We got robbed in Sihanoukville!

From our journals dated May 23rd through May 30th

After a few weeks chilling in Phnom Phen, we headed out to the beach town of Sihanoukville for a few days of further relaxation. Not only is this a very popular stop for tourists (after the two main pitstops of Siem Reap and Phnom Phen are made, a handful of smaller places like Battambang, Kratie and Sihanoukville pick up the backpacker scraps), it is also where city-dwelling Cambodians come to escape the noise and pollution. We were anxious to see the beach again.

By the time we arrived in Sihanoukville, we had already been sold off to a guesthouse partnered with Smile Guesthouse in Phnom Penh. Walking off the bus, we saw a moto driver holding a sign with our names. He and another driver would be taking us to Lovely Guesthouse. The complex was a few blocks off the beach, but only a few minutes walk away. Our room had skyrocketed to $5 a night, so we were expecting the amenities and services to at least double. The place was decent, but boring. Our room was huge, the ceiling as tall as a airplane hanger, creating eerie echoes as we talked and the bright fluorescent lighting raised our blood pressure...we would scream "Turn off the spot light please!" The vaulted volume of the room accommodated a large variety of animals: crickets, geckos, frogs, roaches, and mosquitoes. We welcomed the geckos inside because they have a endless appetite for mosquitoes and roaches, but they must have been on holiday too because the collection of species seemed to grow each day. Each day we would walk the long dirt road that will soon be a shiny new paved dual lane road with median sidewalk. But its current state was dusty, uneven and littered with lazy cows.


We decided to move into a bungalow guesthouse on the beach. That day in Sihanoukville we ate lunch at "Same Same But Different" restaurant/bar/guesthouse, whose name pokes fun at the endless homogeny of Cambodia's tourist industry. This is a philosophy that extends throughout Southeast Asia. We had first come across the Same Same concept in Bangkok, seeing several westerners wearing a t-shirt with "Same Same" on the front and "But Different" on the back.
The main man running SSBD was Polo, and I'm sure that isn't his real name, but we've learned to accept their westernized titles without objection because their real names can only last in our short term memories long enough to mimic their pronunciation once. Polo was super cool, and confident. Each and every question we posed was answered with "Why the hell not?" It was a philosophy I liked very much.

For the same $5 a night price tag, we now had a cozy little room right on the beach. We were happy as we threw down our backpacks, turned on the fan, and took a quick rest on the bed. After a five minute refresher, Rebecca threw her bag on the bed, opened it, grabbed her toiletry bag, opened it, and two full-sized roaches jumped out. Rebecca has psychic abilities when it comes to attacking exoskeletons, and she jumped back before they could crawl on her. I was in charge of action so I jumped on the bed and grabbed both roaches with my hands, jumped up shaking them like peanuts in my closed palm and screamed at Bec to open the door. In the confusion I let one escape out of my clutched fist, much to Bec's horror. Poor Bec, she's a tough chick when it comes to most things, but she'll admit she can't deal with the roaches, she'd rather stare down a rat or a snake, but she's been challenged by the creepy insects our entire trip. We then spent the rest of the day discussing techniques to roach proof our bed so that they don't crawl into our ears or mouth while we're sleeping. We had been warned that Sihanoukville was full of "animals."

Less than a week before we arrived a monsoon originating in China had battered the beach town. Several bungalows were damaged and one had completely collapsed, leaving a large rectangular thatched roof lying on the beach like a huge brown toupee. These bungalows, though basic and simply constructed, are easily fixed and quite resolute. We were told the bungalow lying in ruin will be raised up in a single evening. It's still a scary thought that people live under these simple structures and have to brave such storms with nothing much else to protect them.

Our new bungalow was situated at the end of Serendipity beach which is a small section south of Ocheatel beach which in turn cascades slowly into Otres beach streaming off into the horizon. The long concave beachfront is all basically the same (same same, remember?) with the divisions marked by lack of development and kids endlessly selling fruit and bracelets. The warm ocean water was easygoing. Small friendly waves lapped up on the sand. It was very close to paradise, with lazy tourists drinking beers and smoking cigarettes sitting comfortably outside a long line of undifferentiated bungalows. The water was warm, the food was good, the atmosphere was friendly, but something was amiss. There were blue pipes running from each building into the water, and each afternoon around 5:30pm, a horrible and mysterious gush of muddy brown water ran off from the dirt road straight into the water. It would create a pulsing brown blob of pollution that slowly grew in radius, swallowing tourists bobbing in the water and small gangs of local kids too oblivious to care. The sand was fine and light, and from a distance almost appeared to be white. But upon closer inspection, we found it to be completely saturated with debris, some from tourists, some from the poor state of Cambodia. Cigarettes, plastic bags, condoms, and the occasional syringe deterred us from wanting to layout and catch some rays. We spent most of our time sitting in bamboo chairs, under the shade of our guesthouse, eating $2 meals and drinking happy hour beers.

When I was swimming I saw some tourists snorkeling around in the water, near the rocks by our guesthouse. I asked them what they were seeing "Oh, a rock or two, and some fish." I asked how many fish and what kind, they said "It was two fish, two!" Moments later, I noticed a local man with snorkeling gear armed with a spear gun heading into the same waters looking to get those two fish. Each day, as we chilled out, getting attacked by the most cunning of beach vendors, local kids would spread out a fishing net through the rocks outside our guesthouse and perform a dragnet by throwing large rocks and making big splashes to scare the fish into the net. This would go on for hours.


Happy hour travels the beach town like the time zones traverse continents. There's a happyhour somewhere, almost guaranteed. There's a lunchtime happy hour, afternoon, evening, and nighttime specials to be had. It helps distribute the tourists and their dollars around the city and works quite well. We enjoyed 25 cent beers at noon, then 50 cent beers at 7pm, then 2-for-1 whiskey and cokes at 9pm. It was an easy living.

The child vendors were relentless. They were selling many things, bracelets, fruit, books, barbeque lobsters...but mainly bracelets. They used mafia extortion and coercion techniques, and embarrassingly, it worked on us. These kids have been working the strip for years and over those years have heard every lame excuse in the book. There's nothing you can say that they haven't heard and have a comeback for. They wouldn't take no for an answer. Their English is very good and their pretty faces, and ragged clothes make them unbelievably adorable. They are masters of emotion and manipulation. In fact, the menu at Eden bar, next door to us, has a warning "Don't get stressed if a fruit kid becomes emotional, it is part of their sales ploy." These kids would get emotional, all the time. They would play good cop/bad cop. They would befriend Rebecca in her infinite kindness and scowl at me and my infinite tight-assness. They would soak you in compliments or sometimes cut you with pointed criticisms and insults. They would trick you into making promises you couldn't keep. They used pinky swears to commit you into the family. They would come back tomorrow and they would never forget your face, your name, or your promise. They were masters of tic-tac-toe and would lure sucker tourists into a hopeless gamble in the sand. The little kids would always win and make you buy a bracelet when you lost. One girl figured out our names and began making a bracelet against our wishes. Once the bracelet was made, we felt helpless and paid her a dollar for it. R Heart R!

We did have some fun in the water, regardless of the banditry and pollution. I swam in the shallow waters up next to a wooden fishing boat that was being used by a gang of small boys for jumping off and doing flips. Once I got close enough, they abandoned the boat and used me for a diving board. One by one they demanded that I let them climb on me and toss them into the water. It was fun at first, but after the 10th kid, they started getting overly excited and a bit violent. One kid wrapped his legs around my neck and tried some sort of backflip. It was basically a full nelson on my face, choking me. I had to fight back so I started tossing the kids off, much to their enjoyment. The next day it happened again. The gang of kids swarmed me as soon as I got into the water yelling "Remember me? Remember me?" Due to the saturation of kids trying to make a buck off the tourists, they all need and want to be remembered.

Each night it seemed, were people spinning fire poi on the beach. Some western kids working at Eden next door were pretty good, and on Friday nights way at the other end, Utopia has another decent collection of fire spinners. The main guy at Eden had some crazy poi with 3 foot long wicks that made a huge arc of fire as he spun them. His skills were good, but not polished into a routine, so it was more of a casual performance amongst friends. Then a steady stream of other spinners came out throughout the night showing off their skills and advancing drunkeness. One girl, cheerily drunk, began spinning wildly. She was good, but her ambition outweighed her balance and soon she found herself in an endless 360 degree spin, careening closer and closer to the water. Then her tube top slipped and her boob popped out. Everyone began cheering for her as she kept going...refusing to let a floppy nipple destroy her dreams of being a superstar.

One night, several hours before the fire would be lit, Rebecca was spinning her fuzzy yellow poi balls, trying to polish up after a month of inactivity. Out of nowhere a wide eyed and pepped up English girl name Emily jumped on us and scared us into submission. She was obviously on drugs and really wanted to play with Bec's balls. So we let her spin and she was surprisingly good, her blind ambition and apparent inebriation made her flow wild and entertaining, if a bit dangerous. She was traveling with two other English guys, though they had only met a few weeks back in Kho Pa Ngang, Thailand. The stories of that place and how they all met blew out minds. Southeast Asia is one of the cheapest places on earth to travel. In Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam you can survive on much less than $10 a day...infact it's considered "hard" to spend much more than that, unless you're buying a bunch of crap to take home which no backpacker is. These guys had proceeded to spend over $2000 British pounds in a month, each, for three months. That is a monumental feat needless to say.

Kho Pa Ngang is home of the Full Moon Parties in Thailand where the biggest beach raves happen once a month and insane quantities of narcotics, alcohol, and various other drugs are taken...even more insane when you figure that Thailand has one of the most strict drug laws in the world. If these parties were policed like the rest of the country, literally thousands of westerners would be executed each and every month. It's quite an anomaly of a place. It's an island that could have had a connecting road completed over a decade ago, but local merchants have thus far prevented it as to keep the unannounced patrols of police to an absolute minimum. Some bars openly deal in ecstasy and marijuana.

So these three told harrowing stories of drug binges and how their bungalow was the established spot to be for three months straight. Pete said he did so many pills, he turned white. Steve talked about saving Emily from imminent death several times. She had damn near severed her foot on a piece of glass, walking home on a dangling clump of meat, she woke being nursed up in a strange woman's hut. They also told of a Swedish girl, so completely unaware of her surroundings, she broke into their bungalow, stripped fully nude, jumped into bed and violently refused to leave when she was told that it wasn't her room. All these stories were told with a giggle and grin, just like we used to tell of harrowing nights of total blackouts, car rides, fist fights and Taco Bell. Arguably, there's another level of danger when you're in another country, but they couldn't be bothered.

One day, some of the employees at Same Same But Different were eating eggs for lunch, so I took a closer look, always interested in what the locals are eating. They had chipped off the tip of the shell and were digging in with a spoon, so I assumed it was a half-boiled egg of some sort. What I saw horrified me. They were eating dove eggs, but the bird was allowed to fully develop, only days away from hatching out of the shell, it was boiled and served. The guys were loving it and severed each piece of feather covered anatomy with a spoon, announced the body part to me, saying how good it was and slurped it down. The dove neck made them happy, as did the dove wing. I take pride in trying anything of local delicacy, but this one was too much for me. I had to pass, but I've been thinking about it ever since.

A local delicacy I have enjoyed a few times has been the Hot Bun. For 1000 Riel, about 25 cents, I got a white doughy ball of random goodness. It's an Asian hot dog, of sorts, filled with a random assortment of cabbage, pork pieces and a thick slice of boiled egg. The dough reminds me of an uncooked dinner roll from Thanksgiving dinner, steamed into oblivion to ensure whatever's inside been rendered benign. Rebecca left me by myself during this feast, me and my bad breath.

For dinner we went to Te Le Hong close to downtown...where the locals eat, by recommendation of our moped driver. It was damn tasty and the beer was definitely cheap. We had crabs with ginger and peppers, and grilled shrimp, extremely messy but delicious. As we cracked our crustaceans and slurped down 50 cent Beer Laos, we noticed that the servers were clearing our plates, but not our beer glasses. So began a small pile of beer mugs in the middle of our table as we discussed what we should do tomorrow.

Behind us, closer to the street, were two locals with an entire table filled with glasses. They were just a few rounds away from having a double-decker bar tab. They finally called it quits, paid their bill, and stumbled into the parking lot. One guy walked home, so we sat transfixed on the other guy. He hopped onto his moped, almost falling over trying to get the kickstand up, struggled with the key for a few moments, then painfully proceeded to turn the bike around to face the street. At this point we noticed that several people had stopped to watch. They weren't horrified, just curious and amused. How much damage could a drunk mopeder cause anyway? He slowly and cautiously drove off, keeping well to the right...he was a seasoned drunk driver and I'm sure he made it home just fine.

We enjoyed several dinners at a restaurant owned and operated by westerners, called Mic and Craig's. The first night was fajitas, and although they weren't authentic, they were yummy. The second night was a barbeque platter of steak, ribs and chicken. By the third night we had attained "regular" status and negotiated another barbeque plate, but this time just straight ribs...three succulent racks of pork ribs each and plenty of happy hour Beer Laos. Mic and Craig's had a decent pool table, so we would spend a few hours knocking around the balls. Rebecca had matured a lot as a pool player by now and was just as likely to sink her shot as I was, which wasn't very likely.

Victory Beach was the original tourist hotspot of Sihanoukville, but is now completely dedicated to the "Sexpat." The stereotypical sexpat is an overweight retired westerner looking for love in all the young faces. The perversion of the beach sexcapades has turned off all the backpacker crowd and anyone else not juiced up on Viagra and a pension. The day we cruised by on our moped all we saw were chubby old white men, so we kept cruising.

Renting a moped was dangerously simple. I mentioned to Polo my interest in organ donation and ten minutes later there was a revved up moped waiting in the driveway. I handed over my passport, signed a simple form stating "You're responsible for the bike if it explodes, even if you're dead, good luck!" and we were off. I crashed it before I could even get off the premises, trying to take it up a steep rock-clustered dirt driveway, to the amusement of many locals. A kid from the guesthouse offered to take it to the top of the hill for me, but I had to take it down the back alley which was dangerous even to walk on. It was slightly downhill, with several rocky drop offs...a semi-safe path was laid out over a maze of broken off pieces of cement, though it would take several runs to find the sweet spot. My life flashed before me each time I traveled this thirty meter stretch of death.

Rebecca was highly disturbed by my warm up run. The first gear was touchy so I kept leaping forward, which then made me favor the right side where my hand was gripping the throttle, careening me towards packs of locals ready to bail out and let me crash into their wooden shack. I was finally able to coax her onto the back, promising I would take it slow. I have to admit I was scared, well at least highly aware of my lethal surroundings.

It was Sunday, and the roads had less traffic than normal, but still plenty to make every intersection as fast and overwhelming as an asteroid belt. Mopeds, trucks, cows, rocks, and bikes were undulating around us...but the locals were keen to give us a little more room than normal. Once we got through the city center and were on the long road north to Victory Beach, the ride became a lot of fun. It was exhilarating, a great way to see the entire city. We cruised all the beaches, through downtown, outside the city to their Sihanoukville Mountain, a whopping 180 meters above sea level to view the coastline.

Up on the hill was Wat Leu, a functioning monastery. We didn't really check out the grounds, which were large and filled with ornate buildings, temples, statues and people. Instead we were quickly distracted by a group of dusty children that had climbed a fruit tree and were shaking down a meteor storm of falling fruits. I had to duck and hide several times, much to their entertainment. The fall cracked open the thick rind of the fruit, inside were six thick seeds covered in a pulpy fuzz. Through hand gestures and smiles, I learned to suck on the seed, the somewhat sweet but fully tart aesthetic filled my appetite quick.

The commotion attracted a gang of monkeys who loved the fruit as well. These were the tamest monkeys we've come across and had a friendly raport with the children. The monkeys would calmly hang out next to the children, taking fruit from their hands and then began to groom the kid's hair for bugs and lice. By now, we were averaging a monkey interaction each week.

We also visited the Catholic church, but not during mass. We found the main chapel closed for massive renovation. They had constructed a new building, but it lacked any real charm and looked more like a warehouse than a place of worship, but it was large and the original chapel was definitely on the small side. Some nice teenagers from the church let us into the new chapel for a quick look around. To our amazement, we found a prominent statue that looked, upon first glance, as some type of Hindu or Buddhist deity. It turned out to be the Virgin Mary with Baby Jesus, dressed with traditional Cambodian clothing and adornments.

As evening approached, we decided to find a fishing village we had read about near Victory Beach. At dusk, all the wooden fishing boats head off into the sunset for their evening fishing run, a good place for pictures and admiring the colorful skies. It took us a couple passes to locate the dirt path to the village. It takes some orientation to learn which dirt paths are considered legitimate roads and which ones are simply inlets to residences. The subtleties betrayed us often. We first walked around an area with a dock and a few wooden shacks. We figured by the lack of fishing boats and the confused stares by the locals living there that we weren't in the right place, most likely disturbing a family preparing for dinner. So we doubled back, speeding past a small army of manual labored road workers, rolling a massive cement culvert up a hill. They were highly amused by our lost and speeding ways, the picture shown was taken right as I sped past them having taken my hands off the handlebars and screaming. The workers were amused, Rebecca wasn't. I had to promise no more near-death experiences.

We found a small dirt path veering off the more established dirt road, leading to the beach, which turned out to be the desired Hawaii Beach. It was lined with primitive but charming beach huts. They were basic structures, fitted with chairs and tables and not much else. There was a well-equipped kitchen area recessed from the beach that appeared to serve a half dozen of the large wooden structures. I can only assume that during busier times, each bungalow is filled and the kitchens are bustling streams of revenue. We were there at sunset during low season, so it was basically deserted, with just three other people several bungalows down from us, also doing their best to get shots of the vivid blues and pinks of the sunset.

We sat down and within a few minutes a guy appeared with a menu. At first we just ordered a coke, but then, realizing we were quite hungry already, we ordered two entrees: Amok and Tom Yum, both with fish, since the shrimp was "finished." As the kitchen behind us revved up and pots began banging, the sky lit up with orange behind thick clouds and islands. Our camera's zoom wasn't powerful enough for this type of panorama, but Rebecca shot away. The fisherman weren't as busy as expected, but several boats puttered off into the distance and a few more puttered back towards the shore. They were slow and beautiful, I fantasized about spending a day with them, learning how they harvest all the fresh fish, shrimp, crab and squid that we had been enjoying over the past month.

Then it grew dark. Quickly. The clouds were a bit too thick for the sky to blaze and soon enough the darkness gained advantage over the twilight. The photographers to our left had vanished, our moped faded into the darkness, and we suddenly felt very alone. The activity of the kitchen was our only saving grace, a bang of the pan or a murmur in Khmer would remind us that we weren't in an evil black vortex, never to see daylight again. We were quickly losing our minds though. I was paranoid that our moped would simply disappear into the darkness, leaving us with an $800 memory. Rebecca was worried that the mosquitoes and sand flies were seconds away from launching a deadly attack and would drag our bodies into the waters never to be seen again. Our chit chat became sparse and nervous. Laughing at our inevitable demise and unwise dinner selection was the only way to survive the mental demons.

Dinner finally arrived, lit by candlelight, and it was delicious! The Amok, a local favorite made of curry and coconut milk, was filled with thick chunks of fresh fish served inside a large hot green coconut. The Tom Yum was served in a metal soup pot that looked like a round bunt pan, the middle was filled with red hot coals. Tom Yum is an interesting dish because it's completely filled with inedible ordinance: slivers of lemongrass, thick slices of ginger, countless bay leaves and of course the floating fishheads. The fish was cleavered, simply and bluntly, into three pieces and thrown into the oval moat.

We slurped down our delicious dishes, paid our bill and got the hell out. Our moped was waiting for us in the dark, thankfully. Our ride back was dark and cautious. The endless array of potholes, cow poop, and random debris in the road required that we travel at a gingerly pace, but we didn't mind.

For $4, we had the moped for 24 hours, so the next morning we got up and decided to make one last joy ride of the city. We were slow to get started, but all we wanted was a quick venture and we'd surely have the moped back by 11:30am, no problem. We made some odd decisions about what to take, almost ominous decisions. I originally decided to skip the backpack altogether and struggled to decide how much money to take, explicitly thinking that taking any money would be risking its being stolen. Rebecca opted for the bag, to have access to our sunscreen and a towel, and strangely decided to leave the camera even though we were guaranteed some good pictures at a secluded beach.

The south tip of Ochateul beach was fairly undeveloped, with a long stretch of virgin beach and flat clean sand. I persuaded Bec to give the moped a go. Starting in second gear was easy, so Bec took off down the beach with no problem. My attention wandered into the endless ocean and serenity of the moment. Then I heard the motor rev to a fevered pace and a thud. I panicked and whipped around to see the carnage. The moped was spinning sand sideways and Bec was struggling to get it back upright. I screamed at her to see if she's alright and she was. She just lost balance while flipping around in loose sand. She decided to retire her racing license at this point, so I took over. She said she'll give it another go, maybe in some dirt next time. We cruised to the end of the beach where there was a small cluster of basic bungalows, each one preparing for the next high season with new construction. We doubled back into the isolated part and stopped. We were all alone and hot so we dropped our stuff next to the bike and ran into the water. It was a great moment, we were in paradise, holding each other's hand as we walked several yards into shallow water, not another person in sight. It took a long wade out to reach water deep enough to splash around. We shared a loving embrace, several kisses and made a joke as a moped passed that those kids could rob us. They cruised on past with no issue, so we returned to whispering sweet nothings into each other's ear. We were only in the water for a few minutes when the moped with the two teenagers returned. The reality of the situation sunk in instantaneously. We were being robbed. The rider on the back, a young punk in a bright pink shirt and a ridiculous spiky haircut jumped off the back and ran towards our bike. I yelled "NO!!!!!" and sprinted towards them. I was less than 50 yards away but everything became slow motion. Hurdling through the water was difficult and it only took them 5 seconds to grab my bag, get back onto the bike and speed off into the distance. It was a coup de tat because in that bag was our moped keys...we were helpless and they knew it.

My emotions overwhelmed me. It was surreal, I was in denial, kicking and beating the bike and yelling like I was being murdered. It was so frustrating to simply watch these two punk kids ride away, almost leisurely, back towards town, knowing that nothing would be done. We walked down the beach a bit and found a small group of Cambodians sitting under a palm tree. They spoke little English and could offer no help or sympathy. We also found a couple Chinese tourists, they were concerned by my screams and in a huge offering of trust and generosity, offered their moped for me to return back to our guesthouse for help. We were stranded, our moped was rendered useless and walking back would take over 30 minutes. Worse yet was the bandits would quickly realize that the most valuable item in the 'barang booty bag' was the moped keys. They would be returning soon, and I was reluctant to leave Rebecca with the bike, but she assured me she would be alright with her new found friends.

I sped back into town, hot and emotional. I stared at every passing moped with suspicion and contempt. I soon realized that my anger was getting the best of me and if I didn't cool it I would probably hurt myself. I kept going over a mental inventory of my bag: my journal, sunglasses, t-shirt, Bec's wallet, $11 bucks, Bec's poi, malaria pills, 2 months of contacts, my hat, the moped keys and our guesthouse keys. My journal! Then I thought about the guesthouse keys, a single key on a keychain with a big number '2' on it. I realized that those two punks could be heading to our room right now to finish the looting. That's where the good stuff was: camera, harddrive, the real cash and passports. I felt ill and gunned it towards home. I cruised down the final dirt road a little too fast and lost control as a car braked suddenly on the pothole ridden road. The moped took it well, but I banged my knee and it began to twinge. My erratic behavior concerned the locals staring at me, but I'm sure they've seen it before....an irate foreigner screaming "I got robbed" expecting the royal brigade to file out on horses and tanks to find the culprit and return the shiny new camera to them, and whip the locals to show them that harassing the revered tourist is forbidden and doesn't pay.

What I did find was a maddening complication of complacency, but at least it was soothing. The on duty manager of the guesthouse, which is whoever speaks the best English at the time, kept saying "relax, no problem, no problem." I berated him with questions concerning the lock on my door, getting a new key for the moped and the probability of getting back our bag. This isn't a big town and they knew that I knew that they knew who it was...or could find out. A westerner got his wallet stolen on the beach the day before and all the kids selling fruit laughed about it, and all admitted they knew who had done it.

Two doors down from our bungalow is a makeshift police station, but it was seldom manned. Rather, it was a shady spot for the barking motorbike drivers to attract business. It turned out that the police were very reluctant to even involve themselves in the countless petty thefts in Sihanoukville. An English girl we met on our first day had her camera stolen and tried in vain to file a police report so she could claim her insurance. For hours she got the runaround at the main police station. She received such excuses as "The door is locked where the form is located" and "we don't have a copy machine." It was obvious that the money received through thievery outweighs the loss of tourist dollars that might result from a bad reputation. In time, this will surely change, because we heard so many stories of tourists getting robbed in the few days we were there...the reputation will eventually kill off what little attraction this beach town has to offer. Then the police will crack down on the kids stealing things, but it might be too late. Regardless, it's too late for us.

Over the next hour, a complex set of steps had to happen to rescue the moped and liberate my girl. I was definitely worried about her and I was sure the girl who gave up her $800 moped to a stranger was surely worried about my prolonged absence. At one point of, an unfamiliar guesthouse employee took my borrowed moped into town to notify the moped's owner. He arrived to immediately leave again to locate a locksmith. Then they both returned to escort me back to the beach. At this point I had given up trying to understand the logic, though progress was definitely being made.

I led the way and arrived to the deserted beach to find Bec and our two new Chinese friends surrounded by local peasants and a goon squad of generically labeled security guards...they were worthless and smiling. The locksmith was amazingly primitive. He came equipped with a blank key and small metal file. He stuck the key in and felt for resistance, then carved a small notch into the generic key face, then repeated several times until he had found the right linear sculpture of the key. He had the ignition turned in less than five minutes. I paid them the $10 fine and told them to keep the moped. I was tired of the whole process and wanted to walk back. It would give us time to cool off and talk through this traumatic experience. We were embarrassed, mad, hurt, and disappointed in the people of Cambodia. The kids who robbed us were well off. Their bike was brand new, their clothes were trendy and they were healthy...they weren't the dirty, desperate street urchins that I expected to attack. Now I realized that we were surrounded by thieves, literally encased in a shark tank full of them, picking off the oblivious in a fabulous feeding frenzy. The charismatic kids selling bracelets and fruit, who cling for physical embrace are in actuality hustlers, using their small size and sunny smiles to wiggle closer towards pockets and loose bags. A simple "Do you have a light" from one of the talkative teens can distract someone long enough for the camera and all culprits to be long gone in 10 seconds flat.

This little robbery was far from free, but we both agreed that they didn't get anything too important so we were thankful in a way for the experience. We knew we were lucky, and this would serve as a very powerful lesson about always being aware of our surroundings. If we had lost our passports, we would now be discussing our trip home and the end to our adventure. Unfortunately, the American government's current policy towards lost passports is to issue a temporary one that only allows a one-way trip home. Although I lost over a month's worth of writing in my journal, I could recover most of it from memory whereas losing our camera or portable harddrive would be an irreparable loss. We were also kicking ourselves for talking trash about all the suckers getting robbed around us. We had doomed ourselves when we called that first English girl stupid for getting her camera stolen. "We're from New York, ain't no body going to get us, we're too smart!" We'll never say that shit again. We thought we've been pretty smart all along, but if you get lazy for just a second, they'll get you!

We joked about making a t-shirt with "I got Robbed in Sihanoukville and All I Got Was this Lousy T-Shirt" on it. Everyone we spoke to loved the idea as I'm sure our client base would be massive.


The total replacement value of our losses was about $120, the most troubling was my journal, Bec's credit cards which took several hours to cancel, and our headlamp that had already saved our lives several times. The malaria pills and contacts were a bummer, but it was just money and I knew soon enough we would forget about the pain, and begin remembering the hilarity of the situation. I was also thinking about how the story would sound in our blog. Hope it is entertaining!

The Chinese lady who so kindly gave us her moped was a travel writer, as Bec learned with her hour spent with her. They tried to console Rebecca by saying it would be a great story one day. We both knew we would end up in one of her stories as the stupid whiteys who got robbed and thought it was such a big deal.

As we walked back towards our bungalow, we stopped off at the far end of Ochatel beach at Three Naked Ladies offering 25cent beers for lunch, so we stopped in for a few. The owner was a Canadian-born schizophrenic, suffering from paranoid delusions and feelings of grandeur, all the while looking and talking just like a Hawaiian Rob Schneider. He was quiet at first, but once the flood gates opened, he drowned us with the most insane stories I've ever heard. He claimed to have psychic and telekinetic abilities, including levitation at will, and had been abducted by the CIA several times for their sick experiments. He talked of times in Jakarta where a ghost woman armed with an AK-47 pulled ten thousand dollars out of his moneybelt without touching him (who carries ten thousand dollars in their moneybelt?). He spoke of lost family members in several Muslim countries, government conspiracies to cover-up secret murders, NASA being responsible for several recent earthquakes, and a dizzying array of other twisted tales. He spoke of Canada being the most corrupt and evil regime in the world...Canada? We listened to his 30-minute dissertation, silently sipping our cheap beers, too scared to ask for details, and realized that we didn't have it so bad.


We spent the rest of the day in quiet mourning of our loss. Silently, we were both running the image of the robbery through our minds, thinking how stupid we were, how a series of simple decisions sealed our fate. We fixed it with a few beers and an early night. We know that things happen for a reason, and perhaps this relatively minor incident will serve to keep us more aware and vigilant in the future. We have heard from some travelers it's necessary in some parts of Vietnam. We had decided that we were through with Sihanoukville and would catch the early bus out of this hellhole.

Phnom Penh, Land of Sins and Grins

From our journals dated May 7th through May 23rd and May 30th through June 2nd


As soon as the bus rolled to a dusty stop, we were attacked by a chaotic mob of waiting tuk-tuk drivers, like salivating dogs they sprang to life at our arrival, all vying for our attention and ultimately our $2-dollar business. They were all waving guesthouse fliers, smiling and screaming, "OK!? Very cheap! Come with me!" I focused solely on securing our bags and Rebecca was befriended by a very nice tuk-tuk driver named "Mr. Mao or Mr. Black" who coincidentally worked for our desired guesthouse, therefore the ride was free. Every driver has a set list of things to see around the city and are always trying to set up an itinerary...Mr.Mao was no different. He spent the five minute ride trying, successfully, to secure our business for a full-day tour the following day. He was also quick to announce, "This is Phnom Penh! Watch your shit!" He explained how bags can be snatched by mopeds speeding by and cameras are often taken right out of tourists' hands. With the dizzying undulation of thousands of mopeds speeding around us and our lumbering tuk-tuk squeaking along, I could see how easily things might fly out of your hands.


Just like all good backpackers, we looked to our Lonely Planet guide for guesthouse advice, and we chose Lazy Fish on the Boeung Kak Lake, on the northeast side of the city. It was a chill place with a deck right on the lake, built on a rickety wooden pier. For $4 dollars a night we got a decent room, but there were some issues, well, more like a magazine rack of issues. There were parts of the floor that had never been cleaned and behind the bed was either splattered curry or something much worse. The lock on the door couldn't have hindered a pissed off poodle and we had to straddle the freestanding toilet in order to take a shower in the tiny bathroom. I tried to make the toilet situation a little less humiliating by calling it the Party Podium and referring to the bathroom as the Venetian Spa. It didn't work. As the sun went down, the creatures of the night came out. Crickets began dive bombing us on the bed and we counted at least five other random insects swarming around the bed. In order to survive the night, and avoid choking on a mouthful of insects, we asked for, and received without argument, a mosquito net. The only problem was the mosquito net had more holes in it than fishnets on a drunken hooker climbing a barbed wire fence. The pieces of cheap shipping tape used to repair the holes illuminated in the night like the most horrid of all creatures. With no other options, we simply shut our mouths tight, held each other close and prayed for salvation.

Lazy Fish, we believe, suffers from what we've dubbed the "Lonely Planet Syndrome" of a deep complacency forming after being published in the single most popular book ever written about touring Southeast Asia independently. A mention in this book makes a place successful, instantly and continuously. The most recent version was published in 2003 and hasn't been updated, so for 3 years straight, backpackers and budget travelers have been streaming into places like Lazy Fish, blindly and without question. They simply had no need to update or clean a room when a fresh load of westerners shows up each and every day. To their defense, their food was spectacular, so after we had moved to another guesthouse we still went back there many times and watched as tuk-tuk after tuk-tuk dropped off some dirty travelers clutching their Lonely Planet guide like a Southern Baptist preacher does the Bible.

The next day we promptly checked out and moved 2 doors down to Smile Guesthouse. We were amazed to find a much cleaner and more hospitable room for only $2 DOLLARS a night and we ended up staying for over 2 weeks.


Same Same, But Different

There are dozens of guesthouses lining the Boeung Kak Lake and each one is exactly the same, constituting Phnom Penh's Backpacker Ghetto. Smile is just one of 15 or so crowding the dirt road for a bit of lake view and backpacker revenue. Each one has the same menu and prices, a homemade pool table, bamboo and wicker furniture, a Buddhist shrine in the corner of the deck, a big posterboard menu offering buses, boats, and visas, a free book exchange filled mostly with bootleg copies and outdated travel guides, a television, a huge collection of bootleg DVDs (the local format is actually VCDs), a radio, another huge collection of bootleg CDs. The lucky ones on the lake all have the same big Beer Lao and Tiger Beer deck umbrellas cemented in vegetable oil canisters, and hammocks filled with swinging babies, all distributed evenly on a patchwork of wooden planks forming a swaying deck hovering over a lake filled with bright green algae, snails and lots of trash. Looking out along the lakeside you can see all the other guesthouses with the same setup, the guests drinking beer and watching movies, the Cambodian teenage boys in baseball caps and fake Abercrombie and Puma t-shirts playing pool.

We loved our $2 dollar room and the family running the place. They took care of us around-the-clock with the sweetest smiles, and they made the most perfect fruit shakes we've ever tasted. There always seemed to be a couple babies lying around, usually swinging in a hammock or taking a bath, but always being adorable.

The rooms were very simple. The walls were paper thin, to be specific, they were Balsa wood thin. It was creepy how close our neighbors sounded. It felt too perverted to take a shower at the same time, as you could hear the person less than two feet away, splashing water from the same pipe, separated by nothing thicker than a laminated magazine. If someone entered their room, we jumped out of bed thinking someone was opening our door. Talking, even whispering, was easily overheard. It took all my strength not to join in on the conversations going on at either side of us. Sometimes the urge overwhelmed me and I would blurt out something strange and disturbing just to bewilder the neighbors. The plastic wall in the bathroom was so thin and transparent the sun would shine through and illuminate the room from the outside. When we first noticed this phenomenon we spent several minutes going through a simpleton's order of elimination to figure out where the light was coming from. I could only think that a drunk person could easily fall through the wall and plummet into the water below, never to be seen again. Even the floor was emaciated. Mice ran rampantly under the makeshift building, squeaking and scratching all day long. We were lost in a caveman science experimentation again, and searched under the faux-linoleum vinyl flooring that wasn't "installed" so much as "placed" like a dropcloth at a frat-party. Even after we searched in vain for mice living in the floors, we couldn't believe how close they sounded as they taunted us with their squeaking laughs.


The wooden structure of the guesthouse was alive with creatures. Geckos numbered in the thousands and would occasionally fall off the roof in some sort of temporary lapse of control and plop onto us, scaring the living shit out of us due to our combined fear of roaches and rats. Mice would scurry up and over the wooden poles that made the main structure of the building. Luckily they never fell on us, but one did get caught in a trap trying to descend a pole into the kitchen. It was mortally wounded and was writhing around, much to the displeasure of the female guests of the guesthouse. My services were requested to release the mouse from his misery. I boldly accepted the challenge and after three powerful thumps to the tiny cranium, I was declared victorious. The crazy little granddaughter at first seemed amused by all the activity, but when the grandfather dislodged the rodent carcass and showed her, she ran away screaming.


Welcome to the Killing Fields

Cambodia's history is bloody and fresh. Back in the late 1970's, when I was collecting frogs and getting beat up by my brother, kids my same age in Cambodia were being trained by the Khmer Rouge to be the new commanders of the peasant population, to implicate friends and family to be murdered. Millions died during the auto-genocide of their fellow comrades, including almost all educated citizens, and for such crimes as having good teeth or falling asleep during indoctrination lectures. The mindboggling ideology of the Great Leap Forward, whose master plan by Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge envisioned one million young, hardened souls to do nothing but farm rice and never think again, took hold in the years 1975-79. The United Stated of America had abandoned the remaining Cambodians to their fate, pulling out completely near the end of the Vietnam War. I would guess that few people in America even know we have a history with them. Cambodia is a living example of Orwell's 1984 mental nightmare. Only when a person comes here can they come close to understanding the torturous burden Cambodia still carries on it's back.

The two main tourist attractions in Phnom Penh is S-21 and the Killing Fields. S-21, or Tuol Sleng, was the largest and most centralized detention center and prison used by the Khmer Rouge to torture its own citizens. The sky and atmosphere turned gray but retained its stagnant heat as we approached the gloomy concrete buildings. The fact that they once were schools for young children - that the metal frames once used for jungle gyms and swings had been converted into torture devices - made the place even more morbid. Prisoners were shackled en-masse by the ankles and were tortured daily at this genocide factory. The torture techniques were diabolical and diverse: electrocution, hanging, drowning, clubbing, starvation, and isolation. The results were stunning. Each prisoner would inevitably confess to hundreds of crimes. Most of the admissions were surprisingly mundane and irrational. In order to avoid further torture, which would only cease through final expiration, any friend, foe, or family member that could come to mind would be implicated in the never-ending rabbit hole of paranoia and delusion. The numbers were staggering. Men, women, kids and several westerners were caught in the dragnet seeking to eradicate any semblance of free thought or dissent. Photographs were taken of all the prisoners, and now the eyes of the doomed stare back at you as you walk the cursed halls. The wooden cells are still in working condition and the barbed wire has not rusted away. Though we wished we were visiting ancient site, it is barely 30 years old. Only 7 people survived Tuol Sleng Prison out of 14,000...this place was truly hell.

The other main attraction in Phnom Penh was the killing fields outside the city called "Choeung Ek," a mass burial site of 17,000 Cambodians and the final resting place of most S-21 prisoners. After S-21, we were obviously feeling a bit down and didn't think we could handle any more history lessons. But after a silent lunch and the smiling encouragement by our tuk-tuk driver, we decided to finish the tour of torture and visit Choeung Ek. Keep in mind there were hundreds of mass burial sites throughout Cambodia, but this one was the largest and is now the most infamous.

The 15 km's in the tuk-tuk was torture in and of itself, but we couldn't help but think that thousands of people from S-21 had taken this very road in the past. After leaving the city center, the road was horribly deteriorated, dusty, and conveniently under construction. The road work was another sign of Cambodia's progress, but also a reminder that a huge part of Phnom Penh's tourist industry is based on its miserable past. It would be like visiting Germany for the sole purpose of seeing Auschwitz or going to NYC just for the World Trade Center site. On approach, a tall slender building called a stupa was visible. The Buddhist structure was beautiful from a distance, but as we came closer, the morbid reality assaulted our eyes and hearts. It contained over 5000 skulls, exhumed from the grounds surrounding it, displayed behind plexiglass, but not sealed so that the spirits of the deceased can visit their remains freely, according to Buddhist beliefs.

The surrounding grounds were simple, but profound. Dozens of grown over holes littered the place like bomb craters, but these were the excavated mass burial sites of the 8,000 bodies that were found. Bone fragments and pieces of decaying clothing could be seen throughout. Signs bluntly explain what was found during the excavation: one burial site contained nothing but headless corpses, another one contained hundreds of women and babies. There was a tree used for smashing infants. Another tree was used to harness a large speaker to drown out the cries of victims being bludgeoned to death with pickaxes and ox cart handles to avoid wasting precious bullets...most skulls showed massive blunt trauma.

That evening, back at the guesthouse, I found a bootleg copy of the book "The Killing Fields" which was made into a movie back in the 1980's. I felt it very appropriate to read this low quality photocopied version, here in Cambodia, sometimes struggling through the distorted words. The book was much better than the movie, as is typical, but the movie was probably the most effective public relations campaign Cambodia has ever received in the west. The book did a great job of explaining the politics leading up to the fall of Phnom Penh to the Khmer Rouge, with American forces slipping out unannounced, fleeing a sinking ship. It then told the story of Pran, a Cambodian interpreter working for a New York Times reporter, who was forced into a rural labor camp after Phnom Penh was evacuated and left to ruin. Keep in mind that at the time, Phnom Penh was the most beautiful and sophisticated city in all of Southeast Asia. The malnutrition, sleep deprivation, inhumane working conditions, indoctrination, torture, and systematic removal of all culture previous to 'Year Zero' was described with morbid imagery. Rebecca and I agreed that the worst part was when a dissenting citizen, rebelling due to mental and physical state of collapse, was tied to a tree, cut wide open and forced to watch two teenaged Khmer Rouge soldiers filet and eat his liver. This graphically described the level of desensitization reached by the Khmer Rouge soldiers through incessant indoctrination, reeducation, negative reinforcement and torture. The young citizens of Kampuchea were eager to accuse anyone of anything for the reward of being able to execute the traitor themselves, and possibly receive a little more food than the rest. At one point they were allocated a single spoonful of rice for every 20-hour workday. The remainder of the day was spent trying to weed out the traitors within, as even sleep was considered disloyal.

It's a wonder that Cambodia was able to recover from this decapitation of population and culture. Over half of the current population is under 20 years old, most lacking formal education and productive skills, over 75% of the population relies completely on sustenance farming. But what we saw in the people we met was encouraging. They don't dwell on the past, rather they are eager to build a future. Phnom Penh has the most fascinating mix of old and new...people with wooden pushcarts in front of new skyscraper construction sites. Patient cyclo drivers waiting for a fare, their numbers diminishing in the midst of motos, taxis, andcrowded streets. Simple sidewalk barbers still in business while kids stream past with their fancy new sneakers and MP3 players, and multi-hued hairdos. Monks, dressed as they have for ages in their saffron robes, now scoot around town on the backs of motos, some on cell phones. Development projects, though meager in the eyes of western civilization, are numerous and enterprising. Cambodia has a thriving tourism industry that brings in more and more visitors each year. Phnom Penh has a busy riverfront with new restaurants, bars, and boutiques. Its central boulevards, left in complete ruins in 1975, are lined again with the scarlet flame trees and fragrant frangipanis. I am confident that Cambodia will be a much better place in a decade. They deserve as much support and encouragement as they can get.

