KOrea - Hanging in the south with little Kim's big brother

korea! land of the many confusions

lissahirst — Wed, 9 Mar 2011 15:16:00 GMT

So I think we have had 3 weeks of Korean strangeness so far. The orientation was interesting and frantic from the minute we arrived at the airport in Incheon we were rushed through the EPIK program intake thing, and bundled out of the terminal building at 11PM into an atmosphere that didnt really resemble the Wellington summer air. It was boneass skifield nasty cold, but it took a bit of time to realise this as the air seeped through the layers of jackets that I'd been wearing on the plane because of excess baggage requirements and a strange exit from Wellington. Maybe it was too early for the airport people there. "Go over there, unpack one bag, put all the excess in the other, that way you'll only have to pay one lot of 75 dollar charges."

"Thanks" did that. Back in line. "Your bag is too heavy"

"Yes. Thank you. We are going to pay the excess."

"What's 58 minus 23?"

"I don't know" (also too early for me - 4.30am).

"Um... " fucking around with a calculator "Your bag is too heavy".

"Yes we know. We are going to pay the excess."

"oh... ok... um..." ticket printer stops working "um... er..." fucking around with ticket printer... "um... " paper in the wrong way, repeat process, printer works finally. Take bag to heavy luggage payment counter "Ok that'll be 50 dollars"

"um... ok." Take bag to place where heavy bags get loaded onto the luggage escalator

"Your bag is too heavy."

"Yes... we know... thats why we're here... this is a recipt from the excess baggage counter."

"Oh. ok... um..." You'd think that people would get to know their job after doing the same thing day in day out for who knows how long.

Gotta love NZ. Quaint isnt quite the word, retarded is too strong... somewhere in between would be better.

So we were rushed off in the night in the direction of I still dont know where as the nuclear powered neon of Incheon flashed by us, also flashing past us was a 40-50 metre high purple sequined knob statue. Sleep deprived? Culture shocked? No... I wasnt the only one who saw it. An exchange of bemused glances around a few people on the bus. Was that a...? Yes i think it was... Why? I think "Why?" is the most relevant of the 5Ws and an H in the Korean context. I'm guessing that we'll never know.

505 slightly worried soon to be English teachers completed our orientation. No washouts as far as I could tell, some near misses when 10% of the South Africans in the group failed the drug test because of high levels of morphene. They reckoned it was flu medication thats legal there but nowhere else in the world... I think the governments putting it in their water to calm them all down.

I think almost without fault the Korean people who we've met have been amazingly helpful, friendly and curious. They don't have the same dislike of tourists that you can see elsewhere in Asia, i guess because there are no tourists here. After a night of skipped dinner, we hit the couple toast (spam cheese and egg toasties) then the soju, and crashed a karaoke room that someone else had paid for. After they started chanting USA USA, the people from the rest of Englands colonies decided it was time to leave, and joined the Korean students in their room for a round of Creedence and Sk8r boi. Memories of Big Lebowski meets Generation Kill in some strange Korean alternate reality. They kicked us out of their room after we had entertained them with two songs... ok now pay or go. I love that there is a line here that you dont really cross.

We were split into groups for our orientation, ours somehow being the best (subjective I guess) and most patriotic despite my predisposition for a lack of participation, and we did a massive haka for our farewell peformance led by our invaluable kiwi asset James, which easily made up for the disappointing sad, and downright offensive effort of another group who looked more like wet fish, and had some kind of applause over the PA rather than the actual chant. The girls in our group performed the K-pop dance to a Korean song called "Sorry Sorry", which has been useful on several occasions, most recently at a reunification parade that a whole group of us waygooks (foreigners) were drawn into when we first ventured into Gumi town on our day off. They wouldnt let us leave, and got my thumb print in exchange for a free cup of coffee (universal currency), and filmed an interview with our 'team leader' Jessica who participates in everything, allowing others of us to thankfully get away with the bare minimum. Yusss! So interesting fact(?) waygook is korean for foreigner, and is quite possibly the reason why american soldiers in the vietnam (or american, depending again on subjectivity) war called the VC, and vietnamese in general, gooks. Kinda illustrates the lack of understanding that was pretty instrumental in the losing of that particular fight.

So we are in a town called Gumi, in a province that I still haven't figured out how to pronounce, it's just above Daegu close to the South East coast, on the northern boundary of the Busan pocket, if anyone is at all familiar with Korean War history. It's a modest size (400,000 people) and accounts for 10% of Koreas flatscreen production, which in turn accounts for the 10% of the tap water here that is composed entirely of lead. Well maybe thats not the flatscreens fault, more likely some other heavy industry, I hear Korea's batterys are pretty good. But despite the lead, the plants grow, and when spring comes I think this place will actually be pretty nice. It's a bit bleak now.

Some strange stuff... it's hard to know where to start. The public parks all have gym equipment installed in them, but absolutely noone uses it. We have scouted out a few remarkably good cafes, the best being 'Cafe Hong Coffee and Book' best coffee and the best name. They do a range of single origins, and are the only people so far that have been able to extract a shortie that I enjoyed. The menu is all in Korean, so its hard to get food there. We pointed at the menu and ordered the first two foods on it, and out came half a loaf of bread, unsliced, toasted, with butter melted into it... with a side of sweet whipped cream. Actually quite good. Next out was a sweet banana toastie with something like cheese but sweet in the middle. Not so good. It's next to impossible to buy bread here thats not sweetened. I dont know why. Also, all cheese is single serve plastic wrapped american style. An absolute nightmare considering my love of cheese and hatred of excess packaging. I have not yet purchased any cheese. They have a good recycling program though, a necessity I guess, with separate bags which you have to buy for food waste and general waste, and any bag with recycling in it will be collected for free. Which is good, but less packaging to begin with would be a more logical way around the problem. Also it is somehow cheaper to buy takeaway coffee than to drink from porcelain. Which makes me want to actually kill.

