Singapore
Now, the flights from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore can be incredibily cheap. I saw some for like $30 CAD, but I've heard they have literally been as low as $1 with taxes. I voted to see more of Malaysia by taking the bus. On the bus, I met a doctor who highly recommended I check out Borneo, an island shared between Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei, containing one of the biggest, thickest, most full-on jungles in the world, and the highest mountain in South East Asia. He said he had a friend from Germany who had made camp on one of the hundreds of uninhabited islands off the coast, and stayed there for 2 years, never once told to leave, or hassled in the least, all at no charge. Sweet.
Now, my Singaporean experience was very focused on one specific thing that was very far out of my control. Food. The guy I was staying with, Jeffrey, who happened to be friends with Chin Chin, was a chef turned investment banker, who was very much a food enthousiast. He was wealthy, and would take his family on 'food tours' in different asian countries every few months for over a week at a time, which often involved taking along a chef from that country. It was a non-stop feast for 3 days, starting with 'half-boiled egg's....basically egg yoke with seasoning that he made me drink in Rocky-esque fashion to prep my stomach for the days to come. He even brought me over to Malaysia just to show me the top restaurants of the country; an elite list that he'd compiled after more than 30 years of careful 'research'. One of these places even let me prepare some of the food. Before I'd even finish half of one thing, he'd drop another plate in front of me, or drag me off to another restaurant to try half of something else.
I was a little worried before arriving at his place on that first night, because judging by his couchsurfing profile, he seemed like a bit of a clean freak. He was very clear that he expected me to change my full outfit at least twice a day, and shower the same number of times, at least, and wash everything I had before arriving. A tad excessive, I thought, but it turned out to be with just cause, due to the slew of stinky travelers they'd hosted in the past who had stunk up a number of different mattresses. Escaping the smelliness in the constant heat did indeed require quite the effort, but the cold showers were more than welcome. He and his family turned out to be amazingly friendly and generous people. I left there with not only fond memories, but souvenirs, bags of snacks, and a pack of delicious instant malaysian coffee (they've mastered their instant coffee over there). He also chauffeured me around Singapore, taking me hiking and sightseeing, and sending me to some other really cool spots.
Singapore can be described as a chain of rooms with air conditioning, between which you dash only when absolutely necessary. It's very close to the equator....it is HOT!
On my last night, in the wee-est hours of the morning, after a late night nap, Jeffrey took me out to coffee shops for a tour of the night life. And believe me, there was nightlife. The city was booming. And the lights were all set up for the annual Formula 1 nighttime race all around town, which is featured in many video games.
Trip home
At around 3am, Jeff brought me to the airport. I was in terminal 3, which is the newest and most modern of the terminals at the Singapore airport, which is the most modern airport in the world. Not a bad place to wait around for a few hours until my 6am flight. However, after a few minutes of laying down, I started feeling something brewing inside me. Started as mild abdominal pain, and ended in gut wretching indigestion, feverish sweats, dizziness, and severe diarheaa. At this point, I really couldn't tell if I had H1N1 or food poisoning, and wasn't sure if I should be getting on this flight. I decided to suck it up and hope for the best. Luckily, the guy I was seated next too was from Hamilton and we had lots to talk about, so it kept my mind off of it, and he didn't seem to notice my trips to washroom in 10 minute intervals. We landed in Hong Kong, I managed to get some dry food and water in me, and I started to feel peachy again.
After a few delays, as we were sitting in the plane awaiting the taxi, we received an announcement to remove ourselves from the plane right away, because the crew coulnd't locate the emergency axe, and one of the passengers may have yoinked it. They searched all of our bags very very thoroughly (again), and 3 hours later, we were back on the plane ready to take off. 15 hours later, in and out of sleep, random movies playing on the big screen at the front, an hour wait at US customs in Chicago, another hour wait to have my baggage rechecked, and I missed my connecting flight by several hours (duh). For the first time that I can remember, the woman at the desk was actually nice, and helpful! Rather than have me wait for the midnight flight, she offered to put me on a less packed flight at 9am, and set me up with a nice hotel room and a free meal. Best sleep I've ever had. Other than almost missing my flight in the morning (waiting in the mammoth line with what I thought was a flight ticket, but was actually a receipt I needed to exchange for a ticket, but they let me in anyway) the last leg home was splendid. I had a seat in the middle of the emergency row with an empty seat next to me. Leg room! It's not a myth! Another beautiful nap, and I landed in TO, tracked down my bags that I was convinced were still somewhere in Asia because everyone else was long gone, and was greeted by my sister and her boyfriend. We headed straight to my friend Chris's cottage, where Ash and Andrew were chilling for the weekend. Perfect end. A weekend of music, wakeboarding, camping food and beer, and I was Canadian again.
What I Learnt
Everywhere is different, but everywhere is the same.
I am the same person no matter where I am.
Everywhere is beautiful.
Thanks for reading. Stayed tuned for the next trip :)
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Malaysia Part 2
Pilau Pinang
I set up a host in Penang, and jumped on a bus, where I met a few chinese dudes from Beijing who I'd see again later on. My host, a middle aged Chinese guy, swung by the bus station on his motorcycle and gave me a lift to his place (with my giant pack and guitar). He was responsible for the organization of most Chinese cultural events that took place in Penang, like operas, dragon dances, kung fu, drum shows, the list goes on. And I happened to have rolled into town on the 1 year anniversary of Penang being declared a UN World Heritage Site, so there was no shortage of interesting things to see, with front row or backstage access no less. Wasn't so lucky with my living arrangements though. Contrary to the spare room I was told I'd have to myself, which was being taken by a fellow couchsurfing couple (he had double booked), I was sleeping on a stained mattress in a storage room. Did I mention he lived in the Fight Club house. Pretty close. It was POURING rain outside, and the roof wasn't so watertight, so I was basically sleeping on a dry 3 x 5 patch on a filthy mattress, waterfalls dumping down around me, in a room filled with shelves of pails, buckets, and mops, all with an inch and a half of dust on them. Just before the first night, my host tells me "oh....if you hear any sounds, don't worry, it's just the rats chasing the cockroaches". I woke up with small red bites all over my body, and surely enough one of the other CSers woke up to find rather large bites taken out of his recently purchased pears, and his baseball cap. Needless to say, I didn't care to stick around this place for very long. Turned out, my host was jam packing his place with travelers because he was writing a book on them. Hosting allowed him to interview them and compile the feedback.
I had one other night at his place before we were saved by his friend Chin Chin. She offered to take the couple and I to her house for a few days. It was like night and day. She lived near the beach resorts on perfect crystal blue water, by lush green mountains, surrounded by palm trees, in a beautiful, pristine house, nay, palace. Well....house. There was no turning down her continuous offers to buy us meals and drinks, give us malaysian cooking classes, present us with feasts of fresh fruit, chauffeur us around the island, give us a tour of her friend's vegetable/fruit garden, a textile factory, and so many other interesting places. I think she showed us every restaurant worth eating at in Penang.
On my last day with her, I thought I'd check out a 'Fish Spa', which is a place where you put your feet in a pool of water and let the hundreds of fish nibble at the dead skin. Its a mix of being ticklish, and painful, but you feel like a million bucks coming out of there. Then I caught a ride to a national park, and hiked for a few hours, until I reached the remote 'Monkey Beach', which contrary to its name had no monkeys at all, only dozens of sea-doos and vacationing Arabs. Malaysia, being a partially muslim country with halal restaurants and countless mosques, is an ideal beach vacation getaway for muslims. I went for a dip, chatted with some locals, and paid a boater for a lift and bike ride back home. The next day, I said a sad farewell to Chin Chin, and the american/polish couple, and headed off to the Cameron Highlands.
