Folks,
I've been extremely tardy with the travel updates of late and this is for various reasons - writers block, chaotic transit and, let's face it, good ol fashioned filthy laziness. I feel the following film may tide you over in the meantime and perhaps explain the lack of prose to date.
Stay tuned....Cambodia edition still to come, not to mention 'Return to the Kok' and the trek to Ko Samet.
23.6.08
16.6.08
Nostalgia
I want to tell you everything.
Every little tidbit of fact, fiction and fantasy. I want you to smell the fish sauce and the dank rice fields, feel the salty sweat pouring down my sideburn, the crazy sensation of being an outsider in the middle of something so out of control that it actually has an order to it. I want you to know about how I almost died twice crossing the main highway in Phnom Penh; or the bewilderment I felt when our Yellow Little Miss Sunshine Minibus almost tipped in a mudpit after a petrol tanker derailed on the way to Kompong Cham. I want you to settle into the long stretches on the potholed road, absorbing foreign palms and shanty box hamlets and faces of the good people smiling as you pass on by. I want you to hear the cacophonous roar of motos and tuk tuks, the never ending beckoning of the drivers and dealers, and the poor kids desperate to sell you their bangles and postcards with sorrow in their tiny eyes.
I want you to know how compromising it can feel to be a lone Westerner in a country where many people have been so traumatised by a brutally macabre past and continue to reel in significant poverty with desperation that has no end. I want to tell you about how you rethink, re-analyse in detail everything you once believed when you’re so far removed from your regular, safe cotton-lined comfort zone, witnessing in person the sort of daily insanity that goes on in a crazy, unbelievable, chaotic part of the world.
I want to tell you everything. But I don’t even know where to begin.
It’s a struggle for even me to know what’s going on. I’m barely coming to grips with where I find myself each morning and what the hell I seem to be doing here. It is a month since I embarked on this journey. I can’t tell if it feels like a week or thirty. I feel like a man in temporal limbo, wedged between two realities; an old life and a new one. I wish you could feel just how truly weird that feels. Maybe you have already.
I want to tell you about how time feels meaningless. Like in a Tim Winton story, ‘coming and going in waves; fluttering and sifting like dust, rising, billowing, falling back on itself.’ Time flows through us and not the other way around.
And cyclically, without fail and without choice, the times of your past always return to fall back on you just like Winton’s wave.
Lying in a luxurious health spa back in Laos receiving a right Royal pampering, the pleasure was so trance inducing that I found myself revisiting every single one of my twenty-four years on this planet, floating through every event and highlight and potent memory, deeply and thoroughly. It summed up a common theme of late. Almost every day on this trip I seem to cop whiffs of scents and flavours and words and visions that plunge me thick and fast back down the golden path of my memory lane. A concentration of distilled memories. Things I haven’t thought about for so long and forgot existed…
…When I broke my leg at the age of two. Watching Neverending Story and Flight of the Navigator. My Nana Barb. The Christmases – that one year it snowed in Croydon and how magic it felt looking out Barb’s window. Easters at Point Lonsdale and Merimbula. Birthday parties. Chaotic meals at Nan’s. My old houses, my old rooms and my old basketball posters. Ghostbusters and Batman and Ninja Turtles. Playing basketball on Saturday mornings and feeling like a legend. The feeling of my growing little imagination being set on fire with all the amazing possibilities of what lay ahead
Whether it’s the pure fact of being away from my normal zone of comfort, some sort of strange mid-twenties crisis, or the fact that Mercury is moving retrograde through Gemini, something’s making me go over my past in great detail of late and all I can do is ride it out. And so as I fill my soul and consciousness with amazing new input and experience in this crazy land, there’s a massive interplay going on at the same time with the inner world of my past. It’s a constant internal rollercoaster of the most bittersweet. Debilitating, exciting, spine tingling, at times quite lonely. It’s a cocktail, a triple shot in a great Taco Bill pancho villa fishbowl, and it’s happening right now.
In my trance, I sifted on to the first time I ever wailed solo sax in front of a big crowd, the twinge in my fingers, the lights, the adulation and adrenaline, the electricity. Starting the band, getting gigs, meeting amazing people and rocking out. That feeling of ambition that I’d forgotten and let slip away as the years ticked past. That naivety, that glorious carelessness. The idea that anything was possible.
It retraced territory of the sad times. The overcast morning when Kev layed across a Lilydale line train track. Watching Mum break down in front of me. I was stoned and the sledgehammer took its time to hit. For weeks, months, I’d get blazed in my bungalow and feel ethereal spine chills listening to Kev’s Manfred Mann and Beatles vinyl. ‘Davy’s On the Road again’. That chilling 70’s drawbar organ sound.
Felt like he was sitting right there next to me.
I dwelled on the more recent years, of all the ‘firsts’. That sensation of becoming your own person, the knowledge of having the whole world in front of you; of growing up, getting older, slowly, sometimes begrudgingly, falling into the responsibilities of becoming a man.
The first beer, the first parties, the fresh faces. The night I made a drunken tit of myself at Evs 18th and threw his esky lid onto the Alamein train tracks. The litany of tunes that provide the soundtrack encapsulating every one of those memories during that time, and the deluge of emotion that fills your aching, nostalgic soul when you play them all back. You long to be there. In your mind, you’re there. It all floods back.
…Time folding back on itself…
I remember the first sensation of love and lust. The first date on the banks of the Yarra, feeling for the time the tenderness of a girl’s smooth skin and her lips under the moonlight and that excruciating intoxication that would never leave. The first night in bed with a woman on millennium eve.
Nostalgia seeps in again.
I floated back to the years when school ended. One of the greatest waves of all time. An unforgettable euphoric era that everyone around me was in on; a momentum of wild abandon and sheer elation that just wouldn’t stop building.
That time.
That neverending, magical, amazing rite of passage time.
Those times used to fall back on me in the night and cut me deep when my life was already changing so much, already cutting and plunging me into unfamiliar territory. It would make me well with such bitter nostalgia that sometimes I couldn’t see past the next day for want of the magic gone by. But I’d gotten over that. I’d forgotten about all that stuff. Learned that time was your friend and not a tyrannical monster like Pink Floyd used to tell me. Suddenly now those old feelings are back in droves and I ask myself why.
