the video game sense; it was a shopping arcade surrounding a garden courtyard with chic outdoor cafes and a really good evening jazz band. Wandering Raffles' was also a touristy thing to do, and Budi led me around almost in tandem with a real tour group going through to overhear some information. He learned for the first time with me, just where the suites of the hotel were.

We left the tourist bit and entered the Ex-Pat Zone at the new Liberté bar for drinks with their fellow ex-pat friend Janneke, who I had met my first night out in Singapore before. With her were two new faces, fellow travelers Koen and Marc, Janneke's visiting Dutch friends making their way through Singapore in their jaunt through southeast Asia. After rounds of drinks we eventually made it up to the New Asia Bar on the 72nd floor of the Swissotel, the tallest hotel building in town, to end the night away dancing and drinking with the Thursday party crowd of Singaporeans and ex-pats. While to me the club's vibe felt like being at a wedding reception dance floor more than a nightclub, it was fun nonetheless; the Tiger beer flowed from pitchers and the view of nighttime Singapore from above provided a nice final memory of my last night in Asia.

THE NIGHT WAS FUN but the morning after I was back to my melancholy "sinking in" feeling of anxiety with the harsh realization that my 16-month trip around the world would be over soon. I sat on a bed alone in the inn at "stupid o'clock" feeling a little "lost in translation" (picture above), but pulled myself together to get ready for my early morning eastbound flight ahead. I autographed and left behind my last copy of the Hyenas... book for Jean to wish her good luck on her new hostel (and to finally get that book on the shelf of any hostel since I hadn't seen it anywhere in the world), finished my tea, and left the entry keycard on an empty bed. I put on my pack and looked at the empty and lonely hostel the same depressed way I once did when I looked at my empty apartment in metro New York for the last time, after I had packed it up and moved out to save money for the trip in the first place.

Sigh.

I turned off the lights and closed the door behind me like Sam Malone on the series finale episode of Cheers and moved on. The ending had already begun.