The romance has gone...

...from commercial air travel I have decided. It's just not exciting any more. Once upon a time a flight to anywhere was an event... they wore suits and furs and jewels, they dined in actual dining rooms on the planes... they smoked cigars... now a flight to anywhere is just an inconvenience to get somewhere, and for the airlines you are just an inconvenience they tolerate to make money. The same, for me at least, can't be said for trains. But we will get to that.

The verdict on Saigon after three days was that it is a good town, but slightly confusing. For a town of six million it has a tiny city centre. Obviously your average Vietnamese person living in the suburbs with little money doesn't have a lot of use for a city centre, but for the number of foreigners packed into its little tourist area, there is actually very little to do at night. Most bars, what there are, close at midnight or 1am. Only two, the biggest and most western on the main strip, are open late. And they aren't even good, although Allezboo (hahahah... a-lez-bo) (ok I know it's pronounced Alliboo, stupid French) is not a bad spot to sit and watch the normal Saigon traffic chaos. Rob the Canadian, who I met on the bus down, and I walked for hours trying to find the nightlife. But there is none. We even got desperate enough to jump on a couple of motos (scooter taxis) and go flying off into the drizzly night to a place called Apocalypse Now, which a friend of Rob's had told him was a "bar he had to see"... it was certainly packed out but it only took a few seconds after walking in to figure out all the guys were western but all the girls were Vietnamese, and in very small dresses. We finished our beer and got straight back on motos to the other bar.

Yesterday was mostly walking around again (and some hopping and swearing after I stood on a chunk of concrete with a nail in it and drove it about 2cm into my heel... yet another reason I detest jandals), just seeing what there was to see. My train was booked and I could only get on the late one, 2330, so we ended up back at Allezboo, peoplewatching again, to the tune of a million car, bus, van, truck and scooter horns. If there are two lasting memories I will carry from Saigon, it will be the incessant (I mean incessant, all day and half the night, one on top of another on top of another) tooting, and the constant harrassment from frikkin street hawkers and beggars... it got to the point where you just wanted to punch the little kid trying to sell you gum right in the head, seriously. They come one after the other, regardless of if you are sitting, standing, walking, eating, whatever... Mr want a book? Mr buy some gum? Mister, one dollar? baby hungry... Mr want moto? Mr where you going? Mr what you looking for? Mr, tuktuk? You can literally (this happens) get out of a tuktuk somewhere, and a guy in another tuktuk will watch you get out, and ask if you want a tuktuk. I bought a couple of books for the train trip from one of the book girls, who walk around carrying a stack of books on their hip literally as tall as they are, tied together with white ribbon. There was a long and protracted bargaining session and after much arguing and her standing and pondering and pouting for about five minutes, she decided with much frowning to take what I was offering. She pouted some more, as if I was taking food directly from her children's mouths. She walked away, looking back, frowning, shaking her head. And then she went and replaced the two books I had bought from her stack with two others, and then came back and tried to sell me those two.

So after another long wait I got to the train station via taxi, and nearly ended up punching my driver in the mouth also when he tried to tell me the meter was not working and charge me 100,000 dong. The meter said 40,000. He gave up reasonably quickly though, I guess figuring he was going to struggle to get me and all my gear out of his back seat unless he gave me my change. And I was not in the best mood.

As I said I still love trains... arriving at a train station and walking across the platform to find your carriage as the great hulking beast sits there rumbling and fuming... it's still a cool feeling every time, it's an event... And then thundering off across the countryside, bringing traffic to a halt, watching the world fly by, day and night, roaring on and on, screeching and scraping and rumbling and tooting... The 2330 train north this night was fairly full, in the Vietnamese trains the bunks are in cabins of four (for the best ones) or six (for the cheaper harder ones) and arranged east-west across the carriage rather than the Malaysian and Thai style north-south down each side of the carriage. They also had no curtains, meaning while you didn't have people walking past you up and down the aisles all night, you also didn't have any privacy from the three strangers you were bunking with. And the constant side-to-side swaying of the train, which rocks you like a baby in the Malaysian and Thai bunks, kind of makes you feel like you are sleeping in a cocktail shaker in Vietnam. I ended up bunkmates with a French couple who must have booked early as they got the favoured bottom bunks, and a Vietnamese girl on the opposite top bunk. The Frenchies obviously had a selection of massive suitcases meaning I had to cram (with some effort) my pack under one of their bottom bunks and then couldn't get to it after. Anyway before long everyone went to bed, the Vietnamese girl so disturbed about sharing a cabin with foreigners she slept with her handbag still on and her reading lamp blazing all night. I had a pretty rubbish sleep, I was already a bit sweaty and smelly from the day and I couldn't change my clothes as they were under a sleeping Frenchman (come on, it's happened to all of us right?), and I didn't want to strip down to sleep for fear of the Vietnamese girl screaming rape at the sight of my bare chest, so I slept clothed and smelly and sweated further and woke with the dawn pretty grimy.

But what a dawn it was... by the time the sun tried to peek through the clouds we were on the coast and I awoke to look out from my top bunk onto huge waves breaking over rocks below us. I got up and managed to access the top of my pack for a change of clothes and some soap, and soon was feeling much less gross. Despite the state of the toilets, which is generally best not discussed on any South East Asian train. I had already decided reports of a 29 hour train journey were greatly exaggerated, I finally figured out after much puzzling that the silly cow I got my ticket from was reading the Saigon-Hanoi travel times not the Saigon-Hue ones.
The train journey was by far one of the highlights of the trip so far, not the train so much but the countryside. After the endless palm plantation followed by rice paddies of Malaysia, Thailand and Cambodia, the Vietnamese landscape was awesome. I actually spent the entire day standing in the corridor to one side of the carriage, with the window open and my head and camera stuck out (for all the other windows were too filthy to take photos through). There was a lot of flooding around for it is the rainy season here and they have been getting it in bucketloads. But there were also farms and mountains and fog and coastline and waves and cliffs and waterfalls... it was great.

We rolled into Hue about 5, 16 hours rather than 29, and it is pretty cloudy and drizzly, despite not being far above the sea it feels like a mountain town, it is cool enough to be nearly chilly and for the first time I can walk around without sweating like an idiot. All the locals are in puffer jackets and scarves of course, but to me it is just pleasant after a month of raw heat. It seems like a very nice town, my opinions are usually formed fast and probably based on my mood, but apart from anther argument with a taxi driver (this one had his meter covered up as if he didn't have one and tried to tell me 50,000... I ended up paying 29,000) the locals seem truly nice. I got a cheap room and went and had a slightly pricey dinner, but I was sold when they said they specialised in traditional Hue-an food... interesting... unwrapped dumplings... so basically a plate covered in gooey gelatinous goo with various toppings... but the local soup that followed was much better.

I was a little disheartened about two hours after I got here when the first mammoth luxury tour bus rolled past, followed by two more... I was further disheartened when I went for a walk and saw the inferno of neon on the other side of the river... But I think for the most part my impressions will hold. It has a small-town feel, and the people are not pushy or impatient or annoying... except for the moto drivers, who are an infestation spanning Asia... Mr want moto? Mr where you going? Mr where you from? Mr I help you, one hour tour? (and then half-whispered...) Mr, want beautiful lady? Mr want marijuana? etc etc etc...

Tomorrow I will do some exploring and see what there is to see... obviously the nightlife is not huge as I have already done my wander and am back waffling on... I had better pack this up so the old Vietnamese lady who owns the place can sleep, I think I am the only person staying here... Righto, hope all is good, thanks for the emails and keep them coming...

Brief hi...

Thanks to those who have been sending news of the world, no my route doesn't take me back through Thailand, I am gutted I am missing the action though... there was some when I was there but it is definitely picking up. Been meeting a lot of people who were supposed to be going there now or flying home via Bangkok and they are all screwed!! As far as I know there is still not a great deal of danger to tourists etc though, it is just a political thing. Stuff like that can change quickly though

I am heading north tonight, it's a long haul, lot of country to cover. I hope all is well with everyone will check in again soon

Take it easy

Good afternoon Vietnam...

It is day 2 of Saigon and it is sticky and hot and wet and muggy... the rains just came in on schedule, not a downpoor like yesterday, just enough to make it damper and not enough to cool the place down. I have been on the ground in Saigon (for that is what everyone here still calls it despite Uncle Ho's name change) for right on 24 hours and I have to say it seems like a pretty awesome town. It's the right mix of everything for me, history both local and colonial, culture the same, friendly happy people who are used to having foreigners kicking around but also comfortable to run their own place their own way.

The trip from Phnom Penh was painless enough, I decided to go to sleep that night in my scummy overpriced hotel - with a bed made of a single slab of high density foam that I didn't even dent when I jumped on it - and decide what I was doing based on what time I woke up... as it happens I woke in good time to catch a ride to Vietnam and after wandering aimlessly for a while without finding a bus or travel agent I grabbed a tuktuk driver who understood "bus, Vietnam, go now"... he took me to a big travel agent who had a bus going at 0830, which was fine and good, but as we got back in the tuktuk to go to the bus I saw another office with signs for Phnom Penh - Ho Chi Minh (Saigon) and told him to stop... much to his annoyance as he was getting a commission from the other place (as they all do, they take you to whoever they have an "arrangement" with). The second place also had a bus going at 0830 and I just got a better feeling about it so I went with them... as it turned out I saw the first bus, which I would have been on, en route, and it was a double decker packed to the roof with locals and rather miserable looking tourists. Our bus on the other hand was a nice new small bus with good aircon and only about a dozen people on it...

