The Dave Report, Morroco, Dubai, India, South East Asia, 2000
Subject: THE DAVE REPORT: Morocco & India, camels and cows...
Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2000 23:12:45 +1000
Hello My Friends,
"Which country is suffering from your absence?" - a silver-tongued Indian salesmen asked me that the other day, and I really couldn't tell him, there's just too many...
About one month has passed since I left the dreary skies and cosy central heating of my London home - and while it seems this month has flown by, sometimes it feels we've seen more in these few weeks than we've seen before in a year.
Our journey so far has been fast, furious, overwhelming and awesome.
In Morocco, in the madness of the Marrakech marketplace, we've seen snake charmers and monkey handlers and medicine men and storytellers and acrobats and fastfood stalls selling sheeps brains direct from the skull.
In the Sahara desert we've watched the lengthening shadows of our camels as we rode alongside the setting sun, then we pitched camp under a canopy of shooting stars, and watched the next morning as the desert sea changed spectacular colour as the sun rose.
In the multiple marketplaces of Morocco, I've seen bartering (by my "harem" - the four girls I was travelling with) that apparently put the local Berber women to shame - ruthless stuff that reduced poor shopkeepers to tears and left us lugging around 10-tonne carpets and the most impractically shaped lampshades.
Across the country we've entered magnificent mosques, dusty desert kasbahs, dirt-floored Berber homes, sandy desert tents, and (several times) the best toilet in Morocco - at Mohammed's restaurant in Fez, where we were invited to a circumcisum.
In Fez as well I experienced a hamman - a bizarre steam bath/sauna/massage where this scary swarthy Moroccan dude exfoliated my skin with a wood sander before contorting my body into an increasingly impossible series of postions that left me with terrifying visions of "Midnight Express".
But we made it out of Africa alive, and Brit's and my next destination was the Middle East, with a brief look at Dubai - a town of Arabs wearing white teatowels on their heads, festooned with heaps of gold jewelery and driving Rolls Royces and Mercs - or else strutting down the street holding hands (not that there's anything wrong with that) - it's a big (non-sexual) Muslim thing with guys. In Dubai we visited an incredible waterslide park with jets that actually pushed us UP the slides in a series of interconnecting thrills and splashes before spitting us out to watch a stunning sunset over the waters of the Gulf -a relaxing respite before our next big adventure...
India...
After Morocco I never thought I'd see another place as filthy, uncomfortable, manic, insane, outrageous, in your face overwhelming, sensation-stimulating...I was wrong.
Over here, in the past two weeks, we've been to beautiful temples and magnificent forts and holy places and shrines, we've experienced the worst squat toilets in the world, and seen people living in even more horrible conditions.
We've seen, at Varanasi, a vast communal bath in the putrid waters of the Ganges, as literally hundreds lather up and cleanse their sins (if not their skins) in waters where everything was holy - we saw bodies being cremated on the banks and skeletons floating past us in the water (we declined a dip).
We visited the Taj Mahal, a building of breathtaking symetry and beauty, only to find that, for most of the local Indian tourists there, BRIT was actual MORE of an attraction that the Taj, and I think on the afternoon we visited MORE photos were taken of HER breathtaking symetry and beauty than the humble little wonder of the world in the background. Crazy Indians...
In the west of the country, we've heard stories of magnificent Maharajas and incredible battles, and we've visited spectacluar red forts perched on cliff edges, with dozens of beautiful elephants trampling up the steep pathway into the gates - Brit actually was brave enough to "pat" an elephant, she said it felt like a "fuzzy tongue" (??? hmm, I didn't ask).
Most recently, we hiked the wrong way up a steep hill to a little sacred temple overloooking the lovely, peaceful, holy town of Puskkar, lots of holy ghats (steps) spread around a tranquil lake - a great place, a different place, away from the usual insanity of India's traffic.
The traffic. India makes Morocco look like a driving school. No rules, no lanes. Just a mass of swirling bodies and vehicles and animals all meshing together on these narrow thoroughfares, all dancing around in a blur of precision driving that would leave Peter Brock shame-faced, just a constant mix of turns and dodges and horns and complete and utter insanity...yet somehow, someway...we've never actually seen a collison.
And apart from lots of walking/dodging on these crazy streets, we've riden in them all - honking taxi-cabs, bumpy cycle-rickshaws, little auto-rickshaws that make AGY look HUGE - in fact, on our first night in Varanasi, Brit, two poor english tourists and ALL our hefty luggage was somehow piled into the backseat of an auto-rickshaw, while I sat in the front next to the driver AND his mate - and I use the term "sat" loosely - my right butt-cheek was in contact with the tiny, narrow seat, the rest of me was hanging on - and hanging out of the little cabin as we sped and swerved around the crazy streets, dodging cars, bikes, cows...
That's the inner city transportation. As for the inter-city transportation...well...first up there's buses that have to be push-started (!!!), buses that have no concept of lanes on the highways and continually play chicken with oncoming traffic, calmly seeing who is going to blink and return to their own lane first. After trips like that we undertood why the drivers lit incense and prayed at the little alters above the driver's seat before departure. Meanwhile these buses are crammed with dozens of extra passengers, who somehow, calmly fit in, oblivious to any concept of "personal space". And the trains were even worse - even in 2nd class sleeper carriages (more like jail cells) we were overrun with dozens of extra Indians - families, nuns, even the army (plus their crates of ammunition) joined us on one epic 20 hour trip across the sub-continent. On this trip actually, stopped at a station, Brit caused a HUGE commotion when she calmly turned the pages of a trashy gossip magazine - only to look out the window to find that dozens of faces were staring in agog at the pictures of Liz Hurley and Claudia Schiffer - and when the train finally got underway, we found the magazine in question almost caused a riot as all the Indians shoved and pushed in their eagerness to get into the aisle for a look at the sacred mag.
Speaking of sacred, brief word on animals. Love the elephant of course. And the monkeys, which are prolific. The odd Bengal Tiger (unfortunately seen in the zoo). These creatures reinforce my humble "Jungle Book" background of India. But the top dog in the animal world in this country is definately the cow. Totally cool, totally confident in the fact that they are "untouchable", these quadropeds are EVERYWHERE - streets, temples, riverbanks, homes, cafes - YES - I actually saw one wandering into a restaurant one day. Unbelievable. And they are the only traffic obstacles the don't get beeped at, merely swerved around respectfully. Which is what Brit and I did when we walked the streets around these cows - swerve around them respectfully. Not to mention swerving respectfully around the sacred contributions they made to the pavement...
Some towns, like Pushar, have an extremely high cow:person ratio. But in general, across India, I've got to give the people their due - they win the population contest. It's bloody crowded - and the overwhelmeing impression that I'll leave India with is that of the people. Hordes of them. Talking. Hassling. Hoicking. Spitting. Yelling. Saying hello. Asking you your country. Talking about cricket. Staring. All types - friendly, grumpy, crazy, greedy, shifty...but I'll miss the kids the most.
I'll miss the food too, but not what it does to me. As discreetly as possible, let's just say I prefer the way it goes down to the way it comes out. But hey, that's India. And if you can't learn to love squatting over a hole in the ground when you go to the loo like the other billion people, it's not for you.
But it's definatley for us, we've loved it. After two exhausting weeks though, it's time to depart, ready for the next leg. One month travelling down, one to go, hopefully now a little more relaxing, a little more sedate, just as much fun. Ahead of us: South East Asia: the modern luxuries of Singapore, the tropical rainforests and monsoons of Malaysia, the beaches and temples and elephant treks (yes! more elephants) of Thailand. Enthusiasm is DEFINATELY not waning. And YES, somehow, someway, beautiful Brit is still very patiently putting up with my enthusiasm, being very pratical and logical and kerbing my eagerness to do EVERYTHING and go EVERYWHERE and consequently keeping us on time and around budget. And of course Brit's patience and understanding extends to my insane compulsion to photograph every SINGLE thing (almost) - at last count, 44 rolls of films - not too bad for a month!
