Around the World Tour 2010 Full Blog

World Trip 2009-2010 Summary

When I planned this trip I don’t think I realized I was circumnavigating the globe, but someone eventually pointed out to me that I was, in fact, flying around the world in entirety. Don’t ask me why I chose the places I did because there is not much of a rhyme or reason. SE Asia has always been one of the last regions on my list of places to visit, but it turns out I’ve spent more time on the Asian continent than any other except my home continent of North America. Kenya was a spur of the moment decision triggered by a discussion with two temporary roommates a month before the trip. The Europe section of my trip was added one day while I was on the internet in Cambodia. That was spurred partly by conversation with fellow travelers and partly because I had not seen much of Europe and felt like it was necessary in order for me to relate to people who have.

I flew out of Chicago on January 14th and spent one day in Tokyo, Japan. I would have stayed longer, but this was just a free stopover from American Airlines. I flew to Bali, Indonesia from there and quickly fled the touristy island of Bali in search of secluded and pristine islands. I explored around a dozen of the 17,508-island archipelago of Indonesia, ending in Kalimantan. I continued north to Malaysian Borneo where I spent one month experiencing some of the greatest adventures yet in my life. During that time, I made a short visit to the tiny country of Brunei, which makes up one percent of Borneo. Peninsular Malaysia was next, followed by four days in Singapore, two weeks in Thailand, and then two weeks in Cambodia. Approximately three-and-a-half months later, I flew out of SE Asia and took a quick look at Hong Kong.

A half-week stop in Hong Kong, a stop at Heathrow, and one flight later, I landed in Kenya. My intentions were to also visit Uganda and Tanzania, but Kenya captivated me and never allowed me out of its borders (I may have stepped over into Tanzania in Masai Mara, but that doesn’t count for much.) My month of exploring the otherworldly city of Nairobi, roaming the great African wild, and mingling with the locals was life changing.

In Europe, I spent some time in England, The Netherlands, and Sweden, and also enjoyed a bus ride through France and Belgium on my way to Amsterdam. When I arrived in London, I was happy to be back in western civilization, but by the time I got to Sweden, I was ready to be back in the wild and I found that in North Sweden, where I experienced 24 hours of daylight for the first time.

Through my travels, I have gained an appreciation for how truly diverse and immense this world is. I have never been more inspired in my life, but I am not going to stop here. At the age of 23, I have traveled to six continents and I intend to explore Antarctica in the near future to complete my goal of traveling to all seven continents by the age of twenty-five.

I intend on seeing more of this immense world than most people care to and I won’t be doing this through tourist groups or by frequenting popular tourist attractions. I will be immersing myself in local cultures and spending time in solitude truly appreciating the wilderness that this great world has to offer. Through these travels, I hope to inspire and educate the people I meet along the way, the people following me at home, and myself.

Here is a Map Showing the Movement of My Trip
 

Gear and Packing Notes

I tried to pack really light but that is hard to do when you are packing for camping as well. If I didn’t have intentions of multi-day treks and camping I could have cut my weight in half. At the airport, my backpack weighs 43 pounds and my daypack about 12. Most of the gear I got was very lightweight compact gear. I tried to make myself nearly waterproof as well. This list isn’t exhaustive, but it does include all the big things at least.

Clothes: 2 l/s button downs/ 1 l/s shirt/1 T-Shirt/ 1 s/s button down/ rain jacket/ fleece /2 pairs zip off pants/1 pair jeans/ 2 pairs board shorts/ 5 boxers/ 5 socks/ long underwear pants/ running shorts/ under armor top, bottom/ surfing shirt/ hat/ hiking shoes/ flip flops

Technology: mini laptop/ iPhone / earphones/ external iPhone battery/ camera/ spare camera batteries and memory cards/ Gorilla pod/ adapter for foreign plugs

Backpack/ day pack/ sleeping bag/ sleeping pad/ backpack rain cover/ waterproof compression bags/ stove/ fuel bottle/ stove repair kit/ fishing pole/ fishing gear/ compression straps/ earplugs/ mosquito face screen/ compass/ 50 water purification tablets/ CamelBak /towel/ headlamp/ fire starters/ flint and steel/ rope/ mess kit/ cooking skewers/ bug spray/ sunglasses/ sunscreen/ travel money pouch/ pillow case/ duct tape/ toilet paper/ sewing kit/ safety pins/ bathroom stuff/ First Aid kit/ Guidebook/ passport/ photocopies/ passport photos/ multiples credit cards/ notebook/ pens/ permanent marker/ highlighters/ US dollars

I will add to this and write details of what was needed and not needed and also what products were really good.

My budget for this trip is $6,500, not including pre-trip things like travel vaccinations and travel insurance and not including my Making a Difference cause.

I was vaccinated for Yellow Fever, Japanese Encephalitis, Typhoid, Tdap, (Tetanus, Diphtheria, and Pertussis) Polio, Hep A, Flu, H1N1, and Meningococcal Meningitis. Normally I am somewhat against getting vaccines, but for this trip I plan on going pretty far into the wild and want to increase my chances of survival. I guess I am becoming more preventative. I am also on Doxycycline for malaria. The only required vaccination was for yellow fever and that was for Africa.

I purchased five months’ worth of travel insurance from World Nomads and that is mostly for health purposes. It includes dental, hospital and emergency evacuation, among other things.

Small amounts of everything, more can be gotten later
No sweet fruity anything
Take TP off roll and put in Ziploc
Duct tape: wrap it around pencil to save room
Checked bag weight limit!! (33 pounds for Asian countries)
Additional photos for visas: 2 for each country, keep some handy when I am going to border
Copies of passport: don’t give to people to hold make them take copy
One dollar bills to trade with people in times of need
Buy over there: mosquito sleeping screen/ Sarong
1) Can I live without it?
2) Will I cry if it gets stolen tomorrow?
3) Can I buy it locally?
 

Budget

Jan 14 – April 28, 2010 (112 days)/ April 28 – May 26 (28 days)
112 days at $15 day = $1,680
Africa = $1,000
$350 Visas
$300 small flights
$300 small boats, buses (20 times at $15)
$600 charity
= $4,230
+ $1650 flights (Bangkok, Hong Kong, Africa, USA; for getting to Asia, I used miles)
+ $620 extra
= $6,500 total
 

Indonesia/ Trip departure

January 14 and 15, 2010
The time for my trip to begin had finally arrived. I got out of bed at 4 a.m. and took a taxi to O’Hare. My first leg of the journey was a four-hour flight to L.A. and I spent most of the time looking out the window and wondering where I was. I saw miles and miles of snowy deserted mountains and great views of the Grand Canyon. After sitting in the airport for a few hours, I hopped on the 12-hour flight to Narita, Japan. I dozed off at first and woke up to the shoreline south of San Fran before we headed west over the Bering Strait. I arrived in Japan around 4 the next day making it 24 hours of traveling, but with the loss of 15 hours due to time change it was 39 hours. Don’t worry I’ll get those 15 hours back when I head west to Africa and then back home. My flight to Bali, Indonesia was 23 hours later, so I had time to go into Tokyo and get a tiny sample. I was through customs, out of the airport and onto the train within 50 minutes of landing. I took the Keisei Limited express for 1,000 yen to the Ueno station in central Tokyo and after not too long, I realized I was on the Skyliner, which got me there faster and with more comfort. From Ueno station it was a 15-minute walk to the Oak Hotel (address 6-1-2, Higashiueno, Taito-Ku Tokyo), which I had reserved on Hostels.com before leaving. My plan was to check in, take a shower, and then explore the neighborhood and have sushi for dinner. Today was my lucky day because the hostel was having a free sushi party. So I ended up staying in the hotel and chatting with other travelers before hitting the sack at 9:00, which would have been 6 in the morning in Chicago.
 
January 16, 2010
After a weird night of sleep, which would have been day, I got out of bed around 7:00 and got ready for the day. With my flight being at 3:30, I only had about four hours to see the city. For breakfast, I sampled half-a-dozen foods, including grilled salmon, pickled veggies, Miso soup, Natto, a soft boiled egg and rice. Most of it was good, except the Natto, which was disgusting. I still ate half of it though, trying to figure it out. I then walked through the tiny backstreets looking at shops on my way to Ueno Park. It was only about 40 degrees out, so I had to occasionally warm myself up in the stores. Ueno Park is the oldest and largest park in Tokyo and also known as the most beautiful, but since it is winter here, I think most of that beauty was hidden. I checked out the Toshogu Shrine from the outside and walked around the Shinobazu pond. The highlight of that for me was the ducks. This whole area is known for its markets, museums and the park and is known to have the “old Tokyo ” feel. I was extremely happy all day, and every corner was something new. Japan is very fascinating and VERY different. I walked around the Ameyokocho market, which was mostly retail type products, but also had some food. I saw a lot of cool seafood, including huge octopus legs, dried jellyfish, and lots of fish. The arcades, which were absolute madhouses, were also worth walking into. Crazy Japanese music was playing and all the Japanese toys (like cats and all that stuff) that you could want to win, not to mention what I think were porno booths in the back and gambling on the side. For lunch, I went to a convenience store in the train station and got some of the packaged but seemingly fresh food. Most of it was new to me and I had a Sapporo beer to go along with it. I felt like I was doing something wrong drinking beer on the train but no one paid any attention. All over the place there were vending machines, many of them with hot drinks like coffee and tea in them. When I got off one station too early and had to wait 20 minutes for the next train, I tried one of the drinks. I got the one that looked the craziest and had no English on it at all. It tasted like an upscale ramen noodle soup broth. I only drank half and began to feel really tired. When I checked in and got to my gate, I sat down and my body was feeling really heavy. I was wondering what was going on and realized I must have had some sort of relaxant drink and it practically put me to sleep. To stay awake, I walked around the terminal. I saw some crazy Japanese toilets. On the plane, I started chatting with a lady named Michelle and after takeoff, I remembered to look for Mt. Fuji, which amazingly I saw in the distance. This flight was eight hours and Michelle and I chatted for about five of them. She was very cool and we were on the exact same page with just about everything. Things went smoothly at the airport. There was a huge line for visas that I skipped since I had gotten it from the embassy in Chicago. From the airport, I took a taxi to nearby Kuta, which is an extremely touristy party town on the beach. I had no desire to be there, but it was nearest to the airport. I stayed at Komala Indah I. For 100,000 rupiahs ($11), I got a huge private room and, this might sound crazy, but that was way more expensive than I was expecting. My guidebook said I should be able to find rooms for 40,000 IDR but it was late and I didn’t want to go looking around. In Indonesia, they use rupiahs (IDR) and the exchange rate right now is about 9,200 IDR for 1 USD.
 
January 17, 2010
After breakfast, I walked two blocks to the beach and was disappointed with how polluted it was. Swimming was unattractive due to the large amount of garbage floating in the water. I rented a surfboard for an hour (30,000 IDR) and rode some waves. For the most part, the waves were pretty gentle and definitely an easy place to surf. Considering it’s been a while, I did pretty good. I wanted out of Kuta, so I walked to find a bus and was hassled the entire mile or so. I got a shuttle bus with Perama to Ubud, 1.5 hours, for about $5. I learned some Indonesian while I was waiting, too. I got a room at Ayu Bungalows for 80,000 IDR, which was still more expensive than I thought it was going to be. I walked around, had lunch and then went to the Sacred Monkey Forest. They are wild monkeys, but they are fed so much and have so much human contact that they are barely wild. It was still fun though as it was the first time I have seen wild monkeys. There were a ton of little babies, too. I had dinner at a place called Warung Lokal and had something called a Chinese Omelet, which didn’t appear to have any eggs in it at all.
 
January 18, 2010
Today felt like the longest day of my entire life. After having a huge banana pancake for breakfast, I rented a motorbike and headed in the direction of Lake Batur. This place is absolutely mad. I never knew where I was the entire day. The streets and towns aren’t marked and there are almost no directions. When I was around Batur, I could base my direction off the volcano and the lake, but besides that I might have been driving in circles all day. Outside of Ubud I saw thousands of people and no more than five of them were white, and throw in Ubud and I might have seen 10 or 15. As soon as you get off the main roads, everything changes. There are naked kids everywhere, people with no teeth, and almost no English is spoken. The “cities” and ten minutes outside of the cities are a different world. When I finally stumbled upon Lake Batur, I was about 1000 meters above it and I sat down and had lunch for $2 with an amazing view. It is very stressful here because you get hassled to buy something every couple of minutes. I try to be nice and talk to people, but it always turns into money. It makes life extremely stressful and very hard to concentrate at times. Even if I pulled over my motorbike for a minute to look at my book or rest, I would have another person on a motorbike cruise up to me or someone walk up to me and try to get me to buy something. I’m looking forward to moving on to the less touristy parts of Indonesia. Even though it is super cheap here, it is way more expensive than I was expecting and my Lonely Planet guide book is WAAAAAY off on the prices. A motorbike for 24 hours is $5, a nice meal at a sitdown restaurant $4, a cheap meal off the beaten path is 50 cents to $3, a 1.5 L bottle of water is 35-60 cents. I am paying $9 for a private room with a bathroom and shower in Ubud. That took some bargaining though. A liter of gas is 50 cents to $1.10 at the little stores on the side of the road. Every 50 meters or so, a store will sell you a bottle of gas and pour it into your motorbike for you. Gas stations are few and far between but you could run out of gas almost anywhere around here and not be in trouble. The countryside was filled with amazing rice paddies and temples. I went in some of the temples, but they didn’t interest me very much. Trash is everywhere. I am very disappointed with how they treat their environment. They live in their own trash. It seems you can’t really trust anyone here because all they want is money. They give you the wrong information in order to give you money. One guy on a motorbike told me not to go down one road because police were stopping tourists and he told me to follow him down another road and he’d take me on a trek up the volcano. I’m pretty sure he was lying his ass off, but I didn’t go down that road or follow him. I’m not trying to complain though. I’m just telling you what it is really like here. It is very stressful, but it’s early in my trip and I’m learning a lot. I think things will get easier as I learn more and get used to it. Besides all that, it was an adventurous day. I went to the village of Trunyan (pop. 250) on Lake Batur. I went swimming, learned some more Indonesian, had a great lunch, and learned some of the local food, including a fruit called Salak, which has skin like a snake. It was a cool little fishing village. They built pens about 100 meters offshore to farm the fish and I swam out there and checked them out. I just drove around all day without seeing any tourists and much of the day I was the only person driving on the roads. I tried cutting through the volcanic fields to Lake Batur on a rocky trail but turned around after a while. It’s hard to tell with the curves, but it might have gone on for miles and it might not even have ended up at the lake. In some villages, every person I passed was so excited to see me and in others it didn’t phase them. Throughout the day, I was probably no more than 30 miles between the farthest points, but there seem to be vast differences on this island. The mountain region I was driving had a peak of about 1700 meters and I was at just above sea level at times, too, so that varied the scenery a lot. When I got back at 6:30, I felt like I had been gone for days. That motorbike sure took a beating.
 
January 19, 2010
Late morning, I left on my motorbike for Lake Bratan in the mountains and the beach town of Lovina. The first hour it poured down on me, but it was a warm pleasant rain. Along the way, I checked out some cool sights, including a monkey forest in Sangeh and a little local market that seemed to have just ended. Again, I was appalled with all the trash and how they treat the environment. I continued north to Petang and then cut across a tiny rundown jungle road to the main road to Lake Bratan. On the roadside, I stopped and tried some sort of meat they were cooking over coals. I paid about 15 cents for that. After a while, I made it to the mountain town of Bedugul on the lake, which was pretty touristy. I was surprised at how modern the fishing poles were and how many they had to rent out. There were fishing boats to hire, and all sorts of water activities like wakeboarding and tubing. As I climbed the mountain into the damper colder weather, I passed a hundred or so monkeys along the side of the road begging for food. Again, monkeys, not people. I went on a short hike to the Git Git waterfalls. I found some little kids playing on a rope swing and they were nice enough to let me play, too. I swung back and forth across the river for a while and swam in the deep pool next to it. I continued on a little further to the beautiful falls and had the big pool to myself to swim in. Nearing the large city of Singaraja on the ocean, I stopped at the poorest little food place that I could find. Some lady who spoke no English reached into about five or six bowls and grabbed all sorts of ingredients and threw them into a bowl for me. Then she went into another room with it and when she came back, it had been turned into a soup. It was spicy, delicious and filling and cost me about 60 cents. I started at 1,000 rupiahs and worked my way up to 5,000 by pulling out bills. She didn’t even understand my hand signals and I didn’t understand a single thing the toothless lady did either. She sat and stared at me for the entire meal. I don’t think many tourists stop at those places? I went to Lovina and was unsatisfied with the piss poor snorkeling and again the pollution. The black sand beach was also pretty disappointing. I had at least a two-hour ride back, so I headed to Ubud around 4. I didn’t want to go back through the mountains though, so I went west and added about an hour to the trip. I went through Sererit, Budbunan, Ringdikit, Pupuan, and Antosari and then cut east through Tabanan and Mengi. Some of these towns were tiny and others were bustling with traffic. Around Papuan (but all between Sererit and Antosari) the rice terraces were the best I have seen yet and the views were expansive. Driving a motorbike here is unlike anything I’ve ever done before. Never, not even in my dreams, would I have thought I would be driving in these conditions. I would have been scared out of my mind, but now it is easy and for the most part fun. Along the way, I had another crazy soup for 5,000 IDR from a street vendor carrying a cart. This time he served it to me in a glass bowl with a spoon and I sat on the curb and ate it and then handed the empty bowl back to him. I’m guessing that is extremely unsanitary, but whatever doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger and I’ve got 4.5 months of getting stronger. The trip ended up taking four hours and that was a hell of a toll on my body. Today I felt much better. I realized that I got really beat up the first couple days (scorched from only a couple hours of sun, pestered nearly to death by the people, bad jet lag, paid more than I wanted to for everything, and was always lost). Today was a whole different story though. It took some time to adjust and I am by no means a pro at this, but I am handling this place a lot better than before. Fewer people are bugging me because I am better at ignoring them. A lot of the time I pretend to only speak Spanish. I am learning that almost always when they are asking for money, they are just lying and using the same story over and over because those are the only words they know. I feel like I am being harsh, but it is the only way for me to not go crazy. I really want to help people, but not like that. I want to make sure when I help people it is going to the right place. I have also figured out the roads. If you want to get somewhere, you have to stick to the main roads where there are signs, otherwise it is nearly impossible. Today I wrote all the cities that I would be going through on my hand so that I could easily reference it when I was passing signs.
 
January 20, 2010
I had a relaxing morning and spent some time packing my stuff in a more logical way now that I can kind of see how I will be doing things. I walked around Ubud and went to the market, the palace, and some bookstores to find a good guide book (unsuccessful). I had lunch at the legendary Warung Ibu Oka and had the Babi Guling, which was a suckling pig dish with veggies and rice. Even though it’s one of the most popular places in town, a cheap lunch there was still only three bucks. I am contemplating becoming a semi-vegetarian and only eating seafood and birds, but much of the time I can’t even tell if I’m eating meat. Also that would maybe make eating more difficult at times. At the market, I bought a piece of fruit, no idea what it’s called, and as I broke it open to eat it, I was talking to somebody and when I looked down, there were ants all over my hands and wrists! At 3:00, I took a 1.5 hour shuttle bus from Perama to Padangbai. This is the port to get to the island of Lombok, where I am going tomorrow. It’s a tiny relaxed beach town centered in a cove no more than ¼ mile across. I am staying at the Kerti Beach Inn right on the beach. The little cove is stuffed with boats and the small street is full of accommodations, restaurants, stores and some dive shops. Just over the hill on the other side of the cove I went snorkeling in the “Blue Lagoon.” At first, as I swam out it was nothing special, but after about 50 meters I was very surprised. It was some of the better snorkeling I have done. The water was clear up to about 15 or 20 feet and the fish were plentiful and diverse. Tomorrow I catch a 9 a.m. ferry to Lembar, Lombok and a bus from there to Sengiggi, also a little beach town. Plenty of tourists here, in fact, the most I have seen yet. Lombok should be much less touristy, especially on the east side, and after that it should get pretty wild.
 
January 21, 2010
In the morning, I had a six-hour ferry ride from Padang Bai to Lembar, Lombok . I intended on taking a bus to Sengiggi, but I met a dude from Alberta and he and I had the same ideas of what to do over the next couple weeks, so we decided to travel together. He was heading to the Gili Islands, so I went there instead. The ferry ride was fun and there was plenty to look at. The toilets in the boat were the Asian style toilets that are basically a toilet bowl built right into the floor, so it’s a squatter. There is a hose next to it which I assumed was to spray off your feet, which is what I did, but after talking to other travelers, I learned it’s to spray off your bum! They don’t really use TP over here much. After two more hours of shuttles, we arrived in the city of Bangsal at the harbor for the Gili Islands . There was some confusion with the dishonest sales guys and after getting quite flustered, Patrick and I realized shortly after the boat launched that we were headed to the wrong island! We didn’t care though and we said keep on going! We were chatting with a girl from Spain and two French people and they were pretty cool. The Gili’s are three small islands, some with a party vibe and some a more upscale vibe, but all three very laid back beach islands with white sand and coral reefs to be had. On the ride out, we enjoyed an amazing sunset with a view of Gunung Batur, a huge volcano on Bali. We ended up at Gili Trawangan, the island farthest out, and got a room at Gili Gecko for about 10 bucks. We went out for dinner and had a few Bintangs (Indonesia’s most popular beer) and hung out with another Canadian.
 
January 22, 2010
In the morning, after our included breakfast, we looked around and found a better hotel, Edy’s Home stay. After that, we met up with Rocio, the Spaniard from the boat, and rented bikes and they rented snorkels (I have my own). We snorkeled on the main beach and saw three big sea turtles, plenty of fish and coral and a school of about 15 squid. We rode our bikes, and then walked them when the trail turned into sand, around the whole island and snorkeled again in another spot. The snorkeling here was no good because we couldn’t get out past the inner reef because of large waves. When we arrived back on our side of the island, we stopped at a little beachside restaurant that had little pagodas outfitted with a low table and pillows. Here we had some lunch, a beer and met Michelle and Ben from Toronto and New Zealand. Pat, Michelle, Ben and I went out for another snorkel on the east side of the island. The snorkeling was awesome and there were sea turtles everywhere. A reef shark swam right under us while we were on the surface talking, but only Ben saw it. Our time was cut short when a strong rip picked up and was pulling us away from the island. Swimming was a challenging task and somewhat nerve-racking. The four of us and two of Patrick’s friends from Canada and Australia went out for dinner and beer at the same beachside restaurant as the night before. Michelle and Ben showed me Gado Gado, which is boiled veggies, rice, and peanut sauce. It is their “go to” meal in Indonesia and will become mine, I think. It’s healthy, usually pretty large, and one of the cheapest items on the menu. We checked out another bar after dinner and hit the sack pretty late, around 2:00.
 
January 23, 2010
In the morning, we met up with Michelle and Ben to go out for a snorkel. Ben and I rented harpoon guns to see if we couldn’t catch us some dinner. We had no luck out there, mostly because the guns were extremely rudimentary and didn’t work. We headed back into town to get some new guns and they tightened them up for us instead. The guys at their hostel climbed a tree and picked us some fresh coconuts to drink and then eat. After lounging around, we went out to snorkel again. Snorkeling was decent, Ben saw another shark, and we didn’t spear anything. The four of us went out for dinner and drinks again. It was a great time. Ben and Michelle are some of the coolest people I’ve ever met. They are headed to Australia in a week or so and heading in the opposite direction as us, so we parted with them at the end of the night. Until next time, Ben and Michelle.
 
January 24, 2010
We woke up late, packed up and headed to the harbor to catch a boat back to Lombok. Our timing was perfect and the ferry hit its 20 people for departure minimum and left within 15 minutes of us arriving. On the way back, I saw some weird birds flying over the ocean in front of the boat and realized they were actually flying fish! They were out of the water for probably 10 meters. We hired a bemo (van taxi type thing) to take us to the little mountain town of Senaru, which would be our base for a trek up Mt Rinjani. Mid-afternoon we arrived and met a couple from Holland who we ended up doing the trek with to split costs. I had some awesome fried tempeh for lunch and then we went on about a two-hour hike to some waterfalls (Air Terjun Sendang Gile). The first one fell out of the jungle and into the river bed below. It was a tremendous amount of water, and my guess is that walking under it would put you in a wheelchair. We then continued on through the jungle along a pristine river to another fall. This one had a huge scour pool at the bottom that we swam in for a while. The wind this thing created was just massive, practically blinding. I felt rejuvenated when we left this set of falls. We saw some black monkeys flying through the trees, which I still have not figured out what type they are. The river was clean enough to drink straight out of, too. Gado Gado was for dinner and then we set up the details for our trek. We had hoped to do a four- or five-day trek solo, including going down into the crater lake, and summiting the tallest peak of about 3800 m, but our dreams were shattered when we were told the national park was closed due to wet season and it was illegal to enter. The only way we could go was with a guide, which was illegal, but they could sneak in. So we had no other choice but to go with the Dutch couple and do a short two-day trek, which would only go as high as the crater rim at 2600 m.
 
January 25, 2010
We were greeted at 5:00 a.m. to a Muslim morning (blaring Muslim screeching through a loudspeaker, a gut wrenching sound). We had breakfast and did some last-minute packing and were transported one by one to the trail head. We were on the trail on this very clear morning by 6:30. The hotel packed us food, including rice packs, hard boiled eggs, ramen noodles and fruit and our packs with a tent and other gear weighed about 13 kg each. The trek was very steep and very tiring, but after not too long, my body was used to it. The trail was made of dirt covered in tree roots and fallen leaves and palms and led us through the cluttered jungle. Besides a couple monkeys, some slugs, and some huge millipedes I found in a log, there was not much scenery, just thick jungle. I also found some fruit that had crazy Mario mushroom patterns on them. We were at Pos III (2000 m) at 1:00 and that’s where we set up camp. The rest of the afternoon I spent lying on my sleeping bag in the sun and in the clouds when they were passing through. We had dinner and chatted with Natasha and Alex and retired to the tent at 8:00
 
January 26, 2010
After a solid night’s sleep, we woke in the dark at 4:30. We had some hot tea and breakfast and set out for the crater rim shortly after 5:00 with our headlamps strapped on. The trek up was a challenge and probably my first time climbing a volcano, or anything, for that matter, at this time in the morning. After not too long, it was just light enough for me to turn off my headlamp and continue on. I moved ahead and reached the crater rim at 6:00, just in time to watch the sun rise. The view from the rim was astonishing. You could see the jungle we just climbed through, the countryside of Lombok, the ocean, and even the Gili Islands that we had come from the day before. Far below in the crater was a pristine lake and an active volcano that had erupted in the last few years. We watched the volcano shoot out plumes of gray and white smoke as we enjoyed the view. The highlight of the trek down was climbing a tree and watching some monkeys in the canopy from their level. We got back for breakfast around 8:00 and were joined by about 10 macaques watching us from the trees, squabbling, howling, and waiting for us to leave so they could eat our scraps. One even ran up and stole a pack of noodles right from our side. Patrick and I flew down the trail and made record time. At one point, I got a thorned fern right across the forehead that literally pulled me backwards to the ground. I thought I was going to be gushing blood, but there was nothing but a few trickles and about 10 small thorns stuck in my head. We waited at Pos I under a shelter for the others and just then it began to rain and then it began to pour. Half an hour to an hour later, the others caught up and then we sat another hour waiting out the storm. The trail had flooded and seemed to have turned into a series of little waterfalls. We arrived back at around 2:00, had lunch and then I showered under a rain gutter. Then we headed off to the next island, Sumbawa. First, we got a short ride into Bayan from two motorbikes and then they set us up with a ride to Labuan Lombok. It was with a truck loaded down with about five tons of bagged salt. We threw our bags on top of the salt and crammed in the front with the driver and some other Indonesian, neither of whom spoke any English. We drove about two hours through washed out roads through the rural countryside and along the ocean past fishing villages. Twice there were kids clearing the roads from debris and asking for handouts from the cars. Our driver gave the eight-year-old a cigarette and the kid exclaimed “Terima Kasih!” (thank you). We saw some domesticated water buffaloes along the way. The driver dropped us at the crossroads to the ferry and we had about an hour to walk to the harbor. On the way, we purchased 14 pieces of fruit for $1. Almost everyone we passed yelled “Hey Mister!”, including kids, moms and teenage boys. For dinner, I selected two whole squids out of a glass food display case. The eyes, ink sack, tentacles, it was all there and I ate it all, except the rock solid eyes. The boat was somewhat of a carnival. It had a slide, a swing, a playground and a praying room, too. Pat and I played a couple games of checkers and, at times, we had up to five Indonesians circled around us, watching. We arrived in Poto Tano, Sumbawa about two hours later and got a bus to Sumbawa Besar, which was another couple of hours. When we arrived at 11:00, we went straight to bed.
 
January 27, 2010
We woke at 8:30 and then spent a couple hours reorganizing our bags before heading out into the city. I took out two million rupiahs at the ATM, bought a $3 Rip Curl hat to replace my lost one, used the internet, and had a delicious $1 breakfast consisting of rice, fried shrimp, and fried egg. Again, in this town, everywhere we went we got “Hey Mister!” I even had a kid run up to me and take his picture with me. We didn’t see any tourists all day and we didn’t see any yesterday after we left Rinjani. We hopped on a bemo to go to the bus terminal, which broke down, then we walked, then it picked us up, and then it broke down again, and then we walked, and then we got in a new one. All this through 90-degree heat. It was fun though. We were looking for ice cream the whole way, but were unsuccessful. We got to the bus station at 2:00 and there was supposed to be a 3:00 bus, but it didn’t arrive until 4:00. We spent those two hours chatting with the locals, who were very excited to see us. One guy looked at my North Face hiking shoes for 15 minutes in complete awe poking and prodding the soles. They insisted on getting their pictures with us using their cell phones. The eight-hour bus ride took us through very green mountainous rural regions. The roads were just wide enough for a large car, and many times two big buses had to squeeze past each other. That made for an interesting time. I slept for a couple hours, but sleeping is hard when you are fighting to stay in your seat. We arrived in Bima seven hours later in a disgusting parking lot and there was no more public transportation going to Sape, so we had to hire a bemo to take us the two hours or so. The sideways bench seats worked fine and I had a good laugh when Patrick fell off of his, onto the floor while trying to sleep. The two hours were very entertaining as we passed herds of cows on the side of the small road and dodged dogs, cows, horses, and goats, coming within inches of nailing a few of them. At 12:30, we pulled up near the harbor in Sape and stayed at Losmen Mutiara. A double cost 35,000 Rupiah or about $4. It was the crappiest room I’ve ever stayed in by far, but our gear and bodies smelled bad enough to cover up any odor the room had. The shared bathroom had the standard tub with a scoop to pour water over yourself and the lock on the door was a nail that you slid through a hole. Showers are by no means standard in this part of Indonesia and neither are reasonable toilets.
 
