Interlude: Biking around Chiang Mai

Being significantly less dense than Bangkok, it was actually safe (and recommended) to bike around the city. It's a relatively small city so it will take anywhere between 15 to one hour to get to anywhere you want. The biggest challenge is the intense heat and the cars/mopeds ruling the streets. I was armed with my 1.5 litre of water, hat and backpack, rented a rather medicore 21 speed bike for 50 baht and started to bike around the city with my friend. The first 20 minutes was quite easy as I was hugging the side walk and avoiding all the cars that were double parked, until I had to cross two 3 lanes streets in a row. I saw my friend crossing the street without stopping her bike with ease as I was too scared to do such a thing and hopped off my bike praying I would cross the street without becoming road kill. I felt like the frog in the video game frogger, waiting and waiting for the right opportunity to cross the street. The first 3 lanes wasn't too hard as there weren't that many cars, but the 2nd one had an additional challenge as 2 lanes of cars merged into the 3 lanes which doubles the amount of cars and mopeds. I waited for 10 minutes with the sun blasting on my head, waiting for an opening. After a while, I basically closed my eyes, started to cross the street and screaming for my life as I was crossing the 3 lanes, looking at the drivers and begging them to not run me over. My heart was pounding, the adrenaline was pumping through my veins and my friend was laughing with me as she went through the exact same experience as me a week ago when she started to bike the city.

Chiang Mai, the city where nobody wants to leave

As I got off the train and got ripped off for the umpth time for a ride to my hostel, I realized how calmer the city was. No high rises, no crazy cars or taxis harassing everybody. It was actually SAFE to walk the streets and not get run over by a car. I didn't once got harrassed by tuk tuk or taxis. I understand by people extend their stay in Chiang Mai. However, I underestimated one element in Chiang Mai, the heat. The city felt much hotter than Bangkok. I was surprised as I was more than 1000km north of Bangkok in the mountains, which logic should dictate that it would be cooker than Bangkok. The temperature hovered around the 38 degrees mark, with an intense sun pounding on my head. My dorm room had one fan and it felt like a constant sauna. Everybody was under the shade, with a beer in their hand either sleeping or drinking. At night I ventured the streets of Chiang Mai with a fellow foodie who I met in Bangkok two weeks ago. I had a much deserved Thai massage which is an interesting experience. On top of breaking the knots between the muscles, they pull your body in ways that nobody would think of to crack the bones and stretch the ligaments, for an hour in an air conn room. The best part of the massage was the air conn. That's how hot it was in the evening.

Chiang Mai is a more cultural city compared to Bangkok where there are heaps of massage, muay thai and cooking school. The foodie in me was screaming for a cooking class, so I booked one in an organic farm, 20km outside of Chiang Mai. Sammy, a skinny Thai man with a pony tail greeted me with an impecable English at my guesthouse and proceeded to pick up the rest of the students. We stopped at the market where he explained the different kind of rices and how coconut milk was extraced. We also decided on the dishes we wanted to cook. I choose to cook a jungle curry (red curry), my favorite soup Tom Yum Gung, the ever so popular Pad Thai, Papaya Salad and a pumpkin custard.

The farm itself was really nice, peaceful and the open kitchen had a view of the rice field. Sammy kept on showing off the "best toilet in Chiang Mai" which was quite impressive. We got to the dining table where a mortar/pestle and cooking apron was set up on the table. We were going to grind and make our own curry paste! We proceeded to chop the ingredients and grinded the spices for 30 minutes before we head to the kitchen and cook the curry. The jungle curry came out quite nice, but it was a bit too salty. Cooking the tom yum soup was as easy as making the vietnamese counter part, canh chua. The soup came out quite nice, but it wasn't salty enough and it was lacking a bit more of the sour. Next time I'll make it, I'll add a bit more lemon. The most successful dish was my Pad Thai. Using a wok on a gas burner for the first time, I was sauteeing my pad thai quite easily as if I have been cooking in a wok all my life. The pad thai came out perfectly, a nice blend of sweet, sour, salty and fish sauce. It was much better than the 20 baht pad thai I had on khao san road. We all feasted on our creation and proceed with a break. I immediately ran to the hammoc and passed out under the heat for a good hour which felt like three. I woke up groggy and went back to the kitchen to make the papaya salad. To my big surprise, the entire dish is prepared in a mortel and pestle! Once the sauce is prepared (the key to this dish is the sauce), I dunked the carrots, papaya and long bean into the mortel and started to toss and crush everything! What an interesting way to make the dish! The dish came out quite nice as it had a good mixture of sweet sour and a good punch of chili (i had 3 and i was crying). It would have complimented very well with my pad thai. While I was still recovering from my chili high, I watched the other students with their other dishes: the egg rolls and a chicken wrapped in pandal leafs. Once we finished with the dessert, we brought the dishes on our table and struggled to finish all the food on the table. we all thanked Sammy and his wife for the wonderful course and as we were packing our things, Sammy's incredibly cute and adorable daughter, niece and nephew each gave us a cooking book and thanked everybody in an impecable English accent. They were soooooo cute.  We all left the class content and full.