Cameron Highlands
The chinese dude I had met on the bus had sent me a message that he lost his buddy and wondered if I'd be interested in some hiking with him. So, we met up again in Cameron Highlands, land of the mountains with a perfect climate for tea plantations. I only had one full day to spend there, so we made haste. Joined by a british dude, we did some jungle hiking, hitchhiked in the back of a 60s truck that reeked of goats or something, and explored a tea plantation with flowers of every color. The walk back from the tea plantation was about 2 hours long through the green hillside. By the time we got back and took off our boots...it was like "aaaahhhhhhh". Yup, one of those.
That night I was looking at a map on the wall and a western girl pointed out some other good hikes for me. She looked strangely familiar, so I told her so. The 'where are you from, who do you know' game ensued, and she turned out to be the T.A. from my first field course in geography! No joke. In a small town in the mountains of central Malaysia, I ran into my T.A. from a first year field course. We all stayed up chatting and reminiscing, had a run in with a Syrian guy who was angry at the world, particularly at us 'Americans', then we called it a night after some street pad thai. The buses were sold out, but I caught a ticket on the 'locals' bus. A rickety old thing with springs sticking out of the seats pulled up at 8 am, and I laughed out loud. It turned out the be the nicer bus behind it that I'd be riding. Phewf. It was the milk run, which was fine by me because I got to soak in some more scenery. A quick transfer back in KL, and I was bound for Singapore.
I set up a host in Penang, and jumped on a bus, where I met a few chinese dudes from Beijing who I'd see again later on. My host, a middle aged Chinese guy, swung by the bus station on his motorcycle and gave me a lift to his place (with my giant pack and guitar). He was responsible for the organization of most Chinese cultural events that took place in Penang, like operas, dragon dances, kung fu, drum shows, the list goes on. And I happened to have rolled into town on the 1 year anniversary of Penang being declared a UN World Heritage Site, so there was no shortage of interesting things to see, with front row or backstage access no less. Wasn't so lucky with my living arrangements though. Contrary to the spare room I was told I'd have to myself, which was being taken by a fellow couchsurfing couple (he had double booked), I was sleeping on a stained mattress in a storage room. Did I mention he lived in the Fight Club house. Pretty close. It was POURING rain outside, and the roof wasn't so watertight, so I was basically sleeping on a dry 3 x 5 patch on a filthy mattress, waterfalls dumping down around me, in a room filled with shelves of pails, buckets, and mops, all with an inch and a half of dust on them. Just before the first night, my host tells me "oh....if you hear any sounds, don't worry, it's just the rats chasing the cockroaches". I woke up with small red bites all over my body, and surely enough one of the other CSers woke up to find rather large bites taken out of his recently purchased pears, and his baseball cap. Needless to say, I didn't care to stick around this place for very long. Turned out, my host was jam packing his place with travelers because he was writing a book on them. Hosting allowed him to interview them and compile the feedback.
I had one other night at his place before we were saved by his friend Chin Chin. She offered to take the couple and I to her house for a few days. It was like night and day. She lived near the beach resorts on perfect crystal blue water, by lush green mountains, surrounded by palm trees, in a beautiful, pristine house, nay, palace. Well....house. There was no turning down her continuous offers to buy us meals and drinks, give us malaysian cooking classes, present us with feasts of fresh fruit, chauffeur us around the island, give us a tour of her friend's vegetable/fruit garden, a textile factory, and so many other interesting places. I think she showed us every restaurant worth eating at in Penang.
On my last day with her, I thought I'd check out a 'Fish Spa', which is a place where you put your feet in a pool of water and let the hundreds of fish nibble at the dead skin. Its a mix of being ticklish, and painful, but you feel like a million bucks coming out of there. Then I caught a ride to a national park, and hiked for a few hours, until I reached the remote 'Monkey Beach', which contrary to its name had no monkeys at all, only dozens of sea-doos and vacationing Arabs. Malaysia, being a partially muslim country with halal restaurants and countless mosques, is an ideal beach vacation getaway for muslims. I went for a dip, chatted with some locals, and paid a boater for a lift and bike ride back home. The next day, I said a sad farewell to Chin Chin, and the american/polish couple, and headed off to the Cameron Highlands.
Cameron Highlands
The chinese dude I had met on the bus had sent me a message that he lost his buddy and wondered if I'd be interested in some hiking with him. So, we met up again in Cameron Highlands, land of the mountains with a perfect climate for tea plantations. I only had one full day to spend there, so we made haste. Joined by a british dude, we did some jungle hiking, hitchhiked in the back of a 60s truck that reeked of goats or something, and explored a tea plantation with flowers of every color. The walk back from the tea plantation was about 2 hours long through the green hillside. By the time we got back and took off our boots...it was like "aaaahhhhhhh". Yup, one of those.
That night I was looking at a map on the wall and a western girl pointed out some other good hikes for me. She looked strangely familiar, so I told her so. The 'where are you from, who do you know' game ensued, and she turned out to be the T.A. from my first field course in geography! No joke. In a small town in the mountains of central Malaysia, I ran into my T.A. from a first year field course. We all stayed up chatting and reminiscing, had a run in with a Syrian guy who was angry at the world, particularly at us 'Americans', then we called it a night after some street pad thai. The buses were sold out, but I caught a ticket on the 'locals' bus. A rickety old thing with springs sticking out of the seats pulled up at 8 am, and I laughed out loud. It turned out the be the nicer bus behind it that I'd be riding. Phewf. It was the milk run, which was fine by me because I got to soak in some more scenery. A quick transfer back in KL, and I was bound for Singapore.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Malaysia Part 1
I had been pretty comfy renting a room in Perth for 2 months, so flying into Kuala Lumpur Malaysia was both refreshing and terrifying. As soon as I stepped off the plane, the equatorial heat slapped me in the face and my clothes instantly took on that dampness that didn't go away until I got back on the plane to leave. For me, Malaysia was all about the couchsurfing. Right around the time of my arrival, I had decided I'd be heading home in 3 weeks, so it was time to fully experience couchsurfing for the rest of the trip. Best decision I've ever made.
It didn't take long to realize Malaysia is a very culturally rich place. The East India Trading Company brought many workers to Malaysia, and they never left. So you find a mix of the native Malay people, who speak Malay and are Muslim in majority, then the Chinese, who speak Mandarin and are primarily Buddhist, and the Indians, who speak Tamil and are mostly Hindu. Most people speak English as well, which makes it a pretty easy place for westerners to navigate. The social and political situation there is very stratified and extremely interesting...one could do a thesis on this I'd imagine. The best part of all this: the food! I can't say enough about it. Three amazing cuisines converging into a land of fusion restaurants, all with so many delicious options. I'm a fan of dips with bread, and there's no shortage of that. I was there during fresh fruit season as well...some of these fruits look like medieval battle axes...some of them smell like garbage in the sun.
Kuala Lumpur
My first host was Agnes. I stayed with her in Kuala Lumpur for 4 or 5 days that were filled with amazing restaurants and spectacular sights. It was definitely action packed, never a moment to rest, which was exactly what I needed. Through her, I met most of the avid KL couchsurfers, mostly in one shot at a picnic in the park behind the Twin Towers, and some at random dinners throughout my stay. I went to visit a hindu temple in a giant cave up a thousand steps in the side of a mountain, with mango eating monkeys all around me trying to pick my pockets. Agnes also brought me to Melaka, the cultural center of Malaysia, to her friends traditional chinese wedding, and I got to participate in all the activities. One of these activities basically involved keeping the groom locked outside until he and his posse coughed up enough money that we'd agree to let them in to see the bride (this is age old tradition apparently...and they made me keep the money too). A six course chinese dinner followed, in a huge hall, no other foreigners to be found. Melaka is so beautiful, especially at night because it has a small village feel, with no structures more than two stories high, places of worship of 4 or 5 types all within a few blocks of each other, and everything lit up. We had a midnight dinner at a world famous hot pot restaurant.