It’s a bittersweet, wild, amazing journey this thing called life. I haven’t mastered it myself, and doubt I ever will. Just when you think you’ve got it nutted out, the universe throws you another set of hurdles. When the going’s good, its usually pretty damn good…when it’s not, it can be pretty rough. Or at least, pretty bloody testing. More often than not there’s a fat jewel at the end of a long, hard cycle of introspection; a clue, a revelation and a pointer to the next destination.
I’m living a dream over here, something which is going to become clearer when I have the vantage point of looking back on it all in hindsight. I guess that’s why I’m wondering why all the old stuff is returning thick and fast so suddenly and furiously right now when I should be taking in all the new inspiration. It’s not just a fleeting thing, because its been going on for weeks.
Winton’s right, time travels like the waves. Like the energy behind life itself. And life, existing in time, comes around again and again, like the solstices and the seasons, the rotations of the moon and cycles of the planets. Sometimes we’ve got to relinquish the past and make leaps ahead without a sliver of thought for yesteryear. Then there are times like these when the past heaps on us like a closet door opened, jam-packed full of old boxes of stuff. It comes tumbling down on your head to interact with the present, to guide us, progress our beings and give us more juice to jump even greater leaps up the track. That linear timeline of memory, those remarkable little nuggets of ‘now’ always come back to remind us just how integral they were once upon a time. And no matter how painful or nostalgic or bittersweet they’re back for a reason. Spinning like coloured streamers on a maypole; cycling around, intertwining, folding back and unfolding on schedule.
These waves that make up the very person we know ourselves to be and create that person that we are set to become. They are never, ever going to leave us.
And for now, I think I’ve told you everything I can.
Every little tidbit of fact, fiction and fantasy. I want you to smell the fish sauce and the dank rice fields, feel the salty sweat pouring down my sideburn, the crazy sensation of being an outsider in the middle of something so out of control that it actually has an order to it. I want you to know about how I almost died twice crossing the main highway in Phnom Penh; or the bewilderment I felt when our Yellow Little Miss Sunshine Minibus almost tipped in a mudpit after a petrol tanker derailed on the way to Kompong Cham. I want you to settle into the long stretches on the potholed road, absorbing foreign palms and shanty box hamlets and faces of the good people smiling as you pass on by. I want you to hear the cacophonous roar of motos and tuk tuks, the never ending beckoning of the drivers and dealers, and the poor kids desperate to sell you their bangles and postcards with sorrow in their tiny eyes.
I want you to know how compromising it can feel to be a lone Westerner in a country where many people have been so traumatised by a brutally macabre past and continue to reel in significant poverty with desperation that has no end. I want to tell you about how you rethink, re-analyse in detail everything you once believed when you’re so far removed from your regular, safe cotton-lined comfort zone, witnessing in person the sort of daily insanity that goes on in a crazy, unbelievable, chaotic part of the world.
I want to tell you everything. But I don’t even know where to begin.
It’s a struggle for even me to know what’s going on. I’m barely coming to grips with where I find myself each morning and what the hell I seem to be doing here. It is a month since I embarked on this journey. I can’t tell if it feels like a week or thirty. I feel like a man in temporal limbo, wedged between two realities; an old life and a new one. I wish you could feel just how truly weird that feels. Maybe you have already.
I want to tell you about how time feels meaningless. Like in a Tim Winton story, ‘coming and going in waves; fluttering and sifting like dust, rising, billowing, falling back on itself.’ Time flows through us and not the other way around.
And cyclically, without fail and without choice, the times of your past always return to fall back on you just like Winton’s wave.
Lying in a luxurious health spa back in Laos receiving a right Royal pampering, the pleasure was so trance inducing that I found myself revisiting every single one of my twenty-four years on this planet, floating through every event and highlight and potent memory, deeply and thoroughly. It summed up a common theme of late. Almost every day on this trip I seem to cop whiffs of scents and flavours and words and visions that plunge me thick and fast back down the golden path of my memory lane. A concentration of distilled memories. Things I haven’t thought about for so long and forgot existed…
…When I broke my leg at the age of two. Watching Neverending Story and Flight of the Navigator. My Nana Barb. The Christmases – that one year it snowed in Croydon and how magic it felt looking out Barb’s window. Easters at Point Lonsdale and Merimbula. Birthday parties. Chaotic meals at Nan’s. My old houses, my old rooms and my old basketball posters. Ghostbusters and Batman and Ninja Turtles. Playing basketball on Saturday mornings and feeling like a legend. The feeling of my growing little imagination being set on fire with all the amazing possibilities of what lay ahead
Whether it’s the pure fact of being away from my normal zone of comfort, some sort of strange mid-twenties crisis, or the fact that Mercury is moving retrograde through Gemini, something’s making me go over my past in great detail of late and all I can do is ride it out. And so as I fill my soul and consciousness with amazing new input and experience in this crazy land, there’s a massive interplay going on at the same time with the inner world of my past. It’s a constant internal rollercoaster of the most bittersweet. Debilitating, exciting, spine tingling, at times quite lonely. It’s a cocktail, a triple shot in a great Taco Bill pancho villa fishbowl, and it’s happening right now.
In my trance, I sifted on to the first time I ever wailed solo sax in front of a big crowd, the twinge in my fingers, the lights, the adulation and adrenaline, the electricity. Starting the band, getting gigs, meeting amazing people and rocking out. That feeling of ambition that I’d forgotten and let slip away as the years ticked past. That naivety, that glorious carelessness. The idea that anything was possible.
It retraced territory of the sad times. The overcast morning when Kev layed across a Lilydale line train track. Watching Mum break down in front of me. I was stoned and the sledgehammer took its time to hit. For weeks, months, I’d get blazed in my bungalow and feel ethereal spine chills listening to Kev’s Manfred Mann and Beatles vinyl. ‘Davy’s On the Road again’. That chilling 70’s drawbar organ sound.
Felt like he was sitting right there next to me.
