they shoot horses (emus) don't they?

my mouth is dry, either from the dry heat here or from chatting nonstop with the amazing french girl I met here.
There are waaay too many Germans in Sydney, and they are too young; the girls in particular have the habit of crying homesick tears in public payphones. Yesterday it was freezing. waiting to have a drink with the English couple I'd met in Thailand, Chiang Mai, and again here at the local supermarket, I was sitting at "Pie face" (not the only name that reminds you forcibly of the UK and that is simply lovely, what about "hog's breath"?!). this was in the King's Cross area - a formerly sleazy area, now between the Meatpacking district and Camden, sort of. Thus I had time to marvel at Australian girls' resistance to coldness (why isn't it coldity? or coldth? or colth, if you must?). must be a British gene, or the girls were imports for it was truly freezing with a nasty wind, not only in comparison to Thailand.

anyway, the gorgeous and smart French lady and myself enjoyed sydney by treating ourselves to terrific scones and tea in the chinese garden, shopping at paddington markets and fresh seafood at the fish market. Thanks to her I moved, into an area that reminded me of some great places in brooklyn. the hostel is virtually encircled by bakeries. I feel like thanking god on my knees for hot showers every morning. that's what has happened to my "decadence breeds decadence" credo - no aircon, no need for hot shower"...
My first night at Florence's guesthouse was peaceful and soul-soothing: I lay down in the bed which smelled safe and kind and like when I was a kid at my grandmother, and I dreamed of having a fit of laughter with one of you...
strolling around manly beach on the last day, we got some looks - although I got them for my eccentric half-backpacker outfit I think.
now I'm in Cairns, this unprouncable,in-enunciable city and we're back to hot, which my irrational, I-love-to-be-tortured body rejoices in...
to be continued

emus and cangaroos can't walk backwards, they say, that's why..

sydney today. I'm wandering around with big eyes like a starved orphan - pies!muffins!supermarkets! empty streets, empty sidewalks, GIANT sidewalks, no motorbikes, people walk so fast! They are arrogant and busy!! The heat is so dry I keep putting creme on my skin. It is almost unbelievably CLEAN!
Arrived at 5.30am and am dead tired. I got the plane's prime seat, next to two transsexuals - the one next to me, Bianca, was a sweet person and quite a character. her make-up was the most impeccable I'd ever seen (hello there wedding!), her hair fake blonde curls, fake blue lenses, pumps, and a pink very hole-filled sort of dress from which protruded her fairly large belly. She was impractical and a bit dumb and apparently very warm-hearted and eager to tell me all about her family, boyfriends, operations, when, where, price and degree of pain and sensitivity of the area; nose job, boob job, and now the big change... I was torn between breathless interest and being overwhelmed with all the details... and of course, I didn't get any sleep.

random jumble of observations

Arrived today in Bangkok at 5.30 (on the plus side, hardly any pestering Tuk-tuks, even on Khao San), and checked in at the guesthouse from last time whose host is sort of a grown-up ladyboy: even though he is correctly dressed in black, he gives off the impression of constantly waving a feathery boa or a tiara... but his English is swell and he writes down instructions in Thai for safety. His name is Pan. How cool is that - second only to the Burma boy in Ko Tao whose name is "Mojo", and I seriously consider naming my first-born thus (dibs!).

Anyway, here are some random observations

All you can eat: Bht 268 for Ladies, Bht 278 for ladyboys and Bht 298 for Men

every thai cafe ONLY AND WITHOUT EXCEPTION plays sugary thai pop. oh, and here's the current "hymn," the one thai song (reggae) that is either ok-bordering-on-good or one has heard it so often that the soul just gives in... kinda like with fashion sometimes. anyway, here it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAdZzr0ysxg
(title, as far as I can see: job 2 do doo doo doo.. I think actually that pretty much sums it up...)

Things I'm looking forward to : less noise, especially sugary Thai pop, less stink, even in supermarkets; more f-ing VARIETY in supermarkets, damn 7/11! This feels like back in Eastern Europe (says the old lady)! I want rows and rows of cereals and yoghurt and CHEESE for god's sake, and BREAD, not sugary white rolls, not brown-colored sugary white rolls; they have sugar on the table instead of salt and pepper, doesn't that tell you something?
I want to be understood with more subtle wishes or questions; I want showers and WCs where you can hang stuff - seriously, how do Thais do it? is this only for us Falangs?
I'm looking forward to walking down the street without being stared at, without the constant semi-harrassing calls, Hey you, Miss / Lady, ho! hallo!

backpackers who can speak thai are blond, lean, tanned, and never smile back at me.