Bec came across an article in a National Geographic that shed some disturbing light on genocide over the last century. More than 50 million people were systematically murdered in the past 100 years. From 1915 to 1923 the Ottoman Turks slaughtered up to 1.5 million Armenians. In mid-century the Nazis liquidated six million Jews, three million Soviet POW's, two million Poles, and 400,000 other "undesirables." Mao Zedong killed 30 million Chinese, and the Soviet government murdered 20 million of its own people. In the 1970's the communist Khmer Rouge killed 1.7 million of their fellow Cambodians. In the 1980's and early 90's Saddam Hussein's Baath Party killed 100,000 Kurds. Rwanda's Hutu-led military wiped out 800,000 members of the Tutsi minority in the 90's. There's still genocide today in Sudan's Darfur region.

In sheer numbers, these and other killings make the 20th century the bloodiest period in human history. As a human race, we really haven't advanced that much, have we?

We're not history majors and we're not adding anything substantially new to the discussion about Cambodia, but if any of this moves or inspires you, then I implore you to read up on Cambodia's past, present, and future. They need to be better understood, as does much about this region of the world in the eyes and hearts of Americans. Do it!

Ironically, on the way back from the Killing Fields we were asked if we wanted to go to the shooting range. The third most popular touristy thing to do in Phnom Penh is to shoot a fully automatic AK-47 or a Bazooka. The AK-47 costs a dollar a bullet, providing about 20 seconds worth of enjoyment. The bazooka comes with a free chicken, if you're not morally abhorred, for $200 an ordinance. This type activity isn't in our budget or our philosophical intentions, so we passed, but I did get into several discussions with fellow travelers about it. My opinion was that the bazooka was the best deal due to it's exotic obscurity. I've shot a semi-automatic AK-47 before and I believe that it's now legal to own and operate fully automatic weapons in Texas, but I can't imagine another situation where I can shoot a bazooka. Therefore, the bazooka is the weapon of choice. It was counter argued that the AK-47 is the weapon of choice due to the amount of enjoyment that would be received, chicken or no chicken. Popping off 30 rounds of 7.62-mm hot madness is surely a better experience than a single pull of a bazooka trigger, regardless of the explosion 100 yards down the field. Also, it's understood that a chicken is very difficult to hit, so 30 chances is better than one. And finally, you're much more likely to have some semblance of a chicken left to eat with the AK-47 than the missile. These are complex arguments, the nuances endless and profound, the decision is tough, but it's ultimately up to you to decide.

We also went to the Angkor museum, where they have some of the precious statues and artifacts from the Angkor temples. It was a good finale to the whole Angkor experience. Hundreds, if not thousands, of examples of stone, metal and wood statues and carvings were on display throughout the large square building with a beautiful garden in the middle. There was way too many artifacts to see, it made it hard to focus an appropriate amount of attention or respect to any one piece, even though each individual piece is worth worshipping, literally.

Later on we checked out an art studio showcasing some amazing and detailed pencil drawings of the Angkor temples. The theme of the project was discussing the concept of looting. Angkor has been deserted, as a functioning society at least, for a thousand years, and has suffered some of the most barbaric and systematic looting any world heritage site has experienced. But what defines looting and when, if ever, is it acceptable? Is protecting artifacts by barricading them inside a museum not looting and coveting in itself? Is it appropriate for tourists setting foot on sacred land, trampling on ancient stone walkways and entering temples that were reserved for kings and gods? Hasn't every culture looted from another through conquest? Every culture has been influenced just a bit by their neighbors, right? It's definitely worth thinking about.


Ok, so it's about time to discuss the uncomfortable subject of toilets and things that you do in toilets. The whole world poops, but each culture does it a little differently. We had read a lot about eastern toilets, referred to lovingly as 'squatters,' but finding the wisdom and dexterity to actually use them correctly had eluded us for quite some time. We knew the pieces that made up the puzzle: a hole in the floor, a bucket of water and a ladle; however, the complex combination necessary to assemble a successful poop was beyond us. We knew that a few ladles of water from the bucket would flush the toilet through gravitational momentum, but what about our bums? Toilet paper is a scarce commodity around here. It is available, if commandeered in a premeditated state, for about 25 cents a roll, but the aftermath of flushing it would prove disastrous. The plumbing pipes used in most of the region are about a third of the size compared to the west, similar to the plumbing of a small yacht. Some places provided a small plastic bin to place your used paper, if you can stand the sight and smell of the evil that lurked inside.

Westerners don't have the capacity to squat properly. Asians have been doing it all their lives. Through my knowledge of anatomy, I understand that the muscles surrounding the pelvis are too rigid to allow a western bum to lower itself into a proper position with feet placed flat on the ground. We can only do a catcher's squat, on our toes. Bec and I have been practicing in our room a bit, trying to get into the correct position. I can only hang in there for 30 seconds and that's while gripping the side of the bed like my life depended on it. There's no yoga pose as painful and self-deprecating as the eastern squat.

So assuming a tourist can crouch in some feasible position, then what? How does the "cleaning process" go down? Assuming the ladle isn't infested with several species of feces, assuming there is enough room in the stall too maneuver, which is typically the size of a broom closet, how is a cup full of water splashed haphazardly towards the bum going to do anything? Or are we expected to use our left hand? And which angle do you dangle? From the front or back? The backsplash from either angle seems unsanitary and uncomfortable. The logistics are overwhelming and every travel magazine or internet discussion on the activity conveniently glosses over the specifics with gross abandon.

Luckily the guesthouses and restaurants we've patronized have almost exclusively had western toilets, usually with western plumbing, but some have the bucket and ladle requiring a few pours to flush the floating brownies. Attached to the wall is what Rebecca has affectionately named "The Butt Blaster." It's a spray nozzle, the same you see on some kitchen sinks for washing dishes. It's a manually operated bidet, of sorts. You basically point and shoot, and it works wonderfully, although the power is often overzealous. But with a drippy bottom, you are assured of a clean one and that, in itself, is fantastic. In the beginning we would routinely remove all clothes before using it and follow-up with a shower, just to be sure. But with practice we have gotten more adept, and thanks to our new butt-blasting friend, we haven't seen or used a roll of toilet paper in well over a month. That said, in public the best combo is the Butt Blaster and a roll of TP, so you can be clean and dry.


To this day, we have yet to have done "Number Two" in an official squatter, but we're mentally preparing for it each and every day, and perhaps after a dozen more rigorous bedside yoga sessions, I'll be able to perform in a professional manner.


I got a $2 haricut and I'm still paying for it.

The last day before we took a sideways trip to the beach town of Sihanoukville, I decided that my hippie hair had gotten long enough and it was time for a cut. I hadn't touched it since before we got married and now it was past my shoulders and making a beeline for my butt. If I didn't do something soon, I would most likely turn into a dreadlocked rastadork that I dreaded so much. We had noticed several roadside barbers advertising $2 haircuts. They were simple enterprises: a chair, a hanging mirror, one unlicensed Cambodian with a tool box of cutlery. With nothing else to go on, I chose the first one that was free...in retrospect, perhaps that wasn't the wisest selection technique. With an insurmountable language barrier, I used hand gestures to say I wanted about 2 inches off the back. He agreed, at least in theory. His first cut was within range, a 2 inch lop of dirty backpacker quaff fell to the street. As he ventured towards the other side, however, his angle turned sharply upwards and before he had made one pass four inches was missing. I had been wearing glasses due to the massive amount of pollution clouding up my contacts, and had taken them off, so I had no idea what was going on. But I could feel the apprehension building in his muscles and noticed that he hesitated several times and looked at Rebecca for guidance, but she was too busy giggling and taking photos.

"It's too late now", she said through a laugh that sounded more like hyperventilation. I was enjoying the cultural exchange too much to fret about the possible damage. Cambodian street barbers don't have much experience with long hair I'm afraid and he had difficulty righting his lines, so after several passes from one ear to the other, over 5 inches had been removed.

In many other situations I would have been pissed and highly resentful, but the nature of our travels renders any type of grudge moot. Hell, I'll have hair back to my shoulders by the time I touch soil in Europe so what's the big deal? I was a little saddened when Rebecca said she had no idea how attached she was to my long hair, but she later apologized for that insensitive comment. She now says in a daily mantra, "I love your little bob!"

Throughout our relationship, we've had to accept the fact that we look a bit similar especially since we're both over six feet tall. But now we have the same exact haircut, and are highly concerned that we look disturbingly like brother and sister. We're afraid to kiss in public, worrying that we'll be arrested due to some sort of cultural taboo on sibling smooching. I'll be paying on this one for a while.

Back in Bangkok Rebecca bought a small tin of talcum powder called "Prickly Heat." South East Asians, Thais especially, are absolutely dependent on talc to appear fresh and dry, defying the elements that destroy tourists' appearance and hygiene. As travelers stumble around dripping with sweat and stinking like oxen, the locals keep the most amazing composure. Even the girls behind their fiery woks all day on the street appeared cool as cucumbers. They didn't stink, never sweat, and were always clean. We had been using a bandanna to constantly wipe away our repulsiveness, but thought the talc might make a nice addition to our arsenal. So one day, after a cold shower, we sprinkled a modest amount all over our bodies, focusing on our chest, armpits and nether regions. We weren't in a hurry so we just sat there on the bed. The immediate feeling was a cooling effect, like a menthol cough drop, but less than a minute in we were concerned. Everywhere the powder had touched was burning profusely and we both began screaming in pain. Something had gone wrong, terribly wrong. My arms felt like I had just gotten an Indian sunburn from an ogre. I thought the skin on my chest was about to peel off. It was like we were in the movie "Nerds," and an entire bottle of Liquid Heat had been soaked into our jock straps. The sensation was so intense it felt like ice and fire at the same time. We writhed in pain for about 10 minutes, screaming and laughing hysterically until it began to wear off. We swore that Prickly Heat was the devil's work and we wouldn't touch it again. But the next day, after a cold shower, we dabbled in it again, much less this time, and soon enough we were addicted like the rest.

Each and every day I had been walking around the corner to a simple little snack-shack to buy water. It was a scary feeling to be in the high heat of the day without a bottle in our hand, so we usually traveled with a couple reserves in tow. For 500 Riel each, about 13 cents, I would get several one-liter bottles of drinking water to survive the day. The bottles were packaged in the cheapest flimsy blue plastic imaginable. The ink used to print the bottling factory's name would smear away, making it appear to be a bootleg version of purified water, a scary thought indeed. The tops were sealed with a weak plastic rip cord, that would break off about 80% of the time, regardless of what technique Rebecca or I thought was best. It was infuriating, because then I'd have to get a knife or pen top or my teeth to break in and the result would always be a big cold squirt of water in my face and lap. We were drinking four to six bottles a day and soon enough we had a huge pile of empty bottles in the corner of our room, making it hard to move around without feeling like we were in a kids' playground ballpit. But it gave us a great perspective on the value and necessity of clean water, having to personally secure each and every drop of hydration that touches our lips.


Phnom Penh is happy, happy, happy...happiness is everywhere. There's happy pizzas, happy shakes, and happy cigarettes. In fact, you can make anything "happy" for an additional $1.50. It's marijuana and it's everywhere. Tuk-tuk drivers offer it to you on the streets with reckless abandon, but that isn't surprising. What we didn't expect was the guesthouses offering it on their menus and wanting to put it in our food. For the sake of science, I'll describe the herb in greater detail. The price is amazingly cheap. $5 will get more than an ounce. All in all, it's not any worse than the bundles of compacted swag smuggled over the Texas/Mexico border. It's so cheap and plentiful strangers are willing to toss you a nug of the bristly green bud without hesitation. The bags are so huge that backpackers will often go half-in and for $2.50 can get well over 10 well-endowed joints. Keep in mind this stuff isn't of high quality or potency. Tokers are just as likely to develop a migraine as get the giggles. Everyone inevitably develops a hacking cough that in itself will make the diagnosis of tuberculosis next to impossible. Every night as we walked back down the dirt road to our guesthouse, tuk-tuk drivers would boldly hold out fat bags of weed and tiny bags of low grade opium...we almost had to bat them away just to get through.


The low quality of the weed became a huge joke amongst the guests. We had been hanging out with a couple of crazy young Canadians that were completely lost in their own personal narco-tour. The first day I met them, they were smoking, by far, the largest joint I have ever seen. It was like they were huffing on a muffler. It was easily a $10 joint. With the help of four professional potheads, they were only able to finish half of it, and when disassembled it was still two handfuls. They were able to procure a small bag of what is referred to as "Super Skunk", which made them burst out in hysterical laughter each time the local kid working at the guesthouse would say it. Canadians, British Columbians specifically, are self-proclaimed cannabis aficionados. They feel that "BC Bud" is by far the best smoke in the world. So the idea of a mangy nugget that smells more like evergreen oregano than marijuana being referred to as Super Skunk can be expected to receive some heckles.

Over the period of a week, these two Canadians ate, drank, and smoked everything they could get their hands on: weed, opium, ecstasy, hash, Mekong Gold, Ketamine, and Yabba. Mekong Gold is a $1 dollar bottle of cheap whisky, or as the Canadians referred to it as "wicky". Ketamine, or Special K, is a cat tranquilizer and the most commonly used anesthetic in the Vietnam War. Yabba is the one to worry about, almost all tourist drug overdoses are due to the use, and often misuse, of Yabba. It's a methamphetamine, often abused by hard working farmers and long-haul drivers, but it's the tourists that fall victim to the dirty drug. Overdose is common as is heavy metal poisoning from the use of mercury used in production.


I ate Khmer food most days. Their food wasn't near as spicy as their Thai neighbors, but that could be easily remedied with chili sauce. Most dishes were loaded with vegetables so the question of proper nutrition seldom came into question. "Amok," a curry and coconut stew with fish, shrimp or chicken was by far my favorite. Every guesthouse, and most restaurants as well, focused heavily on western style recipes. It was weird to come this far from home and be inundated with pasta, hamburgers, and Mexican food. But each and every morning, almost without fail, we would both be ordering eggs, bacon, and coffee. We'd venture into a bowl of noodles for brekky every once in a while, but some habits are just hard to break. Several times a week, we would sneak back to Lazy Fish for a fried fish sandwich that for $2, we both agreed was in our Top Five best fish experiences ever. We just hoped they weren't catching them in this lake.

The Boeung Kak Lake is polluted without question, and we wouldn't call it beautiful, but it is definitely serene. On days when the heat hits you like a dose of valium, we would lounge all day at our guesthouse, looking out over the peaceful waters, as patches of healthy looking green ivy floated past. These are the hydroponic plants that produce the lotus flower and would travel with the wind, collecting in massive clumps on one side of the lake, then the other, in an endless dance with the weather. The sunsets were psychedelic zen.


Mr.Mao, our original tuk-tuk driver bumped into us a few days later, and when I thanked him again for assisting us the other day, he invited us to a party at the guesthouse in between Lazy Fish and Smile, called Hello Guesthouse. We were honored at the invite and left with him immediately. We entered the deck overlooking the lake to find the party in full effect. Two icy cold Beer Laos were placed in our hands within seconds of setting foot on the deck. The pool table was covered with several Khmer dishes and all sorts of devouring was going on. The music was thumping and the dance floor was pulsating, literally. With 20 rambunctious Cambodian men vibrantly dancing, the wooden planks making up the floor bowed like a trampoline mat. No one seemed to notice, so I didn't give it another thought until I almost got my toes caught in between the boards reverberating like soundwaves. It became obvious that music and dance is a huge deal to the people of Kampuchea. We were asked, no, forcefully dragged, up to dance. There didn't seem to be a choice. They would get so excited when we would join, that they would collide, bump, and sometimes gyrate with us. It wasn't a sexual thing or any type of perversion, for we noticed that all the guys were dancing very close to each other, though haphazardly, without a single female around. The energy of the room seemed to build exponentially at each new song, until a modern Cambodian pop song came up and everyone exploded in jubilation. Seeing the shock in our faces, Mr.Mao quickly explained that "This is a very popular song in Cambodia".

After each song, we would quickly retreat back to the dark corner where we tried to drink our never ending supply of Beer Laos, but the sanctity seldom lasted long enough to even sit down, for another group of half-drunk guys would forcefully demand we rejoin the dance party. After a half dozen songs, I gave up trying to run away, and stayed on the dance floor hoping it would provide Bec with some semblance of immunity. It was great fun, though I surely burnt a full day's worth of calories in less than two hours. The number of beer bottles floating around the room was staggering. Each and every Cambodian had one, if not two or more, bottles of Beer Lao in hand and would run around vehemently toasting everyone in the room, then starting it again. This caused everyone beers to foam over, looking like they were drinking alcoholic volcanoes.

They taught us how to dance Khmer style. It was a simple 4-step maneuver but it made them so excited to see us try it. By the end, I had thrown in some Khmer-inspired hand movements that reminded me alot of the "hand rolling" that was popular in my short tenure as a rave kid. I wasn't doing it right but that wasn't the point. These people loved to dance!

During the few moments we were allowed to rest, we sat next to two westerners who appeared to have Cambodian girlfriends. The tall quiet guy, a Norwegian, turned out to be the owner and was married to a Cambodian who was by far the best dancer in the room and had the most graceful hand movements. The shorter guy, shirtless and randy, leaned over to say,

"Keep in mind this is a party for a four year old"

The Norwegian/Cambodian couple had a beautiful son named Nickolai, that along with his dozen other friends, ran around and played completely oblivious to the adult debauchery going on above them. The dance floor was duel zoned, at the feet of each stumbling dancer was a kid with a plastic firetruck or ball. It was amazing to see the fragile dance between the two rival parties, but not a single catastrophe happened. At one point, the drunkest guy in the room paraded Nickolai on his shoulders, barely able to stand himself, a few spotters followed behind for safety.

The idea of this extravagant party being in honor of a 4-year old's birthday consumed me. We asked the shirtless boy wonder what a real party looked like. He said when he got married, just a few weeks ago, the party went on for 4 days straight and damn near killed him.

It was somewhere around the end of the first week in Phnom Penh that I felt like we were making a bond with the people. I felt that a brotherhood had been formed and as cheesy as it sounds I felt like we were all one people. But later that day, at 10:30pm, when we snuck off to Lazy Fish for a fish burger my reality came crashing down. We approached the gated entrance too quick to realize that everyone was asleep. Not a single light was on, nothing moved, the place was dead...all except for the teenaged kid manning the gate. We tried to run away, but he kept insisting that they were open and ready to accommodate us. It was ridiculous. We kept inching towards the gate to leave, embarrassed and horrified, but he yelled at one of the rooms, in Khmer of course, for everyone to wake up, that we have hungry guests. Before we could escape this nightmare, 4 pajama-clad girls streamed out of a room, turned on all the lights in the main area, including the television and fans and handed us a menu. We were tormented because now it was too late, we had to order, but the trauma of the situation killed our appetite, we just wanted to run away. As we flipped through the menu, 4 sets of eyes focused solely on us and our selfish needs. We ordered some noodles and a beer and sat in petrified silence as they cooked. After ten minutes of silent horror, the food arrived, we scarfed it down as fast as humanly possible, skulled the beer, paid the $6 bill, tipped a buck and ran away crying.

We befriended some English blokes named John and Andy who, like ourselves, really appreciated the chilled out vibe of the lakeside guesthouses. We had a great conversation with them regarding begging and who's genuine and who's not. Ever since we set foot in Cambodia, literally as we walked across the border, we had been inundated with the full spectrum of begging, many of them were gut wrenching and had brought tears and overwhelming feelings of guilt and empathy. It couldn't be that each and every one of these people were so desolate that if we didn't give them a dollar they would starve to death.

John and Andy told us of a time they were walking down the street in an area not frequented by tourists, so they were basically the only non-locals in the crowd. A lady that, up until coming across these two shining white faces, had been completely sane and sovereign, instantly dropped to her knees and made the most pathetic gesture for help and money. It was like some sort of involuntary spasm, an automatic attempt to retrieve some money from the tourist industry. They basically ignored her and kept walking. Just as quick, she rose up, dusted herself off and continued shopping. They told of decrepit looking kids holding their infant siblings in slings begging for money to buy food, and when offered a hot meal, they refused and stomped off. They also told of ladies making the most heart-breaking attempts to portray the pain and suffering of their miserable lives, then refusing to accept 100 Riel, seeing it as an insult. 100 Riel is about 3 cents, not much I agree, but in a country where five of these meager donations could secure a meal or clean drinking water, a person who refuses help doesn't deserve it.

We had read in a local magazine a warning about a western beggar in Phnom Penh, supposedly an American citizen. He had survived off tourists donations for years and attracted a lot of controversy. It's a hard concept to ponder...should a westerner be able to beg in a third world country? Is he any less entitled? According to the article, he didn't think so and even argued that he was showing the Cambodians that they don't need to feel embarrassed to beg. There were allegations, however, that he had violently assaulted a few western females and even tortured a dog. To our surprise, we were approached by this unlikely celebrity right as we were boarding our bus to Sihanoukville. He was very polite and calm, though very shaky from some affliction or substance abuse, and he simply asked for any amount of money we could spare, with no manufactured story of stolen wallets or a life-threatening emergency.

We were in love with our guesthouse and the family that ran it. We were amazed at the quality of our $2 dollar room, the tasty food and bend-over-backwards hospitality that we received at any hour deemed necessary. We found it impossible to find anything to be unhappy about. We assumed this transcended all travelers who were lucky enough to find the guesthouse at the ass end of a long dirt road. One afternoon a couple Israeli girls came to check out the place and were interested in staying. Israelis have a certain reputation in the travel circuit for their relentless ability to negotiate for a cheaper deal. If you read into this statement, you'll probably know that this often creates friction. What happened next far overstepped any bounds of normal haggling.

Rooms with a single bed are $2 dollars, rooms with two beds are $3, and rooms with three beds are $4...simple enough and quite reasonable on a global scale. The girls wanted separate beds so grandpa of Smile guesthouse politely said it would be $3 a night. They disagreed adamantly. Their logic deduced that since there was a $2 dollar room in existence, they should get that room, but with two beds in it, since they didn't fancy sleeping in the same bed together. They argues so loudly we heard it all from the pool table. I was having trouble following, but they seemed to think that the owner had made an error in judgment by not having a $2 room with two beds. Grandpa, the owner, was bullet-proof but never lost his cool and 20 minutes later, after hearing the same exact irrational, almost delusional gripe, the girls consented to a $3 dollar room.

To be fair, it was only one girl doing the damage. The other girl didn't say much at all and seemed content either way. Although I was highly disgusted in their ungrateful and stingy attitude, we ended up chatting with them later that evening. To have a little fun, I told the perpetrator that we were paying $1 dollar a night and she exploded. She might have had an aneurism hadn't Rebecca killed my joke immediately by saying we were paying a dollar, each. Her friend was really cool and seemed very articulate and aware when a group of us, Canadians, Americans, and Israelis, got into a discussion about world wide resentment towards Americans and conversely a world wide perception of traveling Israelis. We told of our first guesthouse in Bangkok that had a prominent display refusing service to Israelis, due to "problems." The girl of angst, not surprisingly, was completely unaware of the Israeli reputation and of certain attitudes towards Americans. She was literally living in her own personal budget bubble of ignorance and denial. I felt sorry for her.


The main kid hanging out at Lazy Fish was Pot, pronounced "put". He was a hyper, smiley type dude, who's broken English was easy compensated for by his gregarious flamboyancy. His life was full of color and troubles. He was a pro kickboxer and showed me several times how he could kick my head effortlessly. He was on television as the spit bucket side kick of a famous local kickboxer during a monthly championship tournament on Cambodian National Television. He was into motocross and participated in pointless and highly dangerous races occasionally. He then told of a time when he was racing his bike on the street and collided with a female pedestrian and injured her badly. He had to pay $1,500, which is why he's still broke, and the girl still can't walk. He didn't quite seem to have the right level of remorse as he told this story so we decided many of his troubles were self-induced. He was a DJ and fashionista. He was also a hopeless romantic, a pool shark, and possibly a male gigolo.


Mr. Mao, our original tuk-tuk driver, who initially wanted to sell us weed and have us shoot a chicken with a bazooka, by the end of our stay he had landed a job with a bank. We saw him very happy in a starched white shirt and slacks the day before we left. We shook hands and congratulated him, feeling that progress was being made, indeed.

The road to the guesthouses on the lake was narrow and made of dirt, rock and miscellaneous debris. Our first night out late scared us to death. The time slipped past us and soon we found ourselves walking home past midnight. The road had no lights and no one seemed to be awake. It was as dark as a forest and our fears took a deadly grip on our nerves. An invisible dog lashed out at us behind a gate and made us jump five feet back and grasp each other tightly. It was a tiny dog, but the eerie situation manifested a pit bull in our minds. Each corner was surely full of bandits armed with machetes. I knew this was the end of it all. We rounded the last corner of the death march and came across a large black figure lying on the ground. We almost stepped on it and it raised up in concern. Our fight-or-flight instincts kicked in, but I ran one way and Bec the other...we were holding hands and damn near dislocated our shoulders trying to drag each other to safety. I won and slowly dragged Rebecca's petrified body past the black werewolf. It was just a docile black dog belonging to the neighbors, but in the darkness of the night, everything seemed so scary. We vowed to always carry our headlamp with us from now on.

If darkness were the only threat

A few days later construction began on our road for a new drainage system. A small army of rough looking laborers dug a deep trench through the middle of the road using nothing but pick axes and wicker baskets to transport the dirt...the pace was painfully slow, but the overall progress was impressive. Day by day, the trench grew by 15 meters and the pile of dirt and debris on each side grew as well. It was difficult to walk on during dry weather, but one night it rained heavily and we learned the true value of paved roads. The dirt turned to mud and the mud turned into a thick viscous cement-like material that simultaneously would grab our flip-flops in a death grip refusing to let go without surgical removal, and then facilitate a frictionless slide straight towards the black hole waiting for us at the bottom of the sloping hill. It was a living nightmare, we were traveling at 3 feet a minute, having to hold each other for support, one person finding some sort of balance which allowed the other person to use the counterweight to maneuver through the mud. Even with this methodical, anal retentive technique, we almost fell into the trench several times and were covered in mud. Several pounds of it had stuck to our feet, legs and backside. Our friend at the guesthouse had to hose us down for a while just to get us to a point that we could dash into our shower without leaving a trail like a 200 pound mud snail had attacked the village. So we made another vow to never venture out in the rain. At least not while the street was dug up.

Malaria!

We've been taking our Anti-malarial pills, doxycycline, ever since we left Bangkok. We were not enjoying it. The warnings on the pill bottle were long and scary. "Drink lots of water, don't lie down, don't ingest dairy, avoid sunlight, digestive ulceration likely." The pills definitely caused stomach pains and cramps. Combined with spicy food almost guaranteed gastrointestinal catastrophes. The directions also say to "Take pill with or without food," which sounds like a worthless statement, but it's saying to take the pill regardless. The pill causes discomfort with a belly full of food to minimize the repercussions of the caustic ingredients, but without food, causes unbearable heartburn.

All this and the pills don't guarantee anything. In fact, they often mask the symptoms of malaria, then make treatment less effective. The alternative anti-malarial drug, Lariam, causes vivid nightmares and has been associated with suicidal tendencies and paranoia. Many travelers, most often the long-term travelers like Peace Corps workers and reporters, opt to not take anything at all. They instead are overly observant of the symptoms of malaria and are quick to get treatment. There is no perfect solution to the disease that kills millions worldwide, only outdone by AIDS, and we're not the first to bitch about it.

We had begun dreading the pills to an embarrassing degree. We would postpone meals, even though we were famished, and would wince as we swallowed the bright blue pills. We began with the intake at breakfast, but by the second week, we had pushed the dosing to well past 7pm. At this rate, we would be eating midnight snacks, passing out the pills like we are at a rave, yelling "Party, Party, Party!"

We then started singing a parody to the Aquarius song from Hairspray (or the Forrest Gump Soundtrack for you uncultured ones)

Nausea and Dysentery
'Sqeeters and Flies abounding
Citronella candle illumination
Rising fiery indigestion
Traveling our S.E. Asian courses
Guided by the Lonely Planet forces
Oh, care for us;
Malaria!

This is the dawning of the age of Malaria
The age of Malaria
Malaria!
Malaria!

Don't forget the Dengue!

Our pills do nothing to prevent it - nothing does except not getting bit by mosquitoes - and many people feel it's much worse than Malaria. It's referred to as "Break-bone Fever" because your body becomes so sensitive to any touch that the weight of bed sheets can cause a person to scream out in blood curdling pain. The headaches are described as icepicks to the temples. Delirium then sets in and nothing makes sense anymore, days pass, then weeks, until the untreatable disease slowly runs it diabolical course through your body. Dang!


We took a week hiatus to a beach town called Sihanoukville, but that's another story. We arrived back into Phnom Penh a bit cranky having ridden in the front row of the bus, seemingly right next to the jet powered horn that would send cows and monks skidding into the dirt shoulder. The roads are filled with all sorts of vehicles, trucks, busses, cars, motorcycles, mopeds, tractors, bikes and pedestrians. The biggest beast on the road dominates, which is usually our bus, so the deafening horn is used endlessly as a means to clear the road.

The tuk-tuk drivers were waiting for their prey. Even before the bus came to a stop, the tuk-tuk drivers were fighting amongst themselves to get first pick of the tourists. "Back off, they're mine" they said in a universal language accented with sharp elbows and dropped shoulders. The guy who laid claim to us was sporting a brand new green "mini tuk-tuk" that he was proud of. We had to haggle a bit, but that's to be expected. He made us check out a few other guesthouses on our way back to Smile, but none of them came close to offering the clean cozy $2 room that Smile did.

We were welcomed like old friends returning home, and everyone commented on my $2 haircut. They're very observant people. Right as we walked out onto the deck, we saw John and Andy sitting at the same PC's playing games like nothing had changed.

It was time to apply for our Vietnam visa, so we handed over our passports to our guesthouse. They facilitated the potentially complicated procedure for a $2 surcharge. For $32, they could get the visa back to us in less than 36 hours, for $38 they could do it in a day. Quite a progression when you consider this type paperwork used to take a week. As promised, we had our passports returned to us the next day. We took a look at our colorful new visas, conveniently taking up an entire page in our passports, and noticed that the visa was stamped Sihanoukville. To my amazement, our passports were put onto the same bus we had just ridden, processed that day, and returned on the bus the following morning. Quite a logistical feat.

As soon as we had arrived and set our bags in our room, the sound of plump rain drops began pounding against the metal roof of the guesthouse. The rain built quickly and violently and soon enough we were engulfed in a deafening onslaught of metallic cacophony. It was like a powerful waterfall had surrounded us and there was no escape. We were all yelling at each other, but it was futile, so we all ran around screaming at each new thunder boom and as the driving rain built and crescendoed repeatedly. The sturdiness of the wooden guesthouse structure, built entirely on wooden stilts, came into question as the wind gusts rocked the building a bit. The rain riot built up into a furious roar. The monsoons are upon us!

It was at this point we thought back to the dirt road outside. The condition had surely disintegrated into a minefield of slippery death. It had been repaired considerably, with just the sewer caps now exposed, but the hard packed dirt would surely return to ooze by this watery assault. The violent storm passed as fast as it arrived and the road didn't reach full muddy saturation, at least not today.

The next day, to our horror, we walked along the dirt road to find a full-sized backhoe digging a deep trench down the long straight section of the road. The skinny road barely accommodated the massive diesel beast as it indiscriminately ripped through existing drainage lines and years of compacted trash. The aftermath of this trench was terrifying. The high volume of dirt being excavated in order to bury cement culverts basically formed a steep sloping V, pointing directly into the muddy trench quickly filling with dirty water from the broken drainage pipes. It was very difficult to traverse the steep dirt walkways when dry, but when the rain returned that afternoon, it became a bona fide deathtrap, a gauntlet that even the locals dared not to cross. The trench was at least 3 feet deep, much deeper than the ditches manually dug with spades and hoes. The excavated dirt piled on the sides were an additional 3 feet height, making the inevitable fall from grace a devastating 6 feet into a pool of waiting hepatitis. We were going to have hell getting out of this place come tomorrow.

Before we left Phnom Penh, and Cambodia for that matter, we headed to the Central Market for a little tourist shopping. It was taxing. The main building was a run down golden art deco building, cross shaped with four wings shooting off in each direction. The interior reminded me of NYC's Grand Central Station, filled with street vendors and open air butcher stalls. But each wing looked exactly alike and outside was an even more dizzying accumulation of vendors, making it impossible to get any bearings. The symmetry and chaos of the redundant, never-ending booths made orientation impossible. We were spinning around in circles of bags, sarongs, glasses, notebooks, toiletries, t-shirts, and postcards. All the while amputees, the blind, and badly deformed begged for money, grabbing our arms and chasing us down yelling "Mister, mister, Madame" and sometimes just, "hey lady!"

As I haggled with a vendor over the price of a backpack, I felt a tug on my sleeve. What I saw chilled me to the bone. I looked up and into the face of the most deformed human I had ever seen, outside a formaldehyde filled jar. He had a growth on the side of his head that was large enough to initially look like a still born twin brother attached to his face. It was a huge flap of skin growing off his left side of his skull, folding over like a malignant apple turnover. It must have weighed 10 pounds and was covered in the same hair that grew on his head. The kid deserved all the money in my wallet, and I wanted to give it to him, but the arresting sight instantly turned me into a coward.

By the end, I had purchased a $6 "Northface" backpack, a $3 "Prada" sunglasses, a $2 Beer Lao t-shirt and 10 postcards for $1. Rebecca failed to purchase anything, falling victim to the overwhelming dichotomy of simultaneous claustro/agora-phobia...and the never ending parade of begging war victims.

It was time to move on. Cambodia has been at times, soul-fulfilling, heart-breaking, hilarious, and frustrating, and we will never forget it. We had used up our 30-day visa fully, so the next morning we boarded a bus and made a 10 hour trip into Vietnam. What lays in store we don't know, but stay tuned and we'll surely tell you!

Angkor, Wat it is!

From our journals dated May 2nd through May 7th, 2006

Once in the bus station, we purchased our tickets to the border town of Aranya Prathet with no problem and headed to the food court for some neutrally biased food. I pointed at the blandest food I could identify, struggling to resist the chef lady's enthusiastic recommendation for the red curry, long red chilies instead of vegetables floating in the sauce, like mines waiting to sink the next poop ship.

Upon boarding the bus, we were shown our assigned seats. The bus was fairly nice, but we there wasn't a bathroom, this bus was all business. We watched Tom and Jerry surrounded by people of an assortment of nationalities. It dawned upon me that Tom and Jerry is the most brilliant cartoon ever. It uses no words, just enthralling music, and a few sounds effects and incessant cartoon violence. Everyone on the bus was laughing together in happy unity.

The four hour ride passed smoothly and we were kicked off the bus with little fanfare in Aranya Prathet. The backpackers, four of us now, huddled together, back to back to defend against the smiling tuk-tuk drivers, drawing in on us like hyenas on a wounded flamingo. They were very nice and didn't mind our continued attempts to haggle below their intended 70B fare for a ride across the border. Laughing, one of them pointed to the wall, a hand-painted price list simply stating "Tuk-Tuk - 70B." Seeing it in writing seemed to seal our fate, so we loaded up two people on each tuk-tuk and made the last few km's toward the border.

Now on the Cambodian side, I can see things have instantly gotten much simpler, dirtier, and poorer.

As we walked towards the border gates, keeping an eye out for the visa office and any snipers mistaking us for runners, we were approached by a couple of guys acting authoritative and speaking very quickly. Taking folded forms from their pockets they were offering to sell their services for an expedited visa, for 1300B but plenty didn't seem right. I looked up and saw a sign saying the visa office is another 300 meters in. Right then a Thai police officer ushered me forward, having given the street salesmen their 10 seconds to land the deal.

There was only one bribe that needed to be made, and that was directly with the visa office. The visa itself cost about 700B, but the visa officer, in his infinite kindness and generosity, politely requested a donation to pay for his overtime associated with helping out his dear friend, the 'barang' as we'll now be referred to in the Khmer language. If you don't pay, then that visa could take days, or at least until he gets tired of looking at you.

We had the 1000B bills hanging out of our passports and the guy was impressed. True to form, we had visas in hand in under 5 minutes. We now have 30 days to enjoy Cambodia. We rode a shuttle truck to the immigration office. Right as I was signaled forward, five superbly dressed Thais were ushered up, the officers literally pushing me to the side. I recognized these blue-chip travelers as a group of wealthy Thais coming to enjoy Cambodia's high stakes gambling, for a minimum bet of $2,500USD. This border town used to be nothing but a cesspool, now it's still a cesspool but with several luxury casinos with gamblers inside that would make any Vegas pitboss blush. The elegance and size of the buildings clash harshly against the dust and dilapidation of its surroundings. Finally, I stepped forward and received a huge sticker and 6 stamps in my passport, entirely filling two pages.

We took yet another complimentary shuttle truck to the bus station, which offered a single option: a $10 bus headed for Siem Reap, home of Angkor Wat, leaving immediately. A British girl gave a big sigh at the comment "leaving immediately." She and her friends had taken the 6am bus from Bangkok and was tricked into waiting over three hours till now, so the bus would be at 100% capacity. She had heard the same promise at least twice an hour since she arrived.

As hot and frustrated backpackers scrambled aboard the bus, all the seats had been taken and there were a few of us waiting to find a seat. I regrettably snapped at the kid loading the bus. The kid pointed at the front row, stacked completely solid with packs, and I yell, "What the fuck is this?" I knew I had overreacted as he was reaching to move the bags for us. Bec reminded me to keep my cool as things were done very differently in this part of the world. His adjustments to the stacks of packs left us with the two best seats on the bus, which isn't saying much, but at least we had legroom.

Our luxury was relative to the people in the back, who had it really bad, where the bumps from the road amplified into an endless thrashing. The ride was immediately painful: bumps, cracks, washboard mounds, huge craters, and boulders smacked us around wildly. The entire trip promised to be bone-rattling torture. Our sacrums began swelling within the first 3o minutes. We were both joking we wouldn't shit right for a week. The pile of backpacks kept toppling over onto the driver as he struggled to keep the mini-bus on the road and away from potholes, motos, bicycles and other vehicles on the dirt road. The truck seemed to be disintegrating a little more with each kilometer. Curious as to how fast our crawl actually was, Bec glanced over the driver's shoulder to see that the speedometer and fuel gage were both broken. Either that or we were rolling at 0km an hour on an empty tank. The whole trip was only 140kms, leisurely driven in less that 2 hours on any decent road. A paved road is coming soon though, supposedly in less than 2 years. Once that happens, I'm afraid that something will change about Cambodia and the Angkor Wat temples. I'm glad we get to see Cambodia in its final hours before joining the mainstream tourist circuit.

All along the way, the road was lined with families living in thatched huts, elevated by bamboo stilts, an algae filled pool in each front yard to collect rain water. We passed by a crew of landmine clearers, waving metal detectors, armed with shovels, literally right next to the road.

Cambodia is the most heavily mined country in the world, and landmines can easily maim an unsuspecting tourist walking off the beaten path, just like the farmers who have lost limbs trying to plant rice. These clues are subtly revealing a country that has a terrible past, and a heartwarming future. The wealth and economic signs are dismal. Hand carts instead of powered vehicles, fragile huts with no electricity, clay-red dirt everywhere, naked children playing in piles of garbage, heavy trucks rolling slowly over the crumbling road, overloaded trucks hauling enormous piles of people and bikes and whatever else someone dares to load onto the back.

As we shifted around in the seats, finding the least painful way to sit, tailbones throbbing, we looked outside and realized how good we didn't know we had it. We were surrounded by people who would consider themselves lucky to be as miserable as us. We saw many entire families on mopeds, getting covered in dirt, scarves or masks covering their faces if they were prepared, or just a hand if they weren't. They bravely rode through potholes as big as their bikes. Large groups of people loaded uncomfortably into the backs of trucks, seated on top of the cargo, enduring the same dirt road, without seats, without safety, without windows, without air-conditioning. And the people living in the remote countryside, watching the passing chaos, many of them surely will never travel out of their villages at all. We wouldn't be complaining about our sore bums anymore.


Since the get, we had been dodging diesel, dirt, and rain flying in through the windows, large trucks spewing soot and dust as they hogged the road honking a deafening version of King of the Road. It was after our first break, three hours into it, that the driver asked us to pull up the windows and turned on the air-conditioning. All us riders gasped in shock, feeling betrayed that the driver had kept this secret. Sensing the hostility, he defends himself by saying we have now approached "The part of the road that is very dusty, and very, very bumpy."

We were speechless.

So far, everyone speaks very good English as compared to those we met during our brief stay in Bangkok. The people seem to be much more sociable and gregarious, engaging us in conversation about us and our countries. 'Luong,' told us a lot about his country, the good and sad, and explained that if a kid expects to make a decent income in Cambodia, then it will be through tourism, thus learning English from an early age is imperative. According to Luong, people in Thailand have many more opportunities and can get by without learning English.

The bus arrived into Siem Reap around 11 PM and pulled into the entrance of Winter Guesthouse, hoping we would stay due to exhaustion, which we did. The room was cheap and decent, so we never moved out. Our guesthouse was a bit away from the downtown touristy area, so they offered free lifts into town on the back of a moped. Lucky and Ronny would be our designated drivers.

It was pretty scary at first, flying down the road on a 100lb bicycle, holding onto the back of the seat, surrounded by all sorts of moving objects weaving a dizzying fabric of controlled chaos. Barreling through signless intersections protected by nothing more than a horn and the sight of two large Americans on board. The locals are fearless...entire families of five piled onto one bike, the guy driving, wife and kids behind him, with a baby in his lap. We eventually learned to just relax and trust the driver, with a single hand holding on, or none at all. Most girls rode side-saddle, with their legs onto one side...they never seemed to fall off.

The first evening in Siem Reap, we passed a wreck between two bikes with one guy sprawled out on the road, unconscious. People were gathered around him, slapping him and shaking him. All the things you shouldn't do to someone that may have head or neck injuries, we thought. But this must happen all the time because our drivers barely slowed down as we drove right past them.

Lucky and Ronny dropped us off by the Siem Reap River intersecting the town, and were given a few hours to look around before they picked us back up. We were immediately approached by a pathetic lady begging, with her child delicately attached to her fragile frame with a dirty piece of fabric.

"Food for my baby" she would say over and over, her hands scooping imaginary food into her shriveled mouth. It was gut-wrenching to see this, knowing that I could easily hand her a twenty dollar bill. I'm conflicted about this type of street level beggary because I'm afraid it disempowers the individual. By teaching them to subsist on begging alone, they are not capable of providing for their family without direct support from someone else. But what if there isn't another option, what if the tourist IS the only option for survival?

