Thailandia

GETTING LOST IN THAILAND

BANGKOK

Crap. Where’s Renae? This is ridiculous, this is the first airport I’ve landed at that doesn’t have wifi.  I knew I should have taken a screen shot of her itinerary, I’m pretty sure I land a couple of hours ahead of her. Damnit…  (these were the thoughts running through my head as I walked through the airport that I had landed into.  After about 25 minutes I realized I was in a completely different airport than Renae so I took the shuttle over to her airport as she would be landing. All the while praying she hadn’t already left.  No problem there.  I found a couple of flights coming from Taipei, (where I though she was flying in from) and waited on our agreed place to meet.  And waited. And waited. And walked around and waited. Eventually I found an internet kiosk and discovered that her flight was actually from China and she was supposed to have landed 45 minutes prior so I ran back to our meeting place and waited some more.  A total of about 4 hours passed at which point I had already confirmed with the airlines that she was on that flight, before I started looking for a police/security post because I was starting to get worried.  As I was walking by our original meeting place I see Renae sitting there like she’s been waiting for hours (she had) Turns out she had been waiting on the other side of immigration by exit C, which would have worked out nicely if I had arrived in this airport, but since I hadn’t I was about 100’ away sitting on the outside of immigration by exit C.  We had sat on opposite sides of the barrier for a couple hours, maybe more.  Awesome.

            Alright well once we had figured ourselves out a little bit we set off in search of our hostel.  Everything was smooth and we checked in and began making friends with the guests, exchanging information on what we should see, go and do in Bangkok.

The next day we headed to the infamous Koh San Rd.    After some confusion regarding the water taxis, we arrived and enjoyed some brews and food as we took in the sights. It’s easy to see why Thailand is the world’s backpacking mecca, there’s travellers abosolutely everywhere.  There stuff to do, taste, view, feel, and hear.  Eventually we got roped into some tourist trap/scam of going around in a ridiculously cheap tuk tuk tour which stopped at a couple of interesting places before they began trying to sell you custom tailored suits.  Well I fought off the first try but the second I fell for and now have a nice suit waiting for me in Bangkok to pick up when it’s time to head back the US.  Lol we’ll see what $150 usd will get me, I did go back the next day and it was sizing up rather nice I’ll have to admit. It’s hard not to laugh, but whatever.

            Haha the way back that night trying to get back to our hostel was a bit of a mess.  We tried to jump on a water taxi like we had done the morning, except we jumped on one going farther upriver enstead of downriver. Realizing our mistake we got off at the next stop and waited 20 minutes until we jumped on another boat.  This one went well for a while until it proceeded to break down. Great! Now we were closer to home, but on the wrong side of the river and stuck at a point.  Well these massive 70’ water taxis have 3 crewmembers. A captain, and his first mate who controls the docking and passenger movements, and then a ticket checker.  As the captain and first mate were trying to secure the boat as best they could, the river current started pushing the boat so that it was going to hit a restaurant.  The Rapid fire thai between the captain, first mate, and ticket checker ( a small woman  ) was confusing the hell out of everyone on board.  Simplified story, I broke the bewilderment of our water taxi passengers and jumped out to help the small crew. Lucky thing too, because they were gonna lose and the boat was going to get damaged as well as the restaurant.  About 10 other guys followed suit and joined in on securing the boat back to the dock. Everyone was saved and 20 minutes later a boat came by and took the broken down boat away leaving all of us standing on the dock.  Shit.  Haha another 20 minutes and then we were taken aboard another water taxi. Needless to say it was an adventure getting back home.

            Once we got back to the hostel, good spirits and good beer greeted us at the entrance.  We headed out with everyone to a crazy karaoke bar and had a great time.

            I think Renae was in a surreal state up until the next day as if it hadn’t registered she was in Thailand.  We went back to Koh San Rd the next day and we’re walking around exploring when she exclaims “We’re in ******* Thailand!”  I looked at her and smiled “Yep!” haha it did feel good to be here. So we celebrated and made sure it was real by eating weird bugs and scorpions and other delicious food.  Too bad this realization came a little late as we were heading out the next morning at 5 am to Cambodia.  Or so we thought

            Just like the night before we got back to our hostel intending to get some early nights rest but were swayed to go out with group of people from the hostel. It was a blast. But we didn’t stand a chance against a 5 am train. Lol luckily there was a 1pm train so we hopped on that one and head to Siem Reap. See Pics.

Kuala Lumpur

KAY EL

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.  Flew into this place not expecting to much and trying to lay low because I was running on my last hundred dollars.  I had heard about the cheap delicious food; happy to find out that my hostel was located right next to a large outdoor chinese food court.  So I spent the next 3 days exploring the city and munching on great treats everywhere I went.  KL is a lot like Singapore, it has a lot of diversity, but just about everyone here speaks English. Which is nice.  I went to a place called the Batu Caves which was pretty spectacular minus all of the trash and smells.  Honestly I had a good time in KL as it was a new atmosphere to contrast to Bali, but besides the food and some more open air markets there’s not much else that sticks out in my mind of this city.  Oh I did meet some guy from Indonesia, who was on his way to a conference on renewable energy who told me that KL is home to the largest date palm plantation for crude oil? (it was a little hard to understand him)

Here’s some pictures.