January 28, 2010
I slept solid until 4:30 when the Muslim prayers started blaring into the room, and then was again awakened at 4:45 by a man pounding on the door yelling “You buy tickets to ferry.” Then at 5:00, the alarm went off. We got to the ferry and watched the sunrise over the harbor full of fishing boats and I stocked up on food for the eight-hour boat ride. A man made me some rice packs with some delicious looking chicken and spices. The boat ride was a lot of fun. When we boarded, we met David and El from England and Holland. I borrowed David’s Indo book and wrote down a ton of phrases and the numbers. There was hilarious English in this book because it was made for Indonesians that don’t speak English and there were just ridiculous typos. I went out to the “deck” and made an area around the anchor chains and ropes my own. Here I stretched on and off throughout the day, which added up to hours. Running down Rinjani tore my body apart. This morning my legs almost gave out from underneath me while walking multiple times. I could barely make it up or down stairs. It’s getting better though. Sitting in buses, ferries, and bemos for hours upon hours and sleeping on hard-as-wood beds magnified it as well. The scenery was absolutely amazing the whole way. To the south, we passed deserted islands with empty beaches hidden away in sheltered coves. The islands are nothing but parched rolling green hills, plateaus and rock cliffs and sandy beaches meeting the blue ocean. To the north, the ocean seemingly stretched forever. The food I bought at the harbor turned out quite interesting. I took a big bite out of the chicken, which was really crunchy and there didn’t seem to be any meat. After swallowing, I realized I just bit a big chunk out of the back of a whole chicken head. The eye hole was looking at me. I opted out of finishing the head. On an unrelated note, I have decided to become a semi-vegetarian for a while and eliminate beef and pork from my diet. Hopefully, it won’t be too hard to figure out what I’m even eating at times though. I saw some more crazy flying fish. We got a pretty rudimentary hotel room which did have a semi-working shower. There was no water for the first hour though. We are in Labuan Bajo, Flores. The power and water goes on and off here a lot and generators seem to be in use a lot. Pat, El, David and I went to dinner at a restaurant down the street and I spent most of the night typing this blog. We also organized a trip out to Komodo and Rinca islands in Komodo National Park. This is the only place Komodo dragons exist. They get up to about 12 feet and 220 pounds. They are probably the closest thing to dinosaurs left in this world. I’ll be out there for three to five days, and I’m guessing I will be completely out of contact. I’ll return to Labuan Bajo after Komodo and let you know how the expedition went.
 

Indonesia

January 29, 2010
The four of us were on the boat and headed out before 9:00. We sat and enjoyed the gorgeous deserted islands and deep waters and played cards for most of the five hours out to Komodo. Before we arrived, the cook prepared us an unexpectedly amazing lunch with fish, veggies, fruit, and who knows what the other stuff was but it was beyond good. As we neared Komodo Island, I was seeing large animals on the beach and soon we realized they were deer, and lots of them. They docked the boat and we walked up to the ranger station and paid all the mandatory conservation and guide fees. We did a short one-hour hike with a ranger around the near part of the island. The amount of wildlife we saw was comparable to Yellowstone National Park. There was so much it almost felt fake. After five minutes of walking, El screamed and I looked up to see a HUGE Komodo dragon blocking the path 100 feet ahead. My first reaction was that it was a statue because of how massive it was and the way it was posing, but a moment later it was walking towards us and my heart began racing. I didn’t know if it was coming for us or if it was just continuing on its original path. We stepped off the trail and he kept on walking right past us. I think this dragon was about as big as they get, over 200 pounds and 10 feet long. We continued along and shortly after found a smaller, but still large, dragon lying behind some brush. We watched him lay nearly motionless for 10 minutes or so before moving on. During the hike, we also saw a wild boar, a couple chicken-like birds (Megapolis?), and a small Komodo. As we were walking back to the boat, we spotted a small Komodo which I chased through the brush, but he was way faster and I gave up after not too long. The little guy spooked up about 10 resting deer. When I stopped running, I was at the cafeteria and I saw two big Komodos resting just ahead next to a building. They laid there calmly as we checked them out. When we left the dock there were the same amount of visitors there as when we came, zero. We snorkeled Red beach and had the gem to ourselves. The hundred or so hard and soft corals were just as amazing as the thousands of fish all over. Among Jacks, Snappers, Lionfish, Parrot fish, Trigger fish and Wrasses, we saw sea turtles, rays, Moray eels, and a 1.5 m shark. As we rode along to the “Flying Fox Island,” we reminisced on the amazing day and basked in the gorgeous sunset. We arrived after dark and anchored for the night and, as I tried my luck at fishing, I watched the Flying Foxes, which are a large fruit bat, swoop through the sky.
 
January 30, 2010
Waking up on the open deck just after sunrise, I caught the last bit of the bats making their way back to the island to retire for the day. I did a little morning fishing and after having no luck, I jumped in and did some snorkeling. I was amazed that I could see so many fish but couldn’t manage to catch a single one. The highlights of snorkeling were the huge colorful starfish and some sort of walking sea fern with about 18 legs. We drove a few hours to Rinca island, which is also in Komodo National Park. As we neared, a small dragon appeared on the dock to welcome us to the island. The wildlife was again abundant and we saw a couple dragons out on the trails. Around the ranger station, there were a half dozen lying around. Seeing them sit so tamely near the buildings kind of dulls the excitement, but you can get a real good look at them there. They come there because they smell food. Only some of the dragons have grown accustomed to humans though, and the further you get from the ranger station, the less likely they are to stick around once they see you. Most people just do the short hikes though and don’t get to experience that side of Komodo Island. We left the island to do some more snorkeling and we snorkeled off of a small island that we had to ourselves for the afternoon. As I was sitting on a rock looking out into the water, I saw a small manta ray acrobatically fly out of the water. Other highlights of the afternoon were a small purple eel hiding in the coral, and jumping off the crow’s nest of the boat, about 25 feet up. Later in the afternoon, the boat dropped me off back at Rinca and the others headed back to Labuan Bajo. I worked out a trek with the head ranger and then spent some time negotiating a price. As he talked it over with one of the local guides, I went down to the dock to fish, but was too tired and spent most of my time laying around and watching the macaques. I spent the evening sitting around with the rangers who are mostly locals of the island and showing them pictures of Wisconsin and other parts of the USA. As we did this, the dragons laid on the ground below us. I also showed them the National Geographic Adventure article “Here Be Dragons” and they knew/were related to the people in the article. They invited me to have dinner with them and we had rice and noodles as I watched the geckos catch bugs and the rats (which they called mice) run through the room. I walked back to my simple room full of bugs and spent 10 minutes using my fishing pole to scare a small fruit bat out.
Over dinner, we also discussed the plans for the next day. We would start at 6 a.m. and hike to Rinca Village, about 10 miles away, where we would have lunch in the guide’s house and rest. Then we would continue on to another small village about five miles away where we would stay the night. At 6 a.m. the next day, we would leave the village and hike six or so miles back to the ranger station in time for me to get a boat back to Labuan Bajo with the rangers. I’m not sure how accurate the mileage is. You can never count on numbers being right with ANYTHING here in Indonesia. They said somebody does a trek like this no more than every three or four months. Even most of the rangers have never done many parts of it. Later, I found out that the guide, Abdul Kader, had only done it once and he hadn’t even done all parts of it. Arif came with us, too, and he was a guide in training. Much of the time I could tell they weren’t sure of which way to go, but they always found a way.
 
January 31, 2010
To sum up today, it was a day like no other and one of the most unique days of my entire life. The trek itself was an astounding experience, but add the people and the villages and today was almost hard to believe. We had a small breakfast of rice and noodles and were on our way by 6:30 into the hills. At times, we were on small ungroomed trails, some of which I think were animal trails, but much of the day we were making our way through brush, trees and parched fields, descending and ascending steep tall hills, through dried up mangroves and flats, and along beaches. Before long, the temperatures reached about 90 degrees and the sun was unmercifully beating down on us. Throughout the morning, we came upon a dragon basking on a rock, one tearing apart a rotting deer, which quickly fled into the brush, and a few others. In the late morning, we could hear loud screeching and followed it to a bat cave, which we entered. It was filled with thousands of bats. We arrived in the guide’s village and spent part of the afternoon there. The two villages on this island are solely fishing villages and every person seems to depend upon fish. They prepare the fish by heavily salting them and drying them in the sun for a couple of days. It was quite the scene seeing thousands of fish lying out on mesh in the sun and it also made for an unpleasant smell. The beachfront was littered with fishing boats, some of which had motors and some of which were just dugout canoes. All of the houses in Rinca Village (pop. 300 or 400) are on stilts, which I think is for the tides and waves but also for safety from the dragons. We had lunch, rice and noodles, of course, at Abdul’s house, prepared by his wife. As we sat around the plastic table, I watched people walk past the door with baskets and buckets of water on their head and goats would occasionally come up to the door and look in. One even ran through the house. Abdul is 24 or 25 years old and has been married for 1.5 years and with his wife for 2.5 years. Much of the time, they don’t seem to know their own age exactly. I took about an hour nap on their comfortable box frame, not mattress. Some little kids came into the house and I took pictures of them. When I showed them their pictures they giggled so hard and were super excited. They were amazed. Life in the village is very simple. Some houses have concrete toilets outside, but only for going pee. For going poop, they have a concrete building with a well next to it to get water for flushing. I’m not sure if the one I used was the only one in the village or if there were many. They have a different well that is cut about 12 m into the ground to get freshwater, which has to be boiled before drinking. I also looked at the school, which is surrounded by a concrete wall to keep out the Komodos. Look at my Making A Difference page to learn more about the schools. After three hours, we continued on to the next village and I saw a small Spitting Cobra along the way. The island has three species of snakes: Spitting Cobras, Russel Vipers, and Green Vipers, all of which are extremely poisonous. Before 6:00, we arrived at a small village (pop. about 200) and found a family willing to let us stay in their house. The two villages are very tightly knit and Abdul and Arif probably knew the family. I walked around the village and the kids quickly accumulated and followed me around. I asked Abdul to see if any of them had a ball and one went running to his house. Until nightfall, I played soccer with about 20 kids. Every kid wanted to pass me the ball so I was able to get every kid involved by passing to them. The parents wanted the kids to go to bed, so as all 20 kids stood around me, Abdul told me how to say things like “It’s time for bed now” and “Go home.” They thought it was hilarious. After 10 minutes of trying, most of the kids scattered, except a few that hung around and watched my every move. The house we stayed in had one lantern that everyone sat around at night. They watched in amazement as I blew up my mattress, pulled out my sleeping bag, and took out my contacts. We had the usual for dinner and made it an early night. The next day, Abdul told me that I was the first and only tourist to ever sleep in the village. That amazes me, but I guess it is believable considering there is no accommodation, no restaurants, and no real stores.

 
February 1, 2010
Early in the morning, we were on our way and the hike back was eventful the whole way. We followed the beach for about 45 minutes before cutting into the thick brush. Shortly after, we heard a loud crash in the woods and were startled by about 25 water buffalo stumbling out of a muddy watering hole. For the next few hours, we coincidentally continued along the same path as the buffalos, following the mud they left on the trees. We spooked up water buffalos the entire way back and also saw a pair of wild horses. As we reached a high point on the island, I looked to an island in the distance and saw a massive rain cloud heading our way. Within a half hour, the cool rain was pouring down on us, which was a relief from the heat. Just as I was wondering if we would see any more dragons in the rain, we came upon a massive dragon sitting in the pouring rain. I’m guessing he came out for the sun in the morning and then was too lazy to move when it started raining. We followed a mostly dried riverbed the last two miles back and again spooked up buffaloes, one of which was blocking the bed and would not let us pass for a while. We arrived at the ranger station around 11:00 and I got to talking with an Australian who said I could catch a ride back with him and his boat mates. I discussed ways to help the schools with Abdul and made tentative plans to meet him in Labuan Bajo tomorrow to give him supplies to bring back to the villages. On the ride back, we stopped and did some snorkeling on a white sand beach where I saw a crazy little blue and yellow eel and an insane lobster-like creature that I chased around for a while. Arriving back in Labuan Bajo, I felt like I was arriving back in civilization (remember this town is pop. 8,000 and has unreliable electricity and water). I was surprised and happy to see El, Dave, and Patrick at the hotel and the four of us met up with my Australian and American friends from the boat for dinner.
 
February 2, 2010
I planned for a relaxing day around Labuan Bajo, which would involve shopping for school supplies for the kids on Rinca Island, going to the ATM, buying groceries, finding a cheaper hotel, using the net, finding out if the Pelni still leaves on the 7th to Makassar, Sulawesi and other things. Then I found out that there actually was a ferry TODAY at 2:00, so I took that option rather than exploring Flores for five days. I went to buy supplies and, surprisingly, ran into Abdul in the street, so we went together. We got supplies together and then we said our goodbyes when he had to get on a boat back to Rinca Village. Check out the Making a Difference section for details on this. He told me the whole village misses me and that a lot of them were asking him why he did not take me around the village and introduce me to everybody. He said his wife even cried last night because she “couldn’t remember me.” I’m not sure what that meant. There was definitely a language barrier between us. I feel a huge bond with him and many of the kids in the village. I tried using the internet, but both restaurants with Wi-Fi were plagued with disconnections and I didn’t get much done. I got on the boat at 2:00 and it seemed like all the other passengers were wondering what the hell I was doing on there. I spent the afternoon sleeping and sitting with the others in the economy section.
 
February 3, 2010
I awoke at 6:30 feeling claustrophobic because of all the people sitting around me. I noticed open rows of seats around the boat, but people seemed to be clustered around me checking me out. The morning was pretty annoying, as I had small crowds of grown men around me watching my every move. One guy stared at me for about an hour. Everything I did was monitored and I was not comfortable. While I was typing on my computer, one man was even standing above me reading it aloud. Finally, around 10:00, the boat stopped at one port and most of the men got off. Twenty-six hours after departing Flores, the ferry arrived in Bira, Sulawesi. When I got on the ferry, I thought it was going to Makassar, but it turned out I was going to Bira, five hours away. All that mattered to me was that it was on the same island. This turned out to be a tiny beach town with crystal clear water. I got a huge bungalow to myself for about $7 a night and snorkeled until sunset.
 
February 4, 2010
It’s morning now and I’ll probably snorkel and explore the deserted beaches all day. The town is extremely quiet and there is absolutely nothing going on here. I don’t see any other tourists around. I might rent a motorbike and explore the countryside, too. It’s going to be a good day to relax and unwind. I’ll probably head to Makassar tomorrow morning.

 

Making a Difference Komodo

Rinca Island, Indonesia, January 31 to February 2, 2010
I did a trek around Rinca Island in Komodo National Park and got an opportunity to spend some time in two small villages, Rinca Village (pop. 300-400) and another with a population of about 200. Each village has their own schools with 50 kids in Rinca and 20 kids in the other. I did not have time to check out the school from the inside, but I got to look at them a little. In Rinca, the school is surrounded by a concrete wall to keep the Komodo dragons out. The schools had a few small buildings, including a simple house for the teacher(s) to stay in. The kids can go to school here until 6th grade and then, if their family has enough money, they can continue school in Labuan Bajo, a 1.5 hour boat ride away. After spending some time in the villages, I realized this would be a great opportunity to help. I asked what the school needed most and found out notebooks and pens were the most important items followed by pencils, erasers, rulers and other supplies.

I spent the night in one of the villager’s homes in the second village, and later I was told that I was the first tourist to ever spend the night in the village. I played soccer with about 20 kids, which I guess is about all the young kids in the village. When their parents wanted them to come into their homes and go to bed, I stopped playing and they all gathered around me. I didn’t know what to do so I asked Abdul how to say things like “Time for bed” and “Go home” and the kids giggled at every word I said. Eventually they finally scrambled off.

Back in Labuan Bajo, I bought 100 notebooks, 60 pens, 20 pencils, 5 packs of markers, 12 packs of colored pencils, 21 rulers, 10 drawing books, and 9 whiteout bottles. I also bought a net and ball for them to set up in their school yard. All of this cost about $30. I wish I could have done more, but Abdul said this will go a long way. He brought them back to Rinca and will give them to the two schools.

I felt like I made a strong bond with many of the villagers and I miss them a lot. I am so excited because I feel like the money that my fundraiser raised is really going to make a difference over here.

 

Sulawesi

UPDATE: Spent the afternoon on a secluded beach that I had to myself. Did a lot of snorkeling, saw some huge sea turtles and caught a small lobster. Snorkeling was great. The water fleas were so bad they drove me out of the water. The tide had risen up to the rock cliffs, so I had to wade back through the water. Bira beach is a great place to relax and do nothing. The beaches are deserted and beautiful and there was almost nobody here. It’s all white sand beaches and rocky cliffs and ledges.

 
February 5, 2010
Got a bemo to Makassar at 10:00 and arrived at around 3:00. Most of the ride was through fishing villages. I think they do a lot of fish farming in this area. Chris from Germany was in the bemo for most of the way and we talked for quite a bit of the trip. When I got to the bus terminal in Makassar, I found a place with fast Wi-Fi and spent the rest of the afternoon there. I had set up a place to stay in advance. I used couchsurfing.com, which is a site managed by people who will host travelers for free and who want to be hosted when they travel as well. This was my first time actually staying with someone from the site. I paid a kid a buck to give me a motorbike ride to her house about five miles away and we searched for the place for about a half hour. We accidentally went to a house owned by an American named John and that was pretty interesting. When we finally got to her place, she and her family came out to greet me. Eka is 33 years old and lives with her 30-year-old brother and her mom. In Indonesia, typically you don’t move out of the house until you are married. They brought me inside and about 15 kids from the street followed us in and sat on the floor and watched us as Eka and I talked. She speaks pretty fluent English, but her family did not really. They had a room for me to stay in and they made a great dinner. Eka invited me to a wedding the next day and I hit the sack pretty early.
 
February 6, 2010
I woke up pretty early and walked out to the living room. I watched TV for the first time since I had left the States. I felt like it was a Saturday morning back when I was a kid in Ashland. Of course, I didn’t understand anything, but it was relaxing just sitting there. The weirdest thing I saw in that hour or so was something on the news. They were dragging a few screaming kids out of the school and restraining them to the ground. I was wondering what the hell was going on and Eka said they were possessed. I’m not positive, but I don’t think that goes on in the States. After a delicious breakfast, we took a bemo 1.5 hours away to a small village to attend her friend’s wedding. It was a traditional wedding of south Sulawesi and I don’t think words can do justice to the experience. Look at the pictures and that might help a little. It was a Muslim wedding as well, and I was the only white/non-Muslim person there. Eka was doing some narrating for the wedding, so I was pretty much front row with her for the whole ceremony. The couple had met two months ago, talked on the phone for a month and then the man proposed to her and then the wedding was a month later. Here is a little info on how it works here. The man (and his family, I think) propose to the woman and her family. He will absolutely not be accepted unless he has enough money. The man pays for the whole wedding and gives the money to the woman’s family, who then takes care of everything. The wedding is in the woman’s village, and the man doesn’t show up from his village until after the party has been going on for a while, and then he is escorted in by everyone from his village. In this case, there were about 100 people carrying gifts for the woman’s family and music was played as they came in. Then he stood at the gate and there was a lot of loud chanting through horrible microphones with a lot of echo. Later, the couple sits and a LOT of stuff is read saying what the man is bringing and what the responsibilities are. Neither of them looked at all happy and the man looked at the ground nearly the whole time. No smiling at all. Then they go sit in a shrine-like area and people greet them. There may have been a little smiling while they were up there. I tried nine different desserts, all of which seemed to be made of 90% sugar. Most of them tasted the same and none was that good. Of course, there is no alcohol because the Muslims don’t drink. Plenty of little plastic waters though. It was an extremely interesting experience. The man’s family leaves nearly right after the ceremony, and we left shortly after as well. We took a bemo back to Makassar and then we hopped onto a bike with a cart in front. It was my first time riding in one of those and it was pretty comfortable. We rested for a bit and then Eka and I went into the city. Today was my first time being in a big city for weeks and it was overwhelming, but in a good way. I was happy to be around people and being around an area that had Western influence seemed to make me smile. We went to Pantai Losari, which was a pretty cool night scene. There was a dock with swan boats and men renting out little fishing poles about a foot long with some string wound around them. Pantai Losari is a popular place to just hang out. Then we went to a mall. We walked around and looked at all the stores, some of which we had in the States and some of which were new to me. It was funny to see rice and noodles served at KFC, and I also saw a TFC (Texas Fried Chicken) and CFC (California Fried Chicken). I don’t know if we have those restaurants in the States. We had dinner at a food court. They actually had Western toilets here, and when I twisted a knob to flush it, it shot a stream of water at my legs. Apparently, I pushed the wrong lever and that was the butt squirting lever. For the last few weeks, I had only been in small towns and villages, so I had not seen the most civilized people. This was a very different view of Indonesia and the people. It was great seeing the place with a local because I learned a ton that I wouldn’t have understood had I been in the city alone.

 
February 7, 2010
We were going to go to a market at 6:30, but a massive thunderstorm canceled that. Instead I went back to bed and slept until 9:00. When I walked out into the living room, there was a dude sitting there trying to sell a pressure cooker. A door-to-door sales guy in Indonesia. Who would of thunk it! Eka and I went back downtown and visited Fort Rotterdam (dates from 1545) which is one of the best preserved examples of colonial Dutch architecture in Indonesia (Indonesia was taken over by the Dutch). Now it is mostly used as a place for English classes. Eka took me to one and they wanted me to introduce myself and do a Q&A session. There were about 30 people in this class. So they asked me about America and about Obama (whom I know next to nothing about), and a science teacher asked me about the human body. I think he wanted to know how to teach it in English?? I went to the museum and I helped two freshman university students with their English homework. It was like a scavenger hunt where you have to ask questions. I met a bunch of Eka’s friends and we hung out and talked. Then Eka and I went to a shopping center that is supposed to be really cheap. The first floor was mostly bags, shoes, and clothes including a lot of face wraps for Muslim women. The second floor was cell phones and the third was computers. On the top, there was a food court that we ate at. It was pretty Western except for the piles of durians (a big, spiky, stinky fruit) in the middle of the food court. I saw a McDonalds, so I, of course, had to try the ice cream. They had mini cones for about 10 cents, regular cones for 30 cents, and sundaes and crappy McFlurrys for 60 cents. Apparently they were out of cones though. That night we went to a wedding reception. This was in the city and was much larger. There was a lot of food and a lot of little plastic waters. One weird thing was people didn’t throw anything away, they just put it on the floor, so the floors were filthy.
 

Kalimantan and Borneo

February 8, 2010
I wanted to get out of Sulawesi and head to Kalimantan to get into the jungle asap. Eka called her cousin, a travel agent, and found out that there were at least flights to Kalimantan. So I grabbed a taxi to the airport planning on taking whatever flight I could get. It was not where I wanted to get to in Kalimantan, but in Indonesia there are not always a whole lot of choices. After waiting for four hours, I had a short 1.5 hour flight and as soon as I got my bags, I bargained with a taxi driver and got him from 50k to 15k rupiahs and hopped on a motorbike to the bus station. We pulled right up to a Samarinda bound bus and the nearly full bus departed within ten minutes. The bus ride was uneventful and for much of the time I found myself waking up on an annoyed middle-aged Muslim woman. I left the bus station to find the internet in hopes that a couchsurfer had replied to my email, but had no luck. I tried to research the city and find out about hotels on the net, but could find virtually no info, so I picked a hotel from my Lonely Planet guidebook that I thought was within 15 minutes. I made note of all the markets and stores as I rode along in the bemo, hoping to come back to them after I checked into the hotel. The bemo drove and drove and I kept taking mental notes of places but after an hour of driving, I gave up on that idea. Eventually the bemo dropped me off somewhere, but he had no idea where the hotel was. The language barrier made it impossible for me to tell him to just drop me off at any hotel nearby. So I started walking and a pushy hooker helped me to find a hotel very nearby. As I tried talking to the hotel clerk, the hooker yelled “I will come back later” from the door. The hotel was way too expensive, but the clerk was nice enough to give me a ride to the nearby Hanyani Hotel from my Lonely Planet book. This place was more reasonably priced and much more crappy. I was starving, so I walked around the streets to find some dinner. I sat down at a Turkish kebab place and enjoyed a veggie kebab. Then I moved to the restaurant next door to have a second dinner. They had food laying out on the table and you just sat down and threw what you wanted on a plate. I’m assuming they just expect honesty. I grabbed some skewers of green olives to have with my shrimp and tofu and soon realized they were little greenish brown eggs. Nisar Ahmad, an Indian who grew up here then lived in the States for a couple years and now lives here again, sat down next to me and we talked for a while. He was basically the first person I talked to in Kilimantan who spoke English and it was nearly perfect. He owns a furniture store and the mattress I was sleeping on from the hotel was from his store. He was hilarious. He paid for my dinner and then drove me around town for a bit before dropping me at my hotel.
 
February 9, 2010
I wanted to do some treks into the jungle around Samarinda, but it was too hard to find anyone who spoke English or any info on the internet, so I decided to move on to Malaysian Borneo where the jungle is much more accessible. Early in the morning, I grabbed a bemo to the bus station and bought a ticket for the 16-hour bus ride to Berau. From there, I would have to make my way up to Tarakan or Nunukan by bus or boat and then take another boat to Tawau in Malaysian Borneo. As I sat waiting for the bus, I decided that I did not want to take days to get there and instead got my money back and went to the airport. I knew I could at least get to Berau and hopefully just get a flight to Nunukan, or even better, Tawau. They had flights leaving in an hour to as far north as Nunukan, but every flight was full and waiting in standby was unsuccessful! I was very unhappy to spend another day in Samarinda, but was cheered up when the guy at the check-in counter offered me to stay at his place. So I bought a ticket for tomorrow and waited (and discovered free Wi-Fi) until Pertuis got a 2-hour break at 12:00 and drove me to his place. He is 32 years old and lives in a new apartment with a couple of friends. He even had a spare bedroom for me to stay in. Someone had told me to go to Desa Pampang, a traditional village outside of Samarinda, so I paid one of his friends to motorbike me there and back and hang out there for a few hours. This turned out to be a complete waste of my time as there was nothing there to see except an empty open-walled building with a few girls in traditional clothes selling jewelry. They tried to get me to pay an entrance fee, but I refused since there was NOTHING to see. So we drove the 25 km back to Samarinda and I paid the guy half of what we had originally planned since we spent no time there. After laying around in the sun and relaxing for a few hours, I went to walk the streets. I discovered how cheap good ice cream bars were and splurged three times during my five hours, spending about $1.50 altogether. At one of the hawker stalls, they were cooking up pancake/waffle-like creations with syrup and I figured I’d give one a go. The Keju Susu I had was jaw droppingly good and I spent about fifteen minutes sitting on the street shaking my head in awe. I was stuffed but figured I needed something healthy for dinner, so I went to a restaurant and asked for a little tofu and tempeh. Instead, I got a huge portion smothered in homemade sauce and veggies. Delicious, but I nearly put myself into a food coma.
 
February 10, 2010
Pertuis and I went to the airport at 8:00 and as he worked, I used the free Wi-Fi. I boarded the plane just before eleven and was happy when Pertuis hooked me up with a free luggage check. Seating was unassigned and the flight stopped in Berau and Tarakan before making its final stop in Nunukan 2.5 hours later. The taxi drivers were insanely annoying at the airport, but one of them took me to the port for a buck or two. I was hoping there were still ferries over to Tawau, but mostly expecting to sleep in the worthless port town. Luckily, a ferry left about an hour after I had arrived. By the way, the people at this port were ridiculously pushy and the kids on the boat were, too. I loved Indonesia, but the last few days made me want to get the hell out. The seas were really rough, but this boat was flying a good 30 or 40 mph. The port at Tawau was a complete riot. The water was chocolate brown and churning at the surface. It took awhile, but they got the ferry tied up to a dock which was piled ten feet high with people and cargo. The way off the boat was a plank moving about a meter or so with the waves and I’m pretty sure falling off would most likely have resulted in death. I had been in contact with a couchsurfer in Tawau for the last few days and he said he would be “the only white man at the port.” As soon as I got out of immigration, I saw him standing there waiting. He is an expat from England and has been living on and off in Malaysia for over five years. Recently he bought a resort nine miles out of Tawau and he’s got big plans for restaurants, resorts, and tourism activity, all of which will be self sustainable. I was a lucky guy because he had just put up his Tawau couchsurfing profile one day before I contacted him. The resort is a very relaxed place out in the sticks and right on the beach and is filled with all the coconuts and bananas you could want. He just opened the resort a month ago, so it is only partially up and running. He and his friend/personal assistant, Anthony, took me out to dinner at Linda Delight, where we had wild goat, frogs, crocodile, and aubergine. They also serve python, monkey and a ton of other crazy stuff, but only under the table. After dinner, we laid out in the bed of his truck, had a few beers and watched the stars. There were so many stars in the sky that it was nearly a blur.
 
