Goooooooooooood morning Vietnam!!!!!!!!

So what do I think about Vietnam? Good question. What can you say about a place where:
a) you have to say "no thank-you" to about three thousand people within a walking distance of 1km?
b) people generally like to stare at you, laugh at you (plunking your big Amazon self onto one of the little itty-bitty makeshift restaurant chairs) and grope your freakishly white arms/face/thights?
c) people are always looking for a way to extract more money out of you and generally rip you off?
d) your tour guides whom you paid a substantial amount of money steal two iPods from the group and turn particularly venomous when the victims of the theft demand them back?
e) drivers of buses, cars and motorbikes lay on their horns all the time?
f) you get robbed walking down the street?

Let me be honest. If I had written this blog about two hours ago, it would have been a pretty negative one. I should mention that I was fresh off yet another overnight bus of which the driver honked his horn consistently and stopped for four "dinner" breaks between the hours of 11:00pm and 4:00am. This is not the first bus I've been on like this. Then at 6:00am when we were pulling into what was supposed to be Saigon, for those who hadn't been awoken by the horns blaring, he blasted Vietnamese love ballads. Like loud. Anyway, I was told that I would arrive in Saigon this morning, but it was Nha Trang. The tour guide said, "No, no, Saigon another 10 hours away." So I've been bumming around Nha Trang all day waiting for another overnighter tonight (cause I paid for a sleeper bus...may as well save myself a night's accommodation, yeah?), exhausted and with no place to go but the beach. The beach would be nice if Vietnamese dudes didn't come and plunk down next to me and start touching this alabaster skin (and by the way, I have a tan right now....by my standards...) that they can't get enough of. And asking me questions. And asking me to buy stuff. And when I say no, asking me for kisses. If any of this rings familiar, it's because this is just like Italy/Greece/Turkey. Only this time I'm really trying not to get defensive right off the bat, and there's a lot more touching. Anyway, it felt like there was no escape, so up until about a couple hours ago, I was fed up with Vietnam and feeling so ready to be home that I was working myself up quite the Pity Party.

And then I went back to the beach, for lack of anything better to do. And I was harassed by another Vietnamese dude who squeezed my thigh muscles and said, "Yes, athlete" and wanted to give me a massage that worked its way from 100,000 dong to FREE. Of course, I still declined, and he eventually left. And then someone else dropped herself into the sand next to me, and saved this blog from being a particularly negative one (OK, I admit that this blog hasn't been all sunshine and rainbows...). I won't even try to spell her name here, but she was a 21-year-old Vietnamese girl and after about 20 minutes I realized that she legitimately didn't want to sell me anything. She was just (from what I gather) a marine biology (???) student who is also studying English and goes to the beach each evening to find a "foreign girl" to practice her English with. So we chatted for over an hour, and she was such a sweetheart, asking me about Canada, telling me about Vietnam, etc. And she reminded me that aside from the ones with dollar signs in their eyes (and there are billions of them), Vietnamese people are by and large quite lovely. I've given a few impromptu English lessons while I've been here, including with the girl who runs the shop in Hoi An where I had my boots made. She was one of the people who loves to grope me, and it wasn't quite as irritating with her, because I really don't believe she was hitting on me or trying to pickpocket me. I was wearing short shorts and a tank top and I think she legitimately was fascinated by the length of my legs and the paleness of my skin. Kate, my partner in crime for much of Vietnam, thought it was pretty hilarious cause this girl literally couldn't keep her hands off me. She sat in my lap, rubbed my thighs, hugged me, held my hand, the whole nine...It was a little strange at times (the hands on my bare thighs felt a little wrong) but she was a sweetheart. And there have generally been a lot of really friendly (well, not so friendly) people around. Unfortunately, it's just those few bad seeds...