Back in KL, I managed to score the last ticket to go up the Petronas Towers and walk the 'Skybridge' in between (they only give out a limited # each day). Agnes was really good at keeping me in the dark on the plans, so I'd never know what was coming next, even sometimes minutes before. I'd just go to bed when I was told, get up when I was told, and know that I'd be seeing really cool things that day. Pretty exciting. Side note, I was invited to volunteer with another CSer at a soccer game, and had to decline, but later found out the game was the national team versus the visiting Manchester United, and I would have been a bodyguard for a Manchester player. The wedding was cooler though.
If ever your couchsurfing in Malaysia, ask me about the host who runs an elephant sanctuary where you can volunteer to work with the animals. He also trains people in jungle survival, which you can tag alone for as well. It's definitely on my list for the next time.
I stayed for a few nights with Zul, a really interesting guy who lives at the other end of the city. There was an amazing view of the Towers from his balcony. He's the one who took a lot of the guitar playing photos I have on my facebook music page. We had a good chat until the wee hours of the morning. While waiting for him outside his apartment, I also met a cool Tamil guy who became my impromptu guide for the night and took me to his uncles restaurant where we ate and drank and chatted.
To be continued...
It didn't take long to realize Malaysia is a very culturally rich place. The East India Trading Company brought many workers to Malaysia, and they never left. So you find a mix of the native Malay people, who speak Malay and are Muslim in majority, then the Chinese, who speak Mandarin and are primarily Buddhist, and the Indians, who speak Tamil and are mostly Hindu. Most people speak English as well, which makes it a pretty easy place for westerners to navigate. The social and political situation there is very stratified and extremely interesting...one could do a thesis on this I'd imagine. The best part of all this: the food! I can't say enough about it. Three amazing cuisines converging into a land of fusion restaurants, all with so many delicious options. I'm a fan of dips with bread, and there's no shortage of that. I was there during fresh fruit season as well...some of these fruits look like medieval battle axes...some of them smell like garbage in the sun.
Kuala Lumpur
My first host was Agnes. I stayed with her in Kuala Lumpur for 4 or 5 days that were filled with amazing restaurants and spectacular sights. It was definitely action packed, never a moment to rest, which was exactly what I needed. Through her, I met most of the avid KL couchsurfers, mostly in one shot at a picnic in the park behind the Twin Towers, and some at random dinners throughout my stay. I went to visit a hindu temple in a giant cave up a thousand steps in the side of a mountain, with mango eating monkeys all around me trying to pick my pockets. Agnes also brought me to Melaka, the cultural center of Malaysia, to her friends traditional chinese wedding, and I got to participate in all the activities. One of these activities basically involved keeping the groom locked outside until he and his posse coughed up enough money that we'd agree to let them in to see the bride (this is age old tradition apparently...and they made me keep the money too). A six course chinese dinner followed, in a huge hall, no other foreigners to be found. Melaka is so beautiful, especially at night because it has a small village feel, with no structures more than two stories high, places of worship of 4 or 5 types all within a few blocks of each other, and everything lit up. We had a midnight dinner at a world famous hot pot restaurant.
Back in KL, I managed to score the last ticket to go up the Petronas Towers and walk the 'Skybridge' in between (they only give out a limited # each day). Agnes was really good at keeping me in the dark on the plans, so I'd never know what was coming next, even sometimes minutes before. I'd just go to bed when I was told, get up when I was told, and know that I'd be seeing really cool things that day. Pretty exciting. Side note, I was invited to volunteer with another CSer at a soccer game, and had to decline, but later found out the game was the national team versus the visiting Manchester United, and I would have been a bodyguard for a Manchester player. The wedding was cooler though.
If ever your couchsurfing in Malaysia, ask me about the host who runs an elephant sanctuary where you can volunteer to work with the animals. He also trains people in jungle survival, which you can tag alone for as well. It's definitely on my list for the next time.
I stayed for a few nights with Zul, a really interesting guy who lives at the other end of the city. There was an amazing view of the Towers from his balcony. He's the one who took a lot of the guitar playing photos I have on my facebook music page. We had a good chat until the wee hours of the morning. While waiting for him outside his apartment, I also met a cool Tamil guy who became my impromptu guide for the night and took me to his uncles restaurant where we ate and drank and chatted.
To be continued...
Monday, January 4, 2010
Australia Part 2
Once the end of Ashley's teacher's college program came around, we got rid of her old Corolla, with which I had just learnt how to drive standard (on the left side of the road), and we rented ourselves the cheapest campervan we could find, although still not really that cheap with all the insurance we needed to cross the Outback. A little tip that I wish I would have known before hand ---> www.standbycars.com.au has a 'relocation' program that rents out vehicles to be brought back to a specific destination within a specific timeframe for sometimes as cheap as $1 a day, to save them the trouble of doing it themselves. Anyway, over the next 30 days, we made our way from Brisbane down to Sydney, to Melbourne, along the great ocean road to Adelaide, then through the 3-4 day stretch of the Nullarbor Plain (the southern portion of the outback) to the south-west of Australia, and around to Perth. We spent several days in all the major cities, and spent nights in many places in between, sometimes in a hostel, sometimes in caravan park, sometimes in abandoned parking lots or backstreets.
We saw so many amazing things, but there were definitely highlights for me. The Great Ocean Road/The Great Australian Bright are both drives along intimidatingly sheer cliffs dropping into the Southern Ocean, with no shortage of natural sculptures standing alone in the water, the remnants of ancient shorelines. Breathtaking. Also, the drive through the Nullarbor was amazing, particularly one night spent parked with the van in the middle of the vast nothingness, campfire fuelled by loose brush, and the risk of dingos always present. The number of stars we could see that night were unlike anything I've ever seen in my life. There were even fainter stars within the usual gaps between the stars, and fainter yet in the gaps between them. There was almost more white than black in the sky. The only audible thing were the road trains (long transport trucks passing on the highway we left behind about 400m ago. You could hear the slightest sound coming from kms and kms away. Otherwise, it was the kind of silence that leaves a ringing in your ears.
A lovely surprise was Esperance, a small beach town we had no particular aim to visit, but rather just stumbled upon looking for a place to sleep. A national park near this town called Cape Le Grand held probably the most beautiful beach I've been fortunate enough to set foot on --> Lucky Bay. Crystal clear blue waters, plunging into the Emerald green several meters out from the white sand laden beaches, with grains so fine they are bordering on silt.
Lastly, back in the first days of the trip, a great event came in the form of a secret parking spot for caravans in Sydney. After a night parked in a sketchy neighborhood, we were advised by the cops to get out of there for our own safety (should have known from the shaddy characters we could hear throughout the night) and to check out some areas further east. Not 20 minutes later, we found ourselves driving along a park at least a km in length, along the shore of a bay, with multi-million dollar homes on the other side of us, and no parking signs in sight. You learn pretty quickly that no signs = good to go. Not the best part yet...there were only a couple of other vans parked there, half a km from us...we could set up our chairs and cooking gear...and...the other side of the bay, which was filled with yachts and sailboats, was the Harbour Bridge, the famous Opera House, and downtown Sydney. The daytime view was spectacular, the evening view was indescribable. We thought it must be too good to be true, until a police cruiser pulled up beside us, we tensed up, and he gave us a smile before he headed over to sit by the water and admire the view. A home owner later came out and told us how lucky we were to find this spot. It was worth holding on to for 2 or 3 nights.
My trip with Ash finished in Perth in early June, when we said our tearful goodbyes as she boarded a plane home, and for the first time on this trip, I was traveling alone. What to do now. Not a day into it, I decided to drop a line to my friend Drew, who I had met in Russia on the train a year prior with Kyle and Justin. He was back home and wanted to meet for beer and to watch the footie game on tv. A few beers later, he invited me to stay with him at his house. It was the perfect set up. I checked out early from my stinky, overcrowded hostel and ended up spending 5 or 6 weeks at his place, waiting out the rain and preparing for the next part of my trip. I managed to do a lot of fun stuff throughout that time, like tour a submarine, tour some underground tunnels by boat beneath a jail, volunteer on a sail boat, and catch a ride up to Broome in the north of australia with a car full of travellers.