The market was dizzying mix of tourism and daily life. The outside perimeter contained t-shirts, paintings and statues, but as we ventured towards the center, piles of dead animals and bushels of green plants begin filling the stalls. The center was a large cement courtyard, divided into sections, each filled with stalls specializing in a particular species. There was a large variety of fresh fish, many of them still alive. The dried fish displays were spectacular, eight to ten dried flat fish with a bamboo spear stringing their head together, making a fish fan. Rebecca originally thought they were handbags from a distance. Another courtyard had quadrants of land-based meat. The chicken square, the cow corner, and of course the hog station. Piles of pig hearts and a pyramid of pig legs...pick a part.

The drivers aren't paid a salary by the hotels. The hotels just provide an opportunity to make some cash. The complimentary lifts into town give the drivers time to build rapport with their guests and hopefully persuade them into a multi-day guided tour of the temples. Lucky spoke very good English and answered all our questions well and had a good sense of humor. Ronny, however, barely spoke English, thus making him dependent on Lucky's ability to charm.

Lucky's sales pitch was precise but his price was a bit optimistic. He ensured us we would see all the important temples, promising us we would definitely see everything in three days. I figured the tip would just be included, so we never countered an offer. For $10/day, we would have guides taking us to all the best temple sites and friends taking us to all the best restaurants.

But now it was time to pay for the temple tickets, at $40 for a 3-day ticket, they were quite expensive. Our money situation had been discombobulated ever since we left New Zealand. I was now converting prices quoted in Cambodian Riels into Thai Baht, then for comparison, doing a cross-analysis into US Dollar to see how I would have reacted in my former life, and finally into Australian dollar to compare it to the number of meat pies I could have purchased at Woolies. Buying a bottle of water took 15 minutes.

So we went to a Chinese currency exchange to convert our last stack of Thai Baht into US dollars, which much to my frustration had just been converted from US into Thai Baht 2 days ago. I was losing my ass in commission fees. The business was simple, containing a single glass display case that was originally designed to protect cupcakes from sneezes. Behind the single pane glass was huge piles of cash. Bundles and stacks, it would take a full sized duffle bag to transport all that cash. Behind the counter on the floor was another huge pile, this one dumped on the floor like dirt. This is the nature of Cambodian currency, where a bundle of 500 Riel notes is about $6 USD, and some of the smaller denomination piles were basically rolls of pennies.

Our drivers encouraged us to take a Sunset tour of Angkor Wat. At $2, it was a cheap introduction to the temples and a clever way to keep us as customers. We were immediately awestruck. The level of detail of the vast complex made most stone architecture look like a pre-fab trailer. Every square inch of the stone temples was intricately carved. We tried to visualize the amount of work that went into these temples, the millions of citizens involved in the construction and lifestyle of the kingdom. Those people walked the same stone steps that we were on right now. I was able to envision those ancient people, celebrating and building and living, not the tourists climbing all over it, and that made me happy. The temples of Angkor had been known to exist after their fall as a civilization, but no one can say why they abandoned the city in the first place.

Our tour was fairly quick, and much to our displeasure, we were booted off the temple right as the sun was setting, by one of the hundreds of security guards. But the tour did give us some insight on what our next 3 days would involve. The temples spread over an area 77-square miles, so a moped is absolutely necessary. We ran into the two backpackers we met at the border. They had rented bicycles and pedaled quite a bit their first day of exploring. Hearing the exhaustion in their voices and seeing their sunburned skin, we were sold on the idea of mopeds.

We got attacked by a gang of cute little girls, selling books and postcards. They went crazy, surrounding us with a divide and conquer technique. "Angkor" by Dawn Rooney is the most popular book on Angkor by far. They asked for $7, we countered at $3. I ran away, leaving Bec to fend for herself. Those girls are very observant, they noticed the ring on her hand and asked for her husband's name. With that key piece of information, they leaped on me ferociously.

"Rory, Rory, your wife said by this from me," except four of them were saying the same thing, holding up their own books. They were relentless but so adorable. The book was surely counterfeit, but it was printed in full color on high quality paper. I gave her $5 and as we were driving off, the clever girl tricked Bec into agreeing to buy another book tomorrow.

"OK lady, tomorrow you buy...from me!"

That night Rebecca talked Lucky into taking us to his favorite street cart, a few km's down the road from our guesthouse. This place was a fairly permanent structure, home of three kitchens, plenty of seating space, three TV's blasting World Wide Wrestling, not a pirated DVD, but live! The food was extremely tasty and cheap. A great local meal and a beer for under 2 dollars. It was comforting to be there with an interpreter, so we could ask stupid questions and get the coldest beer.

I had been eyeing up a collection of food carts right across the road from our guesthouse. Lucky said, "Don't eat there. Not so clean. Make you sick." We were lucky to have Lucky.

We went to bed early because our first full day at Angkor would start at 4:30am for the sunrise. We had been so enchanted by our first visit, waking up early would be no problem.

Promptly at 4:30am, we took a twilight ride through town, merchants setting up shop for the day and a handful of tourists in tuk-tuks were heading toward Angkor Wat as well. We zoomed past most of them with our agile two-wheelers and adept drivers. Our expectations and excitement grew as we got closer, the faint light of dawn just enough to make out the moat surrounding Angkor Wat. By 5:30, we were watching the sun rise over Angkor Wat. Most of the temples of Angkor face the east, but Angkor Wat faces the west, making it a perfect silhouette to the sunrise. This fact of its difference in orientation convinces many experts that Angkor Wat was built as a tomb, ot for funerary purposes. We walked alone on the south lawn and found a view of all five towers. Then we crossed to the other side, in front of the water basin, for a more popular reflective shot of the five towers.

When we walked back to the collection of tuk-tuk drivers we got attacked again by the girls from yesterday evening. The girl put on a convincing pouty face, full of hurt feelings and called Rebecca a "liar, liar" for not buying another book from her.

"You're not from USA, you're from L.I.E."

I'm confident that little girl will grow up to be quite successful. We noticed that all the kids were selling postcards with a similar act, spewing the same lines with the same emotional voice inflection. "Where you from? USA, capital Washington D.C." Adorable at first. But they are all being trained to sound pathetic. Sometimes I question if they even know what they're saying.

At 7am, we had brekky by Bayon Temple, one of our favorites. Over 200 huge stone faces, ornately detailed, looking over the kingdom with an omnipresent awareness. The temple was filled with little old ladies praying, lighting incense for good luck. Several monks were climbing their way around the walls, their bright orange robes shining in the morning sunlight. A major element of design within the kingdom is the bas-relief, detailed stone etching about 1-2 inches deep. We searched in vain for a depiction of a lady giving birth. We were trying to learn to appreciate the detail since we would be visiting many temples, the only way to fight off 'wat fatigue,' when you walk into a beautiful temple 800 years old and all you can do is shrug your shoulders and say "OK, next!"

After that we hit Bauphon, a pyramid temple in ruin. There was extensive work going on, cranes and armies of reconstructive surgeons. We read the stories and saw the pictures of 100 years of fruitless attempts to save the pyramid from collapse. We learned about the painstaking methodology required to restore a temple of this complexity and condition. An entire new method of archeology had to be developed in Cambodia, and it is constantly updated.

Next was Phimeanakas, the King's temple. The king had been cursed to a life of having sex with a seven-headed serpent lady each and every night, before visiting his various wives and concubines, or else he would die. Some curse...

We finished the day with Terrace of the Elephants and Terrace of the Leper King, two magnificent temples with multiple levels of deep "high relief" carvings (deeper than bas-relief). These adjacent temples has huge stone elephants with trunks forming pillars, 20-foot cavernous walls and amazingly detailed carving, portraying endless battles between good an evil. We spent 15 minutes, running around in the hot sun, looking for the 5-Headed Horse.

"Northern end of platform, behind outer wall", the book said.

We went outside of northern wall, back behind the west wall, outside of the inner wall, then finally found the inner side of the outside wall, down in the deep recesses of the outside terrace. Seeing the Five Headed Horse, gave us closure, and sun stroke. The statue of the Leper King looked like a naked Buddha.

Upon leaving Angkor Thom, through the east gates, the bridge across the moat was lined with hundreds of gargantuan stone gods and devils as they wrestle a long thick serpent, or naga. This was one of my favorite designs.

We headed out to Ta Keo, a tall temple offering great views of the area. The chamber roofs were often no longer enclosed, exposing the bright sun through an eerie opening, heavy square boulders precariously hanging over, looking ready to fall and any moment. Once we had climbed up to the top, grasping each new step with our hands, refusing to to look down for fear of panic setting in, we found ourselves in a such a peaceful setting, almost a spiritual place with saffron fabric-adorned Buddhas, incense burning, filling the air with sweet smoke, and cute old ladies giving out good blessings with kind wrinkled smiles. Then a tuk-tuk filled with two new tourists arrived below and were attacked by dozens of little girls running from each food stall, little high pitched voices piercing the air like a flock of seagulls around a pile of breadcrumbs.

"Post card, you buy! Cold water, lady, you buy, YOU BUY!"

After lunch we visited Ta Prohm, the jungle castle, also known as the temple from Tomb Raider. The long dusty path to the temple's entrance had landmine victim musicians, beautiful music played by people missing appendages and the ability to see. A little boy cleverly tried to trick me into hiring him as a guide. If they get you to say "Yes," no matter what the pretext, then you've just agreed to buy 10 postcards and a drink. I barely escaped with my greenbacks.

Like all the guidebooks say, this place feels just an Indiana Jones movie. It lay completely in ruin except for the huge trees that had parasitically shoved their massive roots into and between the boulders that made up the walls and rooms, keeping them suspended in a surreal state of semi-collapse. It seemed only the places still held together were done so by trees and roots, the rest of the temple had completely disintegrated into a huge pile of sand stone legos. Much of the temple was off limits due to recent and impending collapses.

The Hall of Echos was audaciously audible, a slim, tall chamber possessing unexpected acoustic life. I couldn't understand the guidebook's instruction to "thump your chest," for I much preferred screaming or clapping in an echoing room, but alas, the thump was the only thing that worked, creating a healthy deep drum beat through the acoustics of my chest cavity. This activity was used by the original monks to purify their soul. I used it for my own rendition of Wild Thing by Tone Loc.

Ta Prohm was a great diversion from all the other temples that bad been painstakingly restored, reassembled, replaced, braced and buckled. For the most part, this temple had been left as it was found, showing the voracity and hunger of the jungle, the compromise each side made in order to exist. How even the greatest architecture can't stand up to mother nature.

Having enjoyed Ta Prohm with our last drop of energy, we were hot, hungry, and tired. Lunch was an hour of endless pestering by the onslaught of Cambodian children selling postcards, flutes, bracelets, books, water, statues, and t-shirts. Their schools schedule class around the morning and evening rush to sell books, postcards, and water to tourists. The children were charming, even when doing their well-rehearsed, "Buy my postcards so I can go to school and learn English," routine. These kids were all well practiced, learning fast to become master salesmen. They were all extremely cute, charismatic, emotional and persistent. One little boy refused to give up, using persistence as his main sales technique. He plopped down on our table with the postcards in our faces, every ten seconds or so, he'd repeat "Ok, you buy!" After the 100th no, he was beginning to win us over. He had unfortunately picked the wrong pair of tourists. He finally asked why not, and when I replied "No money," he answered, "No money, no honey!" a phrase that the local kids love to repeat. I needed a t-shirt like my driver had. A simple white one with black letters, "No Postcards, No Tuk-tuk, No Temples, No Sunset, No Boom Boom," I could just sit back and point.

We exited Angkor Thom through the South Gate, taking pictures of the Naga serpent and demon gods overlooking the moat, to finish the day back at Angkor Wat, the crown jewel of the vast complex. We were looking for the "Churning of the Ocean Milk" bas-relief, which is a major feature of the temple. On every side of Angkor Wat, for hundreds and hundreds of yards, the stone walls contained the most magnificent stone carvings of bas-relief art known in the entire world. Once we found the "Churning of the Ocean Milk", we could easily see why: the detail, the precision, the symmetry of the hundreds of intricate figures all interlaced as they tried for thousands of years to squeeze the elixir of immortality from the giant serpent.

Upon viewing these bas-relief carvings, it's easy to understand there isn't another place like this in the world. Although none of the other walls impressed us as much as "Churning of the Ocean Milk", it was interesting to see the styles change and the gods morph through the years. Each section was commissioned at a different time, carved by different artists trying to appease a new king that worshipped a different god, or at least the same god with more heads or arms, as Buddhism and Hinduism traded places and blended together.

The steep eroded stone steps to all these temples' upper chambers were dangerous and exhausting. A tumble on any steps, especially the really tall temples like Angkor Wat, Ta Kao and Phnom Bakheng, would be tragic. These staircases become a convalescent home for the sun drenched and dying. I loved climbing the temple steps, but even I got spooked a few times, they were damn steep!

The first time we climbed into the upper chambers of Angkor Wat at sunset, we noticed hundreds of people were waiting in line to view something amazing, they were all clamoring to get to it. The next day, during high noon, with no one up there, we quickly discovered that it was just a queue to access the only staircase with a handrail.

We were down to $11, enough to survive on for a day, but it was a pretty scary thought to be broke and stranded in a foreign country. So we had our drivers take us into town to hunt down some dollars. Although there is a 'credit card cash advance' service, where a bank charges your credit card, and hands you cash with a 2% cut taken off the top, I was hoping for an ATM. The first bank we stopped at had an ATM, but the password technology was from the 1980's. It would only take 5 numbers, refusing my insanely long password that had been maximized for encryption security. Bec pops off with "That's probably the only ATM in Cambodia, Mister 'I Need a Password that the Pentagon Can't Crack', we're screwed!"

Lucky found us another bank with an ATM with a modernized password logarithm so I juiced up on $300 American dollars. It felt quenching, like Gatorade after a summer soccer scrimmage.

For our second day, we took a long and dangerous ride out to Banteay Srei. Cows, dogs, errant bikes, carts, and trucks were all jumping out at us. The big dog rules the road so when a 4-door sedan jammed into the middle of the road, we were sent into the rocky shoulder, losing our traction in the gravel for a few scary moments. Then a rabid looking dog forced us to slam on the brakes. Looking at Rebecca and Lucky in front of us, their ride seemed to be going much smoother...not so many skids through potholes and near collisions with pigs. Their pole position allowed them to pick and choose their battles with the bovine.

We saw temples like Preah Rup, displaying a massive complex of mortarless brick, the first civilization to develop the material and technique. Everything was originally covered in a fine white stucco, ornate and bright, but we were left with only our imagination.

Then we saw Banteay Srei, Citadel of the Women. It was a fairytale palace, with pinkish sandstone carvings, and lots of signs saying not to touch.

Later on we visited a Crazy Elephant Temple. Having been in the sun for hours, losing liters of sweat, we reluctantly climbed the series of steep stone steps. There we were rewarded with a beautiful Buddha statue with a 7-headed serpent. During a revered moment of zen meditation, this serpent had hoisted Buddha over the floods, saving him from doom. This was the day after we found out that our dear friend Laurie Williams got engaged to her man, Mark Turner. We lit some incense at Buddha's feet and said a prayer for their long and happy life together. We are so thrilled for them! Congratulations, Lur and Mark!!

Then on to Ta Som, with trees growing through the walls. A little boy hung out in the windows and doorways, making the best photo opportunities, and he knew it.

"Take my picture lady", he demanded. Then he says "Ok, you give me a dollar!"

Neak Pean, the coiled serpent, was by far my favorite one. It was an artificial island, floating in the middle of a large square reservoir. Four additional pools joined from the north, south, east and west. Each were supplied water through a series of complex pumps and irrigation techniques that I couldn't comprehend. Each pool had a different fountain head, or gargoyle: a lion, elephant, horse, and human. Each gargoyle head represented the four great rivers flowing from Lake Anavatapta high in the Himalayas. Rebecca and I enjoyed beautiful visions of inhabitants atoning for their sins in this wonderful water playland.

Preah Khan, the sacred sword. This was a massive complex with linear door entrances that gave off an infinite mirrored reflection. It seemed only yesterday that these halls were full of monks and dancers. This temple, in particular, was distressing to explore. Several hundred years after its original construction, a new king, worshipping Hindu deities instead of Buddhist ones, ordered the destruction of all Buddha images throughout the temple. Thousands of Buddhist images were savagely hacked and chiseled from the walls. Everywhere we looked were thousands of chunky oblong scars where the Buddhas used to exist. Sometimes we saw the eerie shadow of the Buddha outline, smiling through the image that still exists. But the people of Cambodia cherish all their temples once again, and along with the wonderful organizations that do so much to preserve what is left, even the looted, overgrown temples with beheaded statues are beloved.

The heat was absolutely destroying us and we were wobbly, smacking our heads into the short stone entrances. We were stumbling, grumbling and wincing through gulps of piss-warm water that smelled and tasted like the cheap plastic bottle it had been brewing in.

On Friday, day three of our nonstop tour of toasty temples, we started with a long trip out to the oldest temples in the kingdom, from the 800's AD.

We saw Bakong, a great pyramid temple built on an artificial mountain, with a grand walkway over another large moat. Bakong had the first example of large serpents lining the moat and had the only example of surviving door handles, ornate blocks on the sanctuary tower doors, a great juxtaposition against all the surrounding piles of rubble.

Our final temple would be Phnom Bakheng. It had a crumbling staircase, carved into the natural sandstone mountainside, rising high into the forest. This was temple number two in popularity due to its vantage point overlooking the jungle and the best sunset photo opportunity of all the temples. But this popularity comes at a price. Each and every day it is plagued by a horde of miserable tourists...out of shape idiots slowing climbing the rocky uneven sandstone, the Japanese lugging their cumbersome photo equipment and arthritic elephants carrying rich retired fogies up the hill...all clinging onto the steps for dear life, clogging up the entire staircase.

But we had arrived at 2pm and the sun was in full effect, blaring down on us from a cloudless sky. We were struck by the absence of everyone else. We were completely alone, not a single person to be seen, every shot we took made the place look like we discovered the abandoned shrine ourselves. Admittingly, the heat was exhausting and painful, but our photos were as pristine as any guidebook. From the top, we relished our final view of Angkor Wat and the surrounding land, spent in spiritual solitude with each other.

Enduring the heat was a worthwhile sacrifice. Keep in mind this is low season, during the busy times, these temples are absolutely crawling with tourists, like ants on a watermelon. If lasting memories are more important than current comfort, then visiting the main temples, Angkor Wat, Bayon, Phnon Bakheng, Ta Prohm, between 12-4 pm is required. Otherwise your pictures will look like Disneyland, a carnival ride of goofy looking tourists, large dumb hats, digital cameras, backpacks, and empty water bottles, climbing over your shots.

When we were surrounded by tourists, we found ourselves patiently waiting for the westerners to pass by the frame before taking our shots.

"Get out of the shot, whitey!" I would jokingly mumble to Rebecca.

A panorama full of Cambodians was totally fine, but a couple smiling gringos in front of an ancient temple and the shot was ruined. There's just something wrong about framing a picture of Angkor Wat with a pale looking dude from Cincinnati, wearing a NASCAR t-shirt in the background.

After we were officially watted out, we visited the Land Mine Museum, which is on the way to Angkor Wat, next to some sort of tiger zoo that we were too scared to inspect. There are two land mine museums in Siem Reap, this one was privately ran, the other was government sanctioned. According to our Lonely Planet guide, there was some odd trouble in the past and the proprietor of the non-government museum was imprisoned. We never could get an explanation of the feud, but regardless it had been settled because posted on a wall was a sign explaining that there is no longer any problems and please spread the word that the other land mine museum is a great place to visit. It seemed a bit forced to me, perhaps it was part of the plea bargain to avoid further persecution.

The museum was simple, basically a wooden shack and some living quarters for the land mine victims that lived there and ran the place. It was financed solely by donation. They were very friendly and offered tours of the place, giving a first hand account (bad word choice I know) of the lingering dangers of land mines throughout Cambodia, the heaviest mined country in the world. There were massive piles of defused mines of all shapes and sizes. Dozens of hand grenades sat on tables, it was scary to pick them up because they still looked legitimate and for a second I thought that this museum could be an interactive one with a sick sense of humor. There were laminated sheets explaining each pile of weaponry, and the crude and course nature of the displays sank an eerie feeling in both of us. Nausea set in before too long, as a smiling kid with one leg held up the same type mine that shredded his body as he was tending his rice fields. The rawness of the country and it's people is overwhelming sometimes.

During dinner, we asked Lucky where our $40 admission charge went. What he told us was shocking. Out of the multi-millions that come in annually, Lucky said 90% goes to Sokha Hotels, controlled by a single business man, who owns a chain of high-end hotels and Cambodia's only petrol company. Ten percent goes to the government, with only a fraction going to the actual inhabitants of Angkor. It was maddening to hear that Cambodia's most important asset, its ticket to recovery from decades of debilitating war, is owned and manipulated by a single man.
This guy has total control over the Angkor territory, mulling over ideas to increase revenue like laser light shows and escalators. That leaves UNESCO, World Monument Fund, JASA, ASPARA, and EFEO to finance and partake in all the expensive and meticulous reconstruction and preservation, ultimately making Sokha more money.

Regardless, we did the shit out of Angkor Wat. Three days of nonstop temple action had taken it's toll on us. We had the dreaded wat fatigue. The idea of having a 7-day pass seemed ludicrous. Even through there were hundreds of other temples unexplored, we had seen the most elaborate and historically significant ones. Only a detail-orientated and girlfriendless archeology student could stay motivated for a week. But seeing these magnificent temples and climbing their steep steps, touching the masterpieces with our hands, filled our souls and excited our senses in ways that photographs and documentaries never could. We know this experience will forever be one of the brightest highlights of our journey. Happily full of wattage, we decided to move on.

We headed to the city center in the morning of our last day in town, before we were to catch a $5 bus to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. We had a tasty $6 pizza, from Ecstatic Pizza. Not to be confused with Happy Pizza, Fantastic Pizza, or Pizza Ecstasy that lace their pies with hallucinogenic herbs.

We went back to the Old Market, full of souvenirs and seafood and purchase our $2 "Danger Mines" and "Angkor Wat" t-shirts. A dirty young boy, holding his infant brother in a cloth sling, latched onto us and begged for a torturous long time. I recognized this as the indoctrinated begging technique learned by all the local kids, but it was hard to dismiss the hardships this kid had obviously endured. The ordeal upset Rebecca, who then felt ridiculous running around and snatching up all the great bargains.


We grabbed our bags and took one last moped ride with Lucky and Ronny to the bus station. We got there early so I asked the driver how much time I had before departure. He turned away, refusing to decipher my ramblings. So I ventured out into the food carts, hunting for snacks, all the while keeping a watchful eye on the bus, ready to leap onto the bumper and wrestle for a ride. We ended up with Pringles and anti-malarial pills, a tasty snack indeed!



If you are interested in more temple pics, visit our Shutterfly photo site.

Bangkok: We Heart Farang!

From our journals dated April 28th throughMay 2nd, 2006


Our Thai Air flight took 9 hours to fly from Cairns to Brisbane to Bangkok. But they fed and watered us humanely. At one point I had a Jack-n-Coke, a red wine, and a cognac on my tray. For our in-flight entertainment, we watched an awesome Japanese gameshow where people put together elaborate costumes and sets to disguise their physical bodies as something quite different. Ninjas defied gravity by having another guy in black against a black backdrop, boosting them for a slow-motion round-house, or a stage full of people dressed in black and white, moving to music as piano keys. They were all masters of disguise revealing a final mystery. Months of design and practice, all for 10 seconds of fame, a medal if they were lucky but always the audience's applause. Though we couldn't understand a word, we were very entertained.

At the airport and through customs, we were greeted by the most insane receiving line of people frantically waving and yelling at us. Initially shocked and laughing, we smiled, waved back, and enjoyed what it must feel like to be famous as everyone wanted our attention to consider their transportation or hotel. We managed to break free and found that phone calls are just one baht. So we made a couple of them and secured a room at a budget hotel called Wendy House near Siam Square. A cute little lady that had helped us with the phone while trying to sell us a ride was now following us, watching us patiently shuffle back and forth from the information station and the payphones, then down a long walkway to nowhere looking for the buses, not till then did she attack. Nancy was charismatic and funny, well-versed in English, even if it was based solely on buzzwords. She asked where we came from and we answered Australia, since we literally just had, so she fired back:

"Ah Australia, beautiful ocean, kangaroo, Crocodile Dundee!

She made us a deal we couldn't refuse, at least not in the mental state we were in. Since 5am, we had crossed two time zones we were close to worthless. She knew where Wendy House was and would take us to the front door for 400B, about 11 bucks. She assured immediate departure, exclusive service. Her idea of immediate departure was a little slow, but so long as she kept saying things like, "Statue of Liberty, McDonald's, George Bush!" we were keeping our patience. Seeing the congested airport traffic, congestion like I've never seen, traffic cops in soot-covered face masks, I knew this was Bangkok. Soon enough, her "brother" rolled up honking in a beaten down, but working white...well originally white, 4-door sedan. Another 5 minutes of snail crawls and we'd be off. A wild ride through the center of Bangkok, a city whose streets are embellished with shiny silver food carts, making it always look like the holidays. As our taxi's sound system thumped techno Thai music, we stared wide-eyed out the window at enormous shrines for the Thai President, and downtown streets packed with people though it was close to midnight.

True to form, Nancy and her bro dropped us off at the front of Wendy House, a tiny little dusty "soi" or side street, far, far away from any place a bus might stop this late at night.

Our room was small, basic, but air conditioned. It was perfect! It wasn't till the next day we would find out just how vital air conditioning, and electricity for that matter, is to sanity. We noticed that check-out is a civilized noon, compared to 9an in Oz, this country is really starting to melt my heart.

Before leaving the Siam Square area, we walked around the area and checked out their mega-mall, accidentally. We strolled past the vendors outside selling Mickey Mouse t-shirts and past 50 people lined up outside a door, and just as we passed the doors opened. We walked smoothly into air conditioned bliss, doors flanked by ornately dressed security guards greeting all the hungry customers with a military salute. After a few happy minutes we realized we weren't in the mood for shiny, expensive things. We wanted cheap, dirty things from the street!

Soon enough we returned for our packs, and once loaded up with all our worldly possessions, we hiked up the road, over the river and up to Asia Hotel on directions that were vague, at best, over 3 years ago when our Lonely Planet was last updated. We were looking for a dock to board a water taxi towards Khao San Road, home of cheap lodging for backpackers. Bangkok was once the "Venice of the East," and has an extensive network of canals called 'khlongs' that are still a vital part of their transportation and daily life. We loved the idea of seeing some of the city from the inner canals and were anxious to use the locals' transport instead of another taxi.

Having to double-back, we broke for lunch which was in full effect as hundreds of well dressed young Thais were rushing the street carts. Following their lead we got into the longest line and was served the yummiest curries and noodles ever, for under a dollar, including iced tea. They even boiled our spoons for us! We relaxed for a while on our sidewalk spot, watching the chaotic Bangkok traffic: buses packed beyond capacity, the windows down in hopes of a polluted breeze, cars and brightly painted taxis filling every available inch of asphalt, and motos galore, each precariously packed with more people and cargo than the last. It was still our first morning and we were already accustomed to seeing families of five piled on one bike.

Bellies full, we were focused again on catching the water taxi, and found a pier. We asked a few people there and they all pointed us away from the pier, referencing another dock down river...we think. They all seemed to convincingly point and gesture down river, so we keep walking down the narrow walkway between the river and people's lives. The first thousand meters or so, we're anxious and optimistic, proud we've managed to get ourselves 'off the beaten track' so soon and encouraging each other that it's surely just around the bend, just around the trash and floating cat. The path bordering the canal kept getting dodgier, and more narrow. Smaller meanderings through clusters of shanty huts and food carts...we were walking through people's kitchens, the hallways between bedrooms, and we were HUGE, dragging our packs across their pans and hanging animals, ducking under their drying laundry, but everyone kept smiling and pointing down river, always down river. We terminally ended right in front of a family enjoying lunch. A large cement bridge intersected the river, a 10-foot high wall had ended the path and shut us down. A lady pointed at the rickety handmade ladder leaning against the wall. We climbed that ladder to the amusement of the family watching, not an easy task with our heavy packs, and once on the street, we declared the canal adventure officially over.

So we sat on the side of another busy, loud, and polluted street, as most seem to be in this city, looking at our tiny map, making wild guesses at where we might be. A nice-looking fellow recognized our distress and offering his tuk-tuk services. For 100B, about 3 bucks, he could take us to the front door, a convenience we are fond of, and throw in a "free" free map. We were wary of tuk-tuk drivers because they have a bad reputation of hustling tourists of their time and money. This guy seemed straight-forward and was forthcoming about his "sponsor," a souvenir shop that pays him commissions for dragging tourists to their store under duress. We politely explained we were not interested in visiting his sponsor, but we would accept his ride.


So we cruised through the city on a slow tour full of sights, sounds, and hacking coughs. The mufflers point at your face from all directions, like being attacked in the perfume section of Macy's during the holidays by 4 pound puffs of crud and cancer. As we approached Khao San, the landscape turned noticeably touristy, meaning there were westerners everywhere. Joe, our smiling happy Buddha of a tuk-tuk driver brought us to the door of Bella Bella Guesthouse, so we snapped a quick shot of him and let him continue is heroic quest to save all farang (foreigners) from pollution.

In order to save a whopping 100B, about 3 bucks, we opt for a fan-only room, thinking that it shouldn't be a big deal cause "Hell, we're from Texas. We invented heat!" So we settled into our simple little room, I looked outside and noticed how the powerlines were like thin strands of black pasta, creating a macramed pattern symbolizing the exponential growth that Bangkok's neighborhoods have endured. Our fan made things somewhat tolerable, which was made a little more tolerable by 8 bottles of Beer Chang. At 4am, my eyes jumped opened, I was alarmed. The fan was still spinning, but so slowly that the ventilation had all but stopped. Then it seemed to actually reverse, sucking the air from our lungs, I was gasping for air. At first I thought we had been tricked by gremlins, but soon enough my rational mind figures the electricity had gone out. I heard several windows screech open by other neighboring hyperventilaters gasping for fresh air. The electricity turned off and on sporadically throughout the night, driving us mad with rage or euphoria, each time. Most of the time we were separated in hot disgust, naked and wet like we had just showered.

Khao San Road is Thailand's Tijuana. The oversaturation of advertising and blinking signs was exhausting. But there was cheap Pad Thai, less than 50 cents for the delicious noodles. We devoured spring rolls daily.

Our daily diet consisted of 15B Pad Thai, 25B spring rolls, and 45B Beer Chang. That covered all the basic food groups and was great everytime. We loved roaming the streets, where life in Thailand is truly lived - the locals eat, drink, and socialize on the streets. We would get lost together following strange smells and pop into exotic food stores to sample something new. We loved the experience of this new region of the world, but we were already itching to venture out and see more. Each time we walked the streets, vendors, tuk-tuk and taxi drivers, and tailors vied for our attention. "Hello! Hello!" they all screamed at us, their magic word for getting us to consider what they're offering. White-boys, drunk, strolling down the sois, holding hands with their temporary Thai girlfriends, aloof but smiling. Already, we were dreaming of leaving this city.

That one night of unventilated terror will be with us for a while, like shell shock. The next morning we searched around and by noon we had switched to Sawasdee Smile Inn, and for the same price we now have air conditioning and a television.

The room was noticeably smaller, and the only English TV channel was BBC, but we were in love, jumping around on the bed in delight each time the air conditioner turned on.

Outside, the street vendors lined one side, and guest houses on the other. The guys selling bootleg CDs were all bumping the same few songs, which would turn into our own traveling MTV HITS XXII soundtrack.

We tried again to take the water taxi, wanting to see Wat Pho, the temple of the Reclining Buddha. All rivers were shut down due to a practice run by the navy for a ceremony. Defeated again we found solace in more Pad Thai and Beer Chang, and soon our spirits were lifted again.

We needed to focus on devising a plan, some sort of route through the countries we wanted to visit: Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. This turned out to be a great moment for us to get together on our schedule. I tend to go into denial about geography, orientation, or mission when in a new land. It's not till Bec has to answer my 100th question about where we are and where we're going things begin to fall into place and momentum propels us forward. Rebecca gets clever and snags a detailed itinerary from a travel website offering a 21-day route from Bangkok to Hanoi. This would be a good route to begin with, but we also needed to get into Lao, which sounded like a challenge from Vietnam given the write-up in Lonely Planet.

After two rejections on the water taxi and so many questions left unanswered about how best to leave the city, we venture out once again for the markets, with nothing more than the words "Mo Chit," the stop for the markets. We successfully get onto a water taxi that took us to the Sky Train when then dropped us off at Mo Chit. Things went real smooth and we were proud.

Mo Chit contains a massive market every weekend called Chatuchuk. We blindly delved into the maze of stalls, 1000's of stalls back to back, with a thin tarp roof for shade, and soon enough didn't have a clue where we were. The categories changed like the horizon from a train. Fabrics morphed into toys which abruptly turned into fish, thousands of plastic bags with live fish inside. That faded into reptiles, then dogs and cats, then baskets and purses.

Around lunchtime I got hit by the second large object of the day. A large umbrella blew over in the wind and smacked me in the back. That morning, a metal sign fell over serendipitously into my hands. I began obsessing on the law of thirds, looking up for a falling cow.

For a snack, I had a bag full of bugs, fried larvae to be exact.

We had walked so far and gotten so lost we almost took a tuk-tuk back to the beginning, but we resisted. We managed to navigate back to the entrance, but that only began the new series of challenges.

Mo Chit is the neighborhood with the markets and the bus terminal, well, one of the bus terminals, the one offering routes to the east, towards Cambodia. We had this glorious vision of the bus terminal being seamlessly connected to the Sky Train, or maybe across the street from the markets, somewhere within eyeshot, but once we left the markets, it was nothing but chaos and confusion. There wasn't much English to be seen, the few signs around were all pointing to the sky train. We stagger around in the Sky Train entrance, looking everywhere for a clue, but we both figured there was no connection between the two. The bus terminal could be anywhere. So we do what any good American tourist would do. Harass innocent employees, unrelated to you or your mission, ask anyone who connects eyes with you, ask anyone endlessly till you get your information. We approached the girl behind the thick glass selling Sky Train tickets. She gives us a bus number, we take it stubbornly, wanting her to show us the magical walking escalator that will whisk us to the building, shielded from dirt or signs in a foreign language. With the number 3 scribbed on a piece of paper, we walk back outside to see a massive clump of people gathered around a bus stop, dozens of busses roll in and off, barely coming to a stop for their customers. We find a sign with the number 3 on it and wait. Soon enough a dirt soaked bus screams up, windows down. We hop on and bark "Bus Terminal?" They nod yes and take our 7 Baht.

The bus ride was fun, windows down, bumping through the streets, kids hopping on at every corner, old grannies hopping off a continually moving bus. The bus did a U-turn and we panicked. The ticketman reassured us with friendly hand gestures. We arrived to the bus terminal, but we were dropped off in a swath of food carts and market stalls. We wander around for a while and follow a stream of people in a different direction.

We finally found the freakin bus terminal. There was even an information booth where they spoke English. It was great! We could ask as many questions as we wanted, so we got about 4 off before she ushered us to window 22. We ask her another half-dozen questions until we have what we need. There are numerous rides to any city, but window 22 sold tickets for government run buses. The logic is simple, these buses cater to the local, returning customer. These buses are the nicest and run decent schedules. The tourist-only buses are often times neglected because they know they will never see those kids again. Those buses also stop at every corner of the way, trying to hustle more riders, making a 4 hour trip more like 7 or 8 hours long.

We took the air conditioned #3 bus back to Khao San, back to backpacker central, where things are simpler and more English. The day was challenging, at times it seemed too daunting a task, an insurmountable challenge, having to navigate this chaotic and polluted city. The idea of walking into an air conditioned travel agency, just a few steps away from our air conditioned room, seemed divine and well worth it. But that would have been a let down to our promise, a defeat to the hardiness, our ability to do things like the locals, refusing to be hand fed an itinerary, with a 2% surcharge of course. We had to engage our surroundings, not retreat from them. It was time for a Beer Chang!

Our first guesthouse, Bella Bella, had the cheapest beer, but it had been conquered by a old drunk Californian guy rounding up anyone on the streets he could focus on. He managed to fill a large table with random foreigners drinking beer. "Come join our UN!" he would yell in a slur to anyone close enough. His jokes were bad and his dentures were creepy. We had been watching a temporary bar be errected in the street. Before we could finish our Chang, a bar full of generic spirits, 3 tables with chairs, lights and a booming sound system appeared, operated by a tough looking Thai lady covered in tattoos, chain smoking cigarettes.

It was Sunday and we wanted some church. We confidently hop on the Express Boat to Pier #1, Oriental Pier. There's a Catholic Church nearby. We arrived just in time for the mass to be ending, our information on mass time was from the high tourist season, unfortunately. So we sat in an empty church, vast and ornate, reading their bulletin. It had two essays, one on the power of prayer and one on multi-culturism, how to embrace other cultures, nations and religions. I found many of the ideas to possess a certain Buddhist flair, with some lines on mindfulness were like reading straight out of some Buddhist literature I've read. It was the most powerful essay I remember reading in a church bulletin.

We walked down Silom Road and visited out first Wat, or temple in Thailand. In a country that is 97% Buddhist, we managed to find a Hindu temple. It's hard to tell the difference at first, but I did notice a lot more animals, extra arms coming out of multi-headed deities. The worshipers were offering large platters of food, complete with a small Tetra-pack of milk. The temple was full, hundreds of worshippers whisking around the various shrines, the few tourists were getting pushed further and further into the fringe, to a point it became awkward. So after a quick look, we put our shoes back on and left.

We stopped into the Holiday Inn on the way back, to do a little market research. We were given a room rate about 2.5X more than our highest guess, but then we though back to American prices and realized that this hotel is an extremely nice place for $99/night USD. We sat in their lobby, loitering for air conditioning and comfy seating.

Reluctantly, we head back to the pier and catch our first local boat, the cheap dirty ones. For only 11B, a 10 cent savings, we were spoiled with loud, rumbling, over crowded wooden crate. We went north to Wat Pho, home of the Reclining Buddha. This was as close to a religious moment I've ever had in a religious temple. A massive golden statue, 30 meters across, in the position Buddha is believed to have been in when he reached enlightenment, laying on his side. The sounds of tinny chings filled the echoes emanating from behind the Buddha. There were 108 small metal bowls lining the wall. For 20B, I was given a bowl full of small 1/4B coins, each about the same circumference as a watch battery. 108 is a lucky number for Buddhists, so by tossing a single coin in each bowl, I was praying for hope, health, and happiness.




We also bought a bottle of water and got back onto the water taxi. It wasn't until we had drunk half of it did I notice the mismatched plastic lid and the extreme wear and tear to the outside of the bottle. We had been sold a counterfeit bottle, USED WATER! My comment "Well, might as will finish up, you're already screwed" didn't set well with Bec, so we threw it away. We didn't get sick, but we did learn a valuable lesson.

We decided that Monday we would take the $6 bus for 4 hours to Aranya Prathet on the Cambodian border. Little did we know Monday was Labor Day, a huge deal to Thais. That means banks were closed, so our money situation was in question. According to our travel guide, we weren't going to see many, if any, ATM's in Cambodia and we needed to come packing greenbacks, for the US Dollar is Cambodia's unofficial official currency.

Walking around our neighborhood, we noticed a lot of commotion coming from the Royal Gardens. It was on the other side of a large highway, even the underpass was full of screaming mopeds and smoggy busses. Once we got there, it appeared as every Thai in the city was arriving, grabbing spots along the walkways with shiny foil tablecovers. It seemed an even proportion of people claiming space for a family picnic, and people showing up to sell food or gadgets. Hundreds more just laid out an interesting collection of Buddhist medals, statues and beads. There was another lady selling fake dog poo and splatter toys. Apparently anything goes on Labor Day. Thousands of food carts, from a simple one-person stand to a multi-family ordeal with sturdy picnic tables, multiple vats of bubbling food, coolers, boilers, woks and drinks. The tables each had a large pile of fresh greens, being iced down. Kale, watercress, and celery. There were lots of loudspeakers and megaphones competing for attention. The foreign auctioneers amplified hypnotized us, we'd been over stimulated. We find a snake fighter and his MC barking up a crowd. We give them 5 minutes but only get a guy under a blanket, a prayer and some incense, and the snake remained in a bucket. So we venture on, losing our bearings once again, in the dizzying array of commerce and celebration.

Once we find our way to the perimeter we take a moment to rest and watch a gang of 6 guys display the best footwork I've ever seen. They were Siamese Footballers, or Ta-Krow, as the sport is known here. They were kicking a small wicker ball, back and forth, just batting it around basically, having fun with it. Over and over, flawlessly, they would lob the ball effortlessly using every part of the foot, leg, chest, shoulders and head. It was advanced dexterity, flexibility, and coordination, and it was smooth. The favorite move was to make a ring with their hands, let the ball go through and over their head, then kick their foot back towards to their butts, hitting the ball with the bottom of their Converse shoe, sending it back over, through their arms again. They would make any stoner hackeysacker envious.

Overcome by the powerful sunlight, we retreat from the festival to a restaurant we had read about in Lonely Planet. Up until now, I've been dragging us from street cart to street cart. But the A/C was divine at Khrua Nopparat. We gorged on Tom Yum, coconut chicken soup, which made us both melt and uncharacteristically fight for the last few spoonfuls. The spice in the coconut curry base helped Bec graduate to higher pepper peg. The green curry and pineapple fried rice and fried shrimp crab balls were superb. Throw in a bottle of water and a tip hefty enough to elicit a deep bow of appreciation, and we spent less than $7USD.

Then we took our first Dioxycyclone Anti-malarial pill. We have to chug water and not lie down for a while for fear of a stomach ulceration. The daily pill must be taken 4 weeks after being in the last at-risk area. That's a lot of damn pills.

I buy two pairs of Thai fisherman pants, aka hippie pants...the big baggy pants that are basically brightly colored potato sacks, tied up with a string. But I get two pair for about $4. They're pocketless, only a few seams are necessary. They make my but big and dumpy, but it's the official uniform for farang. Upon my first jaunt outside, past the tailor's shop that constantly requests to make me a custom tailored suit, two shirts and a tie for $50. This time he just lets me pass by, without a word. I smile, my first step closer to being an official hippie, not even worth harassing for money.

