Nothing’s Familiar

First place of relevance was Puala Nias, an Island which has been devastated by the Tsunami, then flattened again in March this year by a 7.7 earthquake. Buildings were ruined, bridges were destroyed, people’s boats, surfboards and most of their posessions washed away. The Island is now covered in UNICEF tents and make shift schools. However, I am yet to find people so friendly, welcoming and sincere than the people on this Island. Once you’ve brushed past the touts, sellers and hecklers the ‘real’ genuine people on this island couldn’t be as kind and as welcoming.

Nias has the best ‘right hand’ waves in the world, reaching crazy heights in season and decent size waves in the off season. I was pretty stoked to be riding these gnarly waves for my first bodasheoas experience at surfing. Dudes. I totally sucked on the first day as I had a board smaller than me and I manage to rip a mole off my chest, something which I’ve never done before. That made my day.

So, any how. Like my last e-mail I’ve been spending as much time on motorbikes as possible, It’s a guaranteed way of having a decent adventure, avoiding regular tourist haunts and meeting with locals who don’t see you as a walking cash machine. The Children in Indonesia are great, as we ride around on the bikes they are either walking to and from school or working on farms – balancing incredible weight on their heads. So, after a quick chorus of hello from them I give them a drive-by high-five and continue on my little mission – I might consider not doing this from now on, as yesterday I accidentally smacked a kid in the face…..sorry little man.

By far the cutest kids I’ve come across where all playing outside their nursery school, I stopped by and they all ran towards me curious and wide eyed. I held my hand out to shake a little boys, he just touched my hand and grinned, which then started a riot of all the kids giggling running up to me just to touch my hand. After about 5 minutes their teacher started to shout at them to leave the tourist alone and they stood back and stared at me until I drove off.

The next day I rented a bike the back wheel came loose as we were driving on probably the dodgiest roads in Indonesia, in search of some megalithic stones. Some locals came and fixed it, then I drove on again for 5 minutes before it broke again, more locals came to the rescue – same thing happened after another 5 minutes. The next time it broke one local removed the chain, removed some links added a few screws, patched it up and sent me on my way. It didn’t break again, but, I did drop it a riding along a track the same size as my wheels, with a big drop to a deep puddle on my left and a rice paddy to my right, I suddenly released it would really be a bad Idea to fall into the rice field damaging someones lively hood and then lost control falling towards the puddle. I managed to fall off my bike and support it for a while but it slipt, then, bringing it to the ground I twisted the throttle revving the bike fast and spinning it around before landing on my leg and sitting in the puddle!

I also fell down a cliff later that day, which scared the pants of me – I even let out a feeble “I’m about to fall to my death” yelp, then fell about 1m, twisted on to my front and caught myself from falling backwards, my fellow travellers didn’t even notice. They were too busy playing in the river.

After relaxing a few more days and playing an insane amount of chess (pretty much 2 days solid) – we left the Island with literally nothing to our name, there was no ATM on the island so we were bloody lucky not to get stuck.

Yesterday I was on a lake with a volcano (and Internet cafe), a few nights ago I participated in a local indigenous dance in front of lots of people, then played guitar with some amazing guitarists, got drunk and sang an awful lot, awfully probably. – Oh I also bought a guitar, which has been great fun, everyone here plays, so it’s a great ice breaker.

Last night we arrived in Medan, the largest city in Sumatra – as usual the ‘Lonely Planet’ (the travellers bible) described this place as a hell hole, not really worth visiting. I like it, infact I usual like the places the Lonely Planet tells you not to go to. First off we indulged in the variety of activities, food and shopping available only in cities then found a live concert with hundreds of Muslims standing around. A few old women convinced me and Grant to dance with them, so we did, vagually intime with Batak music for about 5 minutes.

The next day I rented a bike the back wheel came loose as we were driving on probably the dodgiest roads in Indonesia, in search of some megalithic stones. Some locals came and fixed it, then I drove on again for 5 minutes before it broke again, more locals came to the rescue – same thing happened after another 5 minutes. The next time it broke one local removed the chain, removed some links added a few screws, patched it up and sent me on my way. It didn’t break again, but, I did drop it a riding along a track the same size as my wheels, with a big drop to a deep puddle on my left and a rice paddy to my right, I suddenly released it would really be a bad Idea to fall into the rice field damaging someones lively hood and then lost control falling towards the puddle. I managed to fall off my bike and support it for a while but it slipt, then, bringing it to the ground I twisted the throttle revving the bike fast and spinning it around before landing on my leg and sitting in the puddle!