I met a Canadian guy called Rob, since he happened to be in the tuktuk they sent to take me to the bus office, and we got along, so when we got dropped in the city we wandered a couple of budget hotels together (helped by "friendly" locals who grabbed everyone coming off the bus and dragged them to whatever guesthouse was paying them to drag people) and found a pretty good place with a couple of rooms... with the rains coming in and a six hour bus ride behind us we did the only sensible thing and found a bar and drank local beer.

Today I got up pretty early again and started exploring, heading to the War Remnants Museum before the tours got there... it was a predictably disappointing affair with a few tanks and a couple of aircraft and several small buildings with displays of the heroic Vietnamese people fighting off the evil oppressive French and American capitalists... while the war was definitely no fun for anyone, it's certainly interesting to see such a one-eyed perspective, considering how ridiculously pathetically PC all of us western folk are these days. The only redeeming feature was a display of photographs from famous war photographers from both sides, all of whom died during the conflict... but of course yet again, the only attrocities were the ones undertaken by the evil white folk.

That aside the rest of the city was cool, very lively and colourful and interesting. I saw most of the rest of the sights in about six hours of wandering but I can tell it would be a great place to hang around and just chill out. Sadly that is not an option this time around. I have a 29 hour train journey in my not too distant future... Time is ticking and if I want to achieve a few things in Hong Kong and China I will have to skip through Vietnam as I have with everywhere... such is what it is... take care all

Oh yes... and about last Tuesday...

My second post of the day... By popular demand, and while I am without anything to do...

Obviously the story of last Tuesday (it was Tuesday wasn't it?) didn't end with me standing on Hellfire Pass, and while that definitely was a defining moment, there is more to tell... And it led to one of those rare and unexpected situations you don't get unless you are travelling like I am.

As the darkness came in from below and to each side as it only does in the jungle, I had gone there to make my pilgrimage knowing full well I might never get the chance again, and also knowing full well there would be no way back to Bangkok, or even back to Kanchanaburi afterwards. The buses had stopped running south before I even got there and with the departure of the last tour van as I got there, there was nothing else but to walk to the road and sit and see what came past. At that point, to be honest, I was more than happy to sleep on the pass, I had precious little in the way of gear, but I did have insect repellent, possibly the one most vital thing to have... I wasn't going to starve or die of dehydration before the morning... and there was something strangely comforting about the place, despite everything.

With this in mind I walked my way back up to the road on the off chance I may get lucky... the first thing I saw was one of the little rashackle food huts you see on roadsides all over Asia, a thatched roof and no walls, a few tables and basic homecooked food for the locals. I wandered up and thanked the Almighty there was someone there, and promptly grabbed a coke and a bottle of water from the fridge. The lady running the place looked a little bemused and said several times before I understood "No bus Kanchanaburi!!" she led me by the arm and pointed to a clock "No bus!!" I smiled and nodded and tried to tell her I knew that... She watch as I wandered off in the direction of the road and headed south.

Various vehicles passed, mostly locals on scooters heading home, a few trucks and vans... several slowed for a look at me as they approached then carried on their way. I was doing the mental arithmetic, the nearest civilisation I had noted on the way up was about 10km away.. I was planning on waiting until I was out of sight of the food hut before jumping the fence and heading back around to find somewhere to put my head down, but just then I heard a scooter approach and slow behind me. I turned to see the lady from the food hut, and her husband, and their little kiddie of about 5, pull up beside me.. the conversation that followed is a bit hard to explain but mostly involved her talking to me in Thai asthough I understood her, and her husband and I swapping confused looks asthough neither of us really knew what she was on about. I made the international "walking fingers" sign and various others to try to communicate that I was going to walk to a hotel I had seen.. she wasn't having any of this, and started telling me to get on the scooter... I smiled and nodded and shook my head and said I was ok and tried to walk away several times but to no avial, she wasn't having it, and they obviously didn't want me walking down the road in the dark alone. I think I got across the idea that I was going to find a hotel and she decided this was a good idea, but after much to-ing and fro-ing it became clear I wasn't going to be allowed to carry on alone. With significant concerns re structural integrity, and having the deaths of a young family on my conscience, I climbed onto the back of the scooter (it wasn't even a big scooter) and kiddie, mum, dad and I puttered off into the night, weaving disturbingly a bit here and there down the winding roads, and much to the delight of other locals we passed... after about five minutes we pulled off the road and up a driveway. I initially thought they meant for me to stay there the night, but we established they had taken me there as they thought one of the ladies could speak English. She couldn't... but she knew someone who could... kind of... so a couple of abstract cellphone calls later we established they had a friend who had a car who could take me to a hotel. But they didn't. The friend with the car couldn't make it, although I at first thought he said he could, and there was a period of some waiting... EVENTUALLY we established that the dad would in fact take me the rest of the way via scooter, and payment (which I had asked the sort-of-English-speaking guy about) was entirely up to me... I thanked everyone profusely, feeling worse and worse for the drama and wishing I had stayed on the pass.

Dad and I again whizzed off, stopping to top up with gas at a "petrol station" (two pumps with a shelter). I tried to give Thai dad some money and he refused and refused, when he finally relented he tapped the dollar value on the pump, indicating I could pay the 80 baht (NZ$4) in gas... I shook my head and pressed 200 baht into his hand, and he looked at it and his face lit up. He tried to give it back but I refused. Without words to be able to express anything he just smiled and we climbed back on the scooter, and eventually after some time got to the hotel sign I had seen. The River Kwai Village Hotel. Sounded nice enough, and from the sign I guessed was fairly modest, with a cheap room in the sticks for a place to lay my head. Until I saw the bigger sign. The River Kwai Village Hotel Jungle Resort. And then I saw the security barrier... and the guardhouse... but Thai dad on the front turned and smiled and went "Yes, yes?" and I felt guilty so I said "Yes" and tried to grin like I meant it... I knew I was in more trouble when the double laned asphalt drive over the rise and down the hill was wider and better than the public road we came off... and there were signs for ATV tours, riverboats, jungle walks, etc... I knew I was in even more trouble when we passed the six double decker tour buses outside the drivers quarters, which I had from a distance hoped was the hotel... I knew I was in REAL trouble when we wound down a hill to the river through manicured jungle to be greeted by a huge complex, three more shiney tour buses unloaded very well dressed white folk, and a large elaborately lit entrance way into an expansive lobby... Thai dad stopped short on the scooter as the tour bus crowds began to turn and look... I shook his hand and we smiled and said things that neither of us understood a word of, and he rode off into the dark..

I turned and regarded this new and unexpected development. I knew it wasn't going to go well, and considered walking back up the drive, but I just felt guilty, it seemed kind of like throwing the kindness of my Thai samaritans back in their faces... so I sucked it up and turned and strolled casually toward the lobby. You have to paint the mental picture here... It's dark and these folk in very nice clothes are coming off their air conditioned luxury coaches, probably direct from the airport, at a resort in the middle of nowhere, and being handed iced beverages from tables set up outside the front of the hotel as they are directed to the balcony restaurant overlooking the river. A lonely scooter putts up behind them carrying a local chappy and a large tanned white guy, filthy and smelly, with scruffy hair, five days stubble, a sweat and dirt stained tshirt, long pants and hiking boots. The dirty white chap gets off the scooter, shoulders his bag, shakes the brown chaps hand, and then strolls past into the lobby...

And into the lobby I went... I knew I was in further trouble when I saw the gift shop... and the jewellery shop... and the lounge areas... and the somewhat smarmy and condescending guy behind the counter showed me photos of the rooms and asked various questions I will not go into... so to spite him I dug into my bag and pulled out a wad of (almost all my) money and told him I would happily take one of his rooms... and so I did...

I tried to avoid the wealthy clientelle as much as possible, getting many curious looks whenever we crossed paths... at first it was actually good fun obviously, it all felt rather Indiana Jones...... I had no spare clothes so could only shower and put back on my damp and stinking rags, and not being able to afford the food in the plush looking restaurant and being conscious enough of my state to not inflict it on others, I retired to the pool bar where I had a couple of beers, after the staff had quietly gone to the reception to make sure I was in fact a guest and could pay for them... I did of course have a bit of fun, raising eyebrows at one table of French folk who I kept catching looking at me over their cocktails, and talking quietly at the same time... Obviously I was something of a mystery, sitting alone looking rugged and weathered.. or possibly I was doing something to ruin the mood of the place... I eventually tired of catching their looks and decided to take an active part in their indignation by blowing cigarette smoke into the fan whenever it pointed in their direction...