That trip to Broome was pretty interesting, because the car was on it's last legs, and we ended up breaking down in some interesting places. Once of which was in front of a senior's caravan campground, on party night. So, we ate and drank with the seniors in the mess hall. Side note, the morning, the world found out Michael Jackson had died. Anyway, we fixed the car, and it broke down again, this time for good, directly in front of the campground in Broome. It was pretty perfect. Did some cool stuff while I was there, like go to an outdoor movie theatre that was actually featured in the movie 'Australia', held a crocodile, and rode on a camel that was also featured in the movie. Also met with a couple of friends of friends for drinks. This is the point where I realized I'd never have a better opportunity to go skydiving. So, I bought my ticket, and spend 3 agonizing days thinking of nothing else but falling from a plane. The night before, when I was at my maximum stokedness, I got a call saying the plane had been broken all week and they were trying to fix it, so it was a no go. Blast! I got a full refund, but the exchange rate had fluctuated and I lost $40. Double blast!!
Another highlight of Australia was couchsurfing with Ash at Alex and Karen's house. They were this cool couple in Adelaide who showed us the ropes. We played lots of poker, they taught us how to make sushi, and they humbled us in terms of partying, staying up all night and all day pounding the drinks hard, then going to band practice completely wrecked, while we slept like babies hehe.
There are also a few other cool things I should mention, because, well, they are cool. One, the Australian money. It is super colorful, indestructible, and waterproof incase you forget it in your swimming trunks. Two, Coober Petty is this awesome place up in the outback that we didn't get to see, but heard lots about, where the residents live in homes underground to beat the heat. And three, picking up hitchhikers with a campervan is fun, because you never know what kind of crazy stories or good advice they'll have for you, and if you run into them again a day or two down the highway, it's like running into an old friend.
Go to Australia, it kicks kangaroo butt.
We saw so many amazing things, but there were definitely highlights for me. The Great Ocean Road/The Great Australian Bright are both drives along intimidatingly sheer cliffs dropping into the Southern Ocean, with no shortage of natural sculptures standing alone in the water, the remnants of ancient shorelines. Breathtaking. Also, the drive through the Nullarbor was amazing, particularly one night spent parked with the van in the middle of the vast nothingness, campfire fuelled by loose brush, and the risk of dingos always present. The number of stars we could see that night were unlike anything I've ever seen in my life. There were even fainter stars within the usual gaps between the stars, and fainter yet in the gaps between them. There was almost more white than black in the sky. The only audible thing were the road trains (long transport trucks passing on the highway we left behind about 400m ago. You could hear the slightest sound coming from kms and kms away. Otherwise, it was the kind of silence that leaves a ringing in your ears.
A lovely surprise was Esperance, a small beach town we had no particular aim to visit, but rather just stumbled upon looking for a place to sleep. A national park near this town called Cape Le Grand held probably the most beautiful beach I've been fortunate enough to set foot on --> Lucky Bay. Crystal clear blue waters, plunging into the Emerald green several meters out from the white sand laden beaches, with grains so fine they are bordering on silt.
Lastly, back in the first days of the trip, a great event came in the form of a secret parking spot for caravans in Sydney. After a night parked in a sketchy neighborhood, we were advised by the cops to get out of there for our own safety (should have known from the shaddy characters we could hear throughout the night) and to check out some areas further east. Not 20 minutes later, we found ourselves driving along a park at least a km in length, along the shore of a bay, with multi-million dollar homes on the other side of us, and no parking signs in sight. You learn pretty quickly that no signs = good to go. Not the best part yet...there were only a couple of other vans parked there, half a km from us...we could set up our chairs and cooking gear...and...the other side of the bay, which was filled with yachts and sailboats, was the Harbour Bridge, the famous Opera House, and downtown Sydney. The daytime view was spectacular, the evening view was indescribable. We thought it must be too good to be true, until a police cruiser pulled up beside us, we tensed up, and he gave us a smile before he headed over to sit by the water and admire the view. A home owner later came out and told us how lucky we were to find this spot. It was worth holding on to for 2 or 3 nights.
My trip with Ash finished in Perth in early June, when we said our tearful goodbyes as she boarded a plane home, and for the first time on this trip, I was traveling alone. What to do now. Not a day into it, I decided to drop a line to my friend Drew, who I had met in Russia on the train a year prior with Kyle and Justin. He was back home and wanted to meet for beer and to watch the footie game on tv. A few beers later, he invited me to stay with him at his house. It was the perfect set up. I checked out early from my stinky, overcrowded hostel and ended up spending 5 or 6 weeks at his place, waiting out the rain and preparing for the next part of my trip. I managed to do a lot of fun stuff throughout that time, like tour a submarine, tour some underground tunnels by boat beneath a jail, volunteer on a sail boat, and catch a ride up to Broome in the north of australia with a car full of travellers.
That trip to Broome was pretty interesting, because the car was on it's last legs, and we ended up breaking down in some interesting places. Once of which was in front of a senior's caravan campground, on party night. So, we ate and drank with the seniors in the mess hall. Side note, the morning, the world found out Michael Jackson had died. Anyway, we fixed the car, and it broke down again, this time for good, directly in front of the campground in Broome. It was pretty perfect. Did some cool stuff while I was there, like go to an outdoor movie theatre that was actually featured in the movie 'Australia', held a crocodile, and rode on a camel that was also featured in the movie. Also met with a couple of friends of friends for drinks. This is the point where I realized I'd never have a better opportunity to go skydiving. So, I bought my ticket, and spend 3 agonizing days thinking of nothing else but falling from a plane. The night before, when I was at my maximum stokedness, I got a call saying the plane had been broken all week and they were trying to fix it, so it was a no go. Blast! I got a full refund, but the exchange rate had fluctuated and I lost $40. Double blast!!
Another highlight of Australia was couchsurfing with Ash at Alex and Karen's house. They were this cool couple in Adelaide who showed us the ropes. We played lots of poker, they taught us how to make sushi, and they humbled us in terms of partying, staying up all night and all day pounding the drinks hard, then going to band practice completely wrecked, while we slept like babies hehe.
There are also a few other cool things I should mention, because, well, they are cool. One, the Australian money. It is super colorful, indestructible, and waterproof incase you forget it in your swimming trunks. Two, Coober Petty is this awesome place up in the outback that we didn't get to see, but heard lots about, where the residents live in homes underground to beat the heat. And three, picking up hitchhikers with a campervan is fun, because you never know what kind of crazy stories or good advice they'll have for you, and if you run into them again a day or two down the highway, it's like running into an old friend.
Go to Australia, it kicks kangaroo butt.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Australia Part 1
Hey. It's me. I am still alive. You wouldn't think so from the number of posts since Taiwan. Wow, 7 months since the blog post, and about 10 months since I was actually in Taiwan. It goes by pretty fast. So, since that time, 5 and a half months were spent in Australia, and I'm gonna tell you about them. I'll try again to keep this brief, although I have yet to succeed at this. Actually, this probably won't be brief lol.
So, February 6th I said my see yas to Kyle in Taiwan and made my lonely way to the airport after a pretty solid night of partying, and a farewell Mike and Kyle (officially known as 'The Mockumentary') performance at The Armory. The 2 hours of drunk sleep didn't seem to phase the nervous excited energy from flying to a new country in a new hemisphere, where my friends were waiting. A 9 hour layover in Hong Kong gave me time to walk around town and reminisce of the weekend Kyle and I had spent there, and an overnight flight later, I landed in Brisbane. As I'm getting out some Australian $ at the airport, I turn around and see who? Adam from back home! That was awesome. He had come to meet me and show me to his apartment, which was surrounded by palm trees and had a great pool area, and it was a beautiful sunny day. We drank and jammed all day by the pool until we were red in the face (and shoulders) then hit the town. It was a rad first day. I spent a week there chilling with Adam and Jen, who arrived shortly after from being out of town for work.
