The road goes ever on and on...

The Honour Roll... 2008 and 2009

2009-01-28T03:15:00.000-08:00

I originally planned a giant retrospect for this final entry in this nearly-four-month saga of good and evil, but you know what? I can't be bothered. There's no point, really. So, to balance out a lot of the negativity that's been present throughout this weblog, I thought that I would write a list of thanks to damn near everyone I can remember, in rough order. Anyone I miss, I apologise, please email me to tell me so.

Thank you to the following for making the whole adventure worthwhile and above all, very enjoyable:

At home in Melbourne:

Allison Giles, Beau Karnaghan, Gemma Sashidharan (STA Travel), Natasha Foster, Greg Rako, Renzo Faccinetti, Lee McVeigh, Harold DeLuna, Marina Redford, Emma Carlos, Matt Akesson, Damien Csehi, Shivon Ferris, Rosie Kalber, Steve Turner, Robert Giles, Mary Thomas, Sarah B, Peter Mayer/Hans Music Spot, Graeme Hosking, Mark Gambino, Simon Hawker, Sunny Fisher, Christine and Ian Bailey, Bobby and Sandra Burchett, Joe Lucero, John Kennedy, Daniel Ritchie, Jarred, my understanding music students, Drew Dedman, Karl Beesley.

On the road:

Sameer Talwalkar, Michael from Hotel Lawrence in Mumbai, Simone Smit, Charlie Dales, Jet Sanders, The Professor, The Family at MTDC, Vincent, The Brit, The Children en route to Hospet, Rishab, Naina Gupta, Ramko, Kumi, Jonas Lorentzen, Manju, Adi, Acha, Auron, Jimmy Silva, Krischna, Nat Guest House Staff, Khao San Starbucks Staff, Aporia Books, The Pancake Girl Who Should Be a Nurse, The Kebab Girl, The people of Pattaya, Club Thermae, The PAD and UDD in Bangkok - because democracy works..., Nhong, Phyu, Sky, Rimkhong Guest House, MutMee Guest House, Marty, Lisa, Avicet, Sierra, Erwan and Charlotte, Ang, Som, Min, Noi, Peter, Son, Phoxay Hotel, Nung at Syri 2, Seng (the food guy), Ronda, Vong, Toy, Ning, Pet, Dhong, Kaovang, Phoumin (The Doctor), Lee, Raymond, Baan Champa's Residents, Robert Cooper, Okacchi, Chris, Shinji, Bill, Sara, Tracy, Fabrizio, Jillian, Kendall, Stefan, Robert Rouse.

The Authors:

Hunter S. Thompson*
Stickman**
Malcolm Gladwell
Charles Darwin
Richard Dawkins
Khaled Houssini
Lonely Planet
Douglas Coupland
The Bangkok Post
The Nation

Misc:

ANZ Bank
Google
Peter who hosts sardonicreasoning.com!

To everyone and everything who inspired me to write something while I was abroad, including all the swine and the villains, the thieves and the rednecks.

Thank you.

* Hunter S. Thompson, author of many things, has been a huge influence on the style of this blog, as some of you have probably noticed. But also on my life in recent times, and that's fine, but a little about Thompson should be noted here. He was a man who stood up to authority and stood his ground when they tried to stomp him - often visciously - and who wrote what he believed in, right to the end in 2005 when he shot himself in the head. He, along with Douglas Adams, inspired me to write about what I saw with as much truth as possible, while still creating a 'story', which has been the focus of the writing presented herein. Nothing of import is untrue, but there are times when what I wrote about may have been exaggerated. Gonzo journalism? Well, Hunter started it. Blame him.
Res Ipsa Loquitur.

** Stickman is an expat from New Zealand, who lives in Bangkok, and keeps a column online. Visit it at http://www.stickmanbangkok.com, he proved insightful on numerous occasions while I was in the area and is a very prompt replier to emails.

This is not the end, but for the moment, I'm staying in Melbourne. Thanks for tuning in. Over and out.

Fresh Revelations: Fond Memories Corrupted

2009-01-09T09:41:00.000-08:00

As a detour on my way back to Bangkok, from Nong Khai, I decided to revisit Pattaya - Sin City - the seedy sex-tourism capital of Thailand. I avoided writing about that place last time, I was not sure I was ready for whoever reads this thing to know the truth of the situation, but now, after revisiting, I see no reason not to, as it is a reflection of a greater problem that seems to be affecting a lot of Thailand now, after my trip to Laos. A time frame of approximately five weeks, including Nong Khai on both occasions. That kind of time is not, at least not in my opinion, long enough to dramatically shift a national psyche, which has not been limited to Pattaya, but Pattaya serves as a good template and that's where the change was most noticable and so I will start with a recap of what I never posted about before.

Beau and I arrived in Pattaya not really knowing exactly what to expect, which is something that happens pretty much everywhere you travel. Sure, you have a guidebook or the information from other travelers or friends, but it never ends up being what you're expecting and usually, it's best not to expect anything. So, at the end of November, 2008, we found ourselves in Pattaya. The terribly sleeping habits we'd strongly established in Bangkok were suited, we found, to the all-night habits of Sin City, which is situated on what would be a beautiful part of the country right on the coast, a few hours southeast of Bangkok. Before we went, we knew it had a seedy reputation, but figured that it could not be much worse than Bangkok. We were wrong. But for all of that, we had a good time. The experience was a lot like what I imagine an interactive circus to be like; on every corner, khatoey - ladyboys - tried to ply their wares to unsuspecting (or very suspecting) farang, often in search of an understanding soul to take care of them, (to read more on this, I would direct you to Beau's excellent blog on the subject http://bkmusique.blogspot.com/2008/12/they-never-taught-me-this-in-sex-ed.html), or the cheap street whores doing their thing... well, trying to. At every bar we were accosted by the scantly dressed bar-girls trying to lure us in to drink with them, which we repeatedly refused to do. The food in Pattaya is possibly the worst I've eaten in Thailand and the accomodation is expensive, comparitively, but it's a highly interesting place to visit for a fly-on-the-wall observation of everything human, and flies on walls have a tendancy to get to the truth of a situation with a lot of objectivity. Amongst all the hustlers, pimps, whores and other unsavoury types; including but not limited to the aging western man whom the years have been good to hand in hand with a young Thai girl (or boy) who is hopefully - but quite often not - legal, which is disturbing and true. I'm going to relate a story here that not only surprised me, but also reminded me of many harsh realities that face Thai people and one of the most obvious gaps between a so-called developed country, like Australia, and Thailand.

... Damnit, my relative peace here in the Nat Guest House restaurant looks like it's about to be disturbed and my pleasant, reasonably cheap beer ruined by the scum and villainy of other patrons... which I may return to later in this article, for now though, let's see how long I can hold out before feeling violently ill. Some of these people have the appearance of real swine. Completely at odds with my noble beard and scruffy hair... but anyway...

Author's note: I met the following girl at around 6:30am after a night of roaming the streets, my memory is hazy and I have no notes, so names and current ages are a best guess or complete lie, whichever happen first. However, I don't believe this to be detrimental to th story, or the outcome, at all. Now, I'd also like to point out, before I beging, that Thai people, like the Lao, are rarely open with their emotions, especially with strangers. Explaining feelings or displaying strong emotions causes them, as I understand things, to potentially lose face. Also, as one last , completely unrelated note, the beer in Thailand is dreadful compared to that in Laos. I can feel the chemicals used in preservation fucking with me already, and so much for using beer to relax me enough to sleep... but that's another story for another time.

Ann - that is what I will call her, though of course it has as much resemblance to her real name as the name she actually gave me, which I don't remember. (Thai and Lao people often use their nicknames instead of their real names, and many people will never know the real name of their friends, and unlike in the west, nicknames have generally got no relevance to the original real name) - introduced herself, well, actually, the story goes more like this...

Earlier that evening, Ann tried to get Beau and I in to drink at her bar, which we declined, however I noticed some heavy scarring running up her forearms and, on the way back to my hotel a few hours later, decided to try and have a chat to her, at which point she introduced herself. She was playing some kind of card game with an old lady. The bar had long since closed and the quiet grey of early morning was beginning to make itself felt. I figured that this girl would have an interesting story if I could probe deep enough to find it and, as luck would have it, she thought I was handsome and invited me to sit. At first she attempted to explain the card game, but it went over my head, or maybe I tuned out due to the high levels of superstitious nonsense - it was, she said, a little like tarot. Anyway, I found out that she was 21 and from a town, if I recall correctly, not far from the Laos border, but I could be wrong on that fact. She was not from Pattaya, though, and was from a small backwater village somewhere in Thailand. After some more idle, 7am conversation, I asked her about the scarring on her arms. I'd seen self-harm scars before, but never anything like what Ann had. The scars were sometimes half a centimetre thick and there were hundreds of them, criss-crossing their way up her forearm and upper arm. It was obvious that she had done some serious harm to herself and that it would never leave her, but what I could not tell just by looking, was how long ago it was done.

I asked Ann why she did it to herself and her answer was surprisingly simple and surprisingly honest and it echoed a similar story, though far more severe, to that of a man Beau and I met in India who burnt himself with cigarettes.

'I was heartbroken,' she said. 'It was crazy, I know, I'm probably still a bit crazy...? When I was twelve years old, I was in love with a guy who was 15, nothing ever came from it and I was heartbroken.'

'So you took a knife to your arm?' I asked.

'I was a bit crazy, I think. My mother thought I was posessed by a Djinn... you know, a demon,' she explained. 'I just wanted to hurt myself, I felt like all I deserved was pain.'

'The emotional pain was too much, so you hid it with physical pain?'

'I think so, yeah. I was very hurt. In fact, right throughout I was a bit of an outcast. I was... how you say... like a ladyboy, but a girl...'

'A tom-boy?'

'Yes. I would ride motorbikes dangerously... you know, I rode a motorcycle over a waterfall by accident, once.'

'Jesus, how the hell did you survive that?'

'I was lucky... my bike did not survive, though.'

'I'm hardly surprised! Shit, you were very, very lucky! But, beyond that, what do you mean that you were an outcast? Your family didn't want you?'

'It's not that my family don't want me... I think they were scared of me. I was... strange, I still am. I had short, punk hair and wore boys clothes and rode motorcycles fast. This long hair that I have now is the first time in my life. My parents thought I was posessed by a Djinn or something... but I think it was a type of rebellion.'

'So what on earth are you doing in this sinful place?'

'Well, when your arms are scarred like this, you have weird hair and are generally a little crazy, it's quite difficult to get a normal job... but I don't go with customers like a lot of girls do. I just work here in the bar and talk to people. I have to support my family back home and I can earn enough money working here to do that.'

'Do you talk like this? I mean, I doubt a lot of people would understand even remotely what you went through and what I presume you still go through, with the crazyness and all.'

'No, but you're different to most, I think.'

'Put it down to rare insight or something... it really highlights a difference in understanding between Australia and Thailand if your parents thought you were posessed and that you were ostracised for it. Made unwelcome. It begs the question of why you want to support them?'

'They're my family.'