Par example, on our Halong Bay tour...I don't think I can really get into the whole story except to say first and foremost that I was on a boat with a baker's dozen Irishmen, a few Brits, and a couple of Aussies, all of whom history has shown even the most venerable of Canadian livers has difficulty keeping up with. And this group was definitely no exception. I don't know where they get the energy or the tolerance, but they put me to shame. Anyway, our first night on the boat, three iPods were left on the deck next to the crew's iPod speakers. The music (randomly, Whitney Houston...) was shut off at 4:00am, and everything was fine. Then the next morning, the rather sour barmaid accused the crew of breaking the speakers and demanded a rather outlandish sum to replace them. The people who'd left their iPods were instantly suspicious and demanded their iPods back. The barmaid kept insisting that she had no iPods, she had no iPods until things got increasingly heated and she miraculously produced one iPod from her pocket. Everything escalated until everyone was shouting (actually, I wasn't. I was nursing a hangover and staying out of it...but it definitely killed the mood for everyone). One iPod was found, but the other never was and it all resulted in all our bags getting searched and then the personal baggage and private cabins of the entire crew getting searched when the boat reached the shore. The tour guide, who'd previously been really funny and likeable, at first was trying to mediate between the crew and the passengers, but got pretty nasty in the end when the accusations started flying. It just left a bad taste in everyone's mouth, you know? I'm not going to get into the details of the rest of the weekend, but it was a really fun group and good times and after three nights with them, I am still recovering...I met up with some of them, in particular Kate, again in Hoi An, which was great. It was back to that Lao feeling of knowing people everywhere you go...

So after what one of the Irish dudes labelled iPodGate '08, I already had a bad taste in my mouth...and then I got my bag stolen. I will give details of that later on, but will say that my passport and wallet were thankfully not in the bag in question. It's funny, cause since that happened, my stamina has just been gone. I don't feel that upset, but since it happened, I've just been positively exhausted and feel really vulnerable to all the touts and their entreaties to give me their money in one way shape or form. I'm a bit done, is all.

Which is good, I suppose, since I have only a few days to go. Every time I start feeling okay with leaving, I remind myself that in one week's time, I will be in the dead of winter on the Prairies. And the fact that I'm still somewhat cool with that makes me think that I really am spent.

One more blog to come!

On Top of the World and Away From It All

So I've finally found the one place in Southeast Asia that has no 7-11s, travel agencies, internet cafes, or tuk tuk drivers. All you have to do is get yourself to Huey Xai, Laos, take a very bumpy 2.5-hour off-road ride into Bokeo Nature Reserve, hike for ~1-2 hours, and zipline into peace and solitude. Honestly, our treehouse (Treehouse #1) was exactly what I had hoped my treehouse in Turkey was going to look like, only better. It was three split levels (a girl from Tahoe, Sarah, and I got the "penthouse") built around a many-pronged big old tree. I can't say how high we were, but I believe our guide something like 80 metres? We weren't in the highest one, but the views were unreal (wait for the pictures...they're coming shortly), particularly in the morning, when mist filled the dips and valleys and a guide would zipline in with our hot breakfast. You showered in one corner with a full view out two sides of it all (and, I guess, a full view in for anyone happening to be zipping by...not likely, since there are only 12 people and a few guides out there and any one time). My powers of description are failing me here, and I'm going to have to let the pictures and video tell the story.

The ziplining was incredibly scary at first--some of the cables were as high as 150 metres and as long as 380 metres--but it didn't take long to put our faith in our equipment and just go for it. By the third day, we were zipping around without guides and without fear (well, with some fear. I still checked my equipment about four times before I let go each time). Our guides were awesome, but a little lax and a little lazy. You'd ask them to check if something was okay, and they would say without looking, "Yeah, is okay, is okay." The Gibbon Experience founder, who's French, apparently started to project (the only one of its kind in Laos, it saves the land on which it is built from being cleared and/or developed) with the intention of turning it over to the Lao people. It's been 14 years and he hasn't done so yet, and it's not difficult to see why. Still, our guides were a lot of fun, and our equipment never did let us down.

