Troy Archie – Everybody Knows This is Nowhere

Cheapness
So I’m sure most people out there, especially my family, all think I’m a cheap bastard.  Yeah I’ve done some odd things, stayed in some pretty dodgy places and walked an extra couple miles in OZ to save a couple bucks but that was OZ and as I’ve said many many many times before Australia is an expensive place to travel.  I could have easily let loose the purse strings a little but I know I would have quickly piddled my money away.  I did loosen the strings up quite a bit at the end of my time there and actualy spent just about the same amount in the last month as I had the rest of my time in the country.  All it takes is a little bit of a relax and it’ll get ya.  It’s like travelling on a Laos bus with diharrea; one loosening of the sphinctor and your done.  So I’m now in SEA and I’ve let the strings dangle.  In Thailand I held onto them a little bit and watched that I didn’t go over board keeping my budget around $25US/day and still had a great time.  Here in Laos it’s just stupid cheap and I’m averaging less than $20US/day without giving a dam as to where/what I eat, sleep, drink and buy, it’s great.  It’s such a huge release coming from OZ to spent only like $3US a night and get a clean room with fan, clean sheets, soft bed and towel compared to getting a bunk bed for $20 a night in a dingy hostel down under.

After much riddicule and teassing from familly and I started thinking that perhaps I was a cheap bastard but after a couple weeks here in Laos, I’ve come to the conclusion that I am not cheap and in fact, most other travellers out here are the cheap bastards.  The shit that I’ve seen other people try to pull in order to save a dollar is just pathetic, like I’m talking just stupid and low.  There is a great night time market here in town full of amazing crafts and handmade items and the crap that people try to pull with the locals is just discpicable. Hagling with these local people over one dollar is a scene I see on a daily basis here.  The other day I saw this one girl talk a vendor down to 20 000 kip ($2US) for these hand made tops.  The girl then wanted 4 and started to insist that she get an other discount on top of the one already given to her because she was buying so many.  She started to get really upset and insisting that she get all 4 at a cheaper price.  I just about stepped in and gave the girl the dollar she was struggling to haggle out of these people.  She must have been on welfare or something.  It’s scenes like that that I see and overhear on a regular basis here.  People saying how such and such is really expensive when really it’s $5.  I’m they’ve lost more than that in their couch at home or spent that much on a simgle drink in a bar back from the gutter they crawled out of, it’s just ridiculous.

The local people here are poor, dirt poor.  I hear the going rate is $1-$1.5 a day so a buck goes a long long way.  I’ve bought a couple things at the market, a shirt for a whole $2 and these nice drawings made by a local art student for $3.  When I was looking at the drawings earlier in the day I asked how much it was, $1.5 for one.  I only had 5000kip ($0.50) on me and told the girl that I’d be back later.  As I started to walk away she dropped the price to $1 for special discount for me but told her I only had 5000kip and would be back later and from there she again dropped the price to the 5000kip I had on me.  I insisted that I’d be back but just seeing her desperation and the look on her face of how much the money meant to her makes me wonder how a lot of these people can sleep at night when they haggle like it’s their last dime and turn around and blow $1 on a Beer Laos without even a second thought. 

So no, I’m not cheap, here at least.  Compared to many other I practically toss the money around here.  I stayed in a place that was deemed “expensive” by many others at a whopping $5 a night and ate at a restaurant for the outrageous price of $4.  There’s a difference in travelling and living on a budget and just being an asshole.

Christmas
So Christmas is upon us again and again, another Christmas away from home and to be honest I really don’t care.  It’s a million miles away.  Last year X-mas was pretty much the polar opposite as to how I would have normally of spent it and this year I’m in a place that doesn’t celebrate it at all so as you could imagine the “X-mas spirit” really isn’t my little vocabulary right now and again.  I don wonder where I’ll be though…wow 10 more days.  Have you finished your shopping yet?  Suckers.

The Weather
Hot out today.  Hot out yesterday.  Probably be hot out tomorrow.

Luang Prabang
Still here after 8 day’s and will be here for a couple more.  I’m really liking Luang Prabang, great place to just chill out in nice cafes with lots of options for biking and other little sights around town.  Today I went to the museum, tomorrow I’m taking a Laos cooking class and from there It’ll be off to Vang Vieng for a couple days or so I say.  There’s plenty of tourists here and that would usualy make me not too fond of the place but it doesn’t bother me at all.  I think maybe because it’s such a quiet town that the loud and obnoxious tourists don’t stick around and instead head to Vang Vieng.  Vang Vieng is suppose to have some great out door activities, climbing, biking and hiking but it’s also a bit of a backpacker ghetto where us foreigners seem to swarm, get drunk, go tubing on the river, take drugs and watch Friends.  I’ve heard many a mixed things about the place but the best thing about travelling is that if you don’t like the place you can just leave.  Hell you can do that even with the place you live.  I was going to skip Vang Vieng thinking that I wasn’t going to have enough time on my visa but decided to extend my visa for a couple more weeks.  I really like Laos.  The people are great, the food could be a bit better but the coffee makes up for it, especially at this one cafe I found, which is owed by a guy from the US.  I talked coffee with the guy for like an hour.  He know’s his stuff and his place poured an amazing cup.  To answer your question Jesse, the launguage barrier isn’t that big.  Most people speak no to not that good of english but you make it buy using hand gestures and pigeon Enlish and Laos.  The only people really interested in practicing English are most often the novice monks and other young people but in saying that I remember reading that the medium age of the country is 18.9 years of age.

Laos Good
Troy

Laos, what can I say…You have images of this communist regime and thrid world country coming over the border and have no idea what to expect after coming from the adults playground which is Thailand. It’s only across a river but once you cross it you know you’re not in Thailand anymore and anlready see that things are quite different, the further you go into the country the more you see that. My Thai visa ran out so in order to get an extension I had to go to the border and get it extended but I figured if I was going to go to the border I might as well go into Laos and travel there. I took a little shuttle bus with Galen, the guy from Vancouver I’ve teamed up with and a whole bunch of other foreigners. We were herded like cattle, as is the usual Thai way of treating tourists, into a little van and taken on a 6 hour ride to the border. Along the way we stopped at the usual “eatery” places for our breaks, which involed some middle of nowhere bus stop that served food and in this case, a cashew nut stand. The guy that ran the cashew stand was very Thai; if a Thai’s got something to sell you, you know it and would rather sit down to a meal with Satan himself than to spent a mear 2 with them. Pretty much all of the regular everyday Thai’s are great people but once money is involed and they’re in the tourist buisness, they are ruthless and pushy to no end, misinforming, lying and doing their best to get your baht, most of them anyways, there have been a couple that I’ve run into that are good people. The last night in Thailand the from the guesthouse lady would not leave Galen and I alone. We decided that we would make our own way across the border and figure out where to go from there getting our own bus tickets, visas and such. The lady went on and on telling us how it was impossible to do it on your own, how we’d never make the bus and how you had to go through her to get a visa. We went out for dinner and while at this eatery she happened to drive by on her motorbike. When she saw us she jumped off and again proceedded to pester us about buying the package she had. Again we declined. The next day we woke up early and walked down to the boat dock where we crossed into Laos, which was suppose to be 4km away but was more like 400m, got onto a boat, went across got our visas and went to the bus station. Along the way we met a couple about my parents age from Nelson BC, Greg and Marlynn. This was their first big trip, were interested in doing things for themselves without travel agents and were headed to Luang Namth, which is where Galen and I were headed. We had heard there was a boat that could go there and had talked to an English couple in the shuttle van about hiring one to go to Luang Namth. Greg and Marlynn had talked to them also but once we got across the border we couldn’t find them so we made our way to the bus station just to check it out. Once we got there we just decided to get bus tickets completely forgetting about the boat for the time being. We later met up with the couple from England and they had some great stories about their boat trip and how they spent the night in a village with the locals. At first we were all dissapointed that we didn’t take the boat also and had that cool experience but then I reminded everyone about our bus ride.