By the end of my stay in Chiang Mai, I realized I had enough for Thailand. The lack of air conn in our room made our rest impossible as we were all tossing around covered in sweat and the odd mosquito in our room was feasting on our flesh and blood. The heat was getting to me and I couldn't spend another night sharing a room with 3 or more people without air conn. Having to fight for transportation via Taxi when a certain venue isn't located close to a BTS station. I booked a 50$ a 4 star hotel in Bangkok with wifi and air conn and going to patiently wait for the last leg of my trip: 3 weeks in Japan where the average temperature will be floating around 20 degrees. I can't wait, but most of all, I can't wait to go back home with my own bed and doing absolutely nothing. But until then, I really have to start to figure out where I will be staying in Tokyo...

Interlude: overnight sleeper train in Thailand

Thailand is famous for a few things: lady boys, weird ping pong shows, beautiful beaches down south and their train system. It is the most cost effective method of transportation to travel around Thailand and also to go to Lao or Cambodia. It is about 10% more expensive than the bus, but the comfort level is incomparable as the sleeper trains are massive bunk bed on a train getting you from point A to point B. I decided to experience it for myself and I was pleasantly surprised! Although the train was a bit old, it was very clean (until i arrived to the washroom for a nasty stench of ammonium) and very cool with the air conn system. As I was running with 3 hours of sleep, my trip to Chiang Mai felt very fast as I blacked out by 10pm and woke up the next day at 8am. After drinking a rather expensive orange juice, we were informed that the train is late (which is absolutely normal in Thailand) by an hour so I passed out once again. The two danish girls below me had to wake me up. I woke up of my daze and ventured into my final stretch of my trip: Chiang Mai.

Songkran, the water festival

I was exhausted after spending 4 days diving and following it with 2 days of intense climbing. All I wanted to do is chill and relax, which is the complete opposite of what I did in Bangkok. Songkran is Thailand's new year celebration, which last for 3 days. Being a water festival, the streets of Bangkok is converted into a war zone of water and water guns. Everywhere you go, there bound to have somebody (or a group of people) waiting at a corner with a bucket of ice cold water in their hand, ready to splash it an innocent bystander. However, this isn't just a random water fight, there is a significance to everything. According to the Thai people, splashing water on somebody during the songkran symbolizes purification as the water will 'wash away' the bad things of the previous year. People will also put chalk on your face as a way to express happy new year to you.

Being loyal to couchsurfing, there was a group of Singaporians who organized the songkran celebration in Bangkok. As a lazy slob as I am, I found out before hand that one of the guys had an empty room with 2 other free beds, so I jumped on the opportunity and grabbed the room. To my big surprise, nobody from the room (except for Jason who arrived on the last night as he missed his train down to bangkok) checked in, which left me with a very expensive room for myself (but it had AIR CON! I WAS HAPPY!). I met up with the organizer Ummar, and a few of his friends. Later that evening, the rest of the batallion arrived at the roof top where we all introduced ourselves. The usual suspects (germans) were present but to my big surprise, 3 french canadians where also present! The quebec connection has once again been formed! From that evening on, all the couchsurfers quickly got united and will be connected forever.

