Leeched in Tama Negara...and those twin towers

I wrote this post already and then the power went out in the town of Banaue in the north of the Philippines....
So, there I was on a bus with Mats heading towards Taman Negara, the Malaysian jungle. We got into town a little after 4pm and headed immediately toward the travel agent/local restaurant to sign on for a jungle trek. Ross and John were sitting at a table contemplating leaving on a trek on their own that very night. Fortunately for them we walked in and convinced them to join us on a three dayer instead. Turns out that these two are more afraid of bugs than I. We encountered a rather large beetle in our hostel that night. There was another flying bug near the beetle that started up its wings and banged into Ross a few times. He did a very funny dance for us in the hallway trying to avoid the bug. His friend John started running to avoid Ross and the bug that was following him. Both of them decided not to wash that night because it would have meant walking past the bugs in the hallway to get to the bathroom.

The following day we discovered that three other people had signed on as well. Our team now consisted of an elderly Irish lady, two young Irish blokes and two Koreans along with the German (Mats) and I. The Koreans provided some sound effects for our little trek. We hadn't even left the boat and I could hear them making some very familiar noises behind me. On the trek itself I would hear "do you know where you are? you are in the jungle baby" over and over again. I wish they would have known all the lyrics to that little ditty by Guns'n Roses.


The leeches were out in full force. I could feel them trying to crawl into my socks and Mary, the elderly Irish lady, got leeched pretty bad. The trek itself was quite beautiful. It really did feel like the jungle as we trudged through mud, crossing springs and little rivers every half hour. We kept discovering elephant tracks and poo. The highlight was the discovery of tiger tracks and poo. I think the Irish lads were a little worried about those tracks. They were also more than a little worried about the leeches. There was a song and dance sequence surrounding their little adventures in removing leeches from their legs.



The night was spent in a large cave. Apparently this was a favorite sleeping hole for elephants as their tracks and poo was all over one side. We lit a fire to keep the animals at bay while our guides made dinner. Sun told us a little story about his hairdo...well, I had to ask. How can you resist asking a Korean man with a huge Afro puff about his hair? It took seven hours to get it done. Sun printed a picture of Snoop Dog to show the Thai hairdressers. Apparently the words Afro puff mean nothing to the Thai. Even with a picture most hairdressers were reluctant to give him what he wanted. He struck gold around six in the evening and by 1am he was a proud Korean sporting an afro. Kids can't control their giggles when he walks by...who can blame them, really? I could hardly control my laugh when I saw him.

Back to the cave: dinner was great. Chicken curry from a can, rice, veggies in a soup and hot chocolate. Bean, the other Korean, travels with his own homegrown food supplies. The man brought Ramin noodles and Korean hot sauce. I was so grateful because the veggies needed a little something extra.

After dinner we began discussing Mats' German ancestory. He is not into S&M despite being German but he is punctual and hates to be late or when others are late. Mats loves house music and is into the early nineties scene. Unlike most Germans he tans well. Once this riveting conversation was over I settled down in my sleeping bag and passed out. I then spent the entire night trying to push Mats off the tarp we were sharing.

Day two involved more mud, slipping, leeches, noodle lunch, swinging from tree branches to cross streams and a boat ride back.

Our little team met up for some drinks that night and we bonded some more.

It was time to get out of the jungle. We missed the local bus because Mats was too tired to get up and I was too willing to agree to stay in the bunk bed. It turned out to be a good experience. We scored a ride with three travel agents along a very beautiful road to Kuala Lumpur.


In Kuala Lumpur I discovered that durian...

...and making out were prohibited on the subway.

Not to worry. I did find something else to eat and something else to do on the subway.

Met up with Kevin, Tanya, Galen and Bill. I had met Bill back in Istanbul in the summer. Our team had assembled itself after I put the word out on Thaipusam, one of the biggest Hindu festivals in Asia.

On our first day together we took a little saunter over to the Petronas towers. At the towers we were guided into a small theatre where we were brain washed into believing that the towers were a vision realised.

Then we were herded onto an elevator for a ride up to the bridge where I went mental with my camera...but the pictures later were erased due to an effing defect on my card. Luckily, I had uploaded some of them before that happened.

KL is a purdy city.

