There Are No Bad Experiences

Been home a little more than a week now. Yep. It’s great to be back, even if I have no friggin’ idea what comes next here in this grand meanderin’ life I’m leading. So we’ll see ’bout all that, but for now let’s have a look back at the trip that was.

From start to finish, a rundown of the places I layed my head each night: Hong Kong: Hong Kong -> Thailand: Bangkok -> Koh Chang -> Bangkok -> Chiang Mai -> Pai -> Chiang Mai -> Chiang Rai -> Laos: Houayxai -> Pakbeng -> Louang Prabang -> Phonsavan -> Vang Vieng -> Vientiane -> Pakxe -> Champasak -> Don Khong -> Don Det -> Cambodia: Kratie -> Kompong Chom -> Siem Reap -> Phnom Penh -> Sihanoukville -> Kampot -> Vietnam: Saigon -> Nha Trang -> Hoi An -> Hue -> Ninh Binh -> Hanoi -> Halong Bay -> Hanoi -> Sapa -> Hanoi -> Thailand II: Bangkok -> Koh Phangan -> Khao Sok -> Krabi -> Koh Phi Phi -> Phuket -> Krabi -> Koh Lanta -> Trang -> Malaysia: Penang (Georgetown) -> Kuala Lumpur -> Miri -> Mulu -> Miri -> Kuching -> Singapore: Singapore -> Indonesia: Kuta -> Ubud -> Padang Bai -> Gili Trawangan -> Mataram -> Senggigi -> Kuta -> Australia: Melbourne -> Lorne -> Warnambool -> Robe -> Adelaide -> Melbourne -> Brisbane -> Byron Bay -> Sydney -> New Zealand: Auckland -> Hahei -> Raglan -> Rotorua -> Taupo -> Tongariro -> Wellington -> Abel Tasman -> Barrytown -> Franz Josef -> Makarora -> Queenstown -> Routeburn -> Queenstown -> Christchurch -> Auckland

Then, LAX.

Of course, these weren’t all the places I went, just where I slept each night. Bounced around quite bit, it would seem. In fact, the place I stayed the longest was Gili Trawangan, for ten days after Christmas and over New Year’s. It was a tropical paradise! Loved that place. The cheapest night’s stay I had was on Don Det, in southern Laos. 10,000 kip a night — or roughly $1.25. Included in the price was a super chilled-out cow and a few chickens in the yard out front. So that was fun. Those were probably my two most super-favorite places, as a matter of fact — others receiving votes are Pai, Koh Lanta (and specifically the Andaman Sunflower guesthouse), Kuching, Melbourne and pretty much all of New Zealand.

Had a brilliant time throughout, natch. Of all the places I visited, and speaking in broad generalities now, the only country I feel like I don’t need to go back to is Vietnam. Everywhere else seems to hold more possibilities, more opportunities for further exploration. Vietnam surely does, as well, but it doesn’t interest me in the same way — I’m not drawn back there. (Unless I’m going with Eddie Le!) But I feel like I did just about everything one “should” do there, as a tourist — and the difficulties and constant haggling and harassment that are part of the package, as it were, would make it a low priority, if I were to again consider going back to SE Asia. Give me some Chinese difficulties, or some Burmese harassment instead!

You see what I mean.

For future reference, on this trip, I: went skinny dipping (in Halong Bay); slept on a pile of life jackets (on the overnight ferry from Koh Phangan); ate crickets, chicken feet, raw beef, snake and goat (not at the same time); drank snake whiskey, moonshine rice wine and opium tea; saw a king cobra (in a cage) and a python (in the wild); went whitewater rafting, only finding out afterwards that a woman had drowned rafting on the same river two weeks prior; rode an elephant; headbanged in Borneo; got pink eye; snorkelled with sea turtles; hiked 20km in a day; went to an Aussie trance music festival; ate just once at a McDonald’s (on Lombok); climbed a glacier; saw a woman do amazing things with her vagina; was the best pool player in the bar, one night on Lanta; saw the Southern Cross and an upside-down Orion; hung out with some great people from all over the world; earned scuba certification; befriended a monk; had a legless beggar-child dangle from my arm; saw (but never set foot in) China, Brunei and Burma; met a guy who opened a beer bottle with his teeth; read eighteen books; travelled by plane, bus, train, car, truck, motorcycle, boat, minibus, longtail boat, tuk-tuk, songthaew, sedomo, river raft, catamaran, prop plane, ferry, bicycle and (naturally) my own two feets.

Truly, there were no bad experiences. I was sorta bummed that I wasn’t able to get to Java in Indonesia, due to some pesky flight scheduling issues. I sure woulda liked to have seen Jogjakarta and Mt. Bromo — and Borobudur was the only box on my pre-trip list that I didn’t get to check off. Alas, ’twas not meant to be, this time. Yet I shall get there some day. Surely I shall!

Also, I’ve pretty much organized my photos, so you — YOU! — can now check out my 50 favorites from the trip. Keep in mind, these are just my favorites, not necessarily the “best” (whatever that means), or the most scenic, or whatever. Just the ones that I look at and say to myself, “I really love this photo.” Hope you do, too.

I’m just glad I’ve had the free time the past few days to be able to go through and upload and tag and rotate and organize most of them photos. And yet! — there are still a ton that are untagged. And yet again! — I will still encourage you to take a look at the other sets, especially the New Zealand, Australia and Indonesia ones, since I never really did post any of those photos here. If you care.

I’m over trying to sort through them much more. It’s really time-consuming and annoying, after awhile. Also, I noticed while uploading that all of my photos from Australia and New Zealand were taken on a lower pixel setting — i.e., when my camera got “fixed” (for the second time), they changed the default photo size, which saves room on your memory card but reduces the size (and thus, the quality) of your images. After all of the camera issues I had — from breaking my old one on my hip while crashing a motorbike to dropping the new one in a river and trying to get it fixed twice thereafter — to come home and find out that a couple of the really sweet photos wouldn’t enlarge for printing and framing… well, let’s just say that was a bit of a burn.

Damn photographs. I guess it just means I have to go back and do the whole trip over again. Yea, would that I could…

I kept an okay journal during my travels, maybe not quite as thorough as I now would have hoped, but it does have some good memories in there, as well as a (nearly) comprehensive list of all the different people I met along the way. But at some point on my trip, I wrote these words in my journal — wrote them in really, REALLY big letters. Separated out, one word on each page. As a reminder:

And I won’t. The question now is: Where to next?