We departed on the weekend for a roadtrip to Busan to meet up with Mel and some other Incheon people. The train ticket buying experience was unbelievably easy compared to the push shove, lack of understanding, nothing written in English of Vietnam, the lack of trains in Cambodia, the deliberate bureaucratic misunderstanding of Thailand, and the we-dont-stop-at-the-border-so-fuck-you-if-you-want-an-exit-stamp-go-to-your-consulate-and-buy-one bullshit of Malaysia and Singapore. Actually come to think of it, getting a train ticket can sometimes be as hard as a border crossing. Not here though. They have 3 types of trains. Fast, slow, and slow standing up. Slow was about 30 times better than the standard commute to Wellington, and about as many times faster, so I cant wait to travel on the KTX, Korea's bullet trains, which travel god knows how bonesplittingly fast, 300 kmph or some such gorbage. We negotiated the subway out to the beach with as much ease, and hung out on the beach eating seafood on a stick and drinking absolutely rubbish local beer until our Mel and her mates showed up. From there it was a downward spiral of soju, golf (they have golf driving ranges above some carparks with big nets, and as many balls as you can smash in 70 minutes), dice, cards, whiskey, raw fish, taxis, blurred lights, some lady trying to sell me fireworks but I misunderstood, and tried to light the one she was holding, cause I thought she wanted to play. Actually kinda felt like a spaced out recollection of hammersmashing coconuts on the hood of my fireapple red convertable, feverishly muttering into my tape recorder something about "THIS IS THE PROPERTY OF THE WORLD BANK! THAT MONEY GOES TO ITALY." Anyway, it wasnt so good.

So my after school drinks last night were interesting, as i again had to revisit the raw fish and soju phenomenon, which is something of a big deal here, but I left before the dude who was standing up yelling in Korean waving fistfulls of yellow bills could drag us all into a karaoke room to have his evil way with the microphone. We also did not have to kill our own food, which we came very close to having to do in Busan. When we walked into the restaurant, Lissa and Iassumed that it was a petshop because of the large tanks filled with every available fish. The lady who we selected our dinner from seemed to like us though, as she threw in a couple of sea penises on the house. Thanks.

Our schools are interesting. Mine is old, not derelict, but definately run down in the old part of town coordinates 36.139967,128.414544 for anyone who knows how to use doogleearth. I have a heater in my office that runs on come kinda clear oil stuff, maybe paraffin. It starts with a click click, buzzzz BANG, and the exhaust vents directly into the room, so we have to work with the window open. I feel sorry for the girl who sits next to the window but far away from the heater. I'm a good distance between the two. Considering the oldness of the school, we have some pretty cool technology, computer in every class room hooked up to a massive flatscreen television, but the computer in my main room is clogged to the gunnels with spyware, so it crashes every time I try to load my prezi presentation, and i have to revert to the black board. Seems like a version of the future where we have tech as shit, but no natural resources left to maintain it, so we're living in caves. At least i know the rules. Don't live in the fancy cave, live ACROSS from the fancy cave, so at least you have a good view. Thanks Karl. Words of wisdom. Another pop culture word-of-advice, always be nice to the lunch lady. My school cafeteria ladys all look like little pink oompa loompas with their full body pink butchers aprons, gumboots, and white hats. All thats missing is the green hair. But if you say hello and thanks and have a good day to them (they dont speak english, so i guess i could ask them why is there a frog in my bidet and they'd smile and bow) they give you extra strawberries! Yus, it works! Thanks green wing.

Lissa's school is like 'The Jetson's'. She has hoverkids that play football on astroturf with a view of the mountains, and a supply room thats shrinkwrap-new and is bigger than my class room. I bet she even has a remote for her television damnit. I win though, because googlearth says that she lives in a pretty big hole in the ground. (36.140223,128.426195) its only a ten minute walk though, so when she gets some cred, im fully cafeteria crashing!

So thats about it, I'll update when I can be bothered, photos soon to be on facebook. Yay.

Aux

having been bled dry by leeches... having had leeches bloodlet you...