What started as an innocent water fight quickly degenerated into a massive war zone as if I was in the streets of Kabul. It is not safe to walk the streets unarmed (with a water gun) or alone. We had to look behind our back for sneak attack from kids with waterguns or wait to regroup as a group of people we waiting with their bucket. It was a real battlefield. During the day, we wondered on Khao San road, which is the backpacker's road where all the tourists and backpackers roamed the streets drunk out of their ass with waterguns. Music was pumping, water was being spashed. It was like a big street water party. The water was actually quite refreshing making us forget the intense heat of Thailand. At night, we ventured to the more local venues like Silom street and RCA (the clubbing district). I have never seen that many people in my entire life in one small venue or street. There could have easily been over a million Thai, as soaked and wet as everybody. RCA was the craziest experience of my life where we (group of 30 couchsurfers) were almost trampled to death and squeezed like a can of sardine. I had the best time of my life, but it really drained the life out of me. Songkran has been unfortunately added to the Murtaugh list.

On day 3 of songkran, everybody was tired of being wet and splashed on. The heat got to us (even the singaporians couldn't handle the heat anymore). Nobody wanted to leave the hostel anymore as we were afraid to get wet or die of heat exhaustion. I was running on 3 hours of sleep, exhausted and wanting to go straight to Japan, but I unfortunately, still had 5 more days to kill, the last stretch of my Thailand trip. I went up to Chiang Mai with an overnight sleeper train leaving all the amazing friends who I met in the past few days. We might have gone our seperate ways, but songkran will always keep us connected.

South of Thailand: Underwater adventure, tsunami warning and hippy climbing village

Khao Lak/Similan Islands/Phuket

After running around like a headless chicken in crazy and noisy Bangkok, I slowly made my way down to the southern tip of Thailand where I had the strangest experience ever where I believed I had stepped into a portal into a parallel universe, but I'll get to that later.

After an expensive transfer from Phuket Airport to Khao Lak, I had a full day and a half to kill before I was picked up for my 4 days diving adventure on a boat. I checked into my hotel, put on my thongs, walked down the main street to grab dinner to realize that I'm going to have a very difficult time to keep myself busy for a day and a half. Khao Lak is overrunned by retired Scandinavians and Germans with mediocre food at tourist prices and non existing night life. There was a waterfall which was about 10km away but I couldn't be bothered to spend more money on transport just for falling water, so decided to spend the day by the beach, hoping to see white sands and clear water like on the post cards. To my great disapointment, the beaches in Khao Lak are similar to the ones I've seen in Bali. Are all the postcards of Thailand photoshopped?!

A day and a half later, I was finally picked up to the dive center for a very much anticipated 4 days around Similian Islands. A smiling international staff greeted us and we all proceeded to try on the equipment and paying the remaining balance. I went outside and introduced myself the other guests who I will be spending the next 4 days with. I felt I was at the G7 summit as I met people from all over the globe! I was intimiated as most of the guests have over 200 dives under my belt where I had a mere 35 dives. The boat was quite big and t dives were nothing short of amazing. Colorful corals (purple, red, yellow, you name it!) and fishes, manta rays, nudibranches (of all size), the illusive orangutang crab and harlequin shrimps, sharks were only a mere fraction of the underwater wildlife I saw. Since most of the dives were over 20m deep, it didn't take much convincing to take my Nitrox certification, which proved to be very useful as I got to explore in greater details at greather depth.

The 4 days went by quickly and by the time we all noticed, we came back to shore. Having booked a hotel in Karon Beach, I couldn't join the staff and celebrate Prue (one of the dive masters)'s birthday, but I think it was a very wise decision as I spent about 2h around Karon Beach to find food and book a transport to Tonsai before I blacked out in my bed due to sheer exhaustion of the dives. The transport picked me up bright and early and we arrived on the ferry to Ao Nang. I was glad I spent the money to take the ferry as the view was spectacular!! The postcards of Thailand are not photoshopped at all! White sandy beaches, beautiful islands surrounded with clear turquoise water. It was paradise. A longtail ride later, I stepped into a parallel universe of Thailand which brought me to Tonsai, a mecca for rock climbers.