Having mostly meet party travellers or India-Zen-style people who didn't give a rat's fart for politics, I had been afraid they wouldn't show the electoral results - but yes, they did! OBAMA BABY! I had goosebumps and was reaalz happy! I had thought they would pull something, somebody would pull something... otherwise I'm starving for news. the bangkok post is not really exactly thorough. But I guess I'd notice if there was a bomb or something...

Thai subtitles are a dish, seriously. Things like "we need being to get it"are of the more harmless nonsense sentences, more disturbing is when Morgan Freeman, in The Dark Knight (OMG!) qualifies something as "unethical and dangerous" and the pothead who guessed the subtitles translates this as "Africa dangerous"... more examples would abound, but then I was watching the movie - again, OMG?!! and I had missed the beginning...

a note on bowel movements and their relation to a traveller's mood. Those precious, longed for signs typically come when you are at the least inviting toilet imaginable. Probably some test on how much you really want it.. And we all want it. The good kind, the proper kind.The happy or grumpy looks on fellow travellers often have less to do with getting some,I am sure, than with "leaving some" or whatever would be an appropriate slang term. As the slow Boat Brit put it, after a bout of traveller's affliction: Have you 'passed a solid one' yet? Best feeling in the world...

Cute: On the map given out by the gueshouse in Trat, there were listed under "Daily needs" both a "herbal sauna" and "lawyer"(this one's for you darling :)you are a daily need!)

unholy: In laos, they gave out papers with the correct bus prices, an explanation for them and the comment:"your book is wrong" on the prices because of inflation and rise in gasoline prices...

harr harr

my stupid camera has a couple of virusses and worms which no-one can help me to get rid of... and now it's making white pictures. like this:

and here in good. the guy is a crazy crazy Dutch who insisted on keeping his raincoat on for dancing
but who's talking

this is the gang of Belgians, Scots and some Dutch

here are some sunsets and rainy pseudo-post tzunami pics from Ko Tao as Ersatz-drumroll






here we go. I know it's pretty underwhelming now.
some of you might actually know the original- it's a mimicking the design of my mom\s favorite necklace, which I lost in New York. Yes these things happen.



(it does look a bit like a nike logo doesn't it?) i was actually more afraid that it looks like the stuff I kept drawing on my arms with any old pencil..
so, back to sunsets!! this one was actually orange in the original..


and now that I'm at it, this is incredible Ko Phi Phi> oh, and no commentaries on my cheesy skin or similar!

Bojangles

yes yes I know the betwas high on the thorny rose, "I am not a Puma" or "Paul Newman" in Kyrillic (and if I had an extra pair of extremities I would plaster them with these and similar messages) but no. it's tiny tiny and personal. \

and I really wanted to upload a picture now - if only not to ride this self-indulgent theme to death - but this time technology is against me, and I want to tell other things as well...

AFter a raucous party where I met a Harry-Potter-lockalike (from Erfurt which kind of took the steam out of the moment), the Belgian-Dutch-Scottish left for the Full MoonParty in Ko Pha-Ngan,but not before I cleared the table at poker with beginner's luck and a Full House I didn't even realize I had. thus, a perfect pokerface :) Spending my winnings on expensive Island goodies, wiling away in the rain andfeelinglonely and increasingly sick and bored. When my taxi (motorbike) finally showed up, half an hour late, it was to tell me the night ferries were canceled. thus I hectically found an expensive emergency sleeping place and changed tickets. The streets were flooded, the pipes cannot hold the water and my feet kept being reinfected. Accordingly, I slipped and almost fell carrying my backpack. so my big toe was added, for a couple of days, to my other paranoia and disease related occupations.

However!On the boat to Krabi I ran into my diving buddy again who was leaving Ko Pha-Ngang (another island next to Ko Tao and Ko Samui) and he told me on his ferry it was so STUERMISCH that 80 % of the people threw up. one guy's job was only to run around and collect the puke bags...
I arrived late in Krabi -the other side of Thailand's southern coast where, rumors had it, the weather would be better (today was half and half)and checked in something of the local pick-up bar, where rasta draguers that did not look of age asked whether they could call me "my angel" and "honey".. weird.
the last days I spent in Ko Phi Phi, where The Beach was filmed. It's an incredibly beautiful island, it's full to the brim with tourists, not the good kind, many Germans among them; greatweather and happily back now>>

Vanity.. (Now, not yet a picture ...)