lissahirst — Fri, 2 Jul 2010 16:27:00 GMT

we have been away from kathmandu for what seems like a month, im not really sure how long its been, maybe a week... our course finished on friday, and we had a thousand course graduation dinner of nepali food with rice wine, and for some reason, sangria. after a savage hangover and some hasty packing we got the hell out of there and caught a bus to gorkha up in the hills. after racing through the countryside for 4 hours, and not seeing too much of it, we finally managed to climb on the roof for the final 30 km or so. soo much better. hot cramped bus where you cant see anything or a slightly more dangerous and uncomfortable rooftop? rooftop wins. so besides a sweet lightening storm and some pretty epic views gorkha didnt offer us too much. we hiked up 1500 steps to the temple at the top of the hill, got a bit sweaty and caught the bus to pokhara. this place is much nicer than kathmandu, cleaner, less people, less hassle, and the mountains are so much clearer. we hired motorbikes on our first day here and rode off in search of a good view. my bike was 20 or so years old, but hondas dont die, this one just got slower and slower as the trip progressed until it finally overheated and stopped. we left it for a while and went for a walk. we realised at about this point that we had missed our intended destination by something like 40 km, but we stopped in a small town on the top of a big hill and hung out with some local dudes for the afternoon. one of them took us to his house and introduced us to his 6 month old kid and his wife who didnt seem all that keen to see us, but i guess she was shy or didnt speak any english. we rode home and siphoned out the remaining gas for a future expedition. next day we were sitting by the lake having a beer when the clouds opened, and we saw the view that we had been seeking when we got the bikes. we quickly jumped in a cab and headed to the hilltop to watch the sunset, which was ridiculous, with 3 of the highest (and i think shyest) mountains in nepal visible for a few minutes. yesterday we embarked on a mission to reach the world peace pagoda on the other side of town. after a long walk through the hills on a clearly marked path, we ended up in a village that had been abandoned for about 300 years i think, it was just the remains of some stone walls, and terraced fields that were overgrown with trees. as we tried to find the path we scrabbled through the undergrowth where leeches crawled into our socks and started chewing on my ankles. i didnt notice them until we had found a way up to the top and stopped for a drink, where i noticed that my ankles were bleeding into my socks. the old lady at the top of the hill was awesome, and burned them off wile lissa and luke checked their shoes, and discovered parasites of their own. after the excitement of killing the leeches, the pagoda at the top of the hill seemed pretty dull, so we walked down the shore with an american couple we had met at the top and caught 2 boats back, because apparently our western money is too heavy to fit in just one boat, it might sink... the 10 nepalis we passed mid lake in just one boat must weigh much less than us... aah well... so tomorrow we depart for the annapurna circuit. lissa and luke are fretting about the thorung la pass, 5416 meters up. we will have to take 3 days acclimatising to the altitude so as not to die. should be fun!!!!

one more week in crapmanpoo

lissahirst — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 22:12:00 GMT

this city is getting a little dull. we have been here now for just over 3 weeks, and the constant noise, pollution, and lack of open spaces is beginning to do my head in. our course has 1 week left, but it looks to be a busy one. starting tomorrow (sunday!!!!?) we have our fourth teaching practice, 40 minutes of teaching to a class of 30-45 12 to 16 year olds, then 3 more over the rest of the week. the good thing is that they get easier the more you do, so by friday we should be ready to actually get a job... thats the point i guess. its been interesting seeing what people understand, or dont. there is no weekend here. saturday is usually a day off, but i got some bemused looks when i asked students what they were going to do in the weekend as part of an exercise. not being allowed to mention beef is interesting too. a whole new minefield, the cultural one.

we spent the weekend out of town, with luke (our only classmate) we grabbed a taxi and drove 40 km into the hills (2 hours on really bad and then really narrow roads). it cost us about 25 bucks between the 3 of us. awesome. and we could fit 4 passengers into a tiny suzuki if we needed. love the total lack of road rules or regulations. the town we ended up in is called nagarkot, at 2000 metres elevation, it usually has views of everest, but not this time of year. as the sun set it threw light on some mountains in the distance, but who the fuck knows what they were... so i guess im one of not very many people who might have seen everest. with things like that youre usually sure what the hell youre looking at. we got the only guesthouse in town that had other foreigners staying, but unfortunately they were british girls who didnt feel like hanging out with us, so we went for a walk and ended up at the restaurant at the end of the universe, so we had some whiskys as the sun set. then we had dinner in the dark that came in two servings because the restaurant ran out of gas and had to go get some more to finish cooking the meal, and the sporadic gusts of wind blew out our candle whenever we relit it, while the dogs mustard marmelade and ginger fought each other around our feet for the bits of chicken that didnt taste right. but there were fireflys!!!! so overall a pretty different night. our guesthouse owner keep luke talking and when he learned we were training to be teachers, he told luck to make sure the girls know about personal hygiene... dont know what kind of teachers he thought we were going to be!

so this town like everything else in nepal is infested by the army. from the observation tower at the top of the hill where we didnt see everest, we passed at least three separate army bases, and a huge number of pillboxes. i think the army here is overfunded (like most places i guess), overstaffed, underemployed but overly paranoid. not a very good situation...

one of the highpoints of the expedition was the bus ride down. we had seen lots of local busses with people riding on the roof, so waited till it was about to leave so they couldnt do anything about it, and jumped on the back, climbing up to the roof as it started rolling. it was an awesome ride down two hours of winding one lane road down the terraced hilsides, ducking the occasional powerline that threatened to decapitate those not paying attention. the dude taking money for tickets climbed onto the roof to take our money from the doorwell, charged us 25 rupees (45 cents) each, and climbed down with the money in his teeth. no worries! tranzfuckingrail should come here to see how its done. after a couple of hours on the best bus trip ever we wound up in baktapur, looked at some more temples. amazing, but not really anything new, and took another bus home. cant wait till school finishes on firday so we can get out again and see some more madness. there are big drops of water falling from the sky. the monsoon hit the other day, but it only rains one day in two so far, so trekking is still looking pretty promising.