Then, I headed to Byron Bay to surprise Ashley. We hadn't seen each other in over 13 months...she knew I was coming to Australia but she didn't know when. I had kept it a secret for the 3 months that I knew the exact date I'd be arriving, but something possessed me to throw it on my facebook status the night before I boarded the plane, without think about it. This took some scrambling to get out of. I ended up having to tell her that my flight from Hong Kong was cancelled and I was turning lemons into lemonade and staying in Hong Kong for two weeks. This way, I could show up in a week and at least surprise her a little bit. I wanted to make it on a weekend so she didn't have school the next day, and this lined right up with Valentine's day. Perfect. Next problem, I couldn't ask for her address cause it would be a dead giveaway, so I had to get Jen and Adam to say they were visiting her that weekend so she'd give them the addy. It was the only way to get it and make sure she would be around. So, 5 hours on the bus and I walked up to her door. And oh was she surprised. We spent that weekend together as she showed me byron bay where she was doing the teaching experience section of her Master's of Education. She had been renting a room in a house with another girl and I promptly moved in with her.
So a beautiful house in a beautiful town fell right into my lap. For the remaining 4 months of her practicuum, Ash headed to school during the days, and I busied myself with a handful of activities: trying to surf (trying...), bodyboarding, hiking in the rainforest, chilling on the beach, barefoot jogging, sea kayaking to spot dolphins and sea turtles, scuba diving, hanggliding, abseiling, lawn bowling, and cooking. I actually got very into cooking, since it was the first time I had a massive kitchen mostly to myself. Ash even showed me how to make Kangaroo burgers! It was very fun times.
To give you an idea of this town, Byron Bay, it was a little surfing town that had blown up in recent decades to become a huge surfing/backpacking destination, but was still a pretty small place that managed to keep its charm. The crowds were clearly divided between the travellers, and the locals, the vast majority of which were full-on hippies. This place wasn't only known for its surfing, but also its music. Buskers came and went here, and every night there are a number of live acts on tour to choose from, at large venues that were always packed. I auditioned for a buskers permit here and made busking on the street another hobby, and a way to make a bit of money, and get used to singing in front of people. There are many surfing breaks here, one of which takes you along the shore for several MINUTES and drops you off just in front of a cafe, where you can grab a beer before heading back for another run. Some of the primary schools here have surf classes one morning a week, where class is in the ocean, even for the teachers. Those 4 months in Byron Bay were 'punctuated' by many awesome things such as visits from Andrew and Chris, the Soundwave Music Festival in Brisbane (w/ bands like Billy Talent, Alice in Chains, NIN, New Found Glory, Saves The Day, Finch, Moneen, Attack in Black, the list goes on and on), Bluesfest in byron (I was given one of the ridiculously expensive tickets while busking), and many small trips up and down the coast, including Fraser Island when everybody was visiting (Fraser Island is the biggest sand island in the world, and is also a paradise, in which you cruise around in huge 4X4 trucks and get drunko while seeing the most beautiful scenery you've seen in your life...whoever started this was a genius...however we were evacuated early thanks to hurricane Hamish moving in fast).
To be continued...
So, February 6th I said my see yas to Kyle in Taiwan and made my lonely way to the airport after a pretty solid night of partying, and a farewell Mike and Kyle (officially known as 'The Mockumentary') performance at The Armory. The 2 hours of drunk sleep didn't seem to phase the nervous excited energy from flying to a new country in a new hemisphere, where my friends were waiting. A 9 hour layover in Hong Kong gave me time to walk around town and reminisce of the weekend Kyle and I had spent there, and an overnight flight later, I landed in Brisbane. As I'm getting out some Australian $ at the airport, I turn around and see who? Adam from back home! That was awesome. He had come to meet me and show me to his apartment, which was surrounded by palm trees and had a great pool area, and it was a beautiful sunny day. We drank and jammed all day by the pool until we were red in the face (and shoulders) then hit the town. It was a rad first day. I spent a week there chilling with Adam and Jen, who arrived shortly after from being out of town for work.
Then, I headed to Byron Bay to surprise Ashley. We hadn't seen each other in over 13 months...she knew I was coming to Australia but she didn't know when. I had kept it a secret for the 3 months that I knew the exact date I'd be arriving, but something possessed me to throw it on my facebook status the night before I boarded the plane, without think about it. This took some scrambling to get out of. I ended up having to tell her that my flight from Hong Kong was cancelled and I was turning lemons into lemonade and staying in Hong Kong for two weeks. This way, I could show up in a week and at least surprise her a little bit. I wanted to make it on a weekend so she didn't have school the next day, and this lined right up with Valentine's day. Perfect. Next problem, I couldn't ask for her address cause it would be a dead giveaway, so I had to get Jen and Adam to say they were visiting her that weekend so she'd give them the addy. It was the only way to get it and make sure she would be around. So, 5 hours on the bus and I walked up to her door. And oh was she surprised. We spent that weekend together as she showed me byron bay where she was doing the teaching experience section of her Master's of Education. She had been renting a room in a house with another girl and I promptly moved in with her.
So a beautiful house in a beautiful town fell right into my lap. For the remaining 4 months of her practicuum, Ash headed to school during the days, and I busied myself with a handful of activities: trying to surf (trying...), bodyboarding, hiking in the rainforest, chilling on the beach, barefoot jogging, sea kayaking to spot dolphins and sea turtles, scuba diving, hanggliding, abseiling, lawn bowling, and cooking. I actually got very into cooking, since it was the first time I had a massive kitchen mostly to myself. Ash even showed me how to make Kangaroo burgers! It was very fun times.
To give you an idea of this town, Byron Bay, it was a little surfing town that had blown up in recent decades to become a huge surfing/backpacking destination, but was still a pretty small place that managed to keep its charm. The crowds were clearly divided between the travellers, and the locals, the vast majority of which were full-on hippies. This place wasn't only known for its surfing, but also its music. Buskers came and went here, and every night there are a number of live acts on tour to choose from, at large venues that were always packed. I auditioned for a buskers permit here and made busking on the street another hobby, and a way to make a bit of money, and get used to singing in front of people. There are many surfing breaks here, one of which takes you along the shore for several MINUTES and drops you off just in front of a cafe, where you can grab a beer before heading back for another run. Some of the primary schools here have surf classes one morning a week, where class is in the ocean, even for the teachers. Those 4 months in Byron Bay were 'punctuated' by many awesome things such as visits from Andrew and Chris, the Soundwave Music Festival in Brisbane (w/ bands like Billy Talent, Alice in Chains, NIN, New Found Glory, Saves The Day, Finch, Moneen, Attack in Black, the list goes on and on), Bluesfest in byron (I was given one of the ridiculously expensive tickets while busking), and many small trips up and down the coast, including Fraser Island when everybody was visiting (Fraser Island is the biggest sand island in the world, and is also a paradise, in which you cruise around in huge 4X4 trucks and get drunko while seeing the most beautiful scenery you've seen in your life...whoever started this was a genius...however we were evacuated early thanks to hurricane Hamish moving in fast).
To be continued...
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Return to Taiwan, Part 2
The next morning, we woke up to realize that we were surrounded my humongous mountains. It was breathtaking. We were about halfway down the mountainside, with a view of the river below. We packed up, and of course they had a breakfast buffet ready for us. We paid his uncle, but the 3 marine guys were nowhere to be seen. We had made plans to hike with them in the morning but I reckon they were pretty hungover. So we headed out, but by this point my bike was spewing black smoke something fierce and we needed to get to a mechanic. We found a gas station and they rang up a mechanic for us, who showed up with tools not 10 minutes later. He changed my oil for like 10 bucks and we took off into the mountains again.