I also fell down a cliff later that day, which scared the pants of me – I even let out a feeble “I’m about to fall to my death” yelp, then fell about 1m, twisted on to my front and caught myself from falling backwards, my fellow travellers didn’t even notice. They were too busy playing in the river.

After relaxing a few more days and playing an insane amount of chess (pretty much 2 days solid) – we left the Island with literally nothing to our name, there was no ATM on the island so we were bloody lucky not to get stuck.

Yesterday I was on a lake with a volcano (and Internet cafe), a few nights ago I participated in a local indigenous dance in front of lots of people, then played guitar with some amazing guitarists, got drunk and sang an awful lot, awfully probably. – Oh I also bought a guitar, which has been great fun, everyone here plays, so it’s a great ice breaker.
Last night we arrived in Medan, the largest city in Sumatra – as usual the ‘Lonely Planet’ (the travellers bible) described this place as a hell hole, not really worth visiting. I like it, infact I usual like the places the Lonely Planet tells you not to go to. First off we indulged in the variety of activities, food and shopping available only in cities then found a live concert with hundreds of Muslims standing around. A few old women convinced me and Grant to dance with them, so we did, vagually intime with Batak music for about 5 minutes. After retreating,  we met a motorbike taxi driver, with a sidecart for two. He was dying to take me and Grant for a coffee, then drive us around Medan late at night whilst all the time practicing his, albiet rude, good English. He informed us that the reason Indonesian girls love Western men wasn’t because of money (that was no 5 in his ‘what women like’ list) but because ‘you have big guns’ – the reason, apparently we like Indonesian women is because they have ‘small holes’. So Herman drove us around Medan begging us to point out girls we like, for no apparent reason, apart from his own curiosity. He would rate women on breast weight ‘one breast, one kilo’, then love it when girls laugh and smile at us. We were taken all over the city, for free.

Later on today we will head north again to hopefully see some Orangutans; Orang People, Utans Forest

I’m desperately trying to upload some photos now I am here in a city, but I’ve been sat here for nearly 1 hour and haven’t managed one yet!

Hope you are all well,

Rob-in-the-son Cruiso

 check out my photos – www.buzznet.com/burb

Selamat sore! Everybody,

I have to say, my first day in Indonesia sucked ass. I set-sail from Singapore at around 8.30am, it only took 1 hour to reach Indonesia’s border so relativaly short When I arrived in Indonesia, I didn’t have a penny to my name, not in any currency. I’m not to sure why I didn’t think I might need money to get a taxi from the border and I certainly didn’t think I would have to pay for a Visa, but I did, 25 US dollars to be precise. To make matters more interesting there wasn’t an ATM at the border crossing and they couldn’t accept credit cards of any type. So, in short I was fucked. No money to pay for a boat back to Singapore and no money to enter Indonesia. After a short while begging a interesting arrangement happened shortly after, I was to give my passport to a security guard, leave my rucksack at the border and jump in a taxi to take me 20 minutes to the nearest ATM machine. Everything above is usually a big no-no in the travelling world, but I had no option. Passport left, rucksack left, I jumped into an unmarked taxi and got driven off in the wilderness.
At the ATM I suddenly realised I didn’t have a clue about the currency, I clicked ‘fast cash’ and stared blankley at the obscene figures infront of me. I had the option of withdrawing the minimum of 50,000, so I withdrew 250,000 to be safe. I popped back to the Taxi and asked him how much it would be, 100,000 was the price. I wasn’t in the position to be bargaining seeing as all my life was left back at the border – so I returned to the ATM and withdrew a cool million.
Back at the border, getting the Visa now I had money was easy, so I walked to buy a ticket to take me to Sumatra – I couldn’t do this alone, oh no, I got about 10 people begging to take me there, eventully I shook them all off but, one man remained.
He honestly told me there are no boats till tommorrow morning and dishonestly told me all the hostels in the Lonely Planet had closed down and then charged me 100,000 to take me to another hotel, which cost 140,000 for 1 night. I still didn’t have a clue how much all this funny money was worth.

