Chiang Mai at Night; Sex Tourism in Thailand

The last time I tried posting via blogger, the blogger servers had some problem and
lost my post. My friend Ron lost his post at the same time. I was too impatient and
tired to spend half an hour rewriting it. This time, good ol' reliable Notepad will
keep my post safe.

We are now in Pai and I will post about our last few days' adventures later.

:::::::::

So back in Chiang Mai, we spent the 24th visiting a couple Bhuddist temples, Wat Phar
Singh and Wat Chedi Luang, the oldest one in Chiang Mai. Pretty nifty.

On the walk between temples, we bumped into our friend Brendan again! Strange how we
saw him every day there in different places, even though it's a city of 1.6 million
people. He was sitting at an outdoor restaurant, so we talked and joined him for
lunch. We spent about 2 hrs with him; he's a really interesting and talkative guy.

After the second temple we went to get a one hour Thai massage for $3 Canadian. Ron,
Ian, and Jos loved it while I thought it kinda sucked. A lot of it was really
painful, but I figured it would make me more relaxed. Nope. When I had to roll onto
my stomach, my foot started cramping. It never cramped on this trip until then.
Maybe it was the lady that I got or maybe I'm just not suited to Thai massage. Some
of it was relaxing, but then it would be followed by really painful stuff that didn't
do much. The whole endorphins thing just didn't work for me. We'll try another place
later perhaps.

That evening we went to a local club but I wasn't feeling too well so I took the key
and caught a tuk-tuk back to our guesthouse. It was the only key, and without it the
others could not even enter the building to knock on the door so I had to wait outside
as they were to arrive about half an hour after me.

Waiting for half an hour on the street (turned into a full hour) is rather dreary so I
decided to talk to one of the many prostitutes in Chiang Mai. Sex tourism is HUGE in
Thailand, and very much in your face in Chiang Mai. Everywhere you go North American
and European men of middle age, old age, and on occasion my age, can be seen with Thai
girls far out of their league. They come to vacation and pay for a girl for a night,
a weekend, or even a full week or two. The girls are like escorts, doing everything
with the men; shopping, dining, suntanning, drinking, clubbing.

We talked about this on many occasions each day. Once, we were discussing it at full
volume with our Swiss friends Rene and Urs at a restaurant. We then realized that
right behind us, not even 2 feet behind me, were two middle-aged white guys with
beautiful twentysomething Thai girls. We couldn't help but burst out in laughter.

Guys pick the girls up at bars usually, where you can see dozens of the girls who call
out at you when you walk by, like the mythical Sirens. Some of the girls stand on
street corners late at night, and that is where I decided to speak to one while I
waited for my fellow travellers.

Her name was Oil but her real name was Selima. She said she was 23 and I believe it.
Her voice was a little bit low, but I don't think she was a man... you never know
though. I made it quite clear I wasn't interested, and doubly made sure by telling
her that I was sharing my room with my sister and two friends, and I had the only key
to the room. She said it's good money, a night job once her sister's bar closes. I
asked her why she didn't just work her normal job like other people, but she didn't
really give me an answer. We talked about the other girls we could see on the street.
They're friends and they keep an eye on each other, especially when drunk washed up
men walk down the street catcalling at them. She kept a smile on her face almost the
entire time we spoke but it was sort of a fake smile, one she's so used to wearing she
has trouble putting it away. Her eyes seemed to show that she was sad, but it's hard
to read the face of someone who tries to hide real emotions. I felt sorry for her.

I spoke with her for about half an hour before a guy came by on a motorbike and picked
her up, after talking with her for about 5 minutes. In their conversation I could
hear a few words. He mentioned his girlfriend, asked whether Selima was still working
at her sister's bar down the street, and then she waved goodbye as they drove off.

The others soon arrived and we went to sleep; at 930am we caught a minibus to Pai.

To be continued...

Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand

Wow. This place is a blast and a half. We arrived by plane yesterday before 6pm and partied with backpackers from a million different places until we got home at 5am. We met 2 Swiss guys (Urs and Rene) outside a bar that was too expensive for any of us to enter, 2 Belgian girls (Marinaure et Rachelle) at the bar we settled on visiting, a Vancouverite (Brendan, originally from Huntington UK where many of my family comes from) at a random burger stand, 2 Frenchmen from Nice (Antoine et Nicolas) also at the burger stand (and got free rides on their motorbike with them), and some other randoms including a rude New Zealander (he left New Zealand, got Australian citizenship, and joined their military for 6 years or so) who was convinced that he knows more than I do.