Running out of money all round and conscious I still had to get back to Kanchanaburi... and then Bangkok... the next day, I retired to my nice (though not exactly five star) room.

I had asked the guy at the counter if there were vans going south the next day.. he looked me up and down again and said there were local buses if I walked up to the road... as I thought... So that is what I did, the next morning as tourbus after tourbus thundered past, off on their merry tours, I walked back up the hill to the road and sat on the side and waited til a bus came. Back in Kanchanaburi I searched in vain for a minibus heading back, but they were all waiting til late afternoon for their passengers, so another local bus later, and mid afternoon I got back to Bangkok, and my first meal in 46 hours... and so it came to pass...From Bangkok to Kwai to stranded on Hellfire Pass, to the milk of human kindness from unknown friends.. to a night in a resort.. that was last Tuesday and Wednesday

Okay, it may have been wrong of me...

...to brand Phnom Penh a sh!thole after being here for thirty minutes (note I didn't say I was wrong, I said it may have been wrong of me...)

But having spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the place... well, it's basic at best... which is what I expected but I was in a bad mood getting off the bus from Siem Reap, which I caught this morning, and which was packed full and uncomforable... a Cambodian man fell asleep on me... he didn't even take me dancing first...

Siem Reap on the other hand was a "nice town", I hate to admit but despite it's blatant commercialism (over one million visitors a year go to see the Angkor temple area) it has retained something of itself and its people. And the residents are nice and hospitable and even funny and good to get to know.. they aren't dead in the eyes like I have to say I think the Thais are... they haven't yet sold their souls for the dollars, and I hope, and I think, that the Cambodian government may have caught it in time... The place is gloriously free of the diseases that infect Thailand... McDonalds, Burger King, KFC, Starbucks and a 7/11 convenience store on every street. The Cambodians enjoy their visitors, they don't yet resent them, they still see them as people, and it is reciprocated.

Anyway, yesterday I went and saw Angkor Wat, the vast complex of temples and palaces etc dating back hundreds of years from various dynasties and kingdoms... it is impressive indeed, despite obviously being inundated with tour buses of every nationality. There were thousands of people but the enormity of the park is such you can occasionally find a quiet spot, if only briefly, and maybe snap a photo that doesn't feature a fat pasty old couple dabbing their faces and staring in disbelief as their guide tells them they should climb the stairs of whatever attractoin you are at. I hired a tuktuk early in the morning and my driver and I did the rounds at warp speed, the initial tour we did was supposed to take a full day and we knocked it out in four hours, he cutting the traffic queues and weaving in and out of pasty old people to the temple, telling me what the name was, me jumping off and powerwalking up, down, around and through it, camera snapping away, then back on the tuktuk waiting on the other side and Warp 9 to the next pile of rocks... so we got around a goodly number of places in the burning hot sun and after about six hours I was drenched in sweat and ready to pass out, and we had seen all the major sights, so I let 3502 (for that was his number and that is what we shall call him, for I forget his name) knock off early and I retired to a pub for a couple of recovery beers. While fascinating and vast I fail to understand how some people do three day tours of the place... I mean after half a day all the piles of rocks looked the same...

Anyway, worth doing to sa you have and I will be spending months sorting photos when I get home. Today I sorted my Vietnamese visa which has been a bit of a saga (various reports said it took anything from two days to ten) but in the end just involved me walking to the embassy (a LOT further than I thought) after a fairly devastating rainstorm and submitting some details, and obviously they liked me because while they sent all the Brits and various others away and told them to come back tomorrow, they told me to sit and I was handed a nice shiny visa about 30 minutes later. I was planning on a couple of nights here but with time ticking and really precious little more to actually see in this town I may look at a country change tomorrow, if I can find something with wheels going in the right direction... phew... anyway, that's the situation folks... I am going back to my scungy hotel for a cold beverage...

Just checking in again...

To allay some concern re the last couple of days... I am in a prehistoric internet place in Siem Reap, Cambodia... this post is dedicated to John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats and Mr E. 0f The Eels for showing us the beautiful in the tragic and the tragic in the beautiful, the ordinary in the magical and the magical in the ordinary... yes, I had music for once! Blessed protector of sanity... My battered little mp3 player actually worked for the whole bus ride yesterday instead of crashing half way through one song...

Anyway... Went to Muai Thai (Thai kickboxing) at the stadium Wednesday night, not too bad, rather chaotic... yesterday I jumped in a cab to the northern bus terminal and left Bangkok on the first bus that was going the right way, around 12.30 in the afternoon - ok there were earlier ones but I dont get up earlier unless I have to - this keyboard has no apostrophes or brackets by the way... The bus was non-eventful, about five hours to the border town of Aranyaprathet. Scenic enough if you like rice, although there were a lot of mini-garden centres, east Thailand is all about the rural stuff, so for hundreds of metres in long stretches every house is surrounded by little shrubs and plants and such that you can buy for your garden. Aranyaprathet is, as I said, a border town, which in SE Asia usually = scummy... my hotel was basic to say the least, but it was all I needed. I elected not to wander in the evening for once, primarily as I didnt want to leave my pack unattended. The next morning I rose early and headed for the border, to get there ahead of the buses and buses of Thais coming in their thousands to cross over and gamble at the casinos about 100m across the bridge... There are a million horror stories of the Thai-Cambodia border crossing including some I heard from Canadians I met in Bangkok... some of these are a bit exaggerated and some probably due to inexperienced travellers getting into trouble... I will not waffle on but I will encourage you to have a quick read of:
www.talesofasia.com/cambodia-overland-bkksr-self.htm
... this is a pretty accurate but not overstated account of what it is like, and how my morning went. Fun fun!!

I put on my sunglasses and my seriously dont mess with me face and made my way through. By coincidence I bumped into a German couple I had seen the night before on the bus and asked if they wanted to split a cab, which started off as a good idea until I realised they had already fallen for the charms of a nice young Cambodian who was "helping" them through... so we ended up getting loaded onto a "courtesy" bus that took us (via dirt track that is the road) (hey I found a key that makes brackets... not the bracket key of course) to their taxi depot... I tried to convince the other two that we should go for a walk down the "road" to find a cheaper cab but all this guys lies had them convinced and the girl clearly didn't want to be there any more (the apostrophe key is the one next to the key where the apostrophe would usually be) and from the looks on their faces I could see they didn't have the fortitude to press the issue... so I was left with the choice of getting ripped off, paying for a whole car myself, or waiting the maybe four hours until some more tourist types came across from Bangkok. I relented and we shelled out 800 baht each for the trip... after I got in a near-yelling match with the scummy guy doing the dealing... two or three times.

I have heard the ride from the border to Siem Reap compared to a scene from Mad Max, which is completely unfair. In Mad Max they have roads, and the ride here is longer than the movie. The "taxis" are in fact all nearly-destroyed Toyota Camry's with jacked-up suspension. The normal speed is around 70 up to 100km/hr on road, if you can call it that, which varies from something that possibly used to be asphalt, down to dirt with potholes of the type that would bottom a normal car and leave you stranded. Basically the 180(?) odd km is a "work in progress"... you are flanked on both sides by endless rice paddies, and every few km there is a nice new bridge which will probably, one day, be connected to the road, but until then the road diverts down a bank, across rutted dirt and potholes, back up a bank, onto the road, which is rutted dirt and potholes. Along this road are entire towns covered in thick red dust thrown up by trucks, cars, scooters and various other vehicles I have trouble describing. Picture dozens of little school children in white shirts walking home, every few seconds entirely swallowed by a wall of choking red dust. While a Camry roars past at about 80kph. Being overtaken by another Camry doing 100kph. Both of which are overtaking several scooters, with a bus coming the other way. And then of course you are belting down the road following another car, but you can't see it due to the dust, and you also can't see the metre-high concrete culvert until you hit it at about 80 and everything becomes very Dukes of Hazard.

Anyway, much fun, my neck is now, I am sorry to say, wrecked and giving me a lot of grief but should come right. I have checked into a nice... possibly even fancy by my standards... guesthouse for the night... pricey at US$22 but not really caring at this point... I am now going to find food... yet again I didn't really get the chance to eat since... um... Wednesday... and see what there is to see of the town. The continuing story of last Tuesday shall have to wait again, but I haven't forgotten, don't worry... Take care all.

Back on the road...

No time to chitchat I am finally off to the east today, will check in when I get some internet... as constantly proven there aren't many places that don't have it these days... take it easy, will be in touch..

Just FYI - all is well

Hi all... just briefly while I stop for lunch - there has been further violence in Bangkok today, re the current political trouble, there was a bombing and/or grenade attack a few blocks over from where I am at around 3am, but it is mostly business as usual here in the capital. It remains a lot safer than the south where I have already been so don't be worrying.

It is flamin HOT here today, hottest day in Bangkok so far, sun finally got through the smog. I am getting my culture and history etc done with temples, palaces, shiney gold guys sitting with legs folded, shiney gold guys reclining, etc etc etc. Will continue the far more interesting story of Tuesday/Wednesday later hopefully. Take it easy all.

God knows the lonely souls...

Adventuring... we are adventuring... there ya go, two OMR before you even knew what was going on...

