Eyeball Fruit, Mud Snakes & James Bond - The Guest Appearance

She's half Chinese, half German; she has very appropriately coined herself, The Germanese. Being the first visitor to meet up with us on our adventures, The Germanese will be making some guest appearance posts on the blog to help cover Thailand. Enjoy:


After six long months of scrimping and saving, eating ramen noodles and KD for dinner, Jammer and I were finally on our way to our month long trip around South East Asia.  We had planned to meet up with some of our best friends back home, Morgan and Lindsay, who were newly engaged and living in Phuket, our first stop.  

Phuket is one of the southern provinces of Thailand, situated on the coast of the Andaman Sea.  It is a popular tourist destination because of its beautiful beaches and great weather, both which we experienced there.  We stayed at The Surin Resort, formerly The Chedi, which is located in the Surin Beach Area.  The resort was literally paradise, the best beach we visited on the entire trip.  It was so good, that we convinced our world weary gypsy bum friends to join us there nearly every day of our time there. We spent the 11 days of our time in Phuket eating, suntanning, swimming, snorkeling, eating, elephant trekking, eating, sea canoeing and eating.  

One of the most interesting things we did in Phuket was the sea canoeing trip we took to Phang Nga Bay.  The bay has many limestone formations that resemble islands but what the Thais call “hongs”, meaning “rooms”.  These hongs are hollow in the middle, being carved away by many years of sea water erosion.  The hongs are entered through small crevices that are accessible when the tide is at certain points.  As someone who’s very claustrophobic, traveling through the caves into the hongs is an uncomfortable experience.  It’s so tight that you actually have to lie down with all your limbs inside the canoe just to get through intact. Names such as Bat Cave, Diamond Cave and Mangrove Cave describe the contents of the hongs.  The rest of our group didn’t have the pleasure of smelling the bat guano, since the tide was too high to enter the Bat Cave, luckily I had the good fortune of already having visited the cave on two previous trips to Phuket.  

Phang Nga Bay is also the home to “James Bond Island” featured in the 1974 Bond movie, The Man With The Golden Gun. The sea canoeing experience is almost a full day trip, they generally include transport to and from your hotel, lunch (including eyeball fruit, check out Lindsay’s pic), the boat and a guide.  Our guides were great, they spoke very good English and even managed to scare the crap out of Linds with a fake “mud” snake.  If you ever visit Phuket a trip to Phang Nga Bay is a must, and be sure to tip your guide.

The Germanese

Monkeying Around, Animals on the Menu and Fire

Creepily human-like, always aggressive, and ready to snag whatever you've got in hand - they're monkeys. The Batu Caves in Kuala Lumpur (KL) are a sacred place for local Hindu's and are free to visit; you just have to climb the 272 steps that lead you in. This is also home to a colony of long-tailed macaques that run about the site working as full-time models and part-time bag looters. On this particular day, one male macaque thought it wise to blockade Morgan's path until it could snafu the bag he was carrying. Morgs went left - macaque when left. "Wanna dance, monkey?" Morgan would say sticking out this chest in male superiority. Being Morgan-sized didn't seem to phase the monkey who simply showed all this teeth in an eerily mischievous gape and decided to hit the nearest garbage bin instead. Inside the Batu Caves dozens of macaques roam ready to pose for your pictures and startle the poop out of some.

Round two would involve a large number of silver leaf monkeys, some green beans and a banana. Holding any food or items for that matter in your hands is a bad idea and as far as food goes, don't even try and pocket it; the monkeys will reach into your pocket and grab it. Bunches of green beans are sold for less than a dollar at monkey sites, as well as nuts and bananas. Holding a banana on top of my head would lead to a monkey assault on little me. I still have a monkey scar on my right arm from the incident.

A visit the KL tower offered a great 360 view of the city at the top. At the bottom, a pony ride is offered. Sadly, only I was lucky enough to score a ride; there was a midget-pony-rides-for-midget-people-only policy in effect. We would finally snuff out some crazy in the adjacent animal sanctuary where something called the "Double Prosperity" was being showcased. This was the catch phrase the Malaysians had coined to showcase their mutant two-headed turtle. Inside got even more interesting. Propped up beside a snake cage was a Animal Feeding Menu. Having built a very special bond with rodents after spending years rooming with them at past places of employment, Morgan very quickly jumped at Rat. The next few things would NEVER fly in many places in the world, but when in Malaysia... We watched as an employee disappeared into a back room and returned carrying a live rat by its tail. Whacking it on the ground a couple of times disorientating it, he opened up the snake cage and let mother nature take over. The next 15 minutes was spent watching the snake suffocate and swallow the rat whole. Lindsay and Morgan's Excellent Adventure -1, Discovery Channel HD - zero.



