The Morning After

The vague, stuporous idiot grin belies a long, painful day coming on with sunrise of the morning after the full moon.

Kids These Days

As we've seen from previous photos, there are always party casualties. Doc in the box to the rescue! Of course, not everyone takes his recovery seriously. Note the IV bag and the the smoke. What you can't see is that he's shoeless. I know this because he wheeled his IV cart outside the clinic to have a smoke. He sent out for a pair of slippahs while he loitered outside pumping fluid into his veins and nicotine into his lungs. Which reminds me, there's a booming market in mismatched flip flops the day after the party and on subsequent days. Kids wander the streets with woven baskets full of recently collected lost shoes.

Fire Down Below

Not all of the fire folk are professionals. There is quite a bit of amateur fire dabbling at the Full Moon Party. I need hardly go into the details of what happens when a bunch of drunks who've been up for a couple of days voluntarily get into close proximity with flaming arches, jump ropes, spinning hoops, balls, and the like. Kind of like a train wreck, in that you can't help but watch. And photograph. For the observant amongst you, the lady in the foreground with the fantastic legs? Not a lady.

Proximally Advantageous

Fire dancing is all the rage at the beach. The Thai guys are incredible; they are, for all intents, professional fire dancers, with all the skill, poise, and confidence around flaming objects that this entails. Still, note the green cross of the medical clinic in the background. Just in case.

Crowd Control

And, as long as you're going to be in a big crowd, try to, well, you know.

Abunoriginal

Most folks at the Full Moon Party wind up painted like day glow aboriginals. Might as well go all in and do it up right.

Bin Laden Lives!

And he's serving drinks on a beach in Thailand! Not strictly in keeping with the teachings of the Koran, but he seemed to be having a good time.

Rockstar

At least this guy had the good sense to order a couple beers before he passed out so he'd have something to start on when he woke up.

Done

This guy didn't even bother to dig himself a moat. Mmmm, sand. Tasty.

No Man is an Island

But each can still dig a moat around himself if he so desires. Nature's subtle way of saying look but don't touch?

Full Moon Fever

The bumping beaches of Hat Rin's Full Moon Party teemed with tens of thousands of people for the week surrounding the night of the full moon. Many were your average international party folk: drunken Australians, Euro-ravers, English lager louts, the very occasional American out of his element... There were definitely some standouts, though.

Bandwidth!

Greetings from lovely, highly industrialized Cebu! Blog has come full circle in that I am back where the blog journey started, once again drydocking the boat in the Philippines. More on that and the crossing from Chuuk later; for now let's enjoy some bandwidth access and unload a few photos from the Thailand trip earlier this year. I know this is confusing, jumping from one location to another, but I hope the photos entertain regardless.

Sunday Go To Market

If someone offers you a deal on a room that seems too good to be true, chances are, it is. Says the guy who checked into a room directly above a bar on a Saturday afternoon before an all Saturday night party kicks off at said bar while said idiot who thought he’d hit the jackpot with his three dollar room stayes awake listening to the sounds of standard Australian revelry and the clanking of bottles. Things finally quieted down at around 3:30 AM, allowing for blissful slumber until 5:45 AM when the bottle clanking resumed, resultant clean up from the seemingly just settled debauchery.

The complete lack of sleep and the early morning wake up did have a silver lining, driving me out of bed early to look around my new neighborhood in Chiang Mai on a Sunday morning. I found a local market, a block long metal roofed open air shed with stalls selling everything you can imagine, much of it food related. I was the only white guy in the place, watching in fascination as the locals selected their breakfasts and the ingredients for their Sunday meals. I barely knew where to start with ordering food, as much of it was downright unidentifiable. Cloudy red gelatinous cubes of...gelatin, green leafy vegetables that might have been field or collard greens, everything you can cut off a pig but the oink, tubs of live fish still writhing and fighting to be at the bottom of the bucket where the water pooled, brightly colored sticky rice confections, whole tables full of bowls of all types of stewed meats and veggies that sit there all day, a world of cakes and breads, ten different types of hand made sausages, shredded squid, noodles of all makes and models, flats of quail, chicken, and duck eggs, drink stalls with vats of liquids that get ladled into plastic bags with a straw inserted, an overwhelming sensory overload before even considering the surrounding stalls peddling flowers, sundries, and trinkets. If you’re going to be kept up all night because you saved six dollars on a place to sleep, you might as well go spend it in a place like this. Though might I suggest that you personally witness an open flame under anything you eat before you eat it? I jest, and can’t speak highly enough of the cleanliness, quality, and freshness of even the most ramshackle street food vendors, but I got here pretty soon after this market opened, and all those bowls of curry were already out and sitting at room temp. When did you make it again?