At the hostel I found out. I cried a little bit, got grumpy and then shadow boxed infront of the mirror, in my boxershorts, for no apparent reason.

I had just spend nearly 15 pounds (my daily budget) on Taxi’s, 15 pounds on a visa and more money on horrible food and that wasn’t inlcluding the additional 15 pounds to get to my next destination.

I tried to walk around Batam but got so annoyed with people harrasing to take me places, taxis slowing down and beeping at me, people begging for money that I surrendered and took refuge in a Mc-escape-culture-shock-Donalds. Paying a set priced pleased me, then I locked myself in my room and tried desperatly to learn the local language, before surrending and studying Thai for 3 hours before falling asleep.
The following day, I woke up at 6.30am to get a taxi (the same driver) to take me to the harbour, I was aware he was going to charge me the 100,000 again so I thought fuck it, after paying that, from then on I will bargain like del-boy and take no further bending over! So, when I arrived at the harbour he said 150,000 ‘because it’s morning’. I laughed. Gave him 100,000 declined his offer of providing him with a tip, smilled and walked away, seceretly depserate to find another traveller to make this headache situation amusing.
Luckily on the boat after 2 hours of watching Chinese New Year pop-videos I spotted a foreigner and inatiated converstaion. I travelled with Grant for 18 hours on buses and boats to get here, Bukkittingi.
Today was a complete turn around, myself and Grant were asked to go to a local school and chat with the students, but the teacher never arrived to meet us so we decided to rent motorbikes and visit a few things instead. We explored the Japanese war tunnels, which were nice, fed some monkeys, then drove off up hills, past volcanoes, into villages, over canyons and waved at every Indonesian we passed. It was amazing, the most refreshing and exciting thing I have done for a long time, we found small villages where people were playing, eating and actually pleased to see us, they didn’t want to sell us anything, get us to go anywhere, they just wanted to say “Hello” or ‘Hi” to us in English.

On the way back We stopped off and had a coffee in the most amazing cafe, chatted to a Muslim family, ate fresh cookies, then drove back and stared at rice fields, rice terraces and watched a farmer try and control 5 upset buffallos.

Splendid.

Tommorrow we will do the same, but rent the motorbikes all day instead and stop to chat to more locals on the way, then the following day continue heading north.

Sampai Jumper (Goodbye!)

This is going to be a slightly different post than most of the previous. As most of you know, I have 2 friends from back in England (Dan and Stu) who now live in Thailand and an amazing Thai girl, now my girlfriend (Reene), who I have known for around 2 years and has taught me to speak Thai.

I original planned on going to Thailand in April but Ben, another mate from England, wanted to come meet me and do a spot of scuba diving. So, I paid the 30 pounds and flew from Singapore to Bangkok.

For the past few weeks I haven’t really been doing the independent walking around getting lost, chatting to travellers of equal fragrance and saving money quiet as much as I should have been. I have however shared a bed with a man and a woman for 4 days, slept on a floor another day and visited bizarre ‘off the beaten path’ things.

The first week in Thailand my girlfriend took me pretty much all over Bangkok, I visited the crazy JJ Market again, this time only slightly hung-over and dehydrated. I purchased a t-shirt for about 3 pounds and pair of sunglasses (my 7th pair) for 4 pounds and I’m trying not to be upset that the t-shirt is falling to bits and the sunglasses have lenses which prefer falling off the frames and laying on the floor than protecting my eyes from those pesky UV rays. (I am now on my 8th pair of sunglasses).

Reene and her family also celebrated a Muslim day ” Eid al-Adha” whilst I was there, so I was invited to meet the whole family (it’s huge believe me) and consume ample amounts of really nice Muslim/Thai food. I was pretty nervous at meeting the family, due to the language barrier, but did OK, I think. I only got “Hello” and “Thank you” mixed up, which compared to what I said around a restaurant dinner table a few days later is nothing in comparison. I also learnt how to greet Muslims (Salam) and was told by Reene’s family that I am very handsome, not bad for a days work I’m sure you’ll agree.

