Bangkok

Forgot to mention that I have been in Bangkok for the last 6 days now. I have been a man on a mission, a mission nigh on impossible: Replace the stuff I lost in KPG.

* Shoes in Kuala Lumpur
* iPod in Singapore
* Music for iPod in Bangkok

Am now a very happy man with my tunes back. Honest to God, I could feel my mood improving as I played the first 5 seconds of my favourite track.

Yes indeed, Music can soothe the savage beast.

Off to Burma Myanmar tomorrow. The Internet is quite restricted there, so it might be a week or two before you see anything new here. Enjoy your leap year!

Germans

I heard some Germans talking about "Heimweh" today (lit. Home pain, i.e. Homesickness). Natural enough. Then I realised that German must be one of the only languages with not one, but TWO words for the opposite of Homesickness:
Fernweh (lit. Distance pain) and
Wanderlust (lit. Desire to wander)

Thought I would share that with you...

Whoops I did it again

Not really a blog entry but the girl behind me has the webpage entitled:

"The pill - how it works and how it fails"

on her computer. Oh dear...

Same Same, But Different

Seemingly ungramatical and certainly nonsensical, anyone who has been to Thailand, Laos, Vietnam or Cambodia and been outside 5 star hotels will have heard this expression about 741 times.

Let me give you an example of its usage:

You go into your friendly local travel agency and want to book the mammoth 24 hour bus ride from Vientiane to Hanoi.
It being rather a long ride, you are concerned with the state of the bus, if the seats recline, if there is air con etc. Therefore you ask to see a picture of the bus. The travel agent is naturally prepared for this request and is willing to show you one. So he reaches into the depths of his desk and flourishes a glossy A5 photo of the bus.
Not being born yesterday you ask if this is the same bus you will be riding in.

Mr. Travel Agent beams at you and says "Yes, Same Same, But Different".

The first time you hear this, the "Same, Same" part naturally reassures you. The "But Different" part may throw you a bit, but being a trusting European you think that maybe the paintwork is different or that the tyres have since been changed...

Hah. That'll teach you.

"Same Same" refers to the fact that the transport you are actually getting also has:
* Seats
* 4 wheels
* A roof

The "But Different" is all the rest.

So you are shown a picture of a luxury 40 seater airconned coach with TV, a toilet and hot and cold running cabin attendants and what you actually get is a battered old minibus with a desk fan stuck to the window and 16 rucksacks stuck on your lap...

Dude looks like a lady

Right, I have got some things to write about before I lose my impetus...

My first experience of "another" kind of sexuality was a transvestite in Majorca. He / she / it was called Suzie and from my then naive 13 year old point of view he was simply a 40 year old man wearing make up, high heels and had some socks stuffed down his bra. All in all he exuded about as much sex appeal as an incontinent bulldog.

20 years later and I have met some vastly superior Suzies, in fact they are rife here in Thailand... Yes indeed, they are The Ladyboys.

Ladyboys range between effeminate men to the "I haven't even had a single beer yet, but that is the most beautiful girl I have ever seen in my life". Some you can tell straight away (like with the German Shepards & the Terminators), big hands, big feet etc. But the finely tuned ones are nearly impossible to spot. Which of course brings us to the story which many a sailor (among others) has to tell (I think my father speaks of "A friend" to whom it happened, yeah, well...). The usual "Pulled a stunner, got her home and just as it was getting exciting, I reached down and and and and SHE HAD A PENIS!!! I mean he, well she". Cue dazed look and taking a big gulp of a pint as culprit sits at the bar and shakes his head in disbelief.

I have managed to evade their charms, but I have seen many a man being lulled into submission. They actually are the perfect woman - they like a drink and are even more promiscous than most men. You are walking down the beach in Koh Phan Gan after 17 million beers and this gorgeous thing comes up to you and asks if you would like a blowjob... If you can't resist, well at least you can always say that travelling broadens your horizons...

Why they are endemic to Thailand and not anywhere else in the world will remain a mystery to me. As if the Thai men are simply born with less testosterone than the rest of mankind.

This appealed to me:

Boards of Canada

Does anyone know if Big Bird (you know Seasame Street etc.) was male or female?? It was strangely androgenous, never had a partner and was always playing with kids. Was Big Bird indeed the precursor to Michael Jackson??

These are the questions that come in to your head while travelling.

Baddest English of the week competition #2

"Staffs only" (Kitchen door, Tioman Island, Malaysia)

Only an "s" too much, but I had this weird image of only Wizard's staves being allowed into the kitchen... Must have been the alcohol withdrawl.

Singapore

I arrived ready to hate Singapore. For its cleanliness, its bureaucracy and its general anti-asianess but after 36 hours in the place I left with rather a good impression.