Anyway, that's all for now, next time most of you hear from me will be at Christmas-time, whether in person (you lucky Brisbanites), or by other methods. Till then, goodbye my friends, take care, safe journey, go in peace, if you are happy, I am happy, we go smiling...(and all the other spiels that Morrocan and Indian storekeepers have tried on us)
see ya soon groovers,
love
Dave
Hi Guys,
Let me start, if I may, by taking you back a few days - Saturday
14th December, around five in the morning. I'm in the wilds of
Borneo, about a kilometre from the summit of the tallest mountain in
South East Asia, Mount Kinabalu. I'm surrounded by several new
friends - my climbing buddies, and our guide, who seems more
mountain goat than man. But Brit, my travel companion for the past
two months, is nowhere to be seen. Why? Because she's back in
Australia, that's why - she's declined the opportunity to extend our
trip a few days and do something stupid like climbing a mountain
only half the height of Everest. Travel-fatigued and Dave-fatigued
and eager to get a head start on her Christmas organisation, Brit
has headed home a day or two earlier. And me, on the side of that
mountain, leaning forward to keep from falling off, I think about
Brit for a second, I calculate that even though Brisbane is a couple
of hours ahead of Borneo, Brit is probably still in bed, sleeping
off the remnants of jet lag, tucked in, all cosy...
And as I think about my lucky friend, a HUGE part of me wishes I was
in EXACTLY the same place - home safe in my bed. Actually, not just
one part of me, but several. My poor legs for one - stiff and sore
and not happy with me for subjecting them to seven hours of lifting
up and jarring down. My arms and shoulders too, all knotted from the
incredible steep bits of granite rock face that we've just had to
scale using more arms than legs, Spiderman style. My skin isn't too
crazy about being there either - anything exposed, like my face and
my hands, is exposed to a bitter, biting, pre-dawn cold. Whereas any
skin pores NOT exposed are sweating out a river of exertion under my
multiple layers of stinky clothing. So my nose kinda wishes it was absent too - not that it can smell that much anymore, the chill has turned on some endless snot tap inside - drip, drip, drip... And my pride, maybe, for a second, also feels like running away, when my climbing friends notice that the cold has caused me to take to wearing my purple and yellow polka dotted underwear on my head (spare pair, and clean OK?). But despite ALL these parts of me - my legs and back and skin and pride - all taking a battering, there is ONE part of me that REALLY wishes that they had jumped on that early plane home with Brit...
My lungs. Absolute agony. Every breath is dragged out like it's my
last, this horrible rasping, gasping gulp. I'm finding it difficult
to believe there is ANY oxygen in the atmosphere up here - and I
start squinting suspiciously at my guide - and all the other
super-fit people - wondering where THEY have found THEIR air
supplies, maybe they know about some hidden air pockets - real air.
OK, so maybe that was altitude sickness affecting my brain for a
second. But I was really struggling - every few steps I'd have to
pause and gulp down some more air, waiting til my heart stopped
trying to burst out of my chest, stabilising my balance so I
wouldn't fall backwards off the mountain, getting some of the
precious, valuable O2 into my lungs, into my heart, my bloodstream,
down to my right foot...lift it up, move it forward just a tiny bit,
plonk it down, focus on the left foot - up, forward,
down...breath...
And this bit wasn't even the steepest portion - at sea level and
well rested I could probably sprint up it for a minute or two. But -
the air up there made everything 100 times tougher. Mild bouts of
nausea, dizziness. One guy in our group had a hurl. I'm shuddering
to think what it must be like for the guys who climb Everest without
oxygen - if THIS peak, half as high, seems so bereft of air, Everest
must be like being on the edge of space.
So yeah, it's tough. I'm wondering what I'm doing, why I'm doing it.
But then some OTHER parts of me start waking up. My eyes take in the
incredible beauty all around - it's nighttime yes, but the shooting
stars above and the 3/4 moon light up the granite landscape enough
to make torches unnecessary - and it's ironic that the moon is
lighting up this spectacluar surface, because right now, looking
around, I feel that THIS must be exactly what the moon looks like,
it's a foreign, alien landscape, all dramatic crags and valleys and
gullies and ditches and peaks, like nothing I've ever seen.
And it gets better, the view. We narrowly beat the sun in our race
to the summit, arriving amongst this freezing cluster of boulders
and insane tourists just in time to watch one of the most AMAZING
sunrises I've ever experienced - I see the sun rise ABOVE the clouds
to the east. Yes, I seen sunrise from above the clouds before, but
only from a plane, never on the ground (if you can call it that).
But we are a couple of thousand feet ABOVE the clouds right now - we
climbed THROUGH them during our ascent, so we look DOWN on them as
the sun lights them up, and lights up this incredible, beautiful
mountain.
So with the help of my eyes, my soul begins to soar, soon winning
over my heart and convincing my legs and shoulders and shivering
skin that the pain and the cold aren't that bad, the trade off is
worth it. My lungs, realising that there is no more "UP" to go,
begruding agree. And this little internal communication is all
mostly subconscious, my brain is still reeling from the altitude and
the unreality of it all, I don't even really THINK "you know, I'm on
top of the world", but that is exactly what I'm feeling, literally
and metaphorically...
Wow...
Sorry about that guys, little carried away, but had to share that
with anyone who cared. I've got only one real day left of traveling
before I return home so the good ole' Dave Report has hit cyberspace
for he last time this year. I understand that many of you will have
already hit the delete button as soon as you've seen the bulk nature
of this message, but this is really just kinda a journal entry for
myself that I'm putting out there for those wonderful friends
among you who have been so encouraging and positive and asked me
to keep up with these little ramblings. For the rest of you, no
offence taken.
When you last left this exciting series, the challenges and sensation overload of India and Morroco were in our rearview mirror as we headed for South East Asia.
And after India, WHAT a contrast Singpore was, Brit and I enjoyed pure culture shock of the best kind: impossibly clean, almost empty streets, plush air-conditoned shopping malls, quiet, non-hassling people, and of course delicious Singapore Sling cocktails at Raffles Hotel. The trade off for all this spotless, impeccable "civilisation", was a little bit of a "Big Brother" feeling - a little over-controlled, a little sterile, a little boring (but after the intensity of India, we WELCOMED boring!). Gum-chewing is actually a crime on the streets of Singapore - so my friend/dealer Helen was actually breaking the law when she pushed a couple of sticks Brit's and my way. Despite the potential for ending up in jail for mere mastication, Singapore had a HUGE attraction for me - the washing machine at Helen's place - never felt such a compulsion to kiss whitegoods before, but...after we arrived on Hel's door step and she spent the first ten minutes laughing at the India-ingrained filth on my clothes and my skin, I figured it was time to do a load.
Dirt started accumulating again when we arrived in Malaysia. Our first stop was Mallacca, a fascinating little town publicised for it's history - but Brit and I found a greater refuge in it's modern air-conned shopping mall, complete with cinema multiplex, McDonalds, and Kenny Rogers Roasted Chicken. Yes, we were doing it tough. After a brief stopover in Kuala Lumpar to explore some monkey-guarded, Hindu-shrined limestome caves, and not one, but TWO of the worlds tallest buildings (I've been in so many "world's tallest buildings" the last few years, who can keep track?), we entered the deepest darkest depths of the country's interior - Taman Negara National Park. The only way in was by "sampan" (riverboat) up a "Hearts of Darkness" type river populated by buffalo and fishermen and bordered by thick green jungle on either side which looked like it was alive and about to explode out on top of us. I half expected Martin Sheen's narration to drop in a any second.
Here, in the depths of a rainforest older than even the Amazon or the Congo we proceeded to get sweatier and dirtier than I ever thought possible - exploring rainforest paths and canopy rope bridges and bat-infested caves and gorgeously cool swimming streams and steep muddy mountain walks. We entered the jungle one day for an eight hour walk to a hide (elevated shack to watch the animals), and after four hours my clothes were completely soaked in sweat and splatted with mud from multiple klutz slips into the mud. Brit, in comparsion looked like she'd just strolled out of a fashion catalouge. We decided to redirect our walk to a closer hide, we arrived there after wading through a few streams - and Brit took off her shoes and pulled half a dozen leeches off her ankles and feet, leaving a nice bloodtrail/scent on the floor of the hide to attract the maneaters. Our night in the hide was awesome - no maneaters, unfortunately, or elephants (expect in my dreams), but some wondorous fireflies illuminated the gloom - and I spotted some bright, white eyes in the depths of the folige looking back at me - shivers down the spine stuff. Best part was the aural accompaniment - the orchestra of the jungle, the birds and monkeys and insects and wind and rain created a harmonious symphony of sounds that would put Dolby surround-sound to shame - it was bliss to lie back on our hard wooden bunk bed, feeling that we'd never been in the midst of such a cocoon of LIFE before.