We got a wee bit lost and ended up loosing an hour or two, but we would have never spotted this giant suspension bridge had we not. So high up there. Safety isn’t a huge concern for the Taiwanese. This was clear while walking on this narrow suspension bridge a few hundred feet up and families of 3 whipped by us on their scooter (that’s 1 scooter for all 3) and expected us to jump up out of the way against the ropes. Anyway, we had a good long day of riding.
We stopped in a small place for lunch...decided to try the ‘stinky tofu’ I’d been hearing about. Apparently this particular place sucked at it because it was so gross I almost vomed. For months I had been occasionally smelling this horrible odor that is a mix of vinegar and rotting animals, as I’d walk through town. That’s stinky tofu. Some places make it taste good though, so I’m told.
Just before sunset, we cleared this really long tunnel. There was ice in the tunnel, if your wondering how cold it was up there. Upon coming out the other side, we found tons of bikes and cars pulled over, and immediately knew why. The sun was just setting over a ‘sea of clouds’, as they call it. We were above the clouds, where you could see the mountain peaks poking out. It looked just like a field of snow. Totally worth the trip up there.
The ride was spectacular for a bit longer, then the sun set. I have been cold in my day, but never this cold. We had to stop regularly to jog and thaw out the extremities, and we were already wearing all of the clothes we had. I even had a pillow case over my face. It was getting tough to drive with numb hands, and it was dark, foggy, and rainy/snowy. Jeff had the good idea to let a car pass up and follow it so it would light up the way, and eventually we saw the lights of a small town and headed down to it. Turned out to be a small aboriginal village called Lidao. The very first place we went into happened to contain a Chinese speaking Canadian English teacher who was keen to help us find a homestay. We downed a big meal and hit the hay.
Back on the road the next day, we were again dumbfounded by the amazing views everywhere around us. That tunnel the night before had been the highest point of the highway, and we were now descending and exiting the mountains. Everything was green and the road was very curvy. This equals a very fun ride. It took forever because we kept stopping for pictures. So, we finally came out of the mountains, and decided to speed it up a little. Kyle and Jeff zoomed by, and I kept up for a bit, but all along my bike had been coughing smoke. The oil light wasn’t on this time, so we thought maybe it was still burning excess oil, but low and behold, my bike started doing the sound Jeff said it would do if the engine seized, then it stopped. Mike’s scooter, RIP. Couldn’t even kick start it. The tricky thing with this was that your not supposed to leave Tainan with these bikes, or at least the foreigners aren’t because they can’t be trusted, and now we were on the other side of the country and the bike was dead. We went to a place that looked like a mechanic shop, mimed it out, and she lead us to a bike mechanic. This family was so nice. The old mechanic drove his truck out to our bike, loaded it up, and brought it back for us. He took one look at it and made a face that said “this is gonna cost you”. He said it needed a new engine lol. The cheapest way would be to bring it back to the rental company, and he wanted to call them himself, but we couldn’t do that because we weren’t supposed to have it way out there. His daughter then came out, who spoke English fluently, and brought us and the bike to a shipping company that could bring it back to Tainan for us for $40 USD.
After this was sorted out and we loaded everything from my bike onto Jeff's and Kyle’s, she took us to a Taiwanese bento-box type place, and then invited us back for coffee and snacks with her family. Such nice people. When we left, they bagged up all the oranges and bananas that were on the table and gave them to us as a goodbye gift! We got the girl’s number and she would later help us even more with the bike situation.
We drove down the coast, and I was now on camera duty on the back of Jeff’s bike. Not the most comfy way to ride, but better than the bus. This was the sunniest day of the trip so far. Jeff had never seen the ocean before, so when we saw it approaching in the distance, it was a big moment him. We rolled up the pants and walked out on the beach to challenge the massive waves coming in.
The rest of that day we went in and out of some smaller mountains, and ended up back in Kenting, where I had been on my first trip around Taiwan. That first night we got sloshed and played drinking games with some other Canadians we’d met. Kyle told this Taiwanese guy in a band that he and I were famous Canadian musicians, and halfway through their set they called us up on stage to do Hotel California. Neither of us knew that song, so we played another one, but Kyle forgot the words and I was drunk on the drums. Pretty funny when the guys in the band kicked us off the stage. We finished that night with a fire on the beach, and did the same thing the following night, with beer and few other people we had met. It was raining most of the daytime while we were there, but we got to do some good hiking in the lush green hills and through some gorges, and cruised around town a bit.
We made it back to Tainan in record time so that I could pick up the bike we shipped and get it back to the rental company before they charged us for an extra day. I made it to the address they gave, but no bike! The next few days were spent getting Chinese speaking people to call that address, other people to call the shipping company, even called the truck drive. The shipper said the receiver had the bike, the receiver said the company was still shipping it, and the truck drive said he never heard of this bike. So for a while we thought the bike had disappeared and I'd owe them a scooter. Eventually, the girl that had helped us before called me up to say that it had been brought to a different address! I drove there, surely enough found the bike, and walked it back to the rental company. It was 3 or 4 days late by this point, but given that I missed out on 2 days that I had already paid for, at especially expensive ‘holiday rates’, I wasn’t keen on paying for these extra days. When I explained that it broke down on me ‘across town’ and I hadn’t had a chance to walk it over until now, they just grumpily took it back. Because of the amount they had overcharged us throughout all the scooter rentals we'd made there up to this point, purely because we are foreign and don't know any better (so I was told by my Taiwanese friends who pay 1/4 the price for the same bike), and the fact that the bike was faulty to begin with, I didn't feel very bad for them. The girl who works at this place is also maybe the devil herself. The things she would grunt out in our faces every time we were there seemed even meaner because we couldn’t understand them. She would say these things as she closely examined our passports, which we had to provide as collateral when we took the bikes. We headed home and that was it.
Another highlight is when Kyle and I played at The Armory, the best bar in Tainan. They asked us to play on Chinese New Year, which was awesome because its a pretty big party night. That went really well, so they had us play again on my last night in town. We were called The Mockumentary, and we rotated on vocals, guitar and shaker. It was the first time I'd ever done lead vocals for most of a night. They were super good to us....payed us well, free beer, and provided the whole sound system. And the owner come up to do some traditional Taiwanese songs as well. Lots of fun.
And one more fun thing...I had had an urge to play drums for while, so I rented a jam space for a session and wailed on the kit for a while. The owner of the place was there and we got to talking over a saki bottle that never seemed to end. Really cool taiwanese punk guy, who had a band called Mr. Dirty. He invited me to go back that night to jam with them on bass, and I did. It was quite awesome, considering I had never played with such a dirty grungy punk band before, let alone a taiwanese one (mind you, the 3rd guy was canadian also). If I had been sticking around longer, I could have played at Spring Scream with them, which is a huge music festival in Kenting, but I was long gone by then. I'll always have the jam though.
That's Taiwan pretty condensed. There's lots more to say, but I had stopped keeping a journal by this point and am having trouble remembering everything. It'll come back to me though, and I might do an update if its anything important. Otherwise, the next posting should bring you up to speed to where I am in Australia.
Cheers, Mike
We got a wee bit lost and ended up loosing an hour or two, but we would have never spotted this giant suspension bridge had we not. So high up there. Safety isn’t a huge concern for the Taiwanese. This was clear while walking on this narrow suspension bridge a few hundred feet up and families of 3 whipped by us on their scooter (that’s 1 scooter for all 3) and expected us to jump up out of the way against the ropes. Anyway, we had a good long day of riding.
We stopped in a small place for lunch...decided to try the ‘stinky tofu’ I’d been hearing about. Apparently this particular place sucked at it because it was so gross I almost vomed. For months I had been occasionally smelling this horrible odor that is a mix of vinegar and rotting animals, as I’d walk through town. That’s stinky tofu. Some places make it taste good though, so I’m told.