I'll admit that I wasn't completely recovered from my illness while I was up there. I threw up the morning we left and the hiking did not help. I was gasping for air at times, dizzy pretty much constantly (I imagine the elevation didn't help), and nauseous for much of the three days. Let's just say that if survival of the fittest were at play and someone were going to get attacked and dragged off by tigers, bears or cannibalistic hilltribes, it would have most definitely have been me. But honestly, I don't think I could have enjoyed it more if I had been well. Adrenaline is a powerful, powerful drug, and as sick as I felt on certain of the big climbs, the minute my caribiner and safety cord were attached and I was flying high above the trees, I felt like a million bucks.

Unfortunately, the adrenaline couldn't help with the one small issue that was the rat infestation in our treehouse. At night, we were in beds under canvas tent-like structures hangnig suspended above our beds, but the tent was chewed through in places and we had all heard stories of rats chewing their way into beds and bags (it happened to the people in one of the other treehouses in our group). It was full-on creepy at night because you could hear them all around your bed, and I was full-on paranoid by the second night. I listened to my iPod so I didn't have to hear them, but then I got paranoid about what I wasn't hearing. In the end, as far as I know no rats so far as attempted to get in my tent, and Kristin, your bag is intact.

So sadly I'm back on solid ground now. We didn't end up seeing any gibbons, but we heard them "singing" in the morning. I kind of respect how shy the gibbons are, compared to the attention-whore monkeys of Thailand. They're not there to perform for us and we're not there to feed them or tease them. It felt like the most natural animal-related experience that I've had in Asia. All in all, the whole thing was magic. I burnt my right cheekbone and left ear (two separate, somewhat foolish incidents) on the cable when I was attempting to zip and take pictures at the same time. I think the cheek burn looks kind of badass (and you know how hard I strive to look badass). There was some suggestion among the girls in my treehouse that it might scar, but so what if it does? I'll have a permanent souvenir of one of the coolest three days of my life...

Not that I'm homesick, but...***

...I would give my left arm right about now for the following things:
1) a scorchingly hot shower. With pressure. In which I don't feel compelled to wear flip flops. That has walls and is not in the immediate vicinity of the toilet.
2) A bed. With some give. With little to no chance of a bed bug infestation. With sheets with no questionable spots, stains, etc. In a room outside of which there are no:
a) roosters (you think that our little farmyard friends cockle-doodle-doo just once at sunrise? Wrong. They start at about 4:00 am and keep going for hours.
b) monks beating drums, chanting, or singing. You know I love the monks--I really do, probably more than is appropriate--but for the love of god (Buddha, I guess), can't you collect your food at 9:00am???
3) Some clothes that are not the clothes in my (Kristin's) pack at present. A whole new wardrobe, actually, would be nice. I would buy some stuff, but this whole Asian "one size fits all" thing doesn't really work for "Amazons" like me.
4) Some nachos (our nachos), some red wine (Cab Sauv or Cab Franc would be awesome, but beggars can't be choosers right?), some tuna tataki and a yam roll, some beef tenderloin with sauteed mushrooms and garlic mashed potatos. The food I'm not quite so desperate for, cause the food here is fantastic. I'm just a little bit over rice at the moment and if I'm giving my left arm for this stuff, I think I deserve some great food.

I am truly having an awesome time and I don't want to wish my trip away--the end is coming so quickly already!!--but it's been a bit tougher since separating from Kaje and it doesn't help that I've been terribly, violently ill for the last couple days. I switched over to Thai malaria pills (at my doctor's suggestion) and the first one I took made me really sick. So naturally a good bed and a better shower would be much appreciated. I am beginning to feel much better, which is good, because I'm about to go trekking deep into the jungle for the Gibbon Experience. More on that in a few days. If you don't hear from me in a while, I've fallen from a 150 metre-high zipline and impaled myself on a tree. On that note...until next time...

***okay, so this post was actually written a few days ago, but the internet cut out right as I was publishing...so that's the autosave, a few days late. Don't quite achieve the ominous ending I was going for there, now that you know I'm back safely, but ah well, you're getting two blogs for the price of one.