- And that was that, a simple statement; family can do no wrong. The reason she works in a terrible place like Pattaya is simple; it's easy to earn money there doing reasonably simple work. This conversation highlighted a vast difference in general mental health understanding between Australia (and much of the 'west') and Thailand (and probably other less developed countries), but not always. There are still people in the first world who fear the supernatural when they should attempt to understand psychology. It was interesting that, even my friend Ronda, a well-educated Lao, jumped to the 'black magic' conclusion immediately when I related Ann's story to her.

Ann went on to tell me that she felt terrible regret for what she had done to herself and the hassle she put her family through. I told her that it's probably not as bad as it all seems and, that at the very least, I can understand - indirectly, of course - her many problems. She said again that she was crazy... my response was that the sanest people I know are at least a little bit crazy. Which is true. Ann assured me, after I admitted concern, that she never felt any urge to hurt herself anymore and dealt with her emotions rationally, which is, I suppose, the kind of wisdom that only vast and terrible experiences can yield, especially in a country that seems not to understand this sort of thing. She was happier now, more mature. The conversation eventually tapered off and I headed off to my room to sleep.

When I returned to Pattaya in January 2009, all the fun and all the interesting characters seemed to have disappeared, replaced by a jaded, cheerless, bo-muan crowd of workers and scummy old men. Sin City had lost its character, I felt. A great number of bars were up for sale and a whole Soi of them was closed after 6pm and yet the traffic was worse than I recall, the stench of human waste wafted from the sewers with more strength and when trying to find a room, I was told 'very busy, all full' more times than I care to remember. Something was not adding up. I went looking for a few of the characters I met and when I went looking for Ann, I was told that she had gone away. The girl did not know where and I did not press the point. I just hope she moved on to something worthwhile and decent, maybe a job in a factory in Bangkok. I suspect, though, that she probably went back to her village for who knows what.

Now, speaking of severe changes, Bangkok has dropped drastically in enjoyment value too. I certainly don't profess to be an expert on social studies, but when getting a taxi from Ekkemai station to Khao San Rd, I was surprised at how few westerners were out and about in the Siam Square, Silom and Sukhumvit areas, which are generally the habitat of reasonably well-off expatriates and people passing through on other business. When I had a look at Stickmanbangkok.com - an expat's opinion on life and love in Bangkok - Stick had made an observation that a lot of expats have left or are leaving and he has seen a shift in attitude that coincides with political, social and financial insecurity. This shift in attitude is the same one that was so obvious in Pattaya. The generally fun, friendly banter that goes on between locals had been replaced with something darker, something brooding, that was hanging over the city like a cloud threatening to pour thousands of litres of rain but never quite breaking. When I finally arrived at Khao San, I was shocked to see how things had changed. There were tourists everywhere and within minutes of making my first exit from my guesthouse to find my contacts, I heard a very loud, drunken Englishman somewhere behind me exclaim: 'Get the fuck out of my way!' which was far worse than anything I saw last time, and it was only about 2pm - hardly a time for drunk and disorderly behaviour. According to Stickman, there is a division among expacts (go read the article of review on 2008 on stickmanbangkok.com) and nervousness among the Thais, with many jobs lost. Which was true according to my friend at Nat Guest House, who told me that people are genuinely nervous now. I asked whether this is the repurcussions of the airport closures in December, which he confirmed rather forcefully: 'That whole episode was terrible for Thailand... people don't want to visit. It's dramatically affected how people view Thailand and people here are confused about the future... what will happen?'

I wish I knew the answer to that question myself, what indeed will happen here, if tourism drops beyond that crucial point? But on Khao San Rd, the reaction was a mixed bag: my regular daytime phat-thai vendor on Th Rambuttri told me that business was so good it was hard to keep up with at times, and this was reflected, I felt, by the severe increase in street stalls roaming the area plying their wares. Phyu, my Burmese friend, told me that her business of selling tshirts on Khao San Rd was up a lot, while Raj, the Thai-born Indian Sikh tailor ran at a loss last month. The internet cafe that I frequent, which doubles as a travel agency, has shifted from two small offices to one small office. A real mixed bag of reactions, indeed, but my eyes tell me that, at least on Khao San Rd, there are tourists in plenty and business seems drastically up on the month before, yet the attitude is drastically down.

Maybe it's an understandable hangover from the Christmas and New Year period of dealing with filthy farang doing filthy farang things, or maybe it's the other nervousness. It's probably a mixture of the two.
On the 8th of January, I went to my regular breakfast haunt, where they do decent fruit salad, muesli and yoghurt along with just-passable coffee. I ordered the two simultaneously at around 9:45am, received the coffee and...

-- for a quick interlude, here's an example of farang attitude:
I am sitting in Starbucks (which is not somewhere I'd normally sit in Melbourne, but Khao San is essentially devoid of decent coffee and after being in Laos, where the coffee is generally very good... I was having withdrawels...) writing this monster when an American couple poked their heads into the seating area. The woman said 'This is different,' with scorn and distaste. God damn, is nothing good enough for you slimeballs? Get back to your own country and wallow in your take-take-take lives and leave the rest of us alone. Don't bring that intollerant (here I am ranting quite intollerantly) horseshit to the rest of the world. The truth is, there should probably not even be a Starbucks in the oldest area of Bangkok. These pigs really piss me off, and they are everywhere!--

... sorry about that. I received the coffee quickly, but it was not until I reminded the waitress, sometime around 11, that my muesli arrived at 11:15. It was admittely a lot busier than the last time I was there, so I figured I'd go back the following day and see if things were any different. There was. It was quieter and my breakfast arrived quickly, but when I went to pay, the cheer of December (and even of the day before) had vanished:
'60 Baht,' the lady demanded.
'Kawp-pun kaahp,' I replied, handing her 100.
No response, she turned her back and fled in search of my 40baht change. When she returned, I made a point to thank her again - in Thai - which was again met with stony silence and a turned back.

Last time I was in Bangkok, I wrote about the sorry state of rude farang, and while that is still a massive problem, the hostility eminating from the locals is a big surprise and I can't help but wonder whether all that western abuse finally got the better of most people here, and now that the situation is escalating, perhaps they realise that they don't have to take that attitude from people. They are, after all, human and should be treated with the same basic-level respect that all humans deserve. That same basic level respect that us in the west have, more often than not, forgotten about. So perhaps now the local people are giving some western medicine back to the swine, and the innocent people are as all innocent people - victims of hostility. The mildly irritating thing is that the negative vibes of the place are affecting me, too, making me feel somewhat like a hypocrite...

On my way back from that fateful second breakfast, a Nepali man at a jewelry shop-cum-hair salon-cum-clothing stall offered me some 'large' tshirts.
'Hello, sir! You want tshirt? I have extra large!'
'No, thanks,' I replied civily.
'Haircut?' he pushed.
This time my reply was a far more curt 'No.' and I was starting to get a bit peevish at the whole situation.
'Shave?'
I turned around.
'Look, man, if I wanted to shave, I would do it myself or go to a barber,' which certainly shut him up. And now I've forgotten where I was heading with that little diatribe... oh yes, another example of hate.
I was chatting to the girl who painted the 'Gonzo' symbol on my arm when a young man with no top 'fell' on a young Thai girl in school uniform from behind, making a very obvious physical pass at her while pretending not to feel her up. He then, despite her nervous increase in pace, had the gall to try and talk to her. She was probably 15 or so and he in his mid 20s. I stared at the pig, but he was too far away and too drunk to notice. The henna girl, whose name I have forgotten, asked why I was looking at him like that and whether he was drunk?
'I... dislike people like that,' I said finally, after musing about how to say it without losing face. She didn't seem to care and smiled, saying 'same same... bad man,' which really says it all.

So, what I am curious about, after all of that, is what has caused such a drastic change? Is it a hangover from Christmas and New Year swine influx? Economic problems causing job insecurity as Stickman hints at? Social and political instability among both resident nationals and expatriates? An awful concoction of the lot? I'm not sure, but the fun has gone out of the place. Jeremy, an American that I met on the 8th, who had just arrived, said he loved it so far, but maybe that will change, too. The Australian I spoke to on the bus from Pattaya echoed my sentiments, including disgust at the sex-tourist scene there. He found it horrible. While I find some aspects of that scene horrible, it is certainly a curious thing to behold. Two things have stayed consistent, through whatever horrible change is taking place here. The excellent chicken Kebab vendor in Pattaya and the friendliness of the Starbucks staff. Maybe their jobs are secure, but it's impossible to say without an indepth, time-consuming conversation on the politics of Thailand with someone who can see all sides of the story, and who is a Thai national.
Despite all of this, Khao San Rd is a horribly familar place that is entirely welcome and I find myself unable to get motivated to hop on a train to a potentially nicer, quieter and far more scenic place. In fact, I can't even motivate myself to walk to the market for some sarongs.

Now that this beast of a piece is finished, after three hour-long internet cafe sessions, I can get about to doing nothing again. I apologise for the 'interruptions', but feel that it captured the tone and the feeling of the place more strongly than writing a fluent piece from start to finish. There is no doubt in my mind though that something big will happen soon, another uprising perhaps? Who knows, but since I leave in a few days, I'll only hear about it after the fact.

Jesus, this thing was a load of gibberish with no continuity, wasn't it?

Vang Vieng II: Little Things

2009-01-07T21:50:00.000-08:00

When I awoke the next day, the fever was still harassing me, but I felt a little better. Full of the energy that only 14-odd hours of sleep can bring and, subsequently, I was filled with a sense of optimism that every rash judgement I'd made the night before would turn out to be false; a fevered nightmare, as it were. The first thing that any self-respecting traveler does the morning after a fevered arrival is get above ground-level and have a look around. Take stock of their surroundings and get a feel for the place in the daylight. I was fortunate, somehow after eating some food I stumbled into this guesthouse above the Organic Mulberry Farm Cafe and was given what I assume is the best room in the place, complete with balcony overlooking the main strip of town. It was from this balcony that I was able to take stock of my surroundings, while ignoring the violent rumbling in my stomach, and what I saw took my breath away, at least until reality kicked back in.
Directly below me, looking north, up the strip and south, down the strip of main road, everything that I feared was true from the night before was; beer bars, western food restaurants and a mixed-stew of westerners and Laotians, though the night before the ratio had drastically favoured the westerners, at 10am the next day, most of those were nursing hangovers and risidual hallucinations and the Lao ruled by ratio. What had looked, last night, like a tributary to Las Vegas, USA, now looked like a small rural town that had done exceptionally well for itself as the tourism had risen. There were still leftovers - a hangover, as it were - of the small village that preceded what is now one of the biggest tourist traps outside of Khao San Rd in Bangkok; young children, monks and the occasional chicken, but Vang Vieng was no longer a Lao town in the traditional sense of the word. At least not here.
Beyond that was a scene that was almost indescribably beautiful, marred only by the god damn powerlines. In the distance behind the town itself, a monstrous mountain range lumbered its way across the horizon, deep blues and greens rising up into the same blanket of cloud that had unleashed the rain I'd seen in South-East Asia the night before. The cloud itself was nurturing the mountains, pale grey fingers winding their way around the mountains from their dramatic crowns at each peak. This scene was new to me in, after all, I'd barely seen any cloud, let alone rain-cloud, in the nearly three months I'd been away, and to see it so dramatically covering a distant, beautiful mountain range was cause for my breath to be taken away.

