Bounty from abroad

In the olden days great exploreres returned home with a haul bursting with tresures and innovations from far off corners of the globe. Anything less and their princely sponsors would have off'd their heads.

Now, despite my best efforts I failed to secure a prince to sponser our trip. However, as a great explorer I feel it is my duty to bring some sorta bounty back. So, without any further delay, here is a list of things Canada could adopt from afar to make for a better country:

1. Community pets. In India there are cows on the streets, at monuments across Asia there are monkeys, and in Thailand there are dogs chilling out and appearing well looked after everywhere. It simply makes things more interesting, except in instances of aggresive contact - yes I'm looking at you head-butting Jaisalmer cow and water bottle stealing Elephanta Island monkeys.

2. Mobile street stalls. In Thailand and Cambodia the hole-in-the-wall restaurant comes to you via a scooter equipped with a sidecar made up of a frying pan, fridge, cutting board, and wash basin. They park, throw down a bit of patio furniture and start rapidly deploying banana pancakes, random meats on a stick, springrolls, bugs and snakes, and pad Thai. It makes for cheap and tasty, sometimes experiemental dinners.

3. Tuktuks, autorickshaws and Motos. These 3 wheeled small-engined open-air carriages can take two passengers with luggage. Way more fun than a regular cab and cheaper too, these things can zip up and down tight lanes on all sides of the road and get you to your destination on the tightest of timelines.

4. Low cost tall bottles of cold beer sold everywhere. Across Asia when the occassion for a cold beer has occured satisfaction has never been too far. It comes in a litre bottle for 1-2 dollars with exotic names like Everest, Tiger and Angkor. With the exception of India's delicious Kingfisher, fine Asian brews are sold everywhere ensuring that no sunset, hike, after dinner chat or latenight wait at a busy bus-stop goes unaccompanied. It just makes good sense.

5. Pyramids. Might be fun to have a set of our own. I know today's public works project are required to have a rovk solid business case, but I think a few pyramids in let's say Saskatchewan might really liven the place up a bit.

6. Trains, not planes. India's rail network is the world's largest employer, serves millions everyday, and connects almost the whole country in a giant web of rail tracks. Traveling by train has got to be better for the environment and it's way more fun than airtravel! Bring on cheaper, more frequant train travel in Canada.

Other than that I think Canada is AOK.


-- Posted from my iPhone

Panic! Beach day? Boo!

"Hey Steph, what do you want to do today?" I say on day two of our five day stopover in Koh Pha Nang - a paradise island in Thailand's gulf coast. To this question there is a long delay and then a cautious reply, "I was kinda thinking nothing." I looked around for an ejection button, but find none.

Four months might seem like a long time, but this is an around the world trip and there's a lot of world to see. I don't have time for doing nothing. I should also point out that Steph has tried this "nothing" line before with varying degrees of success. We've already done nothing in Dahab for 5 days in September and Goa for 6 days in October. I'm starting to think these beachy destinations are a bit of a prison. Suddenly we're emersed in a golden view and hot sun and depending on location, drinking Egyptian Stella, Indian Kingfisher or Thai Chang, and ordering pita and humas, dal and chapatti or pad thai. Hatching an escape plan I reach for the Lonely Planet and chart out an action packed adventure involving scooters, treks, elephants or camels, mountains and snorkels only to be matched by sparse schedules involving nothing more than towels and sand.

So at 8 AM when Steph says "nothing" it really means relaxing, swimming and reading on a sandy sunny beach for 8 hours, with an hour Thai massage thrown in at some point. Before you go and take her side know that for every day we spend on the beach an elephant cries, a scooter collects dust, a path to an undiscovered peak becomes overgrown and a waterfall loses its will to flow. With each passing day more and more of the Lonely Planet's must do activities go undone, Steph looks more rested and I become completely frazzled.

With this frazzle I become delirius and plot my revenge, charting out an intense itinerary for the remaining inland portions of our trip, including exploring bat caves in Thai national parks, early morning and late evening tours of Cambodia's Angkor temple site and a full day walking around Ho Chi Min City.

Steph is a worthy opponent though and I've seen her counter plotting. She's Googled Vietnam beaches and now knows all the spots. That country is shaped like a banana and its eastern border meets the Pacific ocean with a crust of white sand. my only hope is that in Vietnam there are beach huts containing the appropriate response to the Stella, Kingfisher and Chang I've found elsewhere.

I've also taken some time to plan ahead with a super itinerary of jet skis, treks and snorkels for our final week away, which we blocked off a long time ago for a return to the beaches of Thailand's south. I'm sure like the good plans before it'll be blown away and out of its ashes will be more towels and sand.