I dwelled on the more recent years, of all the ‘firsts’. That sensation of becoming your own person, the knowledge of having the whole world in front of you; of growing up, getting older, slowly, sometimes begrudgingly, falling into the responsibilities of becoming a man.
The first beer, the first parties, the fresh faces. The night I made a drunken tit of myself at Evs 18th and threw his esky lid onto the Alamein train tracks. The litany of tunes that provide the soundtrack encapsulating every one of those memories during that time, and the deluge of emotion that fills your aching, nostalgic soul when you play them all back. You long to be there. In your mind, you’re there. It all floods back.
…Time folding back on itself…
I remember the first sensation of love and lust. The first date on the banks of the Yarra, feeling for the time the tenderness of a girl’s smooth skin and her lips under the moonlight and that excruciating intoxication that would never leave. The first night in bed with a woman on millennium eve.
Nostalgia seeps in again.
I floated back to the years when school ended. One of the greatest waves of all time. An unforgettable euphoric era that everyone around me was in on; a momentum of wild abandon and sheer elation that just wouldn’t stop building.
That time.
That neverending, magical, amazing rite of passage time.
Those times used to fall back on me in the night and cut me deep when my life was already changing so much, already cutting and plunging me into unfamiliar territory. It would make me well with such bitter nostalgia that sometimes I couldn’t see past the next day for want of the magic gone by. But I’d gotten over that. I’d forgotten about all that stuff. Learned that time was your friend and not a tyrannical monster like Pink Floyd used to tell me. Suddenly now those old feelings are back in droves and I ask myself why.
It’s a bittersweet, wild, amazing journey this thing called life. I haven’t mastered it myself, and doubt I ever will. Just when you think you’ve got it nutted out, the universe throws you another set of hurdles. When the going’s good, its usually pretty damn good…when it’s not, it can be pretty rough. Or at least, pretty bloody testing. More often than not there’s a fat jewel at the end of a long, hard cycle of introspection; a clue, a revelation and a pointer to the next destination.
I’m living a dream over here, something which is going to become clearer when I have the vantage point of looking back on it all in hindsight. I guess that’s why I’m wondering why all the old stuff is returning thick and fast so suddenly and furiously right now when I should be taking in all the new inspiration. It’s not just a fleeting thing, because its been going on for weeks.
Winton’s right, time travels like the waves. Like the energy behind life itself. And life, existing in time, comes around again and again, like the solstices and the seasons, the rotations of the moon and cycles of the planets. Sometimes we’ve got to relinquish the past and make leaps ahead without a sliver of thought for yesteryear. Then there are times like these when the past heaps on us like a closet door opened, jam-packed full of old boxes of stuff. It comes tumbling down on your head to interact with the present, to guide us, progress our beings and give us more juice to jump even greater leaps up the track. That linear timeline of memory, those remarkable little nuggets of ‘now’ always come back to remind us just how integral they were once upon a time. And no matter how painful or nostalgic or bittersweet they’re back for a reason. Spinning like coloured streamers on a maypole; cycling around, intertwining, folding back and unfolding on schedule.
These waves that make up the very person we know ourselves to be and create that person that we are set to become. They are never, ever going to leave us.
And for now, I think I’ve told you everything I can.
15.6.08
Lao Lao Laos Layoss
After being suitably Munk’d and lighting up the SpicyLaos Hostel fire in style, the final day began with much lethargy. As I tucked into the Indiana Jones box set and enjoying a behind the scenes doco, my geezer mates Owen, Jim, Jim and Kel finally surfaced from their quarters. With head guide Pong in tow, we tuk-tuked it out into the wild, to the glorious nearby Tad Sae waterfalls.
If God was incontinent in Udon Thani, then his colostomy bag well and truly exploded this afternoon. Already enduring a significant waterfall, another spanner was thrown into the mix when our tuk tuk sprung a loose bearing in the wheel axel and shat itself halfway there. We made it to the waterfalls though, leaping off the main cliff face into baby blue cream waters, again and again until the adrenaline made us sleepy like overtired children. It was awesome.
When you find yourself staying put in one place for far longer than you expected, the reasons for that rarely become clear until very the culmination of that chapter. Luang Prabang’s chilled, spiritual hum kept me within its confines for ten solid nights, and I was extremely lucky to find myself affiliated with Pong and the SpicyLaos crew, who showed me things I wouldn’t have experienced otherwise. Diamonds in the rough are usually found right at the very end, and the last days in Laos were the pinnacle moments of my trip.
After getting drenched in waterfall and colostomy rain our new bearing-ed tuk tuk cruised over to a small Laos family village where we would be eating dinner. Pong, always with an eye for good bush tucker, noticed a massive ants nest hanging above in one of the big riverside trees. With a monster bamboo rod we prodded the nest till the whole bloody thing came tumbling down into our bucket. According to Pong, when you disrupt a red ant nest the ants excrete a fluid that tastes amazingly like vinegar, and this fluid combined with the white ants eggs makes a great, tasty salad. We took his word for it as our feet became public enemy number one for some seriously pissed off, homewrecked ants.
With a huge blue net we traipsed the murky brown Mekong river down yonder and fished out a selection of shrimp, yabbies and tiny fish. A pale yellow sunset blended with the clouds in the sky and made everything before me look awash in sepia – the mountains, the riverbank and the Mekong itself, winding and spilling as far as my eye could see. That was a magical moment, and for the first time in a while I felt like I was a long way from home.
With eight people crammed into a pencil thin fishing vessel we made it back to shore to sit down on the wooden upstairs floor with the men of the village. It was a veritable feast of the most extraordinary. With a hand moulded lump of sticky rice in one hand, we grabbed bits and pieces of all sorts of different traditional Laos dishes and pigged out big time. Our fresh Mekong shrimp were fried to perfection, the chicken broth was amazing, and sure enough, the live ant salad was pretty wild, though you had to be careful the little bastards didn’t bite the inside of your mouth when you proceeded to devour them alive. Aside form the barbequed frog and bowl of assorted insects, this was the weirdest dish I’d ever swallowed. Hellbent on destroying us lanky Western gits, the local blokes plied us with their family made flagon of Lao Lao – replete with all the weird leaves, spices, mosquitos and Lao viagra that we’ve come to expect. After ten consecutive rounds of shots we were destroyed. I hoped this was just a rare show of alcoholic one-upmanship and special celebration rather than a customary day to day smashing of piss over dinner. What these Lao blokes lacked in stature they made up for in barrel chested stamina.