After I finished breakfast, I headed to an internet cafe to email my Hmong friend an apology and explanation why I had not shown up the night before. I would have phoned him, except that he was so far out of mobile telephone range that it would have been pointless, and he knew that. I decided to make the most of my small reserve of energy and take some photos of the beautiful scenery around town, so, with camera in hand, I set off to have a look around. Very quickly the town changed from bar-ridden tourist strip to a rustic, but financially well-off, Lao town, complete with chickens and children and a few roaming monks. One member of what turned out to be a group of three sabaidii'd me and retrospectively, I'm not sure if I nopped them, but no one really seemed to care. Anyway, after some wandering, my aim, eventually, being the far side of the main river to where the other mountain ranges were, I came across two hand-made bridges crossing a small creek. Both promised me BeerLao on the other side, somewhere, and both pointed toward the Karst. There was nothing for it but to head cross. The bars were located on the exact beach that I figured I wanted to be at, or at least, right next to it, and en route I passed through what seemed to be a section of the town dedicated to self-sufficient farming, which was nice to see. To get to the beach itself, which was not much of a beach but more of a rock-and-sand section of dried riverbed that acted as a finishing line for the tubing run on the Song river, I had to cut through one of the bars, which was quite easy, and joyously, no one harassed me to buy beer. Just as a quick diversion, it is the tubing (floating down the river in a tractor tyre tube) on this river that made Vang Vieng famous, along with a ready supply of opiates and hallucinogenics, but too much of a good thing can't last. I was busy snapping some photos and musing on the meaning of the Lao girls beating river-moss to death on the rocks, when I noticed the monks from earlier. They seemed to be having a playful competition of skimming rocks, which, in my youth, I had been rather good at and which is a thoroughly enjoyable way to pass the time. With a broad grin, I picked up the best looking rock for the job and launched it at the river. It sunk straight to the bottom with a loud plop and the monks laughed. I smiled and shrugged and picked another one, this time managing about seven hops. The three clapped and cheered and I joined the fun. The older guy, who was not wearing robes, asked me - in excellent English - my name and where I was from and other such questions. We had quite a long conversation and he told me that he was a monk of some 13 years who was up in Vang Vieng from Pakse - his home town - as a teacher at one of the temples. The younger two, robed monks were his students or perhaps apprentices.

This activity died down after a while and I went back to taking photos, I then trailed after the departing monks and headed back to my room to pass out for a few hours, my energy basically depleted.
This small activity, along with the scenery, certainly made me leave Vang Vieng, two nights later, with a fond memory. A town surrounded by so much natural beauty, marred by commercialism that will probably rival Khao San Rd and beat, hands down, anything in the capital city of Vientiane and with a friendly Lao population - or a friendly population of any persuasion - that, at last count, equaled three people, could still have something wonderful in it. Some of that famous, selfless conduct that makes visiting this part of the world so enjoyable compared to Australia. So despite the fact that I missed the Hmong new year, I did have a good but brief time with some monks and considering that after 7pm, it's hard to find a Lao on the main strip, this was as close to local culture I got in Vang Vieng.

Fun Facts: Hmong practice secular animism, as do the Lao and most sub-groups within Laos. However, the Lao practice the same Buddhism as the Thai and seem to mix the two quite comfortably with no fear of contradiction.

Un-fun Facts: People who phone people from home are some extraordinarily noisy people who make typing these things more irritating than it should be. The worst part is that they generally fall into the harmful farang category that I've posted about before.

Vang Vieng I: Path to the Hmong

2008-12-28T01:01:00.000-08:00

The fever that had been slowly growing on me was reaching a highpoint, exacerbated by a night full of whiskey and beer, as I shuttled my way by bus through Vientiane province, north, to Vang Vieng. My aim was to reach a small Hmong village that night to celebrate the Hmong new year. The fever was strong when I left Vientiane and try as I might, I could not fight it. Somewhere north of the city itself, I passed out.

When I awoke, the scenery had changed quite dramatically. Laos was suddenly so stunningly beautiful that I forgot about the blanket of cold sweat covering my body and watched the world go by. We passed small villages and open fields and what seemed to be heavy jungle, and each time we went through a village, I had an intense urge to stop and explore, not only the village life, but the scenic backdrop; grim, daunting mountain ranges peaked in cloud. The same cloud that still seems to be covering most of the country and which brought with it the first rain I had seen in over two - if not four - months. This scenery, I felt, would be the beginning of some new adventure, but I was traveling light - having left my pack in Vientiane - and could only last a couple of days. The fever struck me again and I passed out.

Over the next two hours I woke in fits every fifteen minutes, resting myself as best I could in the hope that I would make it to the Hmong village and not disappoint my host and myself. Thankfully though, despite the fever, my throat had stopped hurting the night before The fever was making me sweat and the cool mountain air, acting as a natural air-conditioner, kept me placid. I realised that I had an opportunity to take some quick snaps from the bus window - an activity that I discovered in India - and tried a few, only managing one decent shot before the Japanese guy sitting behind me asked to close the window because he was cold. I grimaced at him as he went ahead and closed it anyway. 'It's fine, you weak bastard,' I muttered under my breath and continued to stew in the grip of the fever, sliding in and out of sleep.

It was dark when we pulled in to Vang Vieng, the main street was lined with the horrible neon glow of contemporary Thai/Lao beer culture. I stumbled off the bus with my only bag; a satchel containing books, pens and my photography gear, plus some underwear and two Lunghis which I had purchased in India and a bag-pocket full of drugs against malaria, fever and tooth decay.
I felt too rotten to try and find the village, which was apparently located about 14km out of Vang Vieng and I felt rotten for giving up. I realised, though, that if I did not sleep and eat, in reverse order, it would get a lot worse. I hunkered down in the Organic Farm Cafe and ate some good food, drank some Pepsi and Iced Coffee, then migrated to their guest house. I had read in Lonely Planet that there is a substantial drug and foreigner scene here and, still feeling slightly hungry, with the little energy I had left, I went in search of a snack and some water.
My first impression of the night was not positive. Everywhere I looked there were bars and restaurants, most of which had TVs in them showing reruns of bad American sitcoms like Friends, all of them full of blissed-out or drunk farang. After a time I found a bakery and, after triple-checking with the worker that the cake had no drugs in it, headed back to the guest house, grabbing some water from a small shop and scowling at this terrible turn of events.

Back in my room I ate my cake, drank some water and with a grim view of the world, passed out, hoping that the morning would give me some hope and a much needed positive outlook.

The Secret War (Impromptu Ramblings, IV)

2008-12-23T02:57:00.000-08:00

Up until now, I had not realised what Laos had been through in its history, despite having the Lonely Planet book on the subject. I decided, today, to visit the COPE visitor centre at the National Centre for Rehabilitation, a place that was largely funded by the Australian government to help those who have been affected by bombs in post-war Laos get prosthetic limbs, wheelchairs and other useful aids.

This is really a terrible thing for these people to go through every day, somewhere in the country. Statistically, according to a documentary that I watched, Laos is the most heavily bombed country in the history of the world.

From the beginning of the Vietnam war, in 1961, there was also a terrible war going on in Laos and the effects of that war are still prominent, as are the effects of many wars. All over the country are unexploded cluster bombs. According to a documentary (and other information within the exhibit) there were a total of approximately 580,000 bombing runs by the US against Laos - the reason was partially a 'fight against communism' and partially as a means of blocking routes around Indochina, particularly China itself and Vietnam.
There were bombs dropped in Laos approximately every eight minutes, 24 hours of the day. Lots of types of bombs were dropped, but the one that has the most effect still are the remnants of the cluster bombs.
The approximate stats are as follows.

In excess of 260 million - Estimated number of sub-munitions (bombies) from cluster bombs dropped over Lao PDR between 1964 and 1973.
30% - Estimated failure rate of sub-munitions under ideal conditions.
78 million - Estimated number of sub-munitions that failed to explode.
387,645 or 0.49% - Number or percentage of estimated unexploded sub-munitions destroyed by UXO LAO from 1996 to April 2008.

78 million of these little bastards that have an area of damage upto 30 metres. Little balls of explosive encased in ball-bearings.

So, since I was completely ignorant of this, I thought it would be prudent to perhaps share with anyone else who reads this and who may also be ignorant of this problem in Laos, that is still a problem, thirty years later.

It was affrontive to see these things in a small museum and soon I'll be heading into the rural areas myself and have no idea what I'll find.

Please have a look, at the very least, at the COPE website listed in my new links section and if you are in Vientiane, check the exhibit out. If you're elsewhere in Laos, or if you go to Laos, then you can probably see the results of these bombies rather personally. But, like with many things, education is going to be one of the biggest preventatives, public awareness will help and if you, like me, were ignorant to this, then hopefully you'll be a bit less so for checking COPE out.

The Secret War was not made public in the United States (or most of the western world) for several years after it began in 1961.

NB: No transcription from notepad.

Paradise City (Mekong Catfish, Part II)

2008-12-21T02:50:00.000-08:00

... these poor buggers are being flogged every day of their lives with the knowledge that sex is death and rain kills fish and any politician they see on TV is a liar and a fool.

-Hunter S. Thompson, June 22, 1987
Generation of Swine, page 259

A bleak outlook. But have things really changed in thirty years?

Maybe there is no Heaven. Or maybe this is all pure gibberish - a product of the demented imagination of a lazy drunken hillbilly with a heart full of hate who has found out a way to live out there where the real winds blow - to sleep late, have fun, get wild, drink whiskey and drive fast on empty streets with nothing in mind except falling in love and not getting arrested...
Res ipsa loquitur. Let the good times roll.

-Hunter S. Thompson
Paradise Valley
Generation of Swine, page 11

And so they will. With just under three weeks left on my Lao visa, I figured that a longer, more intimate stay, first in Vientiane and then perhaps in Pakse, was a necessary move. When you're alone, the flexibility to do your own thing is unequaled, and this is essentially what happened.

I've taken to avoiding farang for many reasons, even here in Laos, but not for the reasons evident in my last article. It is a simple fact, as already noted, that the vast majority of all nationalities who devalue honour are swine. Lowly people who are so self-consumed that they cannot grasp the simple delights of life. Preferring, it seems, some pseudo sense of adventure - cheap thrills.
Let me tell you a story, in brief, of some people I met. Their names will be modified but it will make no difference.