But I did notice that the tuk-tuk drivers were offering to take us to the ping pong show. Google it, if you dare.

So Tuesday, we are leaving Bangkok for Cambodia, an all day event, if everything goes right.

We woke up an hour late, too rushed to eat our free Western breakfast. Fourteen hours later, Rebecca would confess she turned off our alarm from my $3 watch and rolled back to sleep. But since she's the one that ultimately got us up, I appreciated her honesty and timing. Once out of our guesthouse, we stocked up on water and cash from the ATM and looked for our taxi. The first taxi driver refused to take us to our bus station, saying another station is just as good. Dismissing him and getting into the next taxi, finding a driver who repeated "bus terminal - Mo Chit" when we said it. He refuses to turn on his meter, a tactic used to get a higher fare. We agree on 200B and it took a solid hour to get there, so not a bad deal. I was afraid the language barrier had prevented us from proper communication...I felt I needed to ensure he knew where we were going. There are several bus terminals.

"Bus Terminal", I said.
"Train?", he replied.
"No, North East Bus Terminal, Mo Chit"
"Mo Chit?"
"Mo Chit"
"Mo Chit, yes!"
"Yes, Mo Chit!"
"Mo Chit!"
"Mo Chit!"
"Mo Chit!"
"Mo Chit!"

After the 10th Mo Chit, we began laughing at each other, I think he was just messing with me. A few minutes later, not fully satisfied with our exchange, and nervous because Mo Chit is also the name of the Sky Train stop and a large neighborhood, I look into the Lonely Planet's meager dictionary for English-Cambodian. I see the words for 'bus terminal' and the Cambodian translation. In a eureka moment, I show Bec, saying "Let's just show this to him and he'll know."

Rebecca stared at me blankly for a second, then realizing I was being serious, said "He can't read that!" I thought she was being rather presumptuous, "What makes you think he's illiterate?" I said. She laughed, "That's an English phonetic translation, they don't use our alphabet, Silly."

I looked out the window in frustration, unrecognizable symbols on every sign, seeing a blunt reminder of my stupidity. I went ahead and sounded out the phonetic words. "So-Thaa-Nii Khon Song." The taxi driver flinched, like I had farted on his baby. I sound out the words again, then he smiles and says "Mo Chit, Mo Chit."

It was something about the way he said Mo Chit, that I knew we were brothers, both knew each other's soul, every thought, each emotion. 20 minutes later he drops us off at the front entrance of the North East Bus Terminal, no food cart navigation necessary. I give him a thankful "kop koon krup", he smiles and drives off.

Aussie Wrapup

We spent three wonderful months in Australia and left April 26th for Bangkok, Thailand. A lot of funny, dangerous, uncomfortable, and expensive things happened between Byron Bay and Cairns, but we decided to push ahead and focus on writing stories about our adventures in Southeast Asia first. We promise to write about the rest of our trip in Australia as soon as we get a chance.

Australia was an amazing country, and an amazingly large country. We intended to spend about a month and a half there, but stayed three, the maximum amount a standard American tourist is allowed. We only saw a minute section of the country, taking in a tiny breath of the massive Australian diaphragm, dipping our foot tentatively into the East Coast waters. It will take several more trips to properly explore what the vast continent has to offer, but our first impression was a grand one. We'll definitely be back!

Rebecca and I have matured both as travelers and as life partners. We experienced some crazy weather and several frustrating challenges, but we kept our spirits up, seldom lost our cool and when one of us did get frustrated with some situation, the other was always there to pick the other back up and keep things under control. We saved a lot of money by camping, poaching, couchsurfing, 'rescuing' abandoned food, cooking our own meals and just taking our time. Cooking our meals taught us a lot about proper sustenance and the sublime value of food. Even when we were eating an extremely crappy meal made from food of questionable quality, cooked on a dirty community grill, eaten with unwashed utensils and devoured amongst swarms of violent mosquitoes - "mozzies" to the Aussies, two transient drunks living permanently in campsites while wading through 30 days of rain, we reminded ourselves that we were eating better than literally billions of people around the world. The fact that we had each other and enough food to last the day while in good health made us feel blessed. Instantaneously our baked beans on toast tasted better to us than some miserable bastard eating steak and lobster.

We developed a really nice working relationship. We found our own strengths and encouraged the other to develop theirs as well. We are benefiting from our symbiosis and synergy. We consistently discussed our impressions and emotions so that we could come up with a mutually acceptable reality of what we were experiencing. It kept us honest and helped me avoid becoming a grump.

Millionaires by Thirty

Halfway through our trip, I developed a mad scientist's hypothesis proving the existence of relative time travel. I calculated that we have already enjoyed twenty years worth of vacations, with the assumption that the typical American, bound within a corporate livelihood, can only travel for leisure five days a year once weddings, funerals, and holidays are deducted. We've been on the road now for four months experiencing six years worth of vacations per month. Therefore, we are in actuality over 50 years old. We transcended the space-time continuum and popped out in Australia twenty-five years younger, more limber for hikes and better able to digest cheap wine. Either way you look at it we're incredibly blessed, we're millionaires! Even if we're broke when we get home...



What It Is

It's what it is, not what it ain't
It's what you can do, not what you cain't
Focus on the good and the bad will fade away
Don't dwell on the past and you'll always have today

If you always create and never destroy
If you always breathe when heavily annoyed
There will always be flowers and you'll gain new powers
New friends will come to you
Enemies will disappear like poof!

You want Proof?

Don't let the evil in
Learn to not want to sin
Work hard and do it again

Don't be aloof, engage everything
Fear is your friend, learn to sing
Look stupid and feel dumb
All that is scary falls down like a crumb

Reality is only what you see
Do you see fun and friends or black and scary?
Don't look for what's not there, cause you'll always find it
Life can be a blast, if you don't mind it
Freedom and fun can flow if you don't bind it
Let loose and unwind it
It's never too late to change, don't feel like you signed it
If you know what you want, you'll always find it



After we left Byron Bay, with a month to explore the remainder of the massively long east coast, we ventured north. It started raining the day we left Byron Bay and didn't stop till we left the continent. This meteorological anomaly proved to be a major influence on the rest of our trip. Our second hand $30 tent disintegrated by the next campsite and thus begun my conspiracy theory against the tent industry. There were literally thousands of these cheap Chinese-made tents strewn all over the country, yet not a single camping supply store would sell me a compatible tent pole. It was literally cheaper to buy a new one, which is what we did.

In Noosa, the last town on the way north with ridable surf and no killer jellyfish, we met some fun loving Swedish kids who found tragedy and trouble everywhere they went, but were too busy having a blast to notice. They got bitchslapped by the cops in Eden, beat up by a hippie in Byron and incinerated two separate vehicles in the span of a few months.

Further on we camped in Mackay which was basically a vagrancy park populated with 'permanents' giving us the evil eye. They were spooky looking transients making their last stand before becoming ferals themselves. The completely inadequate and unsanitary kitchen facilities forced us, for the first time, to become fully sustainable. We cooked 80-cent noodles on our portable stove and drank 800ml VB's kept cold in our esky. A few months ago, exclusively living in hostels, we scoffed at the independent travelers dragging around their camping gear, banging pots and pans like the modern world ceased to exist. Somehow we had become those raging hippies and we couldn't have been happier.

We made a day trip to Eungalla national park to an awesome waterfall called Wheel of Fire. The park was really only accessible by four-wheel-drive, but the Falconer bravely plunged through several river crossings like a champ.

We began to realize the true devastation of Cyclone Larry by the streams of southbound travelers telling their scary stories. In Cairns they braced themselves inside shelters, in Innisfail they evacuated, on Fraser Island they were rounded up by park rangers and made to ride out the storm in half-assed ten dollar tents, some choosing to sleep in their cars in parking garages instead. Most of the stories involved massive amounts of community goon drinking and futile demands for tour refunds.

We experienced a relative lull in the crap weather at Airlie Beach, home of Whitsundays, the most powerful tourist attraction in Australia (read: the most expensive and crowded). We booked the mandatory boat trip, opting for a 3-day, 3-night all inclusive sailing trip that toured many beautiful islands and some of the Great Barrier Reef for some amazing scuba diving...though we did have one botched dive with an inexperienced dive master that reminded us the value of a good dive company...it couldn't have gone any worse for everyone involved and damn near ruined the remainder of my diving. I severely strained my ear drum and after the three following dives, I coughed up thick bloody lougies...fortunately it was only a cosmetic wound. The dive Rebecca and I finally made at Fairy Reef, in the Great Barrier Reef's southern fringe, was of epic proportions and quickly squashed any ill feelings from the previous nightmare of a dive. We had been anxiously anticipating our GBR dive since we arrived in Australia, and it didn't disappoint. The GBR is truly amazing. Our visibility was just fair, so we didn't find it as colorful as Fiji's corals and you won't find the same abundance of marine life in any one spot, but the sheer size of it demands respect. The variety of types of coral was overwhelming, and unending garden spread out for us to explore. It's the only living organism visible from space and is so immense, you could dive it your entire life and never discover it all.

Let us share a few facts from our dear friend Bill Bryson's In a Sunburned Country "Depending on which sources you consult, the Great Barrier Reef covers 280,000 square kilometers or 344,000 or something in between; stretched 1200 miles from top to bottom, or 1600; is bigger than Kansas or Italy or the UK. Nobody can agree really on where the Great Barrier Reef begins and ends, though everyone agrees it's awfully big. Even by the shortest measure, it is equivalent in length to the west coast of the United States. And it is of course an immensely vital habitat - the oceanic equivalent of the Amazon rainforest. The GBR contains at least 1500 species of fish, 400 types of coral, and 4000 types of mollusks, but those are essentially just guesses. No one has ever attempted a comprehensive survey. Too big a job. Because it consists of some 3000 separate reefs and over 600 islands, some people insist that it is not a single entity and therefore cannot accurately be termed the largest living thing on earth. That seems to me a little like saying Los Angeles can't be a city because it consists of lots of separate buildings. It hardly matters. It is fabulous. And it is all thanks to trillions of little coral polyps working with a dedicated and microscopic diligence over 18 million years, each adding a grain or two of thickness before expiring in a self-created silicate tomb. Hard not to be impressed."

The skipper of our boat, the Pacific Star, was a talented, but sarcastic, chain-smoking grease monkey who would often times be found under the boat, swimming in killer jellyfish infested waters with nothing but a pair of shorts and a wrench. Stinger suits were a must and we were constantly told ghostly stories of tourists and captains alike dying or nearly dying from an indiscriminate bite from an invisible invertebrate. But somehow, Skipper Shane was exempt.

At Tongue Bay, we splashed around in the most pristine white silicate beaches in the world, water and sand that would make any Caribbean island jealous, while armored up head to toe in black pantyhose to avoid a potential sting that would close our esophagus, and cause a heart attack in minutes. We were dorks in paradise. At Hayman Island, we snorkeled one of the most luxurious and exclusive islands in the world and got to play with Elvis and Priscilla, the resident Maori Wrasses, over five feet long and nearly 200 kilos, scary and friendly at the same time. We agreed it was by far the best snorkeling spot ever.

Due to an infamous case involving the Lonergans, scuba divers left at sea in the Great Barrier Reef and believed to have been either been eaten by sharks or committed suicide(the movie Open Water was based on their story), safety was of utmost importance. Stinger suits, dive logs and sign-in sheets were strictly enforced, punishable by a spoonful of Vegimite, the breakfast yeast paste loved by Australians and Kiwis, abhorred by the rest of the world, proved the perfect deterrent to impropriety.

It was easy to feel like a number on this trip with dozens of boats taking people in a chain gang fashion to and from the islands and dive spots. I would hate to see it in the high season. The boats are utilized at 99.9% capacity, for when we docked 3 days later, the next horde of travelers were there holding their two boxes of goon were ready to be loaded.

Let me digress a bit to discuss my general observation of the Australian tourism behemoth.
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Just like the vastness of the continental island itself, Australia's tourism industry is unfathomable. It swallows entire towns, transforming them into go-go dancing, hostelling, goon-drinking epicenters littered with full-color flyers and foam parties. There's an "I-site" in each and every town showing with grand display all the innumerable treks and treats available, no matter how mundane or bordering on fraudulent the activities are. There's even counterfeit "I-sites" with slightly skewed I-site logos offering commercialized deceit. Everywhere we went we were berated with visions of credit card wielding backpackers devouring every boat, bus, and bar so thoroughly and voraciously that if we didn't grab the tour being offered, we'd be left eating meat pies on the street and sleeping with the Aboriginals in the park.

Though we prefer to travel independently, sometimes we couldn't seem to escape the inertia of the beast, so we took the packaged deal, got in line for the quintessential photograph, only to get some idiot's face in it, and later on just bought the postcard instead.

It was times like our Whitsundays boat trip, with the "pack 'em in, fill 'em up, and make room for the next boat load of suckers" mantra thumping our heads like a war drum, that I felt the experience was Good, but Never Great. The tour operators and commissioned pimps were sarcastic, pushy, and obviously a bit jaded by the never ending supply of well-funded tourists. We found advertisements and specials that were dishonored, unapologetically. We found countless examples of the bait and switch. Once the money was taken, all bets were off...the integrity had vanished like the $99 deal had. All-inclusive trips often had low quality/quantity meals. Rationing, hoarding, and loathing were three ingredients typically found the menu. Overcrowding, sudden cancellations, and no refunds were services thrown in for free.

We were lucky enough to book a cruise with less than 20 people on board, but we had to pay a hefty premium for that privilege. It wasn't until we returned to port and passed the Pride of Airlie that we realized the true living horror of the $99 cruise special. On a boat packed to the legal day-cruising limit, meaning this was nothing more than a glorified ferry, we saw hundreds of legs and arms hanging off every edge and surface, belonging to sad faces of the recently condemned. The sight of those wretched souls made me feel, in one way, grateful to be on the Pacific Star, but I also felt a twinge of anger that slaughterhouse loads can be sold legitimately.

Generic homogeny even ruled the open roads. Wicked Vans, funky rental campervans decorated with crude and often crass grafitti and crackpot philosophies, almost outnumbered the slain kangaroos on the roads. True, they had spunk and character, but declaring your creative freedom by selecting either the Bob Marley Mobile or the Pussy Wagon was easily drowned out when five Wicked vans lined up at an intersection, all racing towards the next tourist trap, trying not to be the first one pulled over by the cops.

The hostels prided themselves on drink specials rather than clean rooms. Entire operations were run by insincere employees who were travelers themselves. The buck got passed and there was no one left to hear our screams. It seemed the machine was on autopilot.

Everyone was on the take...encouraging their own little fraudulent tour while bad-mouthing the homogenous competition. There are too many people taking cuts, I fear. We heard that the Whitsunday's commissions are so severe that the actual boat operator got less than 50% of the ticket price. No one feels rightly compensated for their work, so they skim off the paying customer.

It's a slippery slope to be going down. Most people I spoke to seemed to agree with my impressions and if my concerns are legitimate, if people are returning home with nothing overly gleaming to say, no longer encouraging their brethren to imitate their travels, then the machine will surely implode. From what I've seen, a significant part of Australia's GDP is based on tourism, entire towns are dependent on the imported dollar to fuel their fragile economy. Perhaps a renaissance is needed to make the experience magical once again.

To be fair, we did spend our time exclusively on the most trodden upon tourist route. There's infinitely more space in Australia than any busload of tourists could ever fill up. To condemn Australia because of what we saw in Queensland would be like blaspheming all of America based on the antics of New Jersey's mullet-quaffed punks. While the Queensland rainforests and fields of sugarcane create beautiful landscapes, the people are "madder than a sack of cut snakes!" The outback of the West is where the mystery still lies and where the tourist can find adventure, or easily die if unprepared.

Further on up the coast, in Ayr, we dove the Yongala shipwreck. It was by far our best scuba experience yet...it'll be hard to beat. The overwhelming amount of sea life and the mysteriousness of the large steel ship was overwhelming. Plus it was deep as hell, we went over 80 feet. It was a serious dive and we had to take lots of safety precautions, but the dive operation was top notch and took great care of us, even if they got a bit snippy at some of our amateur diving behavior.

One kid on our trip got the bends, was put on oxygen and drove to the hospital to enjoy a wonderfully expensive evening of decompression treatments in an iron lung. It turned out he had done another deep dive a few days earlier, and irresponsibly left that info out of the pre-dive brief. The compounding nitrogen proved too much for his blood. The day before our outing, a diver got stung by an Irukandji jellyfish on the neck (only the neck and some of the face is exposed when diving), and almost died on the boat. If he wasn't young and healthy, he would have most likely had a brain aneurysm. There are two main jellyfish of the deadly sort off Oz's northern east coast, the box jellyfish and the Irukandji. The Irukandji is scary because the sting is never felt and the symptoms don't set in till 20 minutes later, but the onset is so severe and life threatening the victim loses consciousness almost immediately after the first symptoms register.

Then we spent a few days on Magnetic Island. Due to the inaccessibility of most of the island we spent most of the time at our beachside resort, Base Backpackers. It was much more beautiful and well maintained than the price tag led us to believe. It was overrun by feral cats, beautiful and friendly, but deadly to the local environment, killing thousands of birds each year. We lounged lazily for a few days, enjoying being able to gaze across the sea to Australia's mainland.



Shake Your Moneymaker


One night the beautiful open-air bar hosted a Dress-a-Boy-Like-a-Girl contest, with the prospect of winning a 4WD for the day. Of course I participated! Rebecca transformed me into "Sheila Starfucker" with professional audacity. We had to perform several 'tasks' as women, including skipping around the room, give yourself a wedgie, and performing a lap-dance for some poor blonde that was ending her tenure at Base. I was definitely the best...best performance and dress, as told by numerous people including the MC and the receiver of my full-on lap dance assault, but I fell victim to the overwhelming support group by Team Sweden, as the winner was decided via applause meter, their large group guaranteed the win. Nevertheless, we got loads of free drinks and had a blast, so no worries mate!






We took a half-day bus tour of the island ran by a crazed sailor named Captain Daniel Daniel. If he wasn't giving this tour, I'm sure he'd be holed up in some alley drinking methylated spirits and burning tires. He loved the captive audience the busload provided for him to tell his corny jokes and flirt with the young girls. With the number of teeth still in his jaws quickly approaching zero, he made the craziest facial expressions and could put his bottom lip under his nose at will. After each stop his wooden train whistle signaled our departure. He was a real kook!




We then drove north through Innisfail, seeing the damage first hand that Cyclone Larry slapped upon these poor residents. It reminded us a lot of Rebecca's hometown of Orange, Texas after Hurricane Rita...trees, trash, and debris everywhere. Fields and fields of ruined banana trees, their thick stalks broken like twigs in the intense winds, and clumps of adolescent green bananas lying on the ground. Australia's banana industry was wiped clean, causing a $2 doller per kilo fruit skyrocketing to over $12 dollars a kilo. Instantly, the breakfast fruit became only fit for kings and very rich monkeys.


We made it to Cairns April 8th, 2006 and would have three weeks to prepare for the exodus: sell the Falconer, purchase tickets out of the country, update the blog, and try to enjoy our last days in Australia. It was a formidable task, and with the ensuing rain, danger and disappointment seemed to loom over the horizon.

We spent our first few days in Cairns at a 5-star caravan park, which seemed like an oxymoronic title to me. I sprained my ankle pretty bad trying to do a flip on a giant jumping pillow, that due to the rain seemed to be coated in Teflon flavored chicken grease. I chose to play on a Pillow of Death and paid dearly for it...having trouble walking for nearly a week. By the next day it looked like the ankle of a neglected diabetic grandma, right before the doctor lopped it off. Rebecca took really good care of me and I got to use the elastic wrap from my emergency kit, which sadistically made me happy. The 5-star caravan park was overrun by refugee families from the cyclone, so the usual beauty and serenity of the park was transformed into a government mandated project of sorts, filled with roving street gangs of ill behaved and screaming Aboriginal kids. We left as soon as I could bear it.

We took a short road trip north of Cairns to Kuranda, to see tourism at its worst and waterfalls at their best. The swarms of tourists buying kangaroo scrotum bags and 'authentic' boomerangs made in China could only be redeemed by one of the most spectacular waterfalls we've seen. Barron Falls was only bested by Minyon because it was possible to swim at the bottom of Minyon...here you'd just die under the enormously powerful flow. Just one of the minor falls on either side of Barron would make an impressive sight on its own. All combined it is a roaring, gushing wonder.

It was the steep climbs through the hinterland towards Kuranda that finally broke the back of the Falconer. Twice we had to pull over as radiator fluid boiled over sending plumes of rancid smoke into the air and scaring us to death. On the way back down, catching great speed on the steep inclines, I got to ponder on the lack of integrity of the brakes, how the emergency brake was rendered useless since it had been locked in an engaged position since Sydney, which in turn had burnt the new brake pads down to millimeters away from failure, and then the leaking calipers straining to keep themselves together, ready to give out at the next great push. I kept thinking of emergency plans, what to do during freefall, but luckily it didn't come to that.

Wanting to push our luck as far as possible, we drove further on towards Cape Tribulation, the end of the road so to speak...beyond that point only 4-wheel drives are allowed. We were determined to see the end of Australia's east coast and retire back into Cairns confident we had done the shit out of Australia. We had to cross the Daintree River by ferry, which is infested with salt water crocodiles. It became apparent that campers and hikers are no longer safe in North Queensland...you can be snatched so quick that your companions won't notice your absence. We stayed in the car and far away from any water sources until we returned to Cairns.

As the rainy days stretched on and on, killing any hope of drying out our camping gear or finding any safe places to hide other than our roach-infested car or our tiny steaming tent, we began reeking of vinegar. Comfort and happiness became more and more elusive as we were surely suffering from Seasonal Adjustment Disorder. We kept ourselves together though, reminding each other in alternating spats of hysteria and depression that we only had a few more weeks to survive...but could we really make it?

We retuned to Cairns to do our time. Each and every day it seemed to rain more and not less. We later learned that April was the wettest month on record in Queensland. By the 15th of April, a week since we arrived in Cairns, and 12 days since the last dry day, we called it quits on the camping and checked into a hostel. The ground beyond fully saturated, our last campsite was literally a swamp, our tent was floating like a plastic lure in a river. Our respiratory systems were failing and massive morning lugies were the norm. Sexiness was out of the question. It was time to abandon tent.


Our first night of warm, dry sleeping conditions and a real kitchen proved euphoric. Our new home was Gilligan's, a hip, popular hostel in the middle of Cairns. It was raining outside, and it would continue to rain throughout the remainder of our time in Australia, a full month of precipitation, but we were ecstatic to lie in bed and lounge in the television room. We couldn't give a damn what was happening outside...we were DRY!

FAREWELL TO THE FALCONER!

By now, the Falconer had become increasingly overrun with roaches. Hunting them was a nightly occurrence, though it never seemed to deter their nocturnal expeditions throughout the cabin. Rebecca would spotlight them and I would dive headfirst into the car, buttcrack in full shine, tossing our camping gear all over the place trying to squash the creepy little bastards. Most of the time they escaped in the nooks and crannies in our gear, but I'm proud to say I slew at least 30 of them. Our neighbors must have thought we were crazy, running around the car in circles, door to door, cussing, screaming, Bec dropping the torch and running away, and me thrashing the inside of the car like I was fighting with a ghost, always with my buttcrack hanging out of my oversized swimmers. A vision of classiness, I know.

Buying a used car infested with roaches is quite possibly the worst thing that could have happened to Rebecca. To her, they're as scary as sharks. She can't explain why, they just are. Imagine spending several hours in a car full of sharks, that's what it was like to ask Rebecca to ride in the Falconer, especially at night, when they ventured out. Even when we were in the grips of Cyclone Larry, as our $30 tent blew around like tissue paper in the wind and large sticks pelted the ground around us, she wouldn't even consider sleeping in the car. I didn't blame her as I doubt I would have either.

In addition to this, the endless saturation of rain had seeped into the Falconer's crevices and now mold was spreading. One day I lifted up the floorboard where the spare tire and tools were kept and found a vibrant community of multicultural spores coexisting in harmony. Blacks, whites and even green fungus had filled up the cavity and I'm sure was now filling the air we breathed. We were officially skeeved out by our once beloved Falconer and wanted to distance ourselves from it as soon as possible.

Our hopes of selling the Falconer and recouping our $2000 investment was dashed on the rocks, like a spawning salmon in the grips of a grizzly bear, by a delusional psychopath of a mechanic named Mac. He sealed the fate of our station wagon by writing up a two page list of problems to reconcile in order to receive the necessary "Road Worthy Certificate", the holy grail of paperwork needed to sell the car to the next poor sucker backpacker. The list included such things as buying a new radio antenna and securing a loose, but functional, plastic piece on the hood that squirts washer fluid. "What the hell did these things have to do with the safety of a car?" we wondered. Is clear reception of the local cricket match needed to keep the car between the lines or from bursting into flames?

The Road Worthy is more of an extortion mechanism to ensure each and every backpacker throws a few hundred dollars towards a garage before they hightail it out of the country, broke and bewildered. Even if we hadn't been so unlucky as to meet Mac, the Queensland Garage Pirate, the outcome wouldn't have changed. The fate of the Falconer was destined for a wreck yard and not another traveler. By now it had slowly disintegrated into a roach infested fungus pod. We were one barely-functioning lock away from having to smash a window to gain access, the brakes were suffering from multiple contusions, only a few kilometers away from total failure, the engine was leaking quite a bit of oil now and was overheating often, and the tires were bulging their treads like a Samoan in a girdle. At least the CD player still worked, so we blasted Dwight Yoakam's "Since I Started Drinking Again" and drove to a car dealer, the only one we could find that would consider purchasing a crippled Ford Falcon. He took full advantage of us, and we both knew it.

In a horrible way, he was doing us a favor, for if he didn't take the car we would have had to rip off the tags, set it on fire and drive it off a long dock...something my frayed patience was coming close to considering. Every year, hundreds, if not thousands of Ford Falcon Station Wagons make their final trip into Cairns and are collected by these grungy garage garbage men. Dozens are crunched up into steel rectangles and melted down. Our beloved Falconer, as much as it hurts to say, was nothing special and coming to that realization saved us from insanity.

We were able to enjoy our last couple weeks as best we could, instead of fighting with shady mechanics, government transportation authorities and travelers who could offer whatever they felt like and would find someone desperate enough to take the deal. We never broke down in some one-kangaroo town and never found ourselves in danger, though I know Dr. Disaster was just one brake pad away from tapping on our shoulders. The end of the line inevitably comes for a backpacker shitbox like the Falconer, we just happened to be the unlucky fools to retire ours. The Falconer limped courageously to the finish line, and he didn't let us down...we must thank him for that. We enjoyed two and a half months of uninterrupted bliss, and if nothing else, we know our second car together will surely be a better one...how could it be any worse?

We had finally realized the desperate futility of trying to sell a car in Cairns, so we were so glad to be immune from it. Cairns is the last stop for thousands of travelers, beginning their trip in Sydney and exiting the country from Cairns on a plane. The cars for sale seemed to pile up each and every day, with no relief in sight. Every posting board was covered, layers deep, with pathetic pictures of other people's shitboxes, with prices scratched out several times. The spastic highlighting denoted their extreme desperation. $2000->$1500->$1000->$500...a poor soul flying home one afternoon said "give me $50 bucks by 2pm and its yours."

A Canadian couple staying in our room were lucky enough to be on the buying side of the situation, having begun their trip in Cairns and planned to circumnavigate the continent. They said everyone they met selling their cars were wide eyed and crazy looking, like a malaria inflicted POW in a monkey cage.

"Don't Buy ANYTHING without calling me first", one kid said with the face of someone suffering from trauma.

"Just make me an offer, PLEASE!, anything!", another kid mumbled while clawing at his arm.

These people had spent the last few weeks sweating it out, literally, while the two or three buyers in the city calmly perused the available vehicles waving a couple hundred dollars in their tightly clinched fists. This gave us a huge relief, knowing that our early surrender was definitely the best move.

All in all, we have very fond memories of our time with the Falconer. It gave us the ability to camp, which saved us more than the money we paid for it. The freedom it provided us is invaluable and the stories that came from it will keep us laughing for years. So in honor of the Falconer, our first car together, I wrote a poem.




I Love my Backpacker Shitbox

I love my backpacker shitbox
It's filled with roaches and dirty socks
I think it might of given me chicken pox
But I really love my backpacker shitbox

It ran and ran and ran
Every 100 k's it ate up an oil can
I'll sell it to the next sucker, just part of the plan
Rego's and Road Worthy's are all part of the scam

I love my backpacker shitbox
When you got love, who needs a muffler or shocks?
It could be a thousand things making all those knocks
But I really love my backpacker shitbox

It's a smoker
It's a toker
How much did I pay for it?
Hell, I won it in a game of poker

Yeah that's the engine burning oil
And any moment the radiator's gonna boil
The carpet's so dirty it looks like soil
And the roof is patched together with foil

When the passenger door fell off
People began to scoff
When the rear wheel feel off
Vultures began to waft

It made 100 k's without a radiator
It cut through a vineyard like a gladiator
It rattled so much, it was my personal masturbator
It's been passed around 100 times like a hot potater

Fuck yeah, it's got rust,
Fuck yeah, it makes me cuss
Because the cabin smells like I forgot to flush
No sleep till Brisbane, then it's Cairns or bust!

I love my backpacker shitbox
The fumes got me higher than a flying fox
Driving it is scarier than salt water crocs
But I really love my backpacker shitbox

I love my backpacker shitbox
So long as it runs, I ain't gotta walk
When I'm done, I'll just drive it off the docks
But I really love my backpacker shitbox


I'm really going to miss that steaming hunka junk summa bitch


Rebecca and I have distanced ourselves from the term 'backpacker', preferring to call ourselves "travelers", feeling that the quintessential backpacker is a 22-year old, fresh out of college, western kid who is dead set on getting as drunk as possible in as many cities as his parent-funded account will allow. I've found a fundamental flaw in their personality. They will seek out, with no exhaustion, the absolutely cheapest lodging...the filthiest, most rat infested room in the city, in order to save $4, but then they'll squander a month's worth of that money on one night's drinking. They see no irony in that, literally starving themselves with toast, beans, or ramen to save $3 then spend twice that to gain admission to an overpacked, unairconditioned bar in the hopes of seeing chubby girls rip off their top during the nightly amateur wet t-shirt contest. If this were Tijuana, these bars would have a donkey in them.

It's disturbing how much ramen these young backpackers eat. I'm not dissing the 39 cent carbo-load of a snack, but it seems that a lot of these kids are eating it as their main meal, lunch dinner and even breakfast if they happen to stay up late enough to see the morning. It probably doesn't matter long term, so long as they return to civilization in a few months, but long term, their bellies will swell and flies will invade their eyeballs to lay eggs. This just might become the next Sally Struther's fundraiser.

"You too can help sponsor a poor broke backpacker who has squandered all their money on jugs of beer and bungee jumping. They're hungry and dirty, but it doesn't have to be that way. For less than a dollar a day, you can help put a vegetable in their unflavored ramen cup. And for only $2 you can feed them a chicken, not the shriveled cubes of loose meat and artificially flavored poultry powder that they're used to, but a real chicken. Look at poor little Sebastian, eating ketchup packets...it's not to late!"


We're going to be broke!

Once we paid our airfare, we dipped below our magical $10,000 mark. But now we have tickets from Cairns to Bangkok to Frankfurt and finally to JFK (via London). This gets us home, well, at least back on American soil, so we simply have to survive, one way or another, until mid-November. Southeast Asia should be great on the budget, everyone has said how it's hard to spend much money there. We should last five days in Asia on what we spend in a single day here. If we maintain our financial wits, then Europe will be manageable, though surely not a breeze. We are looking forward to many many freeloading opportunities there.

It's a scary thought of returning to the US jobless and for the most part penniless, but if we can make it home with no credit card debt, thus solvent, then we are automatically better off than many Americans. While we traveled the world, discovering how everyone else survives, the average American has wallowed further in debt, and no more aware of the reality of their existence. I'm confident we'll be forever changed for the better after this trip, when we get back we'll have a much better idea of what we want to focus our energy on. We are learning patience, perspective of wealth, and how to survive and prosper in tough situations...all of which should serve us well in the search for stability and success.

So we spent the last few weeks in simple comfort. We did lots of blogging and ate all our food, leaving nothing to waste...nothing but some souring condiments and a half used bag of pasta. It rained harder each day, so we lounged and watched television. When the time came to pack up and fly to Bangkok we could hardly contain ourselves.

We were ready for Asia!!!

Byron Bay: Part Two

You can see Julian Rocks from the beach. It doesn't look like much from afar, but beneath the water's surface it is teeming with life. The small rocky island, about 10 km's from the shore, is a national park protected from commercial fishing. We had heard great things about it and were encouraged to either snorkel or dive there. Since we had a gang now and most of them weren't certified divers, Bec and I decided to snorkel with them. We booked the morning boat ride that left at 7am, a tough challenge indeed. But 12 hours later at 7:30am, we were suited up in a rusting 1970 Toyota Landcruiser with a semi-rigid dive boat in tow. We lauched from The Pass, a surf spot catering to experienced surfers only due to the overpowering current. We dropped the boat into the same spot by the jagged rocks that the surfers use, but for once we are higher in the pecking order backed up by two 100hp motors.

We bobbed around in the waves for a few minutes, gave a loud blast of the horn as a warning, then blasted through the waves, launching several feet into the air. Once past the breaks, the swells were massive, a cyclone was building a few hundred km's out and would devastate the camp site in a few days. We would angle up towards the sky for 15 feet or so, the horizon disappearing behind the walls of water, then the boat would defy gravity for a split second as only the motors remained connected to the sea, then we'd slam down hard onto the downside of the swell, cracking against the aluminum hull and manhandling us against the rubber inflatable sides, clutching onto the ropes to stay on board. It took two hands to hold on.

The snorkeling was great...we saw a massive tea turtle and some smaller ones, two leopard sharks about four feet long, trumpet fish, wobbolgong sharks that look like big dark catfish, a large eagle ray and an army of 50 smaller rays, flying in formation straight toward me. Then breaking off into three squadrons, left, right, and above me. About 15 minutes in the dive, right as I spotted my first leopord shark looming in the distance, I felt a startling sting all over my body, my backarm, my neck, my legs were all screaming strings of bee stings. I couldn't see anything to identify the attacker and I freaked out. The most venomous and deadly of jellyfish are nearly invisible to the human eye, so this wasn't a good thing. I had learned to believe that a sting simply meant you have 10 minutes to live. I called the captain over and explained my symptoms and he calmly said it was just a random tentacle from a blue bottle. I was put at ease, but the pain took several hours to fade. A few weeks later, Rebecca got a full blue bottle tentacle wrapped about her ankle, causing a welping rash to form that didn't subside for over a week. Some people have reported pain for months.

The waters were choppy but the visibility was good...the storm hadn't churned up the waters yet. The motion sickness was apparent on most people's faces though. I stayed out for the full 50 minutes and swam back to find everyone already on the boat, slighly pale.

We learned that the dive shop offers free dives to volunteers that help run the place. You get free dives, beginning immediately for simply helping clean up the mess divers make. Load gear, unload gear, clean boat, it's simple! We get very excited at the prospect of getting tons of free dives, with the possibility of working towards our dive masters certification, all for free. The program is great, however it didn't work out as we planned. We went in for the first day and were diving for free having only been there for 30 minutes, helping the first boat launch. I had a great dive, seeing much of the same stuff, but stoked mainly because I was beginning to get comfortable with slow steady breathing, a neccessity for enjoying long dives. We only returned a few times after that first wonderful day, not sure why, we were just too busy being lazy hedonists on the beach, surfing and spinning poi and having a blast with our campfire gang. The shop was cool about it, it must happen quite a bit, and we did great work when we were there, so no hard feelings. I would highly recommend it to anyone spending time there. The only bad part was, being the newbie, I had to huff on a hose to fill four large petrol tanks for the boats.

The next day, I took the four of us, Ken (Canada), Adam(Pommy), Rebecca, and me, in the Falconer to Minyon Falls, about 45 minutes up a modestly maintained winding road west of Byron Bay. The drive was scenic for the passengers, it was challenging for me and the Falconer. Tight, unpaved roads, potholes the size of garbage cans and steep grades had the failing brakes of the Falconer on fire. The national park was a Class 3 hiking path, a rating system we didn't understand or fully read untill we had returned. It contained a minefield of stumps, rocks, rivers, boulders, mud, snakes, spiders, and leeches. I did the hike with a deep painful cut to the bottom of my foot and $4 flipflops, a great challenge to say the least. Bec wore her Keen amphibious hiking shoes that had large slits for ventilation, aka leech doors. Ken is a lunatic, so he decided to do the hike barefooted. Adam didn't bring any shoes at all, so I loaned him my Adidas campus shoes, which instantly made him the best equipped, though still underprepared for the most aggressive and dangerous hiking trail we've yet to encounter.

Not knowing what we were in for, we head out on the 4.5km (one way) venture equipped with a bag of peanuts and some water. The lookout over the falls was amazing and the sheer height petrifying. It literally dropped straight down, so a small leap from the wooden deck would give you about 10 seconds freefall before you completely disintegrated on the boulders 1000's of feet below. It was the first time my knees buckled just from the sight. There was a retired couple there at the same time and the lady refused to even step foot out towards the edge. Ken was fearless and climbed over the barricade onto the rocks and sat on the ledge. Looking at the huge descent to the bottom of the falls, it was easy to tell we were in for a full day.


The rainforest was overwhelming with the thickness and density of its various trees, vines and bush. The loud roar of the falls seemed to be wholly swallowed only a few meters into the green cage of trees vines and birds. We would often find ourselves surrounded by disturbingly loud bird calls or insect cackles. It would be a scary place to be lost or hunted. My flip flops got extremely slippery with the wet mud so I was dancing a delicate tango between moving earth and footwear all the while the cuts on my feet twinged with every little piece of debris getting lodged in the deep crevices of swollen skin. Each segment of the track becomes progressively more difficult with steep traverses across muddy paths.

After our first river crossing, we looked down at our feet to find that everyone was covered in leecehes, except Adam and his closed toe shoes. Ken and I have to pull dozens of leeches off our naked feet, ankles, and especially in between the toes. The anticoagulant inserted by the leeches' razor sharp teeth, made our feet seep blood for 30 minutes after ripping them off in disgust. We were all fully creeped out, screaming "LEECHES!" like in "Stand by Me." Bec, with her highly ventilated shoes, gets a half-dozen leeches to pull off on her own. They're black, slimy, worm-like. The head and tail seem to inch along like an inchworm, but with their ability to sense warm blooded creatures, they leap onto their victims and go for the wildest ride of their blood-sucking, body-surfing life. A few passersby spooked us by saying we should never have ripped them off, that they have poisons and chemicals. Sorry, but we didn't bring out salt shakers or lighters, and we wanted them off!

In retrospect, they weren't being too sensational because a piece of leech was left on Rebecca's foot when she pulled it off and it took several weeks to heal. We learned later on that if you simply leave them alone, they drop off after about 10 minutes having just filled up on enough blood to keep them alive for a year. Damn they're gross!

It was awesome walking through the rainforest during a heavy downpour, surrounded by the unique music of the drops on the leaves. It made perfect sense that it would be raining. That same rain would have created a lot of friction and misery back at the camp, but by simply changing our surroundings, that same miserable rain became beautiful and serene.

Several hours into our hike, we passed under the largest spider I've ever seen guarding the path like the Black Knight between two trees, "None Shall Pass!" we joked and ducked in fear under him. Just ahead on the path we found a simple wooden sign propped up against a rock with "Minyon Falls" carved into it and an arrow pointing towards a massive wall of car sized boulders, now slippery as wet ice due to the mud and constant rain. We don't have much confidence in the sign, but intrepret the sign as pointing towards one particular collection of rocks. We go one way are are stopped dead in our tracks by an impenetrable wall of rock. We go another way to find ourselves precariously perched on 15 foot rocks, barefoot and holding onto a point of friction so delicate a minute slip would begin a slide into a hole of bone crushing death. A slip at this point would most likely break a leg, or much worse. We're spooked and frustrated, we could see the falls just over this rocky prison wall.

We were desperately in need of release after hours of trecherous and laboring hiking. It was getting late and the pommy was beginning to whinge. Ken found his way through the rocks and abandoned us us to suffer for 10 mintes by ourselves, backtracking and screaming in frustration. We could hear him yelling "Woo-hoo!" splashing around in the water not too far away. Exhausted and unsure of our footing in our unsuitable shoes and flipflops, we just couldn't seem to find a survivable way through the slippery rocks of death. As were spinning around in circles, reconfirming our disorientated imprisonment, a dreadlocked couple wizzed past us and disappeared over the rocks so fast that we couldn't even retrace their steps. That was embarassing and seemed to double our frustration, knowing that normal people without the invincible oblivion of Ken the Canadian could reach the falls, yet here we were, yelling at each other on how we're never going to make it out alive.

Ken finally came to rescue us, laughing at us and our inability to navigate over the boulders, "Come on, ya pussies!" It was all so ridiculous and I had to swallow my tongue to not rip Ken's head off for leaving us, but the payoff was so great that no danger, betrayal, or leech attack was too much to endure.

I jumped into the brisk golden waters as fast as I could. Rebecca, obviously spooked from the drama of the final stage of this hike, and still a little worried about more leeches, hesitates for a bit, but finally comes in due to my incessant demands to join me for a dip. But once she got in, she immediately began smiling again. I climbed up to the side ledge of the falls where the falling water had carved telephone booth sized stalls in the stone, perfect for taking an shower under the falling water pellets. Each stall had a magical little pool etched out about 2-3 feet deep. I kept sticking my hand nervously into the hole thinking I'll either get bitten by something poisonous or find a hidden treasure. It would truly be the best Geocache spot in the world (google it!).

There was a decent volume of water falling, which typically creates such a powerful push of water that you can't even come close to the contact point in the pool, but this fall was pleasantly different. Due to the sheer height of the falls and through the various contact points breaking up the steady stream of downpour, the water had dissipated into managble magical mist, allowing you to swim under it fully without getting sandblasted skinless, or drowned. Towards the end of the swim we floated on our backs together and slowly drifted around, watching the falls come down on top of us, it was so peaceful, sheer walls of geometric brown granite, the water seemed to float down slower than gravity demands, so unyielding yet soft. It overwhelmed me, and I knew it was time to pray, giving thanks for such beauty and all our safety. It was so surreal and quiet with my ears below the water that I got a bit of vertigo...sensory overload, a euphoric head rush. Bec was thrilled she got in, she knows better than to pass up an experience like this.