Well I am back in Bangkok, it is half four on... Wednesday afternoon, according to the computer... The last couple of days have been among the more memorable I have had for a very long time for a variety of reasons. I am sitting down to rest and gather sanity from doing some writing. Where to start... well, yesterday...

I got up around 8 after a pretty short and average sleep (as they all are at the moment for some reason) and caught a minibus (actually a pretty nice new van) north with assorted other euro types to Kanchanaburi, about a two hour drive in the usual "entertaining" SE Asian traffic. Once there I left the others to their assorted tours and hotels and wandered down the road to where a rather solid but unremarkable looking black bridge spanned a shiny brown river... which was of course the Kwai, the big black bridge being one of many, but the only one which is THE Bridge on the River Kwai.

Far from being a remote spot in the jungle the bridge is now on the northern edge of Kanchanaburi township and, I am rather sorry today, the usual tourist-trap commercial B.S. is all around it. Ice cream stalls, food places, about 500 shops hawking all manner of souvenir crap, a wooden cartoon-looking "train" ticket booth selling tickets on a 15 minute tourist ride over the bridge... but it was still a pretty surreal feeling to walk out over the river on the narrow stretch of black steel and actually to be standing on THE bridge. It was a weird mix of emotions for me, it was kind of hard to take in. To me I guess the bridge is not really a monument to those who built it, but it does bring sadness, and anger. I walked back and forth a bit, trying to get a feeling for the whole thing, and trying to take photos that didn't contain fat tourists in bright clothes, but the coaches must have left Bangkok just after we did because it wasn't long before they came in their droves. I left and made my way over to the "Death Railroad Museum" which claimed all sorts of things on the signs but was in fact a rather pathetic collection of miscellaneous World War II related rubbish and a bunch of copied photographs, plus a glass case which apparently contained the remains of 106 Thais who died working on the Japanese railroad.

Somewhat disheartened by the whole affair I wandered down the road a bit, looking for but not finding a bus station where I might get a ride north. The man in the little wooden train had advised me that sadly the proper "Death Railroad" train that does a two hour trip over the actual railroad laid by allied soldiers working as Japanese slave labour was not running again until the next day. With no minivans seemingly heading in that direction and feeling like I really hadn't seen as much as I needed to see, I figured I would have to find my own way to where I was going. After a while down the main road I figured I may as well keep on walking to the Kanchanaburi Cemetary, I had initially planned to get a tuk-tuk or taxi but I was already on the way... this ended up taking some time, but when I got there I was greeted by a tasteful little plot with a white stone gate, next to the smokey noisy main road, being carefully tended by a group of local gardeners. I walked the rows for a long time, as I tend to do, and managed to find a Kiwi, a young air force Pilot Officer, aged 23. I wondered what his story was to end up a lonely Kiwi sharing the suffering of all the Aussies and Brits and Dutch and Thais and Indians and various others.

I sat down for a while and contemplated, then got up and started looking for the mythical northbound bus that I knew was supposed to be heading in the right direction. This took a lot longer than anticipated (every thirty minutes my ass), and I had all but given up as the clock ticked on and on, mindful that the minibus driver had told me to be back by 1630 for a ride to Bangkok. Finally a local bus approached and I flagged him down, but it was the wrong one... I waited some more and another appeared and this one was right... I knew it now had to be near on three, and the bus ride alone was going to take an hour and a half one way... but I thought "screw it"... I hadn't come all this way not to do things properly had I? Not like I was going to be back to do it again in a hurry... so I paid my 50 baht and settled back. Maybe there would be another way home. If it didn't take toooo long to get there...

The kilometer markers passed achingly slowly, and the tired old bus struggled and groaned up the winding roads as we gradually gained altitude. Stops were frequent as people got on and off at dusty little bus stops, and the usual women came aboard trying to sell home made snacks and drinks in plastic bags.. I was tempted to grab one as I had had only one coke all day and hadn't eaten... But I decided to wait for now, there is really no telling where that water comes from... If I was going to catch some evil parasite I figured I would wait until I was already dying. We chugged on, passing several police security checkpoints similar to the ones in the south (we were now on the Burmese border rather than the Malaysian), once again I the token white guy and the subject of some curiosity.

Finally we passed kilometer stone 64 and with my total lack of Thai and the ticket man's total lack of English we agreed this is where I wanted to get off, and he called the bus to a halt. I was stoked there was still some light left but the sun hung low so I didn't waste any time... I had seen a watch on the bus and it had said quarter past five... I had heard the place closed at four thirty but I didn't care. The two soldiers at the gate looked slightly bemused as I casually wandered past but didn't object. A tiny sign told me I was in the right place (I was worried for a minute there) and I continued down a narrow sealed drive, past a herd of dairy cows, round a corner, down a hill, under trees... Until I saw the carparks, big enough for a dozen double decker tour coaches but tonight wonderfully empty... the museum was closed and locked but I didn't care, and the sole minibus driver standing next to his vehicle was the only person watching. I didn't hesitate as an old guy I presumed to be the caretaker wandered around a corner, busy tidying up after the day. Without looking back I rounded the corner of the building eyeing up anything that looked like a trail, and saw some stairs that led down the steep hillside. Expecting to be called back at any second I started trudging down the wooden stairs and raised walkways, trying to keep my bootsteps light so as not to attract attention. The light dimmed even more as I got into the jungle, and I thought about how humorous it would be if I tripped and ended up in a tangled heap at the bottom with nobody there til morning... I reached the bottom and my boots crunched onto the gravel of the track, and I waited for a yell from up above... but none came. I started off with some pace, camera snapping as I went, trying to get everything I could before I lost the light entirely. The occupants of the minivan waiting above, probably Aussies looking at them, walked past and smiled and climbed the stairs back to the top. And I was alone. I was there... I had made it... and I was alone, on Hellfire Pass. So I walked on, stoked, savouring the incredible view between the trees and bamboo, as the sun set over mountains beyond a vast smokey valley, the beauty painfully ironic considering the suffering that had created the place. Here and there scatted railway sleepers still lay where they had been placed by the prisoners of war 60-something years ago. Twisted trees grew from both sides and atop the solid stone walls, cut from the hill by the allied soldiers forced to work and die there by the Japanese.

I walked on for a while longer, wall to the right side, trees and a steep drop to the other, wondering at the sheer manpower required to dig this godforsaken track, and finally rounded a corner to be greeted by the pass itself, a long deep gouge in the rock, carved through the middle of a hill, named for the infernal glow of the campfires and lanterns used as the prisoners worked through the night. Solid vertical stone walls rose up on either side and dwarfed me as I entered and followed the path where the rails once lay, to the middle point, where a solitary tree had somehow since grown out of the rocky floor, reaching upward toward the fading strip of light overhead. I stopped there and my boots became silent, and all there was to hear were the familiar sounds of the jungle, crickets and bugs and the occasional bird... a gentle breeze in the treetops... peaceful, quiet, still. And I thought about the spirits of the men who had died here and along the track in either direction... in their hundreds, ordinary guys like myself, made great by their decision to stand up and fight, and made to suffer unimaginable horrors as a consequence. I wondered if they were still here, among the jungle shadows, sitting atop the high walls of the pass looking down, or moving back and forth along the path they had carved like a silent river. And I was alone, a long way from home, as they had been, where they worked and fell, as the dark rose around me... and I put my hand on one hard rock wall, the same hewn by their hands, and soaked in their blood, and sweat, and tears. And I bowed my head. And I stood there, for a long, long time.

Anywhere I lay my head is...

...lumpy... mmm love vinyl covered mattresses... not very much. And noisy guesthouses with noisy backpackers... no Khao San is not exactly the kind of place I generally stay. I guess at best you could describe it as a kind of bohemian "everywhere" type place, full of all sorts of everything... but it is the most "tourist" area I have ventured near so far and I don't fancy it. But the prices are right, and with the slight money flow problem I had up until today, cheap and relatively secure was important when I got off the train from Chumphon. It is also close to things I want which is important when time is limited. So it gets the job done. Compared to Phuket I have to say it has a refreshing lack of old men walking around with Thai girls though. No I am not out sampling the Bangkok "nightlife", not that kind anyway. Even those of my Phuket companions who decided to sample the more "interesting" bars without me came back regretting they had. Some things are best left to the imagination, or in fact, not. There is a nasty element to the place that you can't brush aside or laugh away, and sadly it is fundamental to what Thailand has become.

Having said that there is far more here other than "that stuff", and "that stuff" can be largely avoided if you got to the right places. I branched out today on one of my patented "wanders" after getting over the disappointment of not being able to see the historic sights, and in my travels explored the highways, byways, waterways and alleyways. There is indeed a lot to Bangkok, 9 million people who it would seem all attempt to cross the same bridges over the river at around 5pm. I gave my camera a good workout and took more photos of boats and shacks than anyone could ever want, but paid the price for walking the freeway bridges across the river... I looked in the mirror when I got home and my eyes were red and stinging, my throat raw, from the exhaust fumes. The sun dies with a whimper in Bangkok, burning fiercely down to near the horizon before suffocating in a noxious haze.