His argument was rather interesting and in my opinion rather stupid: If you know you know 2% of things (I argued that this was a great overstatement) then you know you don't know the other 98%. Now, I disagree. Hypothetically speaking, if you knew you knew 2% of things then you would perhaps know 50% of other things but not know you know them, because it's difficult to tell what you really know and what you think you know, some of which you do indeed know and some of which you believe incorrectly. Meh.

Today we went shopping at the Sunday market and also the Night Bazaar here in Chiang Mai. They are crazy. In a good way. There were hundreds, probably thousands of stalls and tables full of all sorts of name brand clothing (all fake, but you'd never tell the difference, and very good quality), watches, shoes, pipes, weapons, musical instruments, silks, handicrafts, every type of Thai good you can think of, and of course food.

Everything must be bargained down and that was a LOT of fun for me. Arguing over 10 Baht (less than 40 cents Canadian) on an item that I've already brought down from 550 to 200 is pretty much inconsequential to my wallet, but the principle keeps me trying.

Among many gifts and other curios, I got 3 long sleeve Thai silk dress shirts that fit very nicely for a total of about $20. I also got some great shorts for $8. Tomorrow at Night Bazaar I will get some teeshirts, each for a bit under $4.

While walking along a street with stalls lining both sides as far as the eye could see, and the street packed shoulder to shoulder in most sections, I spotted the head above the crowd of our friend from last night, Brendan. We had a great little chat with him there in the street. In a city of 1.6 million + tourists, we were very surprised to bump into him.

After about 6 hours of shopping we headed back to our guesthouse.

After dropping our stuff off at the guesthouse, we left again with the aim of me buying some teeshirts. We weren't too successful as they started closing at around 11pm, but will try tomorrow. However, got some other great stuff and Josephine happened to spot our two Swiss friends Urs and Rene driving by in a tuk-tuk (three wheeled 2 seat little open taxi with canopy, will post a photo sometime) and yelled out to them.

They got the driver to stop and had supper with us before heading off to find the bar they were aiming for when we stopped them. Stellar guys, great to hang out with. They'll be in Australia later on and will visit Josephine, Ron, and Ian, and they might make it to New Zealand in which they'll be welcome to crash on my floor.

We plan to leave Chiang Mai for Pai day after tomorrow, it's about 3 1/2 hrs bus ride from here and a great place from which to go trekking for a few days.

There are finally 3 new photo galleries up in the left sidebar, as I finally got a place to upload pics at a net cafe. They are Kuala Lumpur, Pulau Pinang, and Pulau Langkawi. Pulau means island in Malay, just as Koh is Thai for island.

Time for some well-deserved sleep in my $3 a night guesthouse (nice place too).

Thailand!

Yesterday night we had some interesting conversation with Bob. Bob was brought up in Liverpool and now runs a small 16 room hotel in Wales with his Scottish wife. He told me I would be a leader of men. If I go to Wales while he's still running Alpine Lodge, I'll stay there for sure.

So today we had a crazy adventure:

I woke up at 9am and at 945am Zack, my hostel owner, came to tell me that the 1130am ferry off Langkawi was cancelled: today is a holiday here, Hari Raja I believe it's called, so they reschedule to 1030am and 130pm.

I got myself ready in 5 minutes and he drove me to the guesthouse where Josephine, Ian, and Ron were staying. They soon agreed that they should hurry up as fast as possible and Zack would drive us to the port. Ian was still in the shower and unaware of our new plans. 10 minutes later we were loaded into Zack's 5 seater and on our way.

Zack drove us at crazy speeds with the car really loaded down with us and four backpacks, and we arrived at 1030am, departure time. They let us get tickets and we made it onto the boat, thanks to Zack. He had called the ferry to confirm the times, and thanks to him we made it. He also used probably half a tank of gas on a 25 minute drive that usually takes about 40 minutes and with all of our stuff in his car.

Zack had also helped us arrange our train ticket for Thailand. We arrived in Satun, Thailand, and caught a tuk-tuk (pick up truck with two benches sideways in the back, and a canopy for shade) to the travel agent where our tickets were waiting.

