Jun 2006

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

G'day from Mission Beach, Australia. Weather's taken a bit of a turn for the worse as I haven't seen the sun in an entire week! Tomorrow, I depart for Cairns, my last stop in Australia. Terrible.
Right now, I'm travelling with two Italians: Marco and Alessandro. I've been travelling with Alex for a week now, and we met up w/ Marco a couple days ago. They're both real good guys, but a bit of opposites. Alex likes the fine things in life. He's the only backpacker I've met w/ a Rolex (and not the fake kind Greg gave me when he was in DC) and everything to him is broken into 2 categories: beautiful and not beautiful. Marco's more laid back. They're good company, and I've definitely been eating well since travelling with them. Last night we had a little Bruscetta and pasta. We all have our responsibilities cooking. I usually boil the water while they work on making the pasta sauce. We get along well, with the sole argument arising last night when the two Italinas were trying to decide on a wine for dinner (we compromised and bought both). I'll travel w/ them all the way to Cairns, where we'll watch the USA vs Italy game together, and maybe this time the US will actually try.
My Whitsunday trip was OK. We had had good weather up until then, but it was rainy/cloudy pretty much the entire time we were sailing. Luckily, we stayed on South Molle Island so we weren't constantly rocking on the waves, but the scenery and sailing weren't as good as they could've been. I snorkeled twice, and the water wasn't too cold, but the visibilty was poor due to clouds and wind churning up sand. I still was able to see some nice fish and coral, though. Hopefully, the weather will be better up in Cairns, and I will see more there. Also, they did allow alcohol on board the boat, so the people who chose to have a couple cocktails before the sea got rough were bending over the side saying hello to Uncle Raaalph.
From the Whitsundays, we took a bus up to Townsville and immediately caught the ferry to Magnetic Island, since Townsville isn't much. Magnetic Island was nice. It has wild koalas and wallabies (only saw the latter), and we rented a car and drove around the island seeing the sights. It was really scenic when the sun was out, but that didn't happen too often. Our hostel was great: right on the beach, with a bigscreen to watch the soccer. That's where I saw US get destroyed. The Italians cant stop laughing everytime I mention the words "US" and "soccer" in the same sentence.
Well, I'm getting the bus up to Cairns this afternoon. Just got word from Valerie that she is there as well, so it looks like we'll be able to meet up for a cheeky pint or two at the token Irish bar!
Hope everyone is doing well. When is the trip to Ireland?

Cheers,
James

Greetings from Airlie beach. I leave in an hour for my 3day/2night sail around the Whitsunday Islands. I had the option to either sleep in a resort on the island or on the boat, and I was tempted to pick the boat, but certain memories of people smoking out the bathroom on the Pilgrim Soul led me to choose the resort on South Molle Island. The trip should be excellent if the weather improves. Right now, it's overcast.
My Fraser Island trip was very good. My group worked out pretty well. There were 11 of us total: 7 English, 3 Irish and me. Overall, we got along well, although there was this firecracker, Danny, who would always sprint into the lakes and splash everyone and just talk real loud and constantly to the point where other groups didn't like him. The scenery on the island was great. There were lakes in the middle of nowhere, the sand was so fine it was almost like dust, and my favourite part, the champagne rocks, which is pretty much the only part of the island where you can get into the ocean (the rest has bad rips and is shark infested). The champagne rocks basically look like a thermal pool, and the water fills up the natural holes in the rocks during high tide. But, there's a barrier of rocks, so the waves hit the rocks and splash over onto you in the pool. There's also a look out at Indian head where you can see sharks/dolphins etc, but all we saw was a big stingray. From Fraser, I caught a bus up to Airlie beach.
World Cup fever is really brewing down here. Yesterday was the swedish independence day, so all the Swedes were decked out in yellow and blue and enjoying themselves and having some good craic at the token Irish bar, Paddy's Shenanigans. All the English are really looking forward to the World Cup, and I myself am really hoping the US fares well so I can cheer them on. PLus, it will really annoy the people who already dislike the US.
Lastly, I want to give a big "Tanks" to all those who contributed to the "James'23rd birthday fund", which was held a month early this year. Cheers.

James