The dark, night ride back to Prabang in the Tuk Tuk was exhilarating. On a whisky high, I was blown away by the event that had just taken place, the amazing Laos people I got to know and share a meal with. Wind coarsed through my hair as the tuk tuk bloted over dirt road and wooden bridges. I reflected on how amazing the day was. - Owen and I chatted and recognised that all that was some pretty rare and unique stuff – a situation that very few passer-by backpackers would ever get the chance to experience. I was chuffed and felt extremely lucky that I’d met Pong and these blokes and had decided to stay on these two extra days. Sometimes you just gotta wait around for the really great stuff to present itself. And out of nowhere you fall right into it.
13.6.08
10.6.08
Munk'd
My friend Diz once used to talk about her eccentric Eastern European Grandpa, a wild bloke whose youthful facial attributes and demeanour belied his considerable age. His rejuvenation secret was allegedly a morning ritual in which he’d spin the bejeezus out of his entire body in a direction to counter that of the earth’s rotation, and thus, in some strange metaphysical counteraction, undo some of the hard years that the earth had spun onto him. A few years back during a time when I was particularly open to all things esoteric, I attempted the crazy old bastard’s formula with minimal success. In an age where new exercise regimes hit the Danoz commercials faster than you can say ‘where’s my goddam steak knives’, I was compelled to employ a zippy, uber-trendy monicker for this exciting new wave of morning spinning. And so, I became a pioneer in the art of ‘Monk-acise’.
Abdominators, Abeliminators, colonic irrigation. Like all great things, Monkacise was short lived and failed to gain the high profile exposure it deserved. But I just couldn’t understand why. There would be cheap rip offs and profiteering mimicks, but only I, with the exception perhaps of Diz’ mad bastard Grandpa and legit Buddhist monks, understood the true glory and majesty of the art of Monkacise. And it’s only up until now that I stand directly inside Buddha’s backyard that I understand where I went wrong.
Seven legit monks burned into Spicy Laos hostel yesterday on a re-route from their customary arvo trail back to the local Wat. What? Wat. What? Yes. Wat. (Wat means temple) In a hostel lounge room that normally contains a massive big screen tele, a tiered couch apparatus repleat with Western loafers like myself, I was taken aback to see instead a room full o’ Buddhism and a considerable ritual-piece in the middle of 7 brightly dressed chanting party animal monks. After sitting around chanting in unison and looking fairly disinterested in the process - some appearing barely conscious - they blessed the place with water and a huge leaf before downing a toast - some opting for water, some of the older ones taking their chances with a rare bottle of Fanta (possibly to colour co-ordinate with their fluro robes in case they spilt it down their chin). Looking like they’d been given open tab at the local tavern, the monks got stuck right in to the orange fizz. With no further adieu, the deed was done. Wham, Bam, Blessed, thanks very much for the fanta, we’ve got more mindfulness and vipassana and not having sex to get back to. No spinning, no whirling, no Macarena, no jazz hands, nothing. I began to presume that these Monks were fanta slurpin’ usurpin’ imposters. Refraining from forced removal of their prosthetic face masks a la ‘Old Man Willickers from the Amusement park’ in an episode of Scooby Doo, I let the monks walk off into the sunset and digest their Fanta in peace. But I wasn’t happy. Where was the Monkacise, the real art, the furious, arm flailin’ spinnin action? Had I wasted all those mornings getting nauseously dizzy for no bloody reason at all. Was I even further away from enlightenment as a result of my erroneous method? If real monks weren’t savvy with the true art of Monkacise that I knew, then the whole goddam operation was a foolish brag destined to fail from the outset. How bloody foolish I’d been!
The gatecrashin’ monks might have won that round, but the party had only just begun. Forging strong bonds with the family that lives below in the wooden house outside the hostel, we were treated to a really special night of celebration, joining the local Laos folk in a sumptuous Laos barbeque feast, drunken dancing to bad music and plenty of rounds of Lao whiskey. The Lao’s like to ferment their own brand of rice wine, which they then manipulate into a seriously potent concoction mixed with herbs, spices, and something they like to call Lao Viagra. The stuff is strong enough to tear anyone a new one, and just as suitable to run a medium sized tuk tuk for at least a day. So we ate, drank, laughed and danced with this Laos family and their friends, so beautifully friendly, feeling every bit a part of their family for the night. A beefy Laos bloke who called himself ‘Superman’ took me under his wing and ensured I was constantly filled with either Beerlao, Lao whiskey, and often handfed me fresh meat from the barbeque skewers. And to top it all off, Superman fed me barbequed frog head and a bowl of roasted insects, not to mention a whole stick of buffalo skin. I managed to keep it all down as well. These Laos know how to party.
Tomorrow is my last day in Luang Prabang and I’m rapped that I decided to stay as long as I did. Sometimes you’ve got to wait around for the gold moments to present themselves, and they usually do in the end. You learn new things every day, especially on the travel route - as it turns out, what I knew to be revolutionary Monkacise is nothing short of a sham. All you really gotta do to find Enlightenment and a fresh wrinkle-free face is sit on your arse, crash a few parties and get high on Fanta.
Abdominators, Abeliminators, colonic irrigation. Like all great things, Monkacise was short lived and failed to gain the high profile exposure it deserved. But I just couldn’t understand why. There would be cheap rip offs and profiteering mimicks, but only I, with the exception perhaps of Diz’ mad bastard Grandpa and legit Buddhist monks, understood the true glory and majesty of the art of Monkacise. And it’s only up until now that I stand directly inside Buddha’s backyard that I understand where I went wrong.