The Leader of the Pack (Vroom, Vroom)

I think it's seriously, seriously funny how when you first arrive in Asia, you're so overly cautious about everything. You worry about weather the fruit at breakfast is safe, you scrutinize every water bottle (sure, it's bottled, but is it the right kind of bottled?), you avoid touching potentially-rabid stray dogs and ordering any drinks with ice cubes in them. And that all lasts about 3.7 days and the next thing you know you're provoking likely-rabid monkeys, climbing treacherous cliffs and jumping off them, and popping wheelies on uninsured mopeds. OK, that's a lie, I never popped any wheelies, but Blair, Ange and I did rent mopeds with no collision or third-party insurance (and that's why I don't tell you about these things until after I do them, Doug and Lucy) and drove them around Phuket for several hours over two days. Patong Beach on Phuket is exactly the kind of place you want to leave pretty much the moment you arrive, and on Phuket, apparently $6.00 Canadian buys freedom.

It was a pretty terrific day, heading up North to try to find a beach where sea turtles are supposed to lay their eggs at this time of year. We may or may not have found the beach and we never found the turtles, but it was a fantastic day nonetheless, cruising along the coast and through little Thai towns where there were no tourists in sight (and if you have seen Patong, you know why that was incredibly refreshing). We did find a beach where there was no one in sight for kilometers, save lots and lots of hermit crabs.

There were definitely some incidents of confusion over which side of the road to drive on and of being in situations where strange Thai traffic rules were a complete mystery to us. At one point, I found myself in the middle of an intersection with cars waiting to turn in all directions, and I had no idea who had the "right of way", which is a bit of a foreign concept to Thai people...so I once again set women back 30 years and pulled out that winsome facial expression combining helplessness and sheepishness that always gets me out of speeding tickets--knock on wood--and the Thai motorists all laughed and waved me through. There were definitely a couple incidents where my life flashed before my eyes a bit, and in retrospect the idea of driving a vehicle with no protection for yourself or others is a little dodgy, but I'm glad we did it.

What's the worst that can happen, right?

So...do you think Leo DiCaprio will be there?

I don't know about you all, but I find that every summer you get at least one day that stands above the rest in its summerness (summerishness?). For me, it almost always involves being on a body of water in a speedboat, on waterskis (yes, Kristin and Jen, people DO still waterski in the 21st century), or on some kind of flotation device. This trip has had some summery days for sure, but today was pure summer.

Shoot, does it sound like I'm rubbing it in that I'm in a place that feels and looks like summer and you're probably all wearing your winter jackets already? I'm not trying to, but if you were put off by the number of times I used "summer" and its fake derivatives in that first paragraph, you should probably stop reading right now. And you definitely shouldn't look at my latest photo album on Facebook...

So today, The Crew (me, Kaje, Andrew, Blair, Ange, Andrew's cousins Ian and George, and their friend Karen) chartered a long boat from a guy named Kitty (pronouned Ki-Tee with emphasis on the second syllable, but I'm gonna spell it Kitty) and spent the day out on the water, going wherever struck our fancy. We started the day with the obligatory trip to Maya Bay, the beautiful little cove made famous by The Beach. Unfortunately, with Leonardo DiCaprio movies comes notoriety and with notoriety comes crowds and with crowds comes rubbish. Honestly, the beach was lovely, the water was gorgeous, and the limestone rockfaces surrounding it were majestic. But we went snorkelling and it takes away from the experience a little when you see reef sharks (a little creepy, but cool!) and immediately thereafter see an Orange Fanta can on the ocean floor. Hmmm...does it sound like I'm complaining? Cause it really was paradise. But it was not the best stop of the day.

When we'd had enough of The Beach, we gave Kitty a holler and he and all his Thai buddies emerged from out of nowhere, all wearing just their skivvies. For some reason, we left in a different boat than we arrived in and our boat was full of empty beer cans. Kitty's friends gave the guys on our boat free beers and kept yelling "Al-oooooooooooh-ha!" to us as we departed. It wasn't aloha for long though cause they followed us for the rest of the day, pulling up next to our boat and hanging out. They were a pretty funny crew.