February 11, 2010
In the morning, we headed into town and checked out the wet market, which was right at the port I came into yesterday. It wasn’t very big, but what it lacked in size it made up for in quality. A few of the fresh seafoods they had were octopus, prawns, crabs, barracuda, shark, tuna, cuttlefish, mussels, unidentifiable seashells, rays, and the infamous blowfish that if you cook improperly you pretty much die. Everything is completely intact and comes straight off the boat and into the port side market. We had lunch in a food court above the dry market and then checked out that market. The highlight of that for me were melon-sized limes, but it was also filled with bananas, coconuts and other fruits and veggies, as well as dried jellyfish, squids, and fish. We hopped back in the truck and drove a half hour or so to Tawau Hills National Park. All the while I watched the road for snakes. Dan’s been filling my head full of stories about cobras, pythons, and some of the 160 other snakes that live in this area, 130 of which are venomous. We hiked through the jungle to what was supposedly the world’s tallest tropical tree at a height of 88.32 meters. On the way, we saw Red Leaf monkeys and, I think, Gibbons. They were high in the canopy and moving fast between trees, but we got a few good looks at them. One of them actually tried pooping on me and was pretty accurate, but not quite accurate enough. We walked around for a couple of hours, but when we returned, the place was closed down and we had to hop the gate to get out. On the way back, we ran into a running club after they had finished up. Apparently, Dan had previously been in the club, which appeared to be all Chinese men, and we stopped and had a beer with them. For dinner, we went to Anthony’s mom’s house and had Chinese food. Anthony and his family are Chinese and there is a large population of Chinese in Malaysia. In this area, they pretty much own all the businesses and much of the money. Afterward, we met Anthony’s older brother and had a few Tigers at the Long Chance Cafe. Tiger is the most popular beer here. Other common beers are Guinness (which they actually brew here and I’ve heard is much worse than the home brewery in London), and Carlsberg, (similar situation to Guinness).
 
February 12, 2010
I was out of bed and into the car just after six and we were on our way to Semporna. It was a 1 1/2 hour drive before we pulled up at Scuba Junkie. We paid 100 ringgit each for a day trip out to Mabul Island. As soon as we got to the island, they dropped some people off and we headed out to do some snorkeling. Some areas had really low clarity and others were damn good. Normally I never use flippers, but today I realized how nice they are. I could dive a hell of a lot deeper and, in fact, I was down with the scuba divers a couple of times and they said they were at six meters. After an hour-and-a-half of snorkeling, we went back to Mabul and I spent a couple hours relaxing on the white sand beach. After a Western lunch of pasta, Dan and I did a little walking around in the small villages on the water. Nearly all of the lodging on the island is built on stilts out in the water. This place would be great for a relaxing vacation and I could have spent a good couple of days here, but we just made it a day trip. The nearby island of Sipadan is said to be one of the top diving sites in the world and only 120 people are allowed on per day. I would have liked to have done that, but it usually takes a very advanced reservation to get on. I think that says something about Mabul island though. I got fried by the sun today and was super excited to pass out back at the resort. Unfortunately, we didn’t have our bbq chicken and tiger prawns until eleven, so I didn’t get to bed until one.
 
February 13, 2010
We had plans for the morning to go to a river resort and water village, but I didn’t wake up until 10:40. I thought my clock must be wrong, but it wasn’t. Didn’t do a whole lot today. I am way behind on sleep and way too tired. I drove with Dan up to Semporna to pick up a backpacker for the resort and used the net for a little while and had lunch at an Indian place. When I got back, I took a nap for a couple of hours and then we celebrated Chinese New Year (Eve) with Anthony’s mom and brother at the resort. We had a delicious dinner including chicken, mushrooms, and duck. Went to bed early hoping to catch up on sleep.
 
February 14, 2010
Happy Chinese New Year and Valentine’s Day! Today Dan took me to the River resort, but we were disappointed that there were a couple hundred screaming kids there for the new year. We still walked around and this place would be amazing if there weren’t people there. It’s a resort with all sorts of accommodations, including camping, built on a couple hundred acres of land. It is pretty remote and there is a lot of organic farming and oil palm and a beautiful river running through the middle. Oil palm is the main industry (billions of dollars each year) here and has resulted in millions of acres of deforestation. They are palm trees that grow huge black pods which are converted into cooking oil. It has completely warped the landscape here and made a lot of millionaires. On the way out of the resort, we saw what I think was a huge toucan, but may have been some kind of weird pelican. After that, we had a great Malaysian lunch and then went to a water village, which is a village of a couple hundred people mostly living in houses built on stilts in the water on a river. Dan is friends with the chief and when we found him, we realized we were at a wedding reception. We had to eat with them, otherwise it would have been very rude. Reluctantly I had a second lunch. They won’t let you get away with just eating a little. Dan said he was the first white person to ever visit this village (except for the explorers/ settlers/conquerors or whatever there was years ago). Since then, I brought two others making me the fourth white person to ever visit the village. People were very excited to see us, but overall these people are a lot calmer than the Indonesians, in my opinion. Malaysians just seem to have a lot more manners. Malaysia is also a much richer country and much more Westernized and advanced than Indonesia. Sitting at lunch today, I started to understand why Dan decided to settle in this area. After all this, I got a few supplies in town and then Dan dropped me off to use the net at five at Restaurant Sri Tanjung owned by Zulk Ahmd and he will pick me up at about nine. Zulk is a friend of his.
Now for what’s to come…
Tomorrow I am embarking on the most extreme adventure yet in my life. Dan has a friend with a very remote organic farm. From Tawau, it is 90 miles on gravel roads and logging roads. It is in some of the more remote jungle in all of Borneo. I know that it is in the same general area of Kalabakan and about 30 miles from Maliau Basin National Park, which is in the process of becoming a World Heritage Site.
Some of the wildlife includes:
Pygmy Elephants
Rhinos
Monkeys: orangutans, Proboscis monkeys, Gibbons, Red and Silver leaf monkey, macaques
Wild Cats: clouded leopard, Bornean bay cat, flat-headed cat, marbled cat, and leopard cat
Snakes: Pythons, King Cobras, Pit Vipers, many other kinds
Anyway, there is a lot of wildlife there and I’m not sure if all the wild cats are there, but at least three kinds are.

He is going to drop me at the farm and I am going to trek into the jungle and stay for about five nights. People have walked in the area before, but it is mostly unexplored, I think. I will most likely hike for a day in and then set up a camp for a few days and then hike back out. I am hoping to base myself by a river. For food, I will be bringing a lot of rice and maybe hard boiled eggs and will have to harvest and hunt for the rest of my food. I am also bringing cooking oil. Worst comes to worst, I eat only rice for five days, which won’t kill me. I have water purification tablets for the water and will hopefully make a spear out of bamboo. For food, I’m hoping to find fruits and plants and will hopefully get some fish and most likely bugs. I do have a stove and I also have flint and steel to start fires. Dan will either pick me up in five days or I may hitchhike (logging trucks?) the ninety miles back. Whatever I do, it will be a very wild adventure and I am very excited to share it with you all when I get back. P.S. I also have a large machete to work through the jungle and ribbon to retrace my path.
 

Borneo – Into the Jungle

While I was in the jungle, I wrote in my journal and most of what you read here is directly out of my journal. Sometimes random thoughts pop in between things, so the writing can be a bit disjointed. Hopefully this gives you an idea of what I actually felt while I was in there though.
 
February 15, 2010
I was up a little before eight and got right to it. After a delicious breakfast of cornflakes and fresh milk, we were on the road at ten. The total distance of the trip was one hundred fifty km, the first ninety of which were on paved roads and the second sixty on dirt logging roads. The palm oil plantations finally ended after 110 km, leaving us driving through the jungle for about 40 km. Although the palm plantations are not natural and they destroy the land, they do make for some pretty picturesque scenes since the landscape is opened up. There were beautiful views on the way out from the dirt road. The turnoff to the organic farm was at km marker 38 and was two thirds of the way to Sapulut from Kalabakan. The farm was just off the dirt road. It is very remote out here, but the jungle is much different than I was expecting. It is much drier and it looks like much of the trees are Eucalyptus. The food I brought was two kilos of rice, two liters of water, cooking oil, and seasoning salt. I decided at the last minute to ask if I could buy some eggs and they gave me ten eggs for free. I noted that the farm is north/northwest of the small mountain and Tawau is southeast from the farm. After ten minutes of getting information at the farm, I was on my way. They said it would take two to three hours to get to the top of the mountain and then there is a river on the other side. My plan was to climb the mountain, which looked reasonably large, and then head down the other side to the river, where I would set up camp. I walked along an abandoned logging road which ended in less than a quarter mile. The only way up the mountain from here was through the jungle, so I walked into the jungle in the direction of 160 degrees, which is the direction I followed most of the day. I was making my way through the thick brush for maybe twenty minutes before I came across a shallow creek, which I followed for about twenty minutes. I could move a lot faster and cover more ground following the creek, but I didn’t feel like I was gaining elevation or heading in the right direction. I headed up through the trees and after not too long stumbled upon some banana trees. The bananas were up really high and it took a few minutes trying to figure out how to get at them. I tried pushing the tree over, which did not work, but I did realize that I could probably cut it down with my machete. It was pretty easy to fell the tree because banana trees are not actually trees. They are herbaceous plants and the trunk is very soft, composed of layers of leaf sheaths. The bananas were very small and very green, but they were food and I was starving. They actually made me gag. They were so dry and bitter. There were about 50 to 75 bananas on the stem. I threw about 15 in my pack to fry up later hoping that they would taste better. The peel secreted a milk that was so sticky it could have been used as a glue. I kept on for a while and found myself in a clearing. On the other side was a logging road that I followed for a while. The road is very old and I can’t imagine it has been used for many years. Around that time I started to notice the leeches on me. Only one had gotten me, but of all the places it was right on my wiener, which stung a little. From there the climbing got pretty tough and I was nearly vertically climbing at times, mostly pulling myself up by trees and vines and using my knees a lot. After a while, I put gloves on because I was sticking my hands in a lot of cracks and crevices. The most frustrating part of the trekking was constantly getting stuck by thorn-filled vines and branches. Sometimes I would get wrapped in vines and not be able to move forward and that was especially annoying when I was climbing on steep ledges. After three hours (around five o’clock), I thought I was basically at the top, when I found myself at a small clearing that I could see the farm from, but it took another 45 minutes from there. I was slightly disappointed that I hadn’t seen any animals yet and then five minutes later I saw some Red Leaf monkeys, one with a baby, swinging through the canopy. I also saw one much larger grey monkey leaping between the trees. Maybe it was a Silver Leaf monkey or maybe it was a Gibbon? It was just like in the Tawau Hill National Park with the Red Leafs and then a much larger grey monkey. Earlier today, I also saw either old rhino or elephant poop and maybe some elephant tracks. Also some sort of deer tracks? I ran out of water just before I arrived at the top and wanted to continue on to the river but thought that I would be out of light soon. It would be a very thirsty night. At the highest part, I found an area where someone had been camping in the past. They told me a guy camped out on the mountain for a week and I guess this is where. It turned out to be a huge blessing because there was a 1.5 liter bottle of water. I threw in a purification tablet and a half-hour later I had water to drink. I set up my tent first and took off all my dripping wet clothes. I had sweated so much that I literally had to wring out my clothes. At 6:30, it was almost completely dark and I had a good fire going. There is an unlimited amount of dry wood up here. It sure is a good thing I decided to stay here rather than push for the river. Three of my ten eggs had broken open but I was able to cook all of the eggs that had stayed in the bottle and hadn’t gotten all over the stuff in my bag. I am so happy that I got those eggs because I didn’t want to waste my water on cooking rice. The eggs were great and then I fried up about ten bananas. They might actually be plantains though. They have a closer consistency to corn than bananas and they even have kernels. They were actually pretty decent fried up with oil and seasoning salt. Besides that food, I also ate some leeches throughout the day. Some of the lower grassy areas had a ton of grasshoppers and crickets, so that’s what I might end up eating tomorrow. I think rather than moving on and bringing my big heavy pack, I will just go looking for the river and food, which I am assuming will be in the lower elevations. It’s about 600 meters in elevation here according to my camera, but that could be wrong. Then in mid-afternoon, I will come back up here and stay for at least one more night. As I write this, it has just started raining. So far, it’s just sprinkling. That’s weird because the sky looked very clear and the stars were showing when I got in the tent a half hour ago. I’m a little scared up here. I don’t think there is really much to be afraid of, but I still am. Maybe it’s just loneliness I feel though. I wish I would have set a water catcher to collect rain. It’s raining harder now but my tent seems to be holding up pretty well so far. I’m still trying to figure out what makes me happy. I think real nature and adventure like this does, but I think I’m also lonely when I am out here like this. I’m hoping that being alone in the jungle will make me more independent and, therefore, less lonely in situations like this. There is an abundance of the biggest ants I have ever seen in my life up here. They were all over my stuff that was drying. I am definitely getting a lot better at being okay with bugs being in my stuff and crawling on me. You have to be able to if you want to handle the jungle. There are so many here that I would go insane if I wasn’t okay with insects. This rain is great. It really takes my mind away from the sounds of the jungle. So does writing. It’s nine now and I am going to bed pretty soon. Besides finding food and water tomorrow, I would love to see some elephants or orangutans.
 
February 16, 2010
Sleep was okay, but I am on a slant. I got out of bed around 7:30 and was very tired. I cooked two eggs and the rest of the bananas, which was about ten. I cooked over the fire again. I tried using only flint and steel, then only the lighter, and after losing patience, used gas. I need to find some good tinder. At around nine or nine-thirty, I went to find the river. I brought my belly bag, CamelBak, water bottle, and my twenty liter dry sack to put food in. I headed in a south/ southeast direction and after not too long, I found a deep gorge with some water that I followed. At times, I walked in it, but sometimes the limestone was too steep and slippery, so I had to stay above it. After a while, it dropped straight down one or two hundred meters. I continued along that edge and started to hear water and I hoped it was a river below. I found running water, which was pretty much a series of tiny waterfalls since it was on steep limestone drop offs and I stopped here to fill up my water containers. I think it would have been safe to drink, but I used my tablets just in case. I continued on, but the terrain was so steep it didn’t look like I could make it anywhere and it was leading me in a northeast direction now. So I went back to the water and sat for a while and drank half a gallon of water. I think earlier on this morning I saw some monkeys in the canopy, but I can’t even remember. I also saw a black squirrel and two frogs. So I headed back the way I came, without finding the river, and was back at my campsite around twelve-thirty with about five liters of water. For lunch, I cooked rice and also fried up some of the big ants. I only found ten of them though, which was not enough. They were actually pretty tasty though. I don’t know if it was something else in the pan, but there was something sweet. (Later I realized that it was the ants.) I used a bit of seasoning salt on the rice and I am very thankful that I have that. Around 2:00, I headed down to the grassy area that I had found the day before to collect crickets, grasshoppers and bananas. I brought my empty belly bag figuring I would come back with 5-10 pounds of bananas. Instead of heading down the north/northwest side, which is mostly big trees and easier to walk through, I decided to cut down at the steeper west/northwest side to lose elevation quicker. After not too long, I was in very thick jungle. I saw a few Red Leaf monkeys way up in the trees. It got quite a bit darker and I heard thunder that seemed very nearby. Although I dropped in elevation very quickly, I felt like I wasn’t making it anywhere and that no banana trees would be nearby. With it being so much darker all of a sudden, I became worried. I knew I should still have a few hours of daylight, but the clouds changed things and I was in very thick coverage. So I headed northeast, figuring I would find the clearer side of the mountain and that I did. I took that the rest of the way back up to camp, but for a while, I just sat in the jungle. I started to get pretty lonely, maybe because I was sitting in the gloomy rain. I got back to the tent at 4:00 and was pretty happy to be home. I used my MSR Whisperlite stove for the first time and it was much easier than I was expecting. The unleaded fuel from the gas station burned really well, too. I boiled rice and fried one egg up with some ants. Then I fried the rice in oil to give it some flavor. I started a fire just using the coals from my afternoon fire. Oh yeah, in the jungle I found a log with super dry wood and I brought back a bunch of that to use as kindling, which worked great. I sat by the fire for a little while, but got in the tent at about 7:00, shortly after dark. I was pretty lonely, but at least not scared like last night. The monkeys were really howling and there were some huge birds nearby making sounds kind of like a mix between a goose and a crow. I saw them for a second and they were the size of a bald eagle (I later found out they were Hornbills). I was reading my Lonely Planet guidebook and planning the rest of my trip. I realized that I don’t have enough time to hang out here in the jungle AND go to a lot of the other places that I want to go. I’m feeling like I should move on so I have time in Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Especially because this jungle is not that amazing. Being up here on top of the mountain makes it inconvenient to go down to lower elevation to get food and water. Also, I think the wildlife is really down there. It is much safer and more homey up here on the top though. I think that tomorrow late morning I am going to pack up camp and try to find that clearing. I will clear out an area since the grass is three or four feet high and make that my base. Then maybe head out the next day, unless there are more signs of wildlife down there. If I leave here and go to the Kinabatangan river, I might have more time to see wildlife there. I guess it’s hard to find animals in the jungle. It’s hard to cover much ground because moving through the jungle is so time consuming and the elevation is hard because as far down as I go, I know I have to come back up. Maybe I’ll even head out tomorrow. I still have the hitchhike back anyway.
 
February 17, 2010
I woke up at 7:30 feeling really groggy and lethargic, and that lasted until now, ten o’clock. I made a fire and cooked an ant omelet and fried up some rice. At 8:00, I walked around and looked in the canopy for monkeys. I would walk a little, then sit or stand and watch. I saw a few small birds but never up close. I also saw a huge bald eagle-looking bird up in the canopy (learned later that it was a Hornbill). As I was sitting with my legs dangling over a drop off with a good view of the surrounding canopy and the distant mountains, I heard something walking up right behind me. I calmly turned my head slowly to see what it was, but it went crashing through the brush before I even got a glimpse of it. Maybe it was coming to see what I was? Judging by the sounds, it was a small mammal, maybe the size of a monkey? All morning I’ve heard monkeys all over, but I can’t see them. A few times I heard them crashing through the canopy. Some have even been making the loud “ooo-ooo aah-aah-aah” sound. I tried to put my contacts in, but my hands are too dirty and it hurts. I only have two liters of water left, so I can’t waste it by washing my hands. I’m so tired this morning that I think I am going to nap. I’m lying here in the tent right now. I might take off today. I am at least going to find a place at a lower elevation, if not leave. What I really want to do is leave though. I think that would make me the happiest. After reading my book last night, I am finding it hard to stay here and I am feeling very restless. Maybe being alone in the jungle is not for me after all, or maybe if I was by a body of water with fish to catch and fruit to harvest I would be happier. One thing I know after all is that I am happiest in the sun.

I laid around for a while and then packed up camp and set off around noon. I headed north towards the farm, but figured if I found a nice place I would stay there. After only five minutes of walking, I saw some Red Leaf monkeys in the trees. I followed the easy side of the mountain for a little while and then cut off to the right. I followed some animal trails at times and at others it was thick jungle, very hard to get through. I chopped down one banana tree and had a few bananas and threw some in my pack. (For the readers: banana trees grow very fast and die after they fruit once and then will reproduce with offshoots.) I stumbled upon the big clearing, but knowing I was that close to the farm, I couldn’t help but move on. I saw more elephant tracks and some wild cat tracks. When I was walking down the old logging trail to the farm, I started to feel a sense of failure. I started to wonder what the people at the farm, Dan, and readers would think of me coming out of the jungle after only two nights. When I got to the farm, I sat down and started chatting with some of the guys and they gave me biscuits and coffee. I was going to get on the road and hike back, but one guy named Allan said he’d go out wild boar hunting with me, so I changed my mind. He grabbed his machete and a large spear and as soon as he did that, the dogs knew what was going on. They all gathered up and started barking and the eleven of us were on our way in minutes. First, we followed a dirt road for a couple km and then cut onto a thickly overgrown trail. Occasionally the dogs would smell something, but nothing came of it. Then in the distance shrieking and barking sounds disturbed the jungle. Allan listened and tried to figure out which direction the action was coming from and then we were off running through the jungle, down steep slopes, flying between trees, and hopping over logs. We then crossed a river and shortly after found the nine dogs with a thrashing wild boar trying to break free from their jaws. He nearly got away before Allan stuck the spear in his heart, which killed him in a half minute. Then he dragged him two or so miles down the river to a log bridge, where we walked a mile or so down a road to the farm. The river was a beautiful river filled with large boulders and would have been a great place to make a base had I found it. There were plenty of fish and I saw some large frogs, too. Back at the farm, I watched them clean the whole boar from start to finish. It was amazing how much guts the thing had and overall how little of a percentage of the 70-80 pound animal was actually meat. We ate some of the boar for dinner that night and while I was waiting, I sat near the lights and checked out all the huge bugs that it attracted. Butterflies, praying mantis, huge beetles, and cicadas were the main ones. We drank some arak as well. The wild boar was pretty tough and dry, but it was delicious.
 
February 18, 2010
I woke up at 6:00 with the intention of going fishing at 7:00. It was a very foggy morning and I could hardly see ten meters ahead. We collected earthworms and walked a half mile to a shallow muddy river. We fished for about twenty minutes with hand lines and had no luck. We moved down the river to find a better spot, but the river was mostly dry, so we were pretty unsuccessful. We found a big turtle as we walked along the dry river and then we cut into the jungle. I think he had the intention of finding a better fishing spot, but we were also hunting. We had the dogs with us and Allan carried his spear. We ended up wandering in the jungle for about two hours and I was really hungry and tired. I don’t think he knew where he was either. Everywhere we went was full of water buffalo and boar tracks. It was an insane amount. We came upon two wild chickens and got a shot at them with the spear, but missed them and then they disappeared. After an exhausting morning, we got back to the farm and I stuffed my starving body with food. It took me about three hours to clean all of my filthy gear and clothes. Then I walked over to a wood pile and moved the whole thing piece by piece looking for whatever I could find. We caught a big black scorpion, a huge greenish-blue centipede, and saw some frogs and lizards. It was kind of a relaxing afternoon and I took a two-hour nap. Just after dark, Allan, James and I went out frog hunting. We started at the river next to the farm and headed up from there. I walked in the river with a flashlight in one hand and a machete in the other hand. When you shine the flashlight on them, the frogs’ eyes illuminate so you can see them and it basically blinds them so they are stunned. Then you walk slowly up to them while keeping the light in their eyes and once you get close you smack them over the back with the machete pinning them to the ground. The idea is to break the back, then grab them and throw them in the bag. We walked up the river for about three miles and got fifteen or so frogs. The guys were really scared of water snakes and when we finally came across one, they kept a good twenty or thirty meters from him. I’m pretty sure it was a banded krait, which is an extremely poisonous water snake. I think if you get bit by one out here you are most likely going to die. It was sitting right in the middle of the river, so we had to climb up into the jungle and walk around. They think that they are attracted to light so they kept the lights off, but I’m not sure about that. They said one time one chased them because of the flashlight. We had another mile to walk back once we got to the log bridge (from the other side this time). Allan cooked up the frogs for dinner and they were really, really good. A little bony though. We ate the entire frog, not just the legs.
 
February 19, 2010
The night before, an older man had set some gill nets up in a river and that morning they asked if I wanted to go check the nets with them. Sonny, James, the old man, and I got in the truck and drove about fifteen minutes. We pulled over and walked a bit and came upon a beautiful river with deep pools, huge boulders, and fast rapids. They had three gill nets set up, spread out over about a half mile of the river. We got about twenty sucker type fish, something similar to a shad but with a sucker, and some catfish. One stung me while I was removing it from the net and it hurt like hell. It was great swimming in the deep pools of the refreshing river and a lot easier than walking on the slippery rocks. That afternoon, the manager of the farm happened to be there and he was heading back to Tawau so I got a ride with him. I was excited to hitchhike, but no need to do that when you have a free ride.
 

Borneo – Sandakan, Sukau and the Kinabatangan River

After another night without being disturbed by the jungle animals, we woke up at around 7:00. We used up the last of our food and as we started to boil water for the coffee, the stove ran out of gas. Almost perfect timing. We had originally set a place to be picked up by boat, but since we ended up a couple km downstream, we figured we’d sit on the river and flag him down when he passed us. That became more complicated than anticipated when he managed to look directly at us yet continue onwards. As we rode back, I turned the muddy river even browner by cleaning my filthy clothes in it. The only public transportation out of Sukau to the junction 42 km away was at 6:30 a.m., but Andy was kind enough to give me a ride. Imagine those little cars that you see five clowns crammed in and that would be a similar situation. Having two large packs on my back for the ride was quite painful, too.
 
February 19 (continued)
Dan happened to be at the market, so I got dropped off down there and met up with him. I was happy and surprised to see Joe was still with him. Joe and I walked around town a little while, Dan ran some errands and my time was consumed with eating everything in sight. I also used the internet for a bit. That evening I just chilled at the resort and also busted a few coconuts open with a machete.
 
February 20, 2010
I started my day off the best way a day can be started, with a morning swim. I swam just a couple hundred feet out into the ocean and I could see Tawau from there and also the villagers who live on the beach near the resort. Joe wanted to go to Sandakan and Dan was giving him a ride up there, so it worked out perfectly for me to go up there. It’s a four-hour drive up, mostly through oil palm plantations, of course, but we stopped at a few places along the way. First, a waterfall which you could stand right on top of and look down about 100 feet and then at an old logging camp with a stunning view of the ocean and islands around Borneo. We got up to Sandakan around 4:00 and I met up with Gordon Chong, who I am couchsurfing with. He’s a Chinese Malaysian who has lived here all of his life. He is forty-two, has worked at a bank for about twenty years, and loves to travel. He lives in a really nice house in a nice Chinese neighborhood. It was awesome to be in a nice place with a nice bed, bathroom, shower, TV., etc. For dinner, he prepared chicken satay with peanut sauce and then he showed me a Buddhist temple way up in the hills that overlooked Sandakan. It is still Chinese New Year’s, so the temple is all lit up and many people go to visit during these times. Also a lot of people give the temple a ton of money. The more money a family gives, the bigger their name is displayed at the temple. Talk about a business. At night, we met up with Dan and Joe for a couple beers.
 
February 21, 2010
After breakfast, we went back to the same temple so I could get a view of the city of Sandakan during the day. After that, he took me over to an electronics store owned by a friend who was having a Lion Dance done. It was very much worth watching. In this dance, they had about ten raised pedestals that two men operating one lion suit jumped to and from acrobatically. One mistake and they probably would have been in some serious pain on the ground. It is a typical Chinese New Year thing and the business does it to bring in business. That definitely worked for them because the store was jam packed from wall to wall. Then Gordon and I drove over to a Malay water village. One funny thing I saw was an outhouse sitting over the water that just had a hole in the bottom for the crap to fall into the water. Why even have the outhouse? Also a big part of the village had burned down and just the paths with a cement foundation were left which was pretty fun to walk on. Gordon then picked up his brother and the three of us had lunch at a very packed chicken and rice restaurant. It was special according to Gordon because there were no bones on the chicken. Boneless chicken breasts are pretty rare in Southeast Asia though. Lunch consisted of chicken breasts, legs, liver, heart, veggies and delicious rice cooked in chicken broth. It was a simple restaurant that served very few things but it did a good job with what it did serve. Our “waitress” was a very muscular Chinese woman. I guess I can’t do a good job of describing her, but she was hilarious. After that, the three of us went to the Sepilok Rainforest Discovery Center. It wasn’t a place I would normally go, but since he suggested it, I was happy to go and it was a very fun time. It was a small section of jungle with a lake in the middle and paths throughout. I was really surprised to find out that sometimes they actually see orangutans and other monkeys there. I guess the place was wilder than I thought. One section was basically a botanical garden with signs teaching about the plants. I learned a lot about edible plants, which was great. I started eating one that said it was edible and as I was chewing it, I looked back for some reason and read the rest of the sign that said it was poisonous uncooked (raw) due to a presence of cyanide! Good thing I only ate a little and spit most of it out. I learned a lot about animals and realized that the squirrels I saw in the jungle may have been flying squirrels. There are many species of them here and some of them you would never guess were flying squirrels because of how big they are. We did the canopy walk, which was pretty cool as it was pretty high up and I scanned for orangutans the whole time with no luck. I learned that what I saw with Dan before was an oriental pied hornbill. They look kind of like Toucans. From the canopy walk, you could see a whole bunch of honey bee nests on the trees. Afterwards, we went to a place called 7-Heaven and got some delicious ice cream. Then we went back to Gordon’s and he went to his mom’s housing leaving me at his place alone. I watched two episodes of Planet Earth. That is such an inspiring show. I also went for a run for the first time in a month and a half and then exercised afterwards. It felt great. Gordon came back and for dinner he made a tuna, pineapple, and imitation crab pizza. It was some frickin’ delicious pizza and we had chicken and noodles along with it. He put a whole bunch of movies on my computer, which will be nice to have. It was really enjoyable relaxing in his nice house.
 
February 22, 2010
I woke up at 7:00 and had the house to myself for the morning. I took full advantage of that and sat around and watched Planet Earth all morning and ate a ton of food. Since I got out of the jungle, I have not been able to stop eating. I have been eating everything in sight. For lunch, Gordon and I went to an Indian place and then he took me to a bus station to get a bus to Sukau. I slept most of the way and around 4:00 I arrived in Sukau at the Sukau Bed and Breakfast. I am in Sukau because I think it is a great place to get out into the jungle and it is supposed to be one of the best places in Borneo for spotting wildlife. I laid out on the dock in the sun for a while to wait for the owner, whom I was told speaks English. As I was laying there, I thought I saw a crocodile swimming from the shore, but after talking to the owner, I believed that it was probably a monitor lizard. The owner still wasn’t back, so I decided to go for a run into town to check the place out, but after five minutes, I stopped at a lodge and talked to a guy named Simon for an hour. He is from England, but relocated to Borneo and has done so many awesome things. I learned a lot about the area from him and he also let me borrow a compass since I had lost mine at the farm. When I went back, I met three Americans, a bunch of Czechs and a German. I had dinner with all of them and Andi, the German, turned out to be a really cool guy. We decided to go camping together. The two of us walked back to the lodge so I could show him some pictures I had seen and look at Google Earth to try to figure out where to go camping. There were a bunch of pictures, all of which were taken in this area, of monkeys, orangutans, cats, bears, crocodiles, and birds. It was very exciting seeing all the pictures because it gave me hope that we would see some great creatures out in the jungle. We had a San Miguel beer (from the Philippines) with all the Czechs and toward the end, one girl left before the rest of us. When we left five or ten minutes later, we found her behind a tree hiding and crying. Apparently, she had nearly walked into an elephant eating from a tree and it charged at her.
 