Seven legit monks burned into Spicy Laos hostel yesterday on a re-route from their customary arvo trail back to the local Wat. What? Wat. What? Yes. Wat. (Wat means temple) In a hostel lounge room that normally contains a massive big screen tele, a tiered couch apparatus repleat with Western loafers like myself, I was taken aback to see instead a room full o’ Buddhism and a considerable ritual-piece in the middle of 7 brightly dressed chanting party animal monks. After sitting around chanting in unison and looking fairly disinterested in the process - some appearing barely conscious - they blessed the place with water and a huge leaf before downing a toast - some opting for water, some of the older ones taking their chances with a rare bottle of Fanta (possibly to colour co-ordinate with their fluro robes in case they spilt it down their chin). Looking like they’d been given open tab at the local tavern, the monks got stuck right in to the orange fizz. With no further adieu, the deed was done. Wham, Bam, Blessed, thanks very much for the fanta, we’ve got more mindfulness and vipassana and not having sex to get back to. No spinning, no whirling, no Macarena, no jazz hands, nothing. I began to presume that these Monks were fanta slurpin’ usurpin’ imposters. Refraining from forced removal of their prosthetic face masks a la ‘Old Man Willickers from the Amusement park’ in an episode of Scooby Doo, I let the monks walk off into the sunset and digest their Fanta in peace. But I wasn’t happy. Where was the Monkacise, the real art, the furious, arm flailin’ spinnin action? Had I wasted all those mornings getting nauseously dizzy for no bloody reason at all. Was I even further away from enlightenment as a result of my erroneous method? If real monks weren’t savvy with the true art of Monkacise that I knew, then the whole goddam operation was a foolish brag destined to fail from the outset. How bloody foolish I’d been!
The gatecrashin’ monks might have won that round, but the party had only just begun. Forging strong bonds with the family that lives below in the wooden house outside the hostel, we were treated to a really special night of celebration, joining the local Laos folk in a sumptuous Laos barbeque feast, drunken dancing to bad music and plenty of rounds of Lao whiskey. The Lao’s like to ferment their own brand of rice wine, which they then manipulate into a seriously potent concoction mixed with herbs, spices, and something they like to call Lao Viagra. The stuff is strong enough to tear anyone a new one, and just as suitable to run a medium sized tuk tuk for at least a day. So we ate, drank, laughed and danced with this Laos family and their friends, so beautifully friendly, feeling every bit a part of their family for the night. A beefy Laos bloke who called himself ‘Superman’ took me under his wing and ensured I was constantly filled with either Beerlao, Lao whiskey, and often handfed me fresh meat from the barbeque skewers. And to top it all off, Superman fed me barbequed frog head and a bowl of roasted insects, not to mention a whole stick of buffalo skin. I managed to keep it all down as well. These Laos know how to party.
Tomorrow is my last day in Luang Prabang and I’m rapped that I decided to stay as long as I did. Sometimes you’ve got to wait around for the gold moments to present themselves, and they usually do in the end. You learn new things every day, especially on the travel route - as it turns out, what I knew to be revolutionary Monkacise is nothing short of a sham. All you really gotta do to find Enlightenment and a fresh wrinkle-free face is sit on your arse, crash a few parties and get high on Fanta.
7.6.08
Amblin in Luang Prabang...
In a small, wood panelled French-Laos café I sit by the doorway peering out to the main street of Luang Prabang. Young Laos girls on motorbikes zoom past helmetless left and right; colourful tuk-tuks amble up and down the bitumen as a group of four monks, hair shaved and body-wrapped in flurorescent amber, sandal on by to their next spiritual port of call. Shimmering brown Mekong surrounds and loops around me in the middle of this historic colonial peninsula of French door-clad guesthouses, fresh fruit and baguette stalls and boutique travel agencies. As day becomes night, the luminance of Luang Prabang’s night market radiates red tents that span the length of the street. And in the mild breeze of the evening, high above on a mountain in the middle of town, the crown jewel of this magical place, the Pii Mui Temple, illuminates the town with a protective golden majesty. It’s no wonder this town is listed as a UNESCO world heritage city. The place lives up to its reputation as perhaps the most magical location in all of South East Asia. Day in, day out, the vibe that permeates Luang Prabang is one of intense laissez-faire. This is probably why I’ve found it almost impossible to leave the place.
From the very early stages of thought regarding this sojourn to SE Asia I had earmarked Luang Prabang as a priority destination and a place I would probably park for some time. I must stress that travelling up from Singapore at such a rapid rate, facing significant alcoholism on party island Ko Tao and sheer lunacy in Bangkok had taken its toll on my sense of why the hell I’d decided to come to this continent at all. I felt SE Asia might be a spiritual experience, an amazing, eye opening chapter in this new epic trip. Suddenly, travelling with a large group of people, my chances at discovering any deeper meaning to my surroundings was limited to drinking another bucket with the hope of gaining a hallucinatory insight into the nature of things. Alas, this following of the tourist trail was making me feel distinctly like a backpacking sheep. The beaten path was doing little for me and ensuring I felt more and more separated from my initial agenda.
Laos managed to quell some of that angst, though Vang Vieng proved that backpackers will one day ruin everything under the sun if they are given the go ahead to do so. Don’t get me wrong, I aint meaning to sound like a hypocrite here – I had a great time in Vang Vieng, but it wasn’t without its cringeworthy moments. Like being offered shots of Lao rice whiskey from a 10 year old Laos girl on a riverside straw bar packed with blind tour groups of English bovver boys, raucous, offensive yanks, and near-naked girls getting mildly paralytic on massive beers and whiskey buckets. I wondered what that little girl thought about this bizarre scene before her, no doubt her daily practise, watching and helping fuel some of the worst of hedonistic Western tourism. Granted, the tubing was fun and so were the rope swings. (I was informed by the English blokes behind me in the line that they shat themselves when I embarked down the rope, my beefiness very nearly plunging the whole bloody apparatus down as I shook the platform structure to its very core). Nonetheless, one day tubing was enough for Pete and I, which is more than I can say for folks who get trapped for upwards of a week tubing and boozing until they’ve either contracted alcohol poisoning or a viral infection from the river itself.