not too much shenannegans

lissahirst — Mon, 7 Jun 2010 02:58:00 GMT

after leaving singapore airport, nepal really seems like another world. five or so abandoned and nasty looking aircraft litter the right side of the runway, one of them overturned. there is something about an aircraft with its wheels in the air that is so wrong that you cant look away. it goes some way to conveying nepals sense of honesty though i think. at least the fucked out planes aren't locked away in a shed where you cant see them. the airport building is thick with dust, and waaay too big. the contents of each office take up half the space that is available, and the dust is thicker than i thought possible. our taxi ride from the airport into the tourist ghetto of thamel was in a fucked out old corolla. brought back memories. this country is awesome. whats happened so far? shit... its been a long week. i took part in a maoist rally, not seriously, but just to see if anything interesting would happen. it didnt. pretty interesting that the people who support the maoists are generally just country people who get promised a free day in kathmandu with lunch and transport provided if they go and wave a flag. s they do, but they dont get transport home, so they have to walk back to their counrtyside. it reeks of the 'revolution' in chile where a thousand or so dudes are paid to protest on the street and everyone thinks the whole country is behind them because of the media coverage... its not a fucking revolution if they are doing it for the free lunch. had our first week of school. its a pretty hack job, but i like it we have one cool teacher who has a good handle on sarcasm, and one who is a bit of a tool, goes off on annoying and uninteresting tangents, and is a bit too obsessed with his masters degree from harvard or wherever. ah well. there are only three of us in the class, we hang out with a strayan dude called luke, who is into his death metal. weve got a local bar called namaste that we go to to do our homework. fuckin brilliant. the staff gave us all the answers, and thought it was a huge joke as we got drunker and tried to pick up some of their language for homework. the house band is fronted by a dude we call nepali jim morrison, he was real impressed that we came to see his band every night, and gave us heaps of info about underground punk and death metal in nepal to mine and lukes delight and lissas possible apprehension. our guesthouse is on the edge of thamel, which means that it should be quiet at night, but we have a gang of dogs on our street that begin their day when the cars stop. barreldog and neckdog are the leaders of the gang, and spend their day sleeping and sitting staring at the street butcher. amazingly well behaved considering how much raw meat and whole fish are sitting just a foot from their salivation. the view from our roof is pretty incredible. all the nepali houses have a flat roof, and the locals all hang out up there at sunset watering the plants and walking around shirtless with their bellys hanging out. the men anyway. we escaped the city for the first time yesterday (took a taxi after a whole lot of kerfuffel and confusion) up into the hills to a town called dulikhel (i think) where we wandered around for an hour trying to find the tank that was mentioned in the lonely liar. turns out it was a water tank. gutted. we wandered around for a while and wound up next to an english language school. the the girls who lived there all ran out to say hi and practice their english, and invited us in for tea. their grandmother made us some awesome tea and boiled eggs and they taught us card games that i couldnt win cause they kept changing the rules. they took us to the temple at the top of the hill up a thousand steps that is now occupied by the army. that was a bit strange. it had the most amazing view that we couldnt take photos of because i guess their position was 'secret'? they didnt seem too happy to be sharing their hilltop with a temple and tourists, but it was interesting seeing a fortified position from inside the wire. there is a huge military presence in the kathmandu valley, because of the maoists i guess, and it looks like an easy job for the soldiers, leaning over their guardtower walls to check out the ladies. tomorrow we have to go to a school and witness our teacher in action. then on tuesday its our turn. eek. had a few one on one lessons last week, which was cool. my dude was 6 years old, spoke perfect english in the present tense. his favourite animals are lion tiger eagle falcon. no boring ones here! and he wants to be an electrical engineer and have a fast motorbike when he leaves school, and his favourite colours are red golden and silver. what a dude! so apparently the monsoon starts next week. hmmm.

chickenonastick!!!!!!!!!!!!

lissahirst — Tue, 2 Jun 2009 15:47:00 GMT

so we have been stumbling around in the 1pm heat going from place to place trying to find an internet cafe that isnt closed. and this one has air con and warcraft 3 for some reason that i cant really fathom. we are in a place called taman negara in the oldest rainforest in the world. its 130 million years old, and hasnt been affected by any(?) ice ages owing to its location close to the middle of the world. i like how punctuation can change the meaning of a sentence. i have 8 weeks off drinking! can become i have 8 weeks off. drinking! think i prefer the latter. so we made a highspeed dash down from krabi in thailand to melaka in the south of malaysia in 2 days or some rubbish, stopping only so the drive could buy some nuts, and to cross the thai malay border. i ate some highly suspect chicken on a stick, but it was the last foreseeable time that i would be able to do so as we were leaving thailand behind for a difficult to think properly about right now period of time, and i didnt get the sick. think i have massive immunity now due to a lack or aircon and drinking the tap water. maybe i just have liver flukes. but they probably have alcohol poisoning, so it all kinda works out. well its good that i didnt get the sick, due to the aforementioned lack of toilet stops, and the van having no suspension. it would have been a miserable 8 hours. anyway we met sam coop and kylie in melaka and missioned around with them for a while, got some bikes and an irish dude and cruised the city for a few hours, travelled prolly 4 km (SHITTTTTTTTTY bikes) and sweated about a gallon. which is 3 gallons less than sam sweated. but we did see some badly evolved fish lizard frog things wallowing around in the muds of a river, and the by now obligatory monitor lizard. and we saw some dutch gravestones from the 16th century with a skull qand crossbones carved into them. cool.