Our second stop was a cliff jump on a nearby island to Ko Phi Phi Don (where we were staying). George and Ian went to the very top and did flips and dives off it, but it was a treacherous climb (a nearly vertical rockface with spikey limestone formations that could have done some major damage if you took a big fall) and I was proud of myself for jumping at all. Karen, Blair, Ange, Andrew and I all did the little jump, but it did not feel little at about 25 to 30 feet. When I hit the water, it did a number on my ears (they still hurt), so I figure it must have been big enough...

Stop #3 was Monkey Beach, which was pretty cool but a little scary. Unlike the monkeys on Railay, most of the monkeys here were male and super aggressive. When our boat approached the beach, dozens and dozens of monkeys came running and were waiting expectantly for us--or more accurately, for the food they clearly knew we had with us. Kaje had a bag of bananas and one of the males started coming towards her and she got freaked out and dropped the whole bag, which naturally got ransacked in moments. She was disappointed to have missed out handing out the bananas piecemeal, but I don't blame her for dropping the bag. Those monkeys are small, but they are so intimidating. Anyway, things soon were crazy on the beach, as the Thai boys in our brother boat arrived and provoked the monkeys and gave them cans of Leo Beer, which they drank before tearing open the cans and licking out every last drop. I was a bit horrified about them drinking beer (can monkeys metabolize beer?) but I couldn't help but laugh at their holding these cans that were 1/4 the size of their bodies with their little hands. I went further onto the beach to try to get a picture (again) and got attacked by one (again), this time getting monkey arms wrapped around my leg. I had to kick and shriek "What are you doing?!?" to get this one off me, and I stayed in the water from that point on. Blair and Andrew got attacked too, and Blair ended up getting one wrapped arouind his leg too. Unfortunately for him, he got a big cut on the back of his ankle in the process, which may or may not be a bite. A little freaky, but assuming that he doesn't die of rabies, it'll be a great story when he gets home.

For our final stop, we just anchored out in the water to watch the sunset. Didn't take long for our Thai friends to pull up and tie their boat to ours and start the party. If water and booze don't mix, no one has told the Thai people that. I kept diving into the water cause it was just soo nice, but I started to psych myself out, feeling like a shark was going to appear out of nowhere and rid me of one of my legs. The others wouldn't lower the ladder for me though and I started getting more and more freaked out. Didn't help taht one of the Thais dove under and swam up under me and grabbed my leg. I guess I was asking for that one...

We are back on solid ground now, and there's really nothing left to do but eat, have a beer, and go to bed. The bars are all closed on Phi Phi because Thailand is in mourning. We know it's someone important related to their beloved king, but because of the language barrier we keep getting different stories. What we know is that the King's sister/brother died three days/one hundred days/a year ago. Regardless, there's no music and the island is quiet. Time for bed...

Chels

Oh, so THAT's what they mean by "Rainy Season"

OK, OK, I get it, BlogFans. You want another blog. What's the cause for the delay, after I promised more frequent blogs? Well I'll tell you. If I had written five days ago, it would have been the most depressing pity party of a blog I would ever have written. There was some misery, my friends. I'm not asking you to feel sorry for me, given that I'm back in Paradise, but things were bleak there for a while.

So we met up with Blair and Ange in Bangkok a few days ago, and helped them through jetlag and culture shock by wasting days trying to find stuff to do and getting driven around and screwed over by tuk tuk drivers who ultimately got us nowhere. Thankfully, we met an awesome, wonderful, kind-of crazy waiter who was about one snip away from becoming a LadyBoy who steered us back in the right direction....just not in time to see anything before it all closed. Frustrating, frustrating city!!! So we went on a tour our last day in bangkok, or rather near Bangkok because I was starting to get hostile. The tour involved going to the famous Floating Market (made famous on America's Next Top Model Cycle 7), which honestly was a massive disappointment. I thought it was a legit market that locals frequent, but it was just another tourist trap peddling the same old junk, only at this market you're trapped in a boat driven by someone else, so you can't walk away when you're not interested and are subjected to their harassment against your will. I was at the back of our boat, and even our boat driver kept harassing me to buy bracelets from her, and I obviously couldn't escape. So I didn't buy anything or even look at anything just on principle, and the end of our little tour, for which we'd already spent the equivalent of $5 each (yes, a small sum of money, but a lot over here!! Our pettiness over small sums of money over here makes me feel kind of guilty...) our boat driver rowed us into the centre of a dirty canal and demanded that we tip her. Obviously, we were in a bit of a vulnerable situation, and she clearly knew it. We had Ange and her very effective 'tude with us though, and she got us back to shore without our having to produce our wallets. All in all: not cool.