We made it out of the jungle alive, our next target were the islands of the north east coast of Malaysia - unfortunately the monsoon season had OTHER ideas - and with coastal towns flooded and railway lines down from the torrential downpours, we considered oursleves lucky we actually made it through the devastated border towns and up into Thailand, where, back on the west coast of the penninsula, we arrived in Krabi, an awesome spot with more "westies" (western travellers) than we'd seen in six weeks - and we soon discovered why - the islands off Krabi are the most spectacular that I think I've ever seen. Now I KNOW I'm given to hyperbolic overstatment, but seriously folks...WOW! White stretches of sand bookended with dramatic grey cliffs and rimmed with glorious green - dipping palm trees on one side, and lovely opal-emerald-clear sea on the other, a sea dotted with other specatular islands and bizarre limestone crags rising straight from the water. Divine. The smile on my dial was HUGE, and not only because of Brit's bikini. Look up "idyllic" in the dictionary and they should have a picture of this place. No wonder they filmed "The Beach" around here, because, that's what Brit and I found - THE beach - I can't imagine a better one anywhere in the world. We actually went to Maya Bay one day too, and snorkelled alongside rainbow fish in the same waters that lovely Leonardo in that movie dipped and dripped in - so it was tough convincing Brit to bathe afterwards.
It was also tough to leave Krabi, but it was made easier by the fact that our next destination was ALSO a tropical island - Ko Samui, on the opposite (east) coast of Thailand - less dramatic/spectacular beaches than the west, but more your classic, tradtional "Gilligan's Island" type paradise. And here, in paradise, for a few days at least, we stopped. Strange concept for Brit and I, after six weeks of movement, of rushing, off planning, of a continuous blur of "wow-what's next?" routine. But here, in Ko Samui we took a break. We stopped. And smelled the roses. Did nothing. Thought about nothing. Read. Slept. Ate (lots). Lay in the sun (lots). Chilled out...
And, in our europhic daze, we watched the world go by...
We watched the people - like the creepy westerns guys that seem to have somehow "acquired" attractive young Thai girlfriends for the duration of their holiday. We watched the more obvious working girls in the roadside bar-stalls. We watched the plethora of seemingly ownerless dogs wandering the streets freely - the Thai equivalent of the cow in India. We watched the Thai people swim - but they don't really swim like us, they just splash and roll around and wallow in the shallows - and NONE of them seem to own a swimming costume - they submerge themselves in their regualar clothes, usually with T-shirts, one guy I saw was swimming in JEANS! We watched a collosal water buffalo getting walked along the beach like a dog on a leash. We watched the Vitamin D descend from the sun and translate into brown on our baking bods. I watched a guy apply a funky tattoo to my bicep (after he FOUND my bicep) and I watched (or felt, mostly) a traditional Thai Massage from a local practioner while lying on the beach in that gentle sea breeze. And at night we watched lots of pirate DVD movies - free in the esplanade restaurants with cheap dinners - best one was "Meet the Parents", and not just for the classic coincidence of the sub-plot that sees Robert DeNiro indulging in some subtufegeous honeymoon planning called "Operation Ko Samui".
On one day only we dragged ourselves up from all this lazing round and watching and took the initiative to go off exploring the waterfalls and beaches and golden Buddhist shrines of the island on our own. How? By motorbike. Driven by who? Yep, that's right, yours truly. If it was scary for Brit, clinging onto the back of the bike behind me, it was even scarier for me. First time I'd ever ridden a bike on the road. First time I'd ridden a bike on the road WITHOUT a helmet. First time I'd ever ridden a bike with gears like these, or brakes that didn't really seem to work. First time I'd ever ridden with a passenger. (Not to mention the added distraction of those gorgeous thighs clamped around me or her hands on my waist).
So it wasn't easy. Whenever we pulled off from a stop we wobbled all over the place and I lost half the sole of my Teva from scraping along the pavement. When I finally got the hang of changing the gears up, I had NO idea how to get them back down, which meant some badly timed stalls on some steep hills. Not to mention the cog-chain repeatedly falling off - or running out of petrol and having to push the bike to a petrol pump when the Thai couple laughed at us stupid westies in their own lingo and showed us that there actually WAS petrol left by starting the bike easily.
But apart from that, mostly it was heaps of fun - on the flat streches it was easy, a breeze -literally - wind in the hair, bugs in the teeth, zooming past roadside buffalo and elephants and palm trees and beaches - babe on the back of the bike, cool sunnies on - born to be wild, that's me. Get your motor running.
If our biking adventure wasn't enough, there was MORE excitment in the middle of the night - I wake up and Brit is flailing around spastically in the bed, going "Eeeughh!!! something just ran up my leg!!!" - I think she flipped it over onto me cause I feel something furry, then I have a little "huh?..what?" half-asleep little beddance of my own. After the light goes on we both perch on the edge of the bed and peer cautiously over the edge to discover...a meek little mouse. Brit calls him Ferdinand. Still doesn't help her get to sleep. Personally I prefered all the gekkos running around our the rooms in India and Asia, if only for the cute little girly yelps that Brit gave on discovering them - and as far as I know, none of them has tried to share a bed with us. Unlike Ferdinand.
We finally, sadly, left Ferdy and Ko Samui - a place where I lay on the beach on the cool white sand in the middle of the night watching the shooting stars and remembering the last time I'd watched shooting stars - lying on warm red sand on the other side of the world, in the Sahara desert, looking up at a completely different starfield - remembering this, and marvelling at how lucky I've been to experience these things, these places.
Next lucky place is the area around Kanchanaburi, further north, and east of Bangkok. Here we visit the famous Bridge on the River Kwai and the infamous Thai-Burmese "Death Railway" over and around it, where over 13000 allied POW's lost their lives working/slaving on it in intolerable conditions. It's a beautiful valley and it's a moving and sobering and truly fascinating piece of history - to walk the bridge and Hellfire Pass and ride a train over some of the still existing tracks - a lot to get your mind and thoughts around.
Here we slept ON the River Kwai - or if not actually ON it, then on a houseboat/raft moored to the jungleside riverbank - a mosquito net above us and the river less than a metre below, we can see the water through the wide gaps in our floor. At the other end of the weird houseboat/raft accomodation/contraption, we can hear the local Thais singalong (really badly) to Karaoke (Karaoke!!! On a jungle barge in the middle of nowhere!!! They LOVE karaoke in Asia), before then putting on a skinflick video. Bizarre stuff.
The next nights accomadation is even MORE interesting - I sleep in a TREEHOUSE, about 30 feet off the ground in a jungle valley only 100kms from the volatile Thai-Burmese border - I figure I'll have a strategic and safe viewpoint in case Burma invades.
It was on this tour of Thailand that Brit and I FINALLY fulfilled a desire that had been building up inside us for months (no, not THAT!) - we rode a elephant. It was unfortunately an anti-climax. Firstly we got gipped on the elephant - they give the two BIGGEST tourists the world's SMALLEST elephant, poor little gal, but even worse was the spiked sledgehammer that the elephant driver (driver?) kept wacking the poor beast with. Given the thickness of her skin and the strength we could feel in the shoulders below our feet, the whipping on the skull and the extra weight on her back probably didn't bother her too much, but...it just wasn't very nice. Much more fun was feeding her a huge bunch of bananas afterwards - if you consider a snotty, slobbering pair of elongated nostrils chasing you around "fun". Another elephant in our group performed some interesting stunts with his trunk too, one of our tour companions accidentally dropped her sunnies from her seat atop his back - and the elephant scopped them up instantly with his trunk and delivered them back to her. THEN she drops this plastic bag with some bread in it and the elephant has ALMOST passed it back to her when it must smell what it's got in its trunk cause it then pops the whole package into its mouth!!! This girl is feeling SO bad about her possible damage to the digestive system of Thailand's natural fauna - but she feels no better when Thailand's natural fauna stikes back - a monkey in the branches above PEES ON HER HEAD while we are relaxing at some divine waterfalls... karma...
Out of the bush and into the city, and the incredible sights of Bangkok -more gorgeous golden Buddhas than you can poke your feet at, which is a good thing cause you're not allowed to poke your feet at the Buddha. The Grand Palace was..."Grand" is a good word. I don't know who the interior designer of that place was but he'd never learned the word "restraint". Opulance and extravagence in the gold and emerald and silver temples and shrines and mansions - overwhelming stuff, I think my camera was more exhausted than me! The only relaxed, chilled thing about the Grand Palace were all the orange robed Buddhist monks, strutting around with supreme coolness, or just standing and watching with bemusement all the snaphappy toursits.