We were then facing an epic trudge back up the mountain, we were honestly scared at the prospect. That's when we met the couple we had seen earlier. Hugo and Alex from France, adorable together with their dreds, accents, and smiles, turned out to be our guardian angels. They told us about a short cut to a lower car park where their van was and offered us a ride back up to the top. This cut the hiking time significantly...we were back at their van in under an hour, we would be facing several more hours, in the dark, through dangerous hiking trails, with the nocturnal predators of the forrest stirring awake. They most likely saved us from real harm, and we were so grateful.

The drive back to Byron was a whole new nightmare, the roads had degraded significantly due to the rain and the road signs were severly lacking. It takes us about twice as long to get home. Exhausted and in the dark, everything looked different on the roads. We made it back, exhausted, but thrilled to have survived another great adventure.

By now it had been raining now for four days, building progressively. It's on this day that we learn that the rain that had been pissing down on us was due to a cyclone building off the North coast up north near Cairns. It would climax several days later as Cyclone Larry, a category 5, devastating Innisfail as severe as the Gulf Coast hurricanes last season. It was forecasted that 90km+ winds were going to blow through the campsite. That type of wind would destroy tents...we might be sleeping in the roach-infested Falconer. Luckily, it wind never did reach 90km, but it came close enough and it claimed several tents. The only reason our $30 tent survived was due to the thick, burly fig tree hovering over us, protecting us from the heavy downpour and gusting winds.

Two kids from upstate New York showed up in a tiny tent and no camping skills. It was a complete loss. All their clothes were sloshing around in a muddy pool of water. They abandoned around 10pm, toaking what they had on their backs and checked into a hostel. Many families left the following morning, abandoning their hopes of a fun camping weekend.

All the campers were flushed out and forced to congregate the entire day in the camp kitchen. We played Texas Hold'em for 10 hours straight. It would have been longer, but Groundskeeper Willie kicked us out mercilessly at 10pm. It got pretty rowdy in there due to the overcrowding, restlessness and massive amounts of goon and hash scones. A rowdy group on the other side of the kitchen kept crashing our side, pillaging our table with ape impersonations and passionate a cappella renditions of The Star Spangled Banner...we're not sure if they were heckling USA or proud of it.

That night our tent got completely swamped. With the ground saturated, pooling water around our tent began to pour in and soon our new air mattress was a floating island. We panicked, grabbed what linens were still relatively dry and crashed in Lighthouse's large, dry tent. He was already sleeping and quite confused when we broke in, but was too tired to protest. He saved our lives!

Halfway through the weeklong storm, fearing the worsening weather, the teepee and circus tent crews packed up and left, leaving the campsite sparse and boring. There was no color or flavor anymore, killing the vibe a bit, but things always rebound on the campsite...just wait a few hours or so and another assortment of weirdos always turn up and within a few days you can't even remember what was missing.

By Saturday the waves were absolutely ridiculous. Dozens of breakpoints turned the entire horizon into cresting chaos. Everything out there were 3 times the size of the typical wave, which to begin with is large enough to easily drown someone. These were 100% deadly and not a single person was out there. A couple of kids tried to swim out and couldn't even get past the whitewash, it being more powerful than the largest waves on a normal day. Even at low tide, the water was up to the rocks protecting the mainland and waves were crashing hard agaist them. I even saw a 3 foot wave form out of nothing and crash down violently right on the sand in two inches of water.

By day three, I killed time by taking hour long showers and beating up the vending machine for unjustly dangling snacks. Rebecca would hide in the tent and read her book. The Canadians were drying clothes and travel documents on the electric grill. We were all going insane. The sky was opressively gray and wild gusts of wind screamed through the camp kitchen, rattling the metal doors and bending the palms. These cyclones are unpredictable monsters, they hang out at sea, pissing rain on thousands of kms of coast, they can crash into the coast and die, or simply sit out there for days or weeks and stubbornly not do a damn thing.


Here's a poem I wrote while trapped in the camp kitchen:

Day one of rain, it was a pain
Day two of rain, the tarp was to blame
Day three of rain, keeping dry is the name of the game
Day four of rain, Cyclone Larry's to blame
Day five of rain, nature's wildly untame
Day six of rain, more of the same


Then came Monday, it had been raining non stop since Tuesday morning, we woke and stuck our heads out cautiously to find blue skies and full-on sunshine. We threw on our swimmers as fast as we could, squealing with delight. Pommy Adam was so excited he did a few laps around his tent naked before getting dressed. Then, in classic English pessimism, he says "Fuck it's hot!"

The ocean was calm and happy, and mirky from all the muddy runoff from the waterlogged land. Rebecca and I took a nice long walk along the beach, appreciating the sand that had been submerged for days. The only problem is it had been raining and crappy for so long, we forgot to put on sunscreen or wear sunnies so we damn near burnt to death and scorched our retinas.

By 5pm that evening, I would proclaim myself an official surfer, having caught several clean waves throughout the day and having the time of my life. I was paddling with confidence and catching waves with a focused precision. I was jumping up, balanced, on my 7.5 foot mini-malibu and riding waves for a respectable few seconds before falling off. I even spotted some dolphins 15 meters away watching us surf. Adam said it was his best surfing day in all of Australia.

A few days after the storm, the waves dropped off dramatically, leaving the wreck completely rippleless like an abandonded pool. Tallows, a highly popular surfing beach typically lined with 100's of expert surfers, was empty. Only Wategos had waves big enough to ride, but they were extremely lean, weak and sparse. I was having trouble catching waves, so I paddled out a little farther to spend some quality time with a large pod of dolphins that had showed up to enjoy the lovely calm weather. Perhaps 50 of them were hanging around and if I didn't make too much commotion, they would swim around me. I had a baby dolphin and it's family within 5 feet of me, just hanging out. It was great!

A lot of boards began disappearing from the campsite. Sometimes 5 or more a night, typically on the weekends. Luckily mine wasn't stolen, though I kept it locked up in the car most nights. There is a huge operation for black market surf board sales. Byron Bay boards are smuggled north to Noosa so no one can claim them and boards stolen from the north are smuggled south and the game goes on. It's extremely hard to reclaim one as well, having to deal with paperwork in a far off city that doesn't even have a beach.

We began to get the feeling Groundskeeper Willie was in on it because he kept such a tight grip on the grounds. If we couldn't get away with slapping the goon and playing music after midnight, then how does a crew of guys come in and snatch 5 eight-foot long boards and drive out of a camp ground that has automatic gates? We stayed on his good side, which might explain why none of our stuff was stolen.

We had originally wanted to stay at a place called Arts Factory but it was more expensive and a bit detached from the town. Later on we would find out how this place manages to attract hte masses. The complex was huge, it had all levels of accomodation from cheap tent sites all the way to luxery villas. Restaurant, bar, performance stage, cinema, dance studio, spa...it had everything!

The Buddha Bar has performances every night. Wednesday night is the fire show. As the night wore on and as the crowd got tipsier and tipsier, a guy would yell "Taxi!" everytime someone dropped their beer class on the cement floor. There were about 20 taxis called while we were there.

During one of our final free spinning lessons in the park, we were harassed by a drunk Aboriginal. A small gang of them were always there, usually in a corner minding themselves, drinking heavy amounts of booze and listening to a loud boombox distort all the modern hits, yelling profanities at their dogs. This guy was well groomed, but shirtless. He had a good physique for an old semi-homeless drunk. He kept encroaching the girls' personal space, grabbing at their sticks and poi, grabbing their arms, and yelling obsenities. The guy was so wasted he failed to register the resistance being given...it was as if he didn't even see us yelling at him. I kept stepping in between him and the girls, not aggressively, but acting as a neutral barrier refusing entry to a soverign country. I kept my cool and it all worked out, but only because he decided so.

There is a major problem in this country with Aboriginals and their alcohool...they just don't act right when drunk. Having only known alcohol for 200 years , there's lot of theries, most not based on any sound biology, that Aboriginals don't process alcohol as efficiently as their European counterparts, lacking enough glands to filter the poisons. Then there's talk about their extremely thick skulls and how you're more likely to shatter your hand than to hurt them with a punch to the face. Not all Aboriginals are troublemakers, most are upstanding citizens with compassion and grace, and I was happy to see our Aussie neighbors defend them as good people plagued with some bad examples, like any culture really. But the street science is sound, the troublemakers spend their entire lives getting pissed and fighting...they are actually more capable of fighting being in a drunken state.


After three weeks of free spinning lessons, Bec and I decided to purchase our own fire poi and a fire staff, from the original fire toy store in Byron, Gondwana, which specializes in authentic Aboriginal artefacts and art. Adam was ready to play with fire too. He had quickly picked up a few tricks from Rebecca, and even though he was still hitting himself in the head occasionally, he was keen to light them up. While we were in Gondwana, Jerry, a world renowned Aboriginal healer, came in to entertain us. He was wearing a magnificent, and large, silver and turquioise pendant that was given to him by a famous Native American chief Sun Bear from the Lakota Tribe. He's studied with shamans and spiritual healers throughout the world. He claimed to possess over 40,000 years of medical knowledge passed down through his ancestors and described his ability to not "see you" so much as to "see through you."

He liked to give hints of wisdom through playful jokes and innuendo. He joked endlessly. He kept picking up Aboriginal artifacts explaining how they can be used for "negotiation" during marriage counselling...I wonder what type of subliminal message he was trying to give us? He liked Rebecca and decided to do an impromtu healing session on her, free of charge, a rare treat indeed. He pointed sticks, and held stones over her and clapped his hands, claiming that vibrations and heat was streaming off her body. She said she could feel the warmth over the area his hands were. He focused his technique on a unique and peculiar stone called a Zebra Stone. It is only found in one part of Western Australia's desert and is thought to be 600 million years old. Geologists can't explain why iron deposts form in such uniform layers but Jerry felt it was extremely powerful. We thought, at a minimum, it was beautiful, and Bec had to have a pendant. She hasn't taken it off since.

Hippie Rage: What happens when good hippies go mad?

We kept coming across hippie rage in this chilled out peaceful town. I was attacked at Woolworth's (Woolies) by a soft spoken lady who was livid that I stole her parking spot, even though I didn't see her behind me and she parket two spaces over.

"I'm so sick and tied of people like you coming here, not even from here, taking all the parking spots!" she said.

I could tell it wasn't about the parking spot, so when I quickly offered to exchange parking spots, she huffed and ran away. Pommy Adam almost got ran over at a cross walk by a infuriated hippie pounding his steering wheel and screaming "This isn't a cross walk!" But when there's fifteen people crossing the street at a busy pedestrian area, it might as well be.

I discussed these stories with a guy who had recently moved to Byron and began a mobile coffee business. He explained that there are hundrends of pissed-off hippies that have watched their motivated friends make a fortune off the growing tourism, while their pot smoking, acid-dropping selves sat on the couch and bitched about the influx of tourists. Hell yeah they're pissed, they've missed out on the last 30 years just keeping it real. It's an internal conflict displaced on peaceful tourists that make Byron what it is...if they left, 90% of Byron would shrivel up and die, making those pissed off hippies even more mad.



My Baby's New Skin

My baby's got a new skin
She's let the sunshine soak in
Walking barefoot in the sand
I'm so proud to be her man
Her smile's brighter than the sun
Life on holiday, not life on the run
The beam in her eye sings a song
When all is right, nothing can go wrong
She has the pull like the tides of the moon
The game is on, not a moment too soon
She's so clean she's gleaming
She so hot, she's steaming
Finally living her dream
Finally tasting the cream
My baby's got a new skin
I love her forever, again and again


Our second to last evening in Byron, Ernie led most of the gang on a long walk up to the Lighthouse through the rainforest track, overlooking the entire bay from the easternmost point of Australia's mainland. It's a great vantage point, with one wide sweep of the east coast of Australia, every beach I had been surfing on for the past few weeks, seeing how the huge swells sweep in from the ocean are split at the pass, sending powerful rolling waves north towards Watego's, Clark's, Main, and The Wreck, and south towards Tallows, down the long strip of double overhead waves only suitable for seasoned pros who can manage the rocks and rips to navigate through the killer surf. By now I had nearly surfed them all.

Rebecca took some amazing shots of the lighthouse and surrounding horizon and after sunset we took the coastal route back. She's going to be a great photographer, I was impressed by her patience, curiosity and attention to detail. After the multi-hour trek across the bay, we arrived back to Main beach to find a local artist had created the most and impressive sand sculpture I've ever seen. It was a huge dragon, perhaps 10 feet long, ornately detailed with candles strategically placed in spots adding a dramatic flickering intrigue. It was stunning to see a work of art so impermanent, for it would be completely washed away by morning.

The next morning we found a huge carpet python trapped on the fruit tree above Ernie's campervan. The fruit on this tree attracted so many animals, birds of all sorts, bats, possums and now snakes. It should have returned to the bush before light, for it is a nocturnal hunter, but got trapped somehow and as the sun came up, the birds returned to reclaim their tree and went wild, making the most cacophonous sounds imaginable. After thirty minutes of gawking at it in amazement and fear we determined it was harmless having asked the groundsman if it was one of the thousands of Australia's deadly snakes. We dislodged it from the limb with a long stick and I carried it , very cautiously, out into the bush, where the ferals live...hoping it would eat one of them. It was beauutiful...shimmering irredescent green, about 4.5 feet long.

Are you ready?

Over the years, Rebecca and I have developed a highly complex system of verbal and non-verbal communication methods to help us accomplish the demands of the day. To the untrained eye this is seen as acute laziness or even slight retardation. Adam the Pom would marvel at our ability to take hours to muster up the strength to do something that he was ready to do in an instant. He considered us the "cruisiest" Americans he had ever met, which we appreciated, but sometimes in frustration he would revoke the title and call us just plain lazy.

When preparing to face a task, a challenge, or just a quick trip to the beach, we would follow through ten well defined steps to prepare for departure.

One of us would say "Are you ready?"

The other, "Yea, you ready?"

Reply, "I'm ready, you ready?"

Final reply, "Yea, I'm ready, you ready?"

This could go on for hours, and is highly frustrating to the untrained eye, but in actuality things are really happening.

First Are You Ready: We've agreed to consider getting ready sometime in the near future. Nothing more needs to be done.

Second Are You Ready: We've agreed to mentally prepare to get ready fairly soon. A silent moment to reflect on the task at hand is needed.

Third Are You Ready: We've agreed to begin the initial steps to physically get ready. We will need to rest very soon.

Forth Are You Ready: While sitting or lying down, we've agreed to mentally prepare for the main stage of getting ready.

(One of us will get up and do something. Grudingly, the other person will follow suit and do the bulk of the getting ready activities)

Fifth Are You Ready: We've agreed that we're mostly ready, but we need to rest a bit longer.

Sixth Are You Ready: We've agreed to begin the final steps of getting ready. The voice inflection has risen in amplitude to denote the seriousness of our intent to get ready.

Seventh Are You Ready: We're mostly ready, but have left a few scattered morsels lying around and need to sit down and think of where they are.

Eigth Are You Ready: We're both ready, but in a seated position. We're in a lover's call-and response battle, using voice inflection and subtle body language to trick the other person into being the first one to actually get up. This can go on for thirty minutes.

Ninth Are You Ready: One of us has preemptively gotten up and are displaying our absolute readyiness, thus putting all the focus on the other poor soul who now has to prove their readyiness as well. This is a critical moment that could easily collapse, sending the entire procedure back to the beginning.

Tenth Are You Ready: Both parties have stood up, gathered the final morsels and are officially ready!!!

(Now begins an awkard dance towards the door, or the beach, or whathaveyou...like people with wooden legs trying to hop away from a house fire. Eventually we both make it out the door, or on the path towards the beach, hand in hand, congratulating each other on how quick and easy everything seemed to fall into place)

Best Friends Forever!

To all the people we meet on the road, most likely never to see again. It's sad really, because we meet some really great people and have the most amazing and passionate conversations almost nightly. Sometimes you spend weeks with these people, forming a bond stronger than most people you call great friends from home. But eventually, you have to part and that brings the awkwardness, the futility of holding on. Many travelers, especially the young, go through this long, laboring, arduous ritual of getting email addreses, home addresses and phone numbers saying how they will surely keep in touch, see each other again soon, come visit within the year and be "Best Friends Forever!"

Adam, having been on a few long term trips and having seen hundreds of good people come and go, he took a bit more cynical approach. He boldly refused any offer to trade emails, saying, "Yeah, it was great, but seriously, do you think we're going to email every day, sharing stories and such?" It was brutal and honest and that's why I like it.

So as travelers came and went from the campsite that we had claimed as home, Adam and I would yell "Best Friends Forever" at all the people packing up their tents.

"Forever, ever?", I would say.

"Forever!!!!" Adam would conclude.


One night, as we slept quitely in a cool breeze, around 3am, some drunk arrogant idiots plowed back to the campsite having just closed down all the bars, screaming and singing and laughing. They wanted a guitar, made obvious after the 30th consecutive slurred proclamation by one of them. Then one bold adventurous asshole, proceeded to walk from tent to tent, personally waking people and asking for a guitar. I heard him come closer, tent by tent, until he stood over my tent, repeatedly asking me to wake up and give him a guitar. I screamed at him to piss off, but he heckled us for needing our beauty rest and finally wandered off to harass the next victim.

The next day I began to hear mumblings from all the neighbors about how they were harassed as well. Those hoons even went around the powered sites and rocked each camper violently, yelling at the people inside to wake up. The next morning I approached them, after doing a little detective work to figure out exactly which guys were guilty...I almost blamed a large burly Pollock, but kept my mouth shut till I knew for sure. It turned out to be some scrawny weekend-warrior Aussies. I approached them as they shook their hungover heads in confusion asking which asshole came and woke me up. They pandered, saying it wasn't them, one of their friends. I said it didn't matter, the entire campsite hated them. There was over 20 complaints about them that morning. Within the hour, they were forcefully removed from the campsite. So as they drove off, they honked and waved at everyone waying goodbye and that they were going to be missed.

The last full day was an epic day, full of everything we wanted and needed, including a free dangling Snickers from the machine for breakfast. Later, as Bec sat on the beach reading her book "Atlas Shrugged" and watching the waves, waiting patiently for the sunset, I surprised her with a ice cold class of Jack Daniel's and Coke, our favorite drink, and something we've been greatly missing on this trip, due to it's expense. We sat and watched our last Byron Bay sunset together with Ernie and Rhona. The setting sun blazed the sky blood orange...immaculate!

On our last day we did a bit of shopping, purchasing a beautiful aerial photograph of Byron Bay. The local artist is John Derrey and all his photos are amazing. Johnderrey.com.

Right before we left, I ran off for a super quick surf, one last time, on a short board. I paddled out, caught my first wave, rode it clean all the way in and fully stoked.

As we left, I gave Adam a huge manhug and we both shouted in unison, "Best Friends Forever!" A few days later, I emailed him to tell him that Bec and I were "over him." I really would like to visit him in England and surf those cold English waters. They have to wear full-body wetsuits due to the bone-chilling cold, and there's jagged rocks on most beaches making it a dangerous adventure everytime. I can't wait!

And we can't wait to return some day to Byron Bay.

In the Shade

On a scorching hot day,

in the shade in Byron Bay.

Going on a month of hippie beachbum play.

It's hard work being this chill,

there's no pill better than this thrill.

The beach is the best,

waves stronger than King Kong's chest.

People come here from all the rest.

It heals your soul to chill in the Byron Knoll.

There's great friends everywhere,

never to meet again but they don't care.

We tell great stories, some funny some gory.

There's never a night that's boring.

The freedom tastes so sweet,

walking with bare feet.

No more sucking bossman's teat.

Sitting in the shade,

makes me feel made.

Helping strangers out,

returning a shout,

never letting yourself pout,

it's what it's all about.

Life on the road,

learning to lighten my load,

stay in play mode,

peace is my humble abode.

Birds in the trees,

pocketless with no keys.

I'm a yeah-sayer who sees.

High on Byron Bay

From our journals dated February 19th through March 19th, 2006


We arrived at Byron Bay to find a fully bustling town, a welcome change to all the cute, quaint, cuddly sleepy little towns we had been cruising through since Sydney. It was full of people much like ourselves, backpackers, hippies, gap-year travelers, and of course, surfers. We had seen several signs advertising yoga, clairvoyants, and organic food before we even got into the town center. Byron was just our style and we knew we were going to like this place withing five minutes of being there.






We checked into First Sun Holiday Park, a campsite right on the beach conveniently located in the city center. It's called First Sun because Byron Bay is the easternmost point of mainland Australia and sees the first sunrise everyday. Glowing behind the bluff that Byron's famous lighthouse protects, it is a gorgeous sunrise that requires getting up early to see it, even for us sleepyheads.

We had a good laugh with the receptionist at First Sun. She first asked us if we were Canadian. It turned out that asking all North Americans if they're Canadian is the politically correct way of determining Canadians from Americans. Americans aren't phased too much by being called Canadians, but apparently many nationalities are immediately offended by being called American. So it's just easier to ask that way. And it's more likely to be correct, as many more young Canadians travel overseas compared to Americans. She told of her time in the US, when a lady asked her what part of America she from with that strange accent. When she said she's from Australia, the lady thought for a second and replied "Oh, you speak English very well!" We were getting the sinking feeling that Americans didn't have the best reputation around here.

Fast becoming experts at this camping thing, we had our tent set up in a matter of minutes and were on the beach! Byron has no shortage of amazing beaches, and the one footsteps from our camp was wonderful. Cool, true-blue water lapping the finest silicate sand, and a view of the lighthouse we adored any time of the day or night.

The campsite overall was great. Nice facilities and well-maintained grounds. But the camp kitchen had the grossest fridges ever imaginable. There was no need to swab for cultures to prove this epidemic...massive clumps of mold, fungus and sprouting vegetables were forming in every corner. Fishermen stored their bait in the freezer, meats and cheeses intermingled with month-old spilled cartons of milk. Sausages were fuzzy enough to resemble teddy bears. I cleaned out several large piles of condemmed food parcels, as did a few other neat freaks we met...this is the only way the fridges ever get any maintenance. As is usually the case with the worst examples, this fridge had a sign saying the fridges got cleaned every Monday. I found dated items over 2 months old in there!

Tent Envy

Our $30 tent was aging fast. They were able to produce it cheaply by skimping on things like quality zippers and poles. One day, right as a dark storm blew in, I snagged the zipper in the mosquito mesh and by successively freaking out, I ripped the zipper completely off. I panicked, frantically trying to retread the flimsy plastic teeth back into the zipper. Thanks to my trusty multi-tool, I was able to fix the zipper less than five minutes before the rain fell, but not fast enough to avoid the heckles and ridicules from our neighbors.

I found myself eyeing up all the good tents throuhgout the site. Most of the campsite was full of backpackers like us in stationwagons or campervans. But there was always the super-campers' tents: tall ones you could stand up in, long ones with entry ways to avoid tracking in sand and water, and endless arrays of tarps providing much desired shelter from the sun and rain. There was a crew with a massive, awe-inspiring teepee...it was 20 feet tall and fully authentic, except that canvas had been substituted for the buffalo skins, of course. Later on, a guy showed up with a full-on circus tent.

We hung out on the beach for some light stretching. Byron Bay is full of Yoga studios and the associated yogi's...so every evening at sunset there seemed to be a yogi doing a routine on the beach and we would witness the most amazing and contorted moves, looking forward to the day our bodies can wrap around themselves like that.

Being overwhelmed by the simplicity of beach life, I wrote a poem.


Life at the beach

Life at the beach, sweet as a peach
Listen to the waves, nothing left to crave
Sun soaks the skin, face full of grin
Life on holiday, it's the only way.

Time is like the sunrise, to the west as it flies
Catch your wave on the crest, choose one and leave the rest
Sand gets everwhere, but it's not there if you don't care
Sharks are in the water , so paddle harder or offer a barter
The tide goes out and in, taking life and letting it begin.


The first few days, I tried boogie boarding on the huge waves. I was mostly a recipe for disaster, but finally, I caught a wave fully on the body board, it was an awesome rush of adrenalin like I had stolen a car. But then, a wave crashed straight down on me with the force of an entire team of rugby playing elephants. I must have received a mild concussion because as soon as we left the beach I couldn't move. I stuggled like a darted rhinoceros to help prepare dinner, drinking Export Gold all the while. And after I shovelled the creamy pasta into my mouth, I was out for the count. Bec put me to bed and I slept soundly...until our nasty new neighbors retuned at 2am.

I was learning more and more about how to ride waves. I learned to keep my eyes open while body surfing. I sat on the beach and visualized. I imagined the wave, in a perfectly still moment of peaked potential energy, creating a mountain top with steep slippery sides, and me riding down with an avalanche of ocean screaming behind me.

Riding waves felt like I was floating, speed was irrelevant, everything seemed to be whirling around me as I sat there motionless, a brief moment of which all forces of nature converged and spun on your finger. I've now learned to body surf waves consistently, I can ride bigger and better waves than most anyone out in the water...not as much a testament to my talent, but more to the fact that body surfing is a stupid sport. It's only now that I feel confident that my upcoming surf lesson will be epic! Three days into it, on a Sunday, I was ready for my surf lesson. I had made a visit to several of the surf shops (surf lessons were a dime a dozen in Byron), and picked Mojo Surf becuase the guy running the shop was unbelievably stoked. He talked excitedly about how the lesson would be awesome, fun and productive, and about how they would take us out of town away from the overcrowded local beaches to find the best surf for our capabilities. I was sold!

When the Mojo Surf van swooped by to pick me up the next morning, hauling a trailer stacked with long blue soft surfboards, I was happy to see that Nat, the stoked guy from the shop was going to teach the lesson.

"I don't mean to call you an insect, but baby...You're FLY!"

The 15 minute drive out to Lennox was filled with cheesy ice breakers: favorite pick-up lines, etc. I'm noticeably the most stoked, but I'm used to that. I almost got kicked out of a Fu Manchu concert in NYC for "rocking too hard"...go figure! The lesson started out slow, but I was happy to keep quiet and listen, ensuring I understood everything. We spent the next 1.5 hours riding the "bones" - the white wash of fallen waves - a great way to learn how to get up on the board without the fear and danger of getting picked up 10 feet on a real wave and slammed face first into a sand bar, which had happened plenty of times on my self-taught tour of terror. I got up on my first wave, a great sign and a great feeling.

Across the street from 7-mile beach was Lake Ainsworth, an unusual lake surrounded by tea trees. The leaves fall into the lake and ferment, creating a massive pot of anti-oxidant rich Lipton. The entire lake was a rich golden brown with a glistening coat of tea tree oil. It is supposedly great for the skin. I knew I had to bring Rebecca back here and a few weeks later we had a wonderful swim together.

After the lesson, Bec and I reuinited and went snorkelling at The Wreck with some neighboring campers. Our beach is called "The Wreck" in honor of an old Norweigan freight liner that washed up on shore, mostly undamaged, never to return to sea in the year 1921. It was stripped of its valuables and left to become an artifical reef and wave maker. The waves rolling over the steel carcass made it quite dangerous, a large iron turret stuck out like a periscope and was covered with sharp pronounced barnacles, of which I would get cut several times climbing up on it to dive off.

At nighttime we walked the beach chasing crabs of all shapes, sizes and speeds. Bright blue phosphorescence washed ashore under the pitch black sky of the new moon. It was intense and and seemed to glow in Bec's footsteps. The lighthouse emitted a long glowing ray that would sweep overhead every few seconds. We sat mesmerized by it for a while, counting our lucky stars.

We decided to go out on Saturday night to check out the nightlife, but instead of becoming staggering drunken idiots ourselves, we observed a random crew of idiots embarrassing themselves solely for our entertainment. We checked out a band at the popular local Railway Friendly Bar, aka 'the Rails' - a chill spot right on the now defunct railroad. Then over to the Beach Hotel, a massive complex with a 2-room cathedral concert hall, restaurant, outdoor lounge, and pool hall. A tone-deaf female singer backed by a rock cover band belted out perfect "Let's Get Drunk and Screw' tunes. It was being televised live to another hundred more sophisicated drunks outside on the patio who didn't want to bump and grind on the dance floor that was covered in spilt beer and broken glass. We chose to enjoy our $5 VB's outside on the grass lawn, overlooking the street corner that was a raceway of brief drunken soap operas. We enjoyed endless 10-second snippets of other people's business: passionate slurrs, emblazoned curses, and lots of ass grabbing. True entertainment.

It was there that we met John, a Australian John Bellushi from "Brizzy" or Brisbane, and his crew. He was barely able to walk, but conveniently we were all sitting down. He was fully capable of telling candid stories about snowboarding in Canada and about his friend in London who was a high-stakes coke dealer who let him dabble with pure Columbian booger sugar. He was accompanied by a chirpy blonde, a social butterfly with the pupils the size of plums.

They kindly allowed us to tag along as they proceeded to venture from bar to bar, defying gravity and the ambulance. We ended up at a reggae club, an interesting place in an Aussie tourist town because it's full of white people dancing wild and free, and the occassional black person. We then played a never ending game of pool, John unable to decide which of the 12 pockets to shoot at. We left them at club La La Land where the door man wanted $10 cover at 2:30 am to enter a club closing in 30 minutes. We bid them adieu and thanked them for their entertaining, if brief, friendship.

Shade is bloody brilliant! It's shocking how intense the sunshine can be. Finding shade at any cost is of utmost importance, as serious a necessity as water. The 1970's groovy orange umbrella we grabbed from a curb in Toby's neighborhood has proved invaluable, placing us in the upper crust of beach crustaceans. It made sunbathing sustainable, and quite luxurious. We could comfortably sit and read while all those crisply little critters sizzled around us.

It was on one of these blistering sunny days that we discovered a new type of ice cream treat, "MaxiBon." Half of it is ice cream sandwich and half is chocolate-dipped vanilla ice cream. After several tests of this brilliant design, we decided the dipped side should be eaten first while you hold onto the sandwich end. We'll say it again, life can be stressful on holiday. These are the kinds of tough decisions you have to make.

We determined we're too sandy in all the wrong places for an type of romance, so we pile onto the beach for some sunbathing and huge wave riding. We have an absolute blast getting devoured by the waves. I learned to let the wave hit me 1/8th of a second before it becomes lethal, letting the wave wall hit my bare face right before it curls over to create several tons of downard spiraling pressure, it was mesmerizing. Rebecca's favorite method is to find that same sweet spot, but she jumps up with the wave at the heighth of its build, screaming with delight at the big ones that take her 15 feet up and set her back down for the next one. It is a quick perfect thrill, when you get it right. But if you play in the waves long enough, eventually they will win. She got tossed violently by a tripple combo wave set, each one tossing her five more meters. The draw before the next incoming wave was overwhelming, dragging her 5 yards out towards the sea, feeding her into the impending doom no matter what her political affiliations were. All the while, sideways rips were dragging both of us nonstop north. Every time you interact with a rip, you realize that there is no compromise, you will play by their rules which is "My way while in Byron Bay."

My second surf lesson was at Flat Rock beach, north of Lennox. Lennox Head is home to one of the most famous and sought-after barrells in the country. It's not always "working" but as we drove past it, I saw the most beautiful solid barrell rip across the wave...I could only dream of the day that I would be able to climb inside that hydro roller coaster for a ride.

Flat Rock's current was strong with rips pulling hard sideways to the left and right from a magical middle that was hard to carress. My consistency was spectacular, having benefitted from a quiet ride in the front seat simply visualizing my pop-ups and proper stances. They gave me the intermediate beginner board, still a softie but a foot shorter and much more agile. I loved it! I even get some turns going. Surfing is going to be fun as hell, it's obvious, and I don't mind taking it slow. A girl in the group got stung by a blue bottle jellyfish, swelling up her wrist like it was broken.

Nat, my coach from the first day, showed up at the end of the lesson to surf on his day off, accompanied by his highly pregant wife and 1 year old. He showed us a awesome picture from the newspaper of him riding a wave with his 1 year old girl hanging on his back like Lois on superman, a smile like the sun on both their faces. He was eternally stoked and a posterboy for Attention Deficit Disorder medication, a testament to positive vibes.

He also showed us a picture of two surfers fighting in the water, on their surfboards. There's a lot of surfers' rage on the Gold Coast, a stretch of great beaches running from Surfer's Paradise to Brisbane, due to overcrowding. Some of the more crowded beaches have surf cops in the water to prevent fighting...there is blood literally running in the water due to the pent up agression out there. The inability of a surfer to catch a wave must be similar to the most overwhelming sexual frustration. At these surf beaches, there are literally 50 guys fighing over a single wave, 'snaking' around each other, ten guys yelling "My Wave! My Wave!" at once. Snaking benefits the most powerful swimmer, for whomever drops on the inside of the wave, closest to the breaking curl, has the right of way, regardles of how they got there. This aqua dog pile adds yet another element of danger, another hurdle for beginner surfers to jump over before catching the perfect wave.

I now understood the neccessity of surf lessons and the value of taking it slow. It's the only way to learn 'how to learn' in a safe and stable environment. Paddling out into the real surf will overwhelm you with too many variables and you'll be more likely to drown than learn proper form. But lessons don't provide the magic pill. They show you the door and only your motivation and hard work will get you through it. The first lesson is absolute neccessity, but I would have preferred a few days off to practice, because the second lesson, though productive, was mostly me working my ass off with the coach saying "Way to go bro, hell yeah!" with a big thumbs up.


After a few days off, letting my aching muscles' swelling go down and I'm able to touch my toes again, I rented a surf board for three days. I would be fully consumed by surfing during these days, and the frustration involved with learning. With erratic spurts of inspiration and exhaustion, I would have small breakthroughs then hours of tear-jerking tumbles. I would spend an hour in remedial scrimmages with the white wash till I didn't have the strength to turn the board around in the current. Then I'd attempt to paddle out past the breakers, most times adandoning the mission amongst unrelenting onslaughts of massive waves, fully exhausted and tasting what it feels like to drown.

Many times I would battle for 15 minutes at a fevered pace, battling my mental demons of fear and courage, lose ground after each minute and end up farther from my intended destination: the peaceful sweet spot right behind the wave break where the swells slowly bob up and down with a gentle roll of the horizon. A few yards in they metamorphasize into a murderous gauntlet of rips, pulls and piledrivers. Often times I would be only a few yards from the demilitarized zone, but in a act of exhausted desperation, I would hastily and sloppily turn around to grab a wave quickly building in front of me. This was rarely a good idea and the wave would either pass over me with nothing but wasted energy or would crash down ripping me violently from my board and destroying all the ground I had worked so hard to cover. These 15 minute battles lasted eons in my mind, roller coasters of emotion, courage, dedication, and passion flipped over to show self doubt, mortality and weakness.

If I was blessed enough to make it past the breaks and catch my breath, I would then watch endless waves pass, second thoughts and self doubt and hesitiation driving me mad as I see other surfers climb up on these slick beasts with ease. As I creeped closer and closer to engage a wave, I would catch a glimpse of the voracious power wrapped inside the blue swirling sheath and I would get spooked. These waves had been growning in size each and every day since I arrived and now that I found myself out where I've been dreaming to be, the waves were way past my level of comfort, I cried for a learner wave, a pile of bones, something between these beasts and the whitewash I so despised like the bunny slopes on the ski mountains.

It's a frightening feeling to fall off a crashing wave. If I didn't paddle hard enough, matching the speed of the wave rolling under me, I found myself on top of crumbling wall, 6 feet above a moving floor of molten blue and white lava. Then I would fall head first into nothing...my fate was completely in the hands of a spiraling vortex, a washing machine of torque and torture. It would flip me around several times, and then flip me once more, keeping me down far too long. I paniced, knowing I had only one chance to get to the top, but I had been spun around so many times I wasn't sure if I was swimming in the right direction. Would I headbutt the sand, or swim horizontal, forever? I pierced the water, surviving yet again, given one more chance by the ocean. I immediately turned to paddle out for another wave.

Waves are beautiful creatures. It takes every adjective to describe them. So powerful, sleek and smooth, changing emotions by the minute, you have to learn to see the moment, without hesitation or regret.

Clark's beach is where I caught my first big wave. Then I moved to Wategos, a surfers' beach, and within the first few minutes in the water, the deceptively strong current dragged me from the beach north into the rocks. It happened so fast I couldn't believe I was seconds away from being irretrievably past the headland, a point of no return where I'd have to bob around in shark infested waters, isolated and alone, until I came around to another beach that seemed several hundred km's away.

I had to accept my fate and wash up on the rocks. I grabbed frantically for slippery submerged rocks as large powerful waves smashed me against them. Wave by wave, I was realizing how dire of a situation I was truly in. I finally got hold of the rocks enough to avoid a death blow and crawled out of the water like the primordial ooze of my ancestors. That was only half the battle, because then I faced 30 minutes of more terror. With cut feet and a heavy 8 foot surf board teathered to my ankle, I had to scurry over jagged and irregular rocks, climbing and descending rock faces ten meters tall. It was slow and paintful, but I made it and declared defeat.


While I was taking my first surf lesson, Rebecca cut her hair...much to both of our delight...now it's short, shaved underneath and spunky as hell. She was exploding with liberation, I wanted to eat her up. The beach is a wonderful place to be when life is perfectly in the moment.

Rebecca ran off for a poi lesson in the park which I ended up joining. A local named Mic offered a free class twice a week, with no obligation towards anything, no commerce, no sales pitch, he even brought a large assortment of sticks and poi to use for free. He calls them Fire Toys, and he just enjoys sharing his passion for spinning. We knew we'd be lighting ours before long...we were hooked.

Mic didn't like to show off his skills, but slowly it became apparent he was highly skilled in both the poi and staff. A goofy English kid showed up to one class, acting timid initially, but soon broke out every trick we knew and in a way was messing with Mic trying to prove that he knew every trick already. Unphased and refusing to show frustration, intimidation or anger, Mic continuted to push through his repertoir, move after dizzying move, until he finally found some the kid didn't know.

"Finally!" exclaimed Mic and everyone watching gave a sigh and a laugh.

His teaching skills are just as impressive, he's able to get into the mind of a novice and help them visualize and isolate their movements, successfully teaching every person a new move every lesson, guaranteed, from the absolute beginner to the cocky self made expert. He showed me my first fire staff move and I could tell right off that I was going to enjoy this. Rebecca improved exponentially and was usually the best in the class. We were very loyal to Mic class and attended 7 classes over the course of a month. At then end, Mic encouraged Bec to link her huge bag of tricks and begin moving and dancing. He said the stick and poi are a dance partner, spinning independently of you, leading you and you just follow along trying to keep up.

Finding ourselves in Byron after an effortless week, having lost all sense of urgency or obligation (we 'planned' to stay 3-5 days), we began forming a gang, a campfire crew of debaucherist best friends, who will most likely never meet again. We were all hanging in circles, drinking, smoking, trading stories, everyone had a different accent. Australian, Canadian, American, English, Dutch, French, Swedish, and so on. All resources were up for grabs...chairs, tables, torches, and cups seem to float around the campsite, following the shade during the day, following the citronella candles at night. We were known as "Texas" collectively, and soon had the entire campsite saying "what's up, y'all," or a favorite local variation, "g'day, y'all!"

We moved onto Adam's site, going under the radar and ceasing to pay for accomodation legitimately. We instead cooked a wonderful Sloppy Joe, which won us enough goodwill for an entire week before we paid again. We stayed three weeks on Adam's site and paid him less than half of what we would have spent alone, plus we enjoyed having a wonderfully amusing camp-mate. Yeah squatting!

Adam is a 30-year old English bloke and surfing junkie whose maturity level meshed well with ours. He was happy to chill with us at the campsite when all the college-age backpackers had headed out for a night at Cheeky Monkey's - the pick up bar with jello shots and wet t-shirt contests. Adam referred to it, as to all places he didn't care for, as a shithole. He's traveled quite a bit - says that's what made him grow up, and was very proud of the fact that he had three months for his current holiday, and chose to spend 95% of it in Byron Bay. He's owned five cars in Australia, some had been abandoned in seedy parts of town with the keys in them. This turns out to be a very popular way to dispose of backpacker shitboxes. He constantly had us laughing at his announcements that he was "over" whatever he had grown bored with, and sharing his next actions with us proudly, "I'm going for a surf, I am!" "I'm going to have a poop!" And we loved his odd, Brit way of stating simple questions like, "What time do you make it?" We blushed at this, thinking that was a bit of a personal question. "I mean what time is it?" Well why didn't you just ask that way!?! His favorite quote was "I'm Smart...S-M-R-T!" Adam was an easy friend to make and a great campsite neighbor. And that was mutual - he thought we were the "cruisiest" (laid-back) Americans he has ever met. And we had a car, he didn't for this 'short' trip, so with us he didn't have to walk "all the way to Woolies!" (It was less than 10 minutes on foot).

I made a great joke, one that most likely will not translate well. Adam is a POM, or Pommy. Pommies are whingers, meaning they bitch and moan about everything, especially the weather. Pommy is ferring to P.O.M.: Prisoner of Mother England. It is a derrogatory term, and should be reserved solely for friends, or enemies, but not while they're in the same room. Adam the Pommy got bit on his foot one night by a what was most likely a bull ant (they are extremely painful I would come to find out) and convinced himself it was a poisonous spider and that he was about to die. Someone genuinely concerned asked "Do you need some antiseptic?" I said "Nah, what he needs is some Whinging Pommade."


Ken, the Canadian, is a 20-year old street salesman, snake breeder and fire management specialist. He wants to get into real estate since most millionaires he knows of are. He will either become a highly successful entrepreneur, or an infamous criminal. He hung with us for about a week until he just had to get up to Cairns to see salt-water crocs.

James, a Sydney-sider, showed up and constructed, singlehandedly, a massive circus-style marquis tent. His day job was working for a fencing company, thus he had the skills to put up this semi-permanent structure with a master bedroom, complete with elevated bed and real mattress, kitchen, hammock, and garage with room for 50 people, comfortably. He' was extremely nice and contributed huge to the community. He was a member of The Foundation for Humanitiy's Adulthood. He explained their cause, but it blew my mind. I would later read a book by Carl Sagan called Cosmos which discussed a similar concept, focusing on the evolution of the brain, from simple reptilian instincts like aggression to the higher functions of the cerebal cortex which possess compassion and self-awareness. These brain segments operate independantly and often come into conflict. I think James group takes it a bit farther and tries to explain how these evolutionary conflicts manifest into daily life. Or maybe I was just drunk.


Ernie was one of the more colorful characters within the campsite gang. He was retired British Army man of Irish decent. He took no shit from anyone. He and his wife Rhona now live in Thailand.