Stop two was the Tiger Temple, which I liked a lot but also felt a bit uneasy about. The story is supposed to be that monks saved orphaned tigers and then took on more and more tigers until tigers were being born and raised at this place. We were told that the tigers were drugged to make them docile, which the organization claims is not true, and I am inclined to believe them. I've read about how "vicious" animals raised by humans lose their basic reasons for being aggressive, and it wasn't like you were just allowed to go in and hop on a tiger's back. You had to be careful and not wear anything dangly, etc. But the tigers were just laying there, most of them drowsy, and you got herded around by volunteers who took your picture with each tiger. It was just a bit photo op. The tiger cubs were better because you could approach them without being pressured to move on, etc. I'm glad I got to see the tigers--especially the cubs--up close and personal, but there was something a little sad about it all. Next we went to see the famous Bridge Over the River Kwai, which was cool to see but does not make for very interesting blogging. After Laos, the massive tourism of Thailand is turning me off a little. Not that I'm not loving Thailand.

That night, Blair and Ange and I boarded a bus and got the heck out of Bangkok while Kaje stayed alone for aday cause she wanted to meet Andrew at the airport. So Blair and Ange and I took an overnighter and a ferry to Koh Tao, an island in the Southern Gulf of Thailand. Exotic and tropical, yes? NO. The island is beautiful but looked nothing like the photos because it poured rain the entire two days that we wre there. And when I say poured I mean POURED, like you go out for a second and you're drenched. The kinds of showers that we've seen already but last only for twenty minutes to an hour. These showers lasted for two solid days and let up only on the second night for a short while. Naturally, there's not a lot to report about Koh Tao, except that I went out sans Blair and Ange the second night and had a blast dancing at a beach bar with a bunch of guys from Australia, Canada, Israel, Denmark, and Sweden, and ended up administering impromptu First Aid to drinking injuries at 4:00am. It's strange, because I have all this fun with people and I have barely been exchanging information with anyone. It just seems silly to become Facebook friends with them all when you've spent one night hanging out, but then it almost seems unreal.

With no sunshine in sight, we left beautiful Koh Tao for beautiful Koh Phangnan, home of the famous Full Moon Party, and got more of the same. Kaje and Andrew joined us there, and we sat in misery in more torrential downpour, even worse than on Koh Tao. We stayed in some bungalows down the beach from Coral Bungalows, where there's a great set up, so we would go there for meals and to hang out. There were times though that it would be raining so hard that I had to wear my bathing suit and make a run for it, carrying my clothes in a ziploc bag and losing another pair of flip flops (third this trip) in the process. It was a little exhilerating for about three hours, and then it got to the point that it seemed the only point of getting out of bed was to eat and watch movies at Coral. Our second day there, I watched five movies. I also shared a bungalow with a 6'9'', 20-year-old boy from Hawaii who we met getting off the ferry and who seemed normal enough but who tried more than once to crawl in my bed with me despite my very clear signals (like telling him I was not in the least interested in him--he asked) that he shouldn't. Anyway, all of this together made me very supportive of the group decision to jump ship on the Full Moon Party. I don't care if it's a once-in-a-lifetime experience. We were five of the very few people actually leaving the island, but we were rewarded when we came here, to Railay, in the Andaman Sea. It is not an island but an isthmus (??) and is absolutely gorgeous. And although we have a bit of daily rain, we have seen sunshine for the first time in over a week. And I have a sunburn to prove it. Apparently, Angela, you DO need to rub in spray-on sunscreen. Haha. We've been spending our time here celebrating Ange's 25th birthday, which was meant to be spent at the Full Moon Party, but which we've been celebrating in the sun instead. The first night we got here, we had a lovely but very expensive dinner and then went to a Thai boxing match in the middle of the jungle. It was kind of cool, but having worked for a head injury specialist, I really think that boxing is among the stupidest endeavours a human being can partake in...but that's just me. Last night was Ange's actual birthday, which we spent on the beach and then Kaje and I gave her birthday present--corn row braids, Bo Derek style!!!! She was thrilled, and has been shakin' her beads and singing Bob Marley and getting our money's worth. We had another superb meal and drinks with a couple of couples that we met here and then I FIREDANCED!!! I'm not even going to try to describe it to you because there's video that says it all. Except to say that it was probably not a good idea after 3 litres of Beer Chang. But I got by without serious injury and only made a little bit of an ass of myself.