Just before sunset, we cleared this really long tunnel. There was ice in the tunnel, if your wondering how cold it was up there. Upon coming out the other side, we found tons of bikes and cars pulled over, and immediately knew why. The sun was just setting over a ‘sea of clouds’, as they call it. We were above the clouds, where you could see the mountain peaks poking out. It looked just like a field of snow. Totally worth the trip up there.
The ride was spectacular for a bit longer, then the sun set. I have been cold in my day, but never this cold. We had to stop regularly to jog and thaw out the extremities, and we were already wearing all of the clothes we had. I even had a pillow case over my face. It was getting tough to drive with numb hands, and it was dark, foggy, and rainy/snowy. Jeff had the good idea to let a car pass up and follow it so it would light up the way, and eventually we saw the lights of a small town and headed down to it. Turned out to be a small aboriginal village called Lidao. The very first place we went into happened to contain a Chinese speaking Canadian English teacher who was keen to help us find a homestay. We downed a big meal and hit the hay.
Back on the road the next day, we were again dumbfounded by the amazing views everywhere around us. That tunnel the night before had been the highest point of the highway, and we were now descending and exiting the mountains. Everything was green and the road was very curvy. This equals a very fun ride. It took forever because we kept stopping for pictures. So, we finally came out of the mountains, and decided to speed it up a little. Kyle and Jeff zoomed by, and I kept up for a bit, but all along my bike had been coughing smoke. The oil light wasn’t on this time, so we thought maybe it was still burning excess oil, but low and behold, my bike started doing the sound Jeff said it would do if the engine seized, then it stopped. Mike’s scooter, RIP. Couldn’t even kick start it. The tricky thing with this was that your not supposed to leave Tainan with these bikes, or at least the foreigners aren’t because they can’t be trusted, and now we were on the other side of the country and the bike was dead. We went to a place that looked like a mechanic shop, mimed it out, and she lead us to a bike mechanic. This family was so nice. The old mechanic drove his truck out to our bike, loaded it up, and brought it back for us. He took one look at it and made a face that said “this is gonna cost you”. He said it needed a new engine lol. The cheapest way would be to bring it back to the rental company, and he wanted to call them himself, but we couldn’t do that because we weren’t supposed to have it way out there. His daughter then came out, who spoke English fluently, and brought us and the bike to a shipping company that could bring it back to Tainan for us for $40 USD.
After this was sorted out and we loaded everything from my bike onto Jeff's and Kyle’s, she took us to a Taiwanese bento-box type place, and then invited us back for coffee and snacks with her family. Such nice people. When we left, they bagged up all the oranges and bananas that were on the table and gave them to us as a goodbye gift! We got the girl’s number and she would later help us even more with the bike situation.
We drove down the coast, and I was now on camera duty on the back of Jeff’s bike. Not the most comfy way to ride, but better than the bus. This was the sunniest day of the trip so far. Jeff had never seen the ocean before, so when we saw it approaching in the distance, it was a big moment him. We rolled up the pants and walked out on the beach to challenge the massive waves coming in.
The rest of that day we went in and out of some smaller mountains, and ended up back in Kenting, where I had been on my first trip around Taiwan. That first night we got sloshed and played drinking games with some other Canadians we’d met. Kyle told this Taiwanese guy in a band that he and I were famous Canadian musicians, and halfway through their set they called us up on stage to do Hotel California. Neither of us knew that song, so we played another one, but Kyle forgot the words and I was drunk on the drums. Pretty funny when the guys in the band kicked us off the stage. We finished that night with a fire on the beach, and did the same thing the following night, with beer and few other people we had met. It was raining most of the daytime while we were there, but we got to do some good hiking in the lush green hills and through some gorges, and cruised around town a bit.
We made it back to Tainan in record time so that I could pick up the bike we shipped and get it back to the rental company before they charged us for an extra day. I made it to the address they gave, but no bike! The next few days were spent getting Chinese speaking people to call that address, other people to call the shipping company, even called the truck drive. The shipper said the receiver had the bike, the receiver said the company was still shipping it, and the truck drive said he never heard of this bike. So for a while we thought the bike had disappeared and I'd owe them a scooter. Eventually, the girl that had helped us before called me up to say that it had been brought to a different address! I drove there, surely enough found the bike, and walked it back to the rental company. It was 3 or 4 days late by this point, but given that I missed out on 2 days that I had already paid for, at especially expensive ‘holiday rates’, I wasn’t keen on paying for these extra days. When I explained that it broke down on me ‘across town’ and I hadn’t had a chance to walk it over until now, they just grumpily took it back. Because of the amount they had overcharged us throughout all the scooter rentals we'd made there up to this point, purely because we are foreign and don't know any better (so I was told by my Taiwanese friends who pay 1/4 the price for the same bike), and the fact that the bike was faulty to begin with, I didn't feel very bad for them. The girl who works at this place is also maybe the devil herself. The things she would grunt out in our faces every time we were there seemed even meaner because we couldn’t understand them. She would say these things as she closely examined our passports, which we had to provide as collateral when we took the bikes. We headed home and that was it.
Another highlight is when Kyle and I played at The Armory, the best bar in Tainan. They asked us to play on Chinese New Year, which was awesome because its a pretty big party night. That went really well, so they had us play again on my last night in town. We were called The Mockumentary, and we rotated on vocals, guitar and shaker. It was the first time I'd ever done lead vocals for most of a night. They were super good to us....payed us well, free beer, and provided the whole sound system. And the owner come up to do some traditional Taiwanese songs as well. Lots of fun.
And one more fun thing...I had had an urge to play drums for while, so I rented a jam space for a session and wailed on the kit for a while. The owner of the place was there and we got to talking over a saki bottle that never seemed to end. Really cool taiwanese punk guy, who had a band called Mr. Dirty. He invited me to go back that night to jam with them on bass, and I did. It was quite awesome, considering I had never played with such a dirty grungy punk band before, let alone a taiwanese one (mind you, the 3rd guy was canadian also). If I had been sticking around longer, I could have played at Spring Scream with them, which is a huge music festival in Kenting, but I was long gone by then. I'll always have the jam though.
That's Taiwan pretty condensed. There's lots more to say, but I had stopped keeping a journal by this point and am having trouble remembering everything. It'll come back to me though, and I might do an update if its anything important. Otherwise, the next posting should bring you up to speed to where I am in Australia.
Cheers, Mike
Monday, April 13, 2009
Return to Taiwan, Part 1
Back in Taiwan! So, I seem to have accrued quite the backlog on my blog…a backblog if you will, since I’m at about mid-december in my stories, and as I write this it’s just before April Fools (do they have April Fools here….guess I should check that out before I do anything). Gotta catch up. So, rather than typing up about 30 pages of Taiwan stories, I’ll sum up my 2 months there in one post. So I met back up with Kyle and a good solid drunkening ensued. As I was leaving Taiwan the first time, Kyle had just joined with the soccer team. While I was gone, they had won a big tournament and had a week of partying. So the team was pretty tight by this point and Kyle knew half the foreign population of Tainan. Didn’t take long to meet tons of people. While I was there, Kyle and I did some English teaching. I started as a substitute teacher for a guy taking leave over Christmas, and occasionally taught at an alternative English school about a 30 minute scooter right away. Pretty great school….the kids were learning English through music, movies and games. The pay was also amazing, since it was a bit of a commute for me, so I didn’t have to work many hours to get by. Also got to spend 4 or 5 days with my couchsurfing friends in Taipei again and was taken on a long bike ride along the river, and did a bit of hiking and hot springing as well. I also satisfied my appetite for towers by going up the Taipei 101, the tallest building in the world. Around this time, the wheels started turning, so to speak, on a plan to bike across Taiwan, from the north to the south. Sam and David were gonna hook we up with EVERYTHING I needed for this trip during Chinese new year break while they were on vacation in NYC but the weather never panned out :(. Would have frozen my taiwans off. Anyway, ended up going on a scooter trip with Kyle and Jeff. I’ll go into more detail on this later cause it was radical.
