Friday, October 31, 2008

scooters rock!

hello there! I'm more or less alright again - the beach allows you to be lazy and sleep alot (if the infernal house music of the constant partying lets you)

Yesterday I FINALLY dared driving a scooter! left-side and the most incredible roller coaster lane - INCREDIBLE! uncle bubu, you were SO right, it's amazing fun and peole - me included - tend to get overconfident really quickly - thankfully enough, there is only one road and almost no crossings... anyway it was FUN!



this is white sands beach and the pink color is the original one!



this is a random giant pig on the road


this is what I did on halloween (before staying at the cheap-house places as long as I could (coz the people I was with were really cool


sometimes rain, sometimes sun...

this is me trying to not do my "picture face" (I swear to god, I'm the incarnation of Chandler..)

Sunday, October 26, 2008

this sucks

well, I don't know WHAT I'm having but I'm definitely having something! I tried to ignore the flu like symptoms for some days at first, but now, added to the complete exhaustion, I had a major and sudden attack yesterday of what my brother, somewhat too affectionately, calls "Montezuma's revenge" ... no fun.
I did manage to change guesthouses however, without the help of the bored-to-rude personnel here. that means I pay more but I'm having a tv now (the smart girl plans ahead). among the 40-something channels most are thai (fair enough).there is one that seems to show movies about little pigs and blonde girls (the non-x-rated version) and a couple of news channels. my current project is therefore to compare BBC, Fox, CNN and AlJazeera's news reports.
It is painful my friends, for the sun is here, the beach, the palm trees, a coconut landed not-to-far from me on the beach (on more thing to be afraid of)... I do go, enjoy the scenery and feel like I'm the most boring person on the planet - no elephant-riding-diving-snorkeling-motorbiking adventures... (you know how I mean this: it's the carrot dangling in front of your eyes.. and if a carrot doesn't do it for you, feel free to pick another metaphor: the lady friend, the cordon bleue, the iPhone..)
yesterday, I knocked myself out with a US anti-flu medicine this helpful girl gave me (from alaska, against Pailin) and finally slept 12 hours. which is good. even though I'm usually in bed around 9pm (!) I then lie there and sweat and can't sleep. in the old guesthouse a gecko dropped from the ceiling into the bed, next to me (what's with all this stuff from above?) - in the new guesthouse there's a cat who appears to have taken a liking to my bungalow and quick-as-a-flash, she ate my home gecko. I wasn't so sure what to think of this. the tail continued to wiggle like crazy while she was chewing down the main part.
oh, and upon finishing great expectations, I realized that I've read it before! ok, guys, I'll go hunt some liquids and go back to bed, trying not to think. advice is welcome though.. love to you

the irony won't be lost on you


that, arrived on Ko Tao, I'm reading "Great Expectations" as it's raining incessantly. thunder at 7am. where was that tsunami again? palm trees are shaking. I'm watching the thai waiter lazily hitting on that blonde girl. people ask me things like "What's your goal in life?" and state that "I wanna enjoy and live every day!" as their own goal. deep man..

I consider buying War and Peace from the local bookshop but thought I finish Dickens first. My fellow BPs seem to nourish soft spots for Grisham, Amy Tan and Ian Flemming. Maybe, if it stays like this, I wrap it up in a fancy resort (with cable tv!) or jacuzzi-ing.. what's a jacuzzi again?

Thursday, October 23, 2008

The Wild One - update

finally, me on a motorbike! I took the plunge - quite scary actually, and on a Cambodian bumpy road too. Visited "Killing Caves" and a temple with this guy who is "gonna be the next president of Cambodia", whom I'd met on the bus to Battambang (his family fled the Khmer Rouge to Canada).

the caves:
the Khmer Rouge, by way of killing, pushed people down in the cave



this is my hotel in battambang:

After the caves, we rode to a temple which carried 357 steps up to a nice view.