I met Joe at the Thai-Lao border, the friendship bridge between Nong Khai in Thailand and a small area near Vientiane, the capital of Laos. We got to chatting, as strangers in a foreign land tend to do. Joe was coming back to Laos, where he lives for most of the year, after spending some time exploring Malaysia. He told me that he has a son, James, who is three and a half years old, to a Lao woman. But they do not get along. I liked Joe, he seemed honest and, not only that, he seemed to be a good source of information about this new city that I was heading toward. Joe is from Australia, like me, and is looking down the barrel of thirty years. He told me that the reason he comes back so often is to support his son. A noble reason, I felt. I decided, though not on my own, to spend time hanging out with Joe and meet his family and see where this adventure leads. We were friends, now. Over the next few days I met his ex-girlfriend, Nin, and son, James. I was at first a little shocked when I met James. He seemed to speak in grunts and whines, which, to my knowledge, is not what a child pushing four years old should be capable of. I asked Joe whether he was teaching James any English or reading to him, or whether Nin was doing the same in Lao, but the answer was no. Actually, the answer was evasive: 'I really should... huh?' and this was probably the beginning of what would be an end. Perhaps not the end, that has not happened, but an end. I felt sorry for the kid, and as the days wore on I came to realise that unhealthy is too tame a word to describe these parent's relationship. Here is a young child who, thanks to his father's insatiable thirst for adventure, has seen most of South-East Asia and been to Australia numerous times, but cannot speak more than a few words of English. 'Mama', 'Papa', 'food' and the like. He has been through a whole Australian passport, all by the age of three. But James was spoiled. I've seen it before and it's ugly. Parents vying for a child's love and attention almost subconsciously. A bleak future, where the blood is filled with heroin and the liver struggles daily with a strong intake of alcohol. A body and mind poisoned by parents who, wishing for their twisted best, produce the worst possible outcome.
--The greatest harm comes from the best intention--
But it's too early to condemn young James, perhaps not too early to condemn the parents, though.

Every night I would hear from the next room shouting between Nin and Joe. A communication problem so severe that one wonders how they got to having a child in the first place. Nin speaks very broken English and Joe's Lao is tragic. Neither can communicate to the other just what they want, or feel, or what they think James needs. This went on for days, from the first night I was there, and my stay in Vientiane was getting boring. I was not involved in the situation and it still oppressively hung over my head, like a severe thunderstorm waiting to thrash some houses and tip some cows while they sleep, leaving behind a flood of ruin. I had not spent any time with any local Lao people and I was about ready to move on, after a week of doing basically nothing. I mentioned this to Joe over pizza one night and he said again that we should go to Veng Vieng, to the north of the capital. But I knew that I would not like it. Other people that I'd met here in Vientiane and in Nong Khai before that said that Veng Vieng is the place to go in Laos, which means that it is full of foreigners. I said that maybe I would go back to Thailand to see the friends I'd made there. Joe wanted to come and I politely acquiesced.

My chance to get away came in a way that I did not expect, as is the case in most adventures. Tension between Nin and Joe had been growing steadily over the week and poor James was caught in between. Joe had told me that earlier in their relationship, Nin had tried to kill him with an axe, but I did not believe that of her, based on what little I'd seen. Maybe it was true, but so what? That is the past, now.

We had decided to go to Ubon Thani, about 55km south of Nong Khai, in Thailand, when on the morning of our departure, Nin and Joe had a monstrous fight. Joe invited me, during this, to eat one last pizza with him at the Swedish Bakery. As I was packing, he was arguing back and forth with Nin over who-knows-what, James, meanwhile, was screaming like a tormented cat. A perfectly understandable response from a three-year-old. At a quiet point in the drama, Joe told me that he had cut Nin's passport so that he could take James across the border and she could not follow. A low, cowardly act that I wanted no part of.
Soon after that, Joe packed a few things for James and, with him in tow, took off, presumably for the bus station. I hung around to finish packing and to see if he would come back, mainly because I had no idea where the bus station was and by this time, Nin had gone into hiding. I went to eat pizza as planned and brooded on this dark turn of events.
After a while, I went back to the guesthouse to see if Joe had returned, though by now I was going to tell him to stay here and sort his life out for the future of his son. He had not been seen. Nin was in the lobby with the wife of the owner, so I sat down and asked if she was ok. She broke down in tears, which is, I believe, a very rare thing for many people in this part of the world. They prefer not to show strong emotions like that, especially to farang. In broken English, Nin told me how she felt.

'I'm so tired of this, you know?' She sobbed at me. 'Why does Joe not stay away and take James to school in Australia? Why he come back all the time?'
I handed her a tissue and shrugged, indicating that I had as much of an idea as she did.
'I can work here for my sister and have a bit of a life and see James whenever he can come back, but he can have a good education in Australia, he has a future there!'
'You only want the best for your son, right Nin?' I probed.
'Yes, but Joe no understand. Why he do this!?'
'I don't know. But the whole situation is shit,' I remarked.

This went on for about five minutes and I was amazed, though in retrospect, not particularly surprised. This woman, who Joe had painted to be a manipulative, murderous psychopath, was a mother who was hurt and tired of conflict, but unable to say anything. It was a terrible thing to see, terribly sad.
'You need to talk to Joe. Sort all of this out,' I said.
Nin went outside for something, fresh air perhaps, and the other lady, who had remained quiet all of this time, said to me 'she is hurt and angry, he is angry. She should say she is sorry and she misses her son, so that he will come back and they can talk.'
I agreed with most of it, but added that they need to sort this mess out.

After a few phone calls from Nin to Joe, often via myself, we found out he was headed for Nong Khai. I said I'd see him there. Nin and I took a tuk-tuk to the border, where, after more phone calls, we found out that Joe was already in Nong Khai. With her sliced passport and all of Joe's belongings, Nin approached immigration and spoke to some men outside, who she sold Joe's DVD player to in exchange for them fixing her passport and 900baht, easily enough to get her across the border. I told her again that she needs to talk to Joe and she nodded. After waiting for a while, Nin had everything ready. I asked what she was going to do. She told me she would go to Ubon Thani, where she has friends. I offered my help with talking to Joe, as I seemed to be able to read both of them better than they could read each other, and perhaps offer a little personal insight for young James' future. But she declined. I wished her luck and watched her walk through immigration towards Thailand.
I smiled ruefully at the people she sold the DVD player to, turned around and hailed a tuk-tuk back to Vientiane.

Of course, I wish them both the best, but I hold little faith that things will work out for the best. It's a terrible thing when the father of a child says that he should shoot himself to get out of the mess. A terrible thing. They will not do what needs to be done, I fear.

Back in Vientiane, I headed for a new guesthouse, determined to stay for another week and get to know this mysterious city. Within a few hours I was friends with the owners and staff of the guesthouse where I setup camp, and the following night (last night, now) I was invited to their personal christmas party at the owner's home. So much for avoiding christmas. But why not? These are good people and I feel that the oppressive thunder storm is well away, for now. Later again, we all got fiercely drunk on Lao beer and Chilean red wine.

But as I sit here brooding on this last week, fresh Mekong fish with sticky rice and coffee curing a severe hangover, caused by my extremely enthusiastic hosts, I can't help but ponder the absolute loss of personal honour in the most of the west. The offspring of a generation of swine, the sordid leftovers of the 80s are about as foul as any carcass floating down the Mekong in Cambodia or Vietnam.

A few nights earlier I had met and drank beer with two Scots and an Israeli who were heading for four-thousand-islands, south of Pakse. It was the night before I was supposed to leave for Thailand, and after talking with them they advised me, since they didn't seem happy with my lack-of-plan, to go out and see the 'real Laos'. I thought that if Vientiane is not real, then neither is Melbourne, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Talinn, Tokyo or any other city. I think that cities are as real as anywhere else. But you know what? Fuck those idiots and their high-and-mighty 'my-way-is-better-than-yours' attitude and all who believe what they believe. vientiane has shown me things that are just as real and just as much a problem as anything in the rural areas, albeit, the problems are different. The problem, I feel, is the west. Where honour disappeared not long after the dinosaurs and that this terrible influence is ruining the rest of the world and many lives with it.

But maybe there is hope. Maybe the United States and European influence is going to crumble. On BBC sometime this week is a program that will talk about the shift of economic power from west to east. Perhaps this will happen, perhaps not, but it seems to be a very real possibility. China and Japan are now shaking hands and according to the news, India and China are now the two most stable economies in the world. Like the monstrous shift of tectonic plates, the economic balance is moving rapidly. But will it be good or is there a new era of political darkness coming. Something like the dark ages?
We have no choice but to wait it out. As for me, well, I like it here. 24 hours after abandoning the farang, I feel at home again. Maybe it's the welcome of a friendly guesthouse where the people are interested, not in your money (or lack of), but in your life. One thing is for certain, though. I feel more removed from the west with each rapid passing of a day. Hunter Thompson's bleak outlook on the 80s is still going strong, thirty years later.

Res ipsa loquitur.

The Plight of Westerners (Visions of Hate)

2008-12-21T02:11:00.000-08:00

Author's note: I wrote this several weeks ago, while in Bangkok on Khao San Rd where I spent more time than was really necessary. While I certainly don't regret my time there, it has certainly left me with a bitter taste in my mouth toward the west. I had hoped that leaving my own country would make me a little less bitter, but that has not been the case. Consider this a disclaimer. If you do not like me writing negatively about your home country or home race, if you are white, then I'd stop reading. Since writing this I've been to other parts of Thailand and Laos and will append what new findings I have either in-line or at the end. As is to be expected, things have changed slightly in this view as the sardonic moment is past. - Vin

There is a peculiar attitude that seems exclusive to westerners - I'm not discriminating over which breed of westerner - that forces them, against what I presume to be their better character traits, to act like complete wankers when in a foreign country. Actually, I want to localise that to the tourist areas of Thailand. Maybe they collectively drink too much cheap beer and their IQ drops below 50 - the level of severe mental retardation - or to paraphrase myself; the point where they become animals again. Reverse evolution. Ugly.
You can observe these beasts most easily at night, but they are out and about all day. I have been going to breakfast at this nice place that serves good fruit salad with muesli and yoghurt for 35Baht and espresso for 30. I tend to keep odd hours here, just like at home, so my breakfast falls between 11am and 2pm. Already at this time the beer is being quaffed at an alarming rate. Not just one or two lunchtime beers, but a veritable army-load of the gear, delivered, it seems, straight into the blood stream. Those people are a different breed, though, to the ones you see at night. But more on that later. Booze fiends!
Farang also find it acceptable to simply ignore locals and sure, the majority of locals in these areas are trying to make a decent dollar from tourists, and why not? They are trying hard and working, for the most part, honestly. Can you imagine standing outside a restaurant or bar or massage place for twelve cursed hours each day? These are troubled times, too. The week long closure of the Bangkok International Airport means that there has been very little influx of new tourists. People are doing it tougher than ever, here, on the local front. Superficially it may look busy, but vendors and restaurant owners are struggling daily to make any money and indeed, sometimes struggling to break even. For some stupid reason, these same foreigners, who act like mongrels dogs are running scared. So, during all of this, you have seemingly the vast majority of foreigners who ignore or look down on the people who are trying to get business. These animals are rude! I can't imagine not even getting an acknowledgment when I talk to someone. Me? I try to, at the very least, look the person in the eye and say 'no thanks'. But, unless I have to be somewhere, I generally stop for a bit of fun. What better way to get to know the people? What easier way to find out information?
But not these animalistic booze hounds. All they care about, seemingly, is getting drunk and acting like idiots.
It seems a genuine shame, too. There are many interesting characters to meet, even in such highly touristed areas. Interesting characters that are Thai (or Burmese or Lao or any other neighbouring nationality) and who want to know you.