The flipside of Bangkok - where one night left a hard man like me truly humble - was Patpong, it's notorious red-light district - but this place, while seedy, seemed almost "touristed-up", very Vegas, lots of curious families wandering around the street markets. The "nicer" street of Patpong featured an endless supply of gorgeous young Thai women posing in debutante gowns like they were waiting to get picked up for the senior prom - but instead of corsages, they each wore a little number tag - to expedite the selection process, we supposed. And THIS was the classier bit - on the seedier, more traditional side of the street were bars and clubs with lady-boys and bored looking pole dancers with interesting placements of their little glitter stars, and touts trying to hustle us inside these clubs by showing us laminated drink cards with explict diagrams of the "action" we could expect inside. "Favourite postion?" one of these touts asked Brit. I, for one, was glad she didn't respond...
After an final exhausting round of bittersweet bargaining on the tourist infested streets of Kao San Road, we packed our bulging backpacks/Santa sacks, and said goodbye to Thailand - and Brit actually said goodbye to ME! - heading home, all shopped out, all travelled out, all Daved out. Alone in the wilds of Borneo I almost burst into tears with my new found independence - and this was even before I left the airport!!! There was nothing to do but go and foolishly climb a mountain - and this decision has left me hobbling around wondering what has happened to my legs and why they have been replaced with non-responsive steel struts.
After the mountain there was more foolishness that Brit NEVER would have approved of - for the next couple of days - in a succession of transport disasters and lucky flukes and haggling attempts and almost getting seriously ripped off...and ultimately many generous offers off hitchhiking assistance which led to me and my bags being crammed into palm-oil plantation trucks, local laundry vans, westie adventure jeeps - I somehow managed to get from one side of Sabah to the other, VERY cheaply. The transport adventures were worth it though - because here, in the depths of the Borneo jungle, I experienced some amazing wildlife - including gorgeous orangutans of all sizes swinging from the trees with more jive than King Louie, one of them just MISSING his grip and FALLING straight out of the tree in front of me, before bravely wandering around on the path less than a metre away. I saw crocodiles submerged along the banks in Borneo's longest river - but I didn't tell the excited locals that these two foot babies really don't compare to Kakadu's monsters. Best of all were the huge-nosed, really weird looking Proboscis monkeys - who, dozens of feet above in the jungle canopy, would take these death-defying suicide leaps from one tree to another - and make it. I watched in fascination as the big boss of one group of Proboscis - a huge fellow with a nose like a cucumber - climbed up a tree to interrupt a couple of his clan who were shagging in the branches - he just tapped the other guy on the shoulder, the other guy moved away and the big boss just moved in on the girl monkey and kept up the rhythm...bizarre. Must be true what they say about big noses...
Maybe even better than the wildlife in the jungle of Borneo was the human life encountered. I was staying in Sukau, which to call a town would be overly generous - more like a dirt track and a few shacks - other westies are staying in expensive riverside jungle lodges, but somehow I've found a barefloored resthouse out the back of a "shop" - yeah "shop" would be generous too. It's ramadan - the fasting month for Muslims - so I'm dubious about finding food for the evening, until I meet some charming students from the University of Malaysia, out in the middle of nowhere doing eco-tourism research, they survey this curious-looking tall Australian ("you came here ALONE?" I was asked dozens of times), before inviting me back to their hotel for dinner, and then later on insisted I join them for a night time river cruise to spotlight crocodiles.
Travelling ALONE was a revalation after two months with Brit. While of course I missed her smile and the security and companionship and warmth and sharing of despair and joy that had been present with my patient friend, in my last week alone I met more interesting people than in those first seven - I suspect others make more of an effort to chat and help you out when they see you standing singly.
In my next - and final - stop, the tiny country of Brunei, I met an absolute nutter of a Dane - 68 years old, been to 88 counties, lived on bananas and was proud of his free living ways - which included patrolling the halls of the hostel stark naked. Free living or free willy? If it wasn't for him, Brunei would have been pretty boring, I managed to walk around and explore it in an hour - tiny place, ornate muslim mosques and sultan's palaces and golden trim umbrellas for the sultan's parades, not to mention gold coloured shopping trolleys at the local depatment store! - incredible wealth right next to this huge stilt village - basically a town - leaning on a few poles over filthy, stagant water - old creaky wooden homes, stores, schools, hospitals - Allah knows if these people had fire and flood insurance! In just one day in Brunei - and one day is enough! - I managed to escape by contributing less than $40 to the already bulging economy.
And so, yesterday about this time, I boarded the Royal Brunei plane for the last time, and listened for the last time to the regular cabin announcement where they pray to Allah for a safe flight ("Hummmmmm...) - and headed towards my next destination - it still hasn't sunk in yet where I am yet, a place seemingly more mind-blowing sensation-filled than the last nine counties put together...
Home.
I'm back. And I love it. Normal toilets. Polly Waffles. Mum. Christmas at MYER - yep, first port of call was to explore the newly revamped Chermside Shopping Centre - OHH...MY...GOD... I certainly worked there two decades too soon. I'm spinning out MORE HERE at home, with all the changes - and the similarities - than I was in all those exotic places. One huge change to get used to after two months of travelling is NOT being constantly stared at - except of course for the usual lavascious looks from gorgeous women (yeah, wishful thinking).
So that's it. I'm here. I'm back. Six weeks. I PROMISE/THREATEN to all you wonderful Brisbanites that I'll call you or come and visit VERY soon. I'm gagging to see you all. I'll be in Brisbane till Christmas Eve, then up at the beach house near Mooloolaba til New Years, maybe after. The numbers and addresses are below, and if I'm a little tardy contacting you, PLEASE call me or visit me ANYTIME, and you all know you are welcome to come and stay up in the sun for awhile if you have time.
I'm just planning to kick back, drop down a few gears, relax, watch the sail boats go by and try to absorb the last two months of incredible travel - and it will take awhile - Brit's and my existence for eight weeks has been really an amazing blur...whooshing by so incredibly fast...I worked out on the 767 last night we'd been on 10 planes, 8 trains, and literally dozens of automobiles since October 21st - maybe 40 over-air-conned buses, 20 over-charging taxis, 10 over-laden rickshaws, 6 zero-suspension songathews, 5 sucidal tuk-tuks, 4 breezy sampans, 3 storm lashed long-tailed boats, two farting camels...and an elephant with a really snotty trunk...
There have been highs, and there have been lows. Looking back, I guess the lowest low occured in the public toliet of the Jaipur Bus Station. I'll spare the details, but just a few choice mental pictures: unstable intestines, squatting, bad aim, not enough water, no lock on the door, very busy, rats...
Picking a highpoint is MUCH tougher. I'm gonna have to go with that first day on the most beautiful beach in the world outside of Krabi. Mental pictures won't suffice. Go there.
But there's just TOO many moments, too many experiences, sights and sounds and feelings from our trip...too many...but here is one moment from each place that I will never, ever forget:
#Morocco - Camels shadows on the dunes in the Saharan sunset
#Dubai - five fat European men trying to lift their butts so their rubber dingy will clear the bump at the start of the jet-propelled waterslide
#India - skeleton floating in the holy waters of the Ganges at Varanassi
#Singapore - Helen's laughter at the filth and grime on my clothes and my skin
#West Malaysia - jungle surround-sounds at midnight
#Thailand - Brit's smile (and her bikini) in the sun, West Raileh Beach, Phran-Nah Island
#East Malaysia - a foot at a time, granite rock, moonlight, the heavens, Mount Kinabalu
#Brunei - devout Muslims sitting in the shadows of a glorious Mosque, breaking their daily ramadan fast by pigging out on KFC...
OK, that's it. I can't seem to believe the journey is over, which is why I can't seem to stop typing. But I must. Because there will be other journey's and other epic, annoying bulk e-mails.
Till then...
Have a wonderful Christmas my friends. I'll be in touch with many of you over the next week, but for those that I'm not, be safe, be happy, be yourselves. I hope your next journey will be as fulfilling as my last, whether it's an epic trip around the world in sixty days and eighty ways, or a quick one down to the shops for that last minute shopping.