Luang Prabang proved to be the ‘tonic for the soul’ that I’d hoped it might be. The view from above Pii Mui Temple Hill was a sight to behold, taking in the full panorama and feasting my soul on this magical sight. Pete and I felt so ridiculously at ease in this place that we opted to go one step further, pampering ourselves at a local Health Spa with the Royal Package – 3 and a half hours of body scrub, full body massage (minus Henri Lee) and, culminating in…wait for it…an hour long ‘Princess Facial’. Though I cant speak for Pete, a man who very much enjoys moisturisers, I felt supremely gay after the princess facial, though my body and face hadn’t felt that smooth since I exploded from the womb. Gotta try these things at least once I guess.
Pete left a couple of days after this, and although it was sad to split up the A Team, it felt really good to be on my own again, a style of travel I usually prefer, plus, I just might now be able to find myself a little more, with autonomy on what my future plans might be.
After reuniting with English pal Matt, we got word of a hostel that was opening officially on the 7th June, but were taking guests in the meantime. It was breath of fresh air to reconnect with a hostel environment and we met some great people. Pong, the manager, is a Thai bloke who runs another Spicy hostel in Chiang Mai and is hellbent on creating a chain of Spicy hostels up and down the continent. I think he’ll do well. Backpackers are a simple bunch, but you’ve gotta make sure you cater to those specific needs, ie – free internet and wi-fi, places to sit and ponder, a couple of guitars, a fridge on the honour system, 24 hour breakfast and a bed that doesn’t destroy your vertebrate alignment. Spicy came through with all the above goods.
It is now my seventh night in Luang Prabang. I am definitely amblin’ for the time being. Very little zoomin to speak of. Yesterday I very nearly lost it after contracting the most brain piercing headache I’d ever experienced, hoping like buggery I hadn’t contracted Dengue Fever or the dreaded Malaria. Matt, possessing far worse symptoms than me, tested negative for both thankfully. He was one of the foold who got sucked into four straight days of Vang Vieng tubing. But it was perhaps the lowest ebb of my trip so far, one of those painful moments where you cannot believe how rough your life is. You long for that moment when normality returns and your regain a sense of being able to take on the world again. I just hit that point about two hours ago, and despite booking a ticket to fly back to Vientiane this arvo, my renewed mindset made me push the flight back to Monday.
Tonight is the grand opening of SpicyLaos hostel and we’re having a big party. On the guest list is the entire neighbourhood, as well as seven fluoro orange monks who are rocking down to officially bless the place. As if I’d be missing that for the world. I still haven’t decided on my next move…after Vientiane it could be anywhere.
For now, monk on!
From the very early stages of thought regarding this sojourn to SE Asia I had earmarked Luang Prabang as a priority destination and a place I would probably park for some time. I must stress that travelling up from Singapore at such a rapid rate, facing significant alcoholism on party island Ko Tao and sheer lunacy in Bangkok had taken its toll on my sense of why the hell I’d decided to come to this continent at all. I felt SE Asia might be a spiritual experience, an amazing, eye opening chapter in this new epic trip. Suddenly, travelling with a large group of people, my chances at discovering any deeper meaning to my surroundings was limited to drinking another bucket with the hope of gaining a hallucinatory insight into the nature of things. Alas, this following of the tourist trail was making me feel distinctly like a backpacking sheep. The beaten path was doing little for me and ensuring I felt more and more separated from my initial agenda.
Laos managed to quell some of that angst, though Vang Vieng proved that backpackers will one day ruin everything under the sun if they are given the go ahead to do so. Don’t get me wrong, I aint meaning to sound like a hypocrite here – I had a great time in Vang Vieng, but it wasn’t without its cringeworthy moments. Like being offered shots of Lao rice whiskey from a 10 year old Laos girl on a riverside straw bar packed with blind tour groups of English bovver boys, raucous, offensive yanks, and near-naked girls getting mildly paralytic on massive beers and whiskey buckets. I wondered what that little girl thought about this bizarre scene before her, no doubt her daily practise, watching and helping fuel some of the worst of hedonistic Western tourism. Granted, the tubing was fun and so were the rope swings. (I was informed by the English blokes behind me in the line that they shat themselves when I embarked down the rope, my beefiness very nearly plunging the whole bloody apparatus down as I shook the platform structure to its very core). Nonetheless, one day tubing was enough for Pete and I, which is more than I can say for folks who get trapped for upwards of a week tubing and boozing until they’ve either contracted alcohol poisoning or a viral infection from the river itself.
Luang Prabang proved to be the ‘tonic for the soul’ that I’d hoped it might be. The view from above Pii Mui Temple Hill was a sight to behold, taking in the full panorama and feasting my soul on this magical sight. Pete and I felt so ridiculously at ease in this place that we opted to go one step further, pampering ourselves at a local Health Spa with the Royal Package – 3 and a half hours of body scrub, full body massage (minus Henri Lee) and, culminating in…wait for it…an hour long ‘Princess Facial’. Though I cant speak for Pete, a man who very much enjoys moisturisers, I felt supremely gay after the princess facial, though my body and face hadn’t felt that smooth since I exploded from the womb. Gotta try these things at least once I guess.
Pete left a couple of days after this, and although it was sad to split up the A Team, it felt really good to be on my own again, a style of travel I usually prefer, plus, I just might now be able to find myself a little more, with autonomy on what my future plans might be.
After reuniting with English pal Matt, we got word of a hostel that was opening officially on the 7th June, but were taking guests in the meantime. It was breath of fresh air to reconnect with a hostel environment and we met some great people. Pong, the manager, is a Thai bloke who runs another Spicy hostel in Chiang Mai and is hellbent on creating a chain of Spicy hostels up and down the continent. I think he’ll do well. Backpackers are a simple bunch, but you’ve gotta make sure you cater to those specific needs, ie – free internet and wi-fi, places to sit and ponder, a couple of guitars, a fridge on the honour system, 24 hour breakfast and a bed that doesn’t destroy your vertebrate alignment. Spicy came through with all the above goods.
It is now my seventh night in Luang Prabang. I am definitely amblin’ for the time being. Very little zoomin to speak of. Yesterday I very nearly lost it after contracting the most brain piercing headache I’d ever experienced, hoping like buggery I hadn’t contracted Dengue Fever or the dreaded Malaria. Matt, possessing far worse symptoms than me, tested negative for both thankfully. He was one of the foold who got sucked into four straight days of Vang Vieng tubing. But it was perhaps the lowest ebb of my trip so far, one of those painful moments where you cannot believe how rough your life is. You long for that moment when normality returns and your regain a sense of being able to take on the world again. I just hit that point about two hours ago, and despite booking a ticket to fly back to Vientiane this arvo, my renewed mindset made me push the flight back to Monday.