We paid for our tickets and after some time and effort communicating with the kind lady who spoke very limited English, had plane tickets booked for us. We then loaded up on food and drink from 7/11 and caught a 3 hour bus to Hat Yai. We spent a few hours in a restaurant here eating food that was not the best, but satisfying.

In 50 minutes, our train departs Hat Yai and 14 hours later we arrive in Bangkok. A few hours after that, we'll board a plane for an hour long flight to Chang Mai in northern Thailand. Many adventures await us there.

I could have uploaded photos at this net cafe, but my laptop is too deep in my backpack and we have too short a time to get it unpacked, uploaded to my hosting, and repacked, as we still have to get to the train station. Maybe tomorrow?


One last reminder to UBC students: PLEASE vote for me for Senate :-)

Crazy crazy mangroves

So yesterday morning I awoke at 730am after going to bed at 630pm due to a tension headache. I had woken up at 230am with mosquito bites on my hands and arms, as it turned out there is a large gash in my window screen. I got out the mosquito net my dad kindly bought me before leaving home, and hooked it up with bungee cords and a coat hanger..

So, at 830am I was picked up at the guesthouse, along with a Londoner, a girl from Belfast named Emma, and her boyfriend from Czech Republic named Karel. We were driven about half an hour overland to a river boat launch. It isn't really a river, but one of many winding waterways that run through this island, surrounded on both sides by mangroves.

We spent more than four hours winding through waterways and around the coast in a boat with an outboard motor. There were the four of us, a driver, a guide, and four Dutch people. We went into a small cave where there were a few hundred bats hanging from the ceiling, saw a big lizard swimming along by the shoreline, visited a fish farm (nothing like the ones back home, which I wouldn't visit in a million years), saw hundreds of eagles gather to feed, ate a delicious lunch of Malay foods and local fruits on a secluded beach accessible only by boat, fed tropical fish in the open water from our hands and, eventually, returned to the boat launch for the ride back to our guesthouse by 4pm.

Soonafter I set out to find my sister Josephine, and our friends Ian and Ron who had not got my email with the details of my guesthouse, and had booked a different guesthouse room a couple of kilometres away. Luckily for me, my guesthouse owner was driving the opposite way and saw me walking in the scorching heat so he spun round, picked me up, and drove me there.

I found Ian and Jos sleeping, and Ron had left minutes earlier to find me at MY guesthouse. He returned about an hour later.

We took photos as the sun went down at the beach, then had a nice supper of Malay food at a local buffet restaurant. We hung out at their guesthouse for the rest of the night and I walked back to mine at around 11pm.

Sorry for the long post, but lots of stuff happened. Tomorrow if plans go ahead, we hope to leave for Bangkok. I now have 3 photo galleries ready on my laptop, and the owner here says I can upload them using my USB flashdrive. I'll do that as soon as I can.

Stiff Keyboard

This keyboard is reminding me that I have slight arthritis in my fingers. It is almost impossible to hit about half the keys properly, including both Shift keys and the Backspace key. Grr.

As for travelling, I have two new galleries, still waiting to find a way to upload them. I think I might be able to convince this place to let me plug in my laptop to their network later.

I left Pulau Pinang this morning and 3 hrs later arrived here on Pulau Langkawi, off the northwest coast of peninsular Malaysia. Nice place but not crazily cool so far. Tomorrow I am going on a 6 hour organized tour of the mangroves and such. It is very well rated by travellers, many of whom are luckily not of the rich old American variety and whose opinion on travelling I therefore will take seriously.

Yesterday I met a German named Ulf who was staying at my hostel, and since we're both travelling alone we went and found supper at some restaurant and had a couple of beers. I always enjoy meeting other travellers, especially when they're alone as well. There are too many coupls travelling, and they often don't seem very willing to meet new people. As a result I've been spending the vast majority of my time so far alone. While I definitely enjoy travelling alone, back in Europe and now here in Asia, there is definitely something to be said for travelling with others.

Right now, based on email correspondence, it appears as though my sister Joey and our friends Ian and Ron who are with her not that far from my location, will arrive here in Langkawi early tomorrow morning. A nice surprise, as the last email I got from them was that they were heading up the east coast of Thailand. Turns out the bus was fully booked already.

The pain in my fingers is becoming much worse, so I will end here. A better post with more real travel-related stories should be forthcoming.

Vote For ME

I'm on Pulau Penang now, having a great time. I'll update with a travel post later. For now...