The next few days consisted of going to the cinemas, or deep-freeze freezers as they should be called. Visiting more markets and shops, meeting up with Australian Jodie, a girl I walked the Inca Trail with, strolling down Koh San Road – the backpackers haunt and going to go-go bars to watch naked women wobble about the stage dressed in ‘clothes’ which would make Pamela Anderson blush.

Another one of my ‘off the beaten path’ experiences was attending a Thai University graduation ceremony. Reene had graduated last year, but they save the graduation ceremonies until the following year (go figure). I wasn’t allowed to sit in the 7 hour ceremony, which was a disappointment, so arranged to meet Reene and her family at around 3pm for the photos. When I arrived at the university I had a small problem. There were about 10,000 students all wearing the same clothes, with pretty much the same hair style, and being Asian, they all shared the same hair colour as well. So, after 5 minutes of standing around like a complete circus act (not many travellers there) and waving at people who I discovered weren’t actually waving at me, I met Reene and her family, took lots of photos, greeted more family then left to go for a meal.

We drove in Reene’s Dad’s lovely air-conditioned car until we reached the restaurant of the Muslim variety, I was introduced to more of her family and then Reene left me at her parents table, with other elders who all wanted to test there English out on me. They (I forget names) asked me where I was from, so I said “Manchester” (saying Manchester as supposed to Rainow kind of guarantees a larger conversation) and we talked about the inevitable Rooney and other players I have never heard of. The 2 men to my left then said “you should say you are from Ruu-man-daa”, so I practiced and was comfortable I could remember to say that, so – they chatted in Thai to other table members and I had the same question to me repeated “Where are you from”, “Ruu-man-daa” I replied confidently.

I later found out that Ruu-man-daa meant Vagina in Thai.

Bi bi also means vagina in Thai. This is what I was calling Reene’s mum all night, luckily she understood I was being used as a comical scapegoat and didn’t take too much offence, I also called Reene’s dad something of an equal insult, but I forget what that was.

“Cunt, can you pass the fish please?”

I did get my own back by translating various words into English for them, but it was only me who found it funny that they were happily drinking ‘testicle soup’.

When Ben arrived we paid 400 baht to get the train to Chumphon and then a boat to Koh Tao, the whole journey took about 14 hours and cost a mere 6 pounds. Bargain. A minor draw back was that I ate some dodgy train food and the following day when we arrived in paradise I spent 90% of the day sat on the toilet, or crouching over the toilet – both positions involved removing food poisoning. I did however lose a little weight, which was nice. I also get the hint that Ben disliked travelling in such long drawn out forms of public transport, he paid for the return flight home!

So, apart from telling you about chilling on Islands and playing in the sea – that’s pretty much all I have done over the last few weeks.

I’m back in Thailand in April, so I’ll travel the whole country then, I might get something stolen too if I’m lucky.

I am in Singapore again now, and I will get a boat over to Indonesia (Sumatra) tomorrow where I will travel South through Indonesia for around a month. I’m looking forward to entering a country where I have to learn the language from scratch and don’t know anyone or anything about the country!

Speak soon,

Rob

13 hours on a plane, with 3 stops, plonked me onto this small country. Flying over Singapore to reach the airport all you seem to notice is enourmous golf courses, green as far as the eyes can see. When you land, all you see is concrete, tall towering concrete. The traffic lights provide you with a countdown before you get run over, the toilets flush while you are still on them, some urinals have fish tanks above them, all toilets have flashing lights letting you know their status (occupied, flushing, flushed etc….)

I had a bit of an argument with a girl from Singapore when I was in Peru, I sat down next to her and asked;

“Hey where are you from”
“Singapore”she replied
“Can you speak Mandarin?” I enquired.
“No, why do you think that?”
I briefly explained I have learnt a bit of Mandarin from people who lived in Singapore and she just replied “You’re just f*ing stereotyping, where are you from?”
“England” I replied, tail tucked firmly betweem my legs.
“That f*ing explains it then”…
“Fuck you” I hinted and walked off.

I later checked on the internet to see if I was being offensive, the offical language is English, but Mandarin (Chinese) is firmly second. Since I have been here for a week I am yet to hear Singaporeans speak English to each other, my hotel guide tries to speak English to me but speaks Chinese to everyone who works there. I always say ‘thank you’ in Chinese as I get a brighter response.