He knows how to blow up everything with anything. His body is completely covered in tattoos and he took us through the tour, pointing at each one, telling the year, beginning in the 60's, and the price, some costing less than $10. Some were mispelled, some were massive, like the Protestant war hero 'King Billy' riding his horse emblazoned across his back. Some were uncharacteristic of such a tough son of a bitch. He had a tribal ass crack tattoo ever so popular with the 20-year-old bimbos. But I wouldn't tell him that. As a collection, they told a wonderful story of a man who lived a great life on his own terms. Ernie's solution when dealing with anyone from criminals to mild annoyances was, "Just shoot the bastard...but make sure you warn them three times." Then he turned all soft and said that "life is all about good family and you got to have a lot of children" We decided he needed a radio show to give advice to whiney bastards with broken hearts and crappy friends.



Adam, Grant, and Shane, otherwise known as "Lighthouse" were from a nearby town called Tweed Heads, where the city limit sign is scribbled out leaving simply "Weed Heads." They left early each mornng for nearby construction work, and each had homes with roofs and running water less than an hour away, but preferred the simple and quiet life on the beach. Adam fell in love with a German girl he met at the camp. Adam and Stephanie became instant lovebirds, inseparable. In less than a week, she was dropping him off at work and hanging out with his family. They really were cute together and I'm confident it will be the most best one-month relationship ever!

Many of the people we met had at one point or another been in a relationship with another traveler from a different country. These relationships were hot and heavy, full of lust and love, and contained all the ingredients neccessary to fuel any fledgling coupling that would surely mature into something significant if they were at home. But the reality of the situation casts a shadow like a luminous thunder cloud, obvious to both parties that nothing long term could possibly come of it...for in a few weeks one person will be flying to Thailand, the other to Africa. The relationship is more like a partnership and once the plane tickets are reconfirmed, it's time to shake hands and simply say "nice doing business with you" and walk away.

There was a rambunctious crew of Canadians that we had been watching and joining for amusement over the past week. Their crew actually consisted of 3 Canadians, one Irishman, and one Englishman. But that's too bad, because the whole campsite knew them as the Canadians. Every afternoon they would play an improvised game of camp golf and drink box wine. They also played a hilarious game we would soon find out to be called Cowboy-Ninja-Bear.

Before I go any further I have to explain the concept of "Goon". It's cheap box wine, simply, but it has been turned into an artform. Inside each box is a plastic silver sack containing 4 liters of the cheapest stuff available at the store. There are a few different brands of bottom shelf boxed wine and are priced in the $9-$11 dollar range. A freakish aspect of goon is it always has a disturbing warning on the back that says "May contain traces of nuts, milk, eggs and fish." No one knows for sure why these ingredients should be in there, other than the manufacturers refuse to clean the containers, but every box of cheap wine contains a similar warning, and everyone agrees if a certain box is missing one of those ingredients it tastes a little off. Strange.

Goon has an entire subculture in Australia. People wear Goon t-shirts and everyone knows the word. We even heard of a duo of travellers who got "Team Goon" tattoed on their backs in large blocky letters. These guys were from different countries and had befriended each other in a beautiful, but brief period of time. For the rest of their lives they would have to tell friends and family why they had Team Goon tattooed on their back, explaining how they were hanging out with a Sweedish dude for a few weeks, slapping a shiny silver bag and drinking wine that cost $2 a liter filled with remants of fish and eggs.

Goon to broke backpackers is like the buffalo to the Native American, there's endless uses and nothing goes to waste. When you finish off a bag, you can blow it up and have a pillow to sleep on for you'll surely pass out on the beach or in a gutter. That bag also plays in integral part of Goon Ball, where people bat a blown up bag in the air like volleyball, who ever let's it fall on the ground has to drink. Then there's Wheel of Fortune. You tie a bag of goon on a circular clothes line and spin it around in a circle. Who ever it stops closest to has to drink and spins again, and so on.

But Cowboy - Ninja - Bear was our all-time favorite game to play with a bag of goon. It's based on the principal of Rock-Scissors-Paper, but it's acted out with the amplitude and passion of a community Shakespeare Theater group. Invented by the Canadians in a goon-induced stupor, it actually works with sound logic. Two players begin, duel-style: back to back, and walk away from each other counting aloud three paces, then turn around and display their best and loudest version of either a Cowboy (shooting his 6-shooters yelling Bang Bang) , Ninja (hands in karate chops and sounding like Bruce Lee) or Bear (making two big claws overhead and growling). The ninja dodges bullets and kills the cowboy, the bear is impervious to measly Chinese stars and kills the ninja, but the bear falls victim to the 6-shooter thus the Cowboy kills the bear with his gun.

As the game carries on, people confuse poses with sounds and sometimes create an embarrassing ninja bear or a chinese cowboy, so the sound trumps the pose to avoid having to wrestle in the dirt. (Until later when the goon takes over...then there's always wrestling in the dirt.) The loser has to drink Goon, and a new competitor jumps in. A draw results in a redo and you can either drink or not, depending on the debauchery of the night, or how many bags of goon you have. This game is highly entertaining and wildly addicting and a great way to get drunk. It does get out of hand quickly and isn't suggested as appropriate for a bar. The Canadians tried it in the Railway Friendly Bar one night but got kicked out after round three, much to the confusion and amazement of the other patrons.

The favorite goon flavor was Sunnydale Fruity Lexia which sounded more like a skin disorder than a species of grape. The taste of straight goon at room temperature proved to wear thin on our atrophied taste buds and shriveled pallets, so at Rebecca's insistence we began to experiement with various recipes..basically cutting it like a cheap narcotic.

Golden Goonie Poonie was our first generation using Orange Mango spritzer and watermelon cordial. Then we dabbled with Afternoon Delight, which was exactly the same stuff...then perfected the concoction with Goon Tang, again bascially the same but we added Home Brand Lemonade spritzer. Final recipe for Goon Tang: 8 liters of Fruity Lexia, 2.25 liters of Home Brand lemonade, 1.5 liters of fizzy Tropical punch, and 1.5 liters of fizzy golden pash.

The night we officially met the Canadians, they came running through the campsite, screaming like Banchees, holding 7 bags of Goon like silver scalps. They insisted that everyone take a "slap" off the bag. Not wanting to insult our new hosts, I cocked back and open-hand slapped the silver bag as hard as I could, sounding off a sharp crack than echoed through the campsite. It was addictive and seemed to release an animal instinct to hit something as hard as I could. These bags are indestructable, for the most part, and no one could break the lining with a legitimate slap. Somehow I was able to burst one and was forced to drink the remaining elixir out of a dirty pot.

After a slap, you were obligated to take a massive gulp from the nipple. After every bag slap, the drunken Canadians yelled in unison, "Slap the bag and it'll slap you back". It wasn't until the next morning, stirring around naked in the tent oblivious to anything that happed after the fifth slap, did I realize what they meant and came to respect the bag. I had the worst hangover yet.

All the Canadians had nicknames, full nick-names ending in McAllister. Their schtick was that they had all met on a Scottish heritage website and as reunited brothers, were now traveling the world as broke backpackers. Boomer McAlllister, Xavier McAllister, Dudley McAllister, Elvis McAllister, Skeeter McAllister. They all had secondary nicknames as well. Chance O'Malley, Brant Spelrem, Johnny Staples, Luke Mitchell and Afternoon Delight, respectfully. It was extremely frustrating to figure out who was who and who was talking to whom about who, and so on. We're still not sure if we know their real names.

Team Canada had an Ipod constantly playing on random. It would occasionally play an old song I had long forgotten about, "Rock and Roll McDonald's" by Wesley Willis, a homeless schizophrenic crack pot musician who is now deceased. It's possibly the best, purest, straight from the heart of a homeless skitzo song ever produced for under $50. It's an indie classic that you should find on the internet immediately. (Wesley Willis)

Unfortunately, I couldn't remember the name of the artist at the time and the song was stored under a name too generic to find, so it would play, then reshuffle to be lost for another 3 days or so, then when it would come up again, everyone would go absolutely wild, singing Rock and Roll McDonald's as loud and inebriated as possible.

Team Canada had purchased a 1976 Ford Falcon, a yellow tank of iron beauty, for $600 in Sydney. Less than a 1000 km's North, the radiator failed and with a broken thermostat, they were unaware anything was wrong until the manifold burst, cracking the engine in half. They towed the Yellow Submarine to Byron, and needed help pushing it to the mechanic for a proper diagnosis. So after several rounds of Cowboy - Ninja - Bear to get up our strength and motivation, 10 of us got behind the broken beast and pushed it through the streets, yelling and laughing and screaming. It was actually a lot of fun and we got the speed up to a dangerous pitch as we made it through a roundabout, us grunts with no idea of where we were headed or how much further we were expected to go. The next day the Yellow Submarine would immediately be pronounced dead on arrival and a week later would be crushed into a tiny rectangular box and recycled for scrap.


One night, after a few slaps off the goon, we went out to the beach with a bucket and tongs to catch crabs. It's quite a lot of fun...spotlighting them then running after them...they zigzag randomly, not sure which ways is the ocean. It was intense, we both would yell at each other, "get the crab" "keep the light on it" "get it, get it!" "Where is he, keep the light on him!"

Smaller is harder, bigger is better. We scored a bucket of 20 or so and walked back towards the camp to find the gang, spinning fire staffs, glowsticks poi and glow-in-the-dark numchucks. There were glow sticks on strings that turned out to be great poi because the tracers formed a full circle, the full orbit of the spin in bright green. It was there I first spun a lit fire stick and fell in love with it.

We offered our bucket full of crabs as a contribution to the firelit community. The crabs ended up tearing each other's legs off in a bloody battle of every crab for himself. Seeing the carnage I was responsible for, I set them free, some crabs limped off missing several legs. I kept the biggest one who was too exhausted to run away, figuring he was safer with me.

Mark, the guy from Sydney who had recently retired and bought a $3000 teepee to live in, was spinning numchucks in the dark with extreme disregard and gusto. They were wooden with green glowsticks attached to each on. He ended up cracking his head open. With blood running down his face, his daughter Charlie said "Oh, not again!"

That's when the Bush Blokes came running out of the bushes, but we deflected them with a crab donation and we ran away. The Bush Blokes are ferals, meaning they've gone wild. Our campsite was at the northern most edge of town and the beach north of us wasn't developed so bush and scrub met the sand. In that bush lived literally hundreds of random people, all living completely off the radar, living in little communities, many of them selling pot to tourists. The bush blokes were a small group of guys, living closest to our campsite, sycophants, living off the ammenities of the camp. The bathroom, showers and fridge were all fair game...they stole food with wreckless adandon. They were relatively harmless but a major nuisance for they would steal pretty much anything out of the fridge, especially alcohol.

After I had my first bag of groceries stolen I asked a large group of campers who else had been robbed, everyone, and I mean everyone, raised their hand. One night I witnessed a live robbery. One of the ferrals rode a bicycle through the camp as fast as he could, one hand on the wheel and one hand holding several bulging plastic bags full of groceries...he was being chased out of the kitchen, but got away with the heist.

Solar Rooster

I stirred awake each morning around 7am. The air would be cool with a light morning dew to keep things comfortable. The birds would be lightly chirping and I could hear the rumble of the beach thundering on the sand. I would doze off for another hour to find the sun noticeably brighter, the birds would be much noiser, with another 3 or 4 species having joined in to the junior high choir. The air in the tent is approaching stifling, a few noticeable degrees hotter, but I decide I can tolerate it for another snooze. Then at 8:15, precisely, I awake in a panic. fire alarms in my head, the birds are in full chorus, streams of sweat are running off my head, soaking my pillow, drowning Bec next to me. The air is a solid 10 degrees hotter, the bright hue of the sun beaming through the semi-transparent rain fly seems like an alien abduction in effect. I would jump up and try to escape, clawing wildly at the faulty zippers from a second-hand tent, they snaged every few inches on cheap rayon and mesh, I go absolutely insane with claustrpohobic hyperventilation. It took an eternity to escape. But each morning I would crawl out of the oriface like a slimy new baby, gasping for air like clockwork.

Every Tuesday night was "Cheap Pizza Night" at Eagle Boys, a pizza chain that had recently opened up in Byron, offering yummy $4.95 large pizzas, assembled efficiently by underage workers. With a large crew assembled we placed a phone order for 10 pizzas. We were all already wasted from the goon so we nominated Dudley McAlister to place the call.

"Is this Eagle Boys, yeah, I want 10 pizzas. Yes 10. No I'm not joking. I want 5 BBQ Meat Lovers, 3 Super Supremos and uh, what's that sausage that looks like a penis? Caba-what? Cabanossi? Uh, yeah, well, we'll just call it the 'penis sausage' going forward, ok? What pizza comes with the penis sausage? The Bellisimo? Great, the last three pizzas are Bellisimos. My name? It's Raul. That's spelled R - A - U - L - (an unbelievably long pause) E! Raul with an E."

To celebrate good Saturday, the Tweed Heads crew snagged a truck full of wooden pallets from work and invited everyone to a beach party and barbecue. It was great...we cooked massive amounts of animal parts and lit all sorts of things on fire. Aaron impressed us with his skill, and tall-Adam with his lack of fear, with the fire staff.

A guy named Maxim showed up to perform the most impressive fire poi twirling anyone has ever seen. He was simply amazing, with his own custom made whicks, 12 inches long, making huge circles of fire spinning at lighthing speed and angles and combinations not seeming possible. The performance was of such a high caliber and obviously exhausting, he only performed once before retiring. We would later learn he was feral, a well-groomed one at that, and had built himself a yurt, a Mongolian mud hut.

Towards the end of the party, as the last pallet was thrown on the fire, I did handstands and flipflops over the burning sheets of wood. Then our party was taken over by 30+ people we didn't know. The ferals had come out, as had drinkers from the bars, and any random freaks roaming the beach as well. One guy showed up, unfurled his sleeping bag and curled up next to the fire for the night, and another woman showed up and played a little accordian for us. An ecclectic gathering of unknowns, evolving with the night. It was friendly, of course, but we chose to leave before anyone got too incredibly drunk because when you pass out on the beach, things tend to disappear. The next morning, we had to go into the bushes to reclaim some of our furniture from the ferals.


Nimbin is Autralia's little Amsterdam. A social experiement studying hippie burnouts. We had heard so much about it. Good things, bad things, unbelievable things. What a freaky little town it turned out to be, mostly everything we heard was true. It's a town that exists solely by selling weed to tourists. The second you step foot into the city proper, people begin popping out of every corner of every building and natural structure to sell you weed. The various selling techniques were impressive and diverse, full of variety, motivation and sheer blatency. Even the steps ouside the police depatment were a legitimate selling spot with guys selling weed, in plain view of the cops.

There was a hash bar with tables full of the greenie green, pipes blazing by the dozen. An old lady, dressed like the most conserative granny in Kansas, crocheting a cute little doilie, was brightly singing "Marijuana" to the tune of "Hallelujah!" There were hip-hoppers in XL jerseys, hippies of course, and even a cripple who had eaten way too many space cookies. We paid $2 to go into a museum touted as the definitive expert on the history of marijuana. It so pathetically missed its mark, it was almost worth the $2 donation. It was supposed to discuss the history and current events of marijuana reform, but it was just a brightly painted garage sale covered in hodge podge. It was the estate of a flea market freak teeming with pot dealers that scampered and scurried through the disorientating rooms like roaches. They were jumping in and out of paneless windows and going from room to room harassing everyone in sight.

That's where we found our cookie lady, not that she was much different from the 15 other ladies selling cookies, we just appreciated her chilled out tone. There were cup cakes, brownies, scones and cookies available, all made from potent hash oil. The cookies looked the tastiest, so we bought 4 chocolate chip with M&M's on top for $10. She explained how to use them, highly encouraging us to just take a half each. I obliged, finding her description of the potency spot on. Others in our crew ate 1 or 2 by themselves and were knocked out for 12 hours into a weed coma.

The place had an eeire vibe to it, not pleasant or positive at all, like being in a 3rd world brothel...you're not scared for your saftey but it just doesn't feel right being there. The place was defintely worth seeing, and we knew why people say it's a must see thing, all while describing it with insults and defsmations. We were in and out in less than 30 mintues and we had more than enough.

We heard that at night, it gets even shadier. The locals are strung out on heroin and the Aboriginals get quite drunk and fights and petty robberies often ensue. It's a far cry from the happy days 20 years ago when the hippies just stuck to grass.

So we ate our cookie and jumped in the car for the hour drive back home by a James, our generous sober driver who was just along to witness the freak show called Nimbin. After 20 minutes on the road, everyone mysteriously stopped talking, a full silence took over the car with everyone staring out the window or fiddling with their hands.

That's when James asked "Is anyone feeling those cookies yet?" and the answer came back with a resounding "YES!" and laughter broke out. After that the conversation was lively and stoney all the way home, with a stop off at McDonalds for some cheeseburgers (thanks to Charlie for the freebies)...a medical neccessity at this point.

Our days in Byron just flew by. We were having such an amazing time doing, well, not much. The beauty of the campsite was in the friendships that formed, sharing drinks and dinners and latenight discussions. The Aussies were true characters that we were thrilled to meet and get their local point of view, an experience that would rarely happen in a hostel. We were happy to relax here for a while, letting the days become weeks. We were able to step back and realize in the environ of Byron, and with the encouraging words from our closest friends, just what we have been able to accomplish. Sure, we aren't following whatever plan we thought we had, and we didn't have as much money as we thought we would, but somehow we found ourselves in paradise. And try as we might...we're not tired of the beach yet!

...to be continued

(Yep, that's right, there's more, lot's more, so go take a nap, grab a Powerbar and get ready for another installment coming very soon)

Freedom is a Ford Falcon

From our journals dated February 13th through February 16th, 2006


Get your motor runnin'
Head out on the highway
Lookin' for adventure
And whatever comes our way
"Born to be Wild"
-- Steppenwolf


We finally left Sydney-proper in the Falconer, sad to say goodbye to Toby, but anxiously awaiting what waited for us on the road. We stopped for one more Porto's sandwich to celebrate our motivation and headed over the Harbour Bridge for one last glance at that sparkling water and familiar Opera House. Once past the traffic jams of the northern 'burbs, we were thrilled to be on the road again. Bec studied the map to sort out our options. We didn't really know where we were headed other than north along the coast. Toby had told us, "No worries, mate. You just stay on Highway One. You can't mess up!" With the wind in our faces (the Falconer came sans A/C), and all the horsepower the Falconer could muster, the open road and all its possibilities were ours. No schedule to wory about, no way to be found...we were absoutely free.

We enjoyed the scenery along the Pacific Coast Highway, much wider and flatter than any landscape we had driven along in New Zealand, but absolutely beautiful. Eastern Australia is full of tropical wooded hills and rainforests, not at all the arid desert associated with most of the rest of the country. We passed signs warning to watch for kangaroos and koalas and then what we would learn were fauna bridges for koalas to cross over the highway. These crossings are of the utmost extravagance, they're forest bridges. They have all the trimmings of the regular forest or koalas won't cross over them, so they end up being massive structures covered in trees, boulders and greenery. These Aussies will bend over backwards for their koalas. They've tried a few other simpler designs like highwires and tunnels, but conniving dingos and other predators simply wait on the other side for an easy meal. The fauna bridges, through prohibitively expensive, are the only proven way to link isolated koala commuities to more eucalyptus trees divided by ever-expanding highways and urban development.

We drove into Newcastle expecting to camp there. We hadn't made it very far, but Newcastle was supposed to be worth checking out, and we were still camping newbies, so we were trying to be smart about setting up before dark. It was a cute little beach town, but the hostels were full and honestly a bit snotty when we asked about camping. They didn't have campsites on premises, unlike most hostels in New Zealand which will let you pitch a tent in the back yard for about $15 bucks. So we drive another 30 minutes to Stockton which turned out to be a hundred meters by passenger ferry from Newcastle...frustratingly close. Stockton is a sleepy little town that closed down before we could find the grocery store. So we ate some Chinese takeaway while drinking VB's at the town's only pub. This would be one of several noneventful nights camping at a beachside holiday park, but we did get up around midnight for a tinkle and were blown away by the large bright full moon lighting up the calm ocean waters like a technicolor movie set. That's just one thing we've learned about traveling...just when things seem less than spectacular, you are reminded of the simple beauty that surrounds us all the time.

Back on the road Bec read some suggestions from the guidebook and some of the facts about Australia from the Bryson book I had read a while back. Some good ones to consider: Oz is the world's sixth largest country and it's largest island - the only island that's also a country. It was the first continent conquered from the sea and the last. It is the only nation begun as a prison. Home of the largest living thing on earth - the Great Barrier Reef, and the largest monolith, Ayers Rock (or Uluru to use its now official more respectful Aboriginal name). It has more things that will kill you than anywhere else. If you are not stung or pronged to death in some unexpected manner, you may be fatally chomped by sharks or crocodiles, or carried helplessly out to sea by irresistible currents, or left to stagger to an unhappy death in the baking outback. It's a tough place. 80% of all that exists in Oz - plant and animal - exists nowhere else. And in an abundance that seems incompatible with the harshness of the environment. It is the driest, flattest, hottest, most desiccated, infertile and climatically agressive of all inhabitable continents (onlt Antartica is more hostile to life). And yet it teems with life in numbers uncounted. It is an amazing place.

On our way to Port Maquarie, we visited the Billabong Wildlife Sanctuary. The admission was only $10 each, but we thought it was a better experience than the Sydney Zoo. We learned about koalas in a very intimate setting, surrounded by dozens of them and even getting to pet one. They're not nearly as soft and cuddly as you would expect, their fur was dense like wool, but their docile and sleepy nature makes you smile. Billabong captively breeds several species for other zoos and parks becuase it's forbidden to collect wild specimens. The spider monkey exhibit was really cool...they basically built a large jungle gym for them to swing around and play all day...they truly looked happy in their spread. They had a large collection of various birds and I had a riveting conversation with a cockatoo who would nod yes and no at all the right times until he decided to bite my finger. There was a bunny farm, which I found odd (Australia is loaded with rabbits, which they consider a nuisance, why are they in a sanctuary?) until I noticed that all their large snakes and lizards had round bulges in their bellies and smiles on their reptilian faces. Just don't announce that to the children and it's all good. I was most excited about seeing their Cassowarys, huge freakishly scary flightless birds. Their anatomy is much like a colorful emu, with a large sharp talon on each foot and a hooflike helmet making it look like radioactive turkey dressed as a roman gladiator. One of them made a didgeridoo-sounding guttural sound of agression at me. It was chilling for if it weren't for that fence, he would surely have made his own exhibit of my entrails. Far exceeding our expectations was the kangaroo and wallaby area. They were all extremely tame, thanks to the captive breeding program and enjoyed eating crushed corn from our hands. They all let us pet them and hang out for photo ops except for the wicked-looking albino red kangaroos, who were quite shy and would hop off quickly upon our approach.

We arrived in Port Macquarie on Valentine's Day, so we went to the movies at the Ritz 2 Cinema to watch 'Memoirs of a Geisha'. The movie was great, but I was more intrigued by the theater's idiosyncracies. The combos weren't ramrodded down my throat as I was able to purchase an individual drink and popcorn without getting ridiculed for being a complete moron by a pimple-faced highschooler. I ordered a medium-sized drink labled Giant that was smaller than a child's drink in the U.S. They didn't allow any aftermarket salting or buttering of the popcorn, perhaps that is one reason Americans are so fat, we are allowed, encouraged almost, to kill ourselves with a buttered revolver.

Believe it or not, our night in the campsite was quite romantic. We strolled hand-in-hand along the moonlit beach and pondered how much money some people pay to sleep as close to the waves as we would be. With our $30 tent, a $22 a night campsite, and each other, we were rich.

The next morning we enjoyed a day old cinnamon bun and some Tim Tams for breakfast and played in the pool. It was a lazy no-brainer of a day. We made up cheers about the art of rescuing abandoned food and all the wonders of Spam. It was a good chill moment for us, a speck of our existence free from stress or worry or any need for serious thought.

We had to replace a headlight on the car so we went ahead and decked out the car with an Vanilla Elvis air freshener that swings at the hips. The Falconer was truly happy!

It sprinkled that night and our tent didn't do so well, our foam mattresses soaked up liters of rain water quickly turning into funk and emitting a whaft of mildew the next day. On top of this, the birds went absolutely berzerk at 6am. The assortment of birds was diverse...winers, gawkers, screamers and heckling laughers..one chain smoking species even had to clear his throat before he bellowed his mating scream. The birds would turn out to be a blessing and a curse throughout our entire camping experience. Ah, the joys of budget traveling.

On our way to Byron Bay, we stopped off at Coff's Harbor for a quick dip in the ocean. I found it odd that the water was extremely shallow, allowing us to walk 20 meters out at ankle depth. We had a great play in the smallish but powerful waves, but all the while we couldn't get the idea of sharks out of our heads. We jumpped at every shadow or unexpected splash. We were the only ones in the water and our imaginations finally got the best of us, so we got out and walked further down to where the river empties into the sea, creating a spectacular rip current with incomming waves pounding around the flow out to sea. Later we would learn that sharks love to hang out at river mouths for all the fresh fish emptying into the ocean. There was a fisherman standing on the rocks close to the delta, looking cautiously at me as I inched closer to the dangerous current within the sandy cool waters. He was probably deciding if he should warn me or not, or more importantly should he save me if I get drug out. I survived, by only dipping one leg into the powerful hidden stream.

Further on up the road, we passed the Big Banana. Australia is strewn with huge fiberglass sculptures of mundane fruits, vegetables and animals, but the Big Banana is blessed by its convenient location on the Pacific Coast Highway. It wasn't that amazing, but it did meet our estimates of being 'at least two stories tall'. We had been arguing the entire way since Port Macquarie on how long it would have to be to be considered Big. We decided it was one foot away from being demoted to Large and was atleast 20 feet from being considered Colossal.

About 20 km's south of Byron Bay, we stopped at a gorgeous lookout point, and were surprised to find it was a hang gliders' launch. We hung out for a bit to watch them and gaze out at the rocky shoreline. It was amazing to see two full-grown people simply lift off the ground so gracefully, heading upwards towards the sky, but only after taking the faithful leap off a cliff. We have heard so many great things about Byron Bay...time to reach our next destination to see what's on the other side of this big leap we've taken.

Gettin Busy in Sydney

From our jounals dated January 24th through Febuary 13th, 2006

The bus contained yet another cosmic spaz that existed solely to perturb me. She sat in front of us and for 24 hours straight, laughed, giggled and snorted like no one else was there. I just wish that were true. If only I were an Italian mobster with a piano wire, maybe then I could have enjoyed a moment's peace.

The bus arrived into Sydney before 7am. We stumbled across the street and checked into WakeUp! Hostel, mainly out of sheer convenience, but it didn't look too bad. Much to our delight, it turned out to be really nice and very clean, destroying our theory that all Australia's hostels are shitholes. But the Up! theme was very annoying after a few hours in the building. It was plastered everywhere: on the lift, GoUp! in the kitchen, eatUp! washUp! By 7:30am we were snuggledUp! in bed, much to the displeasure to our sleepmates offgassing cheap booze. By noon, fully refreshed we gotUp! and were ready to see the city. (I told you...annoying, right?)

We had a picnic lunch at the Botanical Gardens overlooking Sydney Harbour enjoying the quintessential view of the famed opera house and Harbour Bridge. It was a bit surreal to be so close to such an icon of a city we had seen in pictures so many times. This solidified the feeling that our Australian adventure had begun, and we were feeling the much-needed surge of energy and excitement again. I told Bec what I had learned from the Bryson book, that even though plenty of guidebooks and articles claim the design of the Opera House was meant to echo the sailboats in the harbor, it was actually based on sections of a sphere, nothing more. From the angle we were viewing them, the three large sections looked to me lige conquistador's helmets. We did a well-needed and long overdue Pilates session, stretching and strengthening things often ignored.

Turned out to be a good thing that we lubricated our joints, we had an epically long walk after lunch that ended up disasterously well. We headed north west to discover 'Glebe Beach', which turned out to be a nonexistent apparition of our imagination. After several hours of exploring, past the aquarium, Darling Harbour, and Sydney Fish Market, we arrived in the college neighborhood of Glebe. We ask a local uni kid where the beach was...he stares at us for a second to make sure we're serious then says "Sydney has at least 50 great beaches, none of them in Glebe...sorry mate!" and he drives off. We're stupefied, but laugh it off, plopping down on the side of the street to munch on Pringles and an entire litre of Coca Cola. That's one of the beauties about being in a faraway land. You can do things like that without fear of anyone you know spotting you. Turns out Lonley Planet section's on Sydney beaches transitioned smoothly into general descriptions of cool neighborhoods. We invented a beach in Glebe through hasty careless reading, paying dearly for it, lesson learned. But at least we got a nice, if thorough, walking tour of Sydney.

By the second day in the hostel we get wise and a bit cheeky. If we usually sleep in the same bed anyway, and they charge by the bed, then we should just pay for one bed, right? Seemed worth a try. So the next morning, I trudged down to the front desk, pay one more night for Rebecca and check out for myself. It all works out brilliantly...in hostels of this size and volume, with youngsters shacking up left and right, with people sleeping on couches and passing out in bathrooms, there is little concern over us squeezing into one bed.

With an extra $25 bucks in my pocket, we head to Bondi beach, pronounced 'bond-eye', Sydney's most popular beach. The ride is smooth, quick and easy via a tram from downtown and a short bus ride once out in the burbs. It was interesting to see a bus completely packed, standing room only, with 99% beach goers, bikinis, thongs, and towels and then the single depressed corporate dude in a suit and tie, sweating, scrunched up in the corner pressed against two Brazilian beauties.

The beach was absolutely georgeous, a smooth oval cove of clean white sand between rockly points, filled with bronze sunbathers and surfers, plenty of topless eyefulls to entertain the perverts and waves big enough to endanger the tourists. To the far right side was a brilliant sight that we hadn't come across before but would soon be used to, an ocean rock pool, cut into the rocks jutting into the sea. Common around Australia beaches, they provide a safer haven to swim in: waves can get in, but sharks can't. Four lifeguards were shooting some type of professional film of a Baywatch genre...strutting together, shoulder to shoulder, gleaming rock-hard bodies walking out of the waves onto the beach, when a girl's high pitched blood curdling scream shattered the serene chaos of the crowd's ambiant roar. The lifeguards sprinted off immediately, as if on queue, but unfortunately this wasn't staged. A crowd formed and the atmosphere become tense. The ambulance showed up and carted off a body in a gurney. A girl almost drowned making the guards montoring the rips and swimming zones very cranky for the remainder of the day.

The day was sunny, truly immaculate beach weather, hot and with not a cloud in the bright blue sky. There was a refreshingly cool breeze, a perfect relief from the ozone free heat. Therer were plenty of body surfers and entire crews of talented surfers dodging each other while cutting through the waves like maritime matadors. Then, in the most sudden and unannounced way, a massive wall of dark grey blew in from the ocean. Mysteriously, it never amounted to rain, but an exodus of city dwellers overwhelmed the bus lines back to Bondi Junction. We had just reached our Vitamin D threshold, so we really didn't mind and proceeded to walk around for a few hours. We made it home, happy and brown and enjoyed some Tim Tams, "the world's most irresistible biscuit." They truly are the most amazing cookies to have with coffee - we'll have to send some home.

While sightseeing around the city, we attempted to check out Star City, Sydney's premier casino and resort. Having had some epic moments in Vegas, most recently getting engaged there, let me tell you I wasn't impressed. Actually, I never made it in. They had bouncers at every orifice that refused to let us in with any bags or coats. Then they wanted to charge money to check said contraband. What type of gambling establishment stops you dead in your tracks and includes a covercharge? Back in the states, they'll literally carry you in, prop you up on a machine and spoon feed you easily digestibles while you squander your retirement check. I can't figure out why Australia is the gambling capital of the world. And it's true that they are - this country has less than 1 percent of the world's population, but more than 20 percent of its slot machines - they call them pokies - and they are in hotels, bars, and restaurants along with casinos. When it comes to games of chance they make Asians and look like Mormons. In a last attempt to understand, I hold our bags to let Rebecca go in for a quick peek. They don't even offer free drinks...in fact, it seemed that hardly anyone was drinking. For a country that has the world's most addicted gamblers, I wouldn't expect the casinos to be so hard to gamble in.

Ever since we arrived in Australia, we had been checking out couchsurfing.com of which we are big fans and ambassadors - to try to find someone to stay with, especially in Sydney, due to the expense it takes to meagerly get by in 'Australia's New York City.' Luckily we had received a few invitations and decided to act upon one. There's always a sense of hesitation right before you call a person who responded to your internet-based request to crash on their couch. It's that point of no return, where you make the physical connection, hearing their actual voice and getting directions to their house, that you know it's going to happen.

So we call the cell phone of a guy named Toby, his on-line profile making him seem young, hip, and living by the ocean. He was busy at work and couldn't talk initially, but after a few phone tags, we chat for a bit and I get 'directions' to his house. I would expect more precise directions from a drunken lunatic scribbling on a bar napkin. Yet, there we were, trekking out of the city on bus 399 to the suburb of Malabar. At some uncertain point we would "turn left, cruise past a golf course, and jump off as soon as we get up over the large hill." Toby rarely rode the bus and couldn't tell us the name of stops or what streets they would be on. We didn't know if we were looking at 5km's or 50km's, so along the way we ask a fellow passenger about Malabar and he says "Oh, I'm getting off much ealier, but isn't that where the prison is?" Then he hops off and says "Good luck!"

We follow the directions and they turn out to be surprisingly accurate, hopping off immediately after the hill, past the golf course. A small boy comes running curiously out of his house at the sight of us and says "Where are you from?" We say "The US, why?". He responds with wonder and huge brown eyes "I've never seen people with such big backpacks before!" We figure he probably wanted a much more exciting answer like the outback or the Himalayas. He's able to tell us the street we're looking for and remarkably, we had less than a block to go.

We walked gingerly up to the front door, thinking it all happened too easily and this would be when a rabid pit bull chomps off our legs, but all we found was a note on the door saying "Hi R&R, gone Swimming, make yourself at home, see you soon! -Toby!" So we walked in, dropped our bags and checked the place out. Toby lives with his dad, and the place was a small, fairly clean bachelor pad. I hear Bec calling me from the kitchen, "Ror, ya gotta see this!" She's at the back door through the kitchen and you could still make out through the twilight the golf course just beyond their yard and the swirling waves on the rocks just beyond and below the course. Within five minutes we saw Toby walking up from behind the house, through the golf course, dripping wet and accompanied by the most beautiful and vibrant dog. Indy is a husky mix with one blue eye, one brown, and an infectious friendly personality. He's mischevious too, as we would experience later. Toby put us at ease right away with his carefree friendliness. He has a smile that can't be forced from his face and a laugh to match it - the type of laugh that makes you want to be funny all the time.

Speaking of funny, next we met Eric, a chipper fellow with intense blue eyes and a friendly face. Luckily he is easygoing like Toby, who explained to his dad as we were meeting him that we would be staying for a few days. This didn't seem to phase him one bit, except he said he would have cleaned up a bit for us. With a constant need to be entertaining, Eric absolutely loves to tell stories, just like me, and seems to have one for every subject. We sparred back and forth, story by story, till eventually it ended up going completely in the gutter. Here's one of his classics...

I had a mate who stopped over on a flight in Hawaii and while he was in customs the officer asks "Do you have any drugs?" His response was "What do you want?" That landed his buddy a full body cavity search, free of charge...Welcome to the United States.

He also had a great little drinkin' ditty that required a full explanation and not till a month later did we come to fully understand what it meant...

The Pommies are Whingers
The French are Queer
The Germans are wankers
But they make good beer!

It's a Friday when we arrived and after getting acquainted over a few beers - Toby serves us cold Coronas with lime, could we get any luckier? - and playing endlessly with Indy, we headed out for some beers on the town, back in Bondi Beach, picking up Toby's sweet and beautiful girlfriend, Jade, on the way. A friend of Toby's was celebrating his birthday. The crowded bar we're in was full of fancy dressers next to flip-flops and cut-offs. A hip, happy mix. We have a great time, hanging out with some true-blood Aussies, and they drank their beer carnivorously. We spent $150 bucks that night, enjoying several rounds of VB, Victoria Bitter, which is more than we spent on an entire week of accomodation, but it was nice to cut loose and have a good time with the locals.

Victoria Bitter is an interesting Aussie beer, not so much concerning the taste but because it seems to catch a comment from someone everytime I order one. They come loaded with prejudice and superstition with rumors about secret chemicals to aid in addiction and hangovers. It's also got plenty of nicknames: Vaginal Backwash, Vaguely Beer, Vegemite Brew, and my favorite, Vomit Breath!

I read in the paper a few days later that a bar brawl between white Australians and Lebanese immigrants in the same Bondi neighborhood ended up with several people in the hospital including a kid with a pair of rusty scissors lodged in his back. It was then I remembered about the three days of violent riots recently in Sydney involving the Lebanese and NeoNazis. If people can't get along here, I'm not sure where they can...

As the night wore on, a disturbingly funny joke emerged...the guys kept saying "You drink my pee, you drink my pee!" It turns out that some of the guys work for Sydney Water Supply and occasionally take a dip in the water reservoir that feeds Sydney's water taps...sometimes they take a tinkle in it. So I try to talk them into taking an anonymous photo of them peeing in the reservoir and submitting it to the newpaper demanding a million dollars ransom from the city or they'll keep peeing. It's was a flawless plan but fortunately no one shared my passion!

Everyone here knows the "Hopoate," discussed in an ealier blog regarding a famous rugby player who ruined his illustrious career by shoving his fingers up opponents' bums. So as the night wore on, and after many drinks were imbibed, we formed a huge gang of Hopoate fanatics roving the bar yelling "Hopoate!" and giving the famous hand gesture to anyone who would look, in disgust.



The next day, slightly hung over, Toby introduced us to sandwiches from O Porto's which has since become our favorite fast food joint in Australia. It's a Peruvian chicken sandwich with three thin slices of seared chicken breasts with the most delectable, and spicy, chili sauce I've ever had. It's like a Chick-fil-A that joined the rebel army in Colombia. We preceeded to have 4 O Porto's in 5 days after that...we just couldn't stop.

Sunday we headed out to Manly Beach...no weird pronunciation here, it's MANLY, baby. It's quite trendy to wear a speedo with the name "Manly" emblazoned on the buttox, which I find hilarious. I regret that I didn't purchase any when I was there. Anyway, Toby and I rented surfboards and attempted to surf the massive waves. One of the first waves I tried to catch slammed down on me causing the hard plastic surfboard to ram me in the temple, damn near knocking me out. With my confidence shaken and the waves appearing to grow by the minute, I accomplished nothing, except for swallowing a huge slice of humble pie marinated in salt water. It's obvious that I'll need surfing lessons, these Australian waves are just too bloody huge.


Throughout the weekend we kept discussing our desire to go scuba diving...it was a main reason for us to come to Australia and Toby had been wanting to go for quite some time...this seemed like a perfect opportunity for all of us to check out the local marine life, especially since Toby had his own boat and knew a guide who would take us for free if we rented our gear. We had a chance to see a shiver of sharks. Sydney has a little known cave that is home to the elusive Grey Nurse Shark. It's not a dangerous shark, through it's plenty scary looking with its long curly teeth poking out of an underbite of a jaw...an orthodontist would salivate at the chance to fix up this freaky looking specimin. But they had also been hunted to near extinction in the past so they're super shy and exist in small numbers.

We showed up at the dive shop to find that our guide had left on a family emergency. Toby and Chris are unphased and felt that it would be completely natural for us to go out to the spot ourselves and dive independently. Since we were all certified divers, this is allowed, though it's not encouraged if you don't have a local guide. We had Toby and Chris and they seemed overly confident, so we didn't raise any objections, even though we admitted to each other later we were nervous about the situation. Toby asked for directions and site markers to find the cave. A few minor details get sorted out, like North versus South...again Toby shrugs this off as a minor detail and we all have a good laugh "Oh it's North of La Perouse? Glad we got that sorted out!" We grab our gear, and a kebab, and we're off.

The first few miles in the water are glassy and smooth, minus the fact that the bay we launched the boat from was poisoned. With greasy petrol tanks all around and pumps and pipes enveloped in oil slicks, and large signs warning fisherman and swimmers of extremely high levels of dioxins, swimming and eating of fish are extremely dangerous to your health. Yet the weirdo locals fished and swam undeterred. Just having our legs in the water to get in the boat made our skin tingle for a few minutes.

Just as we picked up speed and attempted to flee the oceanic Chernobyl, John lost his lucky hat to the wind. We double back and fail in our first attempt to swoop by at full speed and grab it. So we kill the engine and slowly coast up to the floating headpiece. Then we look up port side to see a massive freight tanker heading straight for us at a mesmirizingly slow speed. It had no intention, or capability, to stop. A half-dozen guys on the front deck watched in amazement at the ski boat that was about to be crushed like a paper cup. We had 15 seconds to get the fuck out of the way, no more. Toby cranked up the engine with no hesitation and jetted out of the path of destruction. At a safe distance, we all laughed nervously as John's hat is run over by this lumbering beast. A few minutes later we saw the hat float up and we grabbed it and got the hell out of there. Could this near death experience have been a sign?

As we entered the open water, conditions turned dramatically choppier, with swells larger than the 6-person boat we were in. We knocked around like a dinghy in a hurricane. Bec and I kept quiet, but I know we were both eyeing up the conditions unable to imagine diving in this mess.

Then we saw a fin shoot through the water a few meters ahead of us. We immediately knew were looking at a shark...a hammerhead specifically. It wasn't huge, but plenty scary and fully dangerous, specially considering that if any of these swells broadsided the boat we would have capsized and immediately became a tea time possibility. He was checking us out, just as much as we we're checking him out. Then it became apparent that we weren't alone...this was a baby shark and the mother was hanging back, below the water but very aware. She was swimnming around stealthily below, just a few splashes, not to be seen so much as felt.

Then Toby broke the palpable silence to annouce this is the drop-in point to see the Grey Nurses. "To hell with that!" we all agree, and Toby agreeed that given the conditions of the swells and the fact that the water is teeming with dangerous sharks, we should postpone this dive and do an "easier" one at a local reef, Bare Island.