A visit to the Kuala Lumpur butterfly sanctuary left us in stitches. Heading into the insect exhibit after a rather disappointing butterfly viewing (I'd get a better view of live butterflies ripping around on a scooter in Laos as they continuously seemed to find my face or head) we came across some interesting photo commentary.




First it was the butterfly's mating image with a caption that read - "Don't look at me please!", But then the kicker, a water scorpion with a caption "Sucking our..." - anyone want to try tackling that one? McDonald's in KL also had some brow furrowing messaging to share with the hungry people.

We aren't one for arranged tours, but we did like the sounds of the firefly tour as Mr. Chinatown Hotel 2 sold us on the rarity of the opportunity. Raving about how there is only two places in the world you can see the fireflies in there natural habitat like this (Kuala Lumpur and Brazil) we jumped at the opportunity. Hoping in a mini-bus with a couple of entertaining guys who got us lost trying to find place, we all hoped in a boat with life jackets and cameras. We saw millions of tiny lights pulsing in the surrounding riverbank trees. It was pointless trying to take any pictures of the event, and to aid in our quest of getting a closer look (or something for memory's sake) one of our drivers (they always come in twos in case the bus,car,van breaks down as we would find to be useless in Laos) caught a firefly in a bag and released in the car hoping that we'd finally catch a photo op. FAIL. The fly blinked about for a second and then disappeared under Morgan's car seat. We tried to take photos that way, but again were unlucky.

The Hindi Thaipusam festival that is celebrated every January at the Batu Caves carries some serious weight (literally) and WOW factor in KL. As a form of penance or sacrifice to the gods, devotees carry a kavadis (meaning burden), except this burden is attached to your skin. They are brightly decorated frameworks combining various hooks and skewers that pinch the skin, cheeks and tongue used to pull a jug or pitcher. The ritual is thought to bring godly favours to those who suffer them. Ouch.

Ducking out of Malaysia and back over the Thai border our train's engine caught fire bringing everything to a standstill. After all the training we'd tested for the last few months, not once had we had a train catch fire. Not even the old cabooses that chug-a-lugged through Poland. The smoke came barreling out from the front of the train bringing entertainment to many snap happy passengers. One local ho-hummed something to the tune of "this happens everyday."

The Limey

Gourmet Turkey

Cappadocia - the home of Goreme, Turkey (pronounced like gourmet) would be our tasty sounding last stop in Turkey. Famous for its fairy chimneys and sleep-under-the-star caves open to tourists, Goreme makes many visitors to-do list when visiting Turkey. One of the first things you'll see as you make your way over the sci-fi hills to Goreme are the colourful hot air balloons, dotting the sky.




Looking like it should make the backdrop for scientific favourites like Star Wars or the Never Ending Story, Goreme actually is a blockbuster favourite. Many tour groups sell Goreme as the place where Star Wars was filmed, but it's actually the place where George Lucas found inspiration for the new era Star Wars.

The Open Air Museum is made up a large cluster of some of the old, well-preserved caved churches. Most of the churches are fully painted inside with religious motifs and murals dating from 900-1200 AD. Most are in remarkably good condition, although nearly all the eyes of the painted figures have been gouged out. The eyes of the figures were gouged out when the area became inhabited by Muslims who believed them to be graven images.

The Dark Church (named for the lack of entering light, was originally used to house pigeons), whose walls were long protected by pigeon droppings, is the exception. It is said to have taken around 14 years to scrape off the pigeon poo that has preserved the 11th century frescoes beneath.







Small person-sized graves can be seen carved into the cave floors, once used for burying deceased family members - none of the graves were much bigger than 5 feet (I feel smug in this moment knowing I would be a Turkish giant). Directly across from the museum we found more caves - free, but less abound with artwork and evidence of inhabitants. Climbing to the top we caught a fairy chimney sunset. 

The Rose Valley is called such for its red rock. Beautiful formations peppered in red make for a breathtaking scenery. There were barely any other tourists trekking its paths given the chilly time of year.

Paying a visit to Love Valley, we wondered about what natural landscape could have forgiven its name. Much to our comical delight - it was simply a landscape of a hundred phallic structures. But of course it was.

Turkish nights is where we finally caught a glimpse of the famous whirling dervishes, belly dancing and some traditional Turkish dance, music and entertainment. I'm sure everyone was thanking their unlimited wine and raki glasses for aiding in the entertainment as some lucky male onlookers were given a flash belly dancing lesson. Whether Morgan made it out there and rolled his belly or not will stay between me and Turkey. As an evening favourite - I'm torn between the belly dancing and the two-legged humping potato sacks.