But that was all forgotten with my green curry tonight, absolutely fantastic it was... washed down with a couple of Chang (that's "Chung") beers which are bad but cheap... not that NZ$3 is actually that cheap for a beer considering what even we pay in a supermarket at home. Tonight I am again doing some wandering and largely avoiding the "night spots"... I did enough of an imitation of a tourist in Phuket and, while fun, that is all the boozing in places not really any different from anywhere else that I need for now. Tomorrow hopefully holds one of the highlights of the entire journey and I will report back on that soon.

This blog was brought to you from two different internet cafes for reasons best disclosed when I am home...

Once again don't be shy to drop an email to my hotmail and let me know the stories from where you are, it would be good to know what is going on while I am away from the world... I will apologise if I don't reply quickly, blogging takes up most of my internet time, but I am grateful!

Hope again that this finds everyone well and happy and healthy. I am off for a wander and then a shower (you only truely love showers when you are reminded what it is like not to have them... I think ten days is my personal record for not bathing in the tropics, but that was another place and time... be glad you weren't there. You don't appreciate what it smells like until after you get clean and then stand next to one of your mates who isn't yet...). Cheers all.

No Mr Bond..! I expect you to die..!

I am not sure where that came from apart from all the ads for tours to the James Bond island where they filmed... somethingorother...

Well got up today with big plans for grand walking tour and... got to the museums to discover the public holiday we were told ran from Fri-Sun is in fact ongoing til the 19th and everything is #$%&*%# CLOSED... well stoked with that... today has been trying to sort out money situation after issues with my credit card... word of warning, all those "international assistance" numbers they give you do NOT work... I have been given numbers for "Thailand" that redirect to the US, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand... and you cannot access most "free" or "collect call" numbers from Thai phones... and the "replacement card in 48 hours" is in fact one to two WEEKS.. grrrrrrr... Anyway, will sort something, just have to make sure I have funds before I venture back out into less "developed" parts of the world.

Bangkok seems a reasonably good town, although infected with the same tourist infestations as the rest of Thailand, and there is very little "real" Thailand on display, if such a thing exists any more (which I am sorely doubting at this point). I literally can't walk from one end of my little street to the other without at least half a dozen offers of cheap suits, another half dozen for taxis, another half dozen for tuk tuks... watches... dvd's... tshirts... lighters... it's a pretty sad state of affairs and makes me miss Malaysia and Singapore already... however there are good things about it, some stuff is cheap although beware anyone who tells you that you can do Thailand on next to no money... they sting you for the things you can't do without, and the money just keeps on flowing outwards from your pocket. Anyway, not to get all bitter, I have some hopefully good things planned the next few days although may have to hang around a lot longer than anticipated if I want to see most of the best sights when they reopen... such is life... hope all is well where you are

onya

And then it was...

Sunday? I think?

Friday was exploring the southern half of Phuket via moped, which is good fun if you don't mind all the people intent on killing you... the day started on a rather dramatic note when I was standing out in front of my guesthouse getting ready for the scooter ride, when suddenly the electrical transformer on the power pole across the street exploded with an almighty BOOM, showering sparks everywhere... obviously in southern Thailand things unexpectedly exploding are not high on the list of stuff anyone wants to be around so it shook everyone up more than a little bit. Once people had stopped running and screaming and the old heart had slowed down a bit, it seemed to make sense to follow up one near-death experience with another, so it was out into the manic Patong traffic to run a couple of errands and find some more beaches. Phuket is indeed a pretty little island, obviously fairly swamped with tourists, travellers, backpackers and holiday makers, but there is still plenty of blue water and white sand. Some of the resorts looked pretty darn good too, for those with money...

Having run into some money-flow issues myself, I decided Friday that it would be prudent to head for Bangkok to try and sort the situation before funds dried up completely, so on Saturday morning I headed for the bus station over in Phuket town with gear in tow, which involved either an expensive taxi (well ok not REALLY expensive but everything's expensive when you have no money) or the cheaper option of the local bus (truck), which I took... this took somewhat longer than anticipated as he plied the streets of Patong at walking pace looking for customers. Once finally at the bus station I used a fairly large portion of my remaining Thai Baht for a ticket, and half an hour later we were heading north. The bus trip was once again the equivalent of some bizarre Thai torture as the obviously suicidal driver carved between lanes and overtook on blind corners while blasting his mix of "Top Fifty Most Annoying Thai Love Ballads" as loud as the speakers could handle... I fought the urge to doze off or throw myself out the doors to take in some nice scenery.

Seven hours later in darkness we rolled into the little town of Chumphon, and with no real idea of what I was doing or where I was going I wandered up the street with my gear in the rough direction I thought something might be in. I found a hotel and considered just getting a room and collapsing for the night, but I was conscious that if I stopped to sleep I would end up riding the day train to Bangkok, meaning I would end up arriving there in the dark with little money and no place to go. So I wandered some more until I found the train station, and sure enough there were night trains available. Rather than taking the next one, which would have seen me arrive in the capital city at 4am, I booked the 23:24 train to arrive in Bangkok around 8.30 in the morning. With now only about 300 Baht in my pocket (NZ$15) I bought a packet of chips and a drink to keep me going and with little else to do after wandering the food stalls looking at things I couldn't afford to eat, I went and sat around the train station for three hours.

Compared to other recent trips the train ride was bliss, I staggered through the narrow carriage with all my stuff, probably waking the other occipants, and crashed onto my bunk, happily a bottom berth this time and therefore wider and easier to get in and out of. I was asleep in minutes and woke only a couple of times before we were almost in Bangkok. I was rather disappointed to have to do the trip in the dark and miss the scenery but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. Bangkok train station was rather manic even at 8.30 in the morning, but critically the foreign exchange office I was questing for was not yet open. I wandered around in a daze for some time until I finally woke up properly, and after searching fruitlessly for a bus in the right direction I checked the exchange office again and was finally able to change some $USD for Baht. I bit the bullet and got a taxi into town and thankfully found a guesthouse with a decent room, only there was another two hour wait for it to become available... I sit here now on Sunday afternoon having just had my first shower and meal since Friday, and feeling somewhat more human than I have in a couple of days. The sights and sounds of Bangkok await, I just have to resist the urge to go nap...

Mister you want buy cheap suit..?

So it has been an interesting old couple of days... after an afternoon of drinking coffee and hanging around airconditioned malls trying not to sweat every last drop of moisture out of my body, the loooooong wait for the train was finally over at 8pm and the thronging masses flocked aboard. I of course was somewhat icky and smelly so I climbed into my top bunk and put to use my skills from a previous career as a circus contortionist to get changed behind my little curtain without falling out naked onto the old Muslim lady in the bunk below. Since my packs and all are rather bulky, and I am also a cynical and untrusting kind of person, I elected to have them on the bed with me rather than leave them in the aisle for people to fall over, meaning that lying on my bunk on my side I could just squeeze my legs down one side of my pack to almost stretch out my full length. So not much sleep was had, especially when you throw in the noise of the train and stops every five minutes and people coming and going.

Since I had no joy finding a book to read in KL I was forced to amuse myself by sitting/standing in the little area at the end of the carriage where the carriages join, where the smokers are forced to congregate next to the decidely unappealing toilet facilities. Despite all the signs commanding otherwise, in Malaysia they have no objection to you opening the side doors of the train and hanging out sitting on the stairs etc while you thunder through the night with posts and trees and bridges whooshing by inches away (I doubt they would have had much objection to us falling to our deaths either really). Within about 20 minutes of leaving KL I had met an English guy, and Estonian girl and an old chap who was probably once Scottish but had been living in Thailand for 20 years or so, and we chatted for a good few hours before people wandered off to attempt sleeping.

Each second class sleeping carriage like ours had about 40 bunk beds, 20 or so down each side... I pity the poor folk sleeping next to the automatic doors at the end which generally didn't do anything automatically and saw constant passenger traffic most of the night. Sometime in the early hours of the morning, with much noise and drama as is always the way with trains, they unhooked our car from the back and hooked it up to a new train, so that when everyone woke the next morning we appeared to be going in the other direction and half the passengers thought they had slept through their stop and we were going south again... but no, all was under control. I woke with the dawn after fleeting moments of sleep and got up and started hanging out the doors taking photos.

Derek, the English lad, was up before long too and we resumed our posts on the steps on each side of the train, having half-yelled conversations across the aisle and admiring northern Malaysia.

We crossed into Thailand mid-morning with little drama, although the train did leave us sitting at a small station in the middle of nowhere for about 45 minutes while it went for "servicing"which I think was just a scam between the local cafeteria staff and the train crew. Sometime after 11am our 14 hour ride ended in the (more than a little unappealing) southern Thailand town of Hat Yai, a place visiting foreigners are not generally encouraged to hang around in (don't know if it made NZ news but a bombing in south Thailand injured 60 last week, attacks have been ongoing for some time). I was planning on getting a bus to Koh Samui but I was the only one heading in that direction, with the half a dozen other foreigners heading for Phuket... Derek was also travelling by himself with little in the way of plans and since our missions appeared pretty closely aligned I decided that Phuket may be a better bet for a few days of chilling out...

