South Pacific Adventure

Hello my friend. Where you from? Kentucky? Oh! Fried Chicken!!
That conversation is one thing I won't miss when I'm home.
Well, I'm back in Bangkok now. The rest of the dive course went great. We were in the pool the second day practicing breathing with our regulators, and learning skills etc that would make us more comfortable when we did our actual dives in the ocean. And make no mistake, this was a pool not an "ool" as everyone put their "p" in it. Some more discretely than others. The pool is also where you weed out some of the softies. An Irish lass from my group and a Canadian from another group got a bit claustrophobic and nervous breathing through the hose and practicing taking the goggles off underwater so they dropped out of the course. I took to it pretty easily. As long as you just relax, don't get tense and panic, you'll be fine. The third day we went out and did two actual dives. The first one was to about 14 metres and the second to about 10 (always do the deeper dives first). It was a cloudy day and was actually storming as we were underwater for the second dive. Add that to the fact that one guy (bloody English!!) took forever equalize properly (pop your ears during the descent) and the first two dives were ok. We practiced some more skills on the bottom and tried to maintain buoyancy as we swam. The last day, though, was when we took off the kiddie gloves and saw some action. It was a perfect day for diving w/ visibilty around 20 metres. We did 2 dives to 18 metres and I saw a couple white tipped reef sharks, a sting ray, an eel, great coral and lots of ther fish. Couldn't have asked for better. Even bought the DVD of the dive to show my true tourist colors and to have a memento. The last night, the whole grouped celebrated our Open Water PADI certification, and the next morning, I was on the morning ferry back to Bangkok, where I leave for the airport in 10 bleeping minutes.
What a trip it has been. No regrets at all about the places I visited or the length of time I spent in them. In fact,I would have liked longer. But all good tihngs must come to an end. I read the message board for UL Med School, and the first post was from this guy and it was titled: "Once a Cardinal, always a Cardinal". So, I think I'll be buying numerous Powerball tix when I get back to see if I can't get out.
All right. That's it for now. I'll talk to all y'all back stateside. Thanks for all the encouragement and suppport.

James

Greetings from Koh Tao, from a 23 year old Kentuckian. I want to thank all those who took the time to email: Mom, Dad and Babs. Mike and Ed, I guess yours got lost in cyberspace. Grellan and Niall: a day late and a dollar short was barely acceptable.
Koh Phangan was my first stop from Bangkok, where I celebrated the big 2-3. The stomach was a bit dodgy from some bad chicken, but tanks to some Levaquin, I got over it. Foley and Burn, the two Irish lads I met up with, helped me share in a bit of craic. The next night, I caught the bus to Koh Phnagan, which is a nice island off the east coast of southern Thailand. It's very well known for its full moon celebrations, which, as the name suggests, happen every full moon. Pretty much every visitor young and old revolve their travel plans around this event, so you meet a lot of people here who you have met earlier in your travels, which can be a good or a bad thing. I booked this nice villa which is right on the beach and would be better if the ocean came in closer, but that only happens late at night when the tide is in. As for the full moon celebration, it's an all night event on the beach of Haad rin. Basically people of every nationality are present, and there are crazy fire shows, loud music and thousands of people crouding the beach. Never seen anything like it. My only wish was that the weather had been better. There was some sun in the AM, but it usually clouded over in the afternoon. All in all, it was a good place and I met good people.
Now I find myself in Koh Tao, another island about an hour ferry from Koh Phangan. Koh Tao's big attraction is its scuba diving courses. I've booked a four day course that will give me my PADI certification, which clears me to dive up to 18 metres on my own. Today was the first day, and we spent it in a room watching videos and learning about technique, breathing, signals, safety etc. All the equipment and facilites here are great, so there's no worrying about dodgy gauges or tanks or anything. Tomorrow I'l get up early and we'll go into the pool and practice being underwater with the tanks on and doing other things that will help us when we actualy go into the water the following day. The dives are supposed to be great with good visibility and nice coral and marine life, so I'm hoping for sunny days and some god times.
Hope al is well in Denver, Boston, NYC and the Ville.