Lovely Melaka: The Sacred Island & The Tatoo Artist

I'll be leaving tomorrow morning for the jungles of Taman Negara in Malaysia. The last few days have been busy but I'm out of energy to write. Left Cambodia on a bus. Spent a boozy night on Khao San Road with Chris, Kevin and Tanya. Flew the following day to Singapore. Spent a night in mall land and was afraid to litter. Took a bus the following day to Melaka on the west coast of Malaysia. Spent the last two nights at this awesome guesthouse and hung out at the tatoo parlor. Then had dinner at the tatoo parlor cooked by KC, the tatooist.

Went to a sacred island today.

A huge pilgrimage site for Muslims in SE Asia.

It has a golf course and beautiful white sand beaches where I sunbathed.

I'll fill this bit in more later.... Here is a picture of the dinner I had a couple of hours ago.

We took a hellish bus ride from Siem Reap to Bangkok. It took all day. The road is not sealed because a certain airline is paying a certain government to not fix the road so people will be forced to fly.

It's high season despite the bombs on New Year's in Bangkok. Khao San Road has a heavy police/gun presence. There were teams of six to seven cops walking around the streets in the tourist ghetto and the road has been sealed on both sides with barricades and more police officers. Tanya and Kevin were in town and we ran into them by chance on Khao San. That led to some debauchery at the Shell station that turns into a bar at night. We filled up on some beer before moving the show to a pub for some more refreshments including 'the tower'. We shared some of 'the tower' with a Thai pro (that's prostitute to you) who took a real liking to Tanya and I. She wanted nothing to do with the boys. I think she was craving some female western companionship so she could legitimise herself in the eyes of the westerners as just another 35-year-old woman hanging out at the bar with 20-something-year-old boys.

The following day I said goodbye to Chris for the fifth time. I flew to Singapore and landed in the evening. No buses to Malaysia, so I checked into a hostel in the city. I pretty much slept in the hallway on a bunk bed.

Singapore scares the crap out of me. I was afraid to litter. For sure I would get caned like those American boys did a few years back. "Singapore is Disneyland with the death penalty." That's the only quote about a country that I can remember.

The bus ride to Melaka was fairly painless. Malaysia is clean, clean, clean. It's beautiful. Melaka is an interesting city. It's one of the most famous port towns in the world. Back in olden times spices were to Europeans what oil is to Americans today. Apparently the crusades were launched by Europeans to find a spice trade route into Asia but once the Portuguese colonized Melaka they were called off. The city is also known for it's fortune tellers and healers. But, most notably, it is the site through which Islam entered Southeast Asia.

The Sama Sama guesthouse in the old Chinese quarter is instantly charming. There is dirty laundry all over the place. The owners are probably the most laid back Malay-Swiss couple in the world. He speaks fluent German because he squatted in an old apartment building in Hamburg for two years in the late seventies. I checked in for a night and promptly met some of the other guests. Anna checked in for a night three weeks ago. Mike checked in for a weeks a month ago. A 80-year old British lady keeps coming back to the place every other year for a month. The local tatoo artist dropped by and hung out for a while.

The following day I did my tourist duty of getting up at noon and sauntering through the tiny town. I spent most of the afternoon hanging out at the tatoo parlor with Anna. Then we were invited for dinner by him that night. Mike and Mats also came over. Mats decided that he would be leaving with me for Taman Negara over dinner. However, first we wanted to check out this sacred island of the coast of Melaka.

Bright and early the following day Anna, Mats and I packed our bathing suits and headed to the ferry. We landed on the uninhabited island and had traditional rice breakfast. The tombs of two Iraqis are located on this island. Pilgrims were arriving on the ferries in full hijab. We crossed the golf course, found a private little beach and took a nap under overcast skies. Then we dipped briefly into the water before heading back to the mainland to discover that both Anna and I had burnt oursleves to a crisp. Mats was fine. Figures that the olive skins get burnt and the white dude gets brown. A quick visit to the weekend market and it was off to bed for some tossing and turning until 7am.

Good Luck One Dolla'

The bus for Siem Reap was leaving at noon. That gave us a couple of hours to head to the beautiful National Museum in Phnom Penh. Rushing ourselves to pack was really worth it for this museum. At the centre a courtyard surrounded on all sides by large open rooms filled with sculptures. There was even a display of original Rodin sketches of Cambodian dancers from many years ago.