Today, the couples went kayaking and I went to the beach. It is gorgeous here. GORGEOUS!! There's huge limestone cliffs and towers sticking out of the water. Today I was laying under a tree (nursing my sunburn) when all of a sudden the tree above me was FILLED with monkeys. There were probably two to three dozen of them, including a mother with a brand new baby clinging to its belly. They weren't skiddish at all and we could approach them and feed them bananas (what else??). SOOO cool! I got a little too close to the mama/baby though, taking a picture, and the big guy (I'm guessing the Alpha Male of the group, fromthe way he was acting...) came racing towards me and took a swipe at me. It terrified me a lot. Seriously, though, very unexpected and cool (but HOT!!!) day at the beach.

George, Andrew's cousin, is supposed to arrive tonight, and not a moment too soon. Although it's fun travelling with a group (and staying five of us in one big communal bed meant for four) and although doing so gives me extra independence to take off on my own sometimes, which I do enjoy doing, I am beginning to feel like I'm tagging along on the world's longest double date. Not that we're not enjoying ourselves, cause we really, really are. After the monsoon, any time that we're dry is a good time.

I feel as though I'm missing heaps, but it's been too long and I'm doing this freestyle, sans notes.

Hope everyone is well!!! Miss y'all!!!

Cancel that.

Yeah, I've changed my mind about Lao/Thai massage. L-O-V-E them. Our last night in Laos, Kaje and I were mangled from our tubing debacle. I felt like I was in a bad motor vehicle and/or waterskiing accident. So at Kaje's encouragement, I decided to give Lao massage another shot. And W-O-W was it ever fantastic. For $5.00 each, maybe the best massage I've ever had (really, really hope my RMT isn't reading this...). The guy on the other side of the curtain from Kaje and I was making noises that suggested that he was receiving a whole other kind of massage altogether...

Kaje and I are back in Bangkok now, where we've met up with Ange and Blair. Time's up, will blog again tomorrow!

xoxo

If there are no photos, did it actually happen?

What's this? Another blog so soon? Yes, that's exactly what it is. I need to write about tubing in Vang Vieng before the euphoria subsides and the memory of the day fades away. We took no camera, so besides the scrapes and bruises and the mud still in our ears and belly buttons, there are no mementos to remember the day by. Best write about it while it's still fresh.

We knew the day would be either terrific or terrifying when we arrived in Vang Vieng and we were sitting in one of the town's many, many covered but open-air restaurants (all of which play Friends DVDs on repeat) and our slow boat friends who had beat us to Vang Vieng would walk past and tell us of near-death experiences, lost possessions, and sore muscles. One person said it was one of the best days of his life, and I was a little skeptical.