I'm starting to lie about my age.either my company is in all likelihood younger than me and probably scared by "older women" or I find the combination of "29" and "just finished my studies" too depressing. However, and flatteringly, if I don't lie - or only neglegibly - people are expressing astonishment at the numbers!
I'm not sure whether this is truly a compliment to my (relaxed vacation) looks or rather a bad reflection on my behavior (immature!) or, most likely,the holiday lens speaking and a comment on my company's limited imaginative capacity (a life after 27? I don't believe it..)
It is raining. ALL THE TIME. at least it's warm though. I'm hanging with a Belgian-Dutch clique and last night a completely wasted Scotsman - who is generally sweet and the answer to my Braveheart-questions - was shouting on the porch and half inside the fancy place into which I got invited. I thought it was a nightmare until the morning. He didn't remember at first... Right now I was stuck for five hours at a coffee place because the rain is heavy and incessant, and I don't regret anymore not to have joined the others for diving / which I didn't because of my injuries. There are power problems and there were two (small)fires related to plugs or cabels already.
I keep postponing my trip to Krabi. the weather reports and rumors are steady, contradictory, usually begin with "really,but I heard that..." and concern especially the East-WEst-coast relation and when the wet season is ACTUALLY supposed to be. well, maybe tomorrow..

Dive Nazi

the last days in Ko Chang I hung around with these Israelis who were all gonna leave soon, thus the atmosphere became increasingly gloomy and I was actually relieved when that was over - and after an acceptable hummus in Bangkok, Israeli connection, I was off to Ko Tao.
Greeted by splendid weather (against the evil rumors spread in Lazy Chang) I went and signed up for diving class straight away, before I could think it over and become too afraid. I had been recommended to a diving school and a teacher who was supposed to be patient and a native English speaker. Howver, that guy was suddenly unavailable so I got fixed with DiveMaster Violetta. Seriously, I have survived - AND mastered the course - more in spite of than with the help of my Austrian DiveNazi. I'm still grated how terrible of a teacher a person can be (our questions were answered with "what did I just say?", "didn't you listen" and "did you ever see me do that?"). her English was terrible ("1 liters water is 1 kilogram" "we also have waves. waves is related to the wind" "your kinn is here") and combined with her lack of patience or the ability to properly explain - and it's a lot of stuff at first, the outfit, its usage, all the diseases and dangers (gulp gulp gulp) and all the things you have to think of at first..
lucky for me, my dive buddy was my total opposite: calmly excited and basically calm.
I however breathed like an asthmatic pincher and freaked out on the first "dive" - which took place in the swimming pool! - because it was here that I realized what I was about to do - voluntarily drown myself - what if I accidentally stop breathing? what if violetta cuts my cord?? the stuff of nightmares - so for me it's one of the scariest scariest things I've ever done. that said, it's actually not that hard.
Only the last dive did I actually enjoy - when I had a different jacket and could finally float, when somebody told how to breathe better - which affected my mood in a great way - and I could finally enjoy the beauty, the fish, the corals... and we had done all the "skills' such as "cutting off your air so you'd know what your last breath'd feel like."

Diving is incredibly exhausting and I was looking forward to a beach day. Yet it rained in my hut yesterday and yes, it's raining now..
... Nevertheless I will nurse my diving wounds - first I slammed my foot in a fast-closing door, which made use of the fins very painful. Accordingly, I got a blister from the fins. As we were leaving after the last dive, it was very rainy, shaky and slippery and I squeezed my leg between the long boat's rail and the oxygen pumps. This was by far far far the most painful injury so far, I even thought something might be broken at first and I didn't register what people were saying to me. When the deep bump in the leg will have transformed into whatever it will be, I'll take a picture for my final accidents gallery..
Despite the rain, I've already made good use of the day. Firstly, I could finally restore my ipod - the music is lost but I can get new one, and at least it's working agains! Then maybe tonight there'll be a DVD somewhere - like Van Vieng, this place has many restaurants that show television. I might be comforted with something better than "Braveheart" yesterday. (doesn't Mel Gibson look like an 80s victim? I just can't get over this crazy hair.. and people say I have big hair!)
Secondly, Major girlie victory today for I was asked where I had bought my pink nail polish AND I could truthfully answer that it was both cheap and not from here... no, I'm not too old to gloat ;)
Thirdly, it is terribly inconsistent on my part but I went ahead and got a tattoo. yes yes I know. But the tattoo's motif is both great and it was the only true epiphany I've had on this trip so far - really the stuff of awakening from semi-sleep and having a mental image. Yet in another attempt at a cliffhanger, you'll have to wait and see ... hehe