The night is the worst, though. Like in most places, foreigners and even some locals take a great liking to alcohol, much to their detriment. This, as I already stated, does happen in most places where alcohol is infused in local culture, and I freely admit this. But at least in Australia, acting like drunken twits in a bar will not be tollerated for too long... assuming that bar staff and security are somewhat decent at their job. But here, the Thai people will tollerate damn near anything, including mild bouts of farang violence. Hell, walking along a street where westerners are abundant will usually have me balling my fists in frustration. Frustration at the selfishness of foreigners. The absolute belief that no one asides them exists in the world. Add alcohol and things become unbearable.
I enjoy alcohol every now and then, I admit that, but it's not a recipe for hypocrisy or less criticism of the west. I could, however, quite happily live without alcohol for the rest of my life. Maybe alcohol consumption tests should be performed, along with IQ tests, on all passport applicants from all over the world. Those who drink on planes or who score under 80 on the IQ test should be denied exit from their home country. It is for the good of the world.

... Ok, scrap the IQ test, that's silly elitism. Just make a worldwide ban on alcohol, in fact, is it possible to de-invent something? It would be for the good of the planet. Stop these savages in their tracks.

Appendix:

While I still feel as I did then, it seems that most of the rest of the country along with Vientiane, Laos, does not fare the same. Sure, there are annoying drunkards, but at least they're mostly friendly with the locals. So the question remains unanswered. Why do they do it in Bangkok? What gives these beasts free license to forget all their regular manners?

Impromptu ramblings, volume III (Mekong Catfish part I)

2008-12-11T14:00:00.000-08:00

December 5th, 2008, sometime after midnight...
I suppose that a lot has happened in the last week or so. Firstly, I got to celebrate the King of Thailand's birthday in Bangkok, while I was there. I'm quite certain that the entire 7.2million person population of Bangkok congregated in one place near Khao San Rd to watch traditional Thai dance, Muay Thai boxing, eat food and buy trinkets. And my experience was not a lot different.

I was talking to my friend Nhong, a shoe vendor and massage promoter on Khao San Rd when suddenly a heavy thunk went through me. Not just me, but through everyone. 'Come, come!' Nhong exclaimed, abandoning her shoes and hoping that no one would steal them. '... Why not?' I thought, and followed. We raced, while the crackle of bright, celebratory fireworks exploded overhead and the heavy thunk thunk of the launching systems rocked the ground, to the end of Khao San Rd where we took a left and looked skyward. The traffic had ground to a complete standstill, hell, there were far too many people milling on the roads for the traffic to function in any normal manner. The Thai people seemed to collectively hold their breath with each thunk, waiting for the colourful explosion in the sky that was sure to follow. With each set of say, eight or ten fireworks, a cheer would erupt, complete with clapping and Thai smiles.
The fireworks lasted for about fifteen minutes. Nhong went back to her shoes, packed up and said that we should go to the place [forgive me, dear readers, for I know not the name] where all the performances and shows and entertainment and such is. And so we did. It was good to see, briefly, traditional Thai dance and a bit of Muay Thai, but the noise was near unbearable. Thai people seem to like things loud. For example, there were two plays opposite each other, separated by maybe 300 metres. When close to one, the other was still clearly audible. It seems a bit pointless to me, but nevermind. I had a lot of fun.

Later that night I ate Pad Thai and went to sleep. Then, on the seventh of December, I moved out.

December 8th, 2008, around 8:30pm...

This is an experience that, a year ago, I'd never thought I would have. I'd arrived in Nong Khai early the previous morning amid a storm of farang, by train from Bangkok. The truth is, I'd stayed in Bangkok for too long and the opportunity to explore Laos was becoming slimmer by the day, but I didn't care. Bangkok is a great city in its own way and Nong Khai is no worse. Lonely Planet says that people often end up staying in Nong Khai longer than they plan. The slow pace of life and interesting scenery is quite addictive, especially for someone like me who prefers the quiet life to that of the city. They are right, of course. I feel I'll be here too long.

These thoughts are running through my head to the gentle rocking of the Mekong River. I had just ordered a Thai Red Curry made with Catfish caught fresh in the Mekong that day and I came to the swift realisation that I'm in Thailand. Of course, I knew I was in Thailand, but now I feel like I'm in Thailand. On the Mekong River. A year ago, the thought of the Mekong was millions of miles away and now, in early December, I'm sitting on a boat waiting for a meal on the Mekong River. I can see, if I look to my right, the lights shining from Laos and I know that I must go there. Unfortunately, the time has escaped me and I won't have the same time I would have liked to explore Laos, but that is unimportant at this stage. Why? Because I'm sitting on the Mekong River overlooking Laos. I know I'm reiterating that point, but that is the point. Mumbai, Pune, Hampi, Hubli, Delhi, Hospet, Panaji, Arambol, Benaulim, Colva and Mahbaleshwar in India, Bangkok and Pattaya in Thailand and I've not yet felt so far from home so positively. The Mekong, which winds its way from northern Laos (or even China, I'm not certain), through Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. One of the great rivers in the world, so I believe, and to look at it, I do believe it. But not only am I sitting on the Mekong, but Nong Khai itself is a fantastic town... but more of that at the appropriate time.

December 11th, 2008, approaching lunchtime...

I've been lazy. But the truth is, I am enjoying it. Lazy is perhaps also the wrong term to use, as I've been particularly unlazy in the sense that I've actually seen some temples and a market and done so on foot. But I've been lazy in the sense that it is now December the 11th and I'm not in Laos. But no matter. I have nine days of Visa left and, to allow myself to get back to Bangkok, that means I have about twelve days available to me. The unavoidable truth of the matter is that I love Thailand and don't particularly want to leave. There are two ironies in this. Firstly, I didn't actually want to come to Thailand in the first place, as Beau (who, as a side note, is not in Phuket anymore!) will recall and secondly, Laos might be better, but I don't actually know. I've decided that I will leave here tomorrow... but that decision is quite malleable. Laos is right there, I can see it from this internet cafe, despite the fact that there's a row of buildings between me and the river. I just happen to have a view through one of those buildings. The disappointing thing about enjoying Thailand so much is that I won't have the time to get to northern Laos - to Luang Prabang and such - because I simply won't have the time and the unavoidable decision has already been made: I have to leave Australia again.

Nong Khai, unlike most of Bangkok, is inhabited mostly by Thai nationals and a few Lao. The few farang here are expatriates (mostly from the UK, it seems) and backpackers. Which leads me to a final point in this impromptu ramble. Last night while meeting with some French people that I've become friends with, I had the opportunity (and indeed it was a brief window) to meet a retired Canadian couple who have been cycling around the world, on and off, since 1999. They've been on this particular circuit, on their pushbikes, since March or so this year and will be finishing sometime next year. I don't even recall the places they've cycled, but it covers a fairly substantial area, and why not? What a fantastic way to spend retirement! They were heading into Laos today, early in the morning and will be cycling up north through Laos and heading into China. A 62 or so year-old man (who looked all of about 40) and a 59 year-old woman. I was completely stunned and almost envious that they have both the time and the resources to pursue such a great adventure. I'm not much of a cyclist, though I'm sure I could be, but the tales they told of places they'd cycled were extraordinary and really, not worth me repeating here. Meet them yourselves, you swine!

And so it goes. Laos tomorrow, after I book a ticket back to Bangkok. Or maybe the day after. Ah, the pace is so lazy here.

Things to buy from the market:

Zippo - 180baht
Knife - ???baht
Rubix Cube - 350baht
Portable magnetic chess set - 450baht
Bingo game that is not actually bingo - 25baht (but impossible to actually find)

None of that asides the Zippo and the Bingo thing are actually good value. USD$10 for a damn Rubix Cube?! That, I'm sure, is expensive by western standards. Jesus! And a magnetic chess set for more! Pah! I need to bargain, but these cats are hard to bargain with, even though I consider myself quite a reasonable "price negotiations officer". I need the Thai knack... maybe my pool practicing friend can help me out...

The politics of trust, part II

2008-12-01T13:50:00.000-08:00

The same disclaimer applies here as it did yesterday. I'm not taking any political sides, I'm just observing the reactions of people, local, media and farang.

The chaos is getting worse, if you believe the news. But on the streets, things are a little calmer, people are returning, it would seem. Though many are still trying to get out. In the Bangkokpost today, they reported that China will have evacuated all of their citizens via U-Tapao airforce base near Pattaya by the end of today. It seems that most of the people left are happy to stay, which might mean an improvement for those of us who look at all of this and see the worst; the cynicism runs strong.

It is not all daisies and roses, though. Due to the chaos here, the Thai people are worried that westerners will never return, but since I addressed this, briefly, yesterday, I don't see the need to do so again today. What I want to focus on is what's changed today. Firstly, the weather is changing. It's getting quite cold at night, but it still manages to be annoyingly warm during the day. This bit of information, of course, has no bearing on the truth of this matter here in Bangkok.
I purchased a book yesterday (Generation of Swine, Hunter S. Thompson) and took the opportunity to talk to the bookstore owner about his feelings on the matters that are affecting the Thais. In response to my observation that Khao San Rd was very quiet, he said 'Yes! People are worried! Me too! I look at these people in the airport, covering their faces and wonder who they are? What do they want? Are they even Thai people? It's no wonder that it's quietening down, foreigners are scared.'
'Yes,' I replied. 'People are scared. What will happen next? War? I hope not.'
The conversation trailed on to other things after that, things like Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells, which he put on for us to listen to. I took my leave and decided to check my email again. But there was nothing, and this is just padding out my word count for this post.

Later yesterday evening I met a woman from Laos who told me that the whole affair was stupid and damaging to Thailand's international reputation. But I think todays news as more to say on that issue.

Supporters of the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) opened fire on a broadcast van belonging to TrueVisions' TNN news station at Suvarnabhumi airport yesterday. (Bangkokpost.com)*

A mistake, apparently. People are tense. The PAD are tense. Police are refusing to use force. But there's more interesting things than that, the Thai people have had enough. They're embarassed.

A survey conducted by Abac Poll Research Center revealed that many Thai people were ashamed of the political turmoil and they preferred to stay politically neutral.
According to the poll, 76.5 per cent felt very embarrassed about the local political turbulence and the negative views of foreigners toward Thailand.
65.1 per cent said they would have less pride in the country, if the situation turns violent and intensifies. 92.3 per cent believed political problems can be solved by the justice system. 58.4 per cent said they will not take sides in politics. (BangkokPost.com)

Strange times, but not a strange reaction. It's almost becoming absurd, I feel. If the people are embarassed by all of this, then what good can it possibly achieve? What's the point of it all? I know that I don't want to take sides - and I won't - it's all just speculation. However, I will point out that if those figures are accurate, then the PAD are doomed to ultimate failure anyway, irrespective of whether they achieve their goals - which are still fuzzy to me.