Tonight is the grand opening of SpicyLaos hostel and we’re having a big party. On the guest list is the entire neighbourhood, as well as seven fluoro orange monks who are rocking down to officially bless the place. As if I’d be missing that for the world. I still haven’t decided on my next move…after Vientiane it could be anywhere.
For now, monk on!
5.6.08
How Now Brown Laos
The other day a middle aged albino woman from Colorado drummed up some conversation with this here passer-by backpacker from the little town of Melbourne. She claimed to be albino anyway… but I dunno…she looked more of a ‘ranga to me. At very least she had no eyebrows – this much we can be certain of. Regardless of the woman’s lack of epidermal pigment or deficiency of upper brow, this kooky old hippy was a breath of fresh air. After swapping tales of travel and yore, the ranga-albino bird poses me a pertinent question, ‘are you a Zoomer or an Ambler?’. I pondered the question between doses of fresh sweet chilli chook bought from a friendly Laos baguette merchant.
‘I think….both’.
Since the last instalment, It’s been a solid regime of zoomin and amblin around this mad, beautiful, wild, crazy, gloriously diverse continent. And its not that I haven’t felt the urge to divulge all the nitty gritty, all the ins and outs and ups and downs and roundabouts and creamy middles of this wild horse chase adventure. It’s not. A lot has happened…sometimes more than I even realise, especially when yet another day is spent falanging around on the SpicyLaos hostel balcony playing guitar, watching films and generally shooting the sheizer with whoever is around. There’s been a lot of intense moments, a lot of burning around, and as I said earlier, a Libra-scaled balance of zoomin and amblin (in Colorado drawl). To be brutally honest, despite basking in majestic glory of far off exotic lands, it’s been a bit of an effort to take everything in and do it all justice. That, and writing a blog for every waking moment as I did for the Europe trip seems ridiculous this time round, to the point where I’d have nothing to write about because all I’d be doing is writing….about nothing….Bit of a paradox, no?
But here’s what you need to know - here’s the lowdown on what’s going on inside the mindset of Dool as I zoom and amble across jungles, beaches and borders with nothing but my large pack, a bashed acoustic guitar.and a vague concept of what the hell I’m actually doing over here.
Pete and I took a relatively cheap AirAsia flight from Bangkok to a place in Northern Thailand called Udon Thani. The retreat from the ‘Kok was a true blessing; whilst I enjoyed the manic place to begin with, it well and truly did my head in after three nights. Pure chaos. It rained like God was incontinent upon arrival to Udon Thani, as Pete and I white knuckled our seats whilst trying to maintain a manly sense of ease and nonchalance. Deep down we were both shitting ourselves, fearing that our pilot was the son of a rich Thai businessman who forged his aviation papers with a shiny briefcase full of Thai Baht. The plane landed despite the storm as blood returned to our knuckles.
From here we crossed the ‘Friendship bridge’, the connecting point between Thailand and Laos, which perhaps should have been called the Bridge of red tape considering the process involved in getting a Laos visa. It was worth the wait, not just because of the cool full page glossy stamp on page 6 of my passport. Laos felt like a great place to be as soon we set foot inside the border. There was something in the air, a vibe of lethargic freshness.
Laos is a recent backpacker trailpath, for years unnoticed by the plundering Westerner, especially compared to the attention received by nearby nations like Thailand and Vietnam. One thing I noticed immediately upon setting foot into this country is that it is really just at its infant stage of coming to grips with an expanding tourism industry. Cautious of rampant Westernisation and compromising the good natured Laos way of life, the Laos government has been determined to maintain a fine line. A large ecotourism body has been instrumental in providing environment friendly tour programs and treks, and in general, it seems something is going right. The locals are layed back and friendly, welcoming, but certainly happy to see that their pride and joy is not overrun by destructive, out of control tourism.
Vientiane is perhaps the sleepiest capital city on earth. To our delight, we discovered that we were about to enjoy 8000 Laos kip to a single Australian dollar. Henceforth, Pete and I dined like kings, smashing a local pepper steak with fury, and gluttoning an entire pizza at a French-Laos diner not far from our Riverview Hotel. Laos felt good. In the stomach, in the mind and in the cockles. After feeling terribly displaced and brained from the intense ‘Kok this all felt like a breath of fresh air.
And it would go on in a similar fashion, to an even more enjoyable and somewhat bizarre extent. The next day we followed a tip off from our mate Matt from Brighton, suggesting the way forward was North to a little town by the name of Vang Vieng. Now picture this. In the middle of nowhere, after bussing through some lush mountainous road passing tiny shacks and shanty towns, you arrive at what appears to be a one horse town with a population of around 20,000. If that. As you trail down the main drag, the level of relaxation is such that you are certain the authorities are distilling valium in the eater supply. Veeeery relaaaxo. A plethora of bars and cafés serving with ‘BeerLao’ ads adorning every entrance way line the main street and every bloody place in town is showing an episode of ‘Friends’ at a jet-engine decibel level, luring the unsuspecting and oft beguiled Westerner into their premise and plying them with the advertised BeerLao. Vang Vieng is the Laos equivalent of Las Vegas. It is bizarre. For the life of me I could not work out why every freakin place in town had to show Friends! Only one bar went its own way, playing every Goddam episode ‘Family Guy’ on repeat ad nauseum. Suitably, this bar was the only one with a menu featuring ‘Happy Pizza’, ‘Happy Garlic Bread’ and the potentially terrifying ‘Opium Tea’. Family Guy, im sure, would never be the same again.
After two enjoyable nights parked in a riverside bungalow, and one ridiculous write off of an afternoon tubing down the Mekong river in oversize rubber tubes, stopping off at the multitude of bars and rope wings along the way, we decided that ‘Vang Vegas’ was not doing the trip any justice and we should move further north. Boozy poms and wasted yanks get trapped in this town, smashing the tube day after day only to quell their hangovers the next morning and contracting Tinnitus from yet another caper involving Ross and Rachel’s love triangle. The place was weird man, and if ever I felt like the sheep backpacker following the herd, it was here. And after three episodes of friends I actually felt my brain vegetating.