we cruised to mersing by the worst means of transport known to uncivilised people, and had some lasagne at a french run cafe. it was awesome. then got on a fast ferry type thing out to the island pulau tioman (east coast this time) where we cooper led the charge to the bar on the beach that had a 10 ringitt for 3 beers happy hour. and sam got sick. think it was the burger that none of us can properly remember at a restaurant further up the beach where we scared off everyone that was sitting less than 4 tables away. after recovering and having another burger for breakfast we went checking out the wildlife. there is a water monitor lizard that mok reckoned is as round as him and half a meter longer that swam around for a while, plenty more that are not quite as prehistoric, a handful of monkeys (not sure if thats the right name for a group of monkeys) some big spiders, 4 pythons that took over the beach from the cobras a few months back, and the usual butterflies and whatnot. but we spent most time watching the lizards swimming around and basking on their rocks. fuckin impressive. also we went snorkeling just off the beach and saw some scary freakin animals. i drifted slowly over a big rock near the edge of the sea (not really the shore cause it was kinda a cliff) and in a sandy hole was a big blue ray about the size of a leg sifting about in the mud. i called lissa over and she almost screamed her snorkel off when she spotted the beast. had to leave the sea quickly after seeing that.

so i hear its snowing in wellington... dont think the couriers will be impressed with that. good time to be a barista. we had a real hard time leaving the island. not because it was no nice although that did play a part, but after catching the ferry back to mersing all the bus's were booked till monday because its school holidays. had to go back to the french place and eat 2 more meals of food because it was so good. and stayed in a nasty chinese hotel that had aircon. mok cranked his down to 16.5 degrees, climbed into his sleeping bag, and promptly got the flu again. and we found an internet cafe and played the first of several games of starcraft. real third world this place. hah. so now im going to the river to have a swim, and will write properly about taman negara when i have another coffee, and dont feel relaxed. might be next week.

salamat datang ke langkawi. and some thailand island

lissahirst — Mon, 18 May 2009 17:57:00 GMT

hello!. i havent written anything for quite a while because we have been in chailand on an eyeland, and the internet has been prohibitively expensive to use. so a rapidfire update of our travels since penang which i think was the last place i sat down to write anything... we took a boat. the worst boat in Scotland most likely to an island at the top of malaysia called langkawi. the sea had something less than a 1 metre swell. NOTHING by nz standards, but we were on a boat that apparently had a flat bottom. kinda like a landing craft traversing open water at speed. actually im pretty sure lissa wrote about this, but i guess a bit of an overlap can be good. anyway, we had a guesthouse guy with a ponytail, who looked like steven segal. he was the dude. real helpful and cool, and he didnt mind us drinking the duty free beer in his place. so lissa got mauled on the leg by a massive jellyfish, and no one even went near the beach for like a week.she has almost healed right up now though after a couple of weeks of the most savage itch imaginable. next another much nicer boat to Thailand, a bus to krabi, booked a taxi that was actually just some dudes clapped out car to the beach, and booked a longtail boat to hat ton sai, one of the best places ion the world for rock climbing. we weren't really told what to expect so we went down to the beach wearing about 25 kg of pack each, and commenced the wade out to sea. looked kinda like saving private ryan styles thing, but obviously in reverse. the boat was about a mile out. we thought it would come in closer. it didnt. the realisation dawned that we would be wading into the ocean to get to the boat. mad scramble to get passports cameras wallets and such out of the pockets and somehow safely stowed in day packs before the waves swamped us. all was saved except for ross's wallet which fell victim, and we eventually scrambled aboard the longtail. it took us out to a strip of rocky mud that swallowed my new jandals, but was apparently the beach. we sludged ashore and fell into the first bungalow place available. so we spent a few days there climbing swimming and kayaking. our beach was awesome, palm fringed white coral sand with thatch bungalows and a good assortment of wildlife. i got up early most days because it was a good place to sit reading and nearly impossible to sleep past 8. also this is when the monkeys were active, jumping around on the roofs of the bungalows, and hanging out on ross's deck trying to break in and steal his laptop. we also had an encounter with a running lizard, and a pet massive spider who spun a new huge web on our balcony each night, and most likely killed more mosquitoes than us. he didnt try to come inside. unlike the frogs, who seemed most at home trying to look like the wall or hiding under the skirting boards. we kayaked around to the resort beaches a few bays around, took one look at the people and left. this is where the fat rich whiteys go. a can of coke cost almost as much as our bungalow, and none of the people here were fit rock climbers. we did have a cool thai kid jump on our boat and nick a paddle though. he was cool. time to leave, we caught another boat to phi phi which is where the beach was filmed, and is 'one of the most beautiful places in the world' according to someone. it was pretty cool, but hella expensive, but had clear water and lots of fish right up near the beach. our place was a half hour trek through the jungle from the main town, but was about 1000 baht cheaper than the next cheapest option. but it was scummy scummy. still, it had a beach so fuckit right... we went to some thai boxing in town, at a bar that we had heard about from some mad irish dude 2 years ago where they give you free alcohol if you fight none of us fought, although lissa got pretty keen as the drinking progressed. i won my bet on a skinny thai guy who was the dude, and we watched a brawl between an aussie and a brit. the aus dude loved it, he was in his element. we met some kiwis who were on a package tour and couldn't believe that we had to trek through the bush to get home. obviously that walk presented a set of unique problems. and now for tonight we reside in au nang, real close to krabi. we got conned yesterday into accepting some rooms at a resort that were 15 NZD per room had a pool and a free motorbike. 25 mins walk from town. OK... no free motorbike and more like 30mins drive from town. we attempted a walk to the night market and on the way encountered 2 scorpions (one massive squashed, one tiny alive one that got real close to climbing up my foot), some fireflys, about a hundred frogs, 2 massive crawling armored beetle slug things that had a light in their tail, a handful of bats and some strange looking snails. the night market was closed by the time we had completed our paranoid trudge down there. we saw a motorbike crash then trudged back to the resort which mercifully had a restaurant still open. we left this morning packed on a motorbike with a side car with all our luggage and a driver. that honda almost died trying to haul our asses into town, but the driver seemed oblivious, and kept trying to sell us his friends guesthouse. we declined, and treated ourselves to a second breakfast of chicken on a stick. thailands finest innovation.