Combined with all of this, there has been some new explosions, some new gunfire and some increase in crime in the city. But I can't see any of it here at the tourist hub, so maybe it's blown out of proportion.

Now, back to the attitudes of people. As I was sitting here, I listened to a conversation between a Thai lady and a farang, the lady was selling him a bus ticket to somewhere-or-other. She seemed nervous and she made the comment 'I hope that you come back, I hope that you forget about all of this and come back to Thailand. I hope that about all people who come here.' Clearly, she was nervous. The guy reassured her, as I would have. There's no reason to not come back, no reason at all.

Meppenrai!

*http://www.bangkokpost.com/011208_News/01Dec2008_news04.php

The politics of trust

2008-11-30T00:20:00.000-08:00

Normally when I write on blogspot, I'm transcribing from my notebook. This will not be the case today, so you could call this an impromptu improvisation. I don't want to be seen to be taking any political stance, so consider this a disclaimer. I do not agree with nor disagree with the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD), in fact, I don't even know exactly why they're doing what they're doing. Something about ousting a governer that they claim is a puppet of some sinister geezer from a few years ago. I recommend trawling the news, it's easy enough to find out and has very little to do with the content of this article, so beyond this, I won't bring it up again. I do want to make it one hundred percent clear that I'm not taking a political side on this issue, I'm writing this as an observer of the changes, an observer of the attitudes and a reader of the news.

With the escalation of the political confrontation between the PAD and the government, people are getting stressed. But worse, they're getting angsty. Grown men and women getting the angst and acting like petulant children just because a group of people in their own country are standing up for something they believe in, in a way that democracy should allow for. Yes, you are inconvenienced and you can't get home just yet, but so what? What's so important back at home that you can't stay away from for a few days? A new born baby? Why did you leave it in the first place? Come on, think about all of this a little more rationally. If you've run out of money then that's your own fault, if you don't have travel insurance, that's definitely your own fault. It's not exactly expensive. But that's a gripe, and this is not about gripes, it's about attitudes.

Walking down Khao San Road, you can hear it. Everyone's talking about it. 'Are you stuck here, too?' one guy asked. 'Yeah, can't get home. Don't really mind, though,' he replied. But that's just the attitude of the people who are not here with any particular time frame. The attitudes in the news are something else. Not just from farang either. In the Bangkok Post today, there are a few articles on the subject. People are worried. They are saying things like: "This is my first time in Thailand and I probably won't come back," said Glen Squires, a 47-year-old tourist from England, casting a glum eye over the crowds. (Bangkokpost.com)
What, you won't come back because you overlooked contingencies or because you're late home to a meeting? Jesus, man, get a grip. You're alive, so why is there a problem? If you feel in danger of being dead, then go somewhere else? Catch a bus to Cambodia or Laos or Vietnam or something and fly from there.
"I think it's stupid," said Danny Mosaffi, 57, from New York City. "They have killed tourism in this country, the authorities should go do something. Nobody is going to come here." (Bangkokpost.com)
Horse shit nobody will come here. Thailand is a beautiful place and if the international community is so fickle that, due to people standing up for their beliefs - no matter what those beliefs may be - then there is something wrong with the international community. I can hazard a pretty good guess what it is, too. It's greed. How many of the people who are complaining are the type of person who comes here for exploitation; not necessarily morally bad exploitation, such as the buying and trading of ivory, or the sale of humans as slaves. But the exploitation of a country that has very little and relies on tourism so heavily, taking advantage of people who do it because they have to, because there's little else to do, but they don't necessarily like it. Seven days a week of smiling for drunken buffoons who then go and complain that their flight is cancelled due to these very same people having something to say? Jesus, that's twisted.

It doesn't stop there. The Thai people are getting worried and, if the news is accurate, with pretty fair reasoning: At least one million Thais employed in the tourism sector could lose their jobs next year due to the damage being done to the industry by the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) supporters through their invasion of the two Bangkok airports. (Bangkokpost.com)
That is indeed a worrying thought for a country that requires tourism to get by. But why worry so heavily? What is it that makes people scared after a demonstration? Even if the demonstration ends violently, so have many others, in many other parts of the world! We westerners are a soft bunch who act tough under the influence of alcohol, but when it comes to a slice of the real world, something foreign and out of our comfort zone, we flip out. We can't handle it.

With no departures board available, airline employees held up signs that said "Final boarding call, Moscow," while other staff stood inside the security area and pressed signs against a glass window calling for passengers to board a flight to Hong Kong.
At one point, a group of unruly passengers pushed their way through a door to the security screening area after an airport employee announced the final boarding call for a flight to Taipei.
One woman, caught in the surge, began to scream, and the soldiers forced the doors shut. (Bangkokpost.com)

Does no one else see a serious problem with this? Remove the order of something and everyone goes nuts! The local Thai people don't seem particularly perturbed by all of this, so why should anybody else?

I have one last thing to say on this subject; dear westerners, get over yourselves and stop freaking out. It will be over sooner or later, just ride it out.

Good Masala Chai

2008-11-22T22:21:00.000-08:00

The waiters are getting nervous. I can feel it. I know what they're thinking: 'what are these whities still doing here?' and 'they've already paid... what are they waiting for?' The air is getting heavy. Only two hours until we get the pleasure of arguing with taxi and rickshaw drivers for a fare to the Delhi airport. Our destination? Bangkok, Thailand. But what has happened since?

Before all that, let me tell you something. Getting woken up at 7:30am for the last three mornings by a Chai tea hawker is something new, in the five weeks in India, asides on the buses and trains, I've never encountered such a rawkus at such an hour. From the alley outside my room would come the gravelly spruik of 'chaiiiii, good chaiiii,' but in order to understand the gravity of the situation, you really need to imagine the sound in your head. Work with me here, imagine a nasal sound. Good. Now, apply that nasality through the chest and throat, turn the volume up to levels that would make most electric guitarists jealous. Now that you've got something to work with, force those chai moments out, force them hard. The output, if you're doing it properly, should sound something akin to a Nirvana guitar solo, just a little more syllabic. 'Chai! Masala Chai! Good Chai! Chai! Chai! Chai!'
But anyway, that is not the point of this entry. These events took place in the last few days of India, in New Delhi. The Tibetan section, to be accurate. A lovely, quiet part of town that feels as though you step right out of India and into, I don't know... somewhere that's not really anywhere. The place was swarming with Buddhist monks and everyone was incredibly friendly. How did we get there? First there was Hampi. Hampi, dear Hampi. An interesting, barely legal spot in the hills of Karnataka. A place where the Hindu empire ruled from many, many years ago. A place that is now on the world heritage trust... list? Superficially, it is akin to parts of Goa with all the pseudo-hippy, tourist clothing and trinkets, but if you spend a decent amount of time there and learning the real Hampi underneath all of that and becoming friendly with local people, I can safely conclude that you, should you ever visit, will find it a wonderful place with wonderful, genuine people. It was the highlight of my tenure in India I think, but the reason is not so much the wonderful scenery (which I will endeavour to attach some photos of) but the wonderful people. We stayed at this guesthouse with a Tipi. That's right, a Tipi. Called Arba Mistika and made friends with just about everyone there. Hung out together, ate together, had a great time. England, Japan, Israel, Germany, Australia, Denmark and India were all represented by the people there and they were interesting. All travelers like me. But all of that is for conversation, I don't want to digress into a personal account of everything.

From Hampi we caught a bus and a train to a 'hub' called Hubli, suitably, which, on the first visit on the way to Hampi we thought was an absolute dump. A friendly dump, but a dump nonetheless. The second time we found a different area and it was actually quite charming. A bit dull, but quite nice. One night was spent there before one of the most interesting experiences of my trip so far. A 2700+ kilometer train ride from Hubli to India's capital, Delhi. It was cramped, the beds were tiny and there is no security for your luggage at all, so I used it as a pillow, which made the bed even smaller. But for all that, it was quite an enjoyable experienec, it was just an uncomfortable, enjoyable experience. It was dirty, it was noisy, it was rocking back and forth and I barely slept. It was like Kuala Lumpur all over again.... 42 hours of train.

That brings us to now, albeit, in short. The waiters were very relieved when we left. While wandering around connaught place in Delhi, I found something surprising... pepper spray! If I could get it home, I would, but alas, it's illegal in Australia.

Which, in a roundabout way, brings me to a point about beggars. The thing with beggary in India is that the vast majority of beggars are born into poverty. They don't have a choice, they can't say 'hey, wait a minute, I can do more with my life than this.' I know that may sound cold, and what I'm about to say may sound naive, but these people don't seem to realise that there is a choice in life, to choose how to live. The caste system and the archaic beliefs associated with reincarnation and being born into a higher caste depending on the life you live are, along with a lack of education, keeping poor people poor. So, if these beliefs and the caste system were taken away, the born beggary would surely not be so rife in India and, I think, elsewhere in Asia. Sure, people may not have a completely comfortable life full of luxuries like television and such, but living on the street from birth until death... it's just too sad. It seems to me, again perhaps prematurely, that the majority of beggars at home in Melbourne are people who have run out of luck. Maybe they gambled too much, or drank too much, got into drugs or made some bad business decision. I think that they would have a story and wisdom to share and, in a lot of cases, would take an opportunity to get back on their feet. Here though, it doesn't seem like there is any way out when the belief system is so ingrained in the people's psyche. As a result of this, I find it hard to have sympathy for the poor in India and, in the five weeks I was there, did not give to a beggar once. Am I cold for that? Let me explain something. One hundred rupees (about AU$3.20) would feed someone who was living on very basic food - bananas, bread, water - for about a week, in my estimate. Still on the street, but fed, however poorly. The unfortunate thing is that, in many, many cases, beggary is like organised crime. There is a boss. This boss takes most of the money and does what he (or she) does with it, while the "workers" get very little and go on begging. I, morally, cannot support that. Even in the honest cases, after that, what then? A choice... skimp and save and change your life.

And so, with that, on to Thailand.

Hampi:

PS: Click for full view

Success

2008-11-10T03:26:00.000-08:00

I feel somewhat like Raoul Duke as I'm writing this, without the head full of acid and mescaline. The drug of choice? Well, it's a mixture of sleep deprivation and seeing the third world, fleetingly, from a bus window which is something that, so far, has been practically denied to me due to staying in bigger areas. This, I would say, is my first encounter with the real India. The stuff of travellers tales and the reason I came here in the first place. The sad part is that I could not just hop off and check it out. I had to be somewhere. How ironic...