February 23, 2010
I was up at a quarter-to-six and went out on a boat cruise at 6:00 with the three Americans, Sandra (a Swiss), and Andi. It was a very foggy morning, but it cleared up pretty quickly. We saw one orangutan, proboscis monkeys, macaques, three types of beautiful kingfishers, egrets, herons, a white-bellied fish eagle, two monitor lizards and some hornbills. We didn’t get a good view of the orangutan or the hornbills, but overall it was a pretty good morning out in the little boat. Afterward, we had breakfast and then hung out for a bit before Sandra, Andi and I went into town (not much of a town, just three or so little shops and a restaurant) to get food for camping. Walking took an hour, shopping took forever and we had lunch. We were just dicking around and having a fun time and laughing though. We saw a road kill cobra and neon green lizard on the way in, along with some fresh elephant poop. I don’t know if you know this, but elephant poop is huge, one “pebble” is close to the size of a volleyball. At 4:00, we went out on another river cruise and this time we saw two orangutans, proboscis monkeys, macaque, Pig Tailed Macaque, Red Leaf monkeys, Silver Leaf monkeys, hornbills, wild chicken, a Bearded Pig with about ten young and a bunch of fish eagles. On the way back, we saw a beautiful sunset and back at the B&B, Andi and I boiled eggs and rice for tomorrow. At the same time, we made dinner and made other preparations for camping. After dark, Sandra and I went out walking with flashlights in the nearby trees looking for wildlife. I was wearing shorts and flip flops so I was pretty uncomfortable with every little thing touching me, not knowing what it might be. At one time, I felt something actually in my flip flop between it and my raised heel and looked down to see a snake! Then I realized it was only a huge earthworm. We saw one big spider as well and heard something very spooky grunting and one on the other side of the river returning the grunt. Maybe it was a monkey or a deer, I don’t know.
Andi and I arranged for a guy with a boat to drop us on the opposite side of the river about five miles up. This was one the places where they had spotted elephants on the river cruise the day I arrived. From there, we would walk into the jungle and spend two nights out there. He would pick us up at the same place at nine in the morning two days later. We found out that there is only three to five km of jungle on each side of the river and then it turns into oil palm. So basically the wildlife is really dense here because they have nowhere to go. This also means that it is nearly impossible to get lost because you just need to walk toward the river or towards the plantations. You could, however, walk a long way if you managed to walk parallel with them instead.
 
February 24, 2010
I slept solid without waking once all night until 8:30 in the morning. At nine, Andi and I took his motorbike into town to get a permit for the jungle because I guess you technically need one. While in town, we also stopped for breakfast and got more eggs for camping. It then took more than an hour to find the permit place, which was a little ways out-of-town. That includes our detour into an oil palm plantation when we saw a crazy vine-covered building up on a hill in the plantation. We didn’t make it all the way up to the building, so that was left a mystery. We accidentally stopped at a school thinking maybe it was the permit place and also stopped and got some delicious twenty-five cent ice cream. We finally got back to our place at eleven and finished packing, but the guy wasn’t there to give us a ride until half-past twelve. So it was a really late start to the day but, oh well. On the way up, I spotted an orangutan in a tree over the river and it was the best view of one yet. The guy was a huge dick and was reluctant to stop so we could get a good look at it. We didn’t end up stopping exactly where they had seen the elephants, but up river from there a bit. We noted that the river was NW and we walked straight away from the river and into the jungle in a SE direction. Within ten minutes of being in the jungle, we saw a shrew squirrel. At first, we tried to mark where we were going with ribbons, but after a short time realized it would be nearly impossible to retrace these. We at least marked the pickup location though. Out of sight from the river the land was very flat and with no landmarks to base our direction off of we found ourselves walking nearly in circles. Generally we did make it in a SE direction though. We found TONS of elephant and other animal tracks, elephant poop, and boar wallowing holes. We also saw a cool lizard with a pointy head. We occupied much of our time pulling off leeches and checking out beautiful butterflies. Just for fun we climbed some trees and vines as well. After walking for a few hours through many mud holes, we came out at an oil palm plantation on the other side. We really did not see that coming. We walked along the border of the palm plantation and the jungle for a while and then set up our tent about twenty meters back into the jungle in a small clearing. The problem with small clearings is that animals will also use them and if they are walking through at night they may have a problem with your tent. We found a dry area in the clearing which was mostly mud-filled with boar tracks. For dinner, we had rice and eggs with potatoes, onions, garlic, and anchovy curry. Just before the night fell, some noisy hornbills flew over our campsite. We made a fire and sat around that and ate dinner and went to bed at about half-past nine.
 
February 25, 2010
I woke up and looked out the tent to see the trees moving about fifty meters away and loud movement on the ground in the same direction. I thought for sure that an elephant was coming our way, but it must have just been a monkey moving in the canopy and something else on the ground. We got out of the tent at 6:00 and were kind of surprised that nothing outside of the tent, including my dirty mess kit, had been messed with by any animals. We cooked up some eggs and rice and had some coffee to go with it. We saw some rhinoceros hornbills and then we started walking. After a short time, I was feeling too fatigued to walk and I had to sit down and rest and eat some. As we sat there, we watched the squirrels climbing on the vines from tree to tree. We rested a half hour and I felt better, but I didn’t start to feel good for a couple of hours. We found some very tall grass, probably fifteen feet tall, that we walked through for a while. As we were walking through the tall grass, I saw a huge nest up in the trees and as I was wondering what it was, two huge storks flew out and circled in the sky, waiting for us to leave the area. We followed elephant paths, filled with dung, through the tall grass and shrubs. We saw a lot of butterflies in the grassy areas and around 10:00, all of a sudden we were back at the river. I climbed into a fruit tree, that I’m sure commonly had orangutans in it, overhanging the river and looked out to see where to go next. We left our bags there, hoping the monkeys would leave them alone, and headed upriver in the direction of Sukau. After not too long, we ran into a ranger station, but just as we were approaching, we saw a snake that raised its front up a good six-to-ten inches like a cobra would. Later we found out that it was most likely a grass snake that was not venomous. The rangers told us about some limestone caves with cave swiftlet nests in them and we found a path that seemed to lead back there. The ranger station was posted there to do research on the caves and to protect them. We climbed on some limestone walls and formations, but we never found any caves. We took a rest at noon and then we wanted to get back to our gear asap so we cut straight north. We were both really tired and hungry and we only carried one big bun with us and left the rest of the food in the bag. We ended up in the thickest jungle yet and we were knee deep in thick mud much of the time. We also had to deal with ridiculously thick vines full of ants and razor-edged grass. It was quite the adventure to be going through all of this and I actually regained energy from the adrenaline. At one point, I just happened to look up while I was knee deep and I saw a tarsier up in a tree. But after only a second, a bunch of wild hogs tore out of the mud just ten feet in front of me and took my eyes away from the tarsier. When I looked back it was already gone. Look up what a tarsier is, because they are quite amazing. The tree was completely covered in vines, so I climbed twenty or thirty feet up to try to find it with no luck. It was fun climbing to the top of the small tree and hanging from the vines though. So on and on we went through some crazy wild boar land and finally made it back to the river. For the amount of time we walked, we must have been cutting to the river at a very bad angle. It worked out for the best though. From the river, we still had to get to our backpacks and, on the way, we saw an otter and scared up a huge monitor lizard. We got to our packs finally and immediately filled up our water bottles out of the river and put purification tablets in them. While we waited the half hour to be able to drink the muddy water, we continued down the river following elephant tracks the whole way. At about four places, you could see where the elephants had gone in and out of the river. We found a good place to camp just behind where the tracks led into the water and where they had seen the elephants just days earlier. It was crazy camping in the midst of this elephant and boar territory. If we rewound two days, our tent would have been right in the middle of a herd of about ten elephants, and on another day, it would have been surrounded by who knows how many wild boars. We were in their territory, they just weren’t here tonight. We filled up all of our water bottles from the river so we had seven-and-a- half liters. While I was on the shore in a foot of mud looking into the dark muddy water, I felt like a zebra on the Discovery Channel. It was a little scary, the thought of a croc coming out of the dark water right in front of me. Luckily this zebra did not become dinner. Instead, we had rice, noodles, onion, garlic, eggs, and about twenty grasshoppers we had caught before nightfall. We walked around a bit that night with flashlights and found one big stick bug, but that’s it. We went to bed at 9:30 with the bright moon shining into our tent.
 

Borneo – Leaving Sukau, Tuaran area, Mt. Kinabalu, and Kota Kinabalu

February 26, 2010
After another night without being disturbed by the jungle animals, we woke up around 7:00. We used up the last of our food and, as we started to boil water for the coffee, the stove ran out of gas. Almost perfect timing. We had originally set a place to be picked up by boat, but since we ended up a couple km downstream, we figured we’d sit on the river and flag him down when he passed us. That became more complicated than anticipated when he managed to look directly at us yet continue onward. As we rode back, I turned the muddy river even browner by cleaning my filthy clothes in it. The only public transportation out of Sukau to the junction 42 km away was at 6:30 a.m., but Andy was kind enough to give me a ride. Imagine those little cars that you see five clowns crammed in and that would be a similar situation. Having two large packs on my back for the ride was quite painful, too. We stopped for breakfast and ice cream along the way and also checked out a cave that is featured in the cave episode of Planet Earth. We were in a hurry, but we had to check it out, so we jumped off the bike and hurried up the path expecting to walk a couple minutes. We were questioning whether we were on the right path, because it appeared not to have been maintained for years and there was nobody else around. Then we found the cave. It was a massive tunnel, probably large enough to drive a semi through and we had it to ourselves. The only problem was I had flip flops on and we only had the little light on my camera. We walked in 100 m or so, but we had no choice but to turn around. I would have loved to explore this place for the entire day, but we just didn’t have the time nor were we prepared. Andi dropped me at the junction, and I intended on hitchhiking the 80 miles or so back to Sandakan. After five minutes, I flagged down a bus and paid them about four bucks. I arrived in Sandakan in the late afternoon and spent a few hours wandering around the city before Gordon picked me up and took me back to his place. It was really good to be back in a comfortable place.
 
February 27, 2010
I spent a little time relaxing and then we went and got a bus to Kota Kinabalu and also stopped at a camera store to get me a new GorillaPod, which I had lost. In the States, they cost about twenty dollars retail and I got two for fewer than six dollars here. We had lunch at the same chicken and rice place from a week earlier and then we went to the bus station. The bus left early afternoon and I arrived in KK around 7:00 that night. Oh yeah. I got on the bus and the first person I saw was the Chinese girl who was at the B&B the day before. She said they saw about thirty elephants on the boat cruise the day I left and she showed me a couple videos. They even got out of the boat and got close to them on shore. Saying I was pissed off would be an extreme understatement. A couchsurfer named Jacob picked me up at the bus stop not long after I arrived. He is from Austin, MN, and he is working at a foster home for a year. He lives in a house in a village called Kampung Dungang, just outside of the city of Tuaran, which is about 30 km from Kota Kinabalu. That night we got some rice wine and Jacob, Romi, and I hung out for a few hours before I hit the sack. Romi is a local who works at the foster home.
 
February 28, 2010
The plan was to hitchhike to Mount Kinabalu National Park. We ended up catching one van into Tuaran, followed by two minivans. Hitchhiking here is not true hitchhiking because there are so many minibuses and coach buses on the main road that you can easily grab one of those and pay a couple bucks for a ride. It’s standard to pay for a ride when hitchhiking here even when you are picked up by a car. The twisty and turny ride through the mountain roads was pretty rough on my stomach and threw my body off for most of the day. The views sure were great though. We got to the park around noon and, just before the entrance, we cut onto a trail that takes you right into the park. No need to pay when you enter from there 😉 This place I would consider much closer to a forest than a jungle and the high elevation (about 1500 m where we were) probably has a lot to do with that. Mt. Kinabalu at 4095 m is the tallest mountain in SE Asia and the peaks show off the beautiful granite that forms this area. We hiked for about three hours on the trails before finding a beautiful mountain creek to set up camp. We hiked off the trail up the river for a little while to make sure we would be undetectable. I am pretty sure camping in the parking area is not allowed. The setting for the campsite was perfect. We had all the fresh water we needed for cooking and drinking and washing the dishes just an arm length from the tent. It was a nice change from not having enough water to even wash my wands in the jungle. We swam in the freezing cold creek and caught some crazy little fish using a net made of my mess kit bag and some sticks. I’m not sure what these were, but they seemed like catfish with fins that helped them to walk a little bit on land. We also saw some small frogs with an orange tint to them. As soon as we ate our spaghetti and veggies for dinner, I got in the tent and went to bed at 7:30. I hadn’t anticipated how cold it would be here and my sleeping bag was the only place where I could stay warm.
 
March 1, 2010
We were awake, full of eggs, packed up, and on the trail just after 7:00. After a couple of miles of hiking, we were back on the road running through the park. From here, we got our first view of the mountain, since it was covered by clouds the day before. We went to the headquarters to check pricing on a ride back to Tuaran, but definitely had no desire to pay those prices. The headquarters is also where the lodging is and I am very glad that is not the side of the park I got to experience. It was quite the tourist scene. We walked out of the park and had breakfast at a nice clean place with a good view of the mountain and then got a taxi for five bucks a piece back to Tuaran. On the way back, the driver stopped for some food and I saw and bought red bananas for the first time ever. They were pretty good, but not noticeably different tasting from most of the other bananas around here. We were back around 12:30 in plenty of time for Jacob to teach his English class at 2:00. I spent the afternoon at his place and then went to the foster home when he got done teaching at 5:00. The place is called the Jireh Home and has about thirty kids aged six to seventeen that live there. It is a “home for neglected, underprivileged, and abused children.” Usually when a child goes there, he stays until he is done with high school. It is mostly supported by religious groups, but I don’t see a whole lot of religion going on here though besides the nightly meeting and prayer, which lasts about fifteen minutes. My plans were to help them build a soccer field and volleyball court and also to get them English-Malaysian dictionaries and hook up three computers with the internet. They have one computer with internet in the office and three computers for the kids that do not have internet. I hung out at the home some that night and made plans for starting the project tomorrow. The kids here are all very well behaved, but not very talkative with me. The language barrier probably has a lot to do with that, but many of them speak decent English. Jacob has been here for six months though and they are not very talkative with him either.

I received this email today from James back at the organic farm.

“Hi Rob…,
how r u…?
may be 1 week after u leave the farm…. there’s a huge elephant came to the farm.
Luckily it didn’t disturb us.. just eat all the banana around the farm… and walk in front of the generator house.. All of us we’re very frightened and ran for safe…
We didn’t sleep all the night.
We were thinking that if u r here… u can see the elephant too…”
 
March 2, 2010
Around 9:00, Romi picked us up and took us into town to get supplies. The first challenge was that it is so hard to find what you need around here. The tools that I did find were very poor quality. I got a shovel, hoe, rake, and nails and also gas and oil for the weedwacker. I also got five dictionaries and was unsuccessful at finding world maps. I was going to buy wood to make the goals, but Romi had some already. Romi is better with this stuff since he lives here and knows more, so I listen to him for the most part. The couple of hours of shopping were a pretty frustrating experience. We got to cutting the grass, but that only lasted until the weedwacker broke. So then we didn’t have much to do for the afternoon until we got a new one. We ended up getting quite a bit of the grass cut today, but it is taking a lot longer than I was expecting. Everything takes so long to do here. If I think something should take an hour, it will take a whole afternoon. Also, it is above ninety degrees during the day, so it is very hard to work during that time.
 
March 3, 2010
So we got the other weedwacker fixed and Jacob and I got the rest of the field cut down. I am happy with the size of the field, which is about thirty by fifty meters. I have mixed feelings about our progress, but it feels good to at least see the field starting to form. Cutting ended up going into mid-afternoon and then I rested until about 5:00 while Jacob taught class. When I got back, all the kids were out in the field preparing it for a controlled burn. We put about a two-meter gap between the grass we wanted to burn and the area we had not cut down yet. I thought we would have some trouble getting it all to burn, but a couple of jabs with a newspaper torch and the flames were two meters plus. At 5:30, it had cooled off a bit, but in a matter of minutes the place was insanely hot. Romi seemed to really know what he was doing and he had the thirty kids all over the field with branches to control the fire around the edges. I thought everything was going well, and then after less than five minutes, Romi came running from the other side of the field and said “We can’t control it.” I wasn’t worried at all though, because usually Malaysians worry unnecessarily. After I saw him get down on his hands and knees and start praying, I started to think we might have problems. I ran to the other side of the field and saw that the fire had spread into the uncut field and was spreading completely out of control. The fire was spreading across fifty plus meters of dry grass. I gave up and thought we had no chance of controlling the fire. The buildings ahead of the fire were in the back of my mind. The flames were probably as high as three meters in part and extremely hot. Although I thought it was hopeless, I helped to put out parts of the spreading fire by beating it with live branches that we pulled off the tree. Others made an assembly line of jugs of water from the home. Things started to look up as the thirty of us worked furiously to control the fire from three sides and, amazingly, we stopped the fire after about twenty minutes. This was a perfect example of never giving up hope. I thought it would be impossible to control the fire, but we did. In the end, we probably burned three times the desired amount. That ended our work for the day and the sunset over the smoldering fire was very picturesque.
 
March 4, 2010
Jacob and I were out on the field at 8:00 with the intention of flattening the field and removing the obstructions. The fire burnt so quickly that it didn’t do a thorough job of getting at the thick low tufts. We spent the morning with the weedwackers and a hoe working on the field. The work was very tedious and not very enjoyable. Around 11:00, I looked up and saw that a small fire had started in the short dead grass. Not too worried, Jacob and I jogged over and started beating it with branches. The fire wasn’t going out, things started to escalate. Within a minute, the fire had reached the tall dead grass and a huge fire erupted. It was mind boggling. This was on a different side of the field from yesterday, so this area was completely untouched. This time, it was just Jacob and I in the field and all the kids were in school and I quickly gave up hope. A couple of older boys from the neighborhood were walking by and immediately started helping us out and one of the workers started bringing water out. The fire was spreading in three directions and moving at a very fast pace. Two sides were surrounded by roads, so I was not worried about those sides, but the third side led to some buildings a couple hundred meters away. We worked at the fire for a while and managed to contain it on two sides, but the other side had a front of one hundred meters and was quite large as some trees had caught the flame. Word came that someone had called the fire department and five minutes later they were there. After not too long, they had the fire put out. The problem was that it is illegal to start fires and they figured out that we had started a fire the day earlier, so they said they were going to fine us. Later that day, we found out that one of the workers did a good job of talking and they cut us a break. The next couple hours, we walked the fields and put out small fires and dumped water on coals to prevent a fire from starting again. This fiasco really kept us from making any progress on the field. I tried to figure out how this fire could have been beneficial for use, but could not come up with anything. On top of that, Jacob had a bug fly into his ear and lodge in there so he had to go to the clinic and wasn’t back until late afternoon. After spending some time resting in the afternoon, I came back to build the goals in the late afternoon. We got one goal built, but because of the crappy tools, we spent a couple hours doing something I expected to take a half hour. So we didn’t end up finishing the whole field, but we did get a huge start. I was somewhat disappointed with my work, but Romi assured me that we were very successful. At least now there is only some manual labor left to do and nothing left to buy. It turned out the fire cleared a perfect place for a volleyball court and that is nearly completed, too. After dinner, we had the nightly meeting and I spent my last night with the kids and the workers. I also went on eBay and got three USB wireless adapters for the computers so the kids will be able to do research on them. They should have them in a couple weeks. Romi, Sanje, Jacob, and I shared a bottle of whisky that Romi bought for my last night there.

 

Brunei, Kota Kinabalu and Singapore

March 5, 2010
Romi picked Jacob and me up early in the morning and we headed up to Kota Kinabalu. Jacob was going because his trip to the clinic yesterday was unsuccessful and he had to go to the hospital instead. I got to the park in plenty of time for my ferry to Brunei at 9:00. Getting to Brunei turned into quite the event. Every website on the net was wrong and the ferry rep we spoke to on the phone gave us completely wrong information. It turned out the only ferries were at 8:00 and 1:30, and none went directly to Brunei after all. So I was okay with waiting until 1:30 to go to Labuan and then catch another ferry from there, but it turned out I would not make it to Labuan on time to catch the last ferry to Brunei. That was not good at all since I already had hotel reservations for the weekend. To make a long story short, I asked a million questions and finally found a way to get to Brunei today by taking a bus and then a ferry. I ended up getting to Brunei at about 5:00. From the ferry port, I paid a guy I met on the boat to give me a ride into the capital city Bandar Seri Begawan, 25 km away. Public transportation was not an option at this time of day, I guess.
So many of you might be wondering where and what the heck is Brunei? Brunei is one of the smallest countries on Earth and is on the island of Borneo, surrounded on three sides by Malaysia and the South China Sea on the other. It is an extremely rich country as it has some of the largest oil fields in all of SE Asia. It is a completely Muslim country and is ruled by a sultan who is said to be the third richest man in the world. It is a very quiet place, probably in part because the sale of alcohol is illegal in the entire country. Non-Muslims are allowed to bring in a couple of bottles of alcohol and a dozen beers for personal use though. Bandar Seri Begawan has a population of 81,500 people and much of the rest of the country is still intact primary rainforest. Nearly eighty percent of the country is still covered by forest. It is much quieter than Malaysia, but all in all it is a very similar country.
I used my American Express Starwood points to get a free weekend at the Sheraton in downtown BSB. My intentions for the weekend were to check out the main sites, but to also spend plenty of time enjoying the luxuries of the hotel. It felt really good to be there and I had an immense smile on my face the entire night. I got up to my room, settled in and shortly after contacted my Swiss friend Sandra, whom I had met a week earlier. We had talked earlier and planned on meeting up. We walked to the nighttime food stalls just a couple minutes from the hotel and I had stingray for dinner. The scene at the stalls is always fun to me and the plastic chairs and tables are so classy. After that, we walked around a little bit and checked out the Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddien Mosque. The building was very impressive and the artificial lagoon that surrounded it was pretty impressive as well. When it was built over fifty years ago, it cost USD $5 million. We walked around a bit more after that and I grabbed a box of cereal and milk to put in the fridge for breakfast. Cereal with milk is a luxury to a traveler from Wisconsin in SE Asia.
 
March 6, 2010
Relaxed in the hotel for a bit in the morning and then took advantage of the fitness center before heading out for the day. I met Sandra at a coffee shop around 10:30 and we were off to see the sights. We took a water taxi up the river for a short ride and got out at what we were told was the Jame’Asr Hassanil Bolkiah Mosque, which is the largest in the country. The mosque seemed smaller than yesterday’s mosque and very unimpressive, so we had our doubts. We continued walking through the 90+ degree heat and didn’t make it anywhere too efficiently. We ended up at the sultan’s palace though, which is one of the largest private residences on Earth with over one thousand rooms. They do include broom closets in that, according to a custodian I met on the street. It was impossible to get a good view of the mansion though, because it is surrounded by thick trees and fences. The best view we got was from the landscaped park nearby, which was a pretty unimpressive park, especially considering it was so close to the third richest man in the world’s house. After that, we got a ride to the mosque from a couple guys who were sitting on the tailgate of their van having lunch. That place was pretty impressive. During prayer times, non-Muslims are not allowed in, but at 2:00 we were able to get in. We had to wear some pretty goofy gowns and no pictures were allowed inside the mosque. I got back to the hotel around 4:00 and spent the rest of the afternoon and evening at the pool and in the room before meeting Sandra for dinner. After that, we walked along the Brunei River and checked out the night scene. There is a food stall down there that was pretty busy and a lot of people were fishing along the walkway. A lot of them were throwing nets for shrimp, too. Again, it was pretty dead. There is not really a night scene or a day scene here. You can pretty much see the entire city in a day or two. Especially if you’ve just spent a lot of time in Malaysia, since it is really not that much different. That worked out well though because I didn’t have to feel bad about spending time in the hotel and not out seeing things. Weirdest thing I consumed today was a drink called Nutrimalt. Malt and hops were two of the ingredients, so it seemed to be a possible attempt at a non-alcoholic beer, but it was completely disgusting. At that store, we met a custodian for the sultan’s palace and asked him a ton of questions about the place.
 
March 7, 2010
I went for a run in Taman Peranginan Tasek, which I was told is a nice park with waterfalls, trails and intact jungle. The place was not at all what I expected and it was quite unique. The paths were all made of some sort of compacted rubber and everything had a playground look to it. It’s hard to explain the place, but I’ve never seen a park like it before. I spent much of the morning and afternoon at the pool and they were nice enough to give me a late checkout since my flight wasn’t until 5:30. I also went to the Royal Regalia Museum a couple of blocks away, which was pretty much all about the sultan. The most interesting display was a recreation of his coronation day parade which included a royal cart carried by a hundred other people that he sat on. It was pretty much what we saw in the movie “Aladdin.” At about 3:30, I got a taxi to the airport and was back in Kota Kinabalu around sunset. I asked a man if I was at the right place to catch a bus into town and he offered me a ride into the center. That is such a common thing here, to be offered a ride when you ask questions. It works so well that I can expect to hitch a ride by asking a few people some questions about transportation. I stayed at the Summer Lodge in central KK. I was really excited to have a beer at a Western restaurant outside the hotel and I brought my laptop to type up my blog. I looked at the menu, but decided to keep walking and that led to a pretty great night. I ended up walking around in the central area for a while and, after checking out some stores and a shopping mall, ended up at the night market. This was one of the greatest eating experiences of my life. Every night they have this from about 6:30 to 11:00, and over one hundred food stalls are set up. The main theme of the stalls was seafood, but there was also plenty of chicken sate, roasted corn on the cob, fruit stands, bread stands, and the ala carte type place with all sorts of Malay dishes. The style of cooking was Pangan, which means grilled. I’ll just sum up what I ate. I started with some fried bread followed by corn on the cob and some chicken satay. I moved two stalls down and had a squid kebab. At the next stall, I had a huge Tiger Prawn and some seaweed. This amount of food alone would have been enough, but I knew I was going to be in a marathon of food eating here, so I was eating slowly and taking time between stalls. Next, I had a slab of stingray and a red big-eyed fish which I can’t recall the name of. Both were served with a sauce made of garlic, onion, and chili. I also had a different kind of seaweed to go along with that. I moved two stalls and had a fat tuna steak smothered in a similar sauce and grabbed a mango from another stall to go with it. The mango was not what I was expecting at all. It was really hard and tart and the lady shredded it up into little chunks. They normally put chili sauce on it, but I wasn’t in the mood for that. My night was lacking veggies, so I found a stall and tried four dishes. I didn’t really understand him, but one was a fish curry, another shredded papaya of some sort and another stuffed peppers and some other veggies which I think were called Terong and Kachang in Malay, but that could be completely wrong. Then I got a piece of jackfruit before leaving the market contemplating ice cream. I stumbled upon a store filled with sea cucumbers and was going to buy a little one to eat but changed my mind when one the size of my pinky cost three dollars. Instead, I found a Waffle cake stand, which is a freshly made waffle smothered in your choice of topping (I chose peanut butter and chocolate) and then folded into a sandwich. I threw that in a cup and got a huge scoop of chocolate and an equally large scoop of vanilla ice cream to throw in the mixture. I also tried corn ice cream. Who the hell actually enjoys corn ice cream? If you ate that food in any developed country, you would have paid ten or fifteen dollars for the tuna steak alone, but the grand total of eating at ten stalls was twenty ringgit or six dollars. My stomach was in some pain, but surprisingly I felt alright on my walk home.
 
March 8, 2010
I started chatting with the guy in the bed next to me (not the guy next to me in the bed), and we discovered we were taking the same flight to Singapore. We shared a taxi out there at half-past twelve. Before that, I walked down the harbor and was very surprised to see nothing but a large empty concrete foundation where I had spent three hours eating the night before. I then walked to the shopping center and bought a cell phone with a Malaysian Sim card. My number while in Malaysia is 016 838 4139. Country code is 60. When I move on to Thailand, I will get a new Sim card and my number will change. The cheapest phone cost me just over twenty dollars. My new French friend, Nicolas, and I had lunch at a Chinese restaurant before taking our taxi to the airport. I had Curry Laksa. The flight over to Singapore was about two hours. After getting some Singapore dollars, finding some maps, and using the free internet, we took the MRT into the center. The subway system here may be the most superior I have ever ridden on. You purchase a new ticket every time you get on the subway and you have to put a dollar deposit down as well. Then when you leave the station you put the sturdy plastic card back in the machine and get your dollar back. The benefit of this system is that there’s no pollution. The fare differs by distance, and in order to leave the station, you have to scan the card to get out. This prevents anyone from being able to cheat the system. The only way to do that is to hop the gate, but they have so many cameras on you down there. In the train, it is nearly impossible to miss your stop because they have maps, there are lights on each station point that show you where you are and the loudspeaker announcements are 100 percent understandable. So we went into the center and I got a room in the dorm at the InnCrowd hostel in Little India. Then we had Indian food for dinner at a place next door. Nicolas was going to get picked up by his friend’s girlfriend, but since his actual friend was not going to be in town until Wednesday, he decided to stay at the hostel instead. We walked around the city for a while and later went to a backpacker bar down the street and listened to some live music. We learned firsthand how expensive Singapore is when he paid $24 Singapore for two pints. (1 USD = 1.39 Singapore) It was really good though. If you have a liter at the hawker stalls, you can expect to pay around 5 Singapore for it. We met three people from England and after some beers had a late night dinner at an Indian hawker stall.
 