So we cruised over to Bare Island which turned out to be within eyeshot of where we just saw two hammerhead sharks. I was far from being at ease, and the water wasn't much calmer, but we awkardly suited up, banging into each other as the boat rocked. I was the first in the water, doing my first ever backwards roll. As soon as we all got in we attempted to descend but everything was rushed and wrong. My weights were much too light so I was bobbing around like a marshmallow unable to get my upper body under water and it didn't look any better for the others. The current was noticeably strong and we were struggling to stay in place. We all tried to forcefully descend anyway, kicking hard and fast but no one stayed down longer than a minute. We surfaced to the realization of the awesome current at hand. In a minute's time we had been blown 20 meters from the boat...away from the reef, not towards it like a rationally planned drift dive. At this rate we would have been a mile from the boat at the end of this suicide mission. It hadn't occurred to us that we should tag-team this dive and someone should stay on the boat. The panic on everyone's face finally registered and everyone became vocal about their discomfort with the situation. In the chaos John lost his mask, then one of his fins. It was at that point we all admitted defeat, struggled through the swim back to the boat, and climbed back in, exhausted but alive! It's only then that we admitted we had no business going out there alone, without a guide nontheless, in such crappy conditions.

We just wasted $75 each, but we were happy to be alive. We had learned some valuable lessons and would never repeat the stunt we had pulled that day. Not wanting to chock the entire day up to failure, we decided to do some wakeboarding and donutting. A donut is a big innertube tied to the boat and the point is simple: hang on for dear life as the driver flings you to and fro at breakneck speeds with g-forces that would make an astronaut scream. I had some great runs on the wakeboard, as did John, and Toby is really good, as he is a regular on it. But the funnest thing by far is the donut. The person on the donut always had an insane look on their face and they always squealed with delight...it was like a never ending bungee ride and it always ended in glorious disaster. The person inevitably lost horizontal balance, then flipped over and over across the skin-ripping water until a dislocated body part slowed them down enough to pierce the viscous surface. Rebecca's rides on the donut were epic, a huge authentic smile, more of a "shit eating grin" really, estatically full of fear. What made it so hilarious was we had chosen to enjoy our water sports in La Perouse, a nude beach. As Bec flipped and flopped around in the water, holding onto a rubber air bladder for dear life and screaming all the while, the panarama behind her were hundreds of naked fat men, standing knee deep in the ocean, with round brown belllies hanging over tight speedos, hands firmly planted on theiur waists in a bold proclimation of a bull walrus during mating season. Basically it was a beach full of naked men staring at each other, flanked by local kids spear fishing. My favorite memory was Bec taking a quick dip to cool off beside the boat as a pale naked white ass of a nude snokler kicked right past her. We were all three laughing hysterically and she couldn't figure out what was going on until we yelled "SHARK!" and pointed behind her. OK, not a nice thing to do after the events of the day, but it made her laugh too, once her heart rate returned to normal.

We stopped near a cute beach village and ate a delicious fish-and-chips lunch and then headed back to Dioxin beach to find a submerged boat trailer with car still attached and also fully submerged in the water. This rendered the launch 90% useless and seriously dangerous. With a strong current we had to shimmy up to the launch between that and a rickety, barnacle encrusted wooden dock. We slammed into the dock a few times in failed attempts to shot-gun onto the trailer, but finally made it with the help of some fellow pissed off boaters waiting to launch. It was impossible to imagine what happened exactly with the car, but it seemed that the trailer went in first then jackknifed in the water, but no rational scenario could be contrived. Regardless, the inconsiderate idiot left to grab lunch leaving other boaters to figure it out by grinding their propellors over the moron's roof top.

We got home and found Indy AWOL. Apparently this happened quite often, so Toby waited patiently for news. Before long, the neighbor's 30-year old drug addicted daughter came over to say the dog "went to prison." Indy had broken out and ran all the way to the nearby prison to socialize with a dog living nearby. Eric headed over to bail out Indy as we cleaned up the boat and scuba gear. As we were hosing everything down we discovered 3 Redbacked spiders, akin to the Black Widow, all three were fully capable of killing us. It was weird to be that close to something equivalent to playing with a cobra. So we smushed them and continued cleaning.

Australians lived with fear and death as causally as we dealt with moldy bread. This country has more things that will kill you than anywhere else. Of the world's ten most poisonous snakes, all are Australian. Five of its creatures - the funnel web spider, the box jellyfisf, blue-ringed octopus, paralysis tick, and stonefish - are all the most lethal of their type in the world. A few days before, as Toby and I scampered over slippery algae covered rocks, dodging powerful waves sweeping over rocky, razor-edged boulders for a dip in his backyard ocean, Toby explained how he kicked a shark (or, something big - he didn't stay to check it out) one evening while swimming across the bay and that's why he wouldn't swim across anymore, figuring that staying close to the rocks would keep him safe.

We had just heard of a girl that got bit on all four limbs simultaneously, getting both arms and one leg ripped off completely...she died in the water. That was the story I was thinking about as I scanned the horizon for fins in the fading twighlight, which was shark feeding time. So far, all we had to worry about were rip tides, undertows, jellyfish, sharks, spiders, and mad drunken Lebanese with rusty scissors.

It had been a week since Toby so graciously took us in, and we were having a wonderful time, but we were beginning to feel fairly isolated from the city and from a plan of action. It was too damn easy to sit around all day in a comfortable home, sleeping in a real bed and being served food and drink by two of the most awesome hosts imaginable. Toby kept saying we can and should stay as long as we wanted, and he always had new places to show us and more friends for us to meet, "you guys can't leave yet, we're going to a house party Saturday, should be sweet-as!" Eric would take us out on the golf course for a few swings after work, cold beer in all our hands. He taught us to throw boomerangs on the golf course too. And we were always going for walks and swims - the place was our playground in the evening when all the golfers were gone. And Indy was taking full advantage of his two new sucker friends. He was full grown but he demanded to lay on us like a lapdog...we had no choice but to comply, he was that damn charismatic. As much of a blast as we were having chilling at Toby's place, we knew we couldn't get too comfy - there was still so much of Australia to see! But with no internet, no car, and no plan, we decided it was time to begin getting ready to conjour up a plan in a preparation to leave...or something like that. We went to the local library in Malabar and researched a plan of action...and bought a second hand fishbowl to display Toby's $70 box of brightly colored gumballs. It was an extremely productive day, we each had 10 gumballs by bedtime.

With our spirits back up to stoked, Rebecca cooked an amazing creamy pasta and prusciutto dinner as Toby and I hit old golf balls into the ocean. It was a lot of fun until some curious old ladies on their evening walk along the golf course made an inquiry into our odd behaivor. We told them the balls were biodegradable and made of fish food. They balked so we said we were going diving for them afterwards. At that they finally left us alone to finish off our huge bucket of dinged and sliced balls, swinging haphazardly until our backs couldn't take anymore.

At the end of week, Toby took off work due to a mysterious illness, so we all went to the zoo to celebrate. He was close to the end of his rope at work, something I definitely related to, so we shared trade secrets on how to get the most by doing the least. We spent a few hours successfully procuring sandwich making materials and unsuccessfully procuring free zoo tickets through his work. So its cost us a whopping $50 to get in, even with student discounts. Thankfully my University of Texas ID doesn't have a date on it, so most people accepted it for a student discount...ironically I have as long hair now as I did back in college. It was a great zoo, world renowned for it's humane living conditions and variety of animals, and perched high in the hills overlooking scenic Sydney Harbour. They offered lots of $3 opportunities to feed the animals. Giraffes, koalas, and birds of all sorts. We watched gorillas eat buckets full of salad scraps and a platypus swim in a specially night-lighted pool. We also got to see a gang of lazy kangaroos lie on the ground, and the horniest turtles we've ever seen.

Toby had been craving a seafood barbecue, and you know Bec and I were excited over that - finally, a real Aussie shrimp on the barby! That night we cooked an amazing feast...chili garlic shrip, calamari, and Balmain Mudbugs. They're somehwere between a lobster and crawfish, except the whole crustacean looks like a lobster tail. We all helped with the peeling and prepping, and Toby manned the grill. Everything was extra yummy and just the right amount, we definitely had enough but we were left wanting just one more of everything because it was so tasty! We can't wait to have Toby visit us in Texas so we can return the hospitality with a good southern BBQ!



On Friday we ventured into the city, an epic moment considering we had been at Toby's for over a week and hadn't managed a visit even once. It was time to purchase a car and get on the road again. When we first got to Kings Cross Auto Market we found three stationwagons that were all very similar in that they weren't very amazing. Though tempting, we decided we wanted a wagon instead of a campervan, figuring we'd get better gas mileage and could still sleep in it if we had to. High mileage, dwindling registration, lack of camping gear...we just couldn't get any inspiration or motivation to even strike up a conversation with the desperate owners. The market was operated on the top level of a parking garage, the owner simply charged a daily parking fee and helped facilitate the shady dealings between broke backpackers. The air was stifling with heat and depression. People had been there for weeks, there was grafitti on the walls documenting the despair experienced by previous sellers.

So we left for lunch and to discuss our options. We really were determined to have a car by the end of the day, so we decided to visit a local car dealer and then return to the auto market for one last pass. The dealer ended up being shadier than all the backpackers combined. We walked into the tiny showroom and asked to see any stationwagons in the $2000 range. They pandered for several minutes and made some phone calls down to the garage, then they paraded us through the building into the back alleyway. The owner said he had a car to show us..he was helping a "friend" out by selling his car on the side, with no warranty of course. Why in the hell does a legitimate dealer have to sell a car like this? It had been wiped down with a oily rag, making it shine like the buttox of a Tropicana Bikini girl, but much grosser. I touched the door handle and it took five washings with boiling water and a pumice stone to get that crap off. We listened to his spiel that was slicker than the car. It was easy to see this guy wasn't offering us anything above the auto market, both of them had cars that were ticking timebombs and could break down at any time. But the experience did give us a slightly better idea of what to look for back at the auto market. So we headed back, a little bit more depressed and not expecting much. But as we walked in we noticed a newcomer in the back corner. A young Dutch couple had just rolled up with a dirty 1991 red Ford Falcon stationwagon. All in all, it had no descerning features over and above the rest, but we did seem to like the couple's personality. We hit it off immediately, swapping stories and cracking jokes. This was the conneciton I was looking for. Every car here is a complete and total shit-box, they all could explode literally 5 minutes after leaving the garage, we all knew that and it was just a wild game of hot potato. It was the relationship I was looking for to gain some semblance of an advantage. Several of the other car owners gave me the creeps. I heard of shady dealers who had been banned from the market for unethical maneuverings sending their immigrant friends to the market pretending to be not-so-intelligent backpackers who need to sell the car fast with little questions to be answered.

I took a test drive with Floris, the cheerful and goofy Dutch owner, I sped around a corner, took a speed bump at 20km and slammed on the brakes at an intersection, all within a square block and the car performed wonderfully. All the while we were blasting a 70's style karaoke CD he had purchased from an outback gas station...it was by far the worst compilation of crap songs redone by talentless Aussie wannabes...so bad it was good.

I was proud of my bargaining technique. We kept it friendly, but we did bat back and forth several times before striking a deal at $2100, originally he wanted $2600. Then came the extremely delicate and frustrating task of actually getting that $2100 from the bank. Bank of America is my bank of choice, actually "lack of choice" but that's another story, and West Pac is their partner in New Zealand and Australia. Having to deal with international date lines and conflicting limits on ATM cash withdralws, I could only get $900 out of the machine. The rest I had to get from a teller. The teller could only process a single transaction a day, however, and if it was rejected, well that was it for the day. I had to make an international call to BofA to ensure my limits would be met, and an hour and a half later, after 10 ATM transactions and three trips through the teller line, I had $2100 in my hand.

So then we make a visit to the take-no-bullshit guy running the auto market. Upon hearing that we were Americans, he asked if we love Chuck Norris movies, I almost cracked a joke at this obsurd question, thinking of Conan O'Brien making fun of Walker Texas Ranger, but I decide not to risk it due to his unyielding seriousness of the physical and lyrical talents of the Caucasian Bruce Lee...that stocky hard-on of an Aussie was a serious fan and an insult at this point could not only jeopardize the transaction, but might also land me a couple roundhouses to my face.

This was our first car together - actually our first major purchase as husband and wife - so it was an epic moment for us. Rebecca called her dad to tell him about the Falconer and fully expected his response to be, "Why in the hell did you buy a 1990 Aggie-colored Ford?" But he took it pretty well. Cleaning the Falconer turned out to be a true labor of love. Once again we were blessed to have been taken in by Toby as he allowed us to take over his front yard to take inventory of all our new gear and give it all a good scrub. Looked a bit like a yard sale. It took all damn day, literally. I had to bucket wash it because of Sydney's current drought, it was prohibited to wash cars with reckless adandon. I scrubbed each surface with soap and water, filling half a dozen buckets with a filthy foamy dirt sludge of gritty brown water. Mysteriously, the driver's side floormat had filled with a kilo of sand beneath the carpet covering. I had to slice the side open to get it out...somehow it had seeped in there through osmosis. Bec stayed just as busy washing and scrubbing all the camping gear. Indy planted himself firmly in the backseat, lounging in the hot car as if in some protest against our leaving, or maybe he wanted to come on holiday with us. Eric came out of the house every few minutes to praise our efforts and then laugh at us saying that we were going to have that car filthy again in a day or so..."A few days camping, a few trips to the beach, that car will be filled with dirt and sand again!" We knew it was true...but it would be our mess. When we had finished we were covered in grime, but so happy to have our first car together. And Toby and Eric, and even Indy, were excited for us too.

So after a hefty scrubbing of our own bodies, we headed out for one last night on the town with Toby, Jade, and her friend Haley. We first went to a house party in a hip section of Sydney called Redfern where, on an empty stomach, we drank several free beers and devoured a large bag of Doritos. Little did we know that single bag of modified corn starch would sustain us during a extremely long night of drinking and partying. The party was friendly and fun, hosted by a Frenchman called Cedric, we striked up several international conversations with people we don't remember, talking about things we too soon forgot. After a few hours we headed back to Kings Cross, the birth place of the Falconer, to a dance club for some late night booty-shakin. Monkey Tennis was a decent club that worked well with our inebriations...we danced till 3 or 4 in the morning, who knows and who cares? It was our last night in town and we had a blast. After the club winded down, we headed over to a friend's house for a nightcap and to watch the sunrise. We took a cab home and dreamed about finally getting to bed when...

Right as I laid my pretty little head down, the neighbor's crackhead daughter literally burst through the door screaming about her lost dog. She was obviously strung out, or no longer strung out and highly cranky, as she ransacked the house and backyard looking for her dog that she hastily dumped on Eric the night before, saying she would be back in less than a hour to pick it up. So 36 hours later, with the dog no where to be seen, she was frantically yelling and cursing at everyone in the house. She screamed at me, so I calmly told her I didn't have a clue what she was talking about and that I had ntohing to do with her situation. It turned out that the dog had escaped simply to return to her own back yard and was sitting quietly there the entire time. Damn, that really killed my buzz.

We took an extra day to work off the hangovers and to chill out, but by Monday it was seriously time to go. We were sad to leave Toby's...we had it good there and we knew it. Hell, we could have stayed there for months, no problem. During the drive north, remeniscing on all the fun we had, I came up with some philosophical wax...life is an ocean current of never ending waves, constant ebbing flows going up and down, crests and crashes and long lulls of inactivity. But looking at it all from afar, you will see each little wave is part of a larger crest, hopefully heading towards the heavens. You will have lows and each instance of a wave must, by definition crash and die before a new wave can be born and eventually build into something great. That is the sadness we now feel, a dying wave, and we were crashing hard off our 'Toby wave,' but we must have the courage and vision to see the larger current pulling us to our true destiny.

We promise to meet in Europe, the U.S. or even Byron Bay, our next stop in Australia. Toby gave us a body board, a torch(flashlight) and a spear gun, as he is offloading the things he doesn't need and preparing for his own epic journey around the world. I tried to school him as much as possible on the good advice we received and all the small things that have to get done before a trip of that magnitude. I encouraged him to read a book called "First Trip Around the World" by Doug Lansky, a huge help in preparing for our journey.

We'll see you soon, Toby! Maybe Octoberfest in Munich!?!

Reborn in Melbourne

From our journals dated January 27 - 30, 2006

We filled out the Australia customs card and checked off ALL the mysterious scary boxes. Food, wood, animals, soil, farm. That's 5 out of 5...sweat began to bead on my forehead as I think to myself, "I'm sure to get anal probed on this one, or atleast have to sit in the airport quarantine for a few days as they run fungus cultures."

We nervously inched through the customs line, positive we were going to be interrogated by a big intimidating officer. Instead we got Linda, a cheerful blonde with a huge smile. "Right this way," she waved to us, friendly as June Cleaver. She eyed up our manuka sticks for wormholes and bark, our pig teeth for loose meat and our boots for hunks of crud. She was fine with the appearance of everything until she got to our food sack. In there was the one offender: lentils. Apparently they are the legume equivilent of nazi flatware. Minus two bags of soup we were on our way. Stoked that our sticks were still alive!

Upon exiting the airport, we were approached rather quickly, almost aggressively, by two young representatives of Hotel Bakpak, a hostel in downtown Melbourne. We decided to take them up on their offfer for a free ride into town if we book a single night...what could be the harm in that? It was a great deal - the cheapest shuttle into town was $13 per person, in effect we were getting a free night's stay by taking their offer. In retrospect we now know that there is a reason a hostel snatches up newbie backpackers as they unload off the planes.

The first thing we noted upon setting foot on Australian land was the stiffling heat, straight up Texas style, humidity thrown in for free. It zapped what little energy we had left, having been awake and traveling since 5am. We were nearly freezing yesterday in New Zealand, huddling and cuddling together to stay warm in the Camel Van, but now we were discussing how to get properly sedated so that we could sleep through the boiling madness. Our thighs were still aching from the glacier climb, we just wanted to find a spot to chill and get a gameplan to see this land of Oz.

Hotel Bakpak felt like a crackhouse, an Australian hacienda. The bangin' techno music in the lobby was so loud you had to scream your name at reception. Within the first two minutes of being in our room, a big piece of wood with sharp screws fell off the wall suddenly, damn near cutting my hand open. The air conditioner was broken, as were most AC's throughout the massive complex...it's a cement barracade of stifling oppression. We figured we should check out the rest of the place. We asked the first scantily-clad girl we saw in the hallway where the kitchen was located. She slurred, "What!?! This place has a kitchen?" My bet is she could have directed us to the bar. The kitchen was ill-equipped for the volume and immaturity of the clients. The place was a literal mine field of dirty pots, pans, discarded knives and left over food, filthy sinks and tea towels. I had to disrobe and use my shirt to handle a hot bowl from the fatty grime-coated microwave. A girl next to us eating was showing off her fresh bedbug sores, hundreds of red welps and lesions going up her leg in a disturbingly linear fashion. The bathroom had sick and twisted graffiti all over it, written in what appeared to be blood and perhaps other bodily fluids. The showers had black mold. Every one of their payphones were broken. We just hoped we could survive one hot as hell, bedbug-ridden night in the BakPak Hotel of Horror!

The next morning, we made a slow and painful exudus from Bakpak...it took over three hours of frustrating halfsteps to find other accomodation. The lines to checkout were preposterously long, 30 minutes to get to the front to find our super secure "vaulted" passports sitting in a huge random pile with pothead staff members sifting through them, one by one, asking "Is that it? No, shit, uh....is that it?"

We had heard the best place to chill by the beach in Melbourne is the trendy suburb of St. Kilda. We finally get booked at the All Nations hostel...described by Lonely Planet as "clean and cozy, free internet and free BBQ's on Sundays." We bite at that. We make an awkard dash across town and it becomes painfully apparent, again, that we are carrying way too much stuff. We promise to off-load some things ASAP!!!

I was starting to get the idea that all of Australia's hostels suck and their complacent mediocracry is unparalleled. All Nations continues the streak of "Holy shit, are you serious? what is wrong with you and your idea of what a hostel is?" The not-so-confident young intern-type receptionist basically ran the entire operation, minus one overwhelmed Latina housekeeper. We were split into two different room, even though it turned out that my room had free beds. Both rooms had no linens or clean beds. No apology, just blank stares at our request for hygenic protection from the funk. She couldn't even produce two full sets of sheets. The free internet, a main selling point of why we came here in the first place, was "down," again with no real apology or explanation. In my room, I was dumbfounded to find the top-bunk's ladder facing the wall, for no reason other than careless stupidity, and due to the cheap thin rickety metal bars that couldn't have cost more that $10, it was damn near impossible to climb down without tumbling over and breaking my neck...and I love climbing dangerous things...this climb chilled me to the bone.

Rebecca's room was full of large live-in party girls, who shouldn't be clubbing so much as being clubbed. They would hang outside the door like they were on a Brooklyn stoop, oblivious to the fact that other guests occassionally need to enter the room. A vast array of party materials barracaded the door: a huge boom box, cases of boxed wine, piles of clothes and cheap jewely. At least they picked up their drinks before we leaped over the party turds. Bec's bed made the most horrendous squeeks and squeels. With even the most minor move it shifted like illegal scaffolding, definitely a side effect of putting in the one-cent screws in half way and hoping for the best...the bed really seemed like it was disintegrating. The sounds terrified the girl below and woke up all the sleeping walruses from their drunken slumber. In the middle of the night, long after the front desk had closed, Rebecca discovered the room didn't come with toilet paper...gaining the establishment yet another star in their quest for the crappiest hostel in Australia.

The kitchen was a beautiful display of psychological warfare in and of itself. There was only 2 burners to cook on for a hostel accomodating over a 100 people, and a majority of backpackers cook for themselves. All the kitchen's prep space was taken up by huge George Foreman grills, sandwich presses and dirty dishes. The only table in the room was filled with carnivorous Germans devouring greasy chickens. We had to share forks, coffee cups, bowls and almost everything necessary to cook and eat a meal. So we all enjoyed dinner...Jews, Americans, Germans, and Scotts, taking one bite at a time and passing the fork to the left. All Nation's motto was 'UNFKNBLEVBLE' Yea, it's unfucking believable you don't have enough forks!

After our yummy communal dinner, we plop down in the lounge to watch the Oscar award winning movie Jurrassic Park III while enjoying a $6 bottle of wine. It was the cheapest "cold" bottle, but we had to drink it with the cork pushed down into it, filling each glass with brittle bits of cheap cork because the facilities came sans-cork screw: shocker. The lounge, upon appearance, looked impressive with a couch and the entire perimeter lined with leather-like benches. One drunk passed-out backpacker sprawled out on the couch, leaving everyone else to sit awkardly on the benches. They were the antithesis of ergonomic...nowhere to lean comfortably, the angle of the squared benches ensured you had to crane your neck to face the television. We watched 3/4th of the movie and were quickly building up to the denouement of dinosaur-eats-dinosaur and saves the cast of c-list actors, when the manager came in a kicked us all out in a militant manner. It wasn't a huge problem to us, but there was a girl in there that had watched the entire dental procedure from the beginning and was now robbed of the guilty climax of thespian suckitude.

Rebecca walked into the reception the next morning as asked if a refund was possible, since we had booked two nights and were now regretting it. The girl rudely told us of the strict no-refund policy and offers us "credit" to stay another night. We both uncontrollably let out a snort and said "Why would we want a credit, we're trying to get out of hthis shit hole!" So we stayed another night.

We tried not to let our dump of a temporary home affect our mood and set out to explore St. Kilda. It and all of Melbourne really has a charming feel to it: trams buzzing by at street level, colorful sculptures on the streets and in the parks. Melbourne is a city that takes much pride in its appearance, making it very fashionable and cosmopolitan without feeling like a big city. St. Kilda has a hip, happy, beachy vibe. We ducked into vintage boutiques and stopped to read posh bistro menus, as if we may consider dining there if we were impressed enough, on our way down to the beach. And the fabulous St. Kilda Beach was...well, less than fabulous. Now we love just about any beach, but the water was a bit smelly, the waves barely lapped the sand, and even when we did just sit and try to enjoy the peace of a day near the ocean, the flies ruined it! These aren't your ordinary flies, mind you. They are the boldest flies we've ever encountered. Rebecca got us a wonderful and hilarious travel book I had just finished reading by Bill Bryson called In a Sunburned Country describing his adventures in Australia...we both thought Bryson was dead-on with his description:

Flies are of course always irksome, but the Australian variety distinguishes itself with its very particular persistence. If an Australian fly wants to be up your nose or in your ear, there is no discouraging him. Flick at him as you will each time he will jump out of range and come straight back. It is simply not possible to deter him. Somewhere on an exposed portion of your body is a spot, about the size of a shirt button, that the fly wants to lick and tickle and turn delirious circles upon. It isn't simply their persistence, but the things they go for. An Australian fly will try to suck the moisture off your eyeball. He will, if not constantly turned back, go into parts of your ear that a Q-tip can only dream about. He will happily die for the glory of taking a tiny dump on your tongue. Get thirty or forty of them dancing around you in the same way and madness will shortly follow.

That night at the hostel was advertised as "free BBQ" and there were signs all over the place. Although we didn't have our hopes up too high, we were looking forward to a freebie to take away some of our disappointments. After the scheduled time passes, we asked the girl what's and she only then did she tell us that the BBQ had been discontinuted due to last week's Australia Day celebration, where they partied a little too hard and spent the extra $7 they typically spend on the grade-D sausage and thrift bread. Yet again, no apology or awareness that this might actually piss a person off. They were oblivious to their mediocracy. So we scramble together a dinner and eat it on the outside porch watching passers by.

We finally shipped off our scuba fins back home. They had been such a huge drag on our ability to peacefully walk a couple of blocks with our stuff without exploding in cuss words and perspiration, that it was integral to the survival of our relationship to dispose of them. It no longer mattered how many scuba diving adventures would be irretrievably damaged by the use of rental fins, they needed to GO! The only problem was the post office refused to ship our sticks home. That was the end of it, if Australia as a whole couldn't ship them, then we knew we had to abandom them. So there we were, walking around St.Kilda with 6 foot sticks like idiots from the outback. We finally ditched them at a hostel that we checked out but decided to not stay in...after all that trouble and worrying, the sticks were left nameless in the corner of a small hostel in St.Kilda. We didn't know if we should be sad or relieved, so we were a little of both.

It was Monday afternoon and we were still in St.Kilda, without a plan or any real ambition to get one. Communication between us was a bit awkward, we both seemed to be looking to each other to make decisions. There was no direction or focus, no energy. It was hard to tell if we were close to another breakthrough, or if we were in a slump, stuck in a suburb of a city we aren't clicking with, without any real energy to propel us forward to another place of interest. I was hoping it was just a quiet and slow period right before something bold and adventerous. Rebecca brought up the valid point that we were two months in and people have said that's the typical cut-off between traveling honeymooners and true explorers. The excitement of novelty was over and now we were forced to find the passion within ourselves to simply be somewhere, without an overt reason or cause, the reason to be there was simply to be there. We admitted to each other that we were crashing hard from the fall off our New Zealand wave. It was such an amazing adventure that fate seemed to control, not us. And now we found ourselves in this strange new enormous land, without a plan, and endless options. We talked each other through this next bridge that we've come to - on a symbolic level, that once we set foot on the new land, past the bridge, the bridge will burn down and exist no more, never allowing us to retreat to the safety of our old lives, that the new land, though fresh, fertile and full of absolute opportunity and massive possibilities, there will be no more markers in the road or any useful guidebooks to offer proper tours and suggestions. We have truly begun our life long journey today and evermore.

After those deep and meaningful conversations, the day ended up being a lot of fun. After discussing how abstract, untargeted and generalized those frustrated feelings were, we just spent the rest of the day enjoying each other, making silly jokes and being our usual freedom-loving selves. The sun smiled down on us as we stolled through Melbourne's Luna Park, a little bit of Coney Island right here in Australia. We grilled Aussie burgers and corn-on-the-cob on the beachside grill, with stolen utensils from the All Nations (well, we figured they owed us! We did return them, of course). They were the best hamburgers ever! And we scored a half bottle of abandoned Tawny Port to boot...it reminded us of our trip to Libson, Portugal. With our bellies full and our spirits lifted again, we talked of all the wonderful little adventures we've shared together that led us to the desire to see more of the world...on out own terms, and thanked all the powers of the universe that have allowed us to be together on another pin in our map of wishful thinking.




No matter where you go, there you are!

We were scared to see our third hostel, for that would surely cement our perception of Australia's hostel network. "Let's just hope for a bed that isn't life-threatening, a kitchen that can actually feed its guests and facilities that are allowable by even a lenient health inspector", we thought. But once again we are humbled by the relativity of our suffering. We recently read an article about train rides in China that are days long, over-crowded, and so unbearable that the passengers have to wear adult diapers and occassionally leap from the cars in a suicidal dimentia. What do we have to complain about!?!

The beauty of lowered expectations. After all the bitching and checking out a few other hostels, we decided to check back into All Nations and stay there the duration of our Melbourne/St.Kilda trip. It wasn't out of pure desperation or lack of other accomodation or any real crisis, just lowered expectations. Perhaps Lowered Expectations is the breakthrough! It was official, Australia's hostels are noticeably more run down than New Zealand's and the service is barely existant and non-apologetic. Once we accepted that, life in the hostels wasn't so bad.

Our last day in the area was a blast! We checked out the same time that six Scottish jibberish-talking drunks on a Celtic version of Fear and Loathing in St.Kilda...they had drunken themselves penniless, seemingly right before our eyes and now were taking a bus to the fruit picking fields, a place to sober up and rebuild the small fortune neccessary for another weekend bender. One guy in their crew who was heckled and pittied even by his own boys, drank for 36 hours straight, or was it 48?, but kept a smile on his face, remained entertaining, and stayed on premisis...all requirements for staying out of jail or the hospital while on a long term drinking fest. We made a decision and bought two overnight bus tickets from Melbourne to Sydney for $65 each. We hadn't given Melbourne the time or effort it required, but we were able to finally relax here a few days and clear our heads before venturing up the coast. We emailed Tanya, a lovely Melbourner we met in Auckland, who was gracious enough to offer to show us some of the beautiful natural sights surrounding Melbourne, but unfortunately we had booked our bus before she had another day off. We felt the push to move on. For those of you that don't know, Australia is huge! We had to get going if we were going to see even a portion of it. We had about seven hours to venture into the city and see what it had to offer.

We wandered through the streets of the lovely city, the Yarra River running through it reminded us a bit of our beloved Austin, Texas. We strolled through the parks with all their gardens in full summertime bloom, and had to stop and steal a photo through the gate at the lawn bowlers club. Apparently this is the social sport of choice for Australia's 'pensioners.' We thought they were adorable in their clean white uniforms. Our first actual stop was loitering in the gift shop of the Melbourne's Old Gaol (said like "jail"), the famous prison that executed Australian hero Ned Kelly. We learned more by reading the brochures and pretty coffee table books and poking their plush dolls of Ned Kelly, the most famous guy Aussie hung, than we ever could have taking the tour...plus it was entirely free! Ned Kelly is huge here! He's sort of their version of Robin Hood, except he killed a bunch of police while sticking up for the poor in an illiterate hoon type of way. He simply didn't take shit from anybody, and that manifested into a terminal shootout with the cops. He welded together his own homemade bullet-proof body armor. Ned's brothers didn't make it, one getting a lethal shot in the groin, and the others burned alive. Ned survived, but took some bullets to the legs, which he didn't make armor for, to be caught and hung half-dead at the Gaol to the chanting support of thousands of poor fans of the outlaw. In the gift shop we also found not one but five different books telling the story of the famous Peter Falconio murder case (Google it), all saying the same exact thing on the back cover, but none that well. I'll wait for the TV version on Unsolved Mysteries, thank you!

We had lunch at the Victoria Markets, a bustling and seemingly never ending market of fruit & vegetable stands, alongside general Chinatown type crap outside. But inside they offered aisles and aisles of gourmet deli delectables and the most dazzling array of meats (Kangaroo sausage, anyone?) and cheeses. With every step forward the smells were more intense and wonderful! We both picked our favorite vendor...I had to have a honking bratwurst and Rebecca chose the sophisicated and smart smoked salmon cream cheese roll and marninated artichoke hearts. We were both stoked!

Following a tip from someone at the hostel, we walked several km's accross town and off the guidebook map to the Sofitel for an amazing view of the city from the 35th floor bathroom. Talk about a loo with a view! It reminded me a lot of Central Park from a southernly view. This tour was awesome and free...well, minus the $2 Slurpie it took to get us there.

All our touring and walking took a surprisingly long time and our walk back was long, tired and rushed. We walked all the way back to Spencer Street, just a half block away from the bus terminal, when in some sort of dumb panic we jump on the free City Cuircuit Tram and before we could catch our breath and read the tram map, it had whisked us into the docklands, a Melbourne version of Bum Fuck Eqypt, some sort of forgotten development site for a non-existant world expo. We were forced to clamor over elevated walks and through construction sites to get back just in time, and I mean just! Funny how we're able to piss away all our time, no matter how long we're given. If we had 20 hours to walk 1/2 a block, we'd be the last ones there and one of us would be injured. That's what we do, we like to get the most experience for our time. Regardless, we got checked in and proceeded to make the best damn ham and avocado sandwich we've ever eaten. It was euphoric, we were screaming with mouthfuls of cheesey glee. Then the bus ride started and so did our flashbacks of the last bus ride. Oh well, it was all worth it just for the sandwich.

Kiwi Recap

Reflections on New Zealand, December 17, 2005 - January 27, 2006

So plain and simple, New Zealand is the shit!

Everyplace you turn is another breathtaking view straight from The Lord of the Rings. Remote beaches, freakishly gargantuan tropical glaciers, danger at every turn. Driving on the wrong side of the road through hair-pin turns, driving a wee car like it's a Porsche. Adventure waited around every turn, and is yours for the taking - at your own risk! Woof'ing at Tira Ora lodge, staying with the Websters in Nelson and hanging out at the Camel Cottage were definitely highlights...we loved spending time and learning from the locals. New Zealand is full of warm, friendly, hospitable people.

We are better travellers now. We experienced some stressful situations, but we stayed focused, and made some wonderful breakthroughs...not only about travelling but also about being married and spending the rest of our lives together. I know we have what it takes.
We're starting to see the important things in life. We have learned to slow down, and how to communicate better. I can't imagine us ever going back to corporate jobs unless it's absolutely necessary. Owning a piece of land and putting a lot of hard work into it seems of the utmost importance. I look forward to Rebecca and me finding a good medium to express our observations and opinions from this trip...this blog is a good start. We're developing a good tag team routine together. I'm the writer, she's the editor/photographer. I'm the driver, she's the navigator. She’s the can-do attitude, I'm the will-do attitude. I'm funny, she's serene. I'm sharp, she's smooth. She's the queen, I'm the king!

Travelling and meeting people is fun and easy. Trusting the good nature of people is opening new doors. We're shedding that needy American clamor for control and understanding. We have begun to understand more by trying to control less. We've gotten a bit dirtier, yet I find Rebecca sexier than ever. She's developing a glowing radiance that's overwhelming. She's simply stunning. I see her coming out of her shell, as am I.

New Zealand has such a great feel to it, a place to express yourself, more in tuned with the Earth and community. They are young in regards to tourism, so the country is ambitious, innocent and pure. I'd like to live here one day, or at least develop this kind of community where ever we decide to reside. We have been inspired by the artists' communities and farms we visited. Rebecca wants to make pottery, I want to grow vegetables...I guess there's a little hippie in us after all.

Mussel diving was a crazy experience. I truly was scared for my life out there, Rebecca was too. It was cool to be put in that position...expected to rise up to my personal best without depending on anyone else to influence what I'm capable of. It's amazing what these crazy Kiwis are willing to let tourists do. I hope they never lose that ambition, inhibition and trust in people's non-mediocrity. Do what I want, want what I do. This is the final stage of needing acceptance from anyone outside myself. I am free!

I find myself fantasizing about our life together once we return home. So long as we keep travelling, the less likely we'll ever settle back into what we currently call stable or normal. Just focus on going with the flow...it's the best way to let go and find the truth.
We had a brief intro into camping....we hope to do it more in Australia. It's a great feeling to camp for free, like you're completely off the radar.

Seeing all the dolphins while in the Bay of Islands was epic! They are such beautiful creatures, much larger, agile and playful than I imagined. There was a flirting dolphin in the group...it wrapped a ring of kelp on its dorsal fin and kept riding next to the boat hoping someone would grab it. Those cheeky dolphins!

New Zealand's ocean water is mesmerizing. It would change color dramatically, depending on the sky and how the sunlight was striking: Dark blues, light blues, greens, jades, topazes, cobalts...the emeralds of the ocean astounded me at every turn.

Slaughtering the sheep was crazy. Learning what it takes to turn a live animal into a meal was very interesting...a little disturbing to see how a body can be categorized and divided up so efficiently. It was harder than I thought it would be, but its nice to think I could do it again, if I had to.

The intimate exposure to all the hunter-gatherer elements was soul-fulfilling and empowering. Gathering scallops, catching fish, diving for mussels, baking bread, slaughtering sheep, cooking dinner for 12 with a single ostrich egg, buying fruit and vegetables directly from the farms...it took me back to the simple roots of working hard for food and then enjoying it amongst friends.

Challenging myself in potentially dangerous situations has been rewarding. It takes away that martyr blame game of expecting someone else to stop you from doing something stupid. By allowing people to explore and experience being fully responsible for themselves, they'll rise to that call and do what's best.

There are still some kinks to work out. It's questionable if we're hitting the food pyramid correctly. Our packs are still way too heavy and that causes frustration when we're trying to move, especially when in a hurry. The snorkel gear has been a major drag...it's going to be shipped home soon. When we get down to one backpack and one day pack each, it'll be a happy day.

I feel we did pretty good on money expenditures, though we haven't been monitoring the budget as carefully as we should. Oh well, how much does a dream like this cost!?!

Australia, here we come!

Hanging with Hippies at the Camel Cottage

From our journals dated January 23 - 27, 2006


Somewhere around Devil's Punchbowl, eyes dreary from hours upon hours of high impact driving, having come straight off the challenging full-day glacier climb, we threw in the flag, pulled into a rest area and picked out a cozy spot amongst other drivers 'camping' for the night. With not much fuss or extraneous movement, we leaned back the cramped seats and began faking that we were asleep. It was dark and cold, we were in the middle of nowhere. Then a loud screeching thump on the roof. We were under attack! There was a mass murderer outside, sickle in hand, I was sure of it. I flipped on the headlights to face our enemy who would soon enough be eating our tasty livers with fava beans. There on the hood stood a large bird, mostly black with white striping, staring at me fearlessly. It was a magpie, but initially I thought it was a vulture laying claim to its future dinner. It flew away and we attempted to sleep again. Legs twisted, neck cramped, arms tucked...my shoulder atrophied, Rebecca shifts to distribute her blood clots evenly...it was 2:30 in the morning, we were absolutely miserable.

We woke at 5:30 in severe pain but as our pupils adjusted to the morning light, we found ourselves completely surrounded by the most vibrant and surreal sunrise ever witnessed. We were literally on top of New Zealand, it's highest elevation looking at a sky painted by a heavenly Michelangelo...our eyes took in the most brilliant blues, pinks and gold. This moment alone made up for the torturous hours of sleep we just endured.

Within minutes it was gone...vaporised by the coming daylight. Our wee car burned rubber out of the park and hit the highway again. We barrelled down a grade so steep that the heavy 18-wheelers were noticeably spooked. They creeped down the road in their lowest gears, refusing to temp fate by going faster than a mall walker with a new hip. At this angle, runaway cars would be more likely to catch flight than survive.

We were cutting it dangerously close, but we made it to Christchurch on time. With less than ten minutes to spare, I dropped off the dirty and rattling wee car to EZ Rentals. With that out of the way, we are able to catch a few winks at our hostel and then venture out into the city. Christchurch was hosting it's annual Busker's Festival which attracts the best street performers in the world. We saw street artists that would have even brought jaded New Yorkers to their feet in applause...these guys were the best we've ever seen. A trick bicyclist performs a routine so technical, only a few others can match him, yet he was the first to master it and was proud of that...he formerly performed for Cirque Du Soleil. Another guy rode a 10-foot unicycle while tossing goldfish from his feet into a fishbowl on his head, and wrapped his routine in double entendre pseudo-sexual humour and danced precariously between cleverness and smut, tight-roping through a line of over-protective parents that would have beaten him senseless if they weren't laughing so hard.

We would be heading over to Camel Dave's pretty soon.

We had found Camel Dave through CouchSurfing.com, a wonderful online community of bohemian hosts and global freeloaders, the saving grace to our type of budget travel. After talking to him on the phone briefly, I could tell he was an extremely laid back guy. We get to his house and are welcomed in by Warren, a slightly skittish fellow who was renting out a room. Dave was out helping a mate with a flat battery. This gives us time to check out the Camel Cottage and take in the plethora of camel collectibles. There were camels everywhere: camel tea pots, camel cigarettes, photos of camels being ridden by naked chicks, it goes on and on.

Once Dave returns we have a casual conversation to catch up on old times. A peculiar effect from Couch Surfing is you tend to feel like old friends, even though you just met for the first time. The profiles and pictures from the website are very effective, so when you finally do meet, you skip right past all the awkward introductory questions typically plaguing first meetings.
Dave is New Zealand's Willie Nelson. Extremely nice, super chill, absolutely the coolest dude alive. He knows it but without any of the egotistical narcissism that usually comes with the title. His fridge magnets spell "Pops is Cool"...a gift from his grandkids. He's an event promoter and knows everyone in the Christchurch music scene. He knew a lot about Austin's SXSW music festival. He showed us a lot of amazing pictures throughout his colourful years....our favourite was a time lapse featuring a picture of Dave from the 60's when he was 26 years old and then again when he was 52. He looked surprisingly the same. We asked why he had boobs and a dress in the 60's picture. He replies that he was going to a gay ball, of course!

Dave was a "Wildman" from the Lord of the Rings, meaning he burned and pillaged a few villages. He had a nice collection of LotR memorabilia and showed us his prosthetic teeth as well. The facial hair was all his.

We were supposed to be Camel Dave's first couch surfing experience. But a last minute desperate traveller tracked him down the day before. Sean was a American college student spending a year abroad, studying at the University of Auckland. He was a hitchhiker and a chocolate lover. He told a story about hitchhiking through New Zealand holding a sign saying "I have chocolate!" A caravan of rowdy backpackers wiz by screaming and honking at him. They came back several minutes later and asked what kind of chocolate. "72% cocoa," he said. They shrug and say "Oh, we thought you meant you had hash", and they leave him on the side of the road, disappointed, but laughing.