Highway of Hell
So we got onto the bus at the Laos/Thai border for Nam Tha knowing little what we were about to get ourselves into. We were joined by a Belgium couple, Jiran and Debbie along with a couple other foriegners and a bus load of Laotians. The guide book warned us that travel in Laos is a lot slower than in Thailand and that this road we were about to go on was under construction and should at best be avoided at all costs but got on the bus anyways. 140km in 7 hours was the eta. I wish I could describe in better words of the events of that bus trip but I’m at a loss. It was 140km of construction straight out. They didn’t do things like back home working on small sections at a time but dug up the entire road all at once and procedded to do bits and peices here and there. There was one or two sections that were paved but the rest was all pot holes. bumps and gravel. We went up mountians after mountian, endlessly climbing and jutting up and down switchbacks. The sign said it was 140km but with all the switchbacks it was probably more like 200km. We went along steep canyon cliffs where you’d look down the side of the bus and see about 6″ from the side of the bus was straight down 100-200m. We came along areas where avalanches occurred and some of the guys got out to clear trees and rocks. There was one spot where they were working and huge area of the road had collapsed and they had to clear it all out from dirt and rubble with diggers. All along the way there was horrible dust and when we got out we were all red from it. The houses, plants and trees along the way were also covered in the dust. The villages were all small little farming villages with homes made of thatch wood and bamboo where people meek out a living as best they can. Can’t imagine the health problems they’ll have later on in life because of all the dust. We would drive with all the windows open until we passed another vehicle or one passed us and from there everyone would quickly close all the windows to try and keep out as much dust as possible. The whole journy was insane with so many weird stops, and encounters along the way; it was great. We stopped in this one town for a break and I was blown away at just how good of English the people could speak. We were pretty much in the middle of nowhere and yet this one girl there could speak better english than any Thai I had met in Thailand plus they were so friendly. Everyone here so far and along the way has been great. So after 7 hours we finally made it to Nam Tha, dusty, tired and hungry. The whole way I was thinking to myself that I don’t have much travel left in me, I’m done. A couple more months and then it’s back home. After the horrible trip though, which I’ve heard some seasoned travellers say it was the worse bus trip they’ve ever taken, I’m glad I took it as it was a hell of a ride. There’s no way in hell I’d ever take it again or go back that way over that road but I’m glad I got to experience it. All throughout the days here, conversation between Galen, Greg & Marlynn and Debbie & Jiran always seemed to go back to some strange moment or some funny part of the bus ride.  Pics of this bit fun can be seen here.

Nam Tha
We got in about 7pm and booked into a really nice guesthouse that was more like a hotel than guesthouse with nice white fluffy towels, the softest bed I’ve slept in in months with wonderful smelling clean white sheets and a TV with either Communist TV or religious channels. At first we thought it was expensive and wasn’t even quite to sure on the exchange rate but we checked in and afterwards found it that it was dirt cheap. A little pampering in a nice place can go a really long way as I felt rejuvinated the next morning and all for like $4US a night. This place was nicer than the hotels I was stayin in with my family in Sydney for like $250 a night.  We then got kicked out of the place a couple days later on the pretence that they had bookings but looking back at it now the place was a Chinesse owned guesthouse and often they only rent out to Chinesse so we went around the bend to thins place Ccalled Zuela’s GH that was one of the most beautiful places I’ve seen in a long time.  It was an amazing brand new teak wood guest house in a Laos style and was only like $3.5US a night.  The people there were amazing too, on the second night there they were opneing up their restaurant so they invited us for dinner with them.  I’m still at a loss of words at just how generous they were, the food was Laos and amazing.  It felt truely like a home cooked meal, something I’ve been yearning for for a while. 

Around Nam Tha there was a a number of little villages that we went exploring on bike.  We got quite the warm recpetion in a number of them with children yelling Sa Bi Dee (Hello) and a hell of a lot of smiles all around.  We pulled into this one families “shop” and noticed this one fellow with a machette chopping up and chewing on this wood.  We pointed at it wondering what it was and he got all excited, jumped up, ran off into the woods and came running back with a huge branch of it that he proceeded to chop up and pass around to us.  We figured out that it was sugar cane, with a little bit of translation it was a pretty good.  So many little moments like that throughout the time day.  Later that night we all got together and went for Mongolian BBQ.  It’s basically Korean BBQ but better.  You sit around a table with a hole cut in the middle of it and they put this little BBQ thing in the hole, cover it was a metal top and you cook your food on it.  How it differs from Koren BBQ is that there’s a little moat around the bottom of the pan that they fill full of water where all the juices from the cooking meat goes.  In there you put your veggies noodles and other goodies.  It is so good and blast at that when you’ve got 6 people on it.  Definately going to have to make one back home for the back yard.
Nam Tha pictures

Muang Sing
A little ways up the road, a much better paved road I’ll add is a little town called Muang Sing that’s host to a number of different ethnic tribes and some beautiful scenery.  Eco trecking has been really highlighted here with treks being run by the local peoples.  It’s a pretty small town well off the beaten track, with very few foreigners around.  The border to China was like 50km away so we were out in the wook works.  Galen and I went on the one day “difficult” trek up this mountain with an Isreali guy who was a bit of a character.  Our guide was a local farmer named Sihanjy, really nice guy.  Didn’t speak the best english but my Laos sucks so it’s all good.  It was a pretty good hike along some stunning scenery and interesting little villages.  What was really interesting about the villages is how the villagers pretty much paid little or no attention to us only giving us looks as to, who are you, what are you doing here and why have you come all this way to see this hole in the dirt?  Not even general curiosity was really shown.  These villages that were in the valley were moved there by the Laos government from higher an more isolated areas so they wouldn’t grow anymore poppy for the opium trade.  I don’t imagine they liked being moved so I can understand the hostility.  At the top of the mountian there was this little village that Sihanjy said was really old.  The villages in the valley had some power and a well but this place had no power and the only well was a rain water creek about 10 minutes walk away.  This place was full on with bamboo thatch huts and livestock in the streets.  I felt somewhat bad in the sence that here I was almost gawking at these people and felt like I was treating them and their village as a zoo but at the same time I couldn’t look away.  Them, their daily lives and everything about them was so far removed from myself that I just couldn’t help but stare with complete astonish.  The Isreali we were with was like, “I don’t get it, why don’t they make their houses out of brick instead of wood and straw?  What happens if there was a fire?”  What a guy, he was a little far removed.  We only spent a day in Muang Sing and headed back to Nam Tha for a night before making a rough day’s trip to Muang Ngoi.  The ride back to Nam Tha from Muang Sing was interesting.  There was about 32 of us packed (mostly all locals) into the back of a covered pick-up truck.  There were a couple people standing on the back bumper the whole way too, I wish I could have stood.  Muang Sing Pictures

Muang Ngoi
So Galen and I head out from Nam Tha heading to Muang Ngoi.  We have to get a bus to Odomxia and from there another bus or tuk tuk or pick-up or space shuttle to Muang Ngoi.  The first bus was good old fun with me and 34 of my closest Laos friends crammed onto a 17 seater bus.  There were little plastic chairs they put in the ailses for people to sit on and at the front there was a place where they had a big pillow for people to sit on with a couple people standing in the doorway to top it all off.  I started out on the pillow sitting back to back with another girl before that become too painful and I stood the rest of the way with the The Uncas playing on my Mp3 player the whole way.  Lesson learned: if you don’t get a real seat on the bus, stand.  From Udomxia we went in the back of a pick-up to some little town in the middle of nowhere and spent about 10 minutes trying to tell the guys where we wanted to go and bargain a price.  From there it was an other pick-up finally arriving at Muang Ngoi.  9 hours it took us to get there and god knows how many kilometers, probably like 50.

Galen and I spent just one day in Muang Ngoi, there wasn’t a lot to do there but it was a jump off point to be able to boat down the river to Luang Pabrang. There were some caves in the area so we went out walking to check them out. Along the way we ran into these little kids who, in broken english asked us where we were going and we said caves. From there they started to follow with what we guessed was the incillanation that they were going to be out tour guides. They started to try and take us down this one path and across this creek but there were no signs or anything so we turned back in hopes of leaving them behind but they kept right on us. The main cave in the area you really couldn’t miss and I was where the regional government hid out while the US was trying to bomb them into oblivion during their secret war they held against Laos. There were bomb craters pocketing the area and the kids showed us some machine gun bullet holes in the cave walls. After the main cave they started pointing down the field we were in saying “cave! cave!” so we figured there was another one down the way. They led the way and took us to another smaller cave that was across this rice paddy and up a little path. We thought it was a bit dodgy at first but when we got to the second cave there was a sign above it announcing that it had been the sight to the Luang Prabang bank during the late 60’s and into the 70’s which I though was a bit odd as Luang Prabang was like 100km away. We went into what looked to be a small cave but were shown by our tour guides that it went further down still. There’s no way I would have gone down deeper but they lead the way and Galen and I followed suit down this winding and twisting cave that went a fair ways down it was pretty cool and a bit freaky. At the bottom was a little ledge with an old sign that said “Staff Only” and another one declaring it was the bank manager’s office.  Then same the time for buisness.  As we were standing around I felt one of the kids poke at my wallet and after standing around for a bit they asked us for their “fee” pointing at their back pockets knowing that I had my wallet there.  Cheeky little monkeys.  I wouldn’t have given them much or anything at all if they only showed us the main cave, that we could have found ourselves but the second cave was super cool and wouldn’t have known about it without them or have ventured as far down as we had.  So we gave them, there were 4 of them, 10 000kip each which is about $1US.  They nearly shit themselves.  Their faces lit up like light bulbs and they darted off ahead of us showing off everyone who passed by their hard earned cash, kissing the notes along the way.  I really don’t think they were expecting that much but they deserved it.  I only hope they put it in the bank and saved it.  No I don’t, I hope they blew it on candy.
Our tour guides