 Haha who does this to such a nice car...

 KL tower

 Petronas tower

 Batu Caves

 Nice Indian Veggie meal

 This smoothie was bomb. Was not stoked on those massive chunks of kiwi until they plopped in a fatty straw so fruit chunks were not an issue. :)

 Oh yea, I ate stingray and little baby octopi,  yea i know you can get that in the states, but food isn't my most adventurous forte. This is stepping out of the comfort zone. haha

Bali FIN

THE END OF BALI

Thoughts are a little jumbled, excuse spelling, grammer, and any other mistakes.

Shane now had less than 3 days on the island of Bali before he was heading back to California, which ment I had 4 days left. So we decided we wanted to continue exploring the island as we could make it back to Kuta, the capital city within half a days time from just about anywhere on this island.  So picking out some obscure names on a map of bali in the north that looked like the would be a challenge to get to we rented a pair of motorbikes for 2 days and set out riding.  Renting them from the town we were staying in, Candidasa, required us to return there, but since it was on the way back to the airport it seamed logical.  Motorbikes get a bad rap on the internet about how dangerous it is in Bali and it’s not recommended to use them.  Well, after you get over the chaos of their traffic system its actually quite nice and I would highly encourage anyone to do so. It’s $4 for the daily rental and petrol is $1 per liter so it’s pretty easy and cheap to get around and far outweighs getting taxis everywhere. I wish we had just rented bikes the entire time we were in bali and probably would have saved 50-75% of our getting around expenses.

Anyway, so around 8:30 we had all of our belongings on our backs and set off in search of adventure and white sand beaches.  Well, that lasted about an hour maybe 1.5 hours before we stopped to get some petrol, at which point, (I’m not really sure exactly how it happened) when we were leaving the gas station, we somehow got separated.  Different sides of the story explain it with slight variations but about an hour later we were no closer to finding each other and I decided I would find him when I settled in somewhere for the night with Wifi.  I had heard about a place called white sand beach and read through the directions of how to get there several times because it was extremely easy to miss. Eventually after passing it the first time I doubled back and turned down a long narrow road that eventually spit out into a large parking area shaded with tropical foliage. I also paid 2000.00 ($.20) to get into the area and it made me realize how little money I had left 50,000.00 ($5) and that I would need to exchange some rather soon.

Well I’ll let the pictures do that talking.  The beach was amazing, and only had tourists on one end, the otherside of the 2.3km beach was completely deserted.

So after enjoying the water and eating some snacks I headed back to the back and took off again twisting through the roads towards the north of the island.  After 2 or so hours the beaches turned to black sand and the surf was much calmer.  I went up into the mountains passing rice terraces and jungle landscape back down to the shore. It was a great experience and the best way to see the country.  I was zipping right through traffic and making good time, blasting through all the small towns and heading towards one of the main cities on the north coast of Bali where I decided I’d stay for the night.  I arrived and it was a bit of a scarier city than I was comfortable, which made me want to change my plans so after consulting my map for a few minutes I decided on trying for one of the fresh water lakes located inland Bali. I still hadn’t found any money exchange places and my cash had dropped to $3 as I needed a couple fuel stops.  Well I backtracked until I found the turn off for the lake and then only made it about 25 minutes until I was met with an extremely heavy downpour.  That was enough to turn me around again as I had all my belonging in my packpack; including my computer.  All of the Balinese simply pulled over on the side of the road and got out their ponchos and then kept on trekking, but unfortunately for me I didn’t have one and there was not much of a town in the area where I met the rain.  So long story short, I ended up back tracking and then got caught in the storm again as it had cleared the mountains and come over to the edge of the island. Luckily there were some rundown bungalos that I turned off to try and get some shelter.  I was completely soaked in the couple of minutes that it took me to get there.  After talking with the owner for a while about how long he though the storm would last or if he had a poncho I could buy I decided to rent a beachfront bungalow for $10usd (because that’s all I had) and spent the night there while the storm passed.  The only downside to the bungalos was that I had absolutely no internet connection.

It wasn’t until the next day that I did get a chance to shoot off emails to Shane and we rendezvoused the following day back in Kuta. 

More pictures of my solo motorbiking experience

After sending Shane back off to the states I found a nice little beach.

Overall great time in Bali with lots of stuff done and seen. 

Unfortunately on the last night of my time there I got a bad fever with cold sweats; enough to make me think I had gotten some time of bad mosquito transmitted disease. But nothing 14 hours of sleep couldn’t cure and I woke up feeling great.