In all honesty I'm just teasing, the mix of beach and adventure is an unbeatable combination! Besides tropical beaches are the perfect anti-climatization ahead of landing in cold snowy Canada... though I am not sure if that's really the best therapy.

-- Posted from my iPhone

Two days of playing with Elephants

Steph and I signed up for two days of elephant playing at the Thai Elephant Conservation Centre near Chiang Mai (northern Thailand). We had an absolute blast. Like anyone with a brain I've always loved elephants, and this experience just reconfirmed for me just how amazing these animals are.

The course was officially billed as a two-day elephant training exercise, but in actual fact it was two days of supervised playing. We learned a lot though, and had a blast doing it! The best part was getting to know the 28 year old baby, which I rudely renamed "Little Benjamin." Here are a few pictures, which I'm sure appeared above this little blurb as I'm not too sure how to format this blog page!

Learn more at www.changthai.com

Hotel Cult View

We left ourselves short on time for the Nepal part of our trip. And, after spending the best part of two days busing from India's Varanasi to Kathmandu, our time allotment for Nepal was starting to look pretty pathetic. So, after doing the Cole's Notes version of Kathmandu, we fired off to Nagakot to see some mountains and do a bit of nature marching. When Steph, our two Danish friends Rune and Jane, and I settled into our hotel - the place with the best view in town - we had no idea we were signing up for a series of mini-lectures on religious studies and personal enlightenment from the young Nepalese hotel manager we quickly nicknamed Mr. Intensity.

Mr. Intensity had a price we couldn't resist, we each paid just over a dollar for a bed. We can be forgiven for not thinking something was dodgy after paying nearly nothing for a room with a Himalayan view to die for, as the state of the bed, bedding, and washroom was revolting, even condemnable.

We threw our bags down and headed to the kitchen to order some momos to satisfy our dumplings fix. On route to the deserted kitchen and halfway up the building's exterior courtyard stairs we had our first encounter with Mr. Intensity.

"Feel free to enjoy my garden," he said. "Really enjoy my garden," he sternly emphasised, which he followed up by explaining that we were welcome to pick the plants ourselves, and roll our own joints. We all failed to notice the hotel sign advertising a "Reefer Garden" and that the garden outside our room was partially walled in by marijuana plants taller than me.

Now, I don't do drugs in Canada to begin with so I certainly wasn't about to start in Nagarkot, Nepal. Even more so, I wasn't about to do drugs in a hotel run by a guy with such a fiery evangelical persona that I'm sure in 10 years I will be reading an article about Nepalese jungle rebels and there in the accompanying picture will be his face.

Once we reached the deserted restaurant floor we headed straight for the balcony and its awesome view of the world's tallest mountains. Mr. Intensity quickly joined us. Looking out to the vista Steph mistakenly remarked about how beautiful and breathtaking it was. Mr. Intensity's young face turned into that of a war torn drill Sargent and he blurted out our first lesson for the short stay, "I do not believe in beauty, beauty is in the mind." We all stared blankly outwards trying not to seem too impressed by the awesome sight before us.

We ordered 4 dozen fried and boiled momos; the wait was over an hour, which in theory gave us plenty of mountain viewing time. Instead, we got some more lectures and even a page from Mr. Intensity's very own journal. After he brought us drinks he took a smoke from Rune's pack and explained that he doesn't work for money, so cigarettes will suffice as tips. Truth be told us non-smokers at the table rejoiced. However, having paid for a room and seeing prices on the menu we knew this comment was, in fact untrue. Sensing that we were on to him, Mr. Intensity quickly proclaimed, "I never lie, because one day I will die, and I want to end up in the sky." Rune, testing Mr. Intensity's boundaries, jokingly noted that maybe they would cross paths in the after world as Rune heads downwards - the only joke that registered a positive response from our host. Perhaps that's because discussion of Rune's upcoming 30 day trek had allowed Mr. Intensity to share with us just how many times he had done that circuit and hiked to Everest Base camp, I think half a dozen times each, and sometimes in sandals.

Some one among us mistakenly asked for directions for the look out tower - and supposed best, most beautiful view in town. 30 minutes later Mr. Intensity returned with a hand drawn map on a page torn from a notebook. He handed us the map, suggested we follow it and then asked us to make sure we return the page, as it had some "words" on it. Great, he tore a page from his journal and drew on the back. How could we not read it? We treated ourselves to his commentary on the role of confusion in making life decisions that began something like, "In my 25 years on this earth..."

We followed his map without any difficulty and returned to the hotel a few hours later well walked and ready for dinner. "Welcome home" proclaimed Mr. Intensity. There were other guests, things were ok, our fiery host will be busy, we would survive the night, we could relax without the mumbojumbo. Then I open my big mouth, "is your special garden open?" I ask. I assumed not, as it was dark and cold out. He replied of course it was, and that I was welcome to "help myself." "No thanks, not interested, only joking," I said.