So all of us in the newly formed Phuket group were quickly hijacked by a band of bus-touts offering "best deals" on coach-bus rides to the island (and then ripping us all off). To our surprise and horror we learned it was in fact a 7-8 hour trip, for some reason I, and the others, had thought it a lot closer. We were all crammed into the back of a covered ute which whizzed around the back streets until it found the bus, and then we all got on board and made ourselves as comfortable as possible with the barely-working aircon. The bus made the train seem like luxury, and despite the driver overtaking every other vehicle on the road the hours went painfully slowly, and we were all going pretty much mental by the time we rolled into Phuket township in the dark.

We arrived in time for a monsoon deluge and since Derek and I had joined on with a couple of Dutch guys and a young Swedish bloke to combine our resources in finding accomodation, the only vehicle that could carry us and all our gear was another partially-covered (and very leaky) old ute. Again we sped off into the night, the rain soaking us as the ute struggled over the hill to Patong Bay, cars and scooters behind tooting and passing on the left and right. We ended up wandering the streets as the rain continued to bucket down until we finally found a guesthouse with enough rooms at a reasonable price, and we dropped our sodden bags and showered (which was very badly needed after 24 hours of travel) and went for what was only my third meal in 48 hours. After a few beers in the local pubs I headed off for much needed sleep.

Today on the other hand was the total opposite, some time on the beach and a casual wander around Patong, which is a nice place to relax although I wouldn't exactly bring the family here.. not that that stops some people. Not exactly sure now where the next stop on my travels will be, will have to get thinking about that...

Ok, I take it back...

... everyone likes you Lobbie... it's all right... and your knowledge of monkeys is second to none. You would have loved those little buggers... they were all like "hey, I'm a monkey, I do what I want, I'm out of control!!.."

So here I am sitting on my ass again waiting... I rocked out to the train station to find to my complete lack of surprise that the trains do not leave at the times I read on the net... so time to kill in KL. And since I am hauling gear and have seen the sights I wanted to see, I went searching and finally found the elusive iPod charger, it took an arab guy in the very back corner of the top floor of the biggest mall to sell me one, it would seem the rest of the country is these days gripped by a fear of the almighty Apple Mac legal machinery... I left my iPod with him on charge as it is dead as dead, so with a bit of luck I might get an our or two of tunes to keep me company on the looong haul north... if I can find my way back to his stall. I have been looking all over this crazy place for a book shop but Bukit Bintang mall is like a maze, and bookshops don't seem to be high on the priority list here. Eighty five cell phone stalls sure, but no books.

Iced espresso is my friend, it's like crack in a glass...

Must get supplies for the train ride, peace out

A day of no rain...

Who woulda thunk it. Today I spent much time cursing the Malaysian public transport system. I got up nice and early before the other residents and got on the road, wandering down to where the directions said the Number 11 bus stopped... I was unlucky from the start because just before I got there I saw not one but two Number 11 buses pulling away, so I though "excellent, there's the spot, now to wait 15 minutes til the next one..."... So 40 minutes or more later, I decided this clearly wasn't right... I ended up wandering the streets for probably an hour until I finally found a Number 11 bus stopped in traffic in a back street and banged on the door... of course turned out they don't stop anywhere near where they supposedly did...

So off we went, and 45 minutes later we were at the Batu Caves, an awesome limestone cliff structure with... well, a big hole in it... Discovered some time ago by some Brit, they would have been truly awesome back in the day, before they were turned into a half-assed gaylord theme park... I mean, Hindu place of sacred worship... 270-something nasty stairs in the searing heat nearly killed me (taken two at a time of course, cause that's how we roll... I showed them...). At the top the scenery was pretty cool, made more amusing when a flock (gaggle? herd? Lobbie?) of monkeys ninja-ed in like little cave aliens, swarming over the walls all silent and evil, and started fighting over banana skins and hiffing half-coconuts from great heights at groups of sightseers. Hil-ar-i-ous. Although I did have a run in with the boss monkey a couple of times for trying to take photos too close... buggers have big teeth, I had to fend him with my camera once.

Sometimes it is good to see that some things are the same regardless of culture... A group of Hindu faithful walked somberly into the main temple chamber/cave (where they have built an actual temple) and removed their shoes and said their prayers and shuffled under the temple canopy to be blessed... and they sat in a circle as the rites were carried out, and bowed their heads, legs crossed, all heavy with the gravity of the meaning of this sacred pilgrimage, possibly the only time they would make it to this place in their lives... and they offered up bananas and other foods as the music rang out and holy men carried out their duties... and half way through their brief time of purity and oneness, one of the monkeys ran in and grabbed one of their bananas, and when one of them got in the way as he made his break, he leaped on him and growled... and the poor guy screamed like a little girl and shooed him away with much flapping of hands... and as the monkey sped off before the holy men could cane him, they entire group erupted in hysterical laughter, with tradition pointing and exaggerated mimickry, and even when they all sat down to resume their ceremony, every minute or two they would break down in fits of giggles and mocking... I have never seen an Indian blush but I am pretty sure I came close today. Priceless.

Ryno travel tip #338... Remember to eat BOTH sides of your stingray... it's a flatfish... there is meat on both sides... mmm stingray... who would have thought the little buggers were so tasty. Steve Irwin... pussy...

So it's midnight here...

I walked back in a bit earlier into this little place to see three people reading, and about four watching a movie on tv... we are in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, outside the place is thronging with activity, and these people are watching television ("... the drug of the nation, breeding ignorance and spreading radiation")... anyway, I just had a pretty damn good clay pot pork belly from the food market one street over, although I have to admit it did get me sweating again, with at least half a full chilli per forkful... it has quietened down next door, earlier a crowd had amassed to watch 'the beautiful game' on the tv, or whatever gayball is called in Malaysian.

Sounds like the weather is bad to the north, one of the girls was saying they had to leave as they are closing the resorts down... will see how we go. The rains here are not bad, heavy but patchy, with plenty of fine in between. Hopefully tomorrow is good at least, so I can get in what I want to do in KL. I have to get to sleep first, my sleeping patterns are a mess.

Some Aussie is at the counter, his mate stuffed up his booking and there are no beds... the nice lady who runs the place is ringing around everywhere trying to find somewhere for him... I was feeling slightly guilty about my private room with three beds, but then listening I determined he was an ass so I have decided he can offer himself up to the dark streets of KL... we can't just run around helping Australians now can we? What kind of world would we live in?

Oh and for the record, the above OMR (Obscure Musical Reference) is from 'Television, Drug of the Nation' by Disposable Heroes of Hiphorisy. So there. Youtube it.

Just so you know...

... nobody likes you Lobbie. I didn't want to be the one to have to tell you...

ok fine point taken, picture removed... but yes, me and MF DOOM are homies. He doesn't like you either. He told me to tell you. He said it was time you knew.

Anyway I am in KL, I have to say Petronas Towers is a gorgeous building, it's super wicked.

The bus here was about as far removed from the bus to Melaka as you can get. I got up and packed up and got a cab (actually two, I for some reason had to change cabs half way to the bus station...?) and running purely on luck and cunning(?) I got there five minutes before the KL buses left (why, WHY do they all leave at the same time??), and bought the first ticket at the first counter and ended up on a nice new (by Malaysian standards) coach, and we rocked north for a couple of hours. KL seems like a good town... Ryno Travel Tip #219: Buckets of beer (five beers) are cheaper than buying three beers individually... dammit... but hey, when you are trapped by the rains in a place with bars, you need to do something with your time right? Always, ALWAYS ask "how much?" before you buy beer... %$#*ing bar in Melaka charged me RM22 (about NZ$14?) for a Corona...

Squid I took a photo of a T-shirt for you... "SIG SAUER P229, the gun that protects America". I didn't buy it for you though, cause over here you are a XXXL. And you don't have a P229

Once again I am taking a sanity break to write some stuff between exploring, it is the only time in the day/night I can sit for a bit and chill. I will probably venture into Chinatown for food shortly, the guesthouse I am at is in a great location in central KL. This is the first place I have stayed with other Westerners though, and it feels a bit too much like going to Auckland Central Backpackers or Embargos for drinks like we did back in the day... KL has more tourists etc than anywhere I have seen so far, surprisingly more than Singas did. That should change as I make my way north, the next leg will be a pretty long haul.

I am now one week without my own music (I know, I don't know how I am surviving either..), my searches for cheap iPod chargers have proved fruitless (what do you have to do to get someone to sell you a cheap chinese knockoff in this country, seriously??!!) so I am living with the music (and voices) in my head. Hard to believe a week has gone by already. But of course you are reading this, so it's like I never even left... lucky, lucky people. Oh well... enough now, I am about to step back outside into the heavy hot damp and go explore some more... y'all enjoy work.

Oh and...

Listen to MF DOOM!! Haha obscure music'd ya and ya didn't even see it comin... SUCKAS

But do listen to him. He's damn good. Especially his DangerDoom collaboration with Dangermouse.