March 9, 2010
I had all of my shirts except one very grungy one in the laundry, so we walked around little India and I found a shirt for about a buck. A lot of my clothes are stained from being filthy in the jungle. I’ve decided I’m going to be living a life a little closer to civilization in the next few months, so I need to buy some decent clothes. It wasn’t easy to find much for me in Little India though. So I think I’ll be more in the backpacker scene for the rest of SE Asia. I’m contemplating sending my camping gear back to the States and losing about fifteen pounds by doing so, but I’m not sure. That would free up some space for things like clothes. We basically wandered around the city today with places in mind to go to, but never actually making it to them. We did go down to Arab Street to have Indian food for lunch and we spent a lot of time wandering around in stores occasionally buying some things. It’s a little stupid to buy much here though when you can get it for a fraction of the price in the surrounding countries. We saw a forty-story building that, from the front, looks as if it’s just a piece of paper hanging in the air, but it’s actually a triangle and once you get to the right angle you can see what it really is. The building is a crazy optical illusion. I really like Singapore. It’s hard to even believe that it is part of Asia and much of the time you can’t tell that you aren’t in a Western country (except for the millions of Asians). There’s lots and lots of Westerners in this city though. It is a very strict and clean place. An example of this is the fact that chewing gum is illegal, as is spitting and smoking in public, except in small designated areas. We checked out some of the major tourist buildings, including the Long Bar in Raffles Hotel, which is the origin of the Singapore Sling ($22 USD). I had an ice cream at the fanciest McDonald’s I have ever been to, and later found the Bugis Street Market, which is Singapore’s largest street market and mostly sells clothes, shoes, and accessories. At 6:00, we went on a free scooter tour with the hostel. There were five others besides Nicolas and me. Farid from Iran (side note: really cool dude, asked him about his English, because he had almost no accent, and he said when learning, he mimicked Ross from “Friends” and based all of his English language off of him), Luke and Jono from England were all cool guys and Michael, a Singaporean, was our guide. Just imagine a handful of guys riding scooters equipped with bells around a bustling city. It was really fun and Michael showed us a lot of great stuff. We spent a little time at the National Museum and also saw the impressive National Library from the outside. We visited Clarke Quay on the waterfront, which is a very popular place with a lot of the upscale bars and restaurants and places like Hooters and Mulligan’s as well. They have a cold bar where you have to wear a jacket to get in and the Clinic where you sit in wheelchairs and hospital beds and you can even sit in a chair and get hooked up to IVs (actually tubes to the mouth). It’s a pretty cool scene and there is a lot of great modern architecture. We had dinner at some stalls in ChinaTown. We got back at 11:00 and drank a bunch of beers at the hostel.
 
March 10, 2010
Before Singapore. my body was set to wake up around 6:40. Today, Nicolas woke me up at 11:00 and said they were leaving for the aquarium in ten minutes. Somehow I had enough spirit to shower and eat breakfast and not hold them up. Three German girls, Nicolas, and I went together. We took the MRT out to Sentosa Island, which is kind of like their Disney World. The aquarium was pretty good and we watched the shark feeding and the dolphin show. We also got to pet a lot of stingrays and sharks. Afterward, we had some pizza and hung out on the manmade ocean beaches. They are very clean beaches considering they are part of this huge city. At night, a group of about ten of us went out at Clarke Quay. It was pretty fun to go out and go to bars that nice, but definitely not something I would do often. It is way too superficial. The drinks were ridiculously expensive and also really weak. The scene is very impressive though and you sure don’t feel like you are in SE Asia. We met some Singaporean (Chinese) girls as well and it was pretty interesting to talk to them. I got back to the hostel at 4:30 in the morning.
 

Peninsular Malaysia

March 11, 2010
Woke up around 9:30 and had a stressful morning of trying to figure out what to do. I hadn’t seen many of the sights I wanted to see in Singapore, but I also felt like I needed to get moving. Mostly though, I was just feeling super disorganized both mentally and physically. It was too late to get the morning Jungle Railway, and taking it at night would defeat the whole purpose of taking it. My head wasn’t straight enough to walk around and sightsee either. I felt like I had to do something though. So I spent the better part of the morning and day getting my stuff together and then did some internet research and found the north section of the Jungle Railway above Taman Negara is less developed, so that helped me rationalize taking the night train and then doing the second half during the day when I left the park. I spent the rest of the afternoon in the hostel uploading pictures to my blog and that sort of stuff and at 5:00, I took a bus to cross the border in Johor Bahru, Malaysia where I caught the railway up to Jeruntut. First, I had a half hour to wander and had an awesome tofu curry for dinner. The train departed at 7:00 and arrived around 2:30. Although I was super tired, I really didn’t sleep the whole way. It was one of those kinds of tired where your mind is too messed up to know how to sleep. Halfway through the ride, I had to move from second class to economy because the train was basically full and that was the only way they could work the tickets out back at the station. So at midnight, I had to manage my way through the crowded tiny halls with my gigantic bag and twenty people behind me. This brings me to my next point. I need to send a bunch of stuff back to the States. I’m going to be doing less jungle camping and more on the backpacker’s path, so I bought some stuff in Singapore and am in the middle of a conversion. I would have sent the stuff from Singapore, but my stuff just wasn’t together. I really needed some new clothes if I didn’t want to look like a grungy hobo. The jungle “destroyed” some of my clothes. At the station, there was a guy waiting to pick up backpackers and bring them back to a hostel that just so happened to be the one I wanted to go to. Going to bed at 3:30 didn’t help my head.
 
March 12, 2010
Reluctantly, I was out of bed at 7:00 to give myself time before the 8:30 transport out to Taman Negara. I ran to the gas station and filled my fuel tank and also found an ATM since the park doesn’t have one. Although it was stressful, I made it to the minivan in time for the short ride to the boat connection. The boat ride up in the giant motorized canoe was pretty sweet. The jungle here is very intact and absolutely beautiful. The three-hour ride was very scenic, but I had to sleep for about an hour of it. I arrived in Kuala Tahan, which is a small village just across the river from the park headquarters and the 4,343 sq km park. I don’t know if I can properly explain the place, but I’ll give it a shot. The village is based on the river and the first thing you see when you pull up is the dozen floating restaurants. Just off the river up the bank are all the backpackers and guest houses overlooking the beautiful river and the national park on the other side. The whole village is surrounded by jungle as well. If you walk a couple minutes farther off the river, you’ll see the locals’ houses, the school, the bus station, etc. The park primarily consists of primary forest over 130 million years old, and multiple rivers. Near the headquarters, you can enjoy the longest canopy walkway in the world, short hikes, camping, and guided activities. It has a mix of feeling too touristy and the exact opposite. It’s not hard to get off the beaten path and get in some real adventures, but it can be quite expensive to do so because they require guides if you want to do anything more than five miles away. It sounds like wildlife is quite abundant as well, but you need to get pretty far out there for that. The park is home to up to one hundred tigers and many other animals, including clouded leopards, black panthers, golden cats, tapirs, slow loris, mouse deer (tiny tiny deer), and barking deer, just to name a few.

I sat down at the restaurant the boat dropped us at and talked to the lady with the information. She was not able to answer any of my questions. I guess they were harder than she was used to. I wanted to hire a local guy to go out fishing for the afternoon and I knew the park did that but figured it would be way too expensive. I found a guy who offered to take me on a 3d/2n trip after the Malaysian mahseer for about $130. I was planning on doing it, but wanted to go check out the ranger station, so I got a water taxi for thirty cents over to the park. It was too expensive, but I ended up reserving the 14th and 15th in two different hides that I would hike to out in the jungle. I wanted to camp but it wasn’t allowed. These hides are shelters set up over clearings to spot animals at night. Sounded like my best bet of seeing a wildcat. I was then going to head back and sleep for the afternoon, but started talking to Dave from the UK for a couple minutes and then we ended up walking on the trails for about three hours. The jungle was pretty great. After walking for fifteen minutes or so, we saw almost nobody else out the whole time. About halfway through, it started raining pretty good. It felt so amazing. It rained some in Singapore, but besides that, I haven’t seen rain in a long time. In fact, almost none so far on this trip. The highlight of the hike was when I nearly rested my hand on a two-foot snake. I’m not sure what type it was, but it was bright green with some red and glided through the trees and vines with no problem. It was for sure a tree snake. I guessed that it wasn’t poisonous and Dave guessed the opposite. Other mentionable wildlife we saw were greater racket-tailed drongos and what I call a jungle peacock, which is smaller than the peacocks we know and more blue and white. We had a great conversation throughout the entire hike. He is a cargo pilot. For a while we weren’t even sure where we were and the sky was darkening, but we then came out on a beautiful river and from there we were only five minutes from the headquarters. We took a boat back across the river and had dinner with a guy from Colorado and two other English guys and after some ice cream and a beer, I called it a night.
 
March 13, 2010
I had planned on doing some early morning fishing, but felt like sleep was more important, so I didn’t get out of bed until 9:00. I had restless feelings in my bones and, although I felt like I should spend a week here, I ended up on a bus back to Jerantut an hour later. I felt like the only way to get back to normal is to get to a place where I can really relax for a couple days and get my stuff together. So I went ahead and fast forwarded to my next destination, the Perhentian Islands. The jungle railway up to that area was at 3:00, but I asked many people and they said it’s not what it was a few years ago. It’s now an express train and the jungle has been taken over by rubber and oil palm plantations. Even twenty years ago, you could see tigers and elephants from the train and now that is unheard of. It used to pick up every local along the road and have unpredictable times and now it seems to be accurate to the minute. So I decided to take two buses, which would be faster. The first leg was three-and-a-half hours to Kuantan. From here, I planned on hopping right onto a bus to Kuala Besut. I checked with four or five companies, but everything was full for the day and the night. I asked one guy multiple times and then he said if you want to go to Kuala Besut, you can get a bus at one in the morning. I don’t know where that option was the first two times I asked. I heard “Feeneeshed” about twenty times. The same thing happened to me trying to get onto the jungle railway yesterday, except it was just one company and one lady told me “feeneeshed” and the man was smart enough to do two separate tickets. Earlier today, I was thinking I had not spent any time exploring towns in peninsular Malaysia yet, so although I really wanted to get to my destination, I didn’t mind the idea of having eight hours here. So I walked into Kuantan and the first sight was a pretty impressive huge mosque. I enjoyed it from the outside for a few minutes and then my hunger drove me on past soccer games in the city center to a pet store full of pigeons and bunnies, a hotel called Fook Yeh, an Indian barber shop that cost $2.50 for a haircut (didn’t get one), and down to the river to find a place to eat with a cool breeze. The riverfront had a great environment and, with tomorrow being a public holiday, it was in full use. It was great to immerse myself with the locals and see things from their point of view. I chatted with fishermen and watched a few of them catch small catfish and I enjoyed watching the many locals strolling along the sidewalk, resting with family on the benches and grass, and a few who were even riding bikes. Fishing boats were heading out to sea and a few eagles were flying overhead scanning the river for fish. Some people were very eager to come and talk to me and I had plenty of people looking at me, but even though I was the only white person out of the hundreds of people down there, I wasn’t too much of a distraction. Earlier, I had seen a night market beginning, so I headed back there figuring it would be in full swing, which it was. On the way, I walked past the mosque, which was now brightly lit and humming with Muslim words from the loud speaker. I laid in the soccer fields across from it for a while. The narrow walkway at the market was bustling with locals and to both sides was enough food, clothing, accessories, and trinkets to last one person a lifetime. I wanted to eat everything, but now that I have tried so much Malaysian food, I can’t rationalize stuffing myself to the brim. For dinner, I ate what I believe was chicken and vegetable curry wrapped in thin dough and fried on a grill. Just about every meal in the market costs 1-4 RM (3.4 RM = 1 USD). I got back to the bus station at 10:30 and I have been typing my blog for the last two hours. My bus should be arriving shortly and leaving at about 1:00. Hopefully, I can get a good night’s sleep and be somewhat well rested when I arrive in Kuala Besut at seven in the morning. If not, I should be able to rest up on the island as long as I don’t get sidetracked with all the other backpackers. So, in the morning, I will be in Kuala Besut and from there it is twenty-one km by boat to Perhentian Kecil. Long Beach on this island is an extremely popular backpacker hangout. Islands like this are usually a great time because everyone is there to relax and have a good time and meet other travelers. It sounds like a beach paradise with no cars, no banks, minimal electricity produced only by generators, surrounded by turquoise blue water. I should be meeting up with the five German girls from Singapore.
 
March 14 to March 22, 2010
Well let’s see. I didn’t keep any journal, took only a handful of pictures and all of the days are completely blurred together. My plan to stay on the island for three or four days turned into nine days. The hours and the days just slipped away from me while I was out there, but that’s what the island seems to do. The late late nights made the days much shorter and some days before I knew it, the sun was setting again. Much of my time was spent just hanging out on the beach, eating at the beach side restaurants, and partying the nights away. This, of course, was done with all of the other travelers. I hung out with all the German girls and met a bunch of other great people. The people I met that stand out in my mind were Petri and Jeff from Sweden, Peirce and Rachel from England, Tom from England, Alex from L.A., Tara from Brisbane, Sebastian and Malter from Germany (friends of the girls). I really hope to meet up with Jeff and Petri again. We spent some great time together on the island.

With all of the socializing, I did still get out on some adventures on the days that I wasn’t lounging about or sleeping in late.

On one of the first days on the island, I walked through the jungle in search of deserted beaches on the opposite side with nothing but the shorts around my waist. Actually, I intended on taking a well-beaten path to Coral Bay five minutes away and then going from there, but instead ended up wandering for a half hour until I came out on the other side. I was on a small path in the trees that followed the shoreline, but was a good one hundred meters up with no way down. I could see that I would have the ocean to myself when I made it down though. I clambered down through a mostly dried ravine composed of limestone until I reached the jagged shoreline. The most interesting part of this was dodging the many huge spider webs strung between the trees. Imagine a James Bond-type movie where they have to dodge all of the lasers to not set off the alarm and that would be similar, except I was dodging nasty looking two-to-three inch Orb spiders. I looked over from the rocks I was standing on and saw a nearly deserted beach except for three girls right in the middle of it. So I dove off the rock into the ocean and swam around for a while before walking onto the beach to meet the three Swedish girls. Happily, they were fine with me tanning naked and I chatted with them for a couple hours before getting on my way. From there, I swam a half hour to Coral Bay past a few empty beaches and jutting rock ledges.

Another time, I took Jeff and Petri to that beach and we snorkeled our way from there back to Coral Bay as the sun set. The guys were still on the beach putting their gear on and I headed out. After a couple minutes, I saw a huge triggerfish and as I started to follow him, I saw an absolutely massive sea turtle. I wouldn’t doubt it if he was six feet long and 100 pounds. I wanted the guys to see it, so I followed it for a while, but he was heading out to deeper water. For a last ditch effort, I dove down in front of him to cut him off. At that instant, he flipped up vertically so we were body to body and he was looking at me in a “back the hell off” kind of way. I can only imagine what a picture of that would have been like. As we neared Coral Bay, the guys were trailing behind me and laughing about something. I had to figure out what the heck they were doing, so I swam back and found them both naked. They wanted to nonchalantly swim past two snorkelers that were a couple hundred feet ahead. Great idea! My shorts were off in a second. The only problem was that we never caught up to the other snorkelers because we were treading water laughing hysterically for about five minutes. When we neared the shore, we were standing and talking and I dunked my head back under for a second to see a small black tip reef shark swimming in the shallows. A good way to end the snorkel.

One night we were all having a great time and decided to stay up until sunrise. If the sun didn’t rise so late, we would have made it. We got to about 6:00 before we were out.

Two nights later, I made it to sunrise, which was just after 7:00. I woke Jeff up and we had breakfast on the beach as the sun rose.

Another day, Jeff and I left mid day to explore some new beaches. We walked through the jungle with nothing but our shorts and snorkels so that we could get to a far point and then snorkel all the way back from there. We also had one bottle of plastic water that we could ditch when we finished. As we were walking along the trail, a huge crash came from the side of me and we looked to see a two meter monitor lizard walking off. He must have been feeling lazy because he didn’t take off until I was within feet of him. The island has quite a few monitors. The place we’re staying, Champeka, has them wandering around in the yard in front of the chalets. For some reason, they never ate the food I had sitting on the ground in bags, but they did eat my egg scraps that I tossed into the yard. When I first stepped off the boat, there were two huge monitors digging through the sand. These were massive enough to still amaze me even after spending a couple days with Komodo dragons. Anyway, on we went. We passed the two huge windmills on one of the highest hills of the island and then came upon a huge Jurassic Park-looking set of stairs that took us down to an old abandoned jetty. We were wondering what the hell they built these impressive stairs for because there was nothing else around. On we went and found a secluded beach on the calm side of the island. The snorkeling here was some of the best yet, but it didn’t end up producing much wildlife. We saw seven stingrays, but besides that, just fish. Monsoon season just ended here so the water is still pretty shaken up. Normal visibility is fifteen plus meters and we had about five on all of our snorkels. The walking was nearly two hours and then we reached Romantic Beach (the one with the Swedish girls days before) after a couple hours of snorkeling. Needless to say, we were exhausted and starving. We hung out there for an hour or so and then scaled the rocks to get up to higher elevation where we could catch a small trail back to Long Beach. The two of us split three-and-a-half entrees for dinner. This night I got a room, but the last seven nights I slept outside. I guess I was sort of a hobo for a little while, sleeping on the German’s porch.

On the 22nd, I took the water taxi back to Kuala Besut in the evening and then headed up to Kota Bharu. It felt really good to be on my own again. Being with people is great, but traveling solo is the most liberating feeling I know. I wandered around town a bit but mostly chilled at the hostel and used the internet. It was great to have dinner for normal prices again. I stuffed myself for about a buck. Eating was really expensive on the island, although I did cook my own food a lot, so that was cheap. But you can figure on paying three times the price for food in the popular backpacking places than in the local places. I just have to deal with that if I want to go to backpacker places, but I prefer my $1 meals. The food is the real thing in those places, too. I went to a mall and walked around there for a while, too. It was good to be back on the mainland and immerse myself with the locals again. It’s funny because a mall is a Westernized place, so by being there some might think you are not immersing with the locals, but that is truly what the locals do around here, so it actually is. Malaysia is surprisingly Westernized and advanced. Originally, I planned on getting out right away in the morning, but I decided to relax in the city for another day.
 
March 23, 2010
This street either magnifies the sounds of the cars or jets are flying between the buildings. I have never found a street so loud. The cars are so deafening that it boggles the mind on how it’s possible. I got up at 7:00 and got right to my computer. I am about a month behind on my blog and had a ton to catch up on. My intentions for the day were to spend a majority on the internet working on my blog, uploading pictures to Facebook, and keeping in touch with people. I also had to go to the post office and to another shopping center for some stuff. I sent a box back to the States to lighten my load. It cost fifty ringgit to send back five kilos via ship. The first place I went said it would take three months and the second place (same company, different location) said it would take one or two months. It will be interesting to see. I went to the grocery store and got real milk, yogurt, and fruit for dinner, which was absolutely great. I did some walking around the city and stores today, but mostly just worked on the internet getting caught up on stuff. Keeping a blog feels great when you write a couple times per week, but when you get behind it is like doing homework. I met a guy at the hostel from the Czech Republic who just traveled overland through Iran and Pakistan. He hated Pakistan and loved Iran.
 
March 24, 2010
In the late morning, I headed to the last bus station I would visit in Malaysia. For five ringgit, bus twenty-nine took me an hour northwest to the border town of Rantau Panjang. From here, I went through immigration and walked across the border into Su-ngai Kolok, Thailand. When crossing by land, you only get a fifteen-day visa, which for me expires on April 7th. I exchanged the last 246 ringgit that I had for 2,314 Thai baht and spent 180 baht on a four-hour bus ride to Hat Yai City and 75 on lunch and a soy milk. The soy milk here was legit, unlike the sugary crap that you get in Malaysia. I’m sitting on the mini bus right now. Once I get to Hat Yai City, I plan to walk around for a bit before taking a bus to Krabi, another four or five hours away. Unless, that is, the buses are done for the day and I have to spend a night in Hat Yai.
 

Thailand

March 24, 2010 continued
I caught a motorbike into central Hat Yai and walked around in the busy shopping city for about two hours before I had to catch my 6:30 bus to Krabi. So far, I can’t see a big difference from Malaysia, except the city was much louder. Also, so far nobody here speaks English. As I was riding on the back of the motorbike, I caught a glimpse of something big crossing the road and, when I did a double take, saw that it was a big elephant standing on a boulevard right in front of a busy shopping center. There was a man riding it and another leading, but I’m guessing that is still not a common sight. I hopped on the next mini bus shortly before it was scheduled to leave and realized that it was a mistake not to have gotten on earlier, because I wound up in the back where it is always really bouncy and uncomfortable. So the ride to Krabi was not great, but it only lasted about five hours before pulling up in Krabi town. Since it was midnight, I just grabbed the nearest hotel room, which was just a few steps from where the mini bus stopped.
 
March 25, 2010
I didn’t have any intentions of spending any time in Krabi town and I wanted to get somewhere secluded where I could rock climb the limestone cliffs over the water. I took advantage of the free internet in the morning to catch up on some blogs and then do some research on the area. I met Jessica from Orange County, California and we walked to the city center to check some things out. I needed to buy a new camera since mine had broken on the Perhentians and warranty repair would take a month. That’s why I’ve been in all these shopping centers in Kota Bahru and Hat Yai over the last couple days. I want the Stylus Tough 8000 and it has been difficult to find. Actually, I found it in three places, but it didn’t work out in any of them. I decided to rent a motorbike for a couple days and got a rate of two hundred baht a day (31 baht = 1 USD). Can’t complain with that money. So Jess and I were on the bike and headed out of town to a shopping center about twenty km away. No luck with the camera there, but we had a good time on the road and in the stores. I found out they have it in Phuket, so I am going to make my way there eventually. Instead of heading back to the hotel to finish my blog and figure out a rock climbing destination, we ended up spending the whole day out on the bike. We drove back through Krabi, ate some lunch at a local joint and then continued along the coast with no destination in mind. We stopped at a two-table restaurant on a rural road and were delighted to pay fifteen baht for fresh ice cold coconuts. We wound up at a beach near Ao Nang and the limestone formations there and on the way were quite impressive. Much of the land here is flat, but there are all these crazy jutting limestone formations making the land pretty unique. This is why rock climbing here is world famous. We headed back towards Krabi and passed through Ao Nang Beach, which was a typical crowded beach strip of a town where white people probably outnumber locals. That night, I wound up going to the night market with Jess and two Canadian girls. Not the greatest night market, but it was good to switch over to Thai food, plus you can actually get beer at the markets in Thailand. I still hadn’t checked into a room for the night since I had no plans for what to do and when all the cheap rooms at the hotel were booked, I had a bit of thinking to do. A short amount of walking produced no other worthy options, so I hopped on the bike and headed out to find a place to set up my tent. I headed north and passed a few places that looked good, but was in the mood for some driving, so I wound up covering about sixty km before coming upon Hanbok Koranee National Park. I pulled up to a closed gate with no sign of life, but after only a moment, a guard walked up to me. I said camping and pointed at my bag and he gladly let me in and pointed to a lighted area where I could set up my tent. So, at midnight I fell asleep, excited to see the limestone formations when I woke up.

Today was a continuation of not finding any locals who speak English. I learned a bit of Thai, but it is an extremely difficult language. There are five tones that make the word. The wrong tone can mean a completely different thing. That’s not good for my monotone voice. On top of that, the writing is insanely unrecognizable and short phrases can be really long or made of many words. It seems like a very hard language.
 
March 26, 2010
I walked on some of the trails and had a refreshing morning swim in the beautiful river pools. Nobody was around to collect money from me this early in the morning and I had the trails and river all to myself. I was off before 9:00 and on my way out, they didn’t ask me to pay a park fee. Maybe camping at the parks is free here in Thailand? On I went in the direction of Phuket, passing a dozen signs on the left and right directing me to caves. All of these were places I would have stopped, but I told my friend Alex I would meet him here in Phuket in the morning. I had lunch at a rest stop after topping off my tank, which costs about 150 bahts for five liters. After passing through more beautiful limestone formations, I neared Phuket. Here I was in a place I crossed off in my book and had absolutely no intentions of visiting due to it being the tourist capital of the country. I went to meet Alex and Matt at their hostel, but due to my noon arrival, they had already left for the beach. So I explored Phuket on my own for the day. First things first though. Finally, I bought the camera I had been trying to buy at the last half dozen stores I visited, but sadly my days in the air conditioned malls are over. No place can be fully understood until you have been there and that was the case for Phuket as well. My imagination had failed me as to what this place would actually look like. The beaches consisted of miles of uninterrupted rows of beach chairs facing a standard ocean scene. I was confused as to why millions of people would come here every year, but then remembered that most people really enjoy a comfortable beach with cheap food, drinks, and massages nearby at all times. And it is also in the exotic country of Thailand. Not much character to this place, but it gets the job done if that is what you are looking for. On the beach, there is probably a ratio of one hundred Westerners to one local and the white bodies fresh out of Europe blinded my eyes with the sun’s reflection. I drove along the west coast and checked out five or ten beaches, some of them much less packed, and found a beautiful view of the ocean and setting sun at Promthep Cape. On the way into Phuket town, I stopped at a market and had a bag of fried grubs and crickets as a snack. To be honest, it wasn’t as tasty as some of the insects I have cooked in the jungle. I also saw blue chicken eggs. I met Alex and Matt at the hostel and we went out and had some dinner. I got the “fried sizzling with crispy fish” and I think someone else got the “fried sweet and sour with prawn or else.” With the combination of two beers and some insanely hot Thai food, I felt high as a kite. Well, maybe not that high, but pretty high.
 
March 27, 2010
In the morning, Matt headed back to Germany, and Alex and I tried to figure out how to fit all of our stuff and both of our bodies onto the motorbike. After running one errand, we realized she would have to leave most of her stuff at the hostel to make it work. So we were on our way in the late morning in search of a different scene. About thirty km later, at the northernmost edge of the island of Phuket, we came upon some great deserted beaches. The type of beaches that go on for miles without seeing any other people. So, as I had expected, Phuket still holds some seclusion. We spent a couple hours walking on the beach and eating lunch at a little restaurant with an ocean breeze and then continued north. We wound up in a sleepy little town called Thai Mueng that spreads itself along the Andaman sea. It reminded me of a sleepy farming town you would find out west or in the midwest. The beach in front of the city was really great and there were many many more crabs than people. I mean there was almost nobody in this gorgeous place. Across the street we found a turtle and fish hatchery and spent a half hour or so checking out the amazingly stunning creatures. We continued up the road a bit to find a place to camp and found ourselves at Hat Thai Mueang National Park. We set up camp on an undisturbed beach (except for one couple who got their truck stuck in the sand) and watched one of the most gorgeous sunsets I have ever witnessed. For nearly an hour, every time I looked away my eyes came back to an even better sight. This beach is protected primarily as a nesting site for Leatherback and Olive Ridley sea turtles.
 
March 28, 2010
Since we hadn’t gotten much for food the day before, we found ourselves eating rice for the second meal in a row. We walked north along the beach toward a wooded peninsula a mile or two away. It was a good hour walk and we were happy to be the only two around until we got to our destination. This was the northernmost point of the small national park and here at this hill there were a few others. It was a beautiful place with sheltered crystal clear tide pools to sit in and waste away the afternoon. I tried some snorkeling, but the rough waters didn’t yield much clarity. For much of the afternoon, I occupied myself by catching crabs in hopes of having a little more substantial meal when we got back. In total we got about fifteen. A few were sand crabs that I had to chase down in the waves and one large rock crab that had trapped himself for me in a crevice. The rest were smaller rock crabs caught by sitting in the tide pools with my goggles on trying to pin them up between a rock and my hand. We didn’t get back to camp from this “walk” until late afternoon, about five hours later. It was a long, tiring event and there was a large rain cloud looming for the whole walk back. Unfortunately, it got to our campsite before we did and most of our stuff got pretty soaked. So, unable to cook the crabs in those conditions, we packed up and headed out in search of a dry place with cheap food. The national park did not have the latter, so we moved on to a tiny store we had gotten some snacks from the day before. They didn’t cook there, but they were okay with me using my stove on their porch to cook some eggs that I bought from them. First, I had to siphon gas out of the bike since we had run the fuel dry the night before. So, after an hour or two, the rain stopped and we decided to camp on the beach just in front of the little shop. Our stuff was still wet, but we dried it enough to be reasonably comfortable.
 
March 29, 2010
I hadn’t had the energy to cook the crabs for dinner, but they made a delightful breakfast along with some eggs. We had four species and some were better than others, with the big rock crab taking the prize. We went back to the park to try and snag a shower at their facilities, but this time they wanted to charge us an entry fee. Having been in there for free the last two days, we didn’t feel like paying the one hundred baht entry fee just to take a shower. We stopped at the Khao Lampi National Park about thirty km up the road and played in the deep pool below Lampi waterfall for the rest of the morning. Finally, we had to pay to get in ($3) but it covered all national parks for the day, so we intended on getting full use of it. We stopped and had lunch at a little roadside restaurant and then stocked up on food for the upcoming nights of camping. I was intrigued to buy a bright pink chicken egg but ended up passing on that idea. I have no idea what is going on there. We spent the rest of the day in the ocean at Khao Lak National Park, but didn’t find it suitable for spending the night since it was not that remote or pristine. As we continued north, the landscape transformed into a lush green jungle and we sped on through the beautiful region trying to beat the nearing storm. We were quite happy to find Sri Phang-nga National Park before the rain found us and we set up our tent next to a small creek.
 