I have been travelling around Singapore mainly by the ‘MRT’ (Mass Rapid Transport), it’s basically a very, very well organised subway and of cause being in Singapore, clean as heaven. The signs on the subway explain why. “Smoking $1000 fine, Flammable products $5000, Eating or Drinking $500”.

Most places where I have been I haven’t seen any tourists, and I get stared at like I really shouldn’t be here.

I love it.

My first night out, I decided to order myself a beer in a local bar and watch football (Man U Vs. Arsenal). My one beer came out as a jug (5 pints), so I started sipping away. Next to me an elderly man blurted out “The score was 0-0 you know?”, I didn’t know, but it saved me from watching lots of men running around in shorts, kicking a spherical object between themselves on the off chance it might end up in-between the rectuangular white posts before dropping limply to the floor after hitting the oversided, errected, fishing netting. I thanked Steve, gave him some of my beer and he then took me under his wing “You are a visitor to Singapore, it’s my duty to entertain you” So, he took me out, got me drunk and after taking me to a Chinese singing bar, paid for a taxi and the taxi driver sent me home.

The gaming arcades are super sized and crammed full of not-so-supersized people bashing at virtual drums and dancing on virual machines. I’ve visited temples, resturants, the city hall and i’ve also visited the Zoo, which most people say is the most spectacular zoo in the world. I loved it, but it was full of animals.

There isn’t much else to do really, Singapore is great for shopping and looking at huge buildings but after a week, seeing as it’s about the size of Manchester, you’ve pretty much exhausted it.

So, Singapore – i’ve, eaten every asian cuisene possible and today I am off to the Raffles hotel, because my Mummy told me to, then I’m flying to Thailand to spend a few weeks their to meet up with people, then flying back to Indonesia.

Sorry you’ve had to read to updates in one week, and if you haven’t then, well, er….

I’ve tried to write about what I have done in my last week in New Zealand for sometime now. I keep on writing things specific to that day, I never finish it, for reasons I can’t remember and when I read it back it just seems pointless too send. So I’ll start from scratch and cover the last week in New Zealand.

After spending Christmas Day alone waiting in a hostel for my bag which never came off my flight down to the South Island, I went out around Christchurch to get my Christmas dinner. You probabbly all had roast turkey, potatoes, sprouts and lots of alcohol. I had a vegetarian turkish kebab, with water. Whilst you were all sat next to the fire, watching TV – I was sat outside in the sun, reading a book, occasionaly pausing to stare at the breakdancers spinning frantically on their hands, before falling painfully on their backs.

Boxing day was similar, but more breakdancers showed up and performed moves which involved straining their backs to near the point of breaking. It was also a little bit wetter.

When Alasdair, his Cousin (Doug) and Girlfriend (Iris) arrived in their rented car to take me away, I was ready to leave. We travelled to the North of the South Island first to go whale spotting and to relax in the natural hot springs. The whales were unable to squeeze us in for that day and the ‘Hammer Springs’ were springs, converted into modern swimming pools. They still stank of sulpher though and they still attracted thousands of fat, thin, young and old tourists. We decided against queing for 1 hour and decided to walk 2 hours to see a piss-poor waterfall instead.

We continued further North to a place called Picton, all I remember from the first night was staring at and confusing a strange looking cat (it turned out to be a possom) and freezing my bottom off in my $12 sleeping bag. The next day I ditched the sleeping bag and purchased a douvet, pillow, ground mat and a bed sheet cover – (which was of course was really useful, seeing as I didn’t have a mattress).

We then kayaked around the Marlborough Sounds, in a yellow kayak, in yellow kayak.

The following day involved lots of driving in the blistering sunshine until we reached a small place called Franz Joseph. Thousands of people cram here to gaze, take photos and climb the huge glacier. Franz is also situated in a rainforest, which is where we camped. The brochure for the campsite said “Take a 5 minute walk to the centre of the village, but not not before you’ve enjoyed our bar and laundry machines’

At night and all morning we heard the sound of rain pounding against our tent. This, unsuprisingly, was the day we were booked onto to do a full day tour of the Glacier. Coincidently, this was also the day Iris and Doug had those work related things to do -you know, one of those “it came to me in the middle of the night, whilst in a rainforest in a tent whilst being pounded with rain” memory sparks. (I think they just wanted to enjoy the laundry machines)

The glacier was cold, slippery and remarkably astonishing. Which, I guess is how you would imagine a huge chunk of ancient ice to be.