From Muang Ngoi we pooled together a group of people and hired a boat to take us down the river to Luang Pabrang.  It was a really nice ride that took the good part of the day with a couple stops here and there for food and peeing.  Pictures of that trip can be found here.
Muang Ngoi Pictures

Off the beaten track
You think, I want to get off the tourist trail and hit the unbeaten track but when you get there you realize there’s only one place to stay which is rustic at best, only one restaurant that serves the same “Western” and “Asian” food as everywhere else, only 2 street stalls selling the wide variety of noodles with pork or noodles with chicken; I swear with the amount of noodles and meat these people eat I’d be surprised if they ever pooped.  To top it off there simply isn’t a lot to do in these little towns, it would be like vacationing in Elk Point or Tofiel, after a day or two you’re just a little bored and eager to hit the road knowing full well it’ll be 9 hours of hell in a bumpy bus.  I don’t know if it’s just travel in Laos or just the places we’ve been to, but it’s been some tough shit.  I’m far more inclined to splurge alittle on my accomidations and not be such a cheap bastard after many of the bus rides and routes I’ve had to take to get to places. 

Luang Prabang
So I’m in Luang Prabang right now.  It’s a dam nice city of about 25 000 and is designated a UNESCO World Heritage Sight becuase of it’s cool architecture due to the French influence during the years of colonialism.  The town definately has a French flair to it, with cool European style buildings and french bagets everywhere.  Bread is a bit of an oddity in Thailand and is only around to appease the tourists but from what I’m told because of the French, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam have bread as a staple.  Anyways, enough about bread; I’ve been here a couple days now and have been have a grand time.  After hoping and jumping from place to place the last week and a bit it’s nice to come to a city with some modern appliances and that’s not saying much here in Laos.  There’s no grocery stores here, only markets and street vendors and good luck finding and shopping mall, works good for me though.  This is one of those places that you plan to stay a couple days and then you realize it’s been a week and your still there.  There’s plenty of amazing cafe’s with great coffee, great street food and some of the bars and cafe’s have movies at night that you can go and watch.  It had been about a month since I had seen a glowing screen and I was surprised at how much I missed it’s dancing colors.  We watched “The Departed”, it was good. Ohh and clean clothes, that’s a plus too. Renting a bike and riding around town is good too. Today though I rented a mountain bike and rode it out of town to where there were some water falls. It was about 30km out of town, through these little Laos villages and rolling hills/mountains. Took me about an hour to get there and was a sweat mess when I finally arrived. The last leg up the hill took me 30 minutes to get to the top but only 5 to get down. The falls were beautiful and the water was an amazing blue and green in color plus it was nice and cold which was perfect on this hot day and after riding all morning.  I gave a bit of a yelp when I first pumped in but afterwards it was perfect. They also had this bear and tiger rescue place there with about 10 black asian bears and one asianic tiger. Bears I’ve seen before but were pretty cool none the less, the tiger on the other hand was rad. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen one in person before but I was in awe. It walked by me in it’s caged area and gave a bit of a growl/pure and my hair stood on end. I might have been so impressed by it because I just finished reading “Life of Pi“, which everyone should read, thank you again for pointing that one out to me Erin.  Now you should “Damage Done“.  Unfortunatly I took my memory card out of my camera the night before to upload pictures and forgot to put it back in so I don’t have any pics of there, which sucks because that tiger was dam cool.  On the plus side though I renting a bike again tomorrow and going out to a different set of falls.
Luang Prabang Pictures

I got lots more stuff to post and type about that have occurred but lots of it slips the mind and a bit too lazy to continue writing so I’ll make some things that stick in my mind quick.
Working out:  I do my best where and when I can but it always seems to be in odd places with little or no privacy.  I worked out in Nam Tha and looked up at one point to find myself surrounded by all these little kids watching me wondering what the hell I was doing.  They stuck around the whole time I was there too.  Another time I went to work out at this Wat (Buhdist Temple) because it was one of the few places I could find a bit of privacy (no parks in Asia it seems) but only to draw much attention from the young novice monks and quickly found about 12 of them standing around me. 
Monks:  I started to talk to a couple of the young monks before and after my workouts, they spoke pretty good english and are eager to learn. One asked me what a couple words in English were, and this one came out of left field. “What is the word for when a man dresses as a women.” I wrote down “cross dresser” in his little note book and then later told him that in Asia they were known as “Lady Boys”. He got me to write that one too.
Coffee:  Laos Coffee is dam good stuff.  It’s a fairly famous bean in the coffee nerd circles and I can now taste why.  It has a bit of a wheaty flavor to it, and medium body.  Kaa Feh Laos, Dam Bo Soy Nam Tan (Coffee Laos, black with no sugar) is pretty much the only Laos I know really well without having to dig for my cheat sheet.  Can’t wait to get to the south of the country where it’s grown.
Jesse: Thought I’d just a shout out congratulations to Jesse and Janelle and their engagement and eventual wedding which will be in August.  Cool shit.

There’s more I could type about but I’m hot, tired and lazy.  Oh yeah, here’s a bunch of maps of Laos.

Keep it real

Troy

Good old Sir Simon Milligan, what a guy…man I sure do miss Kids in the Hall…Well I’ve been cooking away here in Chiang Mai, taking part in a 5 day cooking course. It’s been really great and really interesting. Thai food and cooking is so basic, simple and extremely fast; it’s rather shocking to see just how basic it really is. It’s also really interesting the different mixes of herbs, spices and sauces that are added to give it’s unique flavor. You’d think by adding palm sugar, fish sauce, tomatoes, dried shrimp, unripe papaya and green beans that you’d hurl upon first bite but instead you have the amazing Som Tam, aka papaya salad, one of my personal favorites. There’s so many other combinations like this that you think would not work but instead come out tasting great. Same with the speed of the cooking; my stir-frys would never turn out right but I realize now that I cooked them way too long. All it takes is like 10 seconds and that’s no exaggeration of stir-frying and your done. I’ve been reading in my LP book that there’s cooking classes also in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam so I just need to find out where to sign up now.

Food is Good

The Master Chef

Hot Hot Hot

Now I’m not a big fan of junk food back home but there in Thailand they have some really crazy ass junk foods that rock.  Chocolate is pretty much more expensive than back home but all the great stuff they have here makes up for it.  Lots of cool crisps and coconut flavored things with nuts in them, weird chips, strange geletan candies, rice puddings, and just about anything sweet in coconut, it’s great.  I don’t have them very often but when I do I always get something different and am always impressed.

Thai Candy

Slow Down
On The subject of food though I have been thinking about “Western Cuisine” lately and I still think after all the great foods that I’ve tried and sampled western cooking is the best. Whaa!? you say. Let me explain; when we all think of “Western Cuisine” what comes to mind? Burgers, chips/fries, battered fish, sandwiches and generally pretty borring and most of the time unhealthy food. The reality of it is, the really good western style foods you can never get in restaurants and can only be found in people’s homes. When was the last time you went out and ordered a stew? Maybe a nice roasted chicken cooked along with potatoes, onions, garlic with aromatic herbs? What you would find at the table for Thanksgiving is usualy not on the menu at any eatery I’ve been to lately and if it was, it usualy isn’t that good, infact it usualy sucks. You don’t find places that have foods like that because they take such a long time to cook. One of my favorites dishes that I’m craving a bit right now is my mom’s stew. You’d never find that in a restaurants simply because it takes 3 hours to cook. One of the best meals I’ve had in recent times was my last night on KI when we had leg of lamb (from a lamb that I got to see slaughtered and butchered a few day’s before) that was cooked with rosemary, pumpkin, garlic, onions, sprinkled with olive oil and left to cook for like 5 hours.

Moments
One thing that I love here is the moments you have with the local people without a word being spoken. I remember in Krabi seeing this huge fat disgusting white guy walking down the street with no shirt on and I turned and made eye contact with a Thai guy, we both looked at each other with looks of disgust on our faces and both just started laughing. No words were spoken but we both new what was going on. Same thing happened in this fitness park I was in. I was admirring the Thai girls and looked over and made eye contact with another guy who was doing the same and we both just smiled and nodded our heads in approval.