Okay Already!

Yes, I'm generally lazy. Yes, I'm a bum. Yes I was off for five months, traveled to a bunch of fun places, and posted very little. Yes I am back at work in Chuuk with a backlog of brain droppings (thank you, George Carlin, you are missed) that need to get on the page. No I am no longer in any of the places that I am going to try to start posting about, this is all half baked stuff that never made it onto the screen before. And, most importantly, yes I am deeply grateful and gratified for the gentle and not so gentle prodding I have received from may of you who have nothing better to do on the internet. Thank you for your kind and encouraging words. So, let's see what's been languishing in the to be posted pile for months at a time. And a side note from a guy who has an unexpected on shore time and internet windfall in the middle of the week: eating at a buffet in Chuuk? Generally a bad idea.

Nirvana in the Strangest Places

Are these people serious? All the ice cream I can eat in forty-five minutes? For just under two dollars? Do they know who I am? Apparently not.

Say Wat?

They say the pun is the lowest form of humor. If that is the case, my travel partner Randal and I have been wallowing in the gutter ever since we discovered that the Khmer word for temple, thus used throughout Thailand and Cambodia, is Wat. I know you see where this is going, but I’ll nudge you along, just because I’ve had a couple weeks of practice and, let’s face it, wallowing is fun.

When traveling and passing one of myriad temples, signs for temples, outlines of temples on the horizon: “Wat’s that?”

“Wat?”

“That.”

“Wat.”

“Right over there, with the spires and decorated roof line.”

“It’s a wat.”

“That’s wat I’m asking. Wat do you think it is?”

“Wat do you think I’m saying?”

“Wait, wat?”

“Exactly.”

“Say wat?”

“WAT!”

“Huh?”

“Wat, are you deaf, or just slow?”

You get the Abbott and Costello idea. Even more amusing when the cab driver gets involved and tries to help.

The list goes on: “Wat are we doing today? Wat’s next? Wat time? Wat will we see there?” Especially fun when the specific wat has a name that we can run with, like the below mentioned Wat Po, which can be slurred into sounding like What For, or What Fo’. See what you can do with that one. Fun, isn’t it?

Big and Buddahful

Here’s Thailand’s largest reclining Buddha, measuring in a 45 meters long. He lives at Wat Po, Bangkok’s oldest temple, which predates the city itself. That he is reclining means that his earthly time, all that sitting and smiling, is at an end; he’s gotten it right and is about to enter Nirvana. I hope Nirvana is large, because this guy is, to put it in perspective, larger than the boat upon which I work and, being made of gold painted plaster covered brick, heavier as well.

Peek-a-Buddah

Sole Man

The soles of his feet are breathtakingly inlaid with 108 mother of pearl depictions of Buddhist holy symbols. The craftsmanship of the work is stunningly intricate. It’s the longest I’ve ever stared at the feet of an inanimate object. It is also, unfortunately, the longest I’ve stood at a choke point and been inundated with a constant flow of tourists. I felt like a rock in the middle of an Asian salmon stream.

Lucky Rain

The building wall that runs along the Buddha’s backside is lined with 108 metal bowls that, if a small coin worth about a penny is placed in each, provide the depositor good luck. There are enough bowls and enough people seeking good luck that the sound of metallic rainfall is an eerie constant while gazing at this religious marvel.

Check

When was the last time you crossed something off of your life list? I know that some of you who read this are the smart ones, the folks who have achieved that fabled catbird seat of life where your daily job is proof and reinforcement of why you were put on the earth. Others of you are motivated jet setters methodically and rapidly crossing off your goals and developing new and loftier ones. Me, not so much. My ambitions are large, but I have not much ambition, so when I get to put a big fat line through something on my wish list, it’s momentous.

Today was momentous. Since the first time I ever heard about the Cambodian ruins of Angkor Wat as a child, I’ve dreamed of seeing and exploring them. Though I only scratched the surface today, I get to cross it off the list. I don’t really know where to begin describing the experience. Is it the sheer size of this eighth wonder of the world? The complexity and intricacy of both the grand, functional design and the fine finishing strokes? The fact that it was all done by hand and took three quarters of a million people decades of constant work to create the final product? The religious and spiritual significance palpable at every turn? The mystery that surrounds the downfall and disappearance of the culture responsible for the wonder that is Angkor Wat? The feeling is too new, raw, overwhelming to put a finger on right now, as I’m still getting my head around it, but kindly stay tuned for further, extensive gushing.

