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Up and Over

Posted August 11, 2013

PART 15 (DAYS 33-35): “How’s everything here?” I asked Chris, the manager at Southern Laughter Lodge, when I arrived back in Queenstown for a day in order to catch a homeward bound flight early the following morning.

“Oh, it’s quiet. It’s finally slowing down,” he answered.

“Oh, is the ski season over?”

“No, the season can go all the way until October,” he told me. “But all the Aussie kids have gone back to university.”

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Hit And Miss

From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted February 12, 2005

DAY 477: “I charred my back and need 1 day to rest it on a moto. ” Noelle wrote on a note for me to read the day before when she arrived at our room before I did. While I was off rock climbing, she had gone diving and sat out on the upper deck during her surface intervals for too long, and when I saw her I saw the result: her back had cooked red like lobster.

The Cliffs Men

From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted February 11, 2005

DAY 476: “Don’t you want to get good at [rock climbing]?” Blogreader/friend Cheryl once asked me in a New Jersey rock gym a couple of months before The Global Trip 2004 began.

“No. If I got any good at it, it wouldn’t be funny [to write about],” was my answer.

That was then, this is now. Sixteen months later, I really wanted to embrace rock climbing and get really into shape. Finally, an activity that works out your abdominals in a cool-looking, adventurous way instead of the ridiculous use of an Ab-Roller. Really, using the Ab-Roller just looks silly, like dry humping the carpet, don’t you think?

A New Homebase

From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted February 11, 2005

DAY 475: “This is one case that Let’s Go let me down,” Noelle said. She had listened to my anti-Lonely Planet rants and brought over the latest Let’s Go guidebooks for Southeast Asia and Thailand, and was quite pleased with them — until she discovered that neither book had maps for Krabi Town or Ao Nang, nor did they really explain how far away they were from each other. Contrary to our thinking, the beach of Ao Nang was miles out from our guesthouse in Krabi Town.

Volunteer Work

From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted February 08, 2005

DAY 474: “I’m in a Toyota pick-up truck in Thailand!” an excited Noelle said in a Toyota pick-up truck in Thailand. We had just arrived in Krabi’s bus terminal after a two-hour bus transport from Surat Thani — the hub town where the overnight train dropped us off earlier that morning — and were now headed to Krabi Town, the popular resort town where divers, rock climbers, sea kayakers, and plain old sunbathers came in droves — that is, before the catastrophic Asian Tsunami of December 26, 2004.

The Fifth And Final Time

From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted February 08, 2005

DAY 473: Twelve days before, just two minutes before my introduction of Noelle as a “character” on the Blog in Bangkok, I ran into a recurring character one last time: Paul from Manchester, who I had met on the Everest Trail in Nepal (before my unfortunate near-fatal incident), and again, by chance, in Delhi International Airport en route back to Bangkok. Our third encounter was also by chance, but in a way it was no real surprise.

“All roads lead to Bangkok,” I told him.

Staring Out The Window

From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted February 08, 2005

DAY 472 (one week since last Thailand entry): “I think that one of my favorite things is staring out the window,” I said, staring out the window of a bus from Phnom Penh to the Cambodian port town of Sihanoukville. Sihanoukville was just one stop on a long two-day overland journey back to Bangkok that we managed to do in one long 18-hour day.

Ouch Was An Understatement

From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted February 07, 2005

DAY 471: “Okay, make us cry,” I said to our tuk-tuk driver after negotiating a day rate for Noelle and me. We instructed him to take us to the darker side of Phnom Penh, the sites where the helpless cries of innocents were silenced, where people were tortured and killed by a ruthless, inhumane dictator — and within our lifetimes.

“The Trinidad Show” Live

From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted February 07, 2005

DAY 470: It’s one thing to experience my life on the road via this Blog, but it’s another to experience it live, as it happens, as Noelle did that day. Since her first appearance on “The Trinidad Show,” she saw things in person that she had only read about on-line, like that blue clamp that holds the logic board of my laptop together tightly. “Ah, the famous clamp,” she said when she first saw it.