Cheers,
James

Sabaay di from Vientiane, Laos. I've been here a day and tonight I take the night train back to Bangkok, where I'll celebrate my birthday (23, if you're counting. and yes, donations are still accepted). I want to do it up in style in a four star hotel, but I'm meeting up w/ 2 lads from Galway and they're scraping nickels together at this point. So, i see a "tree" dollar guest house in my future.
Laos has been great. I took the slow boat from the Thai/Laos border down to the town of Luang Prabang. The slow boat is this long, narrow boat that's probable 70 ft long and 9 ft wide. It has cushioned seats up front (1st class), fold out wooden chairs behind them (2nd clas), then floor space (third class) and finally the engine room (steerage). Seating is on a first come/first served basis, and the first day I found myslef in 2nd class with ample leg room, sitting next to this lad from Wales. The next day, I wasnt so lucky. Got to the boat late and found myself in steerage sitting literally right behind this diesel engine with an almost deafening roar. Thankfully, this guy next to me had a spare pair of earplugs, so I was able to drown out some of the noise. After adjusting to the noise, I tried to read a bit, and then settled on sitting out the window and taking in the view. All in all, not bad. The slow boat cruised down the Mekong river at a gentle pace, and lasted two 7 hour days. We stopped at this tiny place, Pak Beng for the first night to refuel and stay the night. Overall, I really enjoyed the boat ride. They served refreshments on board, the scenery was nice: mud brown river with lush vegetation on the mountains surrounding us. Plus, we had some good craic. I met a good group of people on the boat, and I've traveled with them the rest of the way down Laos. In all, there's 2 Dutch girls, a Swedish girl, 2 Americans, and 4 English blokes.
Luang Prabang was a nice town, but not exactly what I expected from the glowing review it got in my guide book. I visited the former royal palace there, and biked around town seeing the various temples and such. LP, like Thailand and everywhere else I've been has been very humid. You sweat when you sit, and you're dripping if you have to walk long distances with a bag on you back. So, I opt for the tuk tuk (motorbike taxis) everywhere I go.
From LP, I caught a 8 hr bus (advertised as 5) to Vang Vien. The trip was longer because 1) you can't hardly believe a word anyone says and 2) the bus got a flat tire. About the dishonesty, 99.99% of people in the tourism industry lie to you. Whether it's about prices, quality, duration, amenities or whatever you gotta take it worth a grain of salt. Unfortunately, it took me a couple days to figure this out. So, if they ever made a National Lampoon's SE Asian Vacation movie, I could definitely play the part of Clark Griswald. But to my own defense, this is SE Asia. I mean Laos doesn't even have foreign ATM's, so you don't want to get assume it's gonna be like home.
Anyway, Vang Vien had nice scenery to the west, where there were large mountains that pierced the clouds. The streets and the buildings in the town, however, weren't as picturesque. A lot of rubble in the strrets and worn down buildings. VV's best attraction is the tubing, where they drop you off 6K north of town and have you float down the river, and stop at these places along the river where locals sell refreshments etc and there are rope swings along the way. I did it twice, and they were two relaxing days.
Instead of getting the bus to Vientiane some of us decided to kayak part of the way and get a tuk tuk for the second part. We were two to a kayak, and it was a nice float down the river through some grade 2 rapids. Weather wasn't the best, as a thunder storm came through. And when one of the Dutch girls asked about if anyone's died from the thunder, the guide quickly replied " no no... but from the lightning, yes". And he wasn't kidding or even fazed. So, with that, we hightailed to the end. The storm didn't last long, but when it rains here, it pours, and we were a little soggy for the journey home.
Vientiane isn't much, although it does offer the only international ATM's in the entire country. I had to bring in foreign currency and exchange it over as my ATM card doesnt work here. Laos has a crazy exchange rate (10,000 kip=1USD), so it was a bit strange walking around with a mil in my pocket, but I got used to it.
Sorry, for the delay in blogs, but I hope Ireland has been great and the lads have been firing at the sticks. Niall, congrats once again.