Happy Holidays, and lots of love always,
Dave
Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2000 23:12:45 +1000
Hello My Friends,
"Which country is suffering from your absence?" - a silver-tongued Indian salesmen asked me that the other day, and I really couldn't tell him, there's just too many...
About one month has passed since I left the dreary skies and cosy central heating of my London home - and while it seems this month has flown by, sometimes it feels we've seen more in these few weeks than we've seen before in a year.
Our journey so far has been fast, furious, overwhelming and awesome.
In Morocco, in the madness of the Marrakech marketplace, we've seen snake charmers and monkey handlers and medicine men and storytellers and acrobats and fastfood stalls selling sheeps brains direct from the skull.
In the Sahara desert we've watched the lengthening shadows of our camels as we rode alongside the setting sun, then we pitched camp under a canopy of shooting stars, and watched the next morning as the desert sea changed spectacular colour as the sun rose.
In the multiple marketplaces of Morocco, I've seen bartering (by my "harem" - the four girls I was travelling with) that apparently put the local Berber women to shame - ruthless stuff that reduced poor shopkeepers to tears and left us lugging around 10-tonne carpets and the most impractically shaped lampshades.
Across the country we've entered magnificent mosques, dusty desert kasbahs, dirt-floored Berber homes, sandy desert tents, and (several times) the best toilet in Morocco - at Mohammed's restaurant in Fez, where we were invited to a circumcisum.
In Fez as well I experienced a hamman - a bizarre steam bath/sauna/massage where this scary swarthy Moroccan dude exfoliated my skin with a wood sander before contorting my body into an increasingly impossible series of postions that left me with terrifying visions of "Midnight Express".
But we made it out of Africa alive, and Brit's and my next destination was the Middle East, with a brief look at Dubai - a town of Arabs wearing white teatowels on their heads, festooned with heaps of gold jewelery and driving Rolls Royces and Mercs - or else strutting down the street holding hands (not that there's anything wrong with that) - it's a big (non-sexual) Muslim thing with guys. In Dubai we visited an incredible waterslide park with jets that actually pushed us UP the slides in a series of interconnecting thrills and splashes before spitting us out to watch a stunning sunset over the waters of the Gulf -a relaxing respite before our next big adventure...
India...
After Morocco I never thought I'd see another place as filthy, uncomfortable, manic, insane, outrageous, in your face overwhelming, sensation-stimulating...I was wrong.
Over here, in the past two weeks, we've been to beautiful temples and magnificent forts and holy places and shrines, we've experienced the worst squat toilets in the world, and seen people living in even more horrible conditions.
We've seen, at Varanasi, a vast communal bath in the putrid waters of the Ganges, as literally hundreds lather up and cleanse their sins (if not their skins) in waters where everything was holy - we saw bodies being cremated on the banks and skeletons floating past us in the water (we declined a dip).
We visited the Taj Mahal, a building of breathtaking symetry and beauty, only to find that, for most of the local Indian tourists there, BRIT was actual MORE of an attraction that the Taj, and I think on the afternoon we visited MORE photos were taken of HER breathtaking symetry and beauty than the humble little wonder of the world in the background. Crazy Indians...
In the west of the country, we've heard stories of magnificent Maharajas and incredible battles, and we've visited spectacluar red forts perched on cliff edges, with dozens of beautiful elephants trampling up the steep pathway into the gates - Brit actually was brave enough to "pat" an elephant, she said it felt like a "fuzzy tongue" (??? hmm, I didn't ask).
Most recently, we hiked the wrong way up a steep hill to a little sacred temple overloooking the lovely, peaceful, holy town of Puskkar, lots of holy ghats (steps) spread around a tranquil lake - a great place, a different place, away from the usual insanity of India's traffic.
The traffic. India makes Morocco look like a driving school. No rules, no lanes. Just a mass of swirling bodies and vehicles and animals all meshing together on these narrow thoroughfares, all dancing around in a blur of precision driving that would leave Peter Brock shame-faced, just a constant mix of turns and dodges and horns and complete and utter insanity...yet somehow, someway...we've never actually seen a collison.
And apart from lots of walking/dodging on these crazy streets, we've riden in them all - honking taxi-cabs, bumpy cycle-rickshaws, little auto-rickshaws that make AGY look HUGE - in fact, on our first night in Varanasi, Brit, two poor english tourists and ALL our hefty luggage was somehow piled into the backseat of an auto-rickshaw, while I sat in the front next to the driver AND his mate - and I use the term "sat" loosely - my right butt-cheek was in contact with the tiny, narrow seat, the rest of me was hanging on - and hanging out of the little cabin as we sped and swerved around the crazy streets, dodging cars, bikes, cows...
That's the inner city transportation. As for the inter-city transportation...well...first up there's buses that have to be push-started (!!!), buses that have no concept of lanes on the highways and continually play chicken with oncoming traffic, calmly seeing who is going to blink and return to their own lane first. After trips like that we undertood why the drivers lit incense and prayed at the little alters above the driver's seat before departure. Meanwhile these buses are crammed with dozens of extra passengers, who somehow, calmly fit in, oblivious to any concept of "personal space". And the trains were even worse - even in 2nd class sleeper carriages (more like jail cells) we were overrun with dozens of extra Indians - families, nuns, even the army (plus their crates of ammunition) joined us on one epic 20 hour trip across the sub-continent. On this trip actually, stopped at a station, Brit caused a HUGE commotion when she calmly turned the pages of a trashy gossip magazine - only to look out the window to find that dozens of faces were staring in agog at the pictures of Liz Hurley and Claudia Schiffer - and when the train finally got underway, we found the magazine in question almost caused a riot as all the Indians shoved and pushed in their eagerness to get into the aisle for a look at the sacred mag.
Speaking of sacred, brief word on animals. Love the elephant of course. And the monkeys, which are prolific. The odd Bengal Tiger (unfortunately seen in the zoo). These creatures reinforce my humble "Jungle Book" background of India. But the top dog in the animal world in this country is definately the cow. Totally cool, totally confident in the fact that they are "untouchable", these quadropeds are EVERYWHERE - streets, temples, riverbanks, homes, cafes - YES - I actually saw one wandering into a restaurant one day. Unbelievable. And they are the only traffic obstacles the don't get beeped at, merely swerved around respectfully. Which is what Brit and I did when we walked the streets around these cows - swerve around them respectfully. Not to mention swerving respectfully around the sacred contributions they made to the pavement...
Some towns, like Pushar, have an extremely high cow:person ratio. But in general, across India, I've got to give the people their due - they win the population contest. It's bloody crowded - and the overwhelmeing impression that I'll leave India with is that of the people. Hordes of them. Talking. Hassling. Hoicking. Spitting. Yelling. Saying hello. Asking you your country. Talking about cricket. Staring. All types - friendly, grumpy, crazy, greedy, shifty...but I'll miss the kids the most.
I'll miss the food too, but not what it does to me. As discreetly as possible, let's just say I prefer the way it goes down to the way it comes out. But hey, that's India. And if you can't learn to love squatting over a hole in the ground when you go to the loo like the other billion people, it's not for you.
But it's definatley for us, we've loved it. After two exhausting weeks though, it's time to depart, ready for the next leg. One month travelling down, one to go, hopefully now a little more relaxing, a little more sedate, just as much fun. Ahead of us: South East Asia: the modern luxuries of Singapore, the tropical rainforests and monsoons of Malaysia, the beaches and temples and elephant treks (yes! more elephants) of Thailand. Enthusiasm is DEFINATELY not waning. And YES, somehow, someway, beautiful Brit is still very patiently putting up with my enthusiasm, being very pratical and logical and kerbing my eagerness to do EVERYTHING and go EVERYWHERE and consequently keeping us on time and around budget. And of course Brit's patience and understanding extends to my insane compulsion to photograph every SINGLE thing (almost) - at last count, 44 rolls of films - not too bad for a month!