Sure it is 3 times the price of Thailand, the people are nowhere near as friendly as in the rest of Asia, but it is a nice place to live. The trains run on time, there are traffic lights, the police aren't corrupt, the food is great, there is good nightlife etc. A sort of Stockholm in the sun... But you do notice the lack of spirit (for lack of a better word) in the place. A couple of years ago the government even started an infamous "Lets take having fun seriously" campaign.

There are signs everywhere forbidding this that or t'other. In the underground station you are not allowed to:
1) Rollerblade
2) Skateboard
3) Skate-Scooter
4) Study
5) Have pets
6) Eat or Drink
7) Have a Durian (smelly tropical fruit)
8) Bring flammable goods
9) Smoke (well ok)

each with a different fine attached.

So if you are caught on a skateboard walking your pooch, eating a Big Mac, having a smoke, with some liquid gas in your pocket and a Durian balanced on your head then you are up the Khyber.

The Taxis also have a great fare system. Basic tarif etc., but extra charges if you
a) Start at the airport (5 dollar surcharge)
b) Get in at rush hour, 7am - 9:30 am, 5pm - 8pm (1 dollar surcharge)
c) Get in in the city centre (1 dollar surcharge)
d) Get in after 23:30 (23:30-23:44: 10% extra, 23:45-23:59: 20% extra, 0:00 to 0:59: 35% extra and after 01:00 a whopping 50% extra. So ordering a taxi 1 minute too late can be quite costly)
e) Order a taxi in advance (2 dollar surcharge)
f) Put luggage in the boot! (1 dollar surcharge)

Ordering a helicopter is probably cheaper then ordering a taxi into the city center after 1am.

Had dinner in rather a nice place with a friend of the family who I hadn't seen in about 15 years, which is actually a good period of time not to see people (see Cousin Vinney) as you know there is no point trying to "catch up" with what has happened in the interim. Instead you are left with a great "here and now" conversation with maybe a bit of background info. Anyway she paid which dented my male ego but saved me from remortgaging my mother.

Flight from Singa-BKK with AirAsia (the Ryanair of Asia, just with prettier flight attendants) for 40 Euros. The route had only opened 3 days beforehand!

Ain't Karma Grand?

Funny T-Shirts of the world

"Sex instructor (first lesson free)"
"Bad Liver!" (On front) "Must punish him" (On back)
"Nudist beach lifeguard" (Big pair of binoculars on back)
"Only users lose drugs" (Think about it)

World Beer Review #3

Angkor (Cambodia): 5% alc., The original Cambodian beer - delicious, zesty, effervescent, crisp, toasty with a slight touch of blueberries.
Anchor (Cambodia): 5% alc., note cunning play on words. Drinkable, by that I mean it is possible to drink.
Guinness (Malaysia): 8% alc. What I hear you cry... Guinness, Malaysia??? Yes, true. Guinness bought the only serious Malaysian brewery a couple of years ago and now produces an 8% rocket propelled Guinness. Tastes like shite though.

Tioman Island

Going through Malaysia like a de-wormer through a dog, but Malaysia is just not as much fun as the rest of SEA. Tioman island is lovely though, used in the filming of South Pacific (the original Bali Hai) and with more jungles, beaches and coral than you can shake a stick at. The wildlife is rather "wild" too, woke up this morning with a 2 meter Monitor Lizard wandering in front of my bungalow. Said good morning to him, but he didn't evem turn his head... Went snorkelling this afternoon and managed to see a sea turtle feeding underwater. Felt a bit like Dr. Doolittle this evening.

Yesterday was my 100th day on the road, didn't feel like it though.

Off to Singapore tomorrow to chew some gum openly.

Happy Valentine's Day

To one and all, may love be your guiding light and all that. I did manage to get 4 Valentine's eMails, one of them from my mother so that shall be discounted. One being to a list of people, so it doesn't really count either. Still quite chuffed with 2.5 though...

Malacca

Malacca is Malaysia's most "historical" city. Non-Sequitur if ever I heard one. Been stuck here for 3 days now, so it must have something...

Malaysia is rather strange. It's like one of those pantomine horses, where one pair of legs wants to go forwards and one wants to go back. But in our case we have at least three pairs of legs - a pantomine octopus if you will. The legs are naturally the Chinese, the Indians and the Malayans. Each with their own religion, culture, cuisine and problems.

The first thing the Taxi driver (Chinese) said to me in KL was "I am going to bring you to a Chinese hotel because you just can't trust those bloody muslims". Last night an Indian said to me "When you go home make sure you tell everybody that there are no problems here and that we all get on with each other very well". Paranoid. They do get on ok, you see Indians in Halal restaurants and Malayans in Indian restaurants, but they do like to hang around with their own kind (who doesn't). So you have Indian quarters and Chinese quarters. Even down to street level - walk along the Jalan Mubad and you will see only Indians and Indian shops, take the next left and you are on a Chinese street with lanterns hanging everywhere. One huge advantage of this cultural diversity is the cuisine (here I go again), so you will get Indian food with some wonderful Chinese spices or Malaysian food with a slight touch of curry.