Cheers,
Jaimito

Hello from Chang Mai, a city of 1.5 million in Northern Thailand. Chang Mai was/is a large trading post for Northern Thailand. It features a lot of Buddhist temples, which are slightly different than the ones in Bangkok due to the Burmese influence. Chang Mai is also popular because it offers treks into the Thai jungle. I opted to go on a 3 day/2 night trek, which was great. The first day started with a 1.5 hr elephant ride. Yep, I was riding elephants. How it works is they put this little bench seat that holds 2 people on top of numerous mats on top of the elephant's back. The elephants are somewhere around 25 yrs old, and then you have a Thai boy, around 15-20 sitting on the neck and guiding the elephant. The riding was fun, and I even threw out "You cheat, Docta Jones" twice, but it was a stick 'em both times as no one got the joke. As you ride around, you stop at these huts and they sell you bananas to feed your elephant. I named my elephant Babaar, and hooked him up with two bunches of bananas for giving us (there was a girl from California with me) a smooth ride. After the ride, we hiked for several hours to this waterfall, where we had a welcome dip since it was so humid.
About the humidity, it's been humid everywhere so far and you realy give your sweat glands a workout. Now, I have no problem with sweating, and I could even stand to lose a couple pounds after Oz, BUT, the level of B.O. on the tour buses and especially from the English guys on the hike is unreal. I had to stay upwind of those two blokes the entire time, otherwise I would have passed out. The cure of course would be for them to discover the brilliance of roll-on deoderant, but apparantly that phenomenon is found only among Americans.
Back to the trek. We stayed at night in these small little villages, inhabited by Thais, who speak their own language and were Christian as opposed to Buddhist. The people were very friendly, and some of them knew a little bit of English. The next day we did more hiking, swam in more waterfalls, and stayed in a different village. The scenery was very nice, as was the food, which was mainly curry and noodles. The last day, I was introduced to the Thai shower, which isn't to be confused with the Italian and Irish showers which Grellan has mastered. The Thai shower involves bringing your own soap and shampoo and using the waterfall as the showerhead. Quite nice. To finish up the trip, we did bamboo rafting. The raft was made up of about 6-8 bamboo poles tied together. There was the guide in the front with a pole, which is used to steer and speed up the raft, a girl sitting in the middle for a free ride, and then me and my pole in the back, pretending to paddle only when the guide turned around to see why we were going so slow. The trip lasted about an hour, then we were brought back into town. All in all a great experience.
So, tomorrow I head off to the Thailand/Laos border, where I will catch a slow boat into Luang Prabang. I have my visas and everything in order, and am looking forward to Laos from all the good things I've heard from travellers, especially James C.
Finally, about Bangkok. It's huge, humid, there's tons of people hustlin' trying to get you to do this and that, it's pretty dirty (they might want to at least think about garbage cans) and it's kind of smelly as well. But, with all that said, I still liked it. Wouldn't want to live there, but it's pretty convenient having all these shops, tourism agencies, food vendors etc at every turn. Oh yeah, and it's really cheap. You know you're in BKK, when the restaurant in your guest house is playing the Da Vinci Code. With that said, if anyone needs any CD's, DVD's, Adidos or anything else let me know. I fly out of BKK and can pick some things up.
Well, that's it for now.
Say hello, to everyone in Ireland.

James

G'day from Cairns. I'm about to say goodbye to the southern cross and welcome the northern star once again. I catch a flight to Sydney in a couple hours and then go on to Bangkok, and I should arrive at 6:30 the morning of the 19th. I'll stay in Bangkok for a couple days, then head up north into Laos, before going down to the islands off the southern coast of Thailand.
As you can guess from the title of the blog, I finally did a skydive. I did it in Mission beach, which is about 150 km south of Cairns. I finally got a break in the weather, and I made the tandem jump from 14,000 ft. I gotta say it was the best thing I've done so far. There were four people in my jump, and I was the first to jump. So, I was sitting right next to the door, which was glass so I could see us climbing higher and higher in the sky. When we finally reached 14,000 ft, the green light went on, the door opened, my guide and I slid to the edge of the door, with my legs dangling outside. I crossed my arms over my chest, leaned my head back, and the guide pushed us out of the plane and we instantly fell like a bowling ball. I think the best part are the first two seconds as you feel yourself being pulled to the ground at tremendous speed. The people who jumped after me said they got real nervous after they saw me go because you fall away so fast it seemed like I was sucked out by a vacuum. The freefall lasted about 60 seconds, and we landed on the beach, literally right in front of my hostel. So, when I landed, I unhooked from the harness, signed off to the camera (I got a DVD of the jump), crossed the street, picked up my bags and hopped on the bus to collect my DVD and head up north to Cairns. Very James Bond.
Cairns is an OK city with a pretty thriving nightlife. I met up with Valerie last night at P.J. O'Brien's to watch the rugby match between NZ and Ireland. Ireland lost a close match, but the last two tries NZ scored were a wee bit dodgy since it appeared the ball was dropped both times before crossing the touch line. Anyway, Val pointed out one of Uncle Des' former students who is now one of Ireland's best players. Legend has it, Des was short of players, saw this tall lad in the hall, asked him if he played Rugby and got him to start playing again. Then, with the proper coaching he's one of their best players. Val and I hung out til around 12, when she was catching a night bus down to Airlie beach.
The weather here continued to be overcast. I went on a daytrip to snorkel the Barrier Reef, but the visibility and colors weren't as good as they could have been. But, I hear there are excellent coral reefs in Thailand, so hopefully I will see more there.
Last night, Alessandro and I caught the USA/Italy match. Overall, a pretty crazy match, and I about broke a table when Beasley's goal was disallowed. But, the US played much better, and I was content with the draw. The best soccer story I've heard so far came from Tom, this English guy I met. He said one of his mates converts his living room into a stadium-like atmosphere for the games. There are chairs up front, and if you want a seat, you have to sit down and you have to be fully clothed. The back of the room is converted into an area reserved for the hooligans. In that area, everyone is shirtless, bangging pots together, and doing sing songs the entire game. He said there always some people who start off in the chairs, but by halftime, everyone is crammed in the back, bangin pots and making a lot of ruckus. The way he told it, just makes me laugh thinking about it.
Well, that's it for now. I'm not sure how often the blogs will keep up in SE Asia, especially Laos, but I'll try my best to keep everyone informed.
Enjoy Ireland. (Did anyone know that Grellan once shot an 87 at Lahinch??)

Cheers,
James