HA!! did it again... I so sneaky...

And I'm back...

Enough walking for one day, saw most of the markets last night, and really, apart from the food, an asian market is an asian market is an asian market... so I am giving myself a quiet night. It's half ten here and I don't speak any of the languages on tv so the internet is the next best thing. Outside there are horns blaring as people try and navigate the way around the closed market streets, which are one block over. The window is open and the exhaust fumes are festively toxic. My guesthouse owner, who shall hereby be known as Mr YodaMiyagi, recommended a food place that I couldn't find, so I ate from the stalls here and there, and man it was goooood... I couldn't for the life of me name a single thing I ate, but it sure was tasty. There was some pork and some fish involved in some of it... that's about all I can tell you.

Next to me Mr YodaMiyagi's little son, or grandson or something, is playing the same Pokemon-on-acid type computer game he has been playing all night. On the couch next to him, his father, or big brother, or something, is playing the same thing. It has one of those constantly looping soundtracks that make you want to wring little necks. Ah technology.

What else to tell... I think I just started getting bitten by mosquitoes... hopefully the brain eating parasites I picked up from the food stalls will kill the malaria... or catch the malaria also and die. A mate of mine had malaria a few years back, it is apparently uncool. But better than brain-dwelling parasites, which we heard stories of some Aussie catching before we went on my last trip to the tropics. They live and grow in your head and they can't get them out and they eventually make you go mad before you die an agonising death. They have some really cool photos of that stuff.

Looking forward to getting back on the road. After KL I think I will head north fairly briskly for a while. Just have to get up for the bus. And deal with taxi drivers again. I hate them at the best of times so it makes it more fun when ten of them are yelling at you at the same time.

Anyway... Melaka has been good. After Johor Baru I needed something to pick the old enthusiasm back up and this has done the trick. But the journey is the key, not the places in between. Onward and northward.

Malaysia, home of...

Scooter park hell at the train station, Johor Baru

...the extremely annoying ringtone. Oh and traffic otherwise known as 'Deathrace 2008'... but we already knew that. Another crazy couple of days gone by... the train to Tampin was a four hour trundle through palm plantation... and palm plantation... and palm plantation... just before Tampin things livened up a bit when the track got bad and the train slowed to walking speed, taking an interesting tilt to the right which had me trying to do some rough physics and calculus in my head... weight vs point of balance plus momentum plus sideways lurching equals..? but then we all know I was hopeless at calculus. So I chose to ignore it.

Tampin is not really much to see, I got off the train in the dark into the open air station and a couple of taxi drivers tried to convince me that all the buses were gone and 80 ringit was the going rate to Melaka. Since it was pitch black and I had no place to stay and there was very little in the way of civilisation and much in the way of pitch black jungle, I obviously chose to tell them I wasn't going to play their little game... after a bit to to-ing and fro-ing one gave up and admitted there was an 8 o'clock bus which would be leaving any minute from town some distance away. I set off at a pace with all my gear on, at which point the same guy obviously felt bad and came after me on a scooter, offering a lift so that I would make the bus. I explained in simple terms that my 145kg of guts and gear was not going to work on his moped and he concurred, at which time he yelled the directions again and puttered off. Said directions were obviously, as they always are, mildly incorrect, sending me rather unmildly in the wrong direction ('left'...'right'... I mean, what's the difference really?), but a friendly Muslim lady set me right as I wandered Tampin alleyways and I rocked up to the bus just as the crowds piled aboard...

I was the last onto the last bus of the night, saving me fun sleeps under whatever piece of rusted corrugated iron I could find, and the driver crashed the gears and we sped off into the dark. To say my new ride was basic would be too kind, it was I believe most likely previously owned by the US prison service in 1950.. paint worn off all the interior, cans rattling on metal floor, she flew through the dark, doors and windows wide open, gears crunching and unmuffled exhaust wailing like a wounded dragon. I eyed up my fellow passengers and they eyed me up back, and I wondered at what point I would need to get worried if it turned onto a dirt track in the jungle, but then I had no idea what the road to Melaka was like, so I decided to just be happy I was on a bus going somewhere, because somewhere is better than nowhere, and I had just been in nowhere.

We made Melaka with little incident - but in saying that, an "incident" on Malaysian roads means dying horribly with a 1950's prison bus seatpost in your eye, anything less is not even worth mentioning - and my first impression was it was a lot bigger than I was expecting... I knew it was historical and interesting sounding, and I hoped it had a beach, but that was about it... after much more haggling with taxis at the bus station I made my way to the first guest house on my list, which seemed central to whatever was actually there. We got nearly to the right street and the driver told me to get out as he 'couldn't go down there'... which was promising... so I got out and walked and was greeted by much noise and commotion from the direction I needed to go in... at first I thought it might be a political rally, but people were coming out of their shops and looking, and then I started to get a bit concerned it may be a protest. As I got to the corner where the crowds were congregating, I realised my worst fears... it was the Asian Tony Robbins... ('TONY!! OVER HERE TONY!! I LOVE YOU TONY, YOU CHANGED MY LIFE!!!") (Only one person reading this blog will get that... but it's still funny) . Some guy with a headset microphone was selling something... I still half feared it might be some sort of weird "kill whitey" thing so I bounced through the crowd, both packs in tow, fairly rapidly. It didn't take long to figure it all out though, the street was closed for a night market... ahhhh... I get it... Melaka is a tourist trap...

And it is... but not theworst kind... it's not a bad town nonetheless... apart from all the tourists from Singapore and a few westerners from further afield, it's not too bad... sort of the right mix of real town, history and touristy stuff. Had a good look around today and about to venture back out into the night market for some food. I like the place, but the large scale-renovation and construction going on indicates that like so many other places, there isn't long left for the old Melaka. Soon it will be MELAKALAND!!! Oh well... what can you do. I can also confirm there is no beach at Melaka.. trust me, I spent a lot of time looking... I am burned good, dryer heat up here, it's a killer in the sun.

Anyway I think I will be off to KL tomorrow, probably via bus, I wanted to get back to the train at Tampin but I think it will be too much time and hassle getting there to be worthwhile.

400 year old St Paul's on the hill

Oh and say bye to Uncle Helen for me!! Tell her not to let the door hit her in the boney lesbian ass! Take care all

News in brief...

Johor Baru, Malaysia.. not the friendliest town, not a lot of tourists stop off obvioulsy, haha... A bit of a problem with my lack of any language skills... And I don't exactly blend in, towering over the locals and carrying the equivalent of one of them slung off my back and front. Those who are friendly are fascinated by the amount of gear I am hauling, amusing when helpful taxi drivers or bag-check girls try to move your pack for you...

I will not waffle too much, I have a train to catch, I am optimistically trying to make Malacca tonight... But since I have difficulty getting up to catch 6am trains I am on the 1450 which will not make Tampin til 1900 or so, then i have to find a bus in the right direction... ah fun. Anyway, the last of Singas was good, had a change of heart yesterday and decided i should see a couple more things to do it justice, so I hit the zoo and Kranji War Cemetary before crossing the border last night.

Will write in more detail soonish, better wander to the station so I have a chance to let the sweat re-dry under a fan before i have to sit in close proximity to anyone.

So then it was... Wednesday?

Yup losing track already... back in the net cafe... just braved the streets of Geylang again.. actually it's not so bad, being two feet taller and wider than everyone helps... mostly you don't get any hassles, although I was somewhat put out that the guy selling black market cigarettes wouldn't drop his price below $5. And a tiny little thing outside some dodgy club a few doors down made the mistake of grabbing the strap to my camera case to try and get my attention... She will likely stick to all the Chinese businessmen who are the usual clientelle from not on.

I have now confirmed that no matter what direction you walk in away from my hotel, the neighbourhood gets better... seriously.

Anyway, back to the beginning... slept pretty well, awoke and headed to town via MRT train, which naturally involved - a walk. Then got a cab to the top of the hill behind town (my memory is like a sieve at the moment) and cable carred to Sentosa Island. Mucked around a bit, got a wee bit of beach time, had a swim (SO good... except for all the floating trash... and visions of what the hundreds of passing ships going into the ports were dropping in the water..) Then had a bit of a lie on the sand etc, and before you know it the black clouds had rolled in and in came the rain. Earlier today around 1300. And then there was a thunder and lightning show that was pretty impressive, and I was forced to shelter in one of the ultra-touristy beach bars and get a beer and pizza for lunch ($35... ouch) and the rains and thunder continued on and off for the rest of the arvo as I explored the fort complex at one end of the island and checked out their artillery collection... I know you are all overwhelmed with excitement just thinking about it...

Following a cab/train back to my hotel I made the not short wander up the Lorongs to Lorong 35, where I was reliably informed there was a seafood place of some note, recommended by some food guy on tv who travels the world or some such thing... so I thought 'Ok, probably worth a look, and a LOT cheaper than all the seafood restaurants on the harbour' (understand that the eateries on Geylang Road are in keeping with the general neighbourhood... not flash... So I went up there and asked for the crab and they looked at me as I imagine you would if the 3658th white person comes wandering into your little food place asking for exactly the same thing the stupid food guy off TV ate when he came in... and so I sat back and had a Tiger as they went off to curse television food gurus and their countless zombie disciples.