Rumors of War...

...have been greatly exaggerated, at least in he area where I crossed into Cambodia today. These guys are no fools. They have Angkor Wat on their flag, they aren’t going to start shooting up the border point that provides access to it, their largest cash cow. I wore my loudest tourist outfit, just in case. Almost went out and bought some dark socks and blue blockers to make sure they knew I was the real touron McCoy, but the shirt I wore, I feel there was no doubt. In short, a painless crossing. I won’t go into details concerning the train ride, save to make those not already so aware of the fact that a late night meal of Indian food before a pre-dawn six hour train ride is, well that’s just silly.

Priceless

Total cost of ground transportation from Bangkok to Siem Reap, Cambodia, including the $1.70 (yes, $1.70 for a six hour, 200 mile ride) train ticket from Bangkok to the Cambodian border, tuk-tuk transportation across the border, and taxi ride to my hotel in Siem Reap: $23.

Cost of plane ticket from Bangkok direct to Siem Reap: $334.

Fact that there is a Thai-Cambodian border war taking place where I need to cross if I use ground transportation, a real live conflict with mortars and rockets and fleeing civilians: Priceless.

Rant on Rave

Let’s talk about rave music. It’s been on my mind a lot lately. Actually, it’s permeated every facet of my life for the last three days, rattling my head as it rattles the glass panes in the windows of my rented room, perched a hundred feet up and back from the non-stop party beach that is Hat Rin. Only now that it is obvious that the moon is no longer full are people showing any signs of letting up; during the days and nights following the main bacchanal, when it was hard to detect that the moon was waning, the band played on.

Not the band, rather, but the DJ. Now, DJ’s are supposed to be a creative lot, mixing beats and cleverly juxtaposing songs to keep the party going, for three days in this case. Great. It would seem like a worthy challenge, then, to reach deep into the music collection to come up with a variety of songs that kept the music fresh and interesting; dazzle us with the depth and breadth of your musical knowledge and mixing skill, oh clever and creative DJ!

Or, despite having access via the internet to every piece of music since the dawn of man translated into a set of ones and zeroes, you could just rehash the same eleven popular techno songs ad nauseum for three days, like some sort of nonstop top forty radio station that’s lost over half its collection. And also like a top forty station, every time a new DJ comes on, he establishes himself as hip and dazzles the party with his musical taste by...playing those same eleven songs. And keep in mind that this is a kilometer long stretch of beach lined with bars and clubs, all holding beach parties, each with a bumping sound system, each with a DJ, each armed with the same eleven songs. So, if your eyes are getting stung by blowing foam from the bubble generator, or the smell of fuel from the giant flaming jumprope or the whirling fire dancers is getting to you, or this particular set of drunken Aussies is getting too unruly, you can move down the beach to the next club, the next beach party, where an all new creative and inventive DJ will be playing...the same eleven songs. Which may mean that you leave one party, walk a hundred paces down the beach, and into another party where the DJ is just firing up the song that drove you away from the last party.

Here’s what I don’t get. These eleven songs are popular right now because they are new, right? Which means that they have supplanted, by nature of their newness, the last eleven popular techno songs. The supplanted songs, though older, were as popular in their time as these new songs are now. They had the same ability to make people want to dance. So they aren’t cutting edge, but they are still effective. Why not take those eleven older songs and put them in the mix, bringing the playlist to twenty-two? Or, delve back even further into techno popularity, all the way back to 2010, and access even more once cutting edge songs, really expand the repertoire. Though that may expose you to criticism, brand you as a DJ dinosaur, I, being blind to what was popular last month on the techno scene, would be most appreciative of a little variety. I may be drunk, but you played the same tune four songs ago.