As soon as I got off the boat, the first thing I noticed was the sound of Bob Marley's greatest hit and a faint smell of weed. As I walked closer to the music, I almost believed that Bob came back from the dead as I saw a skinny dark skinned man with a goatie, dashiqui and dreadlocks. A male caucasian with dreadlock at the bar ordered a gram of weed and proceed to roll it and smoke it. Where was I? I went to the climbing school, booked a day class and proceed to find accomodation. I was recommended to go to Forest Lodge resort, thinking that it would be a nice resort. The definition of resort in Ton Sai is several rows of bamboo shack. In each bamboo shack is a bed with mosquito nets, a fan, a door to a toilet with a shower head, bucket and a toilet with no flush. The bucket is used to flush. Power only runs from 6pm to 2am and there are no power plugs. As my class is tomorrow, I spent the entire day wondering around the tiny beach of ton sai figuring out what to do. I ended up spending the afternoon finishing my Patricia Conwell book as I was sipping a lemon tea at a reggae bar. After a not so comfortable and humid sleep, I went for my outdoor rock climbing class which is what I've been waiting for. Outdoor rockclimbing is very similar to indoor as you have to be belayed and climb up a wall of rocks, but the main difficulty is that there are no clear marking on where to put your hands for a grip (unlike indoors where there are clear color marked rocks) and the rocks are SHARP. I skillfully climbed 2 walls, and on the 3rd, I had a deep cut on my index due to my stubborness to let go. During lunch, a monsoon like storm hit for 20 minutes, cancelling the 2nd half of my class. I've been offered to go to a deep water soloing trip for free as a make up. Sounds like a good deal to me!

Deep water soloing is what most climbers describe as "climbing at its purest form". No ropes around you, nobody to belay you. It's you, the rock and water below you. Feel tired? jump off the cliff into the water. Done with the climb? Jump off a 15+ meter rock into the water. I would think that would be a great way for me to conquor my fear of heights. Jokes was on me. The first wall was quite challenging and I couldn't get to the top of the path I chose. Although I was up at around 5 meters, it took alot of mental effort to jump off the cliff. Fail. We spent lunch at a secluded beach between two cliffs, a beach which can only be described as paradise. White sand, clear warm blue water, just us climbers. No stupid drunken expats or frat boys. I could spend the rest of the day here if i could. The 2nd wall was my everest, which i couldn't climb. I could barely get off the rope ladder to get on the rock. After struggling for 5 minutes, I gave up, went back on the boat and rest. Being stubborn as I am, I attempted a 2nd try but in vain as I wasn't able to get up that damn ladder. I guess patience is a virtue as I was wasting my arms trying to pull my 180lbs body. I was gutted but I will put this challenge in storage for now, and bulk up the upper body before trying again. Not my cup of tea for now.

As we got off the boat to get back to our huts, we have been informed that a tsunami alert has been issued on the island because of a 8.6 magnitude earthquake and a 8.4 aftershock off the coast of Indonesia. The entire beach was empty with the exception of some crazy expats (including myself) who are at the beach. It was either being eaten alive by mosquitos or die from a tsunami. I chose the latter. We were all at the only bar that was open by the beach, watching a thai news channel about the tsunami. As soon as I saw the epicenter on Tv, the geologist in me knew exactly that there is absolutely nothing to fear about, but I had to find a way to find internet on the island (all the internet cafes were closed) to call home and let everybody know that I'm alive.

After a final night in my hut, I realized I reached my breaking point of Thailand. I'm sick and tired of living without air con (jokes on me, you'll know why), fighting for transport and negociate with people who are trying to screw me over for either goods or transports. I need modern technology and a clean washroom where I don't have to flush with a bucket of water. I was looking forward to my trip to Japan, but before that, I had to make my way to back to Bangkok where I lived the craziest moments of my life. It even beats my crazy house warming party in Sydney.

Bangkok, Thailand

Bangkok, the city that never sleeps. Naive was I when I thought that NYC is the city that never sleep. There are always things  happening on street for everybody: food, dvds, booze, sex shows you name it. Before I got off the plane, my idea of Bangkok is a 3rd world city very much like Hanoi. To my big surprise, Bangkok is as busting and modern as Hong Kong! The  main tourist area is located in the Old city, which is in a "moat" far away from any public transportation (minus the bus), which brings me to the main annoyance of Bangkok: taxi and tuk tuk drivers.

Bangkok has a population of 18 millions, about half of it are the rich foreigners from over seas taking advantage of the very low cost of living. The Thais are no idiots, when they see an opportunity to make money, they jump on it. Taxi and tuk tuk drivers are no different. They are not afraid to screw you over by tripling the regular rate to go to a certain destination. Before I came to Thailand, I read that one should always get a taxi and insist for the meter. However, that concept is completely flawed as 1 OUT 3 taxi drivers will refuse to use the meter with the regular excuse of : "too much traffic". Tuk Tuk drivers are even worst as they will automatically over charge you. Being a westerner myself, I never learned the art of negotiation and with the addition of the language barrier, getting a fair price is close to impossible! Everyday was a constant fight between me and the taxi. Instead of taking 10 minutes to get a taxi, it took me over an hour to grab a taxi driver to get to Khao San, and I gave up and gave the driver 160 baht which is double the actual price. It went to the point that I didn't want to go out anymore because getting a taxi is such a huge hassle!