One of the greatest Cappadocian treats to try is the potted kebab. You'll know where they serve them as you'll probably see a mountain of broken pottery outside the restaurant's front entrance.

Turkey is still very much an unfinished territory for us and it would seem only fitting that we would meet two lovely ladies in Chiang Mai, Thailand that work for Go Turkey Tourism http://www.goturkey.com/.
We'd love to hear more about Turkey, Arzu and Jasmine.


Gobble Gobble
The Limey

The Hole in This Blog of Cheese is Swiss.

Our Swiss post is not the only hole in our blog but it's definitely one of the furthest behind.  We first trained through Zurich in late September early in our trip on the way from Berlin to Milan.  Having looked at hostelworld.com we decided that Zurich was way out of our budget. The cheapest hostel/hotel we found was 25 Euros per person a night.


Then to my surprise an old friend from Vancouver, Omar, having read on Facebook that we were travelling through Europe, got in touch with  me.  Omar and I had worked together at a few different bars back home.  Last I heard he had moved back to Mexico with his fiancee Belinda who was originally from Switzerland and who'd also worked with us at AuBar Night Club.  Now he was living near Zurich in a beautiful little town on the Eurail path called Wil (pronounced Veal).  The two of them had just gotten married the week before.  The dust having barely settled from the wedding, and the out of town guests, Omar's mom, having left a day or two before.  They again invited guests in the form of a couple weary travellers.  They met us at the train station, drove us to their home, set us up with a bed and Belinda made us dinner having just done a full days work.  Omar walked us around Wil that night as we caught up.


The next day we made our way into Zurich for the day.  At the train station we found a tourist office and a walking map that started near the train station.  It was a perfect walk: time wise and lengthwise.  It worked out as we didn't have a lot of time in Zurich with the breakneck speed we were travelling at and also the sun setting early working against us.   Most of the tour centered around the Limmat River, tiny cobble-stoned alleys and water fountains that may or may not be for drinking.  I had no adverse effect from the water, but a few double takes from other tourists.

We made our way back to the Wil train station where we found the unique, to us at least, women only parking stalls that are located close to the entrance, similar to wheel chair stalls.  They are intended to give women a safer option late at night to park closer to the entrance.  Great idea in my opinion.  We ended our day with a dinner with our hosts at a great Tex-Mex restaurant in a beautiful town St. Gallen about 100 kms to the east.  The next morning we spent what little Swiss francs we had left at a grocer across from the train station, buying mostly the cheapest/best chocolate ever.  Even the "no-name" brand was better than what we're used to back home.  Wish we had more time and more importantly more money for this beautiful country.

Thank you for your more than generous hospitality and kindess, Belinda and Omar.

The Yank

One dose of Cotton Castle - Turkey Part V

Pamukkale, which means 'Cotton Castle' in Turkish, is known as the 8th wonder of the world by Turkish people.  It's an UNESCO site visited by tourists from around the world for its post-card beauty and its believed healing powers. 

From a far it looks like a perfectly sugar coated mountain. Getting closer you can make out the jutting calcium terraces shaped like water lilies, others like scallop-shell bathtubs and the simplest ones resembling bleached rice terraces. It is the largest and finest example of elaborate calcium formation in the world. 

 Over thousands of years, the water which flows down the cliff of Pamukkale has carved this fantastic formation of stalactites and basins. The mineral-rich Pamukkale hot spring waters are high in calcium, magnesium sulfate and bicarbonate. They also contain carbon dioxide and are thought to contain radioactive content.

What month are we in again? I wondered as I watched visitors splash about the baths at the end of December. The time of year wouldn't faze us in the slightest as we would take full advantage of the chance to get out of our three-month-old clothing. Really, it's just like being in one really cool communal hot-tub. Water temperatures vary between 35-38 degrees Celsius.

According to ancient tradition, the rick mineral waters within the pools are said to be advantageous in treating various ailments, like high blood pressure and arthritis, and attracting people from all over the world. The water of Pamukkale is especially famous for its benefit to the eyes and skin. Its curing properties are also thought to heal the symptoms of asthma, rheumatism and neurological, gynaecological, nutritional and digestive maladies as well. Reading the long list of healing powers I can't help but think - Doctor/Patient prescription papers in Turkey probably read: One dose of Cotton Castle.

 Unfortunately, but understandably, visitors are no longer allowed to walk on the terraces in order to preserve the natural site. To the ancient civilizations such beauty could only mean that the place was sacred to the gods. Once you make the barefoot climb to the top of Pamukkale, you can explore the ruins of Hierapolis that sit a top the natural wonder. Hierapolis was named after Hiera, the wife of Telephos, founder of Pergamum in mythology.

 

The Limey