flying lizzard and the hair caterpiller

lissahirst — Fri, 8 May 2009 19:36:00 GMT

well we just completed a savage burn around our current home island, palau langkawi on our rented motorbikes. the aim was an expedition out to a huge cable car gondola thing that we didnt go on yesterday because it disappeared into a cloud bank, and mok is scared of heights if he cant see the ground. some odd medical condition. so the rains have been easing for the past 3 days, and this morning dawned pretty fine and hot. we raced hell for leather along the jungle road to find the cable car closed inexplicaby. apparently it closes at any hint of rain or wind, prolly for the best, as it is fuckin high, and i dont really trust these peoples saftey precautions (although malaysia is pretty westernised). we hopped back on the bikes and cruised another few kilometres further into the jungle and came upon a waterfall thing that was up a steep track. some germans walking down looked exhausted. i asked them how far to the top, and she replied 1000 metres or so. very german :) as we walked up we witnessed a new species of jungle monkey jumping/falling (not too sure which) out of a tree, a flying lizzard (!!!) a non flying lizzard, 2 of the hairiest caterpillers that ive ever seen, and an ant carrying a potato chip on its back. karl pilkington would love this place. there is a sign at the bottom saying that the government is not responsible for any deaths in the park, and just beond the sign was a massive freshly fallen tree across the track. i see the reason for the sign though, just downstream from the waterfall is a flat(ish) and slippery(ish) piece of rock that rolls undulatingly downhill for about 50 metres, with the water flowing over it, ending in a pond and more rock. its too inviting to pass up, so i did a few trial runs at the bottom before mashing it from about halfway up. it was freaking awesome, but not worth the massive wrist/tailbone/head damage that fucking up would cost. we cruised around for a bit longer and found another waterfall that we took some photos of that would be awesome album covers for some strange new breed of experimental punk band. some bemused locals gathered around, wondering what these strange white monkeys were doing.

Penang to Langkawi - the sea hurts!

lissahirst — Wed, 6 May 2009 17:36:00 GMT

Lissa:

We left our Penang guesthouse at 7.30am (far too early for backpackers) and arrived at the Port just in time for the morning monsoon to come belting down. We huddled under a leaky marquee with 50 other tourists while the boat company sorted its stuff out. As it was time to board, the raim got heavier, we slithered onto the boat drenched but happy to be out of the rain. The ferry took off, and 15mins out of port the boat started rocking alot. 15mins later people started vomiting. Another 15mins later i started vomiting, up came my tropical fruit breakfast along with my anti-motion sickness pill (damn you travel doctor!). I tried to focus on the latest pirated Fast and the Furious movie, but Vin Diesels acting made me vomit into the wastebasket in front of me. With only another half hour of travel to go the kind ferry staff came round with vomit bags, much to the dismay of the passengers, too late the bathroom floors were covered in unused breakfasts and the wastebaskets were brimming with stomach lining. Not nice. We arrived in Langkawi and negotiated a cheap taxi ride to Cheng Beach. Our driver took us to an awesome guesthouse called Rainbow lodge. The rain started pounding down again when it was time to disembark. I admire the taxi drivers attempts at geting the van as close to the reception as possible, but it ended up making it worse as he parked underneath the leaky guttering of the buildng. Ross hauled our bags out and we relaxed and played some pool whilst our guesthouse owner (think Malaysian Steven Seagal, ponytail and all) rattled off a price for the room. when the rain calmed we took a look at our bungalows and accepted his price. Pretty sweet, $7.50NZD each for a double room with ensuite eeeeh. After settling in and drying off we wandered down to the beach for lunch and had an amazingly large Thai green curry (Langkawi is very close to Thailand so lots of Thai infused food, yum!). Explored the beach a bit and had some tiger beers down on the beach, beer here is cheap as Langkawi has been declared a duty free zone, this place gets better and better!

Next day, rolled out of bed, had breakfast and then it was off to do some wave jumping at the beach! oooh fun! all was going well until i felt an immense sting on my leg, i yelled, floated backwards but the thing (enormous jellyfish!) coiled a tentacle around my leg from my lower thigh to my ankle, i tried to pull it off then it got me again on my other leg. Panic stricken, screaming, crying and swearing like an irish sailor i managed to swim closer to shore and it let go. I don't know who was more frightened me, or the horror stricken looks on Mok and Ross' faces as they decided what was attacking me. The pain was like i had barb wire wrapped around my leg then wrenched out! eeeeeek! i swallowed quite alot of water trying to get out of the sea, and aux hauled me back up to the beach where i continued swearing. He ran off to get vinegar (not urine!) and came back with a sliver of lemon, that was just not going to cut it. I managed to hobble back to the guesthouse and pour vinegar over my leg. Started feeling good then i felt really ill, couldn't breathe properly and all the bones in my body were jangling around. A cool kiwi chick we just met gave me an anti-histamine and it felt alot better. For the rest of the day i was basically bed-ridden, felt like i'd been hit by a truck, damny jellyfish tried to paralyse me! Aux fed me icecreams and a massive chicken burger, the pain subsided and i was able to sleep most of it off. I woke up this morning and my leg is super swollen with small blisters running the length of my calf muscle. Never going into the sea again! ga!