Chiang Mai Market
I went out one night to the night time market in Chiang Mai; man what a place that was. They had so much cool stuff there that I know Brad would go awol there and I myself just about lost it and walked away with a pile of stuff but instead went away with a pair of pants. I know own 1 pair of pants to go along with my 2 pairs of short pants and 3 shirts. I was told afterwards though that there’s a market in Bangkok, the Chatuchak Weekend Market that’s even better and coveres like 35 acres. So sinice I’ve been nice and not naughty, I’ve been making a list and have even checked it twice as to what I want to buy before I go home. I figure I’ll fly out of BKK and will probably pull a Brad, buy a duffle bag and load it full of cool crap that I want.

Well I typed that all out a couple day’s ago and since then I have been even more amazed by the markets here.  Saturday night I went out with a couple others and found that most of the city had been blocked off to traffic and the streets closed to only pedestrians setting the scene for a huge open street market, it was amazing.  Chiang Mai is a real artistic and university city so there are tonnes of artists of all sorts of different wards making some amazing crafts, clothes, art work, furniture, nick knacks and just about thing else you can think of.  I added to my list ten fold.  There were street musicians and bands playing everywhere and the atmosphere was amazing.  I thought it couldn’t get any better than this but sure enough I was wrong.  This was the Saturday night market, which was the appetizer for the Sunday Night market which was Saturday times 10.  Sunday night all the locals come out and the rest of the town pretty much shuts down.  The streets were flooded with people and there were twice as many stalls and crazy cool stuff to go along with it all plus they had like 6 more streets that they blocked off.  The amazing thing is is that this is a regular Sunday night thing.  I wasn’t too sure if I’d come back this way but after seeing this market and all the amazing handmade things I am for sure making a special trip back here to stock up on cool crap.  And yes they were handmade stuff, you could watch most of the people making it right in front of your eyes and if they didn’t have your size they’d make special orders.  Two of the people that I was with made special orders of these really cool flip flops with carvings in them from this one guy.

Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!

Rad Flip Flops
 

Met My Match
So after all this travelling, all these different places I’ve finally met my match. Her name is MAM and I’ve spent 3 nights in her confines until I had to leave, I just couldn’t take it anymore. I’ve stayed in my fair share of nasty places on this trip, hostels/backpackers, farms, bungalows and camper vans and have managed to tough my way through them all but this guest house beat me. It was only 100baht($3can) a night and the room was alright, albiet there was a frog in it last night, but man the bathroom was horrid and I couldn’t take it anymore. I left in the morning and took my chances before cooking class and ended up going even cheaper into a dorm room for only 60baht($1.86can) a night in a place that’s much much better, although it is a dorm room. I felt at first that, yeah it was only 100b a night but after a couple days I realized that I was getting ripped off and had to high tail it out of there. Memories of going to the bathroom still give me shivers down my spine and up until then, I’ve never dirtier after taking a shower. So lone behold, I do have a breaking point.

Comfort
And my god, the bed at MAM, the worst bed I’ve ever slept in EVER and this coming from someone who doesn’t remember the last time he’s slept in a comfortable bed since he’s left home over a year ago. My bed in Sydney was like a wooden board and at first when I started to use it I thought there was no way I could go on like this but after a while it somehow became comfortable or at least I kept telling myself. Before that I was in a good old backpacker, then a caravan that I had to either sleep with bent legs or diagonally in, to again a backpackers to a little shed with a bunk bed in it in Southern Victoria that got freezing cold during the night and so forth. So if you’re ever hating your job, sick of the daily grind and think, “man Troy’s got it going and I envy him so much. That travelling thing he’s doing sounds so cool, I might just throw caution into the reckless wind and give it a shot,” just be prepared to give up everything and all that is comfortable to you. Say goodbye to laying on a comfy couch on a Friday night(Friday doesn’t exist out here anyways) watching DVD’s, laying in bed on a lazy Sunday morning (again, day’s have no names on the road), nice showers and hot baths and just about anything and everything that you hold take as comfortable…ahh, I wouldn’t have it any other way and I regret nothing. At times I think that I am in need of some pampering, especially after the MAM experience and think that maybe I shouldn’t have taken a step even further down by going into a hostel but I say screw it, I can pamper myself when I get home and I keep going. I’m hard, tough as nails and have to stay that way or I’ll die out in the middle of Cambodia or Laos where shit gets hairy. I still have my coffee shops though, that I won’t give up but I do wonder how long I can go before I snap and put myself into a place with AC, a tv and a nice bed. Until then it’s rats, bunkbeds and frogs for me.

More Pictures for your enjoyment.  My next stop is in the north of Laos called Luang Namtha where I’m looking to do some treking.  I’ll either do it out of Luang Namtha or else out of a small town a bit to the north called Muang Sing, I’ll see when I get there.  I’m heading up there with an other Canuck from Vancouver so at least I got someone to get lost with.  Until then…

Safe Travels
Troy

Dogs and Cats
There are lots and lots of dogs and cats here in Thailand, they appear to be stray but as time goes on I seem to think that they are people’s pets. I had heard about the packs of roaming dogs and alleys full of cats before and had this imagine in my head of tones of mangy muts and scraggly cats but I’ve found the opposite. All the dogs look to be pure bread or close to ranging from Golden Retrievers to Cocker Spaniels to German Sheppard’s to hundreds upon hundreds of shitsus and poodles all nicely groomed and fixed up. Even the street dogs look pure bread. Mike told me he thinks that people here don’t treat their animals that well but I disagree, I’ve seen some pretty pampered pets here. I really don’t think this fellow has missed many meals lately.

Rats
When I was staying in Ton Sai in my little bungalow I had a little bit of a rat problem. I came home one day to find a baby rat lying on top of my mosquito net evidently having fallen from the banister above from a nest. I pt my sock over my hand, picked it up and threw it out the door. Later that night I was awoken by scratching from above and grabbed my flashlight, sure enough spotting a rat scaling along the top banister beam tugging away at the leaved room. I made some noise and it ran off and that was the last I heard from it that night. The next day I came home again and this time I found two baby rats lying on the front porch, again having fallen from the heavens above. This time however I decided to let nature take its course and found one of the many cats that were roaming the area and showed him the rats. That made his day and he grabbed them both and took off with them. For the rest of the day I could hear the sounds of the rats squealing as the cat played and toyed with them; vicious bastard. To get rid of my little problem I then employed a broom from one of the lady’s there and knocked down the nest, expecting to be raining on by rats but found none. So that’s the rat story.

Riding your Bike and Traffic in Thailand
Traffic here in Thailand is…well chaos, or so it seems to the naked eye but on further analysis there is a certain poetry to it. You’d think, upon first glance that this place must have hundreds of accidents each day and numerous pedestrians getting hit. You expect to see it at some point of the day but sure enough and fortunately it doesn’t happen. Cars, bikes, tuk tuks and motorbikes fill the streets and jockey for position with one another, nearly glance each other as they race down the narrow streets often veering onto the opposite side of the road in order to pass a slower vehicle or bike (me). In Bangkok you can jump onto the back of a motor bike for a couple baht and they’ll do short trips to where you want to go destination, veering in between cars, taking hairpin turns into back alleys and cutting across parking lots to get you where you want to go as fast as they can. Laws are broken, signs half ignored and lines crossed consistently and constantly all the while I’ve yet to see any accidents. How does this go on I question, without anyone getting killed or a 10 car pile up occurring? I assume that they’re all watch one another and just simply avoiding other vehicles as best they can so in turn I jump on my bike, veer into traffic and do the same. Who needs coffee when you have a bike and speeding traffic?

Injury Report
I won’t lie, traveling is tough work. It’s, at times not all what it’s cracked up to be at least for me that is as I always seem to have some sort of cut, bruise, bite, burn or kink. On Ton Sai I was a walking calamity, cranking my toes on 3 separate occasions of which I’m sure must have broken at least one as it was a bright purple for a couple days. I also had the problem there of sand getting into my sandals, rubbing with my feet and getting really bad chafing and sores. I hate sand. Along with the common climbing blisters and cuts and scrapes from trampling threw the jungle on paths that don’t exist I’m in all right condition. Fortunately that’s all healed up but the list carries on. My current injury list consists of the usual bug bites, along with a really nasty one on my lower back that I think I got from one of the huge ants on Ton Sai, two friction burns on my arms that I got from working out with my rings and a terrible heat rash under my arm pits from again, working out. This traveling shit hurts some days.

Crossfit Edmonton
At long last, it’s there but I’m not. One more reason to come home I guess.