Just then the Himalayans could have fallen into the valley and I wouldn't have noticed. "You do not joke about the smoke." His stern drill Sargent face on full assault blurted out. Even though this runs contrary to every movie Ive ever seen on the subject, I accepted another simple rhythm for an important lesson - marijuana, the drug that makes you laugh, is no laughing matter. I looked up to his angry face from my lowly chair and said I was sorry.

After we ordered some dinner the power cut out. Mr. Intensity came over to let us know that there was nothing to worry about, he works very hard, our food will come in time. Again, I speak, "But isn't it hard to see in the dark?" Am I secretly asking for more cheese? He replies, "Even people with eyes can't see sometimes."

Great. I think I get what he was getting at, but I wasn't about to ask for clarification. I guess I was just worried the cook might pour boiling water all over his feet.

But -- Not to worry! When my noodles arrived they were stuck together in one crunchy clump. I did, admittedly, laugh a bit. Perched on a bar stool from across the room Mr. Intensity must have noticed. A few minutes later he was with us again. "How is the food?" His face was sad. "You must tell me if it is not good." A soft side? Nope. "If it is not good then I will cook it all over again and fire the chef - good service is my focus.". Talk of firing the chef and the importance of hard work continued for another couple minutes, but no one was getting fired on my account so I repeatedly reassured him of the food's gourmet quality.

I guess the cook gets at least another night, though he might want to figure out how to get the crunch out of the noodles if he wants more time with Hotel Cult View. I can forgive it, given the lack of power, but I'm not sure if Mr. Intensity can.

We ordered a second round of Everests (Nepalese beer, the powerful name kinda makes Canada's Kokanee brand seem a bit pathetic). They were served to us by a new, much gentler face, a fellow we quickly and very appropriately nicknamed Mr. Happy.

Mr. Happy and I hit it off right away. At least I think we did. He didn't know much English, but from what I could gather he was actively learning. So, he didn't say much, but he kept smiling, and standing next to me. I assume we did something right because he insisted we have our picture taken with him the next morning using my camera - he wanted us to remember him.

We reached the end of available conversation due to our language barrier, but Mr. Happy wanted more. He retrieved Nepalese for Visitors from the bookcase and handed it to me. Quite rightly he wanted me to learn some Nepalese, I am after all in Nepal. I didn't have the heart to tell him about my terrible track record when it came to learning second languages; French, German and Mandarin courses completed, retention level nil. Anyway, I did turn the pages and take the opportunity to find the Nepalese words for "please," "thank you," "afraid," "fight" and "help"; thinking the last three may be useful if we find ourselves captives of Mr. Intensity.

Just as the kind Mr. Happy was about to tell us he was Buddhist for the third time Mr. Intensity reappeared and informed us that he was teaching Mr. Happy, and then made a downward motion with his right hand while explaining that he was mentoring our new friend. Mr. Intensity then made it clear to us that he was neither Buddhist nor Hindu, nor any other religion; he had his own formula. But we weren't about to stick around to find out more about that. So, as Rune would say, I "climbed to the peak" of my second Everest and headed for early bed.

One of the main reasons we stayed at Hotel Cult View was to get up and enjoy a nice cup of coffee with the sun rise. However, when 6 AM rolled around the visibility was near zero. Steph and Jane got up anyway with the hope that they could catch a glimpse of the rise between the clouds; they didn't. They should be commended for this as they braved two more hours with Mr. Intensity than Rune or I did.

It just so happened that by the time Rune and I arrived it was time for prayer. Instead of lighting a couple incense Mr. Happy and Mr. Intensity set off a few smoke signals that sent the message that they had no idea what they were doing. The whole dining room was smoked out. I asked what was going on and Mr. Happy coughed out the word praying. I was about to as well, but for my life. Steph and Jane felt their way to the balcony, but Rune and I stuck it out. We knew that our time at Hotel Cult View was coming to an end and having survived the night didn't want to miss a second!

"Thank heavens the smoke was clearing," someone said. From a distance, "there is no heaven, it's in here," Mr. Intensity said while coughing and pointing to his head.

Shortly after the air cleared Mr. Intensity arrived at our table with more coffee. Rune must have said something that clicked because Mr. Intensity looked at Rune deeply and said that Rune could become the richest man in Nepal, which he followed with a "I've got something in my heart and I know you do too."

Now, I gotta say I was a bit jealous. What about my heart? Sorry about the garden joke and laughing at my crunchy noodles. Give me another chance, I'll cut back on the sarcasm, anything.

Anyway, we left Hotel Cult View with another point against staying in budget accommodation: sometimes it's just weird.