Anyway, that's all for now, next time most of you hear from me will be at Christmas-time, whether in person (you lucky Brisbanites), or by other methods. Till then, goodbye my friends, take care, safe journey, go in peace, if you are happy, I am happy, we go smiling...(and all the other spiels that Morrocan and Indian storekeepers have tried on us)
see ya soon groovers,
love
Dave
Hi Guys,
Let me start, if I may, by taking you back a few days - Saturday
14th December, around five in the morning. I'm in the wilds of
Borneo, about a kilometre from the summit of the tallest mountain in
South East Asia, Mount Kinabalu. I'm surrounded by several new
friends - my climbing buddies, and our guide, who seems more
mountain goat than man. But Brit, my travel companion for the past
two months, is nowhere to be seen. Why? Because she's back in
Australia, that's why - she's declined the opportunity to extend our
trip a few days and do something stupid like climbing a mountain
only half the height of Everest. Travel-fatigued and Dave-fatigued
and eager to get a head start on her Christmas organisation, Brit
has headed home a day or two earlier. And me, on the side of that
mountain, leaning forward to keep from falling off, I think about
Brit for a second, I calculate that even though Brisbane is a couple
of hours ahead of Borneo, Brit is probably still in bed, sleeping
off the remnants of jet lag, tucked in, all cosy...
And as I think about my lucky friend, a HUGE part of me wishes I was
in EXACTLY the same place - home safe in my bed. Actually, not just
one part of me, but several. My poor legs for one - stiff and sore
and not happy with me for subjecting them to seven hours of lifting
up and jarring down. My arms and shoulders too, all knotted from the
incredible steep bits of granite rock face that we've just had to
scale using more arms than legs, Spiderman style. My skin isn't too
crazy about being there either - anything exposed, like my face and
my hands, is exposed to a bitter, biting, pre-dawn cold. Whereas any
skin pores NOT exposed are sweating out a river of exertion under my
multiple layers of stinky clothing. So my nose kinda wishes it was absent too - not that it can smell that much anymore, the chill has turned on some endless snot tap inside - drip, drip, drip... And my pride, maybe, for a second, also feels like running away, when my climbing friends notice that the cold has caused me to take to wearing my purple and yellow polka dotted underwear on my head (spare pair, and clean OK?). But despite ALL these parts of me - my legs and back and skin and pride - all taking a battering, there is ONE part of me that REALLY wishes that they had jumped on that early plane home with Brit...
My lungs. Absolute agony. Every breath is dragged out like it's my
last, this horrible rasping, gasping gulp. I'm finding it difficult
to believe there is ANY oxygen in the atmosphere up here - and I
start squinting suspiciously at my guide - and all the other
super-fit people - wondering where THEY have found THEIR air
supplies, maybe they know about some hidden air pockets - real air.
OK, so maybe that was altitude sickness affecting my brain for a
second. But I was really struggling - every few steps I'd have to
pause and gulp down some more air, waiting til my heart stopped
trying to burst out of my chest, stabilising my balance so I
wouldn't fall backwards off the mountain, getting some of the
precious, valuable O2 into my lungs, into my heart, my bloodstream,
down to my right foot...lift it up, move it forward just a tiny bit,
plonk it down, focus on the left foot - up, forward,
down...breath...
And this bit wasn't even the steepest portion - at sea level and
well rested I could probably sprint up it for a minute or two. But -
the air up there made everything 100 times tougher. Mild bouts of
nausea, dizziness. One guy in our group had a hurl. I'm shuddering
to think what it must be like for the guys who climb Everest without
oxygen - if THIS peak, half as high, seems so bereft of air, Everest
must be like being on the edge of space.
So yeah, it's tough. I'm wondering what I'm doing, why I'm doing it.
But then some OTHER parts of me start waking up. My eyes take in the
incredible beauty all around - it's nighttime yes, but the shooting
stars above and the 3/4 moon light up the granite landscape enough
to make torches unnecessary - and it's ironic that the moon is
lighting up this spectacluar surface, because right now, looking
around, I feel that THIS must be exactly what the moon looks like,
it's a foreign, alien landscape, all dramatic crags and valleys and
gullies and ditches and peaks, like nothing I've ever seen.
And it gets better, the view. We narrowly beat the sun in our race
to the summit, arriving amongst this freezing cluster of boulders
and insane tourists just in time to watch one of the most AMAZING
sunrises I've ever experienced - I see the sun rise ABOVE the clouds
to the east. Yes, I seen sunrise from above the clouds before, but
only from a plane, never on the ground (if you can call it that).
But we are a couple of thousand feet ABOVE the clouds right now - we
climbed THROUGH them during our ascent, so we look DOWN on them as
the sun lights them up, and lights up this incredible, beautiful
mountain.
So with the help of my eyes, my soul begins to soar, soon winning
over my heart and convincing my legs and shoulders and shivering
skin that the pain and the cold aren't that bad, the trade off is
worth it. My lungs, realising that there is no more "UP" to go,
begruding agree. And this little internal communication is all
mostly subconscious, my brain is still reeling from the altitude and
the unreality of it all, I don't even really THINK "you know, I'm on
top of the world", but that is exactly what I'm feeling, literally
and metaphorically...
Wow...
Sorry about that guys, little carried away, but had to share that
with anyone who cared. I've got only one real day left of traveling
before I return home so the good ole' Dave Report has hit cyberspace
for he last time this year. I understand that many of you will have
already hit the delete button as soon as you've seen the bulk nature
of this message, but this is really just kinda a journal entry for
myself that I'm putting out there for those wonderful friends
among you who have been so encouraging and positive and asked me
to keep up with these little ramblings. For the rest of you, no
offence taken.
When you last left this exciting series, the challenges and sensation overload of India and Morroco were in our rearview mirror as we headed for South East Asia.
And after India, WHAT a contrast Singpore was, Brit and I enjoyed pure culture shock of the best kind: impossibly clean, almost empty streets, plush air-conditoned shopping malls, quiet, non-hassling people, and of course delicious Singapore Sling cocktails at Raffles Hotel. The trade off for all this spotless, impeccable "civilisation", was a little bit of a "Big Brother" feeling - a little over-controlled, a little sterile, a little boring (but after the intensity of India, we WELCOMED boring!). Gum-chewing is actually a crime on the streets of Singapore - so my friend/dealer Helen was actually breaking the law when she pushed a couple of sticks Brit's and my way. Despite the potential for ending up in jail for mere mastication, Singapore had a HUGE attraction for me - the washing machine at Helen's place - never felt such a compulsion to kiss whitegoods before, but...after we arrived on Hel's door step and she spent the first ten minutes laughing at the India-ingrained filth on my clothes and my skin, I figured it was time to do a load.
Dirt started accumulating again when we arrived in Malaysia. Our first stop was Mallacca, a fascinating little town publicised for it's history - but Brit and I found a greater refuge in it's modern air-conned shopping mall, complete with cinema multiplex, McDonalds, and Kenny Rogers Roasted Chicken. Yes, we were doing it tough. After a brief stopover in Kuala Lumpar to explore some monkey-guarded, Hindu-shrined limestome caves, and not one, but TWO of the worlds tallest buildings (I've been in so many "world's tallest buildings" the last few years, who can keep track?), we entered the deepest darkest depths of the country's interior - Taman Negara National Park. The only way in was by "sampan" (riverboat) up a "Hearts of Darkness" type river populated by buffalo and fishermen and bordered by thick green jungle on either side which looked like it was alive and about to explode out on top of us. I half expected Martin Sheen's narration to drop in a any second.
Here, in the depths of a rainforest older than even the Amazon or the Congo we proceeded to get sweatier and dirtier than I ever thought possible - exploring rainforest paths and canopy rope bridges and bat-infested caves and gorgeously cool swimming streams and steep muddy mountain walks. We entered the jungle one day for an eight hour walk to a hide (elevated shack to watch the animals), and after four hours my clothes were completely soaked in sweat and splatted with mud from multiple klutz slips into the mud. Brit, in comparsion looked like she'd just strolled out of a fashion catalouge. We decided to redirect our walk to a closer hide, we arrived there after wading through a few streams - and Brit took off her shoes and pulled half a dozen leeches off her ankles and feet, leaving a nice bloodtrail/scent on the floor of the hide to attract the maneaters. Our night in the hide was awesome - no maneaters, unfortunately, or elephants (expect in my dreams), but some wondorous fireflies illuminated the gloom - and I spotted some bright, white eyes in the depths of the folige looking back at me - shivers down the spine stuff. Best part was the aural accompaniment - the orchestra of the jungle, the birds and monkeys and insects and wind and rain created a harmonious symphony of sounds that would put Dolby surround-sound to shame - it was bliss to lie back on our hard wooden bunk bed, feeling that we'd never been in the midst of such a cocoon of LIFE before.