That night he took Rebecca, Sean and me to see a rock'n'roll blues band playing at Dux de Lux, a great local venue. Quite embarrassingly, he had to coax our lazy butts to go out. Picture a 55 year old man having to coerce three kids in their 20's with free rock'n'roll, cheap organic micro-brewed beer and a free ride. We couldn't refuse. Dave was the best! The band had an amazing harmonica player, a new addition to the band, of whom Dave was friends with. He had the soul power of all three blues brothers combined and played the 8 inch shiny instrument like a jet fuelled Stratocaster. It renewed my interest in harmonicas most definitely.

Our last night at the Camel Cottage was a great one. It was our last night in New Zealand and it was also my birthday. Due to mysterious forces not fully understood, I was able to celebrate my birthday simultaneously with my brother Royce and Rebecca's sister, Reynee. I was born January 26th, Royce and Reynee on January 25th. It was hilarious to sing with Reynee over the phone "You say it's your birthday, well it's my birthday too!"

Dave loves Frank Zappa. We watched the DVD "The Dub Room" and tried to understand the eclectic but obviously talented musical group. Dave also exposed us to another great band "The Jews Brothers". They spoof their Jewish heritage, respectively funny, and accompany it with plenty of other wonderful gypsy sounds.

Dave made Rebecca and me a wood fired bath to enjoy in the back yard while a band rehearsed in the garage. We boiled ourselves literally. It took us a while to get the temperature right, we basically had to drown out the fire below us by spilling water over the side and screaming as each new inch of skin turned bright red. Once we could get in completely, it was euphoric! So on this night, we sit naked in an outdoor tub piping hot from a wood fire burning beneath, in a solid gold hippie's home, looking up at our last New Zealand starry sky, listening to a spunky garage band jamming "Happy Birthday" to me, all by candlelight. Rebecca looked amazing and more real than ever. I told her I thanked God for her everyday. She smiled and beamed with happiness au natural!

The garage band finished, packed up and went home. Dave relit the fire and boiled his own bottom. We all said goodnight and goodbye with a big friendly group hug saying we hope to meet again in Austin for SXSW. We left at 5 in the morning. As I crept into the house one last time before the shuttle picked us up, I bumped into Warren. We scared the living shit out of each other...jumping ten feet back, then having a good laugh about it.

Good bye New Zealand...until next time...

Hands on Franz

From our journals dated January 20-22, 2006




Unrelenting, unexpected and steeper than the climb of our national debt. The one-lane bridges begin to wind around sheer mountain slides so you can't even see potential oncoming cars. Trains are now included in the one-lane bridge's mix...just for fun.

We follow the Buller River from Nelson to the west coast, a wide flowing river that made me want to stop for a toe dip at every pass. After several hours of weaving back and forth over the Buller River, we make it to Pancake Rocks. The rock formations are an anomoly, geologists aren't sure how is was formed, as thousands of tall stacks of brittle pumice-like rock, rounded randomly by the wild wind, give the appearance of pancakes throughout the pointed cape. "Punakaiki" is the real name for Pancake Rock, which obviously looks and sounds like the word pancake, so you assume the Maoris adopted the word in a nod to the tasty breakfast pastry. But alas, Puna means "Spring" and Kaiki means "To Lay in Heaps" so the coincidental word is referring to the rocks and the massive and violent blowholes.

Mid-tide meant that the blowholes were not in full effect, but still packed a violent voracity that humbled you as you stood nervously over rock archways that the ocean will devour soon enough. Ten foot swells, slow and powerful like an angry elephant, ripped through the rocks in a way that made the idea of rescuing someone laughable. A life ring was there but I doubt it has ever been implemented successfully.

We venture on down the coast, finding the McPressure building up until we both exault "Gimme some Mackers" in Greymouth. We hadn't given into the lure of the familiar Golden Arches in NZ yet, and we felt we deserved it after the strenuous drive. This McDonald's had the audacity to have a guest book by the register. I guess they're pretty high up in the restaurant food chain in this skeevy little port town. Once the tasty fries are devoured, we get back into the wee-car and leave Greymouth immediately.

We continue south down the west coast till we get to Hokitaki, a small beach town well regarded by the backpacker circuit and a great half-way point to stop for the night. I can't seem to get the name right, it's a problem I have...I've inherited it from my mother, and it's ingrained enough that Rebecca tends to laugh it off versus trying to correct me. Hoki Poki, Hocky Pocky, Hokie Tokie. Back in the Golden Bay's Wharariki beach, I kept asking locals about Far Rickie, Rock Kitty, Far Rockaway, and Raw Ticky beach, much to their annoyance.

The hostel we pick out of the Loney Planet guide is called The Jade Experience, a quiant little house converted into a hostel, in a neighborhood less than a quarter mile outside of town. It was run by a veteran jadesmith, who turned out to be a total loon, but still a real nice fellow, just so long as you didn't piss him off. Within the first 5 minutes of stepping foot inside his home, which was heated by a fireplace to the point of ignighting oxygen, he held us hostage in his tiny kitchen telling stories about his estranged Japenese wife who used him for a greencard, unfortnate travelers who got booted in the middle of the night for antagonizing him and his passionate love of guns. Then he tried to talk Rebecca into a all night jade carving session which would only be interrupted for "church" in the morning, as it would be Sunday. Rebecca asked what church he attended and he giggled and replied that his service was held at the firing range. "Firing guns is my only religion and I worship faithfully."

To finale our introduction to his house, he takes his lap dog through a series of tricks that culminated in a nauseating yelping duet. His response to everything was "Choice!" Our choice was to leave early in the morning.

We make it to Franz Josef village before lunch and head straight for the glacier. Its a comfortable 4km hike to the terminal face, but I wanted more, so we decide to go on a self-guided tour of the glacier terminal face, something frowned upon by the locals. We are both a little nervous once past the "Danger, you will die!" signs, but I assure Rebecca we will survive. We're warned by a descending guide that we should stay far away from the ice, "Don't get too close man, she'll spit rocks at ya!"

We take his advice because we heard the day before a group of Korean tourists almost got killed messing around too close to the highly viscous face...a multi-ton rocky ice boulder dislodged and sent them running like for their lives.

We stay far enough from the falling ice and rock debris so that slipping on the already fallen rocks is our biggest danger. We scurry up the side to a point that an entire eyeful of glacier eats up our panorama just like being at the movies, except this is garguantuanly real. Five stories up, five down, left and right...our eyes are looking at full-on glacier. From our safe perch we watched as large rocks and pieces of ice slide, tumble and fall off the terminal face. Huge pieces of ice plummet to the ground, sounding like felled pine. Rocks slide off like dandruff of an enormous ice monster. Boulders the size of school busses are scattered like beer bottles after a tektonic toga party. Teams of tiny explorers file up and down the ice stairs like worker ants at a polar picnic. We watch our live movie for over an hour and leave immensely satisfied and full of adrenaline. My hunger for glacial ice time is renewed fully and I get the feeling that Rebecca is catching the fever as well.

After the glacier hike, we head back into town and poach in the kitchen of the Treehouse Lodge for a free coffee and a chance to rest our feet. Now that we've been on the travel circuit a while, we know that high-volume hostels are easy to sneak into for a hot beverage, toilet, or shower.

We then head to Fox Glacier village for a walk around Matheson Lake. This lake is one of New Zealand's most photographed sites, as the mountains refeclt perfectly off the brackish waters. We find out later that it rains 2 out of 3 days here, around 300 days a year, so the postcard shot is next to impossible to capture. It was a little windy when we were there, rippling the mirror of the lake, yet our pictures turn out surpirsingly well.

The great conspiracy:
During lunch at the lake, we can't find our water bottle, much to our frustration. It turned out to be under the carseat, but during the time it was misplaced, it provided us an opportunity for a honeymooners epiphany. If I were to blame Rebecca for the lost bottle, then logically I believed she is so diabolical that she planned this mission years ago. She courted me for over seven years and then stealthily lured me into this trap...the coup-de-gras is the loss of my ten dollar plastic water bottle in a devastating blow that would destroy me for ever. Instead, we agree that we are simply two people trying our best to travel well and although mistakes will be made, we are a team and ultimately "nothing is nobody's fault."

We head back to town to find no budget accomodation available whatsoever...with a budget of $25/night, things can and will fill up fast. We evacuate back to Franz Josef village, book our full-day tour of the glacier, check into the hostel we earlier hijacked, and cook an amazing stirfry with fresh veggies, ramen noodles, and a bottle of Seifrieds Pinot Gris from a wine tour a few days earlier. This is followed by an incredibly romantic night in our cozy little tree house. We pass out relatively early and fill our night with dreams of the coming day's adventure.

The glacier tour is simply amazing. I'm sooooo proud of Rebecca! We were in the 1st group, the most aggressive, so we went the highest and saw the most. Rebecca really stepped it up...walking up steep ice steps which spooked me as well, jumped over dangerously deep crevasses, crazy cracks and dimented dips, walked across wobbly ladders and stealthily stepped around icy pools of death. It's just insane what Kiwi's will allow tourists to do. This type of tour wouldn't exist in America, especially without an expensive and time-consuming alpine skills test. Their briefing back in the headquarters didn't even come close to properly describing the challenge ahead. This tour is exclusive to young and relatively fit individuals. In the United States, they always err on the side of conservative descriptions, but in New Zealand, if they say it's slightly challenging, be prepared for extreme adventure.

We reached the spot where the half-day hikers apex before noon and it hits us quick that we made the right choice. We're just now getting into the interesting terrain, clean blue ice, towering walls and smooth tunnels the snowfields and beyond has to offer. The half-day hikers only get to climb through wet and dirty snow, just for a peek at the deliciousness available to dedicated hikers. Once past the snowfields, the fun really began, we explored the right side of the massive glacier which hasn't been touched for months, not sure why, not sure if I wan't to know why.

About an hour after lunch, we happen upon a large glacial pool, half of our group is above us by 20 minutes or so, overlooking us. These pools are elusive because they form from glacial runoff but melt through and empty into the underground waterfall within a day or so...we had found a nice large one. I ask Henry, our guide, if I can take a dip, as we joked earlier if we were to find one. I was fully expecting him to laugh it off and say no, thus preserving my manly mojo. He radios up to Shawn, the lead guide, for guidance....long pause...I realize that there's a real possibility on getting called out on this.

Then the go-ahead is given. Henry gives a few warnings, simple things like hypothermia and several more hours climbing in wet clothes. This gives me pause and also a chance to back out but I really wanted to do it...how many chances do you get in life to swim in a glacial pool while in a rain forest? There's only two other glaciers in the world that are in a tropical rainforest like this, Fox Glacier being the other and one in South America. I strip down to my boxers, walking gingerly across the slick and sloping ice. I take a poll to determine the group's interest in seeing this go down. There is a resounding thumbs up by most everyone. So, standing there in my boxers, I think of how to maximize my comfort after the swim and decide naked is best. I take another poll for buck naked and get an even more resounding, almost roaring, "YES!!!"...and the sound of cameras turning on. I drop trou and slide in. It was all I expected. Icy wonderfulness, lung compression, spastic breaths and pathetic pants...I dip under the water completely and get out as fast as possible.

I scream at Rebecca for my extra t-shirt to dry off, but she was too busy laughing and clicking photos. She fumbles for it, but it wasn't her fault. I was just extreemly sensitive at this point and I didn't warn her I would need her services. All the while cameras and giggles fire at machine gun rate . The group above us is looking down and laughing at my retracting man bits. I scream hysterically at Bec to help me. It was all in fun and I'm sure the video won't be posted on the internet...too many times. I get dressed quickly, refit my talons and dress up extra snug to rewarm my core. My finger tips feel near frostbitten, but within 30 minutes I'm comfortably warm again. The guides tell me I'm only the second person to swim this season and definitely the first to skinny dip. They applaud me on the effort for it makes a better tour for everyone and something to laugh at back at the pub.

We resume and soon enough it becomes apparent the guide is improvising his way entirely, powered by good ice-climbing sense and a heavy steel ice axe. We get cornered on a high ledge faced by 20 to 100 foot steep drops on all sides...so he calmly carves steps down the shortest side as best he can. We awkwardly side-step down: tripping at this point would absolutely get you a heli-tour to either the hospital or more likely to the morgue. Our tour was action packed with all sorts of these precarious situations: steep climbs with nothing to hold onto, tip-toeing around sharp turns and a wonderful opportunity to fall 20 feet head first into the icy pool my naked buttocks was in earlier. We climb through blue tunnels a claustrophobic only screams of and shimmied through narrow walkways with blue walls at the bottom of crevasses that made you feel like you were being born again, squeezing through tight smooth walls of cervical ice. It was a playland for adult outdoor types. And it felt great to be trusted so much by our chilled-out and confident guides.

It got a bit congested on the way down with the cumulation of afternoon tour groups cautiously descending the steep ice steps that are constantly carved into the terminal face by the glacier grunts. We got off the ice on schedule, debriefed back in the village and then race to Christchurch. Our legs were still shaking from all the climbing, but the adrenaline rush kept us going for hours. We had less than a day to retrace most of our steps, cross the entire south island, west to east, and return the wee car to its rightful owners.

We gots'ta go!

You're Golden, Baby!

From our journals dated January 16 - 19, 2006


The Websters turned us onto a section of South New Zealand called Golden Bay that is seldom discussed by the travel guides, a necessary conspiracy to avoid over-development of a magical place. They even loaned us all necessary camping gear and gave us a game plan, ensuring that we would have a blast in a secret garden of artists and beaches.

We rent a tiny little manual car for the week that we dubbed "The Wee Car." It was a Holden Barina, a Japanese import that was originally owned by a Japanese person for a few years then offed to a consolidator importer before tough emission standards rendered it worthless. At first I was terrified at the idea of shifting with my left hand while navigating through the gauntlet with my right, but I found that the constant supervision needed for shifting a 1-litre engine keeps my mind focused on survival...it only get's dangerous when your mind is allowed enough room to wander back into American highway laziness.

We just recently learned of an obscure but significant Kiwi driving rule regarding left turns. At an intersection, if an oncoming car wants to turn right, meaning across your lane of traffic, and you are turning left, then you must yield by slamming on your brakes, fishtailing a couple 360's followed by a 3-car rear-ending pileup. Then I think back to the guys at the car rental in Auckland, that guy just smiled and handed me the keys with no orientation or warnings whatsoever...in fact he mentioned the small detail of having to drive on the left just as we were driving out of the garage .

On the drive out of Nelson, southwest to Golden Bay, we stopped at one of the many vineyards for a taste. The Grape Escape seems to be popular on the backpacker circuit, so we hopped in to find super friendly people explaining the delicacies of the wines with a smile and decent sense of humor. The wine of the month was free to taste and any other wine was 50 cents, not a bad deal, but a far cry from the imagery I had in mind. Somehow I expected open bottles of wine strewn about with long-haired backpackers wallowing on the ground like poisoned pigs. It was a bit more classy than that, and I appreciated it, but I would have liked a bit more wine in my glass, that's all. This was truly just a taste, it's just a "taste", son.

They had an organic line of wines and a standard one, so we stick to the organic side and found them extremely tasty on an empty stomach. We both agree that we should get more into wines and we drive off giddy, but on the left.

The drive up the Takaka hill was a staggering tour over a hill made of brown and white marble. The wee car struggled in 3rd gear most of the way, sprinkled with careening 70-degree turns, oncoming petrol trucks and road bikers. A few beers in the belly and this road would be full-on suicidal. We reached the apex after a 45-minute climb, we stop to take a gander over the Nelson area at Hawkes Lookout. It's a 5-minute hike off the highway, down a lovely wooden footbridge etched through the marble rocks and thick bush. The last few feet through the dense forest was refreshingly 10 degrees cooler and as the lookout came into view, the sheer cliff that we were walking out upon was exposed...nothing but jagged marble hundreds of feet below.

From that vantage point, we could see our entire journey over the past several weeks...Nelson's cityscape on the beach to Tira Ora's glistening Malborough Sounds fading off in the sea towards the North Island. It was an epic moment for us so we lingerered a while professing our love to each other and amazement to ourselves.

The view continued to force 'oohs and ahs' around every new turn as we descended the hill. We fill up the rest of the day with various 10-minute distractions...stopping off at eclectic looking shops and stomach-turning lookouts and peeks of the blue water as we work our way into the center of Golden Bay. That's the brilliant part of having a car of your own. No tour bus could provide the spur of the moment "Whoa, let's take a look at that" meanderings. You can do it all day long on your own, but it does tend to blow a schedule.

We finally make it to the campsite and have a few hours of light left to set up camp. We pitch our tent in fits and spurts, figuring it out through mistake and toil, until we get something that resembles the stable contraptions built by others. We end up with an extra pole and a nappy looking rain cover so we try to convince ourselves using Jedi mind tricks that the 3rd pole was just a sick joke by Donny, like having an extra box of screws and bolts after working on your car. After a few minutes scratching our heads and conversing with a 10-year kid who was camping next to us, we spot a tent of the same design, successfully implementing the 3rd pole. It's an eureka moment for us and after replanting 20 stakes, we have ourselves a bonafide tent. Yee-haw!

Then it rains.

And rains, and rains, and rains. For the next 36 hours it rained with the voracity of a waterpark toboggan ride. The wind blows our tent sideways, but it was Rebecca's side - luckily for me. Each gust of wind elicits a prayer for salvation, and we seem to get it every time with a sigh of relief. The tent held up pretty well, a few missing stakes caused some leaks, but we made the best of a damp and drippy situation. We figure it was a great introduction to the sport of camping.

The next morning, fairly wet but not yet fully miserable, we drive north to see the Farewell Spit...a long, skinny strip of sandy land that shoots off the coast and for kilometers runs into the sea, barely above water. There's two anomalies associated with these spits. They have freshwater rivers running inland and their hobbies are to collect shipwrecks like postage stamps. The particular spit we were traveling towards had an ingenious lighthouse owner who, for his entire career, carried 2 bags of dirt every week with him to the remote location and eventually planted a patch of tall pine trees, saving more ships than any single bright light could.

We don't make it to the spit becuase half way there we come across a sign for Rebecca Caves and Glowworms. We figure with a name like that it was meant to be, and it can't be raining underground so off we go. We have some time to kill before the next tour so we go Tiki Touring through the ill-maintained dirt roads during a heavy rainstorm in a tiny two wheel drive car...what could go wrong? We first come across the Devil's Boots, an impressive rock formation that looks like two huge brown boots sticking out of the ground, each the size of a small house.

The mud road continued past the Devils Boots towards a goldfield that registered a small blip in the stratosphere of the tourism radar. We slowly guide our tiny, and I mean tiny, white car through large ruts of dirt and rock, barrelling through puddles of muddy water half the height of the car. Rocks and roots cause some gouging of the underbelly of our lovely wee car. We finally come to a section deemed impassable, even by a fully disposable rent car, so we turn back the only way possible....backwards through the same ruts that had us screaming in fear going forward. A couple more bodypart knocking jolts and we're back to the Devil's Boots and half way to civilized road maintenance.

With even a little more time to kill we drive to the Naked Possum Cafe for some coffee. This is a possum-themed restaurant and bar with a retail store completely filled with naked and not-so-naked possums and possum parts. New Zealanders absolutely hate their possums. They were introduced from Australia, where their populations are kept in check by a less hospitable environment and food chain. In New Zealand, however, they go absolutely wild in the lush green bush, eating everything in sight, leaving little else for birds and other small animals. They have thrived to an estimated 80 million. We get a five minute dissertation by the proprieter on why the possum should be wiped off the face of the planet with all available weapons and the best ways to decorate their lifeless bodies once dead. My favorite one was a skinned and tanned possum hide stretched out and hung as wall art, with little holes cut out for the eyes and other neccessary orifices. The runner-up was the possum leather planter complete with a Rata sapling...the favorite plant often devoured by the cute little critter.

The Rebecca Caves were closed, so we were led on an hour-long tour of Te Anarua, an adjacent cave that had less glowworms but more stalagtite architecture. Mark, the tour guide was a Californian hippie expatriate who had lived in Houston too, and seemed to really enjoy being down in the muddy caves. With our lighted hardhats and flashlights, um, "torches," we were ready to go caving. Mark's sarcasm made him familiar right away. Still pouring rain out, he says, "OK, let's just wait here for the tour bus to bring us over to the caves." No such luck, a dripping walk through the bush leads us to the opening. When first entering the caves, we saw grafitti on the walls that turn out to be old signatures, way before guides were operating. We found an autograph from the late 1800's and several from the early 1900's. Water continued to drip cover them in calcite. The names are literally set in stone.

From the start we knew this was another of those NZ experiences - one that would never be the same back home. We were climbing narrow ladders in the dark, inching through the tightest passageways. "These are called barbershops," Mark quipped, "because you might have your sideburns trimmed." We had to turn our shoulders completely sideways to get through. The kids loved running through the tunnels that all us big kids had to crawl through. He hammed it up telling them this was where the hobbits live. We shimmied, climbed, crawled and crouched all over the place. He took the bravest among us on some side tours - jumping over big holes and climbing into passageways. He showed us beautiful formations like thousands of hollow calcium straws, five-foot tall columns and formations resembling dragons, crocodiles, and chicken feet. The guide was full of clever little quips...when we saw the straws hanging from the ceiliing, he handed us a couple broken ones and said, "They're not party favors man, you have to give them back" The calcium formations were sublime. Creamy white and smooth, the age and voluptuousness of a burlesque queen...you feel like you're in another world and you truly are.

That night, after some refreshing 5-minute, 50-cent showers, we cook dinner and "get scrumped". In our constant search for a cheap buzz, we find a plastic 1.5 litre bottle of cider that packed a 8% alcoholic punch, named "Scrumpy". We invented a new drink by adding fizzy fruit punch to the Scrump. We get pretty silly on the Scrumpy Scrump and spend most of the night making up new songs about Scrumpy. "Get your Scrump on!" and "Get your Scrump up on my hump, I Scrump, you Scrump, we Scrump" were epic duets sung on the beach, during lowtide on a windy night watching a great sunset.

We wake up to find the Coffee Pirate on the camp grounds....a chipper fellow, not quite in full-on pirate gear, but with enough Pirate flair to let you know a bad pirate joke wouldn't go over well. Though friendly, he's a very protective local who is vocally opposed to the current pace of development and escalating real estate values of the Golden Bay. He maintians a website showing off some amazing photographs of the area...check out Virtual Bay.

Golden Bay Photos

He tells of a duo of bad tourists named the Botox Twins who applied a plethora of makeup on a tourboat and of another synthetically modified model who berated him for 10 minutes on his inability to supply a skinny frapachino in the middle of nowhere. The Coffee Pirate carries a nice espresso machine in the back of a truck, serving tasty hot beverages to campers miles away from town, and a lady of the high-maintenance type can only focus on what he isn't offering: Skinny Fraps, Decaf. Everythings, White Hot Chocolates, and Larger Marshmallows. These type tourists are predisposed for dissappointment. Instead of being amazed by the local offerings and novelty of a remote amenity, they stay locked in the proverbial search for the unobtainable holy retail grail. The coffee pirate joked that the place should change its name from Golden Bay to "Cold and Gray" so the rich Europeans would stop coming and buying all the beachfront property that could have been afforded by his grandchildren. A curious bit of the naming history of the region (hey, this blog can be educational too!):

The Dutch explorer Abel Tasman anchored in this bay in1642. However, it resulted in a hostile encounter with the local Maoris when a party from his ships tried to land and three of his men were killed. He bestowed upon it the name Murderers Bay. English explorer James Cook renamed it Golden Bay during his voyage of discovery in 1769.

We head out again in the wee car for Wharariki Beach. It's a bit confusing to find the place because it's located on a large farm called Puponga Farm. It's hard to fathom, but hundreds of tourists politely parade through acres of farmland, through herds of cattle, flocks of sheep, and piles of cowshit to reach a beach. Crazy wind, blowholes, wild waves, lazy seals, stoat traps, and submerged caves were waiting for us on this remote beach. It is an absoloutely stunning beach, but it is unsafe for swimming due to the violent waves and wind. The wind truly was unrelenting and powerful. Small groups of picnicking families held on tightly behind the safety of sand dunes and rocks, but we were more adventurous, of course. We toured the blow holes...erroded openings in the caves that invite oncoming waves to enter and explode out the back with extreme pressure and release. You would be in a lot of trouble if you ventured into one of these long caves to find a rushing wave speeding towards you.

We continued exploring up the beach and had to cross a dicey section at the wrong time. A large rock face jets out into the ocean and during low tide you can walk around it to reach the other sections of the beach. We were several hours late, with the tide about 2/3's in, and found ourselves getting beaten by waves and holding onto the rocks for dear life...all while trying to keep the camera dry. We survive, but not without looking stupid. But the brilliant part is, no one is looking because we basially have this entire beautiful beach to ourselves.

We get a little lost and after several minutes of self-doubt and the horrible thought of getting lost in this thick bush and harsh beach, and we find some tracks of previous hikers. It's the rock bridge! We saw it on the map, but it's much harder to spot when you're climbing over 6 foot bushes barefoot and sundrenched. To complete the circle, we return through a vast green farmland, hundreds of healthy dairy cows and thousands of freshly sheared but shy sheep surround us and keep a perfect space bubble of confusion and mistrust.

The entire area of Golden Bay is filled with hippies-turned-artists. We check out several of the artist's studios which are often the front of their house. It's a very welcoming and creative vibe. You know that most of the artists residing here will never be world-renowned, but you know that they are happy, and that simple happiness is what they value.

The next night, after the flood had subsided, we got as dressed-up as our limited wardrobe allows and went to the locally famous Mussel Inn. We have fresh scallops swimming in white wine and herbed butter...yum! The Mussel Inn is owned by the brother of the owner of the Naked Possum, so one family has two of the most successful venues in the Golden Bay, both having the only live music in the area. Tyree Robertson, a spicy lesbian ex-junkie accoustic guitar player was performing. She belted them out like Janis Joplin - not quite as raspy, but just as powerful. She pulled out an old Hank Williams Sr, song "Mind your own business" which went over well with the drunken crowd. The microbrewed Manuka-honey beer was very tasty.

After a few nights camping at the Holiday Park, we drive back towards Nelson to Wainui...on a wild goose chase basically. The hippy cave guide told us about free camping and mentioned Wainui Falls as his favorite. We tried to find a spot to camp, but end up at the actual falls site and decide to hike up to see what effect the last few days of hard rain had...it was gushing!

A fun 30 minute hike up a well maintained path gets us to the falls. A wobbly chain-link fence suitable for only one person to cross at a time was a highlight, but didn't phase us now that we've seen plenty of New Zealand tracks. Not happy with the amount of danger on the wee hike, I decide to climb straight up through the thick bush for a closer look at the falls. It would have been a nasty tumble.

Determining that free camp isn't at the falls, we drive back down to Ligar Beach. We meet an older stoner English couple who were on a similar quest. They decided that because camping at a beach illegally could land you a large fine, but trespassing on private property brings no repercussions whatsoever, they were going to sleep on a residential street in their van. Since we don't have the luxury of sleeping in the car, we press on, not ready to give up on the elusive free campsite or risk the ass-whooping that might come with squatting in someone's lawn.

We find a handful of other campers outside a marina so we go in to investigate. Rebecca finds a large older fella, enjoying a full-course meal and watching a DVD on his 40 inch plasma screen TV outside his brand new luxury motor coach. Turns out the land is intended for members of the boat club, but he says we can camp for the night. So we pitch our tent, make a sandwich and watch the sunset over the marina all while getting SCRUMPED!

We wake up and bail early. Free camp gets pretty weird in the morning with cars and people passing by, looking at you and knowing you just pitched for free. Just a few hundred meters down the road is Ligar Beach, and like Napolean Dynamite, "It's probably my favorite beach ever!" So we find ourselves sitting at the beach having breakfast at 8 in the a.m. It was a great moment so I wrote a little ditty called....

"Lost Watch"

With no watch there is no time
Whereever you are, you'll be just fine
It's all been given to you
So take nothing when you're through
Walk slowly and see far
All is good, nothing left ajar
What time is it when you don't care?
Where you don't want to know and no one would dare
Remind you of all the things undone
Just finish today and be sure to have fun
What's the difference between an hour and a day
It's all in my head and I won't ever say
It's just for me to figure out
The battle of a never ending bout
Everything simply ticks away
The cadence of a single life at play
A beautiful harmony that can't be rushed
With a sound that won't be hushed

Found my Aura at Tira Ora

From our journals dated December 28, 2005 - January 10, 2006


On our journey to the South Island we bypassed Rotorua (which we can’t help referring to as Roto Rooter) and Waitomo. We hoped to go black-water rafting in the underground rivers and check out the caves and hot springs…but hey, we've already decided there will be a next trip to New Zealand - there's just too much to see in one trip! We were excited to get to our WWOOF’ing gig (WorldWide Opportunities on Organic Farms – check it out online!), and thrilled about the idea of not spending any money for a week or two. The concept is for volunteers to work on farms, four to six hours a day, in exchange for free food and accomodation. I had replied to a post on NZ’s WWOOF hotlist asking for help completing a ballroom in time for New Year’s. I was told the place, called Tira Ora, is way out in Marlborough Sounds – accessible only by mailboat. We were to get ourselves to a town called Havelock and catch the mailboat Wednesday morning, the 28th of December. Annebeth, the owner along with husband, Tony, sounded lovely via emails – and the website said they run a camp for kids at Tira Ora as well. So we were on our way…stoked to get out of the “travel bubble” for a while. Meeting other travellers at the hostels can be really fun…but we want to meet some locals…really experience how the Kiwis live.

We boarded the 3AM Dec 26 ferry headed for the South Island. All the other ones were booked due to the holidays, but we didn’t mind the time – we had loitered in the backpackers for the last 18 hours without paying for a room. We lined up with hundreds of other passengers and waited for all the cars and campervans to load up. The workers seemed overly concerned about people bringing pig semen on board their ships…hmmm...bringing other types of animal semen on board is OK? Crossing Cook Strait takes about 3 and 1/2 hours – Wellington is actually a bit south of Picton, so the journey is east to west. We napped a bit on the café tables and awoke in time to watch the sunrise over the hills of the tip of the South Island in the crisp, chilly morning air. As I wrapped my blanket around me, we worried that our summer wardrobe may not suffice in the South. We had a tough hike around Picton loaded down with all our gear and some groceries we had bought for the trip. It is an adorable harbor town, but we arrived very early in the morning and Dec 26 is another holiday in NZ – Boxing Day, though we're still not sure what they observe on that day. We were sure everything would be closed, but we were delighted when a café by the water opened for breakfast. We sat in the sunshine that was quickly warming up the frosty morning and shared a delicious breakfast and a perfectly frothy “flat white” as we watched the town slowly wake up, and a kayaker set out for an early paddle. Our hour-long bus ride to Havelockwas lovely – past several vineyards and cherry and apple orchards. Havelock is a quaint little town, known mostly for green-lipped mussel farming, and the access point for exploring Marlborough Sounds. We stayed at a 150-year-old schoolhouse that is now a hostel. Ernest Rutherford once attended the school as a boy – he went on to split the atom and become NZ’s most famous scientist. The place had nice, clean, refurbished rooms, but retained the old creaky floorboards. Ror and I explored Havelock on foot, checked out “Main Street” which spanned maybe four blocks, but had cute restaurants and bakeries and a tiny grocery store. We were directed to a bushwalk up a hill – past their City Hall with the “large white columns.” We seemed to be the only ones on the trail, so we enjoyed the views of the town from the top and found some extremely cold streams to put our feet in.

The next morning we lugged all our heavy gear to the mailboat...luckily we weren't too far from the marina, but the 10 minute walk felt like hours. We were so relieved to find our vessel and board, we plopped down and sat huffing and puffing until the captain came to ask where we were headed. “Oh yeah – Tira Ora Lodge...you should probably be informed of that!” we gasped. He chuckled at us and flashed a grin that would remain on his face for the duration of the trip. Busily readying the boat for departure in his short-sleeved skipper shirt, shorts, and socks pulled up to his knees, he came back over to us and asked, “What made ya pick that place?” We replied cautiously, “we're going to WWOOF there...why, what is that place like?” “Ah, no...they're lovely, nice people...but they are God-botherers – hope you brought your knee-pads!” he laughed. We had heard the place also ran a camp for troubled teens and that the message was a positive one: no drugs, no alcohol, learning responsibility, but no mention of religion. “Yeah,” he went on, “there are mirrors all over the place with messages of “God is watching you.” Giggling he turned and went about his boat-driving duties leaving us to wonder if two hours from then we'd be greeted by people in robes singing “Kum-ba-yah.” Well, no matter what, we knew we were in for an adventure.


The ride through the sounds was gorgeous – perfect, cool, sunny weather and amazing scenery. We perched ourselves up on the bow's top deck lookout while the captain pointed out mussel farms and native bush. We stopped at a jetty every few minutes to deliver mail, the captain and his wife chatting with each family gathered there to meet the mailboat. “Nice Christmas?” "See you next week." And they gave all the dogs treats along the way. Some people met us by dinghy, always with their dogs yipping all the way to the boat. We really enjoyed the whole fascinating and intimate experience. These people live in such isolation – getting a visit from the mailboat once a week is surely the only form of communication to the outside world for some of them.

When we finally reached Tira Ora, we headed to the front of the boat and found out a teenager named Becky was also getting off along with us. There was a large happy group waiting on the jetty to meet us. One - who we would learn was Carlin – was wearing a kilt and a big smile under his long blond curls. But other than that, no strange robes or costumes in sight. A female WWOOF'er was leaving and giving big hugs to everyone...she seemed happy and that relieved us a bit. We met everyone: Tony and Annebeth Broad (AKA Uncle Tony and Nani Ani), the owners, their son Jason and his pregnant wife Claret, daughters Melissa and Patience, and also Carlin and Carl – both blondies with mischevious twinkles in their eyes who we thought were brothers. They had come to the camp years ago and now spent their summers at the lodge. And we met the beloved dogs: the momma, Din-Din, Mr. Vixen, and Maria (AKA Fox), who we would fall helplessly in love with – she's a cross of Fox Terrier and Chihuahua...lovable, fun and so cute! They all helped us with our bags and once past the jetty the first thing we noticed was the plaques in the trees with the Ten Commandments written on them. The property is loaded with beautiful flowering trees - hydrangeas, hibiscus, lilac as well as ferns, flax, and many types of fruit trees. Just amazing...lush and tropical, they have their own little Garden of Eden, I thought to myself. The buildings are just steps from the beach, which is a rocky one, but boasts gorgeous views of the surrounding hills and calm, sparkling blue water. Ani shows us to our lodging in the “barn,” on the open-air second story deck with single beds. They had made us up a double bed and hung up blankets around it for privacy. It was well constructed, but simple, and the ceiling was too low for our 6-foot frames, but perfect for the kids that come to their camps. There was a rope to climb down from the upper deck and a climbing wall on the outside. Next to us was an outdoor kitchen and the horse and llama paddock. Ani showed us the “solar showers” for us to use – which is a fancy name for the black plastic bags of water warming in the sun. The place was so beautiful, and everyone was extremely nice, the simple accommodations didn't bother me – what did we expect for free? We wanted to rough it – and now we would be! I thought of it as camping, and we couldn't ask for a better spot. We were shown the "compost toilets" on the way to the lodge – basically outhouses, we were told they were the ones closest to us during the night.

On the way to the lodge we noticed the ostriches – one male and three females. Ror and I were so excited, we had never seen them this close before. We got closer and they towered over us,
bending their necks to blink at us curiously with their long eyelashes. The girls seemed
to especially like Rory...but not the male. He would drop to the ground and do his “dance,” wings waving wildly from side to side. It was quite hilarious to watch, but I'm sure it's his way of saying, “Go away! I am very dangerous.” Ror quickly developed a crush
on the lady ostriches and would have to stop and chat and pet them each time we passed and the male wasn't around. Lots of birds were on the property – fluffy white Chinese silkies, turkeys, and a beautiful male peacock. The loneliest peacock in the
world. Sadly there were no peahens around for him, but that didn't stop him from calling out, loudly and desperately all through the night and early in the morning, calling for his faraway soulmate. During the day he would stand in front of one of the mirrors admiring his feathers, or he could be found chasing the female birds – any of them...we saw him chase a turkey hen up into the trees! We even saw him eyeing up the ostriches. Poor guy.

We quickly got used to life on the farm. We were so well-fed and all meals were family-style – the gong would be rung loud enough to hear anywhere on the farm, and everybody would gather and help set the table and eat together. As much as possible was enjoyed together - they had Bible readings every morning that was optional for us to attend, but they were delighted when we joined them and stayed for singing, always accompanied by Melissa on her guitar or piano. It may surprise some of you to hear of Ror and I spending our days listening to scripture and singing gospel songs, but we absolutely loved it. It was so peaceful and welcoming and helped us bond with the family right away. By the second day Ror and I were saying to each other, "if this is a cult, sign us up!"

The girls showed us the site for the ballroom, which they hoped to finish by New Years. It was the perfect seaside spot for a raised dance floor – when the tide came in everyone would be dancing on the water. The plan was to build a frame on pylons and simple deck-like construction for the floor. But only 10 of the 16 perimeter posts had been cemented in...and it was Dec. 28. To add to the concerns, the ground was so soft we weren't sure if it would sink once completed. We quickly came up with a plan B and the next day we built a ground-level deck dance floor by the simple bar hut they had recently built by the beach. Another great spot – the property was full of them! We worked hard to level the ground for it, and all the men sawed and hammered until well after dark. I painted the hut and then went to help the girls prepare dinner. They were curious to hear all about Rory and I...and of course they wanted details about the wedding. They shared our excitement for our unique honeymoon and seemed thrilled that we were sharing a part of it with them. Ani especially loved my story of how we took Tango lessons in secret and then surprised everyone with our first dance at the wedding. She asked for my help getting the guest chalets cleaned and ready for Becky's parents who were coming to visit. The chalets were charming wood cabins surrounded by billowing hydrangea, fruit trees, and grapevines. The girls had bought new sheets, curtains and accessories to spruce them up. Each chalet had four-poster beds and bathrooms with showers. They were hoping to generate some income by opening them up to tourists. As we were cleaning Ani said, “I know! Let's surprise Rory tonight with a chalet for the two of you!” I wondered if I heard her correctly, still in shock from the suggestion I could hear the excitement in her voice, “it will be a surprise just like your Tango – after dinner invite him on a midnight stroll and take him to your chalet!” Did we deserve this generous offer? I wasn't sure, but we'd accept! I squealed thank you and hugged her. What an amazing upgrade – huge comfy and beautiful four poster bed and real toilet and shower! LUXURY! And I loved the idea of surprising Ror too. Nani Ani laid out plush towels for us and a personal welcome note as if we were VIP guests instead of just backpacking WWOOF'ers.

When I led Ror into the room he was surprised, but so tired that he wasn't sure if we were really supposed to be in there or if I had decided to sneak in for a night instead of sleeping in the barn again. We slept so comfortably we were sure we had overslept and that everyone else would be waiting for us to get up. But the farm runs on a schedule perfectly suited for us night-owls. Everyone slowly gets moving between 10 and noon. Lunch is around 3 or 4, and dinner, or "tea" as they call it, takes place late - usually around 10pm. That leaves a little time for late-night singing, playing board games, or just chatting before the power is turned off, usually around midnight. Tira Ora is powered by hydro-electricity. When Tony offered to take us on a tour of the Hydro sheds we eagerly accepted, anxious to learn all we can about alternative energy sources and self-sufficiency. Soft-spoken and gentle-mannered, Tony is meticulous when it comes to his work and maintaining the farm. The rest of the family jokes that if you want something done in the slowest way possible, ask Tony - but they promise it will always be done perfectly the first time. We would learn that Tony was formerly CEO of Credit Suisse who fell in love with Annebeth after a really random encounter. Their lifestyles could not have been more different - he worked tirelessly at his job and raced Porches as a hobby, she took in troubled teenagers, even as a single mother of three, and could be found with a house full of people, laughing, singing, praying, and cooking. Tony left behind corporate life to live the dream of Tira Ora with his new happy family and has fully embraced the sustainable living and teaching positive messages to teens. We listened as he explained the history of acquiring the hydro equipment. Several properties in the Sounds were given a subsidy to try hydro power, but none have been as successful as this land - blessed with a sloping valley that feeds the water into a reservoir. Tony carefully monitors the levels and is able to adjust the flow accordingly to conserve when necessary. An intricate system of pipes provides fresh water to the buildings - gravity takes care of pumping, flushing, etc. and the rest of the gushing flow provides enough power for everything except the gas stove. I could hear the water rushing through the pipes and was fascinated by the method invented to transform that natural motion into other kinds of power. They pray for rain so they can turn on their lights - fantastic! He tells us about their plan to install bio-gas tanks that will convert the compost from the toilets into gas that can be used for cooking. And soon they will have a windmill to harness the wind as one more source of energy. Really powerful winds blow through their valley - a tree had recently been uprooted, but Tony had already milled it into several gorgeous tables and useful mulch - they strive to waste nothing, and they do a good job of it.

Annebeth, or "Nani-Ani" to all the children and travelers who come to Tira Ora, has raised three amazing children of her own and is like a mother to so many others who have been blessed to spend time with her. With an angelic smile and peaceful disposition she is able to keep the household in a special work and play balance.

She would encourage us to work hard on whatever project we chose, but to hike when the hills were calling, and to swim when the ocean was beckoning. Her son Jason worked diligently at any task without a complaint while making sure Claret was comfortable and happy. He will make a wonderful father. Platinum-blonde Patience was often dolled up in girly skirts and earrings, but that didn't mean she wasn't also doing some weed-eating or hopping up on the four-wheeler or tractor. Melissa, the brunette daughter that could pass for my sister, also wore pretty skirts and jewellry most of the time, but would don her overalls to get busy in the garden and she could whip up a feast for 20 in the kitchen in no time. She has her mother's temperment - kind and patient - whether she was teaching or learning. She taught us to make bread and "Kruschiki," or Polish "angel wing" cookies. I showed her some new tricks with her fire poi and Ror gave her some advanced piano lessons - she taught herself to play piano and guitar. These girls are not scared of hard work or getting dirty...I can't imagine that they are scared of anything. They embody an anything-is-possible attitude that is truly ispirational.


One afternoon we answered the call of that cool water and went for a paddle in the double kayak. We rowed out along the rocks and just as we were about to jump in we noticed jellyfish. Hundreds of them. We reconsidered entering in that spot. "Let's row further out," I suggested, "maybe they just like to be near the rocks." Well, that proved how much I know about jellyfish. In deeper water they were everywhere - literally thousands of them! We could catch them with our paddles and lift them up for a closer look. They were mesmerizing to watch, but where we come from you do your best to stay away from them, so we paddled back to shore. Carl was nearby and we asked him if it was safe to swim. "Of course," he said, "just look