March 30, 2010
When the sun rose, we found ourselves in a large man-made field surrounded on all sides by pristine tropical rainforest. Had I been in a jungle mindset, it would have been a great place to get out and do some real jungle trekking. Instead, we kept the tent in our comfortable site not far from the park’s facilities. The park is located in a small mountain range and is packed with streams, waterfalls and fertile rainforest. Wildlife said to be in the park include elephants, gibbons, bears, tigers, and monkeys. We saw none of these, but heard the call of gibbons in the canopy throughout the day. It was an amazing sound that could be very annoying if someone was looking for peace and quiet. Much of the morning and afternoon was spent emptying out our soaking bags and trying to dry everything in the hot sun and cleaning our dirty gear. We left the park to get some cooking supplies and wound up eating at a little restaurant as well. When we made it back in the late afternoon, we were going to hit the trails, but the torrential rains changed those plans a bit. Taking advantage of the cool rain, I threw my shoes on and went off into the jungle. My intentions were to go for a couple miles run, but the trail I was on dwindled in size and sort of ended at a river less than a half mile from where I started. Continuing on would likely have resulted in me getting lost in the jungle, so instead, I stood on the biggest rock I could find and soaked up the rain. I was pretty dehydrated, so I made a funnel from huge leaves and collected the rainwater for drinking. I got the idea of trying to follow the river back to the campsite, figuring it was the same river and it was probably no more than a half-mile away. Down the river I went through the pouring rain, occasionally swimming across the deeper pools that I came on. The jungle here was the kind of jungle I’ve been looking for and my imagination drew pictures of huge pythons swimming through the river with me. Fifteen minutes later, the river flowed into a deep pool with another flowing in from the opposite direction. I wanted to continue, but figured it would be smarter to retrace my steps up the river and on the trail and that I did. When I got back, I found Alex at the restaurant with her stuff spread all over the trails to dry off. She left it under the vestibule and it got soaked. Thankfully, my trusty tent kept my stuff inside almost completely dry. So we spent the rest of the day sitting on the picnic tables waiting for the rain to cease, which it did just before nightfall. Not only was the rain a plague to our time at the park, but the ants near our site were out of control and much of the time covered our gear and bit the hell out of my bare feet. We watched a movie and when the night came, we turned on the lights to the pagoda, which in turn drew in about one thousand flying ants. So we were forced from our dry picnic tables back to the tent. which was only partially full of ants. Alex couldn’t handle all this, so we ended up spending the night in the lodge. I took the motorbike out and drove some of the dirt roads and saw more frogs than I have ever seen in my life.
 
March 31, 2010
We spent most of the morning just like the last morning, drying out our gear. Although we still really wanted to do some exploring of the park, we also wanted to get out of there before the afternoon rain soaked us again. We left the park on a nearly empty tank and I was really happy when I spotted a coin-operated fuel pump just off of the road. We continued north and after not too long, stopped at a pleasant little restaurant set on a lakeside where I enjoyed a $1.30 lunch. As we continued north, I hooked left onto a side road to check out some of rural Thailand. Back there, I felt like I was far from any place other backpackers would visit and far from any English speakers. This was what I had pictured me doing on this trip to Asia and it felt good to be doing it, even though it was just for part of an afternoon. It’s hard to do it without a bike, unless you want to do a lot of walking or figure out how to communicate better. It’s something I’m working on though. I stopped at a T-intersection and admired how abandoned the rural area was. You could compare the looks and feel of this area to rural Wisconsin in the farming country. The wide paved roads (compared to previous countries) give it a feeling close to home for me. Most of the low elevation land is palm oil and rubber tree plantations, while anything on the mountains and hills seems to be mostly untouched jungle. Houses and the little shops that many of them contain are right on the road, as it seems that people like to live right on the road rather than having a long driveway. That seems to be the case just about everywhere I have been so far on this trip. Nearly out of gas, we found a store with a hand-cranked gas barrel. We sat at the little store and ate some food and bought some mangoes and a durian when a fruit truck pulled up in front of us. The rain was obviously nearing and the afternoon was running out, so we figured we better get somewhere to settle for the night. Before too long, the rain was about to dump down on us, so I stopped at a nice resort on the roadside. It was only $50 for a room in this beautiful upscale place, but when you’re backpacking you’ve got a backpack mindset, and even five dollars seems like a lot. We sat under a pagoda for about an hour and as we sat there, decided to head out to the Surin Islands tomorrow morning. So with our new inspiration, we headed to Khura Buri, the jumping off point for the islands. Rain continued for much of the night, but we still managed to get some great food at a small night market and see a crazy pink sunset over the city. Free internet at the hostel kept me up way too late.
 
April 1, 2010
I rose early to leave enough time to buy all the food for our four days out at Mu Ko Surin National Park. It’s comparatively much more expensive out there. Rice, black beans, spaghetti, eggs, veggies, fruits, and milk are what we managed to find at a nearby market. So we were on the boat around 9:00, heading to the islands sixty km offshore, just five km from the Thailand-Myanmar marine border. The port was packed with old fishing boats run by the Thais and the Burmese. The ride out there was two-and-a-half hours, and we were met with a beautiful sight. The large ferry anchored a couple hundred meters from the islands and the excitement grew as I stared at the amazingly clear waters fringing the islands. From the boat, it appeared to be some of the most beautiful water I have laid eyes on. As I watched the half dozen longtail boats coming from the island to bring us ashore, I looked down and saw a five-foot barracuda cruising past the boat. The boat ride to shore was quite exciting looking into the crystal clear water, just waiting to jump in and see what was beneath the surface. The islands are absolutely great, but the only problem is that it is quite a popular place to go. The campground was the busiest and most compact that I have ever stayed in, which was quite a disappointment. There certainly was no seclusion, but it turned out to be very quiet and it didn’t feel as bad as it actually was. Since this place is more expensive to get to, it’s mostly Thai families vacationing out here and not so many backpackers. We luckily found a spot open right on the beach and set up camp before heading out to go snorkeling. The bay we were camping in was extremely shallow and it took a while to get past the shallow sandy region. When we finally did, our eyes were treated very well. We came out into water clarity of fifteen meters plus over reefs sitting in five to ten or so meters of water. It was easily some of the clearest waters I have ever snorkeled, but the coral and fish life fell short of amazing. It was great, don’t get me wrong, but mostly hard coral and not that much diversity. The highlight was chasing a school of squid and getting them to shoot out black ink at me. We were out there for a couple hours and when we tried to get back on shore, we came to a completely different scene. The tide had gone out, way out. Since the bay was so shallow it resulted in the tide going out four or five hundred meters, all the way into the coral reefs. So we wound up swimming and walking on coral reefs in water from a couple inches to a couple feet. This was absolutely amazing though, because the water was still crystal clear so we could look into all of the pools and see everything up close. It was super exciting when I first saw the fin of a black tip reef shark swimming through the shallow depths. At first, we just saw one or two feeding in the shallows, but we found a river-like outlet where they were congregated and we saw up to twelve at once. I hung out with the sharks for about an hour as the sun was sinking lower into the horizon. It was a little scary when I was completely in the water and I had about five of them circling me, but I don’t think they had any bad intentions.
 
April 2, 2010
In the morning, we went out on a snorkeling trip with about ten other people. They took us to two sights that were way too far away for me to swim to. I’ll save the details, but these reefs were along sloping drop-offs where I spent most of the time snorkeling in twenty meters of water. Before noon, we cooked lunch and then I headed out for a little adventure. There were a couple reefs marked on a map that I planned on venturing to, but I had to cross a big channel to the adjacent island. I took my time, but it took about an hour to get across. It was relatively shallow the whole way and I could see the reefs on the bottom almost the whole way. I snorkeled the small bay that I had intended on getting to, and then went up to the small deserted beach and rested for a while before getting back into the water. Then I came upon the best snorkeling I have found yet. It was off of a point where some slow currents seemed to be mixing warm and cold water. The marine life here was great and the reefs varied in depth so it made for a fun time. I followed one huge moray eel that was making his way around the reefs for a while. So that was quite enjoyable for a while, until I discovered all of the jellyfish. Actually, it was still enjoyable but just harder, because I had to be really careful every time I surfaced to make sure I didn’t hit one. It also meant spending a lot more time under the water. So I crossed the channel again, this time in a much deeper part through blue waters that appeared to have no end. As I watched for jellyfish,which had dwindled in numbers, I also hoped to see a whale shark or a manta ray. So I made it back to my island and I had to decide whether to snorkel the rest of the way back or cut through the jungle to the other side. I was excited to see the jungle and opted for that. I thought the jungle would not be that thick with it being an island but I turned out to be incredibly incredibly wrong. In half an hour or so, I probably made it one or two hundred meters and many of those meters were filled with pain. I was barefoot and carrying my flippers and goggles which made it a huge challenge. When I noticed that I no longer had my goggles, I decided to retrace my steps to find them and take the water back. I came out of the jungle the same as I had entered minus my goggles and some blood from my feet and legs. I hope I remember that lesson. I wouldn’t have had it any other way though, because when I got back to the rocky shoreline, I saw an octopus duck under a rock and it was the first I have ever seen. So I made my way around the island, hopping from boulder to boulder. I got my tired, dehydrated, battered body back to the camp before dark. I immediately cooked up some potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, onions, rice, and garlic and had a delightful dinner.
 
April 3, 2010
With no energy to go out on an adventure, I went out snorkeling with a boat again. The snorkeling was possibly better than yesterday morning. One sight we went to was some protruding rocks far off shore that had strong currents running around them. This seemed a great place to see big marine life, but we had no luck there. At the next place, I did see about a five- foot white tip reef shark though. I followed him from above along the deep ledge and when he headed up into the shallower reefs, I followed him for another minute. As the water got shallower, we grew closer and I could get a better look at him. Eventually he got spooked and jetted off. I spent most of the afternoon reading and napping on the beach. Yesterday took quite a bit out of me and I was happy to just relax.
 
April 4, 2010
In the morning, I continued yesterday afternoon’s activities, reading and relaxing. Our boat left the island at 1:00 and we were back in Khuraburi before 4:00. I went back to the same hostel as before and it was great to be in a decent room for the night. I spent most of the night on the net trying to figure out what to do with my last three weeks in Asia. I decided that I would most likely be heading to Cambodia and Laos. I also spent some time trying to fix my brand new camera that had broken out on the islands, with no luck. Besides all that fun, I grabbed some dinner at the little night market.
 

A few last days in Thailand Siem Reap, Cambodia

Well, as I am typing this, it is actually April 21st and I have not kept a journal, so let’s see how much I can recall. At least I have pictures to jog my memory (taken with my iPhone though, since my camera was broken until I got it fixed in Phnom Penh, Cambodia).
 
April 5, 2010
A couple days ago, if you asked me what I’d be doing today, I’d have told you that I was going to drive up to Burma and cross the border for a day or two, depending on what was allowed. Instead, I headed back to Krabi to then catch a bus to Bangkok, hang out with Mari for a day, and then get to Cambodia on the 7th, the day my visa for Thailand expired.

So I was off at about 9:00 in the morning and I took a different route back to Krabi, which was every bit as beautiful as the route I had taken north. I was crossing a bridge that gapped a slow flat river and, when I looked off to the right, I saw an elephant near the river bank. I wasn’t sure whether it was domesticated or wild. The surrounding landscape was mostly open and flat so it didn’t seem likely that an elephant would be free from humans. On the other hand, after some inspection, I didn’t see anything to contain it except some tiny barbed wire fence, which I did not expect to hold in an elephant. I parked the bike and headed down to the river to get a better look but kept my distance just in case it was wild. When I got within fifty feet, I finally saw the chain that restrained him from freedom. I continued on through the lowlands and as I got closer to Krabi, the landscape became more rugged and jungle covered. The road gained in elevation and I found myself looking over beautiful scenic views of the farm lands and jungle. The road narrowed even more as I gained more elevation and I found myself driving on a very cool shady jungle-covered road. When I came out on the other side, my eyes were greeted by the great limestone formations, and as I continued downwards, the road flattened out and again turned into more of a highway. I stopped at a cave and thought about exploring it for awhile, but just didn’t have the time. As I was about to leave, I noticed the gas tank was on E about five miles before the engine died and I rolled into a nice little family home/restaurant on the roadside. They spoke almost no English, but we were able to communicate that I needed gas, so one of the boys went to get me some at a nearby station. It was a bit awkward sitting with the family and also frustrating to not be able to speak their language. The old lady spoke a bit of English though and rambled off about three phrases to me including “I love you.” I rolled into Krabi five hours after leaving Khura Buri, starving, thirsty and exhausted. I stopped at a nice restaurant and had some decent food, along with a coconut to drink. Riding the motorbike a long distance in the hot sun was tiring! It was time to return my motorbike to Charlie at the Old West Saloon. This was the first major attempt someone made to rip me off. First he tried to charge me for eleven days when it had obviously only been ten days, and when I refused two or three times, he walked over to the bike, pointed at a tiny scratch, and said I have to pay for this damage. It was obvious that he was jacking me and my temper flared after five or ten minutes. The key in these situations is to always be calm, but I failed at that as I was really pissed at the dude. Then he got a guy from the bike shop involved and I nearly left without paying or getting my driver’s license back, but Charlie didn’t know that I had taken the money for the ten days back from the guy. Then Charlie started calling me tricky and threatened to call the police. Well, finally I went to the bike shop, because I guess he just rents them from someone else, explained very calmly to the owner how it was ten days, gave her the money and took my ID back with no problems or questions. It was stressful but I came out unscathed. At 4:30, I took an overnight bus to Bangkok. Every seat, except the one next to me, was filled with backpackers and it felt really different to be on a bus full of white people. Why was the seat next to me empty? I don’t know, but I was happy about it.
 
April 6, 2010
The bus arrived at 6:00 in the morning and I really had no clue where I was. I wandered away from the bus station, past all the annoying taxi drivers, into Bangkok. I thought that may be a bad idea, but it turned out just fine as I found a street with all sorts of backpacker accommodations. I was looking for some free Wi-Fi so that I could see if Mari (long-time friend from Norway, if you didn’t know that) emailed me with where she was. When I got Wi-Fi, I was on Khao San Road and her email said she was at the Khao San palace, which was standing right in front of me when I looked up. Kind of crazy for a city with a population of 6.5 million, but then again most backpackers congregate together and I guess this bus dropped me near that area. So I managed to get past the reception at the big hotel and up to Mari’s room on the 6th floor. Since it was 7:00, she was still sleeping, but I just told her to meet me at the McDonald’s down the street. Mari, one of her friends and I went out for breakfast and then I just spent the whole day hanging out with her. She was in Laos for two weeks, then Thailand for two weeks and she had a flight back to Norway late that night. It would have been great to spend more time with her, but we were in completely different parts of Thailand. One day was fun though. We did a lot of shopping on the streets in that area. We had an awesome lunch (stir-fry) and a beer at a nice pub style restaurant. More walking around and shopping after that and then a little bit of time at the pool and on the internet while Mari was getting her hair done. I had dinner with her and her five friends and then they were off to the airport. Nice for me they had paid for a room for the whole day since they wanted to use it until they left at 9:00 that night and I got to stay in it for free. Thanks girls!
 
April 7, 2010
Yesterday, I had arranged for a bus to Siem Reap, Cambodia. I paid 350 baht ($11) for a package that would involve a mini bus to the border, walk across the border, then get a mini bus to Siem Reap. The mini bus picked me up around 6:00 in the morning and all went well during the six hours to the border. Then I learned firsthand about how good Cambodia is at taking tourists’ money. First, at the border I was charged $40 for a one-month visa, which should have been $20-25. Had I done this in advance, I could have avoided that, but it slipped my mind the last few days. I had been warned that they will do that at the border if you don’t get it in advance. Their game plan is to make everything take as long as possible as well. The bus ride once the border is crossed should take two or three hours. Instead, they drag it out so that it is late when you arrive and you are tired, so they can take you to the guest house they are partnered in scheming with and get a cut. Apparently, the bus takes you about fifteen km outside of Siem Reap, so you then have to pay drivers, who they are also partnered with, to get into town. It is actually they who take you to the guest house. It’s a whole chain. Also, you cannot take public transport. The government seems to have made sure of that, so the only bus you can take is the “tourist bus,” which takes you to a “tourist center,” where they press you to change your money and use the ATM because it is “not possible to do this inside of Cambodia”. That may have been true five years ago, but the country has ATMs all over the cities and money changers with fair rates, as well. I exchanged some money at this tourist center and, due to the horrible rate they gave me, I lost about $15 compared to if I had done it in Siem Reap. I decided to not take the bus since it supposedly doesn’t even take you into the city (maybe a lie?) and went with a shared taxi, which cost another 300 baht. All in all, it was only $20 for the six-hour ride and then the three-hour ride to Siem Reap, but I was definitely disheartened from all of this. Cambodia has got it down to a system. It was a lesson well learned and I think most of it was avoidable. I surely won’t let it happen again.

That evening, I met up with Tracey, a couchsurfer from Melbourne, and spent the night at her house. We hung out at her place for a few hours and had a couple of beers. Anchor was the beer, and it is actually made of a type of palm tree. It was not recognizable as beer, but that doesn’t mean that it was not good. Later, we went and got some dinner in the center. Tracey has been living in SR for half a year now and she works as a nurse at a one-doctor clinic in a very poor area on the outskirts of SR. She lives in a very simple house with a simple kitchen, bathroom, spacious living room, two bedrooms, and a balcony with a hammock. Not much in the big apartment except a couch, two chairs, TV, refrigerator, and that’s pretty much what I can think of. I give her props for being able to live a simple, mostly Khmer (that’s what Cambodians are called) life. She seems to have adapted to the country very well. We had a lot to talk about within a few minutes of meeting and talked pretty much for the entire two days we hung out. Her place is on Wat Bo road right next to a temple. Her roommate was in Vietnam, so I got to use his room and his bike!
 
April 8, 2010
Since I stayed up until 2:30 last night watching “Curb Your Enthusiasm” on my laptop, I slept until 11:00 this morning. Tracey was out and we had made plans to meet up at two at her place. I headed out and used the net and walked around a bit and then came back to her place. We took a tuk tuk out to New Hope Community Center, where she works. Today they were having a Khmer New Year’s party for the kids. Most of these people live in severe poverty and there are a lot of health problems here. Some of the families live in cages at an abandoned zoo. Some of the kids have HIV. Tracey sees it all first hand working at this small budget community clinic. I learned a lot from her about what is going on in Siem Reap. There were about one hundred kids at the party and there was a lot of screaming and singing, much of which was over a mediocre loudspeaker system. It was nice being with the kids, but all in all, for me the party was comparable to being stuck in class on a sunny day. We left late afternoon and hung out for a little while before meeting up with some people from the community center for dinner. The first thing the one guy said to Tracey was “After you left, we had a dead body and a kid with a bicycle through his leg”. After that, there was a fundraiser for the center at a bar, which was a trivia game with ridiculously hard questions. Our team came in dead last.
 
April 9, 2010
Unfortunately, Tracey headed out of Siem Reap for a couple weeks, so I had to find a new place to find a hostel to stay at. She said it would be okay for me to stay one more night and I thought I may take her up on that. I spent a bit of time lounging around in the morning and then I got on the bike and headed out to Angkor Wat, which was about six miles from her place. It cost $40 for a three-day pass, which was one of the most expensive things I have done on this trip. The person who runs that gig must be a billionaire. Later I found out that he runs a lot more than just that, and is, in fact, one of the richest people in the corrupt country of Cambodia. The temples I checked out today were Kravan, Banteay Kdei, Ta Prohm and Pre Rup. I biked a total of fifteen or so miles on the old retro bike with a nice basket. The temples are very amazing, but there are so many people trying to sell you stuff all the time that it’s not always relaxing. My favorite temple today was probably Pre Rup. Almost nobody was there and I found a corner to relax in for a while. I took a good nap and it was really a sight to wake up on top of the temple. On my way back, I checked out Srah Srang, a lake. I saw a man out in the water sifting through the weeds with a large basket, picking things out of it, and throwing them up to shore for his kids and wife to pick up and put into a plastic soda bottle. I went to find out what they were doing and learned that they were catching water beetles to salt and fry for dinner. Cambodians will eat everything. Back in town, I had dinner at a food stall on the street and sat on their one plastic chair. That night, I went to Garden Villa to get a room, but since they were full, I told them to just hold one for me tomorrow.
 
April 10, 2010
In the morning, I went back to the Garden Villa and got a really great room for $3/ night. Around 11:00, I got on the bike and headed back to do some more temple exploring. On the way there, I had lunch at the same stalls as yesterday. This time the food was not so good. I was saving Angkor Wat, the main temple, for last, but since I was riding right past it, I figured I would just go to the entrance and take a quick peak. On the long bridge path in, I saw some kids jumping into the water, which excited me as I was really hot. So I stripped down to my shorts, which just meant taking off my shirt and got ready to join them. Then I realized they were jumping into water up to my knees (their waists). It was from ten feet up and they were doing back flips. I contemplated giving it a go anyway, but eventually decided not to. So I got a quick glimpse of the largest religious building in the world and then continued on the bike as planned, out to some of the farther temples. I passed Bayon and then explored Preah Khan, Neak Pean, Ta Som, and East Mebon. I had lunch at a small restaurant and the girl working there was eating a big pile of rice and a small pile of flying ants. I had a few of the ants and they were pretty good. She said they collected them out of the tree that morning. Again, Cambodians really will eat anything. The amount of poverty here has a lot to do with that, of course. I am quite surprised as to how not packed this place is. I was expecting hordes of people everywhere, but I have been able to find plenty of places to myself and once inside the temples, for the most part away from the sellers and beggars, it is quite a calm place. There are also long stretches of road between the temples where you can find peace and quiet. The loop that I did today was 26 km and I had the ride out to the temples and back on top of that. So it was about twenty miles on the old bike today. On the way back, I saw some macaques and went to see them for a minute. One immediately saw my bananas in the basket, climbed up my back, accidentally knocked it over and stole the whole bag of bananas. He was a fat ugly one, but not as ugly as the one that soon approached that lacked a nose and instead had a big red hole in his face. He was really scary and when he tried attacking me, I went running with my bike like a little girl. I didn’t want to get bit though. Visiting the temples is a great experience, but in this heat it is very exhausting. Although I was glad to be here doing this, when it comes down to it, I enjoy being out in nature or exploring the countryside much more. Back at the hostel, I met up with a guy from Denmark (he told me about this hostel when I talked to him for a minute at the temples the other day) and we hung out and had some amazing food at a restaurant down the street.
 
April 11, 2010
I went out to the temples with the guy from Denmark. I can’t remember his name and we exchanged info, but somehow I don’t have it and I don’t think he does either. He was a cool guy, so it is kind of a bummer. Rather than exerting much physical effort, we hired a tuk tuk to take us out there for the day. First we went to Angkor Wat, which was built in the 12th century. A quote from Lonely Planet: “The hundreds of temples surviving today are but the sacred skeleton of the vast political, religious, and social center of an empire that stretched from Burma to Vietnam, a city that boasted a population of one million when London was a little town of fifty thousand.” The houses, public buildings and palaces were constructed of wood – now long decayed — because the right to dwell in structures of stone was “reserved for the gods.” Angkor Wat is the main temple of these hundreds, of which I have explored less than ten. After seeing this, I began to understand why many people devote their entire life to history. It was really interesting to also reflect on how much humans have advanced and made me wonder if this is what it was like one thousand years in the past, what will it be like the same length of time into the future? It was a very eye-opening day. After that, we had lunch and then went to Angkor Thom, which is a fortified city with walls stretching about seven miles across. The best temple there was Bayon with its 216 huge faces of Avalokiteshvara. They say that all of these faces may have been to keep an eye on the people. With the things people believed back then, it wouldn’t surprise me if the people actually were influenced by the thought that these stone faces were looking over them. It also wouldn’t surprise me if some of the present-day Cambodians are still scared of them. We got back to the hostel around 6:00 and then I had a relaxing evening and went to bed early.
 

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

On the 20th, I got this email from Vion, a ranger out at Komodo National Park:

“Hi Rob,how are you,am fine here,n now we waiting to buffalo was attacked by komodo last week.”

I am assuming that they are waiting because the buffalo didn’t die from the attack and now they are waiting for the lethal bacteria from the Komodo’s mouth to kill the buffalo. Good to hear the Komodos are eating!
 
April 12, 2010
I took an early morning bus to Phnom Penh, which took five or six hours and got me there in the early afternoon. I can think of two highlights from the trip. The first was having a big bag of crickets and a mango for lunch. The second was meeting Dan Carrell from White Bear Lake, MN. It was just fun to talk to a guy from so close to home. He has a Cambodian girlfriend or wife and they are here visiting her family and country for about a month. The drive mostly consisted of dry farm lands, but we also went through the delta of the Tonle Sap river, which was a very pretty green region. So many of the farming houses had giant piles of dry hay sitting out in front of them. Many of them were a good twenty feet high. It was a very interesting technique that I have never seen before. I realized writing this now that I did not get a picture of any, since I thought I would see plenty of them while out on my motorbike. They were so abundant on that road, but I haven’t seen a single one after Phnom Penh. The bus dropped us a mile from the city center and I walked away from the bus asap to avoid the hassle of saying no to all the drivers. I would be couchsurfing with Isaac Veth and he said he lived near the central market, which is where I headed. I walked along a really nice boulevard and wondered why a crazy country like this would have something of this sort. I realized later that it was due to the fact that Cambodia was owned by France until its independence in 1953. It took me two hours to get to his place since I had to first try to get a sim card unsuccessfully, then find a person with a phone so I could call him, and I also stopped into a camera store that could fix my camera. I made it to his place mid afternoon and he had three other people staying with him. The five of us and a friend of his named Rick from Arkansas went to get noodles at a Chinese restaurant. That may be the first time I have met a guy from Arkansas. He brought up a story about a half-brother’s half-brother’s half-brother (an eighth brother) and he became the first person who could relate to me on that topic. That night, Isaac showed us around some and took us to the market one block from his house and to the riverfront a few blocks away, which is basically the Westerner hangout place with all sorts of restaurants, internet cafes, travel agents, beggars, and hawkers. I got to sample some of the Khmer cuisine, which was one thing that I was looking most forward to in Cambodia. First, I started off with what I thought were water beetles. They looked very similar to some of the species of water beetle we have in the Midwest and to the beetles the locals were catching out near Angkor Wat. Isaac is sure that they were dung beetles, which is believable since they did taste like poop. I had five or so of those guys. I followed that off with a nice tarantula small enough to fit in your palm. It had a delightful teriyaki flavor and the texture of matted down fuzz in the mouth was very unique. Next, I had a chicken that was straight out of the nest, maybe a couple days old. First, I bit his head off beak and all, and then I crunched on his body. There really was not much meat on him, but at least the bones were plenty soft and easy to chew. The best definitely came last. This was a duck egg with a nearly matured duck inside. I would guess it was not far from hatching as it had a bill, eyes, and feathers, but much of the yolk was still inside. This Khmer cuisine is called Balut. It was so good I was shaking my head with awe. The salty lime mixture thrown in the shell once you crack the top open greatly enhanced the flavor. I’m craving one as I type.
 

Making a Difference Cambodia

April 13, 2010 The Dump Run
Dave is an English expat living in Phnom Penh. He has a small program where he takes volunteers out to an old junkyard to bring food to the families living out there. I think at one time the people used the junkyard as a resource to find usable items, but it is abandoned now. Some of these kids do get to go to school and get help from NGO programs, but they are very much in poverty. The three Canadians and I spent a couple of hours working with him today. First, we went to the market and bought food for the families. I pitched in $50 and all together we had about $100. We got three huge bags of bread, which was about 200 loaves, 150 pounds of mangoes, 50 small pineapples and 45 pounds of apples. When we pulled up to the houses, the people immediately came running with huge smiles on their faces, excited to receive food. I figure we fed about 100 people.

I am happy that the food could bring joy to them for the day, but I don’t think this is a great way to help people. First, it does not do anything for the future. They eat the food and it is gone. They learn nothing from it and besides gaining some nutrients it doesn’t help their future. In fact, I think it creates a dependency. Second, that $100 could go a lot further if used in other ways. That same amount of money could actually change lives by putting it into education.

On top of all that, I don’t understand what is going on with Dave. He seems to like very few Cambodians. He is very racist and has no patience with them whatsoever. He has lived here for four years and doesn’t speak a word of their language.

I think one benefit this program may have is that it can create awareness in the people that volunteer and hopefully they will continue to help people during their lives.
On this trip, I’ve found that giving is not nearly as easy as you would think. There are right ways and wrong ways to do it and both can make huge impacts on the lives of these people whether positive or negative.

Also, you can never really be sure of where your money is going. Many organizations have created so many expenses, employee salary for example, that a small fraction of the money they receive from donations and fundraising actually goes to the cause. From what I have learned, with most of the NGO’s here, only ten-to-twenty percent of what they raise actually goes to the people in need. The best way to help seems to be to not give money, but do what you want to do directly. But that takes time, of course. Besides the organizations, the people you are trying to help may not be honest. For example, you may buy a mom with a child a $10 bottle of baby formula. She asked for it and it seems like she really needs it. What you don’t know is that all she is going to do is sell that baby formula and buy who knows what, quite possibly alcohol though. Or you can give to children, but it is not unlikely that their parents (possibly abusive alcoholics) are actually the ones benefiting from your kindness.

So helping is not that easy.

Here’s a little background on the project and Isaac.

Isaac lived in Cambodia as a young child and was here during the Khmer revolution. He spent some of his childhood in the refugee camps near the Thailand border. At age six or seven, he made it to the United States, where he grew up in poverty in New York, Boston, and L.A. In 1998, in his early 20’s, he started to come back to Cambodia. About six years ago, in his late 20’s he moved back here permanently. He is very passionate about helping children. He knows that he would not be where he is today if he had not been helped out as a child. He has adopted three kids: Hope, Love, and Honor, ages four, three, and seven months, respectively. His main project is building a school and clinic for a community on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. The school is completely built and the frame for the clinic is up. He likes to keep things very simple and spend as little money as possible to get the job done. It makes sense because these kids don’t need a big school to learn in, they just need the resources and people who care about them. It is a work in progress and I think he will be done in the next couple years. He does have kids coming to school on most days, but there is no set routine or anything like that yet. What he really needs is a long-term teacher though.

So here is what I’ve been up to.
 
April 13, 2010
I am couchsurfing with Isaac. He lets people stay at his place for free and just expects them to help out with his project. Right now there are three Canadians staying here, too: Tyler, Jenny, and Brigitte. It is New Years right now, so to celebrate with the kids, we did a couple pinatas. The kids had made them a couple days before. So we bought some candy and filled the pinatas when we got there. At first, I was apprehensive about getting the kids candy, but when I saw the joy it brought to them my mind changed quickly. I remember how much I loved pinatas as a kid and if I can still remember those days, then it made quite an impression on me. It was a lot of fun and the kids had a great time.

Right now we are building a wall with sandbags around the school and clinic to protect it from high waters during the upcoming wet season. Apparently, the water gets so high they actually have to use boats to get to their houses. Maybe that’s an exaggeration by Isaac though. By doing the sandbagging, we are also making a higher ground where the kids will be able to play during the wet season. We spent a couple of hours in the afternoon doing this. It was tough work.
 