On the cunning lingustics front, Malaysian is a weird mix of english, dutch, portugese with an arabic touch.
Counter is Kaunter, Engine is Injin
Police is Polis (same in Dutch I think)
Fireman is Bomba (a latin word)
Water is Air (a real brain twister)
and on the arabic side of things there is one word for "Older brother", one word for "Older sister" and one word for "Younger brother / sister".

Problem situations #12

You're on your own, you hail a cab.

Sit in front Y/N?

Kuala Lumpur (KL)

I have a vague suspicion that the Malaysians have a slight penis envy problem. Let me explain.
KL is full of skyscrapers; absolutely chockers. There is no need for them - they have the space, we are not talking Manhattan here. They could easily extend the city limits by 30km and build smaller buildings, but no the Malaysians like their skyscrapers. In fact so much so that:
The worlds fourth largest telecommunications tower is in KL - Menara Tower
The worlds largest free standing flagpole (ooh, er, missus and all that) is in KL
The worlds largest skyscraper is in KL - Petronas Towers

Q.E.D?

Other than that KL is nothing to get excited about... The food is really rather good and the alcohol is expensive enough to scare any Irishman into Detox. Which is exactly what I need, that and a hot shower which I had last night for the first time since Vietnam, which according to my Blog was the 31st December. First hot shower of 2004!

Georgetown, Malaysia

Malaysia, first impressions:

• Immigration card with mountains of warnings, threats and general nasty questions (Drug dealers will be executed, fire arms smugglers will be executed, if you bring too much money in we will put you in prison, "have you been to south america in the last 6 days?", "When did you last change your underware?")


• Great food


• An amazing cultural mix Indians, Chinese, Malayans, head scarves, red dots on the forehead (embarrased to say I don't know what it's called), turbans, monks...
  

Georgetown itself is on the island of Penang and is the oldest British settlement in Malaysia. The first Briton, Captain Light, set foot in 1786 on what was then a virtually uninhabited island and founded a free-trading area. In the middle is Fort Cornwallis where childless women are recommended to place flowers in the barrel of the Seri Rambai cannon ('the big one'!) and offer special prayers.

Koh Phan Gan - In Review

You may have noticed that the number of posts in the past 10 days has dropped off like snow from the roof in April. But then again, so did myself and Vinney - in to a huge vat of pure hedonism...

Let me set the scene for the unitiated: Hat Rin is the where most people stay on KPG, it has one beach to the east (Sunrise beach) and one to the west (Sunset beach, easy huh?). Between the two beaches is the rest of Hat Rin - 90% of which can be classified as follows:
Travel Agents
Internet shops
Bungalow complexes
First Aid stations

The cunning thing is that some of the shops do a mixture of the above. So you can surf the web as your ticket to Krabi is being prepared and while a Thai nurse is bandaging your big toe.

The amount of First Aid stations also really has to be commented upon, there are at least 10 and they are not short on business. If you ever saw Hat Rin at night you would know why too - Fire Juggling, jumping through fire hoops, walking on fire, dancing barefoot on the beach (with Bottles, rocks, cigarettes, dogs, killer starfish) and lots of boozed up men with too much testosterone etc. So every night at least somebody will drop fire on their toes, land on their head after jumping thru the hoop, stop whilst walking on the fire because they forget what they are doing, kick a rock/bottle/coconut/basketball or if all else fails, get in a fight. The nurses are so used to it they don't even ask what happened.

While passing on the fire & fighting activities I did end up with 3 foot injuries, two huge leg bruises, two pairs of lost shoes, a lost iPod and a head that only stopped buzzing 24 hours after leaving Hat Rin. Bloody Magic.

My highlights:

• My cousin Vinney - mad as a bottle of crisps


• Waking up in the empty bungalow next to mine (too drunk to find my own)


• Dancing with a sea eagle on my head


• Playing long range catch the coconut with a Spaniard @ 6am


• Finally finding a Scotsman to complete the fellowship of the Chang (Post full moon party beers with an Englishman, an Irishman, a Welshman, a Northern Irishman and a Scotsman)


• Too many sunrises and early morning swims to count


• Staying sober enough to scuba dive


• Meeting that bloody Dutchman again (7th time lucky)


• Generally, just meeting a lot of cool people just wanting to have a brilliant time (Including the staff (Yao, Sol & Ong) at the Paradise Bungalows (their website says it all - Under construction since 1999))

I still have sand in places that it doesn't belong though.