Then in the considerable time it took them to cook my crab I started thinking... if indeed I am the 3658th white person to venture to grimiest Geylang and bimble in here, I wonder if in fact they have jacked the price up..? What is crab worth anyway, if you own say a "modest" little corner eatery in Geylang..? What are their overheads..? And then I considered the approximately $35 Singaporean I had left in my wallet to last me til I left... But "Nah..." I thought... "It's just one of the 500 little food places in this neighbourhood... they won't charge much... and it will only be a bit of crab and noodle... So then finally the not especially nice lady who appeared to be in charge showed up at my table with a massive PLATTER of crab and noodle and various other bits and pieces and I though "Oh no.." So I pondered what in fact it might be worth while I ate, and indeed it was not too bad, although I have to admit I have always found the effort of smashing up your own crab and getting covered from head to foot in the little fella isn't really worth the pleasure of eating him... and while I pondered I thought about maybe running... after all, the old lady didn't look to spry, nor did her friend - although all the boys out the back did in fact have large knives... and then I wondered if in fact the gas station down the way would have an ATM that would take my card - doubtful.

Finally after coating myself in several layers of crab goo and eating most of the family-sized portion, I decided to risk it and play on my charm and innocent boyish good looks... so when the bill came, and I realised that appearing on TV had indeed given the grubby cook in his grubby kitchen the idea that he should in fact have a Bentley, I proceeded to pull a wad of money from my wallet that included both Singaporean and Malaysian... and I handed it to the old lady and smiled up sweetly like the picture of innocence and joy that I am. "No... No... No... Mal-ay-sien!!" she pointed her stubby little finger at the offending note and I inspected it in a confused manner... she called over the boss lady, and there was some too-ing and fro-ing... I searched my wallet for more money that only one of us knew wasn't there. I started apologising and making vague helpless noises (they didn't speak English so it didn't really make much difference if the noises meant anything or not...). Finally boss lady said "Visa?!" and to my shock I realised that the old plastic may actually be an option... And sure enough, around the corner of the turtle soup sign, there was in fact a machine... so everybody went home happy. Well, apart from the fact that in addition to embarrassing myself in front of about 10 locals trying inexpertly to east a crab and drop it all down my front, I also spent enough on it that I could have paid for another day and night in Singapore... but ANYHOO... at least I can say I have done it, and it was good crab.

So... tomorrow will likely be onward into Malaysia I guess... the rains to the north sound bad, seems the season is late, will have to take it one day at a time I suppose. I am not sure where the next internet access will be, possibly Kuala Lumpur. Til then I will be somewhere en route... take care all

So there I was again...

At the intersection of Kelang and Victoria... but don't all the best stories start that way? Well, no...

This is attempt 4 to get something down about the last two days. Needless to say the internet facilities in this smokey little room are not the greatest... Copy and paste doesn't work... autosave doesn't work... ugh... Anyway... onwards..

So the flights were okay, although I did have visions of ending up on Discovery Channel at one stage in Brunei when we taxied across a runway in front of another plane lining up to take off... but no major dramas. Royal Brunei as an airline gets the job done... if you can afford better I wouldn't say I would recommend it, but if you are travelling on a budget, it could be worse. My seven hours in Brunei was interesting, I managed to get extremely bored, wander around the grounds outside the airport a bit, and get a general impression of the place. Certainly noticably Muslim, have to remember lots of things... don't look directly at the women... don't look directly at the women...

Singapore so far is everything I expected and has not disappointed. I arrived and wandered into the Red Lane at Customs clutching a large bag of prescription drugs courtesy of my Doctor, expecting to have a fair amount of 'splaining to do... but I was waved through before I could say a word. An efficient yet typically somewhat suicidal taxi driver got me to my hotel in record time, and as we rolled down what can really only be described as a dark wet alley, I noticed dozens and dozens of young ladies were obviously on their way to a party somewhere and were waiting all up and down the road for a taxi... Ok so I knew my hotel was in Geylang, not the flashest part of town, and I had read I could expect to see the occasional "lady of the night" on a street corner... I didn't quite expect the LEAST flash part of town, and I didn't quite expect HUNDREDS of hookers... But what can you do, Singapore is EXPENSIVE... I don't mean a little bit... even their cheap crap is expensive. But the girls are pretty harmless (as long as you don't got within about 3 feet of them I am guessing) and don't bother you much unless you want to be... um.. bothered...

So I went for a bit of a wander to get the lay of the land after checking in and then had an average sleep watching fuzzy tv.

Yesterday was a big day... got up early-ish, walked to downtown (not a short walk)... had tasty deep fried dumpling pastry things and kopi (local iced coffee) for breakfast and then set about wandering... I - saw the Singapore Flyer giant ferris wheel (elected not to have a ride just yet... $30 a trip)... lots of fancy hotels, designer shops etc... went to about 10 malls (Singas is something else for malls... you walk out of a huge mall and next to it is a huge mall... I kid you not)... went to the Raffles (nice)... saw the Merlion and the marina... toured the Fort complex and WWII bunker headquarters... saw a bunch of nice old churches... went to Funan Digital Mall (impressive... and also expensive)... ate an awesome Mee Goreng... then later in the day caught the train out to the Changi Prison museum... Now that was sobering. It is a modest, you might even say understated little place, but just to be on that spot where those things happened was something else. I watched an old Aussie digger - not old enough to have been there, probably Korean War vintage I would guess - as the staff helped him find the names of two guys he knew in the inmate record books. Afterwards we both went and sat in the replica of the little outdoor chapel in silence for a while. He said a little prayer to himself and the staff had to help him out to the exit. I sat by myself for a bit and then it was closing time and I wandered out to find a bus.

The bus ride back was s-l-o-w and took ages, while we meandered the "suburbs" the rains came down hard and turned the streets to little rivers, but at least cooled the place a little... it has been HOT... I know I am a sweater in the tropics... no matter how long I live there I still sweat.. but I guess it has been a while cause I have been sweating BUCKETS. My pores hurt, I have sweat so much... It is kind of embarrassing, but what can you do. Hopefully I will acclimatise shortly, that is partly the idea of wandering the streets in Singas. So anyway we got back to town and the rain had stopped and I decided since it was nearly dusk I would go find Chinatown... so I set off from my hotel again, planning to catch a cab, but since it was still light I decided to wander a bit more (ok I don't know why...), and ended up walking all the way back to town (I walked a LOT yesterday... like I am guessing 25-30km, I kid you not) . I stopped for dinner... wait for it... McDonalds!! Ok at this point I know you are all abusing me for selling out and eating western food, but I HAD to have it... cause they have (drumroll)... Wasabi Fillet of Fish!! And Wasabi shaker fries!! And chilli sauce as well as ketchup!! It rocks!!

So I found Chinatown and it was several more huge malls as well as the markets, not nearly as dodgy as I had expected... and I relaxed with a big bottle of Tiger before heading homeward via taxi... and my adventures trying to get this frikkin blog to work... Today should hopefully more restful as I head over to check out Sentosa and hopefully get a bit of time on the beach... then find chilli crab!! Everything is pretty good, I am slowly getting over jetlag and getting into things. Gear is all working well, carrying two packs is a pain, not sure what to do about that. The weight is fine, about 30kg, but they are cumbersome as I feared. Hard to know what to do. My boots are great, very hot but comfy as.

I wrote a whole bunch more stuff last night but time is ticking along and this is eating into my day so I am going to call it here and maybe get back to you sometime soonish... hope all is well, it is a bit odd at first cutting the cellular umbilicle and not being able to text whoever I want, but it's also good in some ways. I haven't left you all behind completely, I still get to ignore your sarky comments to my blogging... HA!

Anyway, gotta cruise, hi to all, yes I am alive, yes I have seen the news... interesting times. It's all under control!! "He who flees discomfort leads a hollow life"...

Oh yeah, obscure musical reference... Cat Power was on the Royal Brunei flight radio!! She's so great!! And so hot!!

Un-frikken-believeable..

I just wrote this post... twice... it was long... it was detailed... it has deleted itself both times... I am very tired... I am going to my hotel... I will write tomorrow... all is good, had a big, long day... will tell all soon

hope all it good back there, take care

So there I was...

Getting there...

slowly... ok we are now one day out, considering I likely won't get much sleep tomorrow night... and have to be at the airport at... what is it?.. 2am??? Monday... ugh... Why does everyone laugh when I say I am flying Royal Brunei??... Ok... I know why...

Thanks to all who I have managed to catch up with before I head off... and to the kids out west for a good Halloween party last night!! Sorry to those I haven't seen, it's only when you go away you realise how long it has been since you saw people. Not good. But thanks to all for all the best wishes and messages etc, much big ups to all who have helped me out in various ways and to everyone for the tips and advice etc etc. I am not going to name names but you all know who you are... Anyway I will be back before you know it. Right now must head home and get to packing and sorting and etc etc etc

Take it easy all