If I sound confident putting the number at eleven, it’s because I counted. Not at first, but after a day and a half of fairly continuous drinking and dancing, I started paying attention. Then I became a little obsessed, making a list with notes that read things like ‘polka number,’ ‘Italian job,’ ‘BEPeas #2,’ and ‘Matrix ripoff.’ I had to assign names I could easily recognize, as I don’t normally keep up on my techno, being more of a fan of people playing instruments. That said, if techno has a place, it is most certainly on a Thai beach keeping people up and moving for three days. Techno certainly does make one want to move. The driving beat, the constantly modulating, elevated tempo that builds to irresistibly danceable crescendoes, the groupthink feeling it generates amongst a seething mass of chemically altered brains and bodies, the chest rattling, organ shifting bass lines, well, it’ll make you tap your toes for sure. No, I’m not normally one for techno, or nonstop dancing, for that matter, but pump me full of Thai whiskey and Red Bull, the real stuff, slap a bunch of day glo paint on me, throw a huge howlable moon above a semicircle crescent of tropical beach sand, and drop me in the middle of a living breathing mass of sweaty, undulating humanity wriggling around to a nonstop driving beat, and, hell, that’s what I came here to see and do, so let’s dance. If only, if only, could someone maybe play a different tune?

Rudimentary

I won’t call my current digs ramshackle, but I will say that I just borrowed a ladder, hammer, and nails to reaffix a loose piece of corrugated tin that flapped noisily in the wind last night and kept me awake. Then I rented a towel. Tomorrow, I will cadge a toilet seat and this place will start to feel downright homey. No, not ramshackle exactly. How about...rudimentary.

Rash Decision

My resolve against riding scooters in general and especially in tropical vacation spots stays strong. Four days on a world famous full moon party beach has, in fact, strengthened it immeasurably. I have seen just about every kind of road rash injury imaginable, from shaved down and bandaged heads to mummified feet swathed in plastic bags to protect against moisture, with plenty of slung arms and exhaust burn bandaged calves in between. Large scale skin loss does nothing to slow people’s party resolve. They return to the seething fray to dirty their fresh wound dressings and, with two guys swinging a flaming jumprope on the beach, maybe add a few more. Enough fresh scooter wounds about to answer the question I formulated the first few times I wandered the streets of Hat Rin: Why are there so many medical clinics around here?

Inoculous

Note to self: when traveling in Asia, do NOT look at the CDC website first. Okay, that’s bad advice, but prepare yourself mentally before you type in the name of your destination country, because the laundry list of things that can happen to your body on your travels will make you want to cancel your tickets and stay home, hooked up to a Flintstone vitamin IV drip. I only had vague suspicions that there were that many types of potentially nasty microorganisms out there, much less that they’d be lined up at the airport taxi stand waiting to hop into my body.

Which, of course, they were not. So far, common sense and a bit of caution has prevailed even, and I won’t go into detail here, as far as that frequent source of travel problems, the midsection, is concerned. As with much of life, common sense goes a long way. Unfortunately it comes up short stopping Dengue fever, Japanese encephalitis, malaria, and typhoid.

Therefore, I went to the Chuuk hospital several weeks before vacation started in order to get the proper inoculations, immunizations, and mosquito borne disease prophylaxis. See all the cool words you can learn on the CDC website? Here’s a couple more: amoebic dysentery and hemorrhagic fever, but hey, let’s not dwell. Long story short, when I started trying to get medication and shots, the people at the Chuuk hospital looked at me like I was growing a second head on my shoulder, which is pretty much the only type of extreme circumstance for which you’d want to darken the doorway of said hospital. It’s scary there. Through perseverance and a significant amount of kicking myself for showing up within three hours of lunch, I drilled down to the most qualified and knowledgeable person I could find. The doctor made a good point: we don’t have those diseases here, so why should we have inoculations and prophylaxis against them? Fair enough. Her follow on, though, was classic, and the inspiration for this post.

“You go Asia, you think hepatitis, you think malaria, you no get bit by mosquito, you no eat.” Blink, blink. “I’m, uh, I’m going to be there for a month and a half. I am bound to get hungry at some point.” She clarified her point, telling me to only eat canned and packaged food, a commonly employed practice in Chuuk, but you know I’m eating my way through Thailand with great vigor, so not possible. And as for mosquitoes, swaddle yourself in Eddie Bauer expedition clothing, DEET your skin until it combusts, hotbox your room with mosquito coils, wear one of those crazy noise generators on every limb, but if you are somewhere that mosquitoes lurk, from your local creek to the jungles of SE Asia, the crafty, persistent little bastards are going to get you at some point. So, armed with whatever common sense I’ve been able to scrounge over the years, a couple painful shots in the arm administered by a Bangkok doc in the box, and a packet of pills that may or may not rock my liver as hard as having malaria, I emerge from my mosquito netted bed in a bamboo shack (another story) with less than long sleeves and pants and mesh veiled pith helmet, sometimes, gasp, at dawn or dusk, to eat everything in Thailand that swims, hops, or gets washed if at all then in non-purified drinking water, hoping that these precautions will suffice. If they do not, I can always diagnose myself in full living color and hyper-realistic detail on the CDC website.