Travelling further South to Queenstown, we set up camp next to a gang of juvenille delinquents all from Christchurch. What fun it was to watch them drink beer through funnels and debate whether or not to head-butt their cars.

New Years Eve day was spent watching New Zealand and Sri Lanka at cricket, New Years Eve night involved the same frolics which have existed since fireworks and alcohol have been on earth and New Years Day rained, hard, pretty much until the 4th of January – which is when I left New Zealand.

Yesterday I visited 4 different countries. I started in New Zealand, then flew to Australia, Indonesia and where I am now, Singapore.

I’ll tell you about Singapore tommorrow, or Saturday. It’s only little country to it shouldn’t take up too much of your time.

Good day everyone, thought I best quickly post something, just in case you all spend you Christmas holiday funds paying for detectives to find me. Which I am sure you would all do, in a heartbeat.

I am in New Zealand now, staying at my friend’s cousin’s flat, 13 hours ahead of most of you stationary people and a few hours ahead of the rest of you smelly travellers. However I’m probabbly a lot wetter than the lot of you. Since arriving in New Zealand it’s rained, ridicioulsy heavily, pretty much every day. I’ve also spent a shed load of money travelling a little bit by bus, buying a new camera, bag, paying for dorm rooms, Internet and obviously doing the New Zealand’s world famous extreme sports.

So far I’ve sat on an inner tube, whilst wearing a full on gimp suit, floating down a dark, wet, cave, occasionally jumping down dark waterfalls and staring at glow worms. I’ve also scuba dived in “One of the top Ten dive sites in the world”, The Poor Knights Islands, which boasts a massive group of 2m wide Stingrays (obviously they had been eaten by killer whales just before I got there) and loads of sea slugs which are about 5cm long and full of colour (great….) I walked all day to view some waterfalls, got lost, missed the last bus and started to walk 6km back to my hostel before sticking my thumb out to get a lift, I got picked up after 20 minutes and got taken right to my front door – not bad for my first hitch hiking experience.

Thanks Kiwi dude, however you were.

Back at the hostel I met a crazy Taiwanese girl called Huei Ming, or Jennifer (if you want to remember her name and not pronounce it incorrectly). After I impressed her with my dreadful Chinese she explained she had rented a Rav 4 (a big SUV) and is travelling around New Zealand in it, so, I asked if I could travel with her. She agreed, then I spent the next 4 days driving around beaches, nearly crashing to look at sheep (they don’t have sheep in Taiwan) and basically having a great time. We visited a 90 mile beach, some huge kauri trees and took lots of photos.

Today, back in Auckland, I met up with my friends from England who had been travelling around South America at the same time as me. We had planned on meeting up at various times but kept on changing our plans, so, today we finally met. We had a few beers and agreed to do a bungee jump off the Auckland Harbour bridge together. I quickly popped to an ATM and took out $100, then went to buy a sandwich. The sandwich came to about $7, I opened my wallet and suddenly my heart dropped to my pocket, fell through the hole in my pocket and landed on my freshly flicked, hot cigarette butt on the floor….. Empty wallet.

I ran back to the ATM and sure enough the $100 had gone, I had just left it there, waiting for the picking. I quickly justified the loss of the money by thinking about the various things I hadn’t bought a long the way and just tried to forget about it. I then thought, WAIT..! Perhaps the machine had just eaten it? So, as cunning as a prune I returned to the ATM, withdrew $20 and waited to see what would happen. Surely enough the machine got bored of offering me money and sucked it back, success!

Perhaps the money hadn’t been stolen?

I found the ATM’s owner and explained to them what had happened – “You put another $20 into the machine?” they mocked. I agreed, then they explained they couldn’t do anything about it. I have to contact my bank in England who will put a claim against this bank in New Zealand and after duplicating forms, processing, sending back for queries, filed for pending and buried in soft peat I may get my money back, at some point.

Don’t worry I’m not going to ask you all for money.