After leaving Pune the night before and enduring a horribly broken night fo sleep caused partially by the terrible roads, the bus' lack of suspension and a bladder full of urine, we arrived at our destination - Hubli - at about 6:30am (for those in Australia, that is 5.5 hours behind you). Hubli... a town that seems more real than Pune, the people were curious about us, even at the station, and went to great lengths to find someone who spoke English, just to have a translated conversation. It was noisy, bustling with people and completely smelly, which reminds me, I really need a shower. But that is not the point. We were dreading a wait of several hours for the bus to Hospet and were pleasantly surprised by it arriving at 8:30 or so and leaving not long after that. Then the real India hit us with full force, right in the bum. The roads were bad enough to cause me and my pack to leave the laws of gravity in stunned confusion with relative frequency, causing two things to happen - first; I did not continue writing this until many hours later and second; my posterior became very, very sore. But the sights! Oh man, the sights! There were endless fields of rice, sunflowers and vegetables, green and yellow flashing past with a little more frequency than the tiny villages there to harvest it all. People in the villages were doing their people thing - bathing in rivers, working, relaxing, eating - people things! Distinctly Indian people things, but people things all the same. It was a beautiful, joyous sight for me to behold. Me, who has such strong disdain for the marching American prowess of modern India (and every other country). But all that was just the beginning. Some young, male school kids were watching us curiously, but keeping quiet, for quite some time when suddenly, realising what the situation was, I said: 'hi.' Man oh man, did that go down well! We chatted to them as best we could, considering we know nothing of the language, took some great photos and in general made a fuss of them as they did us. They asked for our autographs and I gave one of the kids my pen. This is the India that I came here to see, and I've waited for quite some time to see it and now that it's happened - I want more. Wonderful experience, certainly made up for the physically disturbing aspect of the bus trip. Upon arrival to Hospet, to top the morning off, I managed to dodge a dodgy rickshaw driver into giving us a super-cheap trip to Hampi. My patience, by then, was pretty thin and I was in no mood for pseudo-sales bullshit. But I had fire in my belly! The poor guy offered us a ride to Hampi for 50rs, clearly a price that is too cheap. Lonely Planet 2007 says it should cost at least 80rs. His caper was to show us to a hotel of his choosing and take a commission, but I was not for that. After being a little stern with him, he agreed to drop us at the bazaar. He actually dropped us just outside it, but that's ok, we walked after paying him the 50.

So why, after all that, do I feel like Duke? Duke, to me, seems to embody chaotic movement and a bit of chaos in my life, outside of Australia, is refreshing.

SardonicReasoning server downtime : important

2008-11-10T03:24:00.001-08:00

Just a quick note to everyone to inform you that emails from the 7th of November until sometime around the 10th were not received. I don't know what happened, but it's all functioning quite normally again now.

Sorry.

Photo update

2008-11-08T21:31:00.000-08:00

This cheerful kid was one of about eight who showed great interest in Beau and I while traveling from Hubli to Hospet (a ride which we'd both rather forget, asides for these charming children).

Here you can see Mr. Karnaghan mounting a marble vein, quite stunning scenery, but I can't give too much away or I'll have nothing to talk about late in January when I get home.

This chap guided us to a rocky waterfall area in Hampi... and then asked for 150rupees each, which we could not justify. We gave him 150 combined... god damn extortionists.

I promise... a real piece of writing is coming soon... sometime.

Retrospectively Goa and an old friend

2008-11-03T23:44:00.000-08:00

Having left Goa now, I thought it would be prudent to write about my thoughts on the place and the adventure I had exploring what I did of the tiny Portugese state. It may be important to note, here, that Beau Karnaghan was not to join me until the 2nd of November, due to events back home in Melbourne. So, with that, read on!

I started my trip in Goa in the far north, a little town called Arambol. When I was thinking of places to go in Goa, Arambol appealed due to it being the "last place for the hippies to reside without the tourism culture of the more southerly beaches", which sounded very appealing to me. Hippies are generally cool people and can be quite a lot of philisophical fun. I was blown away, en route, by how quickly the scenery became very tropical. Everything was very green and leafy, with houses built, seemingly, in jungle. The humidity was intense compared to, say, Mumbai or Pune, but that's ok.
Arriving in Arambol was a bit of a shock. It was a real Indian town, very little American influence at all, or so it seemed. Once we (I had two European traveling companions at this stage) got to the beach area, though, it all changed. I was surrounded by pseudo-hippy culture. The kind of culture associated with terrible stores back home like Off Ya Tree, where tshirts of Bob Marley dominate, along with Marijuana symbols and fake Rasta dreadlocks. Ugh, how dull, how typical. After leaving that place two days later, I thought that it was just silly. Absolutely silly. A pretty place, to be sure, but silly. Oddly enough, I never got offered dope or any other drugs while I was there.
Next on my exploration (now by myself), was Panaji, the capital of Goa. What a wonderfully architectural city! The Portugese influence here is dominant in the buildings and the general feeling of the culture. I should point out that most of Goa seems to be Catholic rather than Hindu, Buddhist or Muslim, and that this religion is very important to the people as shown by the abundance of churches in place of temples and the crosses adorning many shops. I only stayed in Panaji for one night due to the price, but it was comfortable and I tried a Kingfish Vindaloo, which, to my horror, I found I liked Pataks Vindaloo paste more than the real thing. Oh well.
From there I went to Colva... the western holiday destination in Goa, complete with beach resorts, expensive restaurants and tacky souvenires. I liked it because it was honest. It was so obviously geared at tourists that, unlike Arambol, it came across as quite genuine. I ended up staying there for four nights and struck up quite a good relationship with the owner of the guest house I was staying at, whose name was Vincent. What are the odds? He was very informative and told me a lot about the Goan culture, about their tolerence of other nationalities and their preference for western ideals over their traditional Indian ideals. They enjoy the openness of westerners, prefer western music over Indian classical and so on and so forth. Also that Pork is a national food, unlike in most of the rest of India. Neat.
I wanted to find somewhere quiet, so I went further south along the beach to a tiny beach called Benaulim, which was superb. It was everything I'd thought that a modern, small fishing village might be, but with more tourism. The tourism, however, was not tacky. Clearly, Benaulim and the visitors to Benaulim were more left of centre than, say, Colva or even Arambol. It was friendly and honest, and still had a lot of "India" to offer in the way of hospitality, kindness and helpfulness. I'd certainly go back there. The entry just prior to this one (which chronologically should have been after it) was about Benaulim, but this is how I got there.
One of the most enjoyable parts about traveling around India is the public transport. You can see so many different types of people crammed together and so much of the countryside that it really makes it worthwhile. It took me two days of traveling (including a stop in Panaji) to get from north to south Goa and cost me maybe 60 rupees, traveling via the cheap, government-run buses. Fantastic!
I had a little shack with no bathroom and a lot of ants on the beach, I was covered in Sand the whole time and my arms are now quite a dark brown. I enjoyed my time there, though I didn't do much other than read and admire the Arabian Sea.

From there, after four nights, I came back to Pune to meet Mr. Beau Karnaghan, which went off without a hitch. Two and a bit weeks of experience count for a lot when meeting someone who is completely new to India, and it was very good to see him.

Finally, away from home

2008-11-03T23:33:00.000-08:00

For the first time since arriving in India, I was struck, on Halloween no less, by the fact that I am basically on the other side of the world. This fact hit me when, for the first time in two plus weeks, I saw the moon for a very short time, appear on the horizon over the Arabian Sea. I had asked a local waiter about it the night before and he said that the moon should be barely visible tonight (the 31/10/08) but that it will be the first time in two months or so that it is visible. I commented to him that I've been in India for two weeks and never seen the moon. Anyway, so the appearance of this thin sliver of moon over the Arabian sea, from an angle that you simply don't get in Australia, was quite a turning point for me in realising just how far away I am. The moon was only in the sky for a few hours, and it was very thin. The angle was like the "Dreamworks Pictures" logo, or that classic image of the cow jumping over the moon from that nursery rhyme. Back home, you can see the full cycle of the moon each month, year round, as far as I'm aware, so taking the moon for granted is not something I expected.

The appearance of the moon encouraged me to stay awake for a while and look to the stars. I was hoping for a bright, vast landscape of stars, but alas, the city lights everywhere nearby obscured the view. The stars, however, are so different in the nothern hemisphere to the southern. There's a little bit of overlap, but it's a different night sky. That was quite an amazing thing to see, and another point in the "you're a long way from home" series of points made by... well, me. Then, of course, I began thinking about the odds of life on another planet and, while I can't remember the example that Prof. Richard Dawkins uses to calculate odds at 1% leaving a total of approximately 100billion potential inhabitable planets at odds that no scientist would ever even bother researching. If you consider, though, that the Milky Way galaxy has something in the order of 100million stars in it... come on, there must be life other than this planet out there. I look forward to the day when it is declared that organic, biological life exists elsewhere in this solar system. That will be a great day. You may even notice that to the right of this blog is a little news stream from newscientist space department. You heard about life on other planets here, first, folks.

A few photos...

2008-10-27T00:42:00.000-07:00

Taken from a moving bus on the way to a place I can't remember the name of in the hills in Maharashtra.

A fountain (flaura fountain?) in Bombay.

On the beach in Colva, Goa.

Maps: where I've been.

2008-10-25T00:37:00.000-07:00

You can follow my journey here:

View Larger Map

Bombay; a cyclic question

2008-10-24T23:57:00.000-07:00

Bombay is a city like none that I've experienced, and that's not at all positive. My self-confidence was shaken beyond anything that I've ever experienced, but the whole experience got me thinking about the idea of improved education on a worldwide scale.

55% of the population live in slums. That is over 7million people, which is more than the entire population of Melbourne. These people cannot hope to afford education and thus are seemingly trapped in a life of poverty, despite the fact that Bombay is quite a wealthy city in the scheme of things, being the home of Bollywood and many trendy cafes, delicious restaurants and so on. It would seem, from my very casual observation, that the poor people are kept poor by the rich people who are kept rich, just like everywhere else in the world. Exploitation of the poor. According to LonelyPlanet, the slum in Bombay turns over an estimated USD$650million per year, which makes you wonder how much each poor person receives, as that's quite a lot of money. That equates to, on equal shares, a salary for each person (as a very rough approximation) of USD$92/year, or RS4457 at current exchange rates, which is 85rs/week. The average national wage here in India, according to Lonelyplanet, is about 192rs/week... or is that day, I'm pretty sure it's per week, anyway...
Even though that is still under half the national average, it cannot be possible that the people living in that slum are actually earning that much and certainly, that income would not cover education.
So the question I want to pose to anyone who happens to read this is the as follows: if, somehow, the poor people of Bombay were all able to be educated and were thus more employable elsewhere in the city, country and even the world - what would happen? It sounds great, right? Saving the poor and everyone getting a "fair go", and so it may be. What if you then applied the same idea to the rest of India and subsequently the rest of the world?
I had to stop and think about this for a while, because it seems to me that our natural resources would probably not cope, at our current levels of consumption, with the increased demand, nor I think would the environment.

Email me your thoughts on this, as I can't conclude any solutions.