The Ex-Pat Zone

From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted February 07, 2005

DAY 469: To make up time and to keep ourselves from being oversaturated with temples, Noelle and I decided like many backpackers before us, to skip out on the third day of our three-day Angkor Park pass — it costs the same as two one-day passes anyway. With that said, you’d think we would have slept in, but no, we were up at “stupid o’clock” again, at 5:30 to get to our boat to Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital city. We had heard that taking the cheaper bus option would involve another unpaved road — which might have led to another potential murder like that one time — so we splurged on the $23 fast ferry which would take us along the Tonle Sap river and lake system.

The DAY 503 Trailer

From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted February 06, 2005

Click here to view the DAY 503 trailer. Make sure your volume is turned up.

(Flash plug-in required.)

Where Life Imitates Video Games

From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted February 02, 2005

DAY 468: “It looks like a movie set,” I overheard one British girl saying to her friends.

“It is a movie set,” her companion replied.

The raîson d’être in the former French-occupied Cambodia is Angkor Wat, the UNESCO World Heritage Site known the world over. The ancient grand Hindu temple is one of the world’s great wonders, so great that it was used as a location for the 2001 Hollywood blockbuster Lara Croft Tomb Raider (starring the beautiful bosomy, full-lipped Angelina Jolie), which as everyone knows (or should know) was based on a wildly popular adventure video game of the same name, which featured a bosomy, full-lipped virtual character named Lara Croft.

The Smiles Of Angkor

From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted February 02, 2005

DAY 467: “Are you just as awe-inspired as I am?” Noelle asked me as we stood in front of the Bayon, one of Angkor Park’s major temples. Her smile was wide with joy, even in the scorching hot and humid conditions of tropical Cambodia.

“Yeah, this pretty much kicks the pyramids’ ass,” was my response.

Red Pills, White Apples, and Blue Pumpkins

From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted January 30, 2005

DAY 466: “I’m not going to be much fun tomorrow,” Noelle said the night before when we checked into the New Millennium guesthouse in Siem Reap at 2:30 a.m. after a long grueling journey from Bangkok.

The Two Backpacks

From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted January 30, 2005

DAY 465: It was advised by numerous parties to travel overland from Bangkok, Thailand to Siem Reap, Cambodia with a transport service set up by a tour agency, in order to ease the transition at the border crossing. What I did not hear until after the fact that it was probably best to go via boat, but alas, the road trip that was supposed to be twelve hours ended up being close to twenty.

Supergirls

From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted January 28, 2005

DAY 464: “We’re in Bangkok. We can’t not see one,” Oklahoman Ellen said to her husband Kevin the night before at dinner. She was of course referring to the famous sex shows of the red-lighted Patpong district, another one of Bangkok’s signature attractions even if you’re not a total perv. That night we went to go see one and discovered it was a rather interesting and enjoyable show that involved a lot extraction of items from a particular female body part.

Pretty Fly For A White Guy

From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted January 28, 2005

DAY 463: One of Noelle’s first impressions and observations of Bangkok — specifically in the Khaosan and Patpong districts — was that, “There are a lot of white people here. I hardly see any Thai people.” True, Khaosan and Patpong are the tourist areas were real Thais wouldn’t have a need to go to — in fact, the Sawasdee House where I was staying still had its sign up saying, “NO Thai people permitted in the hotels rooms.”

White people have been coming to Bangkok for centuries (not that there’s anything wrong with it) way before the song “One Night In Bangkok” became a one hit wonder. One noteworthy white guy who came to Bangkok is one Jim Thompson, the American who came to Thailand and became famous revolutionizing the international hand-woven silk trade.