Vote for Chris for Senate at Large in UBC's AMS Elections. Voting is already open and closes 459pm January 21st. That's VERY soon so go to the UBC student services centre now and cast your vote!

I am seriously running for this position, as I am overseas and therefore the best candidate for an at-large position. No one is more at-large than me, and I will remain at-large throughout most of my term as well, if elected, as I will still be overseas until Christmas.

http://www.ams.ubc.ca/elections/

Oh, and I don't know if this position pays, cuz I'm out of the loop what with being on a tropical island with limited internet access, but if it does then much of that money would be directly funneled into purchasing beer. To give to you. Free.

Yeah I said it.

Bye bye KL

Kuala Lumpur kinda smells and there isn't too much to do here. I couldn't take a third day here so I'm skipping out early, and catching a train to Penang in an hour and a half.

Time to hit up the monorail.

The internet lies

Well, actually I just can't read.

Here's the deal: I booked a train ticket from Johor Bahru, Malaysia to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in Air-Conditioned 2nd Class. I thought it said I had a sleeper, but not a 1st class sleeper cabin. Turns out I was wrong. I had a seat. It reclined. Slightly.

7 hours later I got off the train, having slept no more than 30 mins in 5 minute increments between loud outbursts of laughter from the very much awake and very much happy cleaning staff. In Malaysia, they believe that on a train ride that begins at 1115pm, you should first play a half hour program on the wasteland of central Australia from 1989, then play Stanley Kubrick's worst movie Artificial Intelligence so that passengers can't sleep until 2am. But just to make sure the passengers don't give in to evil evil sleep, they also leave the bright fluorescent lights on inside the car. At least it only cost me CAD $9.00

I also thought when I booked my hostel online for Kuala Lumpur, that it said there was internet access in my room. This time I read it correctly; the internet DID lie. "With a LAN card you can connect your laptop on your own desk to the world" from their website. Language barrier I guess, even though it's only foreign English speakers working here: turns out I can connect my laptop down in the common room, but there's only one net connection and at least two other people with laptops. Not good.

I've got a photo gallery ready for Singapore, but I will have to wait until I can connect my laptop, hopefully tonight, to upload it.

As for Kuala Lumpur, it's a dirty city. The downtown area is not particularly big, and very walkable. I'm not sure if it's the open sewers (actually just drains, but full of garbage too) or the durian, but something smells in the streets here.

I tried going to Petronas Towers, the 2nd tallest building(s) in the world, but I couldn't figure out how to get to the top... I think they don't allow anyone up there unless they work there. Oh well, they have the world's 4th tallest telecommunications tower (CN Tower being the tallest) here as well, and it is definitely open to the public so I'll check that out today for a city view. Hopefully the smog doesn't interfere with photos too much. I'll also try and check out the National History Museum to learn about Malaysia's history. Tomorrow I'll head out, I believe to Penang, once again by train.

Bukit Timah Nature Reserve

Today I woke up in time to take advantage of the free breakfast offered at my ghetto hostel. The breakfast wasn't too ghetto - toast, scrambled eggs, hot dog wieners, tomato, carrots, pineapple.

After breakfast I got myself ready, loaded up on water and juice, and caught a bus to Bukit Timah Nature Reserve. Singapore is one of only two cities in the world (Rio de Janeiro being the other) to have within its confines primary rainforest, and it's a damn fine rainforest if you ask me.

I spent just under four hours hiking the trails, taking innumerable photos, and sweating, sweating, sweating, drinking and drinking, drinking. I didn't see all the creatures I had hoped to see - saw no flying lemurs, no tarapins, no frogs, and no pitcher plants (the ones that fill with water and catch bugs, also used by frogs to harbour tadpoles, which mature inside).

I was sad there were no monkeys either, until I arrived back at the entrance/exit to find hundreds of them had arrived. I started taking photos but my battery died after only 3 or 4, and having travelled all this way I decided to give in to consumerism and buy a disposable camera, with which I took 24 photos in under 5 minutes. If they turn out, I'll scan them all in New Zealand and post a small selection.

Monkeys are cool.

I also got scared shitless by a large black snake that suddenly slithered in front of me - well it was already in front of me and slithered away in fright. It was 4-5 feet long, and about 1.5 inches in diameter, black all along it's body. There are over 100 varieties of snake in Singapore, 28 of which live only in the Nature Reserves. A number of them are venomous.