As I write this, I am in Luang Prabang, 8 hours north of Vang Vegas. It’s been a strange week as I tick off my sixth night in this sleepy town, amblin more so than zoomin'. I’ve got a lot more to say. Hold that thought, go smash a coffee, take a bathroom break and read a novel in there. You’re crazy if you don’t. And I promise not to be too long.
‘I think….both’.
Since the last instalment, It’s been a solid regime of zoomin and amblin around this mad, beautiful, wild, crazy, gloriously diverse continent. And its not that I haven’t felt the urge to divulge all the nitty gritty, all the ins and outs and ups and downs and roundabouts and creamy middles of this wild horse chase adventure. It’s not. A lot has happened…sometimes more than I even realise, especially when yet another day is spent falanging around on the SpicyLaos hostel balcony playing guitar, watching films and generally shooting the sheizer with whoever is around. There’s been a lot of intense moments, a lot of burning around, and as I said earlier, a Libra-scaled balance of zoomin and amblin (in Colorado drawl). To be brutally honest, despite basking in majestic glory of far off exotic lands, it’s been a bit of an effort to take everything in and do it all justice. That, and writing a blog for every waking moment as I did for the Europe trip seems ridiculous this time round, to the point where I’d have nothing to write about because all I’d be doing is writing….about nothing….Bit of a paradox, no?
But here’s what you need to know - here’s the lowdown on what’s going on inside the mindset of Dool as I zoom and amble across jungles, beaches and borders with nothing but my large pack, a bashed acoustic guitar.and a vague concept of what the hell I’m actually doing over here.
Pete and I took a relatively cheap AirAsia flight from Bangkok to a place in Northern Thailand called Udon Thani. The retreat from the ‘Kok was a true blessing; whilst I enjoyed the manic place to begin with, it well and truly did my head in after three nights. Pure chaos. It rained like God was incontinent upon arrival to Udon Thani, as Pete and I white knuckled our seats whilst trying to maintain a manly sense of ease and nonchalance. Deep down we were both shitting ourselves, fearing that our pilot was the son of a rich Thai businessman who forged his aviation papers with a shiny briefcase full of Thai Baht. The plane landed despite the storm as blood returned to our knuckles.
From here we crossed the ‘Friendship bridge’, the connecting point between Thailand and Laos, which perhaps should have been called the Bridge of red tape considering the process involved in getting a Laos visa. It was worth the wait, not just because of the cool full page glossy stamp on page 6 of my passport. Laos felt like a great place to be as soon we set foot inside the border. There was something in the air, a vibe of lethargic freshness.
Laos is a recent backpacker trailpath, for years unnoticed by the plundering Westerner, especially compared to the attention received by nearby nations like Thailand and Vietnam. One thing I noticed immediately upon setting foot into this country is that it is really just at its infant stage of coming to grips with an expanding tourism industry. Cautious of rampant Westernisation and compromising the good natured Laos way of life, the Laos government has been determined to maintain a fine line. A large ecotourism body has been instrumental in providing environment friendly tour programs and treks, and in general, it seems something is going right. The locals are layed back and friendly, welcoming, but certainly happy to see that their pride and joy is not overrun by destructive, out of control tourism.
Vientiane is perhaps the sleepiest capital city on earth. To our delight, we discovered that we were about to enjoy 8000 Laos kip to a single Australian dollar. Henceforth, Pete and I dined like kings, smashing a local pepper steak with fury, and gluttoning an entire pizza at a French-Laos diner not far from our Riverview Hotel. Laos felt good. In the stomach, in the mind and in the cockles. After feeling terribly displaced and brained from the intense ‘Kok this all felt like a breath of fresh air.
And it would go on in a similar fashion, to an even more enjoyable and somewhat bizarre extent. The next day we followed a tip off from our mate Matt from Brighton, suggesting the way forward was North to a little town by the name of Vang Vieng. Now picture this. In the middle of nowhere, after bussing through some lush mountainous road passing tiny shacks and shanty towns, you arrive at what appears to be a one horse town with a population of around 20,000. If that. As you trail down the main drag, the level of relaxation is such that you are certain the authorities are distilling valium in the eater supply. Veeeery relaaaxo. A plethora of bars and cafés serving with ‘BeerLao’ ads adorning every entrance way line the main street and every bloody place in town is showing an episode of ‘Friends’ at a jet-engine decibel level, luring the unsuspecting and oft beguiled Westerner into their premise and plying them with the advertised BeerLao. Vang Vieng is the Laos equivalent of Las Vegas. It is bizarre. For the life of me I could not work out why every freakin place in town had to show Friends! Only one bar went its own way, playing every Goddam episode ‘Family Guy’ on repeat ad nauseum. Suitably, this bar was the only one with a menu featuring ‘Happy Pizza’, ‘Happy Garlic Bread’ and the potentially terrifying ‘Opium Tea’. Family Guy, im sure, would never be the same again.
After two enjoyable nights parked in a riverside bungalow, and one ridiculous write off of an afternoon tubing down the Mekong river in oversize rubber tubes, stopping off at the multitude of bars and rope wings along the way, we decided that ‘Vang Vegas’ was not doing the trip any justice and we should move further north. Boozy poms and wasted yanks get trapped in this town, smashing the tube day after day only to quell their hangovers the next morning and contracting Tinnitus from yet another caper involving Ross and Rachel’s love triangle. The place was weird man, and if ever I felt like the sheep backpacker following the herd, it was here. And after three episodes of friends I actually felt my brain vegetating.
As I write this, I am in Luang Prabang, 8 hours north of Vang Vegas. It’s been a strange week as I tick off my sixth night in this sleepy town, amblin more so than zoomin'. I’ve got a lot more to say. Hold that thought, go smash a coffee, take a bathroom break and read a novel in there. You’re crazy if you don’t. And I promise not to be too long.
4.6.08
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