Apart from the jellyfish and boatride Langkawi seems like an awesome place. I think we're going to be here for awhile :) Thai food for dinner me thinks! :)

we were right in the middle of a fucking reptile zoo. and someone was giving food to these bastards.

lissahirst — Fri, 1 May 2009 21:48:00 GMT

well we have spent 4 or 5 or 6 pretty sweet days exploring around palau pangkor (thats pretty close to the correct spelling). they have no Internet except for in the chinamans guesthouse, and we didnt want to give him any more money than a severe example of bad communication necessitated. but enough of that. we rented motorbikes as per the amended masterplan, and did several savage high speed burns around the island, which is probably not more than 18 km right the way around. we discovered many unexpected wild animals, and all contracted sunburn that made todays move all the more difficult. we found some place that was building big fishing trawlers out of wood, and entirely by hand. awesome. thats a skill thats been lost in most places. and our guesthouse owner dude looked exactly like morgan freeman. with a motash. mok reckons he looks more like morgan freeman than morgan freeman does. like when hes not in films being morgan freeman, he is just himself, which is to say that he is not morgan freeman. and this dude is. anyway, he is obesessed with birds, and this is a good place for that kind of behaviour. they have no seagulls on this island, instead they have sea eagles. quite incredible birds that laze around the sky and occasionally have mid air beak fights or swoop down to catch fish and small children. as far as land animals, the odd huge iguana lying just around a hairpin bend that was taken at slightly too high a speed anyway without the sudden distraction and loss of concentration that comes with the sudden appearance on the road of a massive reptile. biking at night, getting howled at by a pack of monkeys while crossing one of the many forested patches where the streetlights arent. in fact most of the animals there seem to exist solely for the purpose of scaring the crap out of unsuspecting whiteys. then there was the roach in mok and ross' room that refused to flush. too big for flyspray or even an aerosol flame thrower, much to moks obvious consternation. and the unidentified (possibly fictional :)) lizzard/snake that fell on lissa from the trees. and the gigantic centipede. and the kittens in the roof. why are there always fucking kittens??? but we seem to be getting lost down a tangent here.

so i just looked to my left and there is a temple in our guesthouse that i somehow failed to notice when we checked in. they just lit the incense.we are in penang, and im pretty impressed so far with the overall goodness of this city. they have cheap morotbikes, good beer, cheap guesthouses, and nasty slow computers. and i think some monkeys just started howling and screeching outside. its time for another tigerbeer. i may continue this at a later date.

burocracy and the unititty bus

lissahirst — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 01:01:00 GMT

im sitting in the lounge at fathers guesthouse in the cameron highlands, drinking my way through 2 liters of oran jus and eavesdropping the conversation across from me where the girl is just telling someone about how she accidentally took magic mushrooms in laos. mushrooms grow in cow shit. thats why you spend the first hour laughing. this came out of a cows ass... where do you think the expression thats good shit came from. thanks bill.

so we left KL finally some time last week, our last day was freaking epic, but it worked out allright. we had gone to the nz embassy to ask about motorscooter liscencing and insurances and buying them and whatnot, and the woman couldnt really understand why we wanted to ride scooters round, kept trying to talk us into buying a car. but we dicided eventually that due to the burocracy and money involved, ane the difficulty of seilling them again at the end, that bussing to a place then renting scooters while there would be the best option. while at the embassy we mentioned that we hadnt been stamped into the country as our train never stopped after crossing into malaysia from singapore. the woman who had worry lines etched all over face (i think this country is causing her trouble) said that we had a huge problem, we needed a consular letter to the right people outlining our situaton. we paid for this letter, and took a cab the next day out to a fuckin CITY that the malaysian government has built 40 km out of town to house their various departments. it is huge ornate, new and really expensive looking. that is obviously where the money in this country goes. on the way our driver tried to convert me to hindu(ism?) while i tried to explain about the gaia hypothesis, and that perhaps a better definition for god is the earth itself. then he told me that i smell. fuck, it was never going to work, and i knew that i was doomed as soon as he started the religion discussion. we pissed around for half an hour trying to find the right block. eventually found the building we needed. there was a reception in the front. the gir;l gave me directions then said "nice to meet you". bit nicer than the australian/nz service staff angst that im used to. so. blok 4GH or something. there is a market in the back selling fried food, sewing machines. clothes?? really odd. but we found our way up. went to the enquiries counter. were directed to the forms counter. got a form 12 to feed the guy later on. went to the cashier counter. paid our 1 ringit. went back to the enquiries counter. fed the guy our filled out form 12's. got a number. number got called. went up to counter 14. gave them our passports and consular letter and explained the situation. he took our shit. gave us each another number. we went to get lunch and a power root (epic name for a soft drink). went back. our numbers were called in due course. got our shit back with a shiny new malaysian visa. i actually think i preferred our last visa related bad experience. i kinda prefer cronic corruption to cronic burocracy. at least you know where you stand, and you know that your money is going to some dude, and not into the governments gold lined palace.