I may be able to connect my laptop to the internet tomorrow or the next day at a friend's house here, in which case I will do my best to upload some photos of my trip so far.

I Terrorist

So it turns out I'm a terrorist.

Hokay, so: it started snowing in Vancouver before my plane took off, and we lost our place in the queue for de-icing so we ended up behind like 20 other planes, then they ran out of fluid for a bit, so we left over 2 hours late.

Arrived in San Francisco with 15-20 minutes to get from the N. American terminal to the gate for my Singapore Airlines flight. San Fran's airport is not user friendly: one way the sign said "Gates A1-A10" or something like that, and the other way the sign said "Baggage Pick-Up"... there were only two ways to go.

I chose baggage, and luckily it turns out that in American English, "Baggage Pick-Up" refers to any part of the airport that is not a departure gate of the letter A. So I bust my ass to the other end of the airport, where my gate is, only to find out that my flight has been delayed 5 minutes. The ladies at the check-in counter take my passport and ticket, and upon reading my name both suddenly stop smiling and worry and pity spread over their faces.

They run into a side room and come back after a minute, then tell me things should be ok, but I have to wait a few minutes. "Sir, your name is on the TSA list. The police are on their way to interview you and then you'll be allowed to go."

Luckily, San Francisco Metro Police (at least the two I met) were quite nice and after 5 minutes of reading each and every one of my passport stamps and only asking me a couple questions, they let me go.

Run to the gate, where 200 people are lined up for security checks. I bypass all but 30 with a fast pass for the employees lineup. Then I called a security guy and persuaded him to let me skip past the other 30 to the very front since my flight was due to depart within 0-5 minutes.

Bust my ass to the gate, only to find that everyone is waiting - no one has boarded. 5 minutes later, a man announces that "the problem with the lavatory has yet to be remedied, and we will make the next announcement in half an hour."

Get on the plane, turns out it's not a direct flight to Singapore as my itinerary says. We stop in Korea for an hour on our way, with 45 minutes consumed by the security check (mandatory, even though we weren't leaving the airport - and we had to leave the plane for cleaning).

Arrived in Singapore at 2am and was met by 4 kind young Singaporeans who paid for my cab ride to my hostel (I knew them from the internet).

And now I have to let the line of people waiting to use this computer have their turn.

Gone

The going away party was awesome. 60-some people showed up, had some good times, and returned home with a little more colour in their cheeks. Thank you to everyone who showed up, and especially to the people who brought me fine gifts of various imported fluids. It was like travelling to 8 different countries without leaving the basement.

Today I bought more stuff for my trip, including $500 worth of 4 different currencies. My wallet is now very colourful indeed - a true rainbow of debt.

As of 4am PST, Chris has left the country. He will return in approximately 12 months, assuming he is allowed reentry. And now he will stop writing in the third person. Next stop: San Francisco, then on to Singapore!

New Photo Gallery Up

Eh! Steve!

I did up a quick gallery of some pics I took during my 8 month stay in England (September 2002 - April 2003). These are just some (8) random snapshots of different things and places I saw. I will be making several more specific galleries of my time in England. Gallery is over
<--- there

When I have a bit more time (once I get to New Zealand) I will try and insert a proper write up for each gallery as the first part of the flash presentation. Until then, it's just a picture book with almost no words.

New Blog web address

Alrighty, domain is now pointed correctly. As of now, you can access this blog simply by going to www.photodiarist.com

:-)

Comments section fixed

I figured it out - despite my complete lack of knowledge of CSS, after about an hour I found I was missing a single tag, the one that inserts the comment body... somehow I must have cut it by mistake while altering the code with a comment hack from http://bloggerhacks.blogspot.com/

All is well now, and soon some more photo galleries should be up.

Comment problems

Hmm... looks like comments aren't quite working on my site... the comment itself is not posted, only the user name. I'll try to figure that one out soon, but right now I'm going to my grandmother's for dinner.

Boy, does she know how to cook a good meal.

Site up and running

After many hours fiddling with the coding of this template, I finally have my other sidebar working and everything lined up the way I want. In the left sidebar I will put thumbnails leading to my different flash photo galleries.

The first one is now ready - take a look and tell me what you think.

Coming soon: www.PhotoDiarist.com (this blog will become www.PhotoDiarist.com once my DNS settings and all that are set straight).