Keep on Truckin’ Big Momma
Troy

I’m in Chiang Mai now safe and beat up as per usual but the cuts and scrape will heal up per usual and leave a strange looking scar. It’s nice to finally get out of Bangkok. Chiang Mai, is a lot smaller and a lot more laid back with more cafes, bakerys and bookshops than you can shake a stick at. The city is broken up into the Old City and the New City. The Old City is surrounded by a moat, which is still there and also a wall which is only there in places. Everything outside this moat/wall area is the New City. How clever. I rented a bike today and toured around most of the city, pretty much spending most of my time getting lost. I realize that it’s a rather small city now that I spent so much time in places that I wasn’t trying to get to. At one point I thought I was in the South-east of the city but ended up in the north-east… Tiff where were you dam it?

I took an overnight train to Chiang Mai and I must say it was very cool, much better than the bus.  The busses down here are broken into 2 types, the regular government run busses that the locals take and the VIP busses that all the foreigners take.  I took a VIP bus down to Krabi and part of the way back from Krabi.  The first half of the journey to BKK from Krabi I was on a government bus.  The VIP busses are loaded to the rim and you feel like cattle they way you’re treated.  They are a lot cheaper but the ride sucks big time.  The government bus was much better, more roomy and much less foreign.  Now for the train I was really impressed by it.  It was about double the VIP bus but tt was so laid back, really comfortable and a little bit romantic plus to top it off you go through the country side and get to see the farms and rural areas.  It was really interesting to see the people working in the fields all by hand still.  I really enjoyed the trip and will probably take the train more often even though it’s more expensive.  As I child I was really obsessed with trains, my family can vouch to that so on this trip there was a bit of childhood nostalgia that wrung through me.  I also finished Dracula on the trip and picked up a copy of Life of Pi via Erin’s reccomendation.  Dracula was pretty good but I never thought it was scary, probably because of where I was reading it.  I was reminded at the end when they were near his castle and it was really cold of going winter camping with Scouts and my dad coming along with us and we freezing our asses off.  Thanks dad.

I’m just so dam indecisive
Isn’t that a Kids on the Hall quote? I’ve decided to take my cooking classes after all now. I realized that I had no other reason to be here save for wanting to get out of BKK and that if I wasn’t going to take them now why come here at all? It’s for 5 days and looks to be full on plus if I didn’t take it now I run the risk of not taking it at all and I really don’t know what I would do for the next couple days.  The only other really big thing to do here is go on the jungle treks but they’re so touristy and over the top that I’ve decided to pass until I get to Laos.  The jungle trek buisness is pretty dam huge here and pretty cut throat. I’ve changed guest houses because the guy at the guest house kept hounding me about going ona trek and everytime I saw him he was asking me about it and showing me pamphlets so I hit the road andtook my buisness else where.  There’s times here where I feel like I’m seen as a walking ATM. 

There’s some nice looking temples here and such but I could really careless for Thai temples.  They seem to be everywhere and to be blunt, the Thai culture, history and architecture has no interest to me.  The Laos, Khmer (Cambodia) and Vietnamese cultures, history and architecture do strike a cord in me though and I think it might be because they’ve had much more of a turbulant history and growth where as Thailand led a bit of an isolationalist policy in the last 150 years.  Plus then I don’t have to come back around this way and instead maybe go up to Beijing after Vietnam and go see Mao’s dead body and the great wall.

Laos sounds really cool and I’m a bit excited to get there. As for tomorrow I plan on biking around a bit more and working off the gut that I’ve started up. Seriously, I’m starting to get fat I can feel it. It’s sad to see 2 and a half months of hard ass work in the gym can all go down the drain for me in less than 4 weeks. Woe is me I suppose. Yes I am a bit of a glutton when it comes to food and I did miss 3 days in a row from working out which I think is a record dating back to either April or June but really, give a guy a break. I imagine enrolling in a 5 day cooking class isn’t going to help now is it?

On the subject of food, I have been trying everything new that I see.  I tried bugs in BKK, grosshoppers to be exact.  They were alright, nothing that I’d ever wake up in the middle of the night and crave.  They had a real odd taste to them that I just couldn’t put my finger on as to what they were like…might have been the seasoning they used.  A new favorite of mine that I’ve discovered here in Chiang Mai is fish cooked in banana leaves.  Basically you take your fish fillet, put it on a banana leaf, throw some garlic,ginger, lime, shallots and a couple other herbs and spices, wrap it all up and put it on an open fire or BBQ and let it cook in the leaf.  Because of the moisture in the leaf it basically steams the fish with all the spices that are in there.  It’s dam good.  I’ve seen banana leaves back in Sydney so I’m sure you could find them in Edmoton at like A&whatever Asian market in west ed.  Way better than using tin foil.  There’s also a huge variety of fruits everywhere, so many that I think I might have to start taking pictures of them and other cool things that I eat.

Troy Over and Out

Here’s a couple of pictures that I’ve uploaded from Bangkok, Some are from the Grand Palace, a couple from the huge mega mall we went to, a couple from other funny thing that I’ve seen and found along the way and plenty of miscellaneous pictures taken of random things. Also, here is a more pictures taken by Mike from us in Krabi.

I thought this was a weird one, lots of foreigners wolfing down at McDonald’s when they could get amazing food on the street for a fraction of the price. I don’t get it. I broke down the other day and had muesli for breakfast as it was Sunday and couldn’t find my regular breakfast street vendor. I was completely disappointed by it and wanted my money back. Back to eggs, fruit, rice or noodles for breakie. For those in the unknown, muesli is considered a very foreigner thing to have for breakfast and is served at all guesthouses and foreigner style restaurants.

I do have my flaws too though. I saw Starbucks just off of Koa San road and had to have a cup of coffee there just for the sake of having Starbucks in Thailand. It was a terrible cup but worth the picture.

Off to Chaing Mai next. Was going to take a week long cooking course there but decided that I would make a special trip back to Chaing Mai at the end of my travels and take it then so it’s all fresh in my head.

Troy

Well I’m back in good old BBK; what an interesting place this is, you get here and you hate it and want to leave but once you leave you want to get back and once you get back you want to leave again.  Mike described the city as organized chaos before I left and he was oh so right.  Everything from the traffic to the markets to well…that’s all there really seems to be here, traffic and markets.  You go to a part of the city that’s described as a market area but it looks no different than an other street that is lined with millions of food stalls and kiosks sells clothes and anything else you can shake a stick at.

It’s been an interesting last couple of day’s here; I caught the bus from Krabi and a group of people that I was hanging out with there were on there way to BKK also.  Two Swede’s, Erik and Jonas along with Jonas’ g/f Bow who is Thai.  Jonas and Bow are staying at Bow’s parents place so Erik and I split on a guest house room and I’ve been hanging out with them the last couple day’s.  It’s been really great touring the city with a Thai and someone who knows enough Thai language to get around easily in Jonas.  It’s been really good in fact; on the bus ride to BKK the guy forgot to give us a transfer slip and when they came around to check our tickets we had none and Bow had to call up the travel agent place and get them to talk to the ticket collector guy.  We’d probably would have to of paid again if she wasn’t there.

I’ve also got to have an interesting tour of the city because of Bow and Jonas; I’ve gotten to go see a lot of places that no other “ferang” (tourists) go.  I was in this part of town today and I swear everyone was starring at us with a look of, “what the hell are you doing here?” on their faces.  We went into a department store and some of the cashiers and employees were even pointing at us, it was really cool.  I’ve seen a lot of extremes here ranging from watching a family living in their boat and bathing in the river to the huge ass super mega mall complex where all the foreigners and rich Thais go and shop.  The place blew me away and I took a slew of pictures of it all I think because it seemed to out of place as to what else I had seen throughout the city and country thus far.  They got everything here, even more than Oz; Dairy Queen, Outback Steakhouse, Baskin Robins, it’s pretty much like home actually.  Seeing this place and what it has to offer makes me think Australia is the backwards country, not Thailand. After a couple hours in there though I was quickly reminded why I never went places like that back home and was eager to get away.  We also took a look at the Grand Palace and the National Museum.  After all that over the last couple day’s I am now officially touristed out and don’t care for anymore sight seeing along those lines.