 Some weird pain game some balanese were playing

 Grasshoppers, It's what;s for dinner

Our hostel that we stayed at in Kuta, Bali, went back there for my last nights cause i liked the atmosphere so much

Padang Bai

Oh yea I don't know if I've mentioned the heat and humidity here. It's on the excessive side :)  haha we had a great thunderstorm show last night as it rained for a couple hours.  Well, 4th day into our trip and we've experienced the main city, Kuta, a small beach town, Echo Beach, and Ubud, the jungle town; Now it's time to see if we can track down one of those infamous deserted white sand beaches that are becoming extinct.  After minimal research we bought a couple of 50,000 shuttle tickets to Pandang Bai.  It turns out this is the main transit bay for people heading to some of the neighboring islands, Lombok, gilis, and others. BUT! I found a website talking about how this little port town gets overlooked because its just a gateway to the next place. Turns out its a pretty neat place with it's own small hidden beach with some warungs (small little outdoor restaurant)  Swam around in crystal clear water while tipping back some beers.  The rocks around the shore are volcanic and there are lava tubes which feed into the ocean.  When the waves come in and out it forces the air to move through the lava tubes and gives the sensation that the rocks are breathing.



     That night we had a fish bbq back at the hostel. SOOOO tasty, with squid and mackerel.  This hostel has a very family-ish atmosphere and before long you're best friends with everyone that is staying there.  Shane wasn't feeling so well and tried to get some sleep.  Meanwhile I had been talking with a russian couple that had arranged to climb the tallest mountain on bali with a guide that night at 11 pm.  The were going to do a camera timelapse of the rising sun and passing clouds.  After showing my interest they invited me to join, which I happily accepted, which ment I'd be leaving in 2.5 hours.  Sweet! So I went and told Shane my plans and that I would see him the next day and then we'd bounce out to wherever. He sleepily acknowledged.  I was a little surprised when Ayeshia the hostel owner said I would need to dress warmly, as I have done nothing but sweat while I've been here in bali.  But She had already done it and so I took her advice (thankfully) and grabbed my sweatshirt and jeans and then climbed into the Van with Alexi and Anna.
   2 hours later I awoke to the van stopping and Alexi and Anna talking with the driver.  We were here and after waiting about 15 minutes we met with out guide and then began trekking up the side of the volcano.  Oh yea btw Gunung Agung, is 3148 meters tall. That's about 10328' feet! haha awesome.  and after 350 stair steps we had made it to the mother temple, which is at about 1500 meters (4921') Great, we're off to a good start :)  Our guide, Potak, made a quick little prayer and offering at the temple and then we were off using headlamps and the nearly full moon for light.  It was about 2 am when we started and the sunrise was at 5:45 or so we had to climb about a mile vertically in less than 4 hours. cool. Haha it wasn't too hard but Alexsi is actually an avid photographer and what he was really saying when he told me about doing the sunrise timelapses the night before was "I'm gonna bring the biggest backpacking pack you've ever seen in your lift and carry 4 different professional grade cameras, tripods, audio recording equipment all the way to the top of this volcano."  Haha it was a little slow going and I felt bad, but he wouldn't let me carry any of his equipment (except the tripod) haha which I was ok with, I was a little scared of the price tags on his equipment.  Well we made it to the summit around 5:15 and began setting up camera equipment left and right.  then we waited. And IT was freezing! haha  

Oh yea, I spotted this little climbing wall. Looked easy enough, until I actually got to it, it was about a 60 foot wall and after picking out my route I started up the side.  There were a couple different types of rocks. Some which stayed put and others which crumbled. After navigating my way up with general ease to the halfway point I began to have doubts.  I was not longer dealing with the crumbling material but rather the stuff that was originally staying put was no longer so.  I like climbing silly stuff and exploring, but when large basketball sized granite rocks start to dislodge themself a thin boundary line begins to rear its head in the back of my mind.  Breath becomes short and rapid, and the all too familiar feeling of vertigo has to be fought off.  lol have to spend a couple of moments steeling my nerves to rationalize the situation. Ok, looking up, looks grim, but I feel like I can constantly have 3 points to grab onto the entire way up. (you know encase two of them decide to un attach themselves  from the wall)  But on the flipside I still have to climb down this stupid rock.  Climbing UP is 10 times easier than climbing down.  The number one reason I don't climb up certain routes is not that I can't, but rather because I'm not using ropes and the way back down is going to be treacherous.  So I decide to go a little further up onto a nice flat rock that I can sit and rest my arms and legs.
   Ha, well I made it up to that nice little resting spot but not before realizing that a crevasse I wiggled up through was moving. the rock that made up the crack was about 10 tall and 5 wide, and that baby definitely had some play.  So that's where I decided to turn around and head back to our small sunrise surveillance camp.  
    Our guide laughed at me as I got back and said " dangerous, no?" lol, you bet. He later told me that he is going to bring out some climbers that are going to try to climb around the entire rim of the volcano, They're bringing ropes and harnesses to make it up to the top of that rock formation.

 It was the day after the full moon

 peering down into the volcano crater

 My nice little rockwall climb. haha pictures don't do it justice

 I would judge it as being around 35-40 degree angle slope. Constant.

 Even found a couple of monkey friends heading up the volcano as we were heading back down late morning.

 It was a bit of a jungle trek at the beginning of our hike.

Once I got back to pandang bai, I thanked our guide and said my goodbyes to the russian couple. They were really cool, interesting talking to them about the happenings of the world.