Aside from that, Bangkok is a shopping haven filled with a myriad of either night markets or very luxurious malls catered to everybody's taste. There are a few temples worth visiting and the grand palace. Aside from that, there isn't much to do in Bangkok except for eating, shopping and partying. Stay a few days here and move on to the next destination.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

KL, capital city of Malaysia, home of the Petronas towers and Malaysian Grand Prix. In short, my stay in KL was rather bittersweet. I allocated 5 days in the city, which was about 2 to 3 days too much. KL is the equivalent of NYC or Singapore; it's a business city with very little touristic and historical spots to visit. Had I been working or have close friends who lives in the city, my experience would have been much more different. I spent most of my time walking in a hot and humid sauna and being constantly harassed by girls or pimps for massages, eating and drain my money on alcohol (Malaysia being a Muslim country taxes bars heavily, so the prices of the alcohol was comparable to Australia). My hostel was conveniently located at Bukit Bintang, where all the bars, street food and malls are located, so I was only 5 minutes walk away from an air conditioning building if i were to seek refuge or from street food vendors.

I was hoping to meet local couchsurfers (like I had in Yogja and KK) to show me around, but I didn't have much success finding somebody to show me around. When I got to the chance to attend the meet up, the turn out was over 50 people and it was very hard to talk to everybody. Post dinner drinks quickly turned into a yellow fever meat market. I realized that the reason why I had such a hard time meeting local CSers was because I wasn't born with a vagina and a set of boobs. Local KL CS guys were much more interested in talking with girls and hitting on the hottest ones rather than having a nice conversation. The female CSers are dairy queens wanting to meet the exotic gwai lo. I quickly left the bar in digust.

Although KL doesn't have alot of landmarks, there are a few notable sites that are worth mentionning

Petronas Towers
The tallest twin towers in the world, the Petronas towers is quite impressive especially at night. The towers were superbly lit that even a crappy cell phone managed to take beautiful pictures of the towers. It is also possible to go up the tower and view the city on the bridge, but I learned getting a ticket is quite the mission. The ticket booth only sells 1025 tickets a day, and people line up as early as 830 in the morning to buy a ticket with an allocated time slot, which means one would have to plan their day around the ticket. In addition to the queue, I have been told that you can only spend a maximum of 5 minutes on the bridge because the weight of all the tourists might cause the bridge to collapse! For 50 RM (about 17 dollars), I didn't think it was worth the effort to get the tickets.

Chinatown
Also known as Old KL, this is a night market paradise for those who seek fake purses and cheap tacky tshirts and cheap food. Jalan Petilang reminded me of Tung Tsoi market in Hong Kong: big street with rows of vendors selling virtually everything ranging from shoes, electronics, food and clothings. Being a proper banana my bargaining skills are non existant and my 18 kg jam packed backpack, I didn't purchase anything.

The National Mosque
Almost 2/3 of the malaysian population are muslim, thus a visit to the National Mosque is a must after the Petronas towers. Getting to the Mosque isn't straight forward. Although it was walking distance from Chinatown, one must walk across the "river", then walk through a train station, and then exit through an abandoned gate, to then cross the street and then make their way to the Mosque. It is important to mention that there are only 3 one hour time slots per day for non-muslim tourist to visit the mosque, which is 1h between each prayer time. Women have to wear the robe to cover their hair and body, and men who wear shorts that doesn't cover the knees will also have to wear the robe to enter the mosque.

The bird park
This is the biggest open air bird park in the world, where the majority of the birds can fly free under a giantic net and enclosure. This is a must visit for bird lovers. There are several feeding time and bird shows to see

Batu Caves
A very impressive hindu temple located inside of natural limestone caves, easily accesible by train from the city. Word of advice, be mentally prepared to climb 276 steps under a hot scorching sun to reach the top cave.

Bukit Bintang
The exp party area. Think LKF in HK. Same thing. Heaps of bars and clubs, and street food at every corner. Fun to hangout, not going to make it a habit. Around there are really big malls