Another extreme occurred last night when we went to meet a friend of Erik’s from England who was in town.  It was his old boss and was a bit of a surprise for him.  We met him in this really weird part of town that is frequented by a lot of old, fat, balding foreign men look for Thai girlfriends aka sex tourists, it was really bizarre and weird.  You see it all over the place, older guy’s with young hot Thai women but you still don’t seem to get used to it.  What’s even more weird is when you see young guys like our age with doing the same.  There was this one street that Alek’s boss told us to go down that was near the bar we met him at. It was much like the red-light district Pad Pong but on a smaller scale.  We took a quick walk through it and that was all we needed to see.  It was like a David Lynch movie, there were young beautiful women standing outside of the bars, smiling and waving and trying to grab you and pull you into the bar.  It was very surreal.  Pad Pong is suppose to be like 1000 time worse then that so I think I’ll be keeping my distance from there.  That was just too much for me. I couldn’t help but look at the older guy’s and think that most of them have to be fathers and grandfathers.

It was really cool to see Bow’s parent’s place and how the average Thai person lives. I was old that the two things Thai’s like to show off as a status symbol is there cars and there mobile phones. I swear, I’ve seen what appears to be the poorest of the poor persons on mobile phones and dam nice ones at that, much better than the one I have. Even on Ton Sai all the longboat drivers had mobiles and here and the street vendors, food stall cooks and tuk tuk drivers all have brand spanking new phones. And cars. When coming here I thought that all the cars would be pieces of crap but never in my life have I seen so many nice cars. I guess most people would rather have a really nice car and live in a shanty. Bow’s parent’s place was alright, wasn’t a mansion but the SUV her dad had was insane. It was an Izuzu something ‘er rather with plasma screen TV in it and the whole 1 million yards. I have never seen as many BMW’s on the road as I have here.

The people here are all pretty friendly but you definitely have to watch yourself. I’ve had lots of idle conversations with Thai’s on the streets and it leave to a simple good bye and maybe some directions but there’s been some that you walk away with looking over your shoulder to see if anyone’s following you. Talk for instance this one fellow I met. He started a simple conversation with me asking where I was from and what I was doing. I told him I was from Edmonton Canada and from there he procedded to tell me that his Sister, a doctor was on her way to Edmonton to be a doctor there and would really appreciate any insight on the city. He couldn’t name the hospital she was to work at only that it was the second largest in the city. I sat down with him and chatted up a bit and he proceeded to tell me about his sick mother and how since his sister was leaving for 2 years his mother was very worried and might die.  He then went on talking how he could teach me Thai and about Thailand and how I could in return teach him about Canada and help him with English, regardless of the the fact that he spoke extremely good english, which I see as a major warning sign.  About that time his phone rang and lone behold it was his sister and how her and her mother were home just a few blocks away and how it would be great to meet me and get some info about Canada.  That’s when he got up all excited and was all ready to go with me to visit his mother and sister, asking if I had my camera so I could take a picture for a souvenir and that his mother would cook a real Thai meal for me and blah blah blah.  This is when my phone rang and I had to go meet my friends down the road and would unfortunately have to miss out.  I’m really curious as to how often this little scam works for him…

Now for the most important part of the journey and a fundamental reason why I am here; Food.  The food is great and it is everywhere.  I am under the impression that Thai’s don’t cook for themselves simple because it’s just cheaper to eat off the street stalls and probably better tasting.  Everything from Pad Thai, to chicken on a stick to fruits that you ain’t never seen or tried anywhere else, to amazing noodle soups to curry’s up the wazoo to the oh so good Som Tom (papaya salad), this place has got it all.  There’s plenty of western/ferang food restaurants but I think the food there sucks.  It’s pretty much just burgers, sandwiches, pizza, western breakfasts and other crap food like that.  Seeing that kind of food makes me realize how I have no interest in “Western Food”.  The only bad meal that I’ve had here was my first day in town when I had a western style breakfast the rest of the time I think you’re hard pressed to find a bad meal so long as it’s of a local variety.  Just this night Bow took us to a local market where we were the only white people there.  It was funny to get split up and look over the crowd to try and find Jonas or Erik and see a tall blond head of hair over the hundreds of jet black heads a few inches lower than them.  At the entrance to the market I was enticed by this guy’s stall where the most pungent curry I had ever smelled caught my nose and I was drawn in.  I made my order and he said it’s very spicy and I said good.  It was this amazing green curry with fish over noodles and you would sit yourself down in the stall where all these veggies were, load up your dish with whatever veggies you wanted and dig in.  I finished off my curry and had some noodles left so I asked for a bit more, expecting to pay a bit more.  He put some more on and looked a bit surprised that I could take the heat.  After I finished off it off he asked if I wanted more.  I said no that I was good but he insisted and said it was free so I couldn’t refuse and wolfed down the second bowl.  It was one of the best meals that I’ve had in Thailand and it was all for a whopping 20baht, not even $1 Canadian.  It was so good and so nice and spicy hot.  I went and met up with Erik, Jonas and Bow afterwards and they said that my lips and around my mouth were a different color from the heat.  The guy from the stall walked by us and he stopped and talked to Bow saying something in Thai to her and gave me thumbs up.  I guess he said that he though it was really cool that ate that curry with no problems as it was considered extremely hot and that even most Thai’s can’t handle it.  Champion of the Universe.

As for my other guilty little pleasure, coffee, it’s been hit or miss.  On my last day in Oz I found this place where the person that was awarded Australia’s best barista (coffee maker) worked so making the transition from that to here was a bit rough at first.  I’ve had some ok cups of coffee and few bad cups but to off set that I’ve also had a couple amazing cups.  In Ao Nang I found this little cafe that served nothing but coffee and man could those lady’s pour an amazing cup.  I kept going back there over and over when I was in town and was never disappointed.  I thought that I had been spoiled while in Oz with the amazing coffee they had there and thought I would never have another good cup until I got to Laos or Vietnam but lone behold I was wrong and would rank the cups I had there as some of the best coffee I’ve ever had. 

So that’s Thailand thus far, I took a bunch of pics of the Grand Palace and other places but just need to load them up, in which I link to in a bit.

Still here in Thailand and lone behold, I’m having a blast.  It’s interesting what difference a day can make because here I am loving this place now and finding it growing on me like a weird fungus that appears one morning when you wake up.  But anyway’s, I’ll start at the begining of the trip.

Bangkok, baby
So I got into BKK (that’s slang for Bangkok for those who are in the know) on Halloween, jumped on a bus and went into the city.  I had researched which busses I needed to take so I preoceeded to do just that.  I got into the city and made my way to the second bus station at Victory Monument to look for bus number 88 or something like that but couldn’t find it anywhere.  I circled around the place like 3 times looking for it or someone who could speak English but couldn’t find anyone.  Finally I jumped into a cab and said Khoa San road, which is were all the foreigners go as there’s pretty cheap accomidation and it’s the place to be (aka the rats next).  On the way I had a of a broken conversation with the cabbie and let it slip that I just got in from the airport.  When we got to Khoa San the cabbie said the fair was 300baht regadless of what, or what I think was, the meter said.  I grudgingly paid him as I was tired and pretty much bewildered with everything going on around me.  I later found out that since he found out that I came from the airport that he would charge me the airport fair instead of the city meter fair.  Welcome to Thailand.

So I find a nice place to stay and proceed to have one of the best sleeps I’ve had in months. Finally, a room to myself, with a fan, something oh so foreign in Oz.  I spend to next two day’s pretty much just hanging around the Khoa San area, eatting the amazing food, looking for a bus ticket, setting myself up, and acclimatizing to the place and simply taking in all the chaos that surrounded me.  I met a couple of other Canadians at the guesthouse, a couple from Camrose of all places and a girl from Victoria.  From what I’ve seen thus far of other travellers here in Thailand the mindset is very cool and a breath of fresh air from what I left behind.  Seems to be really easy to meet people and I think that might be from the lack of English. On the last day I was in town me and the girl from Victoria, Kirsty (I think) were killing some time before our busses left so we went for a walk down the way going down a road neither of us had gone down before.  Along the way we ate jackfruit which is this amazing yellow fruit to die for, there seems to be a lot of crazy fruits here that you ain’t never seen and pineapple, lots and lots of pineapple.  I don’t think I’ve eaten more pineapple in my life since I’ve gotten here, it’s everywhere.  In my rice, in my curry, served on a stick by a vendor.  It rocks. 