Our first afternoon in Siem Reap we checked into the Number 9 Guesthouse. It featured the first of three signs that amused me in SR.
The second sign was at the Dead Fish, a multi-level bar with floor seating and a crocodile pit.

And of course, the Twenty Seven, or rather, Seven Twenty as it says on the door.

The following day, once we slept through the morning into early afternoon, we grabbed a tuk-tuk driver and made our way out to Angkor Wat, the most famous of the temples of the former ancient Kmer empire. According to the Lying Planet is the largest religious building in the world. The central tower represents Hinduism's mythical Mount Meru. The wat was built in honour of Vishnu and served as the funerary temple for the king. The carvings along the wall and pillars are sublime. The nagas seem to be stepping out of the stone into the courtyards.

I wasn't really prepared for the steep walk up to the central tower. The steps are almost at a 90 degree angle. No railing in sight either to help you hold on. Signs at the bottom warn that you climb at your own risk.


I climbed slowly and got a cramp in my leg. Then I posed like so with Chris on the steps.

Sorry, you're gonna have to turn your head sideways. The computer here won't let me save an upright copy onto the hard drive.

The second temple we looked at was Bayon, the temple of faces. 216 faces of Avalokiteshvara to be exact.

Every temple has a Buddha statue sitting in one of the rooms with a bald headed wo/man trying to entice you to buy incense sticks for good luck.

Day 2 was more intense. We woke up at 4:30am to catch a tuk-tuk for the underwhelming sunrise at Ankor Wat. Seems that a few hundred other tourists had the same sort of idea. The sunrise went from blurry dark to blurry grey to blurry overcast skies.

On the plastic chairs next to us, at the edge of the lake, was Richard and his whiny wive. She ordered the coffee, got the money out of his moneybelt to pay, decided where they sat and clearly had no problems letting the world know that she was a pain in the ass. The icing on the cake was when she asked a lady immediately after sunrise "are you Japanese?". The woman did not look Japanese at all. She was Malaysian to which she replied "oh, because our son bought us this digital camera and I can't figure out how it works." Oh yes she did! I walked away to laugh and laugh and laugh.

We looked at some more temples. Chris was miserable. Food poisoning in the form of liquid poo. After a while all the temples started to look the same. Ta Prohm of Lara Croft fame was filled with Korean tourists taking pictures of every stone. Somehow I managed to edit them out of my shots.

They cut down the tree shooting out of the temple that Angelina Jolie stood atop but there were plenty of other overgrowing roots to photograph.

The Terrace of Elephants was also nice. The temple itself is under construction (cranes and all) and looks like a pile of rocks but the carvings on the outside were beautifully detailed.

Ta Keo is a massive pyramid that was not worth the two minute hike up the steep steps. There ain't nothing on top to look over or at. Nada.

That night we headed to the Seeing Hands massage parlor. It's a basement with four beds and four blind masseuses. They were good. A one hour massage cost $4. My guy felt his way around the bed with his hands and then spent a lot of time on my ass and legs. A little 4-year old girl that lives there came up and started to play with my dangling hands.

Banteay Srei is 37km away. We left it for the last day. Our driver took over an hour to get there which is why we didn't make it out to the sunset balloon ride. Admittedly, we kinda had a half-ass sightseeing schedule but the heat and angry ass problem were major factors in our decision to take it easy. Plus, once you've been in temples for a few hours you stop looking at the sculptures and walk straight through to the end just so you can say you've been there.

Banteay Srei is known as the women's temple and is much smaller than most other sites. It is one of the most beautiful and definitely worth the ride out. The intricate carvings on the temple walls are mouth watering. Unfortunately, the temple is now roped off so you can't walk right amidst the buildings but it is still very photogenic.

On the way back we stopped at a huge man-made lake to watch some local kids frolic in the water at sunset.

The last night in Siem Reap we headed out to the Boom Boom Room for music. My ipod never had it so good.

On our way up the street a local 10-year old street kid came up to me and hugged me. She walked down the street with me arm in arm and then did it again when she saw me walk the other way. She was beaming. Another amazing 20 second moment in Asia that has stayed with me for weeks.