Missednomer

The picture isn't great, but you can still see the model name of the scooter. Automotive companies try pretty hard to come up with unique names for their products. I think Honda may have missed it's mark here, though. Is next year's model to be the Breakdown? How about the ever popular Recall? Definitely get the extended warranty for your Honda Tuneup.

Thai One On

I’ve been eating a lot of Thai food lately. Which makes sense, seeing as to how I’m in Thailand. Not that you’d have to work that hard not to eat Thai food here. Spent the first portion of the vacation in a bunch of uber-touristy places, where non-Thai options abound for the closed minded or those who long for a taste of home, wherever that may be (read Australia, Europe, or Russia). But if you want Thai food, Thailand is certainly a good place to get it. And I want Thai food. The food may wind up being the highlight of the trip, and I’ve seen some pretty cool stuff so far. Two of my top ten foods of all time are of the Thai persuasion, and you can get them just about everywhere here. So I do. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Coconut milk, lean pork, chicken, or seafood, and fresh veggies over rice or noodles in one form or another. Cooked to order with fresh ingredients in sit down restaurants, outdoor cafes, beach huts, airport kiosks, and, my favorite, stalls on the street. Despite best third world judgement, I’m generally pro street stall food, and the Thais make it easy with their focus on fresh ingredients and general cleanliness. I’ve mostly, ahem, mostly avoided eating pre-prepared foods from serving bowls that have been sitting at room temperature for who knows how long, sticking instead to dishes made to order, and so far so good. False sense of security due to the hepatitis A vaccine I got when I arrived? Maybe. But combating whatever may be lurking in the food by scorching it with hot peppers and drowning it in local beer seems to be working. By the end of this trip I am going to bleed coconut milk if wounded. I may get tired of it by the time I leave, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Galangal, anyone?

Fashion Foibles

A note on Japanese fashion. Tie your shoes. Lose the sequins. Blouse your pants to hide the faux leopard fur sticking out of the top of your motorcycle style boots. Eschew mauve and acid green as foundational outfit colors. Strive to avoid jangling like a post apocalyptic scrap metal trinket cart when you walk. And go easy on the menagerie of animals festooning your backpack. And that’s just my advice for the men. I’m no fashion maven, but, c’mon, fellas.

Origamied

As long as we’ve got half a day to kill at the Narita airport, let’s take a gander at the origami museum conveniently located in one of the terminals, shall we? Holy cow. Forget about folded cranes and cute little boxes and jumping frogs. Actually, don’t forget about folding cranes, but now, instead of picturing a single crane, picture that crane with either one or a series of smaller cranes sprouting from and attached to the larger crane, without glue, tape, or tearing of the single square or rectangular sheet of paper. Big crane, small crane sprouting from the tail. Or the wingtip. Or both wingtips. Or a whole halo of small cranes surrounding the big one, delicately connected by tenuous paper bridges again, all from a single sheet of paper.

And that’s just for starters. Everything from completely convincing animals of every shape and sort, down to the wrinkled appearance of hippo hide or the jutting lower incisors of a bulldog standing over a food bowl that contains a bone, to entire dioramas of folded fleets at sea, dragons sacking towns (Look out! Godzilla!), and dojo courtyards full of martial arts practitioners in identical poses. Flowering trees with falling petals, Escher knockoffs with square patterns of paper morphing into gradually more detailed fish and birds going in opposite directions, intricate kimono designs. Did I mention that this is all done with folded sheets of- right, I already said that. Enchanting.

Narita Nap

I fell asleep at the Narita Airport in Tokyo. Not particularly remarkable, sure, except I did it in a bed. I know a lot of you world travelers are used to swanky airports with hotel type day rooms, but a new one on me. A combination of six months of sleep deprivation, a convoluted travel schedule with an all day layover, and curiosity took me to the lobby of the airport day room and shower facility. Twelve bucks an hour rented me a spacious cubby of a room with a single bed and a pocket shower, toiletries and sundries included. Granted it wasn’t particularly plush nor overly peaceful with people walking up and down the hall checking in and out, but it was meticulously clean, Japanese clean, and, bottom line, I was snoozing in an airport without having to arrange myself across a series of airport chairs, uncomfortable armrest to be navigated half way down my body and luggage wedged under me so someone didn’t make off with it while I slept. Then a hot shower before stepping back into the terminal to face the world. Pretty neat.