A pretty woman who said she was 25 and looked like a firm 19 and who was lovely and very taken with me and my nose in particular, offered to lead us to some hidden caves. These were awesome and really really scary: pitch black and cold, lots of rocks sticking out and dripping water everywhere.. we could only enter by squeezing and duck-walking through a tiny narrow and quite long passage way (kind of like a birthing channel..)The girl-woman kept a firm grip on me not only because she liked me but because I had skipped and fallen earlier on the steep way down to the caves (357 steps up...). I fell and scratched my leg quite spectacularly. even though I did my best to get the dirt out of the scratches and even bought pure alcohol for cleaning, now there's puss and everything (yes you wanted to know these details),and I carry the formidably looking thing like proud like anyone would who formely-played-the-Indian-not-the-stupid-cowboy ...

Sunday, October 19, 2008

phnom penh and cambodia - update


just look at these clouds! this is a regular feature... there's waaay too much water around here... we had a major major thunderstorm the day before yesterday which half came through the thin walls of my spartan guesthouse. accordingly, I fled, couldn't sleep there anyway. now I'm settled in a comparatively royal place... there's even a tv. I'm happy. tom and jerry for me!


I went to the Tuol Sleng Museum about the horrors which the Khmer Rouge committed in this High Security Prison.

anyone reminded of stammheim, like me? this used to be a school! it's creepy. and heartbreaking.


what the old lady is selling - i thought that was something to eat at first, but I think it's flowers..


I would write more but the guy next to me cannot stop trying to get his puss or whatever out and I might hit him if I don't leave, so, in the name of nonviolence, see you soon..


Pnom Penh was far smaller and far less dangerous and sinister than I had imagined it. Even the most-haughty and been-there types of BPs had cousneled me not to be alone, at night, with a bag ... Consequently what happened was that on my first day there, which I spent riding around by bike (mainly to avoid having to say "no thanks" every minute, especially to such inciting invitations as "you go killing fields with me!"), I got lost, at night, alone, and with a bag. And after the initial panic, everything was fine.


getting almost stuck on the way to the border: 3hrs of chuckholes, seven people in the car (two in the driver's seat as the Japanese guy in the front had payed for two seats and was therefore left alone..)

Saturday, October 18, 2008

angkor 2



so far I love cambodia; they have the trees and leaves that I love, people speak English well; and they have supermarkets and bake bread (not baked the British, as in Thailand or a sweetish white bread, as in Lao; this is a culinary mecca after Laos - heavenly banana toffee, tasty Chicken Amok (for some reason I keep thinking of Run Chicken Run).
apart from the 5-star sunsets and the amazing sky every day, the weather has helped me to MAJOR indiana jones moments.
right now however, outside is PAN-DE-MONIUM rain. and I wanted to go out and continue exploring the cuisine.. I'm totally and happily exhausted from 3-days of Angkor, my ass looks as if i'm a member in a spanking club from riding that bike around angkor for two days - the first day I took the tub-tuk but I couldn't stand it. apart from the price and the colonial-imperialist vibe to the arrangement, the driver had only big tour or little tour in store and that didn't suit my individualist style..

the barbies of Angkor:

in the grip of nature:

looking for the lingam

my joy about finding a German guidebook in the guesthouse was somewhat dampened when I discovered that their tour descriptions go somewhat like: at the northeast corner of the western Prasang you will find the remnants of a westbound gallery that used to connect the gopurams with the northern prasang to your left.
and now imagine me, who has problems with east and west anyway, hobbling among the ruins looking for gopurams, nagas, prasats and lingams...




another thing that I have learned: the jungle is NOISY! I wouldn't believe the racket these things make! secondly, everything is too big - that includes some good things, like butterflies, but mostly bugs, ants, grasshoppers, cockroaches, beetles, spiders that are plainly TOO BIG!




Luang Prabang

sunset at luang prabang





this is at the most famous temple of luang prabang. it's a very huge complex, peaceful, high above the city, you can look down out at the mekong, and it smells of sandwood...

it's a tree of life (I think) and all the walls look incredibly beautiful with dusky rose background and bright blue elephants and other vegetation and stuff, spread out and fully covering the walls in a at first glance chaotic yet somehow also ordered way ...

I guess the picture doesn't really show it. sorry about that, I have no ambition with regards to pictures - I leave that to you, my more talented friends.. all that is beautiful in these is just because nature in laos is just stunning..