Mumbai - the fear

2008-10-24T02:09:00.000-07:00

The fear at tullamarine airport is nothing compared to the Mumbai taxi drivers. It is the ost incredible experience, and for all those in Melbourne, count your blessings that the taxis there drive responsibly. Funnily enough, I was never scared for my own life, but rather the lives of everybody else, be they the poor, homeless souls lining the streets or the countless pedestrians wandering around for reasons beyond my comprehension. Mumbai airport was my first encounter with india, after 40-odd hours with very little sleep I arrived there, running on a mixture of airline-style Chicken Korma and adrenaline; I was finally here in India! Upon arrival, the chaotic nature of the city was the first thing to hit me and, as yet, I had not even left the airport. While the signs are clear enough (until you get to the confusing customs area), the ramshackle, half-finished nature of the airport is very strange. There were portable-style airconditioners attempting to cool the walkways to check-in and not doing a particularly good job of it, for quite obvious reasons. I realised at this time just how tall I am. Most of the toher passengers reached to about my chest, I was a giant among the Indian people.

Customs, check-in and baggage collection were all very smooth once I finally figured out where to go and when I saw my shrink-wrapped pack coming along the belt, I was overjoyed. It had arrived with me, just as Melbourne had promised, and it had not been tampered with! Once out into the main arrivals area, I booked a prepaid taxi to my hotel - with some apprehension - the cost of which was Rs390, but for some reason, from 400, the lady gave me 20 change. Outside, the heat hit me, but not as much as the smell. It's humid in Mumbai, no doubt about that, but the few days in Melbourne that we had leading up to my departure were much warmer. But the smell, I cannot describe the smell in adequate words, but I'll give it a try. You know when you smell something putrid and your reaction is to gag? This smell was not like that; this was the kind of smell that, just by inhaling, you can feel a few years drop off your life; burning rubber, petrol and gas fumes, badly maintained brakes, death and decay, all mixed up with the faint scent of spice and the body smell of naerly 16 million people. After navigating my way through a waiting/taxi zone, If ound the prepaid taxi area and a chap helped me find mine, even though I did not need help. Once I was in, he asked for a 500rs tip, which I didn't think he deserved at all. I gave him 120 to shut him up, which was still too much, but it got rid of him. At first, I couldn't bring myself to call this behaviour exploitive, but after the rest of Mumbai's experience, it is. Exploitation of naive foreigners, a subgroup I certainly belong to.

The Taxi Ride

My baggage in the front with the driver, me in the back, my driver rushed off to get my receipt stamped and presumably to get paid. I was still coming to terms with the stench of the place, I was sweating profusely and I had absolutely no idea what I was in for.
Suddenly, we were off on our way. I hoped that my driver knew where I was staying, as I'd given the name when I booked the taxi. The first thing I noticed was the use of lanes. Asides the "drive on the left side of the road", the other rules from back home were basically nonexistant, and even that fundamental rule of keep left was stretched to be a fairly open interpretation of the "rule". These drivers can get their cars through soem amazingly tight places between other cars, between autorickshaws, pedestrians, dogs, trucks, buses... trees. Places I would never dream of even attempting to take my own car, nor would anyone else who was in their right mind. Almost immediately after departure the horn began and I can assure you, unless you've been here (or somewhere else where this horn-work exists, if such a place exists), then you've got no idea what you're missing. Even now, sitting in my hotel room, I can hear them. It's a simple toot-toot or beep to tell someone to get out of your way, or a loud, elongated beeeeeep to ask "what the hell are you doing, man?", it's a complete system of well-timed meeps that can only be likened to some sort of taxi-language. All the time my driver was honking at the other drivers, pedestrians, dogs, and possibly a small herd of goats, though maybe that was sleep deprivation, and was being honked (or barked) at in return. We zipped here and darted there, his purpose? To get me to my hotel... quickly. Zip, duck, weave, honk. Turn, shuffle, toot, trundle. The fear had gripped me now. Were the people outside going to reach in and grab my pack? Are they in kahoots with the driver? Is that dog going to jump through the window and maul me, infecting me with rabies? Is this stench going to suffocate me? Calm down man! Trust the guy, I'm sure it means a lot to his honour to get you there in one piece. Jesus, why are you worrying about your life? Take as deep a breath as you can and have a look around. So i did. People trying to sleep on the side of the road, with their personal belongings hanging on makeshift hooks behind them. A society of street dwellers, not just a few, but thousands upon thousands. Dead dogs, living dogs, cats, people, rubbish and polution... all vital aspects of the chaos taht is Mumbai. Does my taxi driver even know where we're going? I thought Hotel Lawrence was in some back alley... ride it out, Vin, ride it out. After a while, my driver asked me if the hotel was in Colaba, a souterly suburb, I said yes, though it turns out I was mistaken. Hotel Lawrence is actually in Fort, slightly north of Colaba, so that made thigns a little more difficult. We drove aroudn, looking for it until finally he pulled over and asked if a pedestrian knew where the hotel was. It took a few tries to get a lead, teamwork was the key. He would find and English-speaking person and I would explain where I wanted to go. We eventually found some some security staff who asked aroudn for me, and they got a result and pointed us in the right direction. They waved us on with a reassuring "it's not far, sir", but soon we were lost again, this time in the back streets. More dogs, plenty of people and the occasional street vendor were passed before we asked more directions, it was then that a man pointed to a building and told us that it was Hotel Lawrence. We pulled up, I got out (with some assitance, since I couldn't figure out how to open the door), grabbed my gear and tahnked the driver. The man with the instructions told me to take the lift and even tried to call it for me, but it was out of operation for the night. I said I'd take the stairs...

I got to a dark, dingy art of the staircase, puffing and panting as if to prove that I'm unfit, something that hardly neesd proving. I saw a man sleeping just inside a doorway, got confused and worried and went bacjk down to count the floors, just in case I missed the place. I reached the bottom... no Hotel Lawrence. "Shit!" I decided to try counting them again, so up I went. I reached the dark area again and nearly turned around to go down and admit that, within two hours, India had defeated me when a soft "yes?" came from the darkness. "I'm looking for Hotel Lawrence?" "Yes, just in here. There is office." "Thank you!" I exclaimed, my relief evident in my tone. When they said "low-key", they erally were not kidding. I attempted to open the office, but it was chain-locked. I nearly gave up, but the manager popped his head out, unlocked it and greeted me warmly. It all got sorted and I locked myself in my room. After tossing and turning, I realised that I was sweating still, had not had any water since the flight and was probably dehydrated, but where could I get safe water at this time of night? I tried getting the manager again, but he must have been asleep. I thought about some tap water, but did not have anything to purify it in, since I needed a litre for the tablet to work. I gave up. I was not confident enough to brave a strange new city by myself at 2am to search for water. As I was laying on the bed, trying to sleep, I was wondering if this was all a bad idea. I felt that the city was too disgusting, that everyone was out to get me. But then, after a while of rehashing the same negative rubbish, I realised that I was in India, and tomorrow, sleep and sunlight would offer a new, more positive perspective. So with a grin of optimism and adventure, I slept.

In retrospect, I should have tipped the taxi driver.

Australia: 0, World: 1 (or how I got to KL)

2008-10-13T21:41:00.000-07:00

Fear. What is going on? Why is this taking so long? Problems like this are supposed to plague me later in the trip, not this early. Hell, I had not even checked in at Melbourne Airport yet... at least not completely.

Things were taking their time and the lady behind the counter was about as helpful as a hitchhiking Gecko. "Attention, passenger Vincent Giles on flight MH128, please return to counter number 94". I looked around with a bit of confusion, then, spying the counter number directly above my head, proceeded to tell the lady who was doing... whatever it is that she was doing behind the counter, that I was Vincent Giles and that, contrary to the announcement, I was, in fact, actually already at counter 94. She looked at me oddly and said:
"was that you?"
"yes," I replied.
She looked a little confused, got up and wandered over to another counter! Without a word! Apparently, as I found out on her return, to see if that page was for me, which she assured me somewhat condescendlingly, that it certainly was not. After a bit more of me standing around and her looking confusedly at her monitor, she decided to ask for help. A nice, jolly, beareded fellow came over, pressed a few buttons, gave me a boarding pass that had printed at another terminal, apologised and sent me through. A family had requested a line of seats, so my original window seat had been changed. They gave me another one in compensation for my terrible ordeal, but the best was yet to come.

I arrived at customs full of steam, confident that the rest would be a breeze. After all, I was not carrying anything dangerous, was I? My main luggage had been sent through without me, of course, so it was just me and my satchel of hand luggage, which to my recollection, contained a camera, some books, pens, deodorant and lip balm. My jacket contained some ear plugs and my wallet contained some foreign currency, some Australian coins and some keys.
"Go on through", the customs official ordered after putting my bag on the belt.
BEEEEEEEP
"Go back through!"
"Huh?"
"Go back through, now!"
"Jesus! Okay!"
"Have you got anything in your pockets?"
"Uh... my wallet?"
I gave him my wallet.
"Go through."
BEEEEEEEEP
"I'll see myself through..."
"Have you got anything metal on you? Belt? Coins? Phone?"
"I have a belt and earplugs in my jacket..."
"Can I see the belt?"
I showed him.
"That should be fine... go through again."
BEEEEEEEEEEP
"Take your jacket off. Is there anything else on you?"
"No."
"Go through."
Nothing.
Great! I did a little dance of self-congratulation, then collected my gear from the conveyer belt, got it all together and trundled off toward gate 8 for departure. Before I arrived though, I noticed that my right jacket pocket had something in it... and then the penny dropped. My ventolin inhaler! That sneaky bugger forgot to declare itself.

The rest of the flight was uneventful, asides some mild turbulance, the food was quite good and the service was excellent. I was lucky to not have someone sitting next to me, so I had two seats to stretch out on. The plane was reasonably quiet, anyway. The staff and people in general here at KL Airport have been very friendly and helpful - not at all like Melbourne. I've been here for nine hours now and still have another six or so until my flight departs. I'm killing time with coffee and window shopping. I'm pushing 30+ hours without sleep, asides for about three hours of broken plane-sleep en route, but the coffee is still running hot and the internet is still free. My next step is a joyous reunion with my luggage in Mumbai!

For those keeping track: Australia 0, The Rest of the World: 1.

All about this... thing.

2008-08-18T02:05:00.000-07:00

I suppose some sort of introductory 'post' to this thing is in order, in case anyone who reads it is a little confused by the whole affair.

This web log (that's right, folks, no 'blog' here) is supposed to function as a public journal of my adventures overseas, such as they are, which begin on October 14th, 2008 when Beau Karnaghan and I depart from Tullamarine Airport here in Melbourne, Australia. Destination: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, but only for the better part of a day. From there we will be flying from KL to Mumbai, India, where the real adventure will begin.

The basic gist of the whole caper is a musical and cultural expedition, though the truth is I just need a holiday. But, while I'm away from this country, the opportunity to continue some sort of journalistic project, complete with any photos that I think people would like to see, is too good to pass up, so here I am, writing this ridiculous introductory post.

If you're expecting an almost day-by-day account of the events, then you'll be disappointed. This is not for that, this journal will be for me to practice creative, journalistic writing... sort of. The point of all this is that it's not going to be a day-by-day thing and will most likely contain all kinds of embellishments that never actually happened. Or, maybe it will just end up being an accurate reportage written in the style of Gonzo. Who knows. Wait until October 14th and beyond to find out.