April 14, 2010
More sandbagging today. It is very tough work and sometimes I am wondering why the heck I am doing manual labor when I could be out having a fun time. I know it’s the right thing to do though as long as what we are doing is going to make the lives of these kids better and hopefully lead them to successful futures.

We also busted open a few more pinatas today. It brings the kids so much joy. I think doing fun activities like that gets the kids excited to come to the school and, in turn, gets them excited a little bit to learn. Even if they just spend a few hours a day there learning things like how to count and the ABC’s, it is a great influence on them that might keep them out of trouble.
 
April 16, 2010
In the afternoon, I met up with Isaac and I got supplies for the school. First, we went to Boston Books and bought 56 books. Many of them were books I read as a child, including “The Little Engine That Could,” “The Little Duck” and “The Runaway Bunny”. Also “The Berenstain Bears” and a bunch of the “Little Golden Books.” These were all books actually sent over from the States and it was really funny to read the little memos inside of the ones that were given as gifts. After that, we went and bought two bookshelves to make them a library. We wanted to display the books so that the kids will be able to see them and hopefully that will inspire them to want to learn how to read. From what I can tell, learning English is pretty much the way out of poverty in many of these third-world countries. I also got coloring project books that have English words in them, notebooks, and dry erase pens. Today is Khmer New Year, so it was very slim pickings because most of the stores are closed. After that, Isaac and I drove out to the school and set up the shelves and books and made a small library. The kids were really happy about the books and all of them dug into the bags and started looking at the books. Isaac and I are hoping that once the kids learn to read, they can have a library where the kids can check out the books. For now, the volunteer teachers can read from them and teach them words.

We didn’t have time to get some of the things I wanted, so I gave the Canadians some money to buy the things. Cushions and mats for the floor, a big storage box to keep things out of the rain, and crayons, markers, etc.

Total cost for all of this

Books = $26
46 project books, 11 notebooks, 4 dry erase markers = $7
2 bookshelves = $14
Gave to the Canadians = $25
Total = $82

I’d say that money will make a pretty good difference.

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April 13 and 14, 2010

Some of the memorable parts of these days:

Getting my haircut for $1.25. Instead of an electric buzzer, he had a buzzer that was manually operated by squeezing the handles together like a scissors. I was very apprehensive because I didn’t want to come out with an Asian bowl cut, but he actually did a pretty good job and he even trimmed up my beard.

Having most of my meals at the market. It’s 1500 riel (35 cents) for a meal, which consists of a bag of rice and a bag of a chicken, vegetable, pork, or vegetable dish. It’s good usually, but sometimes you just get what you pay for, as it is mostly bones rather than chicken meat. From my experience so far, Cambodia is a very hard country to be in as a vegetarian or even a half vegetarian as I am. Pork is very prevalent.

I got my camera fixed for $60 so I can take good pictures again. It is no longer waterproof as they didn’t have the tools to properly seal it, but otherwise it’s completely functioning. I can’t send it in for warranty with Olympus because it would take a month to get back. (In case you are wondering.)

Hanging out with the three Canadians who are also volunteering and staying with Isaac.

It’s Khmer New Year, which is a curse and a blessing. It’s great because this city of nearly two million is very quiet and the traffic is very minimal as it is customary for them to go home to their homeland. The negative side is that most businesses are closed which makes getting things done a lot harder. Also the people who are here are very drunk and noisy. One night I got hit by a motorbike. Luckily just his body decked my shoulder and legs, so it wasn’t too bad. He continued at a fast pace but he seemed really drunk as he was swerving a lot. Isaac said maybe they were trying to snag my pack which I hadn’t realized. If they were, they made a horrible attempt.
 
April 15, 2010
I woke up before 8:00, which is when I’ve been getting up every day in PP. The Canadians had stayed at Isaacs other place last night, so I hung out and used the net and waited for them to get back, since we were going to the dump run today. That didn’t end up happening though. Around 11:00, I went to find a motorbike, but that was a bit difficult with it being New Years. I wound up getting a decent one for seven bucks a day, which is more than you should pay here. I planned on visiting the popular attractions today, but first I just drove around town for a while and enjoyed the freedom of being able to get around easily. The empty streets were nice as well. I spent an hour or two checking out the Tuol Sleng Museum. These buildings were once a high school then turned into Security Prison 21 (S-21), which was not only a prison but a torture center. The museum shows off the tiny bare holding rooms, mug shots of the victims, and a lot of information about the genocide that Cambodia suffered in the 1970’s. At times, this place claimed an average of one hundred victims per day. I wanted to stay to watch the three o’clock documentary, but I was too hungry, so I stopped to get lunch at a restaurant. I bought a pair of really nice sunglasses for $1.50 after lunch and then I headed out to the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek. I drove close to ten miles past this damn place and it took me well over an hour to find it. I finally got there around 5:00 with a half hour until closing time. They told me not to worry about closing time though and said to just go in. I think the money was just going in the pockets of this gate keeper though. In the mid 1970’s, 17,000 people were unjustly executed here and buried in mass graves. Nearly nine thousand skulls are on display here. It’s pretty crazy what happened here in Cambodia and I won’t get too in depth into it, but if you are interested just research it. On the way back, I drove through some rural areas a bit and then into the city. There is just so much garbage out there. I think this is the most trash-filled, dirty city I have ever seen. It took me a couple hours to make it back to Isaac’s because of the driving in circles, but also because I found intriguing reasons to stop. I stopped at one very Western mall that had all the brands you could want. It had freezing cold A/C, plenty of bright flashy lights and was packed full of happy shoppers. I also got some ice cream at BB World. Oh yeah. I was taking pictures in the supermarket and two security guards came running up to me and said I can’t take pictures. That’s a mystery to me. This mall is an example of the many Westernized facilities in the city. This country has come a long way in recent years and now has ATMs in abundance and many, many places accept credit cards. I was told that nobody in Cambodia would accept credit cards. At the grocery store, I saw a box of cereal for $9 and corn flakes were $6. This country is surprisingly really expensive in a lot of ways. I think the fact that they use the USD has a lot to do with that, too. I tried asking for directions many times, but had a very hard time finding anyone who understood English. Eventually a monk hopped on my motorbike and took me to the turnoff that would take me straight to my destination. Traffic was pretty absurd, but didn’t feel dangerous, and I finally got back at 7:20.
 

Southern Cambodia

April 17, 2010
The Canadians and I made our way to a $2.75 “all you can eat breakfast” joint just a couple of blocks away on the riverfront. On the way through, we walked through the market and all was normal there. The only surprising sight this morning was seeing a fish about a foot long jump out of a bowl onto the concrete while the others all waited for the lady with a butcher’s knife. Breakfast was an event that lasted all morning and even continued into the early afternoon for me. Besides filling my stomach up to my throat, I also was working on my blog and setting up places to couchsurf in. I walked back to the apartment and made a few last minute preparations before hopping on my motorbike and catching Highway 3 south. I say highway because it is one of main roads, but when it comes down to it, the road was 75% unpaved and the paved sections were actually worse off than the rocky unpaved sections. The southern coast- bound journey was quite an adventure and not a comfortable one, for that matter. Being the dry season here, the roads were extremely dusty and I was blinded by dust countless times by the cars flying past me at faster speeds. Most of the ride took me through dry farm lands and the first half of the terrain was as flat as a pancake. My three liter tank did not get me the whole way, so I, of course, had to stop and fuel up a few times. This, as in most SE Asian countries, usually involves finding a little store on the side of the road with one and two liter bottles of fuel which they pour into your tank. Another option is finding a similar place that has made a slightly larger investment and has a whole barrel of fuel with a pipe to dispense it into your tank. Lastly, you can fuel up at the gas stations, of which there are reasonable amounts. All of these options cost about the same amount, with a tiny discount sometimes with the little guys, but at the station you are assured that the fuel is not watered down. Apparently the stops I did make to get gas were as entertaining to more Khmers than for me because they gathered in a circle around me as if I was a rare specimen. Although we could not speak to each other I could tell the people living out here in rural areas are very kind people. After about two hours of driving, the terrain became more exciting and I found one hill with old concrete stairs leading up to the top. I climbed up to the religious buildings on top and got my first good view of the expansive flat countryside filled with farmland and palm trees. At about 6:00, I stopped on the side of the road to catch a very pretty sunset and when I took a picture of myself realized just how dirty I was from all the red dust. My face was completely caked with dust as were my eyes and clothes. The sunset brought darkness, of course, which was a disappointment to me for two reasons. The first being that the countryside had just turned into a green fertile land and I was excited to see it. The other being that I now had to navigate around the many huge potholes, rocks, and giant piles of dirt in the dark. Nearly the whole road had construction going on and that is why there were piles of dirt in the road. On top of that, I felt a little bad because only my brights worked, so I was blinding some of the people heading north. At one place I stopped to get some gas, I found out that the nearest town, Kampot, was only twelve miles away. Before that, I was thinking I may have to sleep on the side of the road, which would have been hard since most of the road was farmland, someone’s house, or full of mud. On top of that, I was worried about going off of the road because I’ve always been told that it is full of landmines left over from the war and you should never stray from the path. Over the last week though, I have learned that for the most part, Cambodia is now safe and the only place you really have to worry, at least in the south, is in dense forest and jungle. The twelve km took me about a half hour and after going to two guesthouses, one of which was too expensive and one too full, I looked at my guidebook and Bodhi Villa sounded appealing. It was three km out of town and I found it with little trouble. I walked into a very relaxed common area that also served as a bar and took their last available bed which was in the dorm. I was hoping for a room, but figured I would switch over to one the next day. I was extremely happy to find out that this little place out in the country had excellent Wi-Fi and spent much of the night using it before making it an early night.
 
April 18, 2010
When I set out, my intentions were to make it to a little town on the gulf called Kep but since it had gotten dark, I found myself here in Kampot instead. The little town with a population nearing forty thousand does not have a whole lot going on. It is set on a nice, surprisingly clean river, and has a large central market that seems to serve a pretty good area around Kampot as well as the city. Not far from the river on either side are also some large forested hills. Like I said, there is not much going on here, but that worked out perfectly for me since I came down this way to relax and explore some of rural Cambodia.

When I woke up, I was very happy to see in the early light that the guesthouse is right on the river and has two pontoon docks where I saw the potential to waste away the afternoons in the sun. First things first though, I set out for a morning run. I haven’t been properly exercising on this trip (besides hiking, walking, biking, and swimming) and decided I was going to start getting back into that. The run along the small road was not easy at all and a little painful actually, but it was great. The diet here is healthy in certain ways, especially because most of the food is unpreserved, but I still feel healthiest when I cook for myself, so the next thing I did was take the motorbike into the market. I was very pleased with the selection at the market and for $5.25 I got enough food to make my arm sore from carrying it. I stocked up on enough duck eggs, egg plants, carrots, onions, potatoes, tomatoes, red and green peppers, garlic, rice and milk to last me a couple of days. I came back and immediately cooked myself up a healthy breakfast and when I finished around 10:00, I was happy that I still had morning, even though I had accomplished so much.

The rest of the day I spent at the guest house taking it easy. That involved spending a lot of time on the internet working on my blog, emailing, Facebooking, and planning for Africa. Also swimming in the river, lounging on the dock and cooking lunch and dinner.
 
April 19, 2010
I woke up nice and early and cooked myself breakfast and continued yesterday’s routine. Instead of running, I went for a long swim to a bridge a quarter or eighth of a mile away and did some laps near the docks on top of that. It was a pretty good swim and the currents made it a little tougher swimming in the direction of the bridge. Other than that, it’s the same as yesterday.
 
April 20, 2010
Alright, today I felt like I should get out and do some exploring. I spent some time relaxing and using the net in the morning first and then I headed out around 11:00. I headed east with thoughts of going to the little beach town of Kep and maybe trying to make it to the Vietnam border, but was up for wherever my motorbike took me. All in all, it was a beautiful day out there. On my way towards Kep, I went down some dirt roads into what I guess you could call residential areas. It was mostly farms and small houses. Standing in the middle of the dirt track and looking out into the farmland was a great feeling. I made it over to Kampot around 1:00 and found a little restaurant to have some veggie fried rice for lunch and then I found a little beach to spend part of the afternoon. Kep by no means has luxurious beaches, but they have their own character and the locals seemed to enjoy the narrow stretches of sand. After the beach, I headed out onto some dirt roads back into the farmlands, but this time I made my way into the forest- covered hills. I found myself driving through all sorts of fruit plantations. Jackfruit, durians, mangoes, and bananas took up all the land that wasn’t still jungle. I found a really nice Eco-resort up in the hills and walked around there for about twenty minutes without a single person coming up to me and asking me what I was doing. I did see a few people, but it was mostly empty. Back down in the flatlands, I headed onto an intriguing dirt road, but had to turn back towards town when I noticed my empty fuel tank. Back on the main road, I found myself at a fork with a small market. I had a delicious rice and chicken soup at a restaurant with one table and three chairs. A family filled three of the chairs and I took the other. I pointed at what they were eating and tried to convey that I wanted the same. With a little bit of work, I also got a bottle of water. The sun was getting lower in the sky, but my sights were set on making it to the border. I took a right at the fork and after not too long, I could see some beautiful large rock formations in the distance. I figured that must be Vietnam. I passed over a beautiful river and then took a right onto a dirt road that was supposed to lead me to Vietnam. So what I had seen was not Vietnam after all. This 9 km, which felt like much more than 9 km, of dirt road was a hell of a great time. It is the southernmost crossing into Vietnam and is not used by tourists. It is mostly used to transport goods, which means it is full of overloaded motorbikes, trucks, and all sorts of unexplainable things to the outsider. I saw pigs the size of small cows. I saw a guy on a motorbike stuck in the mud in the middle of the road, so I took pictures, then pushed him out. These motorbikes have so much cargo on them that they are wider than a car. It’s absolutely amazing what they can load onto a bike. On many of the bikes, a woman was sitting on top of all this stuff keeping an eye on it. I saw trucks go by that were stacked so high that the people sitting on top had to lift the power lines up over the truck. “9 km” later, I made it to the border at Ha Tien, Vietnam and pulled up to the guard. I tried to get him to let me walk across the border and stick my right foot into Vietnam, but he refused. We had fun though. Afterwards, I saw a beautiful sunset over the rice paddies. Now I was a good hour from Kampot and it was dark. I wasn’t too happy about this, but mostly because I was taking a different route back and from what I could see, it was much different from the other. I was driving on a small dirt road and on both sides there were rice paddies tapering off way in the distance. Enough light was coming over the hills to reflect off of the paddies to show me that the road I was on was basically an island in the marsh. The only problem this posed was the hundreds of bugs hitting me in the face as I drove along. I pulled into a little place called Phnom Laev village and pulled my bike into an insanely loud market. This place had loudspeakers blaring music so loud I could hardly hear myself shouting. It seemed to be a market, but I asked and I guess it was a New Year’s festivity. When I was trying to capture the madness with my camera, I had twenty or thirty people gathered around me in awe. An hour later, I was back in Kampot and had some sort of soup and a whole catfish? for dinner.
 
April 21, 2010
Went to the market to get food for the last couple days in Cambodia. I drove the wrong way down a one-way street at the market and within ten meters some police motioned for me to pull over and park. So I parked and then started to walk away hoping that they just wanted me to park and not go any further. They explained that I was breaking a rule and also since I was not wearing a helmet, they would be giving me a fine of $5. I just pretended to not have any money and told him repeatedly that I was sorry and didn’t know, but I have learned the ways in Cambodia and promise not to do it again. After five minutes or so, I was free and I drove to the other side of the market to get my food. That afternoon, I went out on the bike to do some exploring in the nearby countryside. I wanted to get up into the large hills, so I drove on the dirt roads through the farmland straight into them. It was fun exploring back there and there was nearly nobody around. I drove through many fields and fruit plantations. The dirt road turned into a trail just wide enough for someone to walk on and eventually I couldn’t go any further when some small boulders blocked my path. I walked a bit further but it was really thick and I didn’t feel like a grand adventure through the forest. Later that afternoon, I found the Utopia guesthouse on the river. It had an awesome wooden deck where the restaurant and hangout area sat about twenty feet up overhanging the river. You could jump right from there into the river, which I did. On the other side, I climbed a palm tree with a wooden ladder nailed into it and swung from the tall rope swing. It was absolutely great. I swam back and had a shake made from lemon and mint from the garden and talked to Tony, from Lebanon, who had stumbled upon the place three months ago and has been working there since. It also had an amazing view of the river and hills. I thought of packing up and moving here, but when I got back to my place, I just felt like relaxing and cooking myself dinner. I also drove over to the gas station and had three of the fifty cent Panda ice cream bars.
 
April 22, 2010
Today was another relaxing day. I spent the morning at Bodhi using the net, typing my blog, and getting some sun on the dock. Late afternoon, the owner, Hugh, was taking his boat out to go kite surfing and he invited me along. We cruised up the river about ten miles and he tried to kite surf, but the wind wasn’t there. It was cool watching him try though and I learned a lot about it. I can see this sport as something I could enjoy a lot and become passionate about. I thought it would be something great to do this summer, but the gear and certification cost a couple thousand dollars. Once you’ve got everything it’s cheap, but I think I’ll save that sport for later on in my life. I came back and was going to go for a long swim, but I threw the goggles in before me and they sank in an instant. Oh well, less weight in my bag. I really didn’t want to go for a run, but I also wanted to get some ice cream, so I schemed up an idea to do a twenty-five minute loop that would end at the gas station. I enjoyed the Panda ice cream bar very much. A different lady working at the station tried to charge me 3,000 riel instead of 2,000, but I told her it was 2,000.
 
April 23, 2010
My flight out of Phnom Penh was at 5:30 and I had what I figured would be at least a four-hour drive. I woke up at 6:00, cooked the last of my food, and headed out around 7:00. What took me six hours on the way down took me less than four today. The road seemed much more navigable, but the faster cars still blinded me with dust clouds. By the time I got back, I was absolutely filthy and exhausted. I was back at Isaac’s before noon and cleaned up at his place. I had a few things to do in Phnom Penh, including buying a guide book for Africa, going to the post office, getting some food, and returning my bike, so the few hours I had before going to the airport were pretty busy. I made it to the airport with plenty of time and the flight back to Bangkok was smooth. Supan Tungjutkusolmun (Sup for short), from couchsurfing, picked me up at the airport and I stayed at his place. He was such a nice guy and we had plenty to talk about. He studied in the States for ten years, including getting his master’s in engineering at UW-Madison. He took me to dinner at Pee Raga, a really nice Thai restaurant, and we had Tom kha gai (chicken, and galangal herb in a coconut broth), shrimp with cashew, papaya salad and coconut ice cream. It was easily one of the nicest meals I have had on this trip. He lives in a nice house in Lat Krabang, which is an eastern suburb just fifteen minutes from the airport. I was pretty exhausted from the long day, so I made it a pretty early night.
 
April 24, 2010
I woke up early and had a few hours to hang out at Sup’s house before going to the airport. We had some awesome chocolate muesli for breakfast and watched TV until we had to leave at 11:00. The programs he showed me were “Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations,” and “Trouble in Tourist Thailand”. The latter was entertaining but poorly made and was about Brits who come to Thailand and get into trouble, mostly from drugs and drinking. The former was an awesome show that I will continue to watch when I get back home. It was a very educational show about traveling and I could relate and learn a lot from it. Afterwards, Sup took me back to the airport for my one o’clock flight to Hong Kong. I flew with Sri Lankan airlines and I had a great time on the flight. The food was great and so was the wine. I had a pretty good laugh when I looked back into the plane and saw nothing but Asian heads poking out over the top of the seats. I was a bit surprised about that.
 
April 25-29
I did not write about my time in Hong Kong.
 

Nairobi, Kenya

April 29, 2010
I awoke after a short night’s sleep at 5:30 flying over either Sudan or Kenya. I was welcomed to Africa by an excellent sunrise from 37,000 feet in the air. We arrived shortly after 6:00 and while I was waiting in the visa line, I realized I was in Africa. It was very exciting, but I also became a little nervous. SE Asia was a pretty crazy place, but if what people told me was true, Africa would be a whole new ball game. And a much more challenging ball game at that. I was very surprised at how small the airport was; especially considering it is the largest airport in the country. Getting the $25 ninety-day visa went according to plan and I found Sam Bowen waiting for me at the exit with no problem. Sam is a friend of my friend Breanne, who was here last summer for a month. We took a matatu back to his place, which is in Shauri Moyo, on the eastern outskirts of Nairobi. Matatus are the main form of transportation here and they are either a 14-passenger minivan or a larger 45-passenger bus. In the city, it usually costs between twenty and forty Kenya Shilling (KSh), of which there are currently seventy-seven to the dollar. So it is very cheap to get around in this city. In the hour or so that it took to get to his place, I could tell that I was in a whole different world. People walk here, unlike in SE Asia where they seem to think the idea of walking half a mile is absurd. Dogs and cats are not roaming the street. It’s a whole different type of crazy. But the biggest difference here is that the people are black, of course. Which is a whole new scene to the eye. Sam lives in a pretty nice apartment that he shares with a handful of other guys and one woman. It is in a gated community that houses a lot of soldiers, so it is an extremely safe place. I showered up and unpacked a bit and after a breakfast of white bread, bananas, and tea, we walked into central Nairobi, which is just two km from his home. The walk in was very interesting and I was happy to be with Sam. Although I think it is safe to walk around in the day, as long as you look like you know what you are doing, I very much appreciated having someone to help me while adjusting to the environment. To be honest, it is actually a bit scary here. Most travelers who need to go to Nairobi get in and out as quickly as possible. No smart local will walk at night in almost any area. They don’t even consider it an option. Many of them won’t even take the matatus at night, sticking only to taxis. I would never recommend an inexperienced traveler to come to Nairobi alone, but I would never tell someone to not come here. It just has to be done in the right way. Nairobi makes Bangkok look like an elementary school lunch break. All that being said, I do not feel threatened, but I am being very careful.

We stopped in at Sam’s work. He is a dental technician. After that, we spent most of the day just walking around. He showed me most of the city center, including the government buildings, and the university. Going to the supermarket to buy water was a new experience. Unlike SE Asia, where you can buy bottled water on every street corner, I don’t see that as an option here. In fact, there are very few food stalls on the street here at all. That alone makes it a world apart from Asia. Water was quite expensive at 65 KSh and on top of that, they charge sixteen percent tax! That is the largest tax I have experienced in this world. Using a credit card was a five-or-ten minute activity. The clerk inspected my identification and manually typed in the card and filled out part of a thick piece of paper. Then we had to take that piece of paper to another desk along with the credit card and passport. He processed the card, signed the paper and then we brought it back to the other clerk. Then we could drink our expensive water. For lunch, we ate at Metro Choice Quality Meals. This was my first meal in Kenya and I was very excited. The choices on the menu ranged from 30-150 KSh, but the vegetarian options were all around seventy. The vegetable meals were Managu, Kunde, Sagaa, and Ugali na Sukuma Wiki. Also on the menu were chapati, kienyeji, and kachumbari. Ugali is the staple food of Kenya and is simply corn flour mixed into boiling water to make a sort of thick ball. It is pretty plain, but extremely filling, and goes great with the meats and vegetables that usually accompany it. I ate that along with Kunde, which was explained to me as traditional veggies and seemed to be a spinach-like leaf, tomato sauce, and herbs. This one hundred shilling meal was delicious and filling. I think I am going to love eating in Africa.

We took a matatu back to his place around 5:00 and rested for a short minute before going to the grocery store and the market to get food for dinner. I watched them prepare some of the food and I am confident that I could prepare Ugali on my own. To go with the Ugali, we had a traditional African dish of veggies and goat. We also had the pears and mangos that we bought at the market. All in all, it was a delicious and healthy meal. I went to bed around 10:00 and got some much-needed sleep.

Nairobi really is a world away. I grew up in a place where black people hardly even existed and wasn’t really exposed to them until I took the Greyhound bus alone from Wisconsin to Florida when I was sixteen. Up to this point in my life, I have not had many relations with black people. UW-La Crosse ranks as one of the least racially diverse campuses in America, so I had minimal exposure during my college years as well. Black people in general are not the traveling type, so I have not met that many while I am out in the world either. There have been few times where I have been in a mostly black community. Two that I can recall are when I accidentally drove to 300 E. 40th St. in Brooklyn instead of Manhattan and when I drove through Southside Chicago last summer. I also worked in some mostly black communities in Michigan and Baltimore, but they were upper-middle class. In my experience, black and white people are very different people. I know that I am making generalizations, but to be quite honest, I find these generalizations to be true more often than not. Being here in Nairobi puts a new perspective to it for me. All black people originate from Africa and all white people originate from Europe. They are completely different places with different climates and factors that would influence how people would do things. So from the beginning, black and white people have been doing things in different ways. It has been many years since we integrated, but I think humans stick to their origins in many ways and I think that is apparent by observing how our races do things differently. So by being here, I feel like I can have a better understanding of why black people in America act differently than white people.

One thing that is very interesting to me is how similar I see Nairobi to inner city America. When I was in Brooklyn and Southside Chicago, I felt like I was in another world and that world felt very similar to this world. Now that I have seen Nairobi, it’s almost as if they took chunks out of here and put them in America. Obviously, there are differences and Kenya is a third world country, but they are still very similar. You can’t see a difference between most African Americans and Africans. The common person on the street here is wearing the same thing as they would in America. An exception is some of the women who are wearing clothing with bright colors and patterns. If I saw someone in America wearing that, I would have guessed they had emigrated from Africa. Also, many of the Somalians look different because most of them are Muslim, so the women are wearing hijabs and the men are wearing some sort of cloak. Sam told me that Africans cannot tell other Africans apart just by looking at their physical features. Clothing and accents will tell what country they are from, but other than that, he said all blacks are the same, except Somalians. He has not been to west or south Africa though. For me being here in Nairobi is an experience like being in another world, but for someone who grew up in the inner city, maybe it would not be so otherworldly. Obviously, I have only been in Africa for a day and I have only seen a speck of the continent. But, this one day has been one hell of a day and is definitely a landmark in my life.
 
April 30, 2020
What a start to the day. Around 9:00, Sam and I took a matatu into town and went to stop by his work for a minute. As we were walking up to his building, I saw a huge mass of moving people and near the front of the mass, a few men were attacking another man. It all lasted just a couple of seconds and I saw one man give a flying kick to another man running away. A second later, he jumped into a store and the metal gate went flying down instantly behind him. Within seconds, all the neighboring shops had all their gates drawn as well. The masses grew and the whole front of the building was surrounded by a couple hundred people. Sam told me that he would have for sure been killed if he had not made it in there. At that time, the speculation was that he had stolen something. In Kenya, if you steal something, you will be killed and made an example of, according to Sam. Suddenly a man, who I assume was him, came out on the balcony above and, for a couple minutes, everyone including myself, watched and tried to figure out what was going on. Just like that, the crowds dispersed and we got into the elevator to go up to his office. In the elevator, we saw a circle of about fifty people gathered around something just across the street from where that had happened. So we went back down to see what was going on there. Inside the crowd was a very beaten man with a giant head. I’m not sure if that was due to swelling or a genetic mutation. Amazingly, a half hour had passed and the police had still not arrived. After many different speculations from different people over that half hour, the true story (I think) was told to me. The beaten man was very messed up on drugs and was trying to steal a car. He was caught and while he was being beaten, another man took advantage of the confusion and stole a woman’s cell phone. That was the man now in the building. I guess they had the man contained inside and he would be arrested. The reason they shut the gate behind him was not to save him but to keep the mob from tearing through his store to get him. Sam said the beaten man would surely die. I had no idea that it is acceptable for mobs to kill someone on the street if they have stolen something. Sam just laughed at the matter. I asked how often he sees something like this and it sounds like maybe every couple of months.

Later that afternoon, we went over to the city park, also known as the monkey park. If you guessed that it is full of monkeys, you would be right. Two species of macaques are there and both of them are very friendly if you have corn or peanuts in your hand. They will climb all over you in an attempt to get your food. Some of them will sit on your shoulder calmly and wait to be fed by you piece by piece, while others will try to pry your hands open or stuff their face into your clenched fist. Besides monkeys, the park was full of Somalian kids and sleeping homeless that Sam called criminals. There were also some other people enjoying the park as well. The kids were really bothersome because they were chasing around the monkeys making it hard for me to get good pictures. Afterwards, we visited a friend of Sam’s at his house. He was a soldier living in a small metal house in the Kenya Broadcasting grounds. He served us some delicious Ugali and vegetables. To turn on the burner, he stuck two bare copper wires together. By the time we left there, it was five o’clock and then we walked through Nairobi for over an hour. We walked most of the way back to Sam’s house and it was pretty dark out since we didn’t get back until 8:00. The streets were insanely jammed with people, cars, buses and matatus. You’d have to see it to comprehend what it’s actually like. For dinner, we had a dish composed of macaroni noodles (boiled with salt and oil), French beans, goat meat, potatoes, onions, and tomatoes. On top of that was kachumbari, which is a traditional dish composed of uncooked onions, dania, carrots, and green peppers. We also had mangoes, pears and milk. Afterwards, I spent some time in bed figuring out where to go for my month in Africa.
 
May 1, 2010
I am sitting at Sam’s right now and it is 11:00 at night. I can hardly recall today’s events, but I’ll try to sort my brain out. I Woke up at 7:00 and spent a few hours in bed reading my guidebook and planning. Afterwards, I had a small breakfast with Sam and James and after a shower, Sam and I walked into town beginning down the same route as the first morning, but then heading through a large market. Much of the market was fruits and vegetables, but other sections were mostly clothes, sunglasses, and random stuff like locks, flashlights, cell phones, and such. The markets on this continent have some similarities to those in Asia, but there are some drastic differences. The main one is the defining music at these markets. I think it is rap and it is so loud that I can’t even think. It makes the market much more confusing to an outsider like me and I feel like it makes me more vulnerable. In town, we went to the calm Masai market, which is nearly all traditional African crafts. It was stacked full of items that I would love to put in my apartment and I actually got a few things. The highlight though was seeing the Masai women. They are hands down the most amazing people I have ever seen with their elongated earlobes, many of which had holes an inch wide in them. They wore traditional clothes and intricate jewelry made of thousands of beads. A small percentage of the women in the market were true Masai women. We ate lunch on Coke crates at a small restaurant not far from the market. I called Claude Edmund and then we walked over to his office, which was just fifteen minutes away. He is a contact I made on couchsurfing and he has a tour company.