Anyways, we’re walking down the street and run into this English fellow who asks us for directions.  So picture 3 white people standing on the corner with a map pulled out trying to figure out where to go; easy target.  We get approached by this one fellow who helps us out and proceedes to tell us about how today in Buddha day and how we can get into many of the temples on this specific day, free of charge.  Great we say and start to walk off in the direction of the closest temple but are stopped by us and told that we should just take a Tuk Tuk (little motorbikes with a carage on the back), one which by complete coincedince I’m sure, pulls up beside us.  Now there’s something you need to know about Tuk Tuk’s in Bangkok, you can either pay around 200baht and go where you want to go or you can pay 30baht and go where you want to go.  The catch is, is that when you pay 30baht you proceed to go around to different stores where they try to sell you shit, mainly gems or else to tailors where they try to sell you a suit.  In turn the Tuk Tuk driver get’s a 200b fuel voucher from the place.  We know about this but figure we might as well go for it and hop in.  Pretty much as soon as we get in we realize that the guy who gave us directions and told us about Buddha day and the temples was buddies with the driving.  Well played.  So we go around to a couple of the temples, see some sights, get pulled over by the cops in which the tuk tuk driver gets a ticket for driving on a no tuk tuk.  At the last temple, the Lucky Buddha temple, we start to talk to one of the curators of the place asking him a couple questions.  Somewhere in the conversation the topic gets turned to clothes and we’re suddenly being told the best place in the city to get a custom made suit is at Top’s Tailors or something like that.  I walk out of the temple and ask Kirsty and the English guy if he was just trying to sell us on buying a suit and they all agreed he was.  So we hop back into the tuk tuk with full knowledge that we are going to a store next but insist on only 1 stop, not the usual 3 that many people go on before the driver gives up.  Now what’s the shop we end up in?  Top’s Tailors.  I couldn’t help but laugh.  We go in a muddle around for about 10 minutes pretending to be interested so that the driver will get his voucher and we won’t have to go anywhere else.  The suits and tailoring there was amazing and at pretty much next to nothing for the price.  When I left there I had in my mind that I was so going to go back there and buy a suit.  About 10 minutes later I asked myself, “when was the last time I wore a suit?” so the suit idea was quickly scrapped but I am tempted to go back there and see if they could fix me up with some decent shirts in a style that I like. 

After that I pretty much said cya to the people I was hanging with and went to the bus off to Krabi and Hat Ton Sai.  Bangkok is a hell of a place; I don’t think it’s great nor is it beautiful but dam is it cool. I’ve often complained that everyone is OZ seems to be selling you something and the same thing can easily be said about here but at a times 10 scale.  The thing that makes it tollorable, actually funny thus far at least, is the way they go about doing it, like in the way I had explained about.  I read this book called “Video Night in Kathmandu” before I left to here and it really goes into depth about the cross culture that is occuring and puts a lighter spin on the whole thing making fun of much that’s going on.  I think reading that has sort of made it a lot easier here, I now look at a lot of things that seem just off the wall and very un-Asian to be quite humorous now and just sit back and laugh at it instead of getting upset about a lost cutlure like for instance Ronald McDonald giving the Thai greating, the weird rice paddy buns and the microwavable curry and rice you can buy at 7-11 instead of microwavable burgers and nachos. I reccomend the book, it was a funny read.

Krabi
So after an overnight bus I get to Krabi, from there I took a longboat to East Rai Lai, which is the mid-range accomidation and over to West Rai Lai which is the expensive accomidation side.  I walked through there and made my way to Hat Ton Sai, the poor party of the area.  The area is basically all beach resorts and simply range in price.  I had to march over this little mountain thing to get there which was a bit fun with all my gear and Mike’s climbing rope and equipment.  It was crazy, along the way there I see this group of guys and ask them which way to Ton Sai.  One of the guy’s in the group had had his blog of his travels in Asia posted on Crossfit.com and whom I coresponded with a little on travel in Asia.  Small world.

I found my way over the little hill/mountain and through the jungle to Hat Ton Sai no problems.  I could have taken a longboat I guess or waited until the tied went out and walked around but didn’t.  I found a very rustic little bungalo for 150b a night and crashed there.  The first day couple days I hung out with Meoard from Isreal and just sat on the beach chilling out.  On the 3rd I went on a tour of the local islands, snorkeling along the way.  At this point I started to get really really borred and felt extremely exhusted for no reason.  I began to think that being on the road for a year was starting to take it’s toll on me and maybe I should cut it short.  I went out to the full moon party that night and pretty much kept to myself, feeling very tired and confused.  The next day I headed into the next town over Ao Nang.  There are no roads to Rai Lai or Ton Sai and everything gets in by boat.  Like I say, it’s a beach side resort and I think that was one of the problems; I went from busy ass BKK to a resort with no in between and it hit me.  After spending the day in Ao Nang and heading back to Ton Sai had a work out, a great meal and felt re-newed.  I went to the local bar at our guest house and met a great group of people and chilled out with them.  One of the guys, Glen from England saw me working out earlier and dubbed me Private Joker ala Full Metal Jacket so for the rest my tenure there we were yelling military orders at each other.  Also met some really cool guys from Sweden, one of which was here with his Thai g/f who used to live on Ton Sai and run a scuba shop before the tsunami took everything away.  From there things just seemed to get better in Ton Sai and the place really started to grow on me. 

Climbing
So finally Mike shows up and we get together one morning for some climbing, which was pretty much the main reason I went there.  Mike came here with his g/f Susan and her parents who flew into England for a quick visit with her and to meet Mike for the first time.  This place is a mecca for climbing with amazing limestone rock all over the place and hundreds of carved routes all throughout the islands.  I had done a little indoor stuff back home and went once with him in Sydney but had never been outdoors so this was all new to me and I have to say it was amazing.  I went out twice with Mike and once by myself roping up with other people and each time had a blast.  On the last day there I was fighting with myself wether I should stay, but a bunch of equipment and climb more or take off.  I decide on taking off but I must say I think I am hooked now; I couldn’t stop thinking about it when i wasn’t doing it and could help myself from stopping along the path I was walking and watch people climb.  The other climbers that I met and climbed with were al great and super friendly.  I met a girl from back home who trained out of the UofA climbing wall and worked at MEC so that was pretty cool.  She said there’s definately a gread following back home with lots of excursions in the Rocky’s during the season so there’s a bonus for when i get back.  I had a great time climbing that I’m still sitting here wondering if I should jump back on to the boat, head over back to Ton Sai and go climbing more but alas, for another time.  I think now that I’ve gotten a taste for it I have another reason to come back here and hve already in my mind to get some more experience under my belt and come back here for a full season like so other people that I met here were doing but I guess that’s for another trip down the road.

So other then climbing for a couple days, I spent my time checking out the area, hiking around and chilling out. The day before Mike came, me and another guy from Oz decided to go on a jungle treck to Ao Nang, the next town over. The main way to get there was by longboat but I had heard rumors that there was a train there so we went about our way to find this mystical trail. We asked around some of the locals where it was, most said you couldn’t go, others blankly pointed in the towns general direction so we headed off into the jungle with the tidbits of info we had. We searched for like an hour bush wacking and trampling through some heavy jungle finding some pretty cool stuff like an old guest house bungallo village close to the top of the his that had been abandonded for quite some time and surrounded by an opium and weed crop, just kidding it was surrounded by bananas. As we were trampling through the jungle the topic came up that if this was anywhere else in South East Asia, walking through the jungle on unmarked paths would probably mean certain death or at least a loss of a limp from all the unexploded mines and bombs in place like Loas, Cambodia and Vietnam but fortunately we were in safe and sound Thailand so we marched on. We headed back down to Ton Sai and manged to find someone with better info and took it from there.  The hike/scramble itself wasn’t too bad, the worst of it being all the mosquitoes that completely ignored the bug spray I used, probably because I just sweated it all off, and I think the aimless walking through the jungle we did was even worse.  On the other side of the little cliff we had to hike there was this amazing 5-star restort they’re building with it’s own private beach so we snuck onto it and jumped into the ocean.  The water is rediculously warm here so it didn’t do too much to cool us down but still felt rad.

What else now that’s worth mentioning.  Oh yeah me and Mike climbined down into this cool hidden lagoon one day.  I’ll mention that Susan came along with us but didn’t go all the way down to the lagoon a she didn’t want to bother using her incredible climbing skills on such a measly decent and climb.  As I mentioned before this place is broken up into different beaches and areas, West Rai Lai, which is the expensive area, East Rai Lai, the moderately priced area and finally Ton Sia, the cheap area.  Again, to get to Ton Sai it’s either through the water during low tide or a hike/scramble through the jungle or a longboat ride.  Each night I would usually go and meet Mike, Susan and her parents for dinner and climb my way back in the dark with my flash light to lead the way.  It’s a bit of a tricky scramble in the dark but not too bad and was pretty comfortable with it after a couple treaks up untill one night I was going through when I crossed paths with a big huge ass snake about 4-5″ diameter at it’s thickest point.  I’m pretty sure it was a python and was wrapped around a big rock.  It slowly slithered away into the forest and that was the last I saw of it.  The only thing I was thinking when i saw it was, “Holy Shit.  Holy Shit.  Holy Shit.  Holy Shit….”.  After that I swear every root and branch looked like a snake.  To further my jungle explorations the next night that I was making my scramble back home my flashlight started to die and about 30m into the jungle I realized I was screwed if I didn’t turn around right then and there and go back the way i came.  When I got back to the side I started my flashlight was pretty much completely dead and I was stuck in West Rai Lai for the the night.  My plan was then to borrow one of the mats they had laying on the beach and camp over night on the beach untill morning.  I was pretty mcuh set on this plan but then met a couple who were in the same seat as I and wouldn’t hear of such things.  They tried to convince me to try and find new batteries in one of the local mini marts but they didn’t seem to understand that we would all need flashlights to walk through and one was only enough for one person.  Finally they managed to find a longboat to take us over to Ton Sai so I grudgingly accepted to go along and pay the outrageous night time far.