We made it out of the jungle alive, our next target were the islands of the north east coast of Malaysia - unfortunately the monsoon season had OTHER ideas - and with coastal towns flooded and railway lines down from the torrential downpours, we considered oursleves lucky we actually made it through the devastated border towns and up into Thailand, where, back on the west coast of the penninsula, we arrived in Krabi, an awesome spot with more "westies" (western travellers) than we'd seen in six weeks - and we soon discovered why - the islands off Krabi are the most spectacular that I think I've ever seen. Now I KNOW I'm given to hyperbolic overstatment, but seriously folks...WOW! White stretches of sand bookended with dramatic grey cliffs and rimmed with glorious green - dipping palm trees on one side, and lovely opal-emerald-clear sea on the other, a sea dotted with other specatular islands and bizarre limestone crags rising straight from the water. Divine. The smile on my dial was HUGE, and not only because of Brit's bikini. Look up "idyllic" in the dictionary and they should have a picture of this place. No wonder they filmed "The Beach" around here, because, that's what Brit and I found - THE beach - I can't imagine a better one anywhere in the world. We actually went to Maya Bay one day too, and snorkelled alongside rainbow fish in the same waters that lovely Leonardo in that movie dipped and dripped in - so it was tough convincing Brit to bathe afterwards.
It was also tough to leave Krabi, but it was made easier by the fact that our next destination was ALSO a tropical island - Ko Samui, on the opposite (east) coast of Thailand - less dramatic/spectacular beaches than the west, but more your classic, tradtional "Gilligan's Island" type paradise. And here, in paradise, for a few days at least, we stopped. Strange concept for Brit and I, after six weeks of movement, of rushing, off planning, of a continuous blur of "wow-what's next?" routine. But here, in Ko Samui we took a break. We stopped. And smelled the roses. Did nothing. Thought about nothing. Read. Slept. Ate (lots). Lay in the sun (lots). Chilled out...
And, in our europhic daze, we watched the world go by...
We watched the people - like the creepy westerns guys that seem to have somehow "acquired" attractive young Thai girlfriends for the duration of their holiday. We watched the more obvious working girls in the roadside bar-stalls. We watched the plethora of seemingly ownerless dogs wandering the streets freely - the Thai equivalent of the cow in India. We watched the Thai people swim - but they don't really swim like us, they just splash and roll around and wallow in the shallows - and NONE of them seem to own a swimming costume - they submerge themselves in their regualar clothes, usually with T-shirts, one guy I saw was swimming in JEANS! We watched a collosal water buffalo getting walked along the beach like a dog on a leash. We watched the Vitamin D descend from the sun and translate into brown on our baking bods. I watched a guy apply a funky tattoo to my bicep (after he FOUND my bicep) and I watched (or felt, mostly) a traditional Thai Massage from a local practioner while lying on the beach in that gentle sea breeze. And at night we watched lots of pirate DVD movies - free in the esplanade restaurants with cheap dinners - best one was "Meet the Parents", and not just for the classic coincidence of the sub-plot that sees Robert DeNiro indulging in some subtufegeous honeymoon planning called "Operation Ko Samui".
On one day only we dragged ourselves up from all this lazing round and watching and took the initiative to go off exploring the waterfalls and beaches and golden Buddhist shrines of the island on our own. How? By motorbike. Driven by who? Yep, that's right, yours truly. If it was scary for Brit, clinging onto the back of the bike behind me, it was even scarier for me. First time I'd ever ridden a bike on the road. First time I'd ridden a bike on the road WITHOUT a helmet. First time I'd ever ridden a bike with gears like these, or brakes that didn't really seem to work. First time I'd ever ridden with a passenger. (Not to mention the added distraction of those gorgeous thighs clamped around me or her hands on my waist).
So it wasn't easy. Whenever we pulled off from a stop we wobbled all over the place and I lost half the sole of my Teva from scraping along the pavement. When I finally got the hang of changing the gears up, I had NO idea how to get them back down, which meant some badly timed stalls on some steep hills. Not to mention the cog-chain repeatedly falling off - or running out of petrol and having to push the bike to a petrol pump when the Thai couple laughed at us stupid westies in their own lingo and showed us that there actually WAS petrol left by starting the bike easily.
But apart from that, mostly it was heaps of fun - on the flat streches it was easy, a breeze -literally - wind in the hair, bugs in the teeth, zooming past roadside buffalo and elephants and palm trees and beaches - babe on the back of the bike, cool sunnies on - born to be wild, that's me. Get your motor running.
If our biking adventure wasn't enough, there was MORE excitment in the middle of the night - I wake up and Brit is flailing around spastically in the bed, going "Eeeughh!!! something just ran up my leg!!!" - I think she flipped it over onto me cause I feel something furry, then I have a little "huh?..what?" half-asleep little beddance of my own. After the light goes on we both perch on the edge of the bed and peer cautiously over the edge to discover...a meek little mouse. Brit calls him Ferdinand. Still doesn't help her get to sleep. Personally I prefered all the gekkos running around our the rooms in India and Asia, if only for the cute little girly yelps that Brit gave on discovering them - and as far as I know, none of them has tried to share a bed with us. Unlike Ferdinand.
We finally, sadly, left Ferdy and Ko Samui - a place where I lay on the beach on the cool white sand in the middle of the night watching the shooting stars and remembering the last time I'd watched shooting stars - lying on warm red sand on the other side of the world, in the Sahara desert, looking up at a completely different starfield - remembering this, and marvelling at how lucky I've been to experience these things, these places.
Next lucky place is the area around Kanchanaburi, further north, and east of Bangkok. Here we visit the famous Bridge on the River Kwai and the infamous Thai-Burmese "Death Railway" over and around it, where over 13000 allied POW's lost their lives working/slaving on it in intolerable conditions. It's a beautiful valley and it's a moving and sobering and truly fascinating piece of history - to walk the bridge and Hellfire Pass and ride a train over some of the still existing tracks - a lot to get your mind and thoughts around.
Here we slept ON the River Kwai - or if not actually ON it, then on a houseboat/raft moored to the jungleside riverbank - a mosquito net above us and the river less than a metre below, we can see the water through the wide gaps in our floor. At the other end of the weird houseboat/raft accomodation/contraption, we can hear the local Thais singalong (really badly) to Karaoke (Karaoke!!! On a jungle barge in the middle of nowhere!!! They LOVE karaoke in Asia), before then putting on a skinflick video. Bizarre stuff.
The next nights accomadation is even MORE interesting - I sleep in a TREEHOUSE, about 30 feet off the ground in a jungle valley only 100kms from the volatile Thai-Burmese border - I figure I'll have a strategic and safe viewpoint in case Burma invades.
It was on this tour of Thailand that Brit and I FINALLY fulfilled a desire that had been building up inside us for months (no, not THAT!) - we rode a elephant. It was unfortunately an anti-climax. Firstly we got gipped on the elephant - they give the two BIGGEST tourists the world's SMALLEST elephant, poor little gal, but even worse was the spiked sledgehammer that the elephant driver (driver?) kept wacking the poor beast with. Given the thickness of her skin and the strength we could feel in the shoulders below our feet, the whipping on the skull and the extra weight on her back probably didn't bother her too much, but...it just wasn't very nice. Much more fun was feeding her a huge bunch of bananas afterwards - if you consider a snotty, slobbering pair of elongated nostrils chasing you around "fun". Another elephant in our group performed some interesting stunts with his trunk too, one of our tour companions accidentally dropped her sunnies from her seat atop his back - and the elephant scopped them up instantly with his trunk and delivered them back to her. THEN she drops this plastic bag with some bread in it and the elephant has ALMOST passed it back to her when it must smell what it's got in its trunk cause it then pops the whole package into its mouth!!! This girl is feeling SO bad about her possible damage to the digestive system of Thailand's natural fauna - but she feels no better when Thailand's natural fauna stikes back - a monkey in the branches above PEES ON HER HEAD while we are relaxing at some divine waterfalls... karma...
Out of the bush and into the city, and the incredible sights of Bangkok -more gorgeous golden Buddhas than you can poke your feet at, which is a good thing cause you're not allowed to poke your feet at the Buddha. The Grand Palace was..."Grand" is a good word. I don't know who the interior designer of that place was but he'd never learned the word "restraint". Opulance and extravagence in the gold and emerald and silver temples and shrines and mansions - overwhelming stuff, I think my camera was more exhausted than me! The only relaxed, chilled thing about the Grand Palace were all the orange robed Buddhist monks, strutting around with supreme coolness, or just standing and watching with bemusement all the snaphappy toursits.