Sitting down with him for an hour or so really helped me to decide what I want to do while I am here. I will be renting a motorbike from him for two or three weeks and I will be driving out to many of the parks, reserves, and conservation areas. Some I can get into on my bike while others I will have to leave my bike with the rangers and get other transportation in. I will spend most of my time in the Rift Valley, Central Highlands, and Western Kenya and I will also spend some time on the Nile and around Lake Victoria in Uganda. Once I get back to Kenya, the grand finale will be Masai Mara. I have connections in Nakuru and Eldoret and much of the areas I want to explore will not be far from there.

We walked the hour back to Sam’s house, but stopped in town for some African porridge, which cost less than one dollar for two huge calabash bowls. It was not the best food I have had in Kenya. We walked through some more crazy markets on the way back and I bought a papaya, some pineapple, a beet, and the two cheapest avocados I’ve ever purchased at 10 KSh a piece (about thirteen cents). We were just a quarter mile from his house when I got my second experience in which a man was laying on the ground with a crowd around him. This time there were three large men yelling at one woman. Apparently the man on the ground was their brother. The man had collapsed on the ground not able to move and was last seen coming out of her house. Speculation was that she poisoned him. Word was he had been lying on the ground there for three hours, but the brothers seemed more intent on yelling at the woman than getting him to the hospital or at least out of the mud.

Photo taking has been very difficult here as every time I try to take pictures, people yell to Sam to get me to stop. For some reason nearly everyone hates getting their picture taken. Much of the time I just want to take a picture of a scene and not of the particular people in it, but I still have trouble with that. I am trying to be really fast at taking pictures now so people won’t notice. They aren’t nearly as good, but it’s better than nothing. It really causes a scene. In situations like when I bought something at the market they were happy to let me photograph them. It sounds like the Masai are very against getting their photos taken though, so I did not get to take a photo. That is such a bummer considering they are the most unique people I’ve ever seen. It is a tribe that very much sticks to its own culture and doesn’t let people, black or white, change it. It was funny seeing one of them talking on a cell phone though.
Back at Sam’s place, I worked on my blog and pictures for a few hours and then we had dinner around 9:00. This was an extremely educational event. Here ya go.

We had rice, beans, and potatoes, which was pretty normal. The Sour Milk or “Mursik” that we had started up a huge conversation. Here is how it is prepared. First cow’s milk is boiled and the cream is removed after it is cooled. The milk is put into a calabash along with ash. The ash can only be from the “Sosio tree” or “wattle tree.” These trees have a medicinal value in which it purifies your blood. Once the milk is in the calabash, you leave it in a cool dry place for at least three days, but no more than two weeks. This is prepared by the Kalenjin tribe, which is in the Rift Valley. Sam and all the others are from this region. They claim that yoghurt originated from settlers who observed this sour milk and tweaked the recipe. They also claim that sour milk is the reason that they have the fastest long distance runners in the world. The tribe they are from is best known to produce the best runners in the world, including Paul Tergat and Pamela Jelimo, who both hold world records and many gold medals. They also call it a hero’s welcome and an example of this is when runners come off the plane from events, the first thing that happens is the mother gives the returning son or daughter some Mursik to drink. It is such a big thing to them. This is all part of one tribe and there are forty-two tribes in Kenya. My observation from drinking it is that it is a very sour soft curdled milk with a grayish color from the ash.

I learned how my dinner mates got their names, all of which are from the Kalenjin tribe.

They get three names. The first is their Baptist name, followed by a name according to tribe, and lastly, their father’s name.

The Baptist name is the name they use in the “cosmopolitan” city of Nairobi. When they go back to their homeland, which is often, they go by their tribal name. This name depends on either the time of day they were born or if they were born during an event or ceremony. If there is an event or ceremony that day, the name will come from that, otherwise it will come from the time of day they were born. The explanation in the parenthesis explains the tribal name.

Sam Kipkemoi Bowen (kemoi = born at night around three a.m.)

Joseph Kiplagat Kimeli (lagat = born at 10:00 in the evening)

Simon Kiptarus Chepkiyeng (tarus = born during circumcision ceremony in the village)

James Kimutai Chirchir (mutai = born at 6:00 in the morning)

All men start with Ki

All women Che or Je

The last name is their father’s first (tribal) name. So if they tell another African their name they automatically know they are from the Kalenjin tribe in the Rift Valley because their name starts with Ki. No other tribe does this. Another note is that everybody always goes back home, even if they live in Nairobi, they will always have a life in their homeland. They can’t marry within their clan or family, but within the Kenenjin they can. With marriage, the woman becomes part of the man’s tribe and she can’t bring in her traditions from her tribe.
Simon’s name created a long talk about the circumcision ceremony. Once the boy is fourteen, he has the choice to become a man. He does not have to if he does not want to and it sounds like he can put it off until he is twenty. There is a ceremony that sends the boy off into the forest. They get circumcised right once they leave and stay away for one month. They learn how to defend the tribe and such and the sponsors (older men who have been circumcised) are out there teaching them. They cannot see any uncircumcised person or woman during this time and they cannot go back until they are healed. A cleansing ceremony takes place when they come back and they can then put on normal clothes again.

They had a photo of them from the ceremony before they went into the forest. Go to my photo album. You absolutely must see this. They do not wear clothes for that month, just goat fur and paint. When they showed me this picture, I could not believe it was them.
 

Making a Difference Grace Care Center

May 02, 2010
I am here in Nairobi working with the Grace Care Centre. It is run by Regina and George Ngige. While I am volunteering with them I am staying in their home. Two friends of mine from back in Wisconsin volunteered here last year for three weeks, so I made the connection through them. You can read about Breann Sommer’s and Ryan Knier’s experience at www.theyatimaproject.blogspot.com.

Grace Care Centre is a not-for-profit organization run by the Ngige family in Kawangware, the second largest slum in Nairobi, Kenya. The Centre provides a home and source of education to a number of poor and vulnerable children living in the local community. There are currently 180 students, of which 50 are orphans, who also call the Centre home, attending school at Grace Care Centre. They have grades one to seven and they even have separate classrooms for all of them. Right now they are working on getting a grade eight, which is the final grade before high school. Grade eight is highly regulated by the government, as it is the exam grade to see if they can go to high school, and I guess there are strict regulations on the classroom setting.

Today, I just got here in the late evening and neither Regina nor George was around, so I went over to a mall and used the internet. Walking through the slum, it was apparent that I was in a very impoverished area. When I came back that evening after sunset, I met a couple of people who were there through a volunteer program. Simone from Brisbane, Kelly from Vancouver, and James from Edmonton. I stayed up talking to them for a few hours and heard a lot about their experiences so far in Kenya.
 
May 03, 2010
Kelly, James, and I walked over to the school around 10:00 and checked out the care center which is an orphanage and school for some kids and just a school for the others. The kids were really well behaved and polite and all of them greeted us when we came in. We got a tour of the place and listened to Regina tell us about how everything came to be. We heard about what they needed the most and got right to work. It was apparent that they needed a system for collecting rain water because the water tank was completely empty and there was just a small hose leading off of the roof into it. She said every six days she pays $25 to fill up a large metal tank. So we came up with ideas many, many times, each time disregarding the last until we found the best and easiest place to make a gutter system to collect the water. Then we went to the mall to withdraw money. This was about a two-hour event using the internet, buying much needed contact solution, and buying fresh produce on the street. An avocado is less than seven cents here! A roasted corn cob is about fifteen cents! When we got back, we went with one of the guys who worked there to get supplies to make the gutters. It was a good half hour through the slums, which turned out great because we got to see the place. At the hardware store, I bought all the nails, piping, supports, links, and sealant we would need to help them collect water. In total that cost around seventy-five dollars. We got picked up with the supplies and were back at the care center just after 4:00. It was late in the day and we had hardly gotten anything done. Just like in my previous experiences, even the most simple tasks take forever. We were able to build half of the gutters though and although it took a lot of effort, we were pretty happy with the final result. We tested them out by pouring buckets of water down and we were happy that most of the water made it into the tank. Some tweaking would need to be done tomorrow though. It was a lot of fun hanging out with the kids and many of them were very eager to help out. Afterwards, I went to use the internet for a while at the mall and then James and I took a taxi back to the house. Walking in the dark is not much of an option here. We had Ugali and Kales for dinner that they prepared for us and sat around talking for a few hours before going to bed. They are a really fun group of people.
 
May 04, 2010
I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of rain. This may have been the most excited I have ever been to hear this. After a quick breakfast, James, Kelly and I walked over to the center and were happy to see that with just the short rain we had last night the gutter had collected three hundred liters of water. The tank was a third of the way full! We were ready to get the rest of the gutters built but were delayed an hour after not being able to find the supplies. It was a good opportunity to play with the kids though. The second gutter went much smoother and came out a LOT better looking. We now had nothing to do though. The plan was to buy some chickens for them to raise to lay eggs, but our ride out there wasn’t available until 2:30. I spent some of the afternoon using the internet at the mall and slowly wandered back buying cheap mango, green pepper, and avocado along the way. We didn’t get back until 3:15 and felt bad about being late. Then we ended up waiting over two hours to leave anyway. So what better to do than play with the kids. These kids are so great. Some are very shy, but many of them are very playful and very excited to talk. It’s really funny how fascinated they are with the hair on my arms and legs. At one time, four of them were petting my arm. I’m laughing just writing about it. Being here is extremely touching to the heart. Finally, at 5:30, the three of us drove out to a suburb called Karen with George and Regina. It’s an upper class area that many white people live in and the houses are absolutely massive. Naomi greeted us at her huge house out in the country and then cooked us all dinner including tea, eggs, bread, and hot dogs. Here in Kenya, no matter how poor you are, you always have at least tea to greet your visitors. Always, always, always. It is really rude not to. It is a very friendly culture and I enjoy it very much. The only negative side to that is that it is very hard to get in and out of somewhere quickly. Then we went outside and learned about chickens. The main thing is that the indigenous chickens produce very few eggs, so it is much better to get the European hybrids that typically produce one egg per day each. I bought twenty month-old chicks at two dollars a piece. When we got back late that night, the coop had been cleaned out by the kids and sawdust was put in. The chicks adjusted very easily and after picking each of them up and putting them by the food and water, they were eating and drinking. I named two of them Breann and Ryan after my friends who told me to come here.

Normally, they get volunteers through an organization and charge about $5/ night including a bed and all meals. Regina puts every penny of profit from this straight into the care center. She truly is an amazing person who is making a difference in the lives of many, many kids. The kids are greatly benefiting from her and are very well educated and disciplined. Her hopes are that they will become successful respectful people that will give back to the community. She is very smart and seems to know how to do things that will make a difference in the future. I truly believe that she is helping these kids to get out of poverty and lead successful lives. It is hard to trust anyone, even charity organizations, here in Kenya, but she is someone who would never steal a penny. That night, I got the idea of making Regina a couchsurfing profile to help them get volunteers. I set my alarm for 6:00 to go to the center and make a profile for them.

 

 
May 05, 2010
I stuffed my face full of last night’s leftovers and hopped in the car at 6:45 with George, Regina and their two incredibly adorable daughters. Another light rain last night and the two tanks now held nine hundred liters between the two of them. I spent two hours making the couchsurfing profile for them. My hope is that other couchsurfers will find them on there and want to volunteer. Regina will put them up for free as long as they are volunteering at the care center. If this works, it could do some great things for them.
 

Lake Nakuru National Park

May 7, 2010
Today was a day. It was exciting. It was amazing. It was nerve-racking. It was scary. And it was long. I woke up at 7:00, hopped right in the shower and had a quick breakfast while discussing faith and religion with one of the priests. Today was the day I would go on my first safari, but I wanted to wait to enter the park until 11:00 so that my 24-hour admission to the National Park would last through tomorrow morning. I drove into town to get food, kerosene, and binoculars and was back at the church before 10:00. From there it is just a right, a left, and four kilometers to Lake Nakuru National Park, one of Kenya’s most visited parks. At the gate, I was greeted by vervet monkeys and baboons and a huge group of school children. The day entry fee for a foreigner is a whopping $60 and on top of that camping is $25. The $5 car fee ran the total fees up to $90 for one day. Into the park I went, hoping that the place would be worth the wallet-raping price and that it would not be too full of other visitors for me to be able to fully enjoy it. The fact that it is the rainy low season here in Kenya gave me hope. It didn’t take more than twenty minutes and I had already seen African buffalo, an ostrich and waterbucks, but they were near the lake which was a good distance away. In that short time, I also saw a group of four warthogs, who looked at me for a bit and then turned and pranced off into the thick brush. The dirt road was a little bumpy but so far it seemed pretty good for my rented Toyota Allion.

To the right was the lake and on both sides of me was thick bush in some areas and open fields in others. I decided to hook right onto a road that led to a campsite figuring I could get near the lake. Within a half-minute on the road, it was apparent that the car wasn’t going to be able to make it down to the campsites due to the giant rut in the middle of the road. I intended on getting out of there, but somehow my right wheel fell into the rut. Okay, I thought, stay calm, this could be bad, but I think I can handle it. I tried to work the car out of the rut for a bit and the situation started to look a bit worse than I had originally thought.

On top of that, I opened all four windows of the car and it nearly instantly flooded with more mosquitoes than I have ever seen. They were biting me handfuls at a time. I managed to work the car forward after putting some rocks in front of and behind the wheel and, although I was bottoming out repeatedly, I was coming about a half foot from freedom every time I gained speed. I pulled it forward one last time to gain speed in the reverse but this time found myself worse off than before, with the frame resting on the ground and the back left wheel a good half-foot off the ground. Now I thought to myself, I am completely f**ked. I’m walking around on this road that is completely surrounded by grass beyond tall enough to hide a hungry prowling lion. I’m not even allowed to leave my car, my car is on three wheels and I’ve gotten twenty mosquito bites in a matter of fifteen minutes. The ranger’s fee for getting out a stuck car is over $100, so that was my last resort.

I grabbed my bag and walked less than a minute up to the main road to throw it in the middle to stop anyone from passing by without seeing me first. Before I even got the chance though, a car was driving up. It was a safari truck with two Kenyans in the front and three what I think were British people riding along on a nice safari. I felt bad taking up their paid time, but when I asked, they seemed happy to let the safari guys help me out. Before we could even get to work, a huge truck of workers happened to be driving by and within minutes we had about ten people surrounding the car ready to lift it and put it on solid ground. A few strained heaves and we had the car back on the road, out of the rut, and on all four wheels. All in all, I only lost a half hour or so of my time and after much thanking, I was back on my way.

The road continued along the east side of the lake at a distance and eventually, at the south side of the lake, the road came down into flat grasslands filled with zebra, buffalo, Thomson’s gazelle, Grant’s gazelle, waterbucks, impala, and bird species that I am unsure of. The road led through the grassland past many grazing animals and ended along the lake where I was free to drive on the very sturdy lakeshore. I spent a lot of time observing and photographing all these animals, along with the thousands of flamingos along the shoreline. In the distance, I saw a huge animal that looked too big to be a buffalo and my excitement grew when it dawned on me that it was probably a rhino. A look with my binoculars confirmed the idea and I drove nearer to it to watch him roam among the buffalo. Unfortunately, he laid down to rest so I didn’t get a good picture of him standing, but I got to watch him laze about and watch a bird pick at his body.

I went along the southern shore, the whole place to myself, and most of the animals seemed completely okay with my presence. I came upon another lazy white rhino and snacked on my bananas and wheat bread as I observed him at the peaceful shoreline. Back on the road, I stopped and watched two separate pairs of white rhinos grazing in the distance with my binoculars.

Not really sure of where I wanted to go next, I ended up on the west side of the lake and saw a troop of five baboons walking along the road. I came out on the northwest side of the lake, which was much like where I had previously been, so I just gave the massive amounts of zebra, flamingo, buffalo, gazelle and the solitary white rhino a quick look. From there, it was only two km to Baboon Cliff, a lookout over all of Lake Nakuru. The view was spectacular and I was surprised to not see any baboons, but happy to see some rock hyrax on the rocky ledges. They look like a large brown guinea pig. By now it was 3:30 and the clouds were coming in and I felt like it was getting late, but in reality I still had three hours until dusk. Now I was up in the highlands and the very few cars I had seen below were gone and I didn’t see another car for the rest of the day. I came upon a pair of dik-diks on the road, which were absolutely amazing. They are like a tiny gazelle that only reaches 15 pounds and 1.5 feet tall. They stood in the road very wary of me, but gave me as long as I desired to look at them. I saw a few more of these throughout the rest of the afternoon.

The road up here was only one lane wide and much of the time it was just two ruts with grass in the middle. I felt like it was really wild up here and I was hoping to spot some wild cats and maybe a giraffe. I was peacefully cruising along at a speed of 10 to 15 mph with my arm hanging out the window and suddenly there was a lion just ten feet off the road on my side. It was so close that it could have pounced through my open window in a matter of seconds. The first sight of that lion looking right at the car is burned into my mind. I didn’t roll up the windows or anything and the lion continued along the side of the car just ten feet away and then onto the road where he continued to stroll along as if I wasn’t even there. He was going the same direction as I was, so I followed him for a minute or so until he stopped in the road. Dozens of mosquitoes flooded into the car and, as I tried to get a shirt on, I watched him in the road hoping he would stay long enough for me to get a good picture. You would think that would be enough excitement, but as I was still trying to get my shirt on, a giraffe came out from the brush and walked onto the road less than sixty meters from the lion. Now I had choices. Get photos of the lion slowly wandering into the brush to the west or the giraffe, which was walking the opposite direction. You are required to stay in your vehicle except at campsites and picnic areas and they say it’s very dangerous to get out, but come on, what’s the odds of me listening to that. I’d already gotten out of the car a dozen times and even frolicked in the savannah for a bit. So I sat on top of my car and watched the lion until he was no longer visible and then sat and watched the giraffe, who was just as interested in watching me as I was of watching him. I got to observe the lion for over five minutes and then I listened to him bark in the woods as I watched the giraffe and the yelping impala and reedbucks. They watched the lion from a distance as well.

That road ended at a ranger station at the park boundary just a km later and I had to head back the way I came. When I got back to the previous road, I went right in the direction of my campsite and two separate times found herds of about thirty buffalo on the side of the road. I found another side road, which was just two ruts and a grassy middle, but that ended a bit later at another ranger station situated at the electric fence boundary. It was 6:00 now and I was about fifteen km from the campsite. I was hoping to time my arrival to just before dark so that I could look for wildlife all the way through dusk. On the road, I saw what I thought was a very tiny round bird with a small head, but when I got closer, I realized it was actually two beetles rolling a perfectly round dung ball along the road. It was fascinating to watch them push and ride the poop ball. I knew what they were from seeing them on Nat Geo.

A half-hour later, I came down into an open grassy valley scattered with trees and was astonished to see the whole south end was lined with giraffes. At any one time, I could see twenty of them. I stopped the car in the middle of the road, since I hadn’t seen another car for hours anyway, and laid on the roof for the next twenty minutes. When I had arrived, a few had just crossed the road and as I laid there, a huge one started to make his way to the other side. Individuals and small groups up to three followed suit and slowly walked from the south side across the savannah and crossed the road just fifty meters ahead. The whole while they were moving towards me and watching my every move. Sitting there alone as the dusk set in with the entire valley to myself and twenty giraffes displaying their beauty was the most amazing moment of my life. I felt like I was looking at dinosaurs. Some of the giraffes were so large and it was a completely new site to me. I never realized how absolutely gorgeous these creatures are.
When they had all passed, I kept on and had to pass through a herd of buffalo and elands that lined both sides of the road. I stopped to get a closeup look at a couple of the large males and was scared off when they gave the car a show down and threatened to charge. Now my heart was racing and I found myself in front of a small river that flowed right over the road. It was almost as wide as the length of the car and I couldn’t tell just how deep. It was basically dark now and I sure as hell didn’t want to get out of the car because I was less than 100 meters from the angry buffalo. So I reversed and I gunned it hoping to make it to the other side. It worked and just a bit later, I was happy to find myself at an intersection with a much flatter road. Off to the left, I saw something walking on the road, so I went for it and it turned out to be a spotted hyena that I followed for a minute or two. A sign said Makalia Falls campsite is four km in the opposite direction, so I turned around and shortly later found myself at a dead end that split in two directions. I went right and found a thundering waterfall, so I turned around figuring the campsite must be the other way. I pulled in at 7:00, five minutes before complete darkness and parked the car. I would have liked to have set up the tent and cooked some eggs, but there was no chance of me doing that in the dark in a place that I really had no idea about. This site is the farthest from the main gate and probably the most remote.

It was an absolutely amazing day, but with all the worries of getting attacked by animals and getting my car stuck, it was also very stressful and I was very overwhelmed. That being said, I feel very accomplished to not only have guided myself through the African bush, but also to have managed to find almost every large animal this park has to offer. Experiencing a lion up close and large groups of giraffes without another soul around is something I will not ever forget. I probably won’t forget sitting in this car in the middle of the African wild and writing this story either.
Spotted hyena, Lion, Giraffe, Elands, Ostrich, Vervet monkeys, Baboon, Dik-diks, Rock hyrax, White rhinos, Reedbucks, Warthog, Zebra, Impala – long twisty horn, Thomson’s gazelle, Grant’s gazelle, African buffalo, Waterbucks
 

May 8-26, 2010 in Kenya

Not much personal journals kept for this time.

 

Making a Difference Kenya

John and George the Fisherman
May 18-19, 2010
The night I arrived at Lake Victoria, I headed to Hippo Point to find a guide to go out fishing with the next day. My heart was set on catching a Nile perch, which grow to over five hundred pounds. I was approached by three men, John Odongo, George, and Ismael and they told me about the services they offer. I could tell they were great guys who had been fishing here for a long time, but I was not at all confident that a trip with them would lead to big fish. They just didn’t have the right gear. I decided to give it a go anyway though.

The next morning I met them at 6:00 and we were out fishing on Lake Victoria the whole day. We caught two or three that all together were about the size of a little kid’s wiener. I paid one hundred dollars for that (most of the profit was not theirs since they don’t own the gear), but I wasn’t a bit bitter. To be honest, I hardly even tried to catch any fish. I spent most of the day learning from these two good men.

They grew up here on the lake and have spent most of their lives fishing. At times, the fishing has been good and John even owned a boat many years back. More often than not though, the fishing is bad and the current environmental issues and the extreme corruption of the government and conservation services has resulted in a lake that can hardly support anyone. They turned to tourism as a new way to make money and sometimes they make money and sometimes they don’t. It’s hard to depend on tourism in a place like this.

John (age 35) and his wife have four kids between the ages of one and nine, and he supports two orphans who were left to him by relatives who passed away. George (age 33) and his wife have three young kids and support one orphan. They say that to support their families, feed them properly, send their kids to school (only up through eighth grade) and put some money away for medical problems will take about $140 a week. Sadly, right now they make about $27 a week. This means they are having to take a lot of shortcuts and I am sure that there are many times they are not eating very much.

I learned a lot from them. A lot about money and what it takes to get by. A lot about education and how hard it is to afford it. In this area, they told me that reaching the age of fifty is old and if you pass sixty you are very lucky and can be a grandfather. When speaking of grandchildren John said, “But here to see them is a miracle.”

To get by, they eat Ugali, the staple food of Kenya. It is simply corn flour mixed with boiling water to make a big chunk like mashed potatoes, except thicker. Along with this, they eat Sakuma Wiki and fish that they catch. Sakuma Wiki is Swahili and literally translates to “push week” as in to push through the week. If they catch extra fish, they sell it and buy staples like corn flour, cooking fat, sugar, and salt.

They learned a lot from me and I learned a lot from them. I told them about how things work in America and why our fisheries system actually works. Another thing we discussed is swimming. I have always noticed how so many Africans cannot swim. According to them, two out of ten Africans can swim and that seems to go along with my findings. I asked if a boat with one hundred Africans sank one hundred meters offshore, how many would make it to shore and they said at most ten to fifteen. I always thought that they could not swim because they were afraid of the animals like crocs and hippos in the water. They said it is just because most Africans don’t have the desire to learn. I told them about how most youth in America learn to swim through classes or through parents or something of that sort. We discussed the idea of teaching swimming classes here in Kisumu and I told them about my experiences as a swim instructor in the States.

After a day of “fishing” we got back to shore and I took them out to dinner at a fish restaurant. The food was great and we, of course, had Ugali to accompany our tilapia.

Afterwards, we went to the market and I bought each of them 220 pounds of corn flour. This cost me about $90 and will feed their big families for about two months. I don’t usually like to buy food for people as it is not a long-term solution, but it seemed like the most helpful thing I could do for their families. By not having to worry about money for Ugali (the most important thing in many Kenyans lives), they will have money for other things, like education.

May 22, 2010
This morning I got a call from John, who was very excited to talk to me. He sent me thanks from his grateful wife. More importantly though, he spoke of the idea of teaching swim lessons in Kisumu. He had already talked to some people in the community about it and he sees it as a great way to make a good income. If he gets that up and running that could be the thing he was looking for to make his $140 per week. I am very excited for him. We are going to stay in touch and I will be helping him with ideas for how to run it. First, he has to get an email address so we can stay in contact. As long as he stays excited about it, I will be there to help him with ideas of how to make things work.

Antony Makere Gibitere
May 18-19, 2010
Early in the morning, John stopped the boat on shore to pick up our fishing poles and, while I was walking around a bit, I met Antony. He was a very polite, good looking, seemingly well- dressed guy who introduced himself and then told me about HOVIC, a center for street boys that he volunteers at. He said “I wish that you had time to see the place” and I told him that I would go there with him after I got back from fishing in the afternoon. I told him to come up with a project that we could do. I kind of wondered what he was doing down there at 7:00 a.m., but figured he must just work there.

Later that evening, we came back to the same spot to have dinner after a day of fishing and sure enough, Antony came and sat down at our table with us. I invited him to eat with us and he accepted with no hesitation. He posed himself in a way that left me oblivious to the situation that he was in, but over the next few hours he clung to George, John and me. I spoke with him and learned all about him and his life. It was apparent that he was a very good person. He is, of course, a Christian, but what impressed me was that even though he spent a few years of his life in the streets, he has never smoked a cigarette or had a drop of alcohol.

The more I got to know him, the more I realized that I should help him. He never asked me for a thing and that is good because I am not a fan of begging. He did beg some as a street kid, but he learned that is not the right way to do things.

When he was ten, he left home for the first time. He had problems being born out-of-wedlock and moved back and forth between parents and schools. His stepmom did not like him because he got better grades than the step children. At times he lived on the street, but through all of this he managed to average a B- throughout school. He always found a way to get to school and education seems to have always been important to him. Even though he has nothing, he is volunteering at HOVIC, a center for street kids. I can tell that this 22-year-old has a great desire to help kids who are going through the same things he has gone through.

Currently he lives in a slum on the outskirts of Kisumu. He has a one-bedroom apartment that he pays $10/month for. He is three months behind on rent and last week his landlord locked him out of his apartment and refused to give him his stuff back until he pays. He has been staying up all night and sleeping in a park during the day. At first, when I met him, I thought he looked so well dressed, but after spending time with him, I noticed the clothes had not been changed for days and his body odor was worse than mine after a week of camping in the heat without showering.

Before letting him know that I was going to help him or giving him any sign, we talked for hours and I learned all about him and figured out what he needed the most. I also learned about his dreams and what he wanted to do with his life. In his apartment, he has a mattress and a sheet and I believe that is it. His dream is to be a DJ and he owns about 80 cd’s, which total 6400 shillings or $85. They are his one and only beloved possession that he has worked so hard to collect one by one over the years and he was thinking about selling them. A month ago, he got a job promoting cell phones and made 15,000 Ksh. He immediately spent 12,000 on driving school to give himself a chance at getting a job as a driver. He knows that is the lowest job out there, but it was the only education he could afford and he wanted to do something good with his money. By hearing this, I knew that he was sincere about making himself a better life. Being a DJ is his dream, but what he really wants is to go to college and get a job that will support him the rest of his life.

Most importantly, I got him off the streets by paying his backlogged rent and the next month as well. I also got him most of the things he needed to have a liveable apartment. I got him a stove, fuel for the stove, cooking pots, utensils, dishes, sanitary items like soap, toothpaste and toothbrushes, staple food like Ugali, cooking fat, sugar, and tea leaves. We ate three meals together as well. That night we slept in the car to save myself 1,000 shillings, which pays for over thirty nights at his apartment.

Now he is back in his apartment and has supplies to keep him going for a while. Now that he has a stove, he will be able to cook simple foods at home, which will make his money go a lot farther. The next step is to send him to college. I gave him three dollars to keep in touch with me via email. He is going to send me all of the information about school. I am going to find a way to put him through college, but I want him to work for it. College is two years and he is going to go to be a mechanic. The school he is looking at supposedly guarantees job placement. If that is the case, then his life may be looking a lot better.

HOVIC

The supplies for the kids!
120 toothbrushes, 10 story books, 100 notebooks, 120 pencils, 5 pencil sharpeners, 10 erasers, 25 pens, 200 bars of soap

 

Europe

My two to three weeks in Europe at the end of the trip was not sufficiently journaled for publishing.
 

May 2010 Summary Notes

The world is an immense place and I intend on seeing more of it than most people care to. And I won’t be doing this through tourist groups or frequenting popular tourist attractions. I will be immersing myself in local cultures and spending my time in solitude truly appreciating the wilderness that this great world has to offer. And through this, I will educate myself to the fullest extent about what else is out there and when I grow too old to continue this mission, I will sit there and relish my many moments of true bliss.

• Inspire and educate others through my travels, both people I meet along the way and people who are at home following travel.
• Gained an appreciation for how truly diverse and magnificent this world is.
• Better understanding of people.
• Made connections between societies.
• Inspired and in awe about this masterpiece that we call the world.