Tainan, the city kyle and I lived in, is the cultural center of Taiwan (it was an older capital) and the 4th biggest city in the country. EVERYBODY rides a scooter there. People are quite generous as well. I was loaned a scooter for most of the time I was there, and kyle was GIVEN a motorcycle. Also, just as I arrived, I met a girl who was leaving the country, and she hooked me up with her cell phone and blankets and lamps and whatever she couldn’t take with her. Great people.
I did the walking tour of Tainan that the Lonely Planet suggested, and it was awesome. I had already seen a few temples, including a temple complex that is the biggest is East Asia supposedly, but the map in the book brought me to heaps of temples hidden within city blocks that I would never have found. I’m sure there are signs for these, but they all looked Chinese to me. Some of these temples and ancient walls were hundreds of years old. I also got to see the “Tree House”, which essentially was the remnants of a house overgrown by massive trees. There were a lot of vines in this house. So off course we got Tarzan and ninja photos.
There was a couchsurfing meeting in Tainan while I was there, with people from all over Taiwan. One of them was the first host I stayed with, back in Taipei. I joined them for coffee and that eventually turned into a night out. Going out in Taiwan with a bunch of Taiwanese people is the bomb. They took me to all of the best restaurants, some of them very small places, and we tried a few things at each place. Since this is in Tainan, its the best of the best of Taiwan really. Then we checked out a temple at night where everything was lit up and there was a festival going on on the grounds as well. Really cool authentic Taiwanese experience.
I had heard about this “monkey mountain”, a hill in Gaohsiung, the 2nd biggest city in Taiwan just an hour or two south of Tainan. I rode a scooter down there and hiked up. No monkeys, because apparently they’re only out until 4pm-ish, but a sweet hike nonetheless.
Tainan is near the ocean, so a scooter ride can take you to the beach where there's surfing, kite surfing (sometimes free), good reading spots, and all sorts of beach stuff.
The scooter trip was a little iffy at first. None of us knew what we were getting ourselves into, other than everybody telling us it would be freakin cold, and to bring full-on winter gear. Hard to believe this whilst sweating buckets in town, but we did bring everything just in case. I turned out to be a long weekend, and all the scooters were booked, so we had to wait until the evening to pick them up. They only had 2 available, so kyle decided to take his old beast of a motorcycle and see how she fared. Our friend Ian speaks some Chinese and was kind enough to help us sort of the bike situation. So, this trip would take us from the west coast of Taiwan where we lived, across the mountains on the Southern Crossing HWY to the east coast, then along that coast to the most southern point of the country, then back up the west coast to home. Taiwan is over 70% mountains, with all the major cities along the flatter coast lines, so there were LOTS of mountains to cross, and we got pretty high up there. Once we got the scooters (important side note: jeff’s was very new, mine was very old) it was already 8pm and we weren’t sure if we should hold off our departure. Jeff eventually persuaded us to hit the road that night because he was short on time before he had to head home, so we did, and even before the mountains bundling up was very necessary. Also, scooters can cruise! My bike stalled on one of the longer straightaways…..foreshadowing? We made it to Maolin where we had reservations at a lodge, but the English speaking person who we spoke with from the lodge decided to leave, and we couldn’t communicate with them on the phone to obtain directions anymore. None of the locals seemed to be able to help us either. We found a hotel lobby type place with a party going on, and started talking to these guys who spoke a tiny bit of English thanks to their Marine training. They were wasted and friendly and one of them invited us to stay at his place. His wife didn’t like that very much, so he invited us to stay at his uncle’s lodge instead. At this point it was midnight or something. He woke up his Uncle, who got up all smiles and prepared us a feast. They even busted out a brand new bottle of Johnny Walker. We sat there and chatted, and there were a lot of high fives and handshakes and shots every time we understood each other. They showed us our room, which was big enough for 6 but it was only the 3 of us, and we crashed hard.
To be continued...
Tainan, the city kyle and I lived in, is the cultural center of Taiwan (it was an older capital) and the 4th biggest city in the country. EVERYBODY rides a scooter there. People are quite generous as well. I was loaned a scooter for most of the time I was there, and kyle was GIVEN a motorcycle. Also, just as I arrived, I met a girl who was leaving the country, and she hooked me up with her cell phone and blankets and lamps and whatever she couldn’t take with her. Great people.
I did the walking tour of Tainan that the Lonely Planet suggested, and it was awesome. I had already seen a few temples, including a temple complex that is the biggest is East Asia supposedly, but the map in the book brought me to heaps of temples hidden within city blocks that I would never have found. I’m sure there are signs for these, but they all looked Chinese to me. Some of these temples and ancient walls were hundreds of years old. I also got to see the “Tree House”, which essentially was the remnants of a house overgrown by massive trees. There were a lot of vines in this house. So off course we got Tarzan and ninja photos.
There was a couchsurfing meeting in Tainan while I was there, with people from all over Taiwan. One of them was the first host I stayed with, back in Taipei. I joined them for coffee and that eventually turned into a night out. Going out in Taiwan with a bunch of Taiwanese people is the bomb. They took me to all of the best restaurants, some of them very small places, and we tried a few things at each place. Since this is in Tainan, its the best of the best of Taiwan really. Then we checked out a temple at night where everything was lit up and there was a festival going on on the grounds as well. Really cool authentic Taiwanese experience.
I had heard about this “monkey mountain”, a hill in Gaohsiung, the 2nd biggest city in Taiwan just an hour or two south of Tainan. I rode a scooter down there and hiked up. No monkeys, because apparently they’re only out until 4pm-ish, but a sweet hike nonetheless.
Tainan is near the ocean, so a scooter ride can take you to the beach where there's surfing, kite surfing (sometimes free), good reading spots, and all sorts of beach stuff.
The scooter trip was a little iffy at first. None of us knew what we were getting ourselves into, other than everybody telling us it would be freakin cold, and to bring full-on winter gear. Hard to believe this whilst sweating buckets in town, but we did bring everything just in case. I turned out to be a long weekend, and all the scooters were booked, so we had to wait until the evening to pick them up. They only had 2 available, so kyle decided to take his old beast of a motorcycle and see how she fared. Our friend Ian speaks some Chinese and was kind enough to help us sort of the bike situation. So, this trip would take us from the west coast of Taiwan where we lived, across the mountains on the Southern Crossing HWY to the east coast, then along that coast to the most southern point of the country, then back up the west coast to home. Taiwan is over 70% mountains, with all the major cities along the flatter coast lines, so there were LOTS of mountains to cross, and we got pretty high up there. Once we got the scooters (important side note: jeff’s was very new, mine was very old) it was already 8pm and we weren’t sure if we should hold off our departure. Jeff eventually persuaded us to hit the road that night because he was short on time before he had to head home, so we did, and even before the mountains bundling up was very necessary. Also, scooters can cruise! My bike stalled on one of the longer straightaways…..foreshadowing? We made it to Maolin where we had reservations at a lodge, but the English speaking person who we spoke with from the lodge decided to leave, and we couldn’t communicate with them on the phone to obtain directions anymore. None of the locals seemed to be able to help us either. We found a hotel lobby type place with a party going on, and started talking to these guys who spoke a tiny bit of English thanks to their Marine training. They were wasted and friendly and one of them invited us to stay at his place. His wife didn’t like that very much, so he invited us to stay at his uncle’s lodge instead. At this point it was midnight or something. He woke up his Uncle, who got up all smiles and prepared us a feast. They even busted out a brand new bottle of Johnny Walker. We sat there and chatted, and there were a lot of high fives and handshakes and shots every time we understood each other. They showed us our room, which was big enough for 6 but it was only the 3 of us, and we crashed hard.
To be continued...
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