so we made it back in time to catch the 1pm air con bus (the company name is unititty. we should have known better) to the cameron highlands. got on when the bus arrived half an hour late, and it was HOT. bus started moving, and it was still hot. and not really a dry heat. bill paxton would not have liked it. so there was no air conditioning. broken. we moved from the back seat to 2 rows forward where there was an open roof hing creating a cool (38 degree) breezee. then the transmission started making some onimous crunching noise, and ross started talking about molten metal flying around, and engine fires. argh. after 5 or so crunches, one of the back tyres blew out and scared the sweating jesus out of me. and prolly everyone else as well. he stopped, looked at it, then continued on. we stopped at a rest area and he told us half an hour. 3.5 hours later we had tried the food (disgusting laksa that tasted real strongly of fish), tried the jukebox (i put some foo fighters on, and the fuckers unplugged it) and even got bored of the monkeys that were hanging out in the trees outside when they started eating plastic rubbish and styrofoam cups. they took the back of the bus apart, took the front apart, fixed none of the 4 big things that were wrong with it, and we negotiated a transfer to another bus that stank of diesel. they tried to not let us take our bags but we barged through and ripped them out of the hold, and piled onto the new (actually much older, but not chinese) bus that took us 15 minutes down the road until the gear bag fucked out, and we drifted into a bus graveyard of sorts to try and hire another bus. it was getting later, and more rural, but you can only laugh. we were having visions of sleeping overnight on the bus fighting off atacks by determined gangs of savage monkeys sick of eating plastic, and hungering for the taste of human flesh, when the negotiations seemed to work and we piled onto our third bus. it cranked away and almost toppled over sideways as the saggy suspension tried to deal with the rutted track. our driver knew his shit though, and he steamed up the hill, overtaking trucks and all sorts of local traffic, even a school bus on the narrow mountain road. we finally made it to the top at about 9 pm about six hours late. fuck. give me a bike.

melbourne sing and KL jumbled ramblings

lissahirst — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 09:33:00 GMT

well after much dilly dallying around about the place we have arrived in Kuala Lumpur. melbourne was cool, but somehow anticlimatic because it felt like we returning home rather than leaving on an expedition. we spent a few days cruising the old favourite bars and cafes, and catching up with the octane posse, who are not so much making coffee now, as roasting it... pretty fun looking operation based at the old Kitchen cafe in Flemington, the name of the company being 'the social roasting company', kinda crossed between peoples and havana, with coffee being delivered by a maximum panniered out beast of a bike. pretty damn sweet. so after living with lissas old workmate ali and her husband ian in their high tech warehouse mansion of a house for half a week (and pissing off their neighbours with some drunken 1am shadow) we relocated to the familiar bolt hole of joes garage to ride out the remaining few days.

singapore next, one more rung down the ladder into the abyss of heat and filth... still not too hot or filthy, but definately cheaper than aus or nz... thinking the highlight was a street burger place called ramly burger or something similar, where they cook a whole bunch of egg on a hotplate, spread out thin, then chuck the meat in that, fold the egg over it and cover in sauce. this way they make about 12 burgers at once on the same hotplate. kinda burger king like result, but it doesnt give you the shits, tastes a bit better (if you ignore the red looking meat in the middle, think it was coloured to look like that), and your money isnt siphoned out of your pocket and into some bottomless corporate coffer. the crapest thing about sing i think was the crappy guesthouse that we booked for the first few nights which was pretty much a cell with air con, no windows, and 4 bunks, and no common area. but fuck it, we werent there to make friends, and it was cheap enough. singapore zoo was also awesome, most of the animals looked about as fed up with the heat as us, but there was a night safari where the cats all came to life, and started prowling around. most impressive was the leopard i think, who was pacing about distractedly, right by the glass. huge beast, and im pretty sure he wanted to kill everyone. i could see it in his eyes. the fishing cats were also awesome, although they didnt catch any fish while we were there. they knew they were just for show, but they played their part convincingly.

massive drama at the airport leaving melbourne. we got there 2 hours early for our domestic flight due to a thankfully over zealous mok, and our massively rushed departure from nz. we waited at the front of the line for half an hour at check in while some tards fucked around in front of us, then were told by the smug airline girl that she couldnt give us our tickets to singapore as we didnt have a flight booked out of the country. we eventually wheedled more info out of her, and discovered that we could leave by train, and could book tickets online at the hilton across the road. massive rush with all our bags to get to the hilton, use the internet, booked tickets and went to the counter to pay. i got out all my silver coins to pay for our 15 minutes of internet and 1 printed page... 8 dollars... "excuse me? are you shitting me?" the girl says yeah... its expensive... the hilton... then "actually forget about it, cause its a FUCKIN RIP OFF!!" haha. good to see some humanity at last.

so we caught the train from sing to KL, pretty comfortable ride on an air con train, much better than crappy jetstar. we traveled through oil palms and a whole lot of cool rainforest. the train had open doors for much of the way, good for taking photos out of and watching the country flash past. when we got to KL we bought taxi coupons and piled into 2 cabs. our guy didnt speak english, didnt know the guesthouse that we pointed him to, and was too old to see or too uneducated to read our map... asia at last :) he managed to get us to chinatown after passing a police roadblock and hastily putting on his seatbelt, and we found our way from there. we went to a beatles bar last night that plays only the beatles, which was really cool for a while but started to get on my nerves when their songs started repeating. and they played yellow submarine. fuck. that song is the reason that i hated the beatles for something like 10 years, because i thought all their songs were all like that... should never have let that bongo guy get anywhere near the fuckin microphone. they also didnt play most of the white album, but all vitriol aside, it was an awesome bar, really comfortable, and they brought around a hookah pipe for 40 ringit which is about 12 dollars or something. prolly tourist prices, but still a good idea...