However my real name is Ranjig Singabab, son of the Late President of Sierra Lionne. My fathers death has caused many problems for us as his $900,000,00- is locked into his account and we can’t access his funds unless we pay it into an off-sure account, for reasons I can’t explain. If you would accept this money into your account and transfer 80% back to me, you can keep the remaining 20% for your troubles. I hope you will accept this offer, and you will be remember in the hearts of the Sierra Lionne’s people for ever. Please supply me your bank details, pin number and address.

Thanks,

Oh and have a good Christmas!

Entering a new country involves leaving another country. Crossing with meat, vegetables and other animal products is usually banned, and if you are entering a pretty security consious country like Chile then your bags will get searched. In my day bag I had a lot of drugs for sleeping, these are usually illegal to carry into other countries without prescription but I wanted them so I was set on claiming ignorance, if questioned.
My rucksack was first to go through the scanners, fine. No problems. As common practice the Chilean border guards open the top of your rucksack look at the top item – in this case a jumper, then close it upset they havent caught you smugglin a three-toed-sloth into their country (if only they looked under my jumper).
After opening a few more zips, ignoring my medical kits, knives and woodern crafts they noticed my weaved juggling balls on the side of my bag.
The first women, aka “security whore” was determined I wasnt going to have my balls. She prodded them, smelt them and tried to squeeze the life out of them to find out what was inside. I picked up my other 3 and demostrated what they were for, unimpressed, she removed them hastily from my hands and passed them to another man – with a knife.
This man was mean, I mean he had your typical “I mean business” face and wore the security apparrel with officious arrogance. He put his knife to my balls, determined to penetrate them. I begged, he moved the knife closer, laughing as he did so. The knife flicked out of its body, reflecting the UV light into my eyes, forcing me to wince, I waited for the inevitable, removing the sweat from my brow as I did so. Then, suddenly, this overdramatised scene was interuppted by another secruity guard “Young whippersnapper” who had extracted from my balls what the Chilean authoritys had feared – a seed. The knifewielders smiled vanished, his knife slipped and clicked back into its body and I started to sweat more.
Someone of authority spoke, “You cant take seeds into our country”. I explained, pleaded, “only 2 of my balls have seeds, the other 2 contain plastic” .. We stared at each other, threatening each other with our gazes, refusing to break contact – but he was squeezing my balls, I remained strong trying not to submit to his underhand tactics. A fly landed on his sweaty brow, he pushed out his bottom lip and blew upwards with startling acuracy, the fly took off, circled around the room, then found another shit to land on.
Just as I was about to buckle, a miracle happened. “Security whore” discovered something in a womans rucksack of much greater significance. I heard her scream “sundried tomatoes” and that did it, man-of-authority released his steely grip off my balls, broke the stare and turned around defeated.

I had won, my balls entered Chile.

I am in Mendoza in the fanciest internet cafe I have seen in 4 months, I have written a few emails and I think I have nearly fixed my ipod. I have just uploaded all my photos onto the pc and a few onto my website. Camera finished with I placed it back in its case put it on my bag. As I was writing another anitidote about something or other, some guy started tapping me on my shoulder, pretty damn vigoursly thinking about it, muttering something in very fast Spanish and pointing at the PC next to me, so, like a fool I turn around to see what the hell he was pointing and after saying “I dont know” (in Spanish) he just shrugged and walked off. I turned round thinking “that was strange”, then suddenly realised it wasn´t that strange, infact it was pretty much a textbook robbers trick. I turned around and sure enough my camera case with my camera, memory card, a few earings (and all your Christmas presents) had gone.

So, the very nice man in the internet cafe phoned the police station, three officers arrived, chatted to me in Spanish then piled me in the back of their van and took me to the police station. They explained something to there superior then told me to wait in line, behind the other 4 people. Now, one sentence I really wish I had learnt from travelling around Latin America is “who´s next”, because not knowing this gives the-people-who-do-know a much greater advantage at getting seen before you. I waited there for 3 bloody hours before someone gave me a police report, if another person pushed infront of me I would have commited a crime myself….

It all could have been worse though, I actually just put all my photos onto this PC so I haven´t lost any, and my iPod was plugged into the PC, which is usually sat in my camera case. I do have a police report, so if there isn´t a million hidden clauses in my travel policy I should be able to get the money back.

I have uploaded some photos on my site from a trip I did yesterday trekking up another 4000mt mountain in the Andes, then cycling down another dangerous road. Have a look if you are bored.

Bye byeeee