The flipside of Bangkok - where one night left a hard man like me truly humble - was Patpong, it's notorious red-light district - but this place, while seedy, seemed almost "touristed-up", very Vegas, lots of curious families wandering around the street markets. The "nicer" street of Patpong featured an endless supply of gorgeous young Thai women posing in debutante gowns like they were waiting to get picked up for the senior prom - but instead of corsages, they each wore a little number tag - to expedite the selection process, we supposed. And THIS was the classier bit - on the seedier, more traditional side of the street were bars and clubs with lady-boys and bored looking pole dancers with interesting placements of their little glitter stars, and touts trying to hustle us inside these clubs by showing us laminated drink cards with explict diagrams of the "action" we could expect inside. "Favourite postion?" one of these touts asked Brit. I, for one, was glad she didn't respond...
After an final exhausting round of bittersweet bargaining on the tourist infested streets of Kao San Road, we packed our bulging backpacks/Santa sacks, and said goodbye to Thailand - and Brit actually said goodbye to ME! - heading home, all shopped out, all travelled out, all Daved out. Alone in the wilds of Borneo I almost burst into tears with my new found independence - and this was even before I left the airport!!! There was nothing to do but go and foolishly climb a mountain - and this decision has left me hobbling around wondering what has happened to my legs and why they have been replaced with non-responsive steel struts.
After the mountain there was more foolishness that Brit NEVER would have approved of - for the next couple of days - in a succession of transport disasters and lucky flukes and haggling attempts and almost getting seriously ripped off...and ultimately many generous offers off hitchhiking assistance which led to me and my bags being crammed into palm-oil plantation trucks, local laundry vans, westie adventure jeeps - I somehow managed to get from one side of Sabah to the other, VERY cheaply. The transport adventures were worth it though - because here, in the depths of the Borneo jungle, I experienced some amazing wildlife - including gorgeous orangutans of all sizes swinging from the trees with more jive than King Louie, one of them just MISSING his grip and FALLING straight out of the tree in front of me, before bravely wandering around on the path less than a metre away. I saw crocodiles submerged along the banks in Borneo's longest river - but I didn't tell the excited locals that these two foot babies really don't compare to Kakadu's monsters. Best of all were the huge-nosed, really weird looking Proboscis monkeys - who, dozens of feet above in the jungle canopy, would take these death-defying suicide leaps from one tree to another - and make it. I watched in fascination as the big boss of one group of Proboscis - a huge fellow with a nose like a cucumber - climbed up a tree to interrupt a couple of his clan who were shagging in the branches - he just tapped the other guy on the shoulder, the other guy moved away and the big boss just moved in on the girl monkey and kept up the rhythm...bizarre. Must be true what they say about big noses...
Maybe even better than the wildlife in the jungle of Borneo was the human life encountered. I was staying in Sukau, which to call a town would be overly generous - more like a dirt track and a few shacks - other westies are staying in expensive riverside jungle lodges, but somehow I've found a barefloored resthouse out the back of a "shop" - yeah "shop" would be generous too. It's ramadan - the fasting month for Muslims - so I'm dubious about finding food for the evening, until I meet some charming students from the University of Malaysia, out in the middle of nowhere doing eco-tourism research, they survey this curious-looking tall Australian ("you came here ALONE?" I was asked dozens of times), before inviting me back to their hotel for dinner, and then later on insisted I join them for a night time river cruise to spotlight crocodiles.
Travelling ALONE was a revalation after two months with Brit. While of course I missed her smile and the security and companionship and warmth and sharing of despair and joy that had been present with my patient friend, in my last week alone I met more interesting people than in those first seven - I suspect others make more of an effort to chat and help you out when they see you standing singly.
In my next - and final - stop, the tiny country of Brunei, I met an absolute nutter of a Dane - 68 years old, been to 88 counties, lived on bananas and was proud of his free living ways - which included patrolling the halls of the hostel stark naked. Free living or free willy? If it wasn't for him, Brunei would have been pretty boring, I managed to walk around and explore it in an hour - tiny place, ornate muslim mosques and sultan's palaces and golden trim umbrellas for the sultan's parades, not to mention gold coloured shopping trolleys at the local depatment store! - incredible wealth right next to this huge stilt village - basically a town - leaning on a few poles over filthy, stagant water - old creaky wooden homes, stores, schools, hospitals - Allah knows if these people had fire and flood insurance! In just one day in Brunei - and one day is enough! - I managed to escape by contributing less than $40 to the already bulging economy.
And so, yesterday about this time, I boarded the Royal Brunei plane for the last time, and listened for the last time to the regular cabin announcement where they pray to Allah for a safe flight ("Hummmmmm...) - and headed towards my next destination - it still hasn't sunk in yet where I am yet, a place seemingly more mind-blowing sensation-filled than the last nine counties put together...
Home.
I'm back. And I love it. Normal toilets. Polly Waffles. Mum. Christmas at MYER - yep, first port of call was to explore the newly revamped Chermside Shopping Centre - OHH...MY...GOD... I certainly worked there two decades too soon. I'm spinning out MORE HERE at home, with all the changes - and the similarities - than I was in all those exotic places. One huge change to get used to after two months of travelling is NOT being constantly stared at - except of course for the usual lavascious looks from gorgeous women (yeah, wishful thinking).
So that's it. I'm here. I'm back. Six weeks. I PROMISE/THREATEN to all you wonderful Brisbanites that I'll call you or come and visit VERY soon. I'm gagging to see you all. I'll be in Brisbane till Christmas Eve, then up at the beach house near Mooloolaba til New Years, maybe after. The numbers and addresses are below, and if I'm a little tardy contacting you, PLEASE call me or visit me ANYTIME, and you all know you are welcome to come and stay up in the sun for awhile if you have time.
I'm just planning to kick back, drop down a few gears, relax, watch the sail boats go by and try to absorb the last two months of incredible travel - and it will take awhile - Brit's and my existence for eight weeks has been really an amazing blur...whooshing by so incredibly fast...I worked out on the 767 last night we'd been on 10 planes, 8 trains, and literally dozens of automobiles since October 21st - maybe 40 over-air-conned buses, 20 over-charging taxis, 10 over-laden rickshaws, 6 zero-suspension songathews, 5 sucidal tuk-tuks, 4 breezy sampans, 3 storm lashed long-tailed boats, two farting camels...and an elephant with a really snotty trunk...
There have been highs, and there have been lows. Looking back, I guess the lowest low occured in the public toliet of the Jaipur Bus Station. I'll spare the details, but just a few choice mental pictures: unstable intestines, squatting, bad aim, not enough water, no lock on the door, very busy, rats...
Picking a highpoint is MUCH tougher. I'm gonna have to go with that first day on the most beautiful beach in the world outside of Krabi. Mental pictures won't suffice. Go there.
But there's just TOO many moments, too many experiences, sights and sounds and feelings from our trip...too many...but here is one moment from each place that I will never, ever forget:
#Morocco - Camels shadows on the dunes in the Saharan sunset
#Dubai - five fat European men trying to lift their butts so their rubber dingy will clear the bump at the start of the jet-propelled waterslide
#India - skeleton floating in the holy waters of the Ganges at Varanassi
#Singapore - Helen's laughter at the filth and grime on my clothes and my skin
#West Malaysia - jungle surround-sounds at midnight
#Thailand - Brit's smile (and her bikini) in the sun, West Raileh Beach, Phran-Nah Island
#East Malaysia - a foot at a time, granite rock, moonlight, the heavens, Mount Kinabalu
#Brunei - devout Muslims sitting in the shadows of a glorious Mosque, breaking their daily ramadan fast by pigging out on KFC...
OK, that's it. I can't seem to believe the journey is over, which is why I can't seem to stop typing. But I must. Because there will be other journey's and other epic, annoying bulk e-mails.
Till then...
Have a wonderful Christmas my friends. I'll be in touch with many of you over the next week, but for those that I'm not, be safe, be happy, be yourselves. I hope your next journey will be as fulfilling as my last, whether it's an epic trip around the world in sixty days and eighty ways, or a quick one down to the shops for that last minute shopping.
Happy Holidays, and lots of love always,
Dave
posted by The Dave Reports @ 9:59 am