Well I think I’ll cut ‘er off there as I have to get on the bus for an over nighter back to BKK and from there up to Chaing Mai for cooking school.  Thus far I’ll use one word to describe my time and stay in Thailand; Magical. There’s still so much shit that I’ve left out ranging from the amazing food, to the amazing people to the rats in my bungalow but all those stories will have to wait.

I posted up a bunch more pics here and Mike will be dropping off more that he took of us climbing and hanging out.

Keep Safe
Troy

Hey all, I find myself writing from Thailand and thought I’d just give a quick update as to the what’s what.  This will be a quick one that pretty much goes all over the map.  I landed here late Halloween night, got ripped off by the taxi driver, found a decent place to stay and had a really great sleep in my own room, something I haven’t done for a good while.  I spent a couple day’s in BKK, wandering around, eating the food and smelling the smells.  It’s a pretty bizarre place and at time I felt major sensory overload so I jumped out of town as quick as I could down to a place called Krabi, which is in the south.  I’m meeting my cousin here and we plan to do some climbing.  I’ve been here a couple day’s now and am rather borred.  Don’t get me worng, it’s a beautiful place and all, great beaches, decent snorkeling, gorgeous resort, neat little bars with a real chilled out air in them… all the things that I really don’t have much an interest in.  So I’m eager for Mike to show up and try out some climbing.  If I enjoy it I’ll stay, if not I’ll go.  I had made a promose to myself when I left Oz not to get myself into a situation where I wasn’t having fun and couldn’t leave but sure enough at my first stop here in Thailand I’m doing just that.  For shame.

Enough bitching, which I seem to do a lot of.  Thailand is pretty cool and pretty bizzare all at the same time.  The main place that all the tourists go is a place called Khoa San Road, which is like a place that a bunch foreigners decided to set up camp and make a place for their very own right smack dab in the middle of a bunch of poor Thais, they all turned around and decided to sell all the foreigners stuff.  It’s pretty strange to walk off the main roads where there’s hundreds of white people everywhere, into the side alley ways and see the Thais’ living their daily lives in the middle of all the hovel.

Everything is fairly cheap here but not that cheap; Street food is a bargain and super good, and accomidation is inexpensive.  I had my own room with toilet and shower for 190baht, which converts to like less than $6 can. 

So right now I’m in Krabi, spent the first day unwiding, the second sitting on the beach and hanging out with an Isreali fellow I met, Meoard, then yesterday I took a tour of the neighbouring Islands, went snorkeling and sat on the beach some more.  I am now officially beached out and care not to see another one for quite some time but I guess I will since the bungalow I’m stayin in is right on it.  I was told that when the tsunami came it went as far as my hut so I should be good if another one happens.  My hut that I’m staying in is pretty rustic to say the least.  It’s basically a wooden hut with wicker walls, a bed and a mosquito net.  Oh and there’s a chair.  But it’s all mine for the bottom price of 150b ($4.60 can).  The food on the island is alright but it ain’t no street food and not as cheap.  Anyways, today I went to a different town around the bend and marched around, sat at cafe’s, at street food did a bit of shopping and talked to, or at least tried to, some Thai’s.  They’re good people and I’m finding that if you even make the slightest effort to learn a few phrases and words, you’ll get a huge smile.

My internet time is just about up so I have to leave it at that. I hope to get a proper update in the next little bit but it might be another week if all goes well with climbing and might noly do an update in BKK.

Oh yeah, and here’s a slew of Pics

It’s day 2 here in Sydney and I am bored so I decided to write on here. I fly out on the 31st and am just killing the days away. I’m stuck in a hostel for the next couple days but I’m doing my best to not be there except to sleep. I’m not doing any cooking there, instead just making salad and eating raw foods. I’m also eating out at all until I get to Thailand, which is a bit tough. I keep walking by restaurants, stopping and reading the menu, thinking what I would order if I were to go in but I’m denying myself this to make food abroad just that much better. Weird I know but I believe a little self-denial makes those things just that more nice. I was going to completely abstain from getting coffee and tea at cafe’s but as I aimlessly wander around I find myself drawn to them for a place to sit and chill out

I’ve been just wanding around the city the last couple days, seeing some of the sights that I’ve never seen before and revisiting old ones from when I first arrived nearly a year ago. The weathers been shit the last bit and was crazy windy today which made it dam cold. I’m sure I’ll miss the cool weather as Bangkok seems to be holding out at a balmy 28-32 everyday

Sydney Botanic Gardens, haven’t been here since my second day in OZ

My family is long gone now, it was a bit of a tearful good-bye but we made it as quick as possible. I had a good time with them but there was a bit too much running around for my liking. I was hoping to just spend more quality time with them all but I forget that they were all on vacation and wanted to see things, do things, buy things and that they had seen each other pretty much on a daily basis back home. I did manage some good quality time though, mom, Tiff and I went for coffee one day for a couple hours and the last day it was just me and mom wandering around and sitting at a cafe drinking tea. Those two times were worth all the running around hassles and seemingly aimless car rides that we so frequently ventured on. I was about to go insane a couple times while in the car; I figure in those 3 weeks I had spent more time in a car then I had in the last year. I enjoyed the driving with my sister and Tracy as it was in the country but all the city driving had me at wits end. In the end I wish we had another week to just do nothing and relax. I scratch my head when people say that they need a vaction from their vaction and are eager to get home. Frankie says RELAX

So for the next couple day’s I’m going to be bored. The first day, the day everyone left was good as I hit the gym with the Crossfit Crew and then went wall climbing with Mike later that day so that really took my mind off of the day’s events and the fact I don’t know when I’ll see them all again. Ends up Mike is going up to Thailand also, getting there on the 7th or something and is pretty much going for the climbing in Krabi, which is where I was referenced that I should check out by lots of people so odds are we’ll be getting together there and doing some climbing, which should be pretty cool.

I’ve got mixed feelings about Thailand and Asia. I’m dam excited at the potential that it brings but I’m a bit afraid that it’ll be like…well…Austrailia. I’m contantly being assured it won’t be though and that there is more than the piss tank culture that’s at times seems to be the only thing here, while staying at a hostel that is. People accuse me of being cheap and I am to extent but the reality of it is, is that this place is bloody expensive and I never feel like I’m getting my money’s worth. I’m a simple guy, I don’t like buying pointless stuff/junk as I view it all as clutter plus where am I going to put it? All I ask for is good food at a fair price and a decent place to stay, something that this country doesn’t seem to afford.

$20 for an 8 bedroom dorm that looks like this is, to put it lightly, shit

Ahhh, the Australian backpacker scene…how I will never miss you…

Yeah I could splurge and put myself in a nicer place but remember, when you itinerary is stretched over a one year period and driving principle is no itinerary, you have to make every cent count.

Regardless, after all the bitching of OZ that I’ve done I will miss it and the great people that I’ve met here. It’s the people that I’ve met here that have made the experience. If I had to choose between one experience of wwoofing that involved the people that I stayed, lived and who’s family that I was part of over all of the sights that I had seen, I would take that one group of people and experience I had with them over everything else. Rocks, beaches and trees have always been there and always will, it’s people that come and go. Or so says I.
I will say though, that one really great thing about travelling Australia is the different ways you can do it, see it and live it. I managed to find my way around the hostels, backpacker scene, meet some real Aussies, and got to see how people live life in a different way. I could have jumped from hostel to hostel, town to town parying it up but that’s not me. I could have jumped in a van and driven around the country aimlessly living the life of a modern day gypsy, which I would have liked to of but never got the chance to.

I have to shake my head; I can’t believe it’s been a year that I’ve been down here but here it is.

Current Mp3 listenings: Misfits, Nick Cave, AFI, Arcade Fire

Current “radio hit” listenings: “I love it” Sneaky Sound System, “I Don’t Feel Like Dancin” Scissor Sisters

Current readings: Dracula by Bram Stoker – found it at the hostel

Troy