Same Same But Different

From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted January 26, 2005

DAY 462: There is a phrase on t-shirts that many of the backpackers in southeast Asia wear: “Same same but different.” It is a phrase often uttered by tour agents and touts when trying to get a foreigner’s business. “Same same” as in “we’re just as good as the next guy;” “but different” as in “but we’re more special.”

Blog and Reality

From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted January 26, 2005

DAY 461 (31 days since last Thailand entry): This here weBlog has become and integral part of my trip — more so than I originally thought. Maintaining it not only has given me a sense of purpose in my wanderings of the world (and given my brother an unneeded second job), it has raised funds and connected me to many people that I never knew before. (In fact, most of the commenters in recent months I’ve never met; you SBRs out there shouldn’t be afraid to “be a stranger” and break the silence.)

Return To Normalcy

From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted January 24, 2005

DAY 460: While island hopping with my Tito Mike and Tita Josie from beach resort to beach resort was nice, it wasn’t exactly my scene. Don’t get me wrong, beach resorts are nice and all, but they are inherently resorts, relaxing places to get away from the challenges of normal life. My days of resorts and island hopping in the Philippines were over and it was time for a return to normalcy.

Not So Chocolate

From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted January 24, 2005

DAY 459: I had first heard about the island of Bohol not from my Philippine-born parents or any of my relatives living in the Philippines, but from the Globe Trekker travel show (formerly Lonely Planet). Host Shilpa Mehta turned me on to seeing the famous Chocolate Hills, Bohol’s signature attraction, which unfortunately for me and my chocolate-loving sweet tooth were not made of chocolate. Upon my own exploration of the island, I discovered that the not-so-Chocolate Hills were just one of many things that made Bohol unique, an island separate from the other islands in the archipelago.

Foreign Local

From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted January 24, 2005

DAY 458: I remember Vietnamese-American Tony (Moshi, Tanzania) telling me he once went on vacation to Vietnam with some non-Vietnamese-American friends and all the local Vietnamese thought he was not a foreigner traveling with the others, but their guide. I was surprised the same phenomenon didn’t happen to me in the Philippines, until I went on a diving trip off the coast of Panglao Island that day.

Island Hopping

From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted January 23, 2005

DAY 457: “Island hopping” is a term often used in the tourism circuit in the Philippines, and for good reason; there are 7,107 islands in the archipelago, why just stick to one? (Some of the smaller ones are even up for sale if you can afford it.) It isn’t necessarily needed to fly from island to island as there are many modes of transportation available, from big ferries to jet-powered catamarans. For the backpacker on the tightest budget, there is the Roro, an inter-island bus that travels on land by road and over water by vehicle transport ferry from island port to island port.

My goal of the day was to island hop from Boracay to Panay to Cebu to Bohol to Panglao, by air, land, and sea — all before nightfall.

Waiting In Vain

From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted January 21, 2005

DAY 456: I woke up in the Hangin House on Bulabog Beach with a slight hangover headache to a welcoming sound coming from behind my room’s window: the rustling of palm trees blowing in the ocean breeze. Wind. Soon, kiteboarders were inflating their kites on the beach, launching them, and venturing off into the surf — but not without some snags.

“It’s gusty,” Mars the German-Filipino reported.

Delusions Of Grandeur

From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted January 21, 2005

DAY 455: Perhaps the “Relatives Factor” I had ranted about before was all just in my head, at least with my Tita Josie. As a savvy single woman, she knew the pros of independence and left it up to me whether or not to stay with her in Kalibo for the second half of the Ati-atihan festival, or venture back to Boracay on my own to complete my kiteboard Jedi training. Because of the downpour over Kalibo that morning and the fact that after two days of parades I was a little “paraded out,” I opted to go back to Boracay. Perhaps it was fate that led me to that decision; I had missed being in the middle of the crowd at the big public shooting that occurred that morning in Kalibo at the festival.

Like Luke Skywalker setting a new course back to the Dagobah system to complete his Jedi training with Master Yoda in Return of the Jedi, I packed my bag and departed the town of Kalibo on that rainy morning.

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