But wow. Seriously, one of the funnest days ever. You rent a tube and get driven to a launch spot, where you drop your tube in the Mekong. You're not on the river for very long though, cause within probably 100 ft. you come to the first bar. At each bar, you're helped by Lao people in the water or thrown a rope with a waterbottle on the end of it. Each bar has either a zipline, a trapeze, or a slide that results in you dropping or falling into the river, and the first trapeze is supposed to be the scariest. I decided that I needed to try them all, and the first one (with only one mojito and half a beer in me to dull my nerves) was terrifying. I can't even really guess how high the first one was, but it was high. It was so difficult to make myself jump off the platform, because everyone at the bar (maybe 200 people) is watching each person go and either cheering for a good go or laughing at the belly-flops and mishaps. I did not want to be a mishap. I had finally prepared myself and had the trapeze solidly in my hands, but there were several tubes leaving the bar at that point and I had to wait for ages until the passed. I was shaking by the time I had to go and was afraid that I lacked the upper-body strength to hold on long enough to swing all the way out, swing back, and then swing back out and drop. Thankfully, my turn was successful and I instantly wanted to do it again. Some of the others weren't as exhilarating, but I did them all.

The atmosphere was so fun, and we drank and laughed and floated and met new people and people we'd met earlier in our travels. So much fun. The fourth bar was the mud bar, which was the most fun. It was pouring rain and there was a big mud volleyball pit with waist-deep water and mud where we played (yup, ballers, I played volleyball) and tackled each other and splashed around. I kept jumping out of there and going off the zipline at that bar to clean off, but by that point I was getting pretty inebriated and the current was pretty strong. Thankfully, I had a little Lao helped who kept throwing me a ring and pulling me in and every time he gave me the "I love you" signal and told me he loved me. He was so cute. And he saved my life probably three times that day, so I guess I love him too.

So if you're thinking that perhaps people tubing down rivers drunk and swinging off very high apparatuses into a fast-moving river (while drunk) is recipe for disaster, and I had pretty much come to that conclusion myself by the sixth bar, at which I fell off the trapeze prematurely cause I could no longer hold on. Thankfully, I paced myself a lot better than some of the other people, some of whom passed out in their tubes, etc. Kaje ended up puking on my leg, but I was so muddy and wet by that point that I really didn't care. Then, suddenly it got really really dark very suddenly and thinks got a little scary. We all grabbed our tubes and were ready to head out but they wouldn't let us cross this bridge, so they had free boats (kind of just a wooden raft) that we were supposed to use to cross. Upon the arrival of the first boat, about ten of us crowded onto it and the boat sank and Kaje and this British guy, Edward, started floating away into the dark. I was freaking a bit and yelling her name, but then I got pinned under the boat a bit against the rocks and by the time I got unpinned, I couldn't see Kaje any more. So I got across the river and was screaming after Kaje and she eventually casually came strolling up, all smiles, saying that Edward saved her life. We were both a bit too drunk to fully grasp the gravity of the sitaution, and we headed home for maybe the most hilarious shower I've ever had, Kaje and I spraying each other with the nozzle and trying to get the mud off of us. We didn't have a late night, cause nine hours of drinking was enough for us, and I really wanted to do it all again (with a camera) the next day. The next morning, though, we woke up hungover and mangled and it was pouring rain, and we weren't entirely sure that we could match or top our first Vang Vieng tubing experience, so we headed out.

I just wish we had taken a camera!!! It's really best that we didn't, because if we had, we doubtless would have lost it. In the course of our tubing day, we lost: both our shirts, both our pairs of flip flops, a few thousand kip, Kaje's tube, a couple layers of skin, a little bit of dignity, and nearly Kaje.

Perhaps it's for the best that there are no pictures...

How many years in Laos prison for kidnapping?

Thank Buddha for ginger gravol. Kaje and I just got off a bone-rattling journey from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng, our current location. For six hours, we drove at a death-defying speed in a "VIP" van packed like a sardine can along switchbacks, with goats, cows, pigs, chickens and children all over the roads and often narrowly missed. There are kids playing everywhere in Laos, including right on the roads, and they are one of my favorite things about this country. They run out to the road and wave and yell "Sabaidee!!" and have the brightest smiles. You'll drive by them when they're riding their bikes and they wave so enthusiastically that they get distracted from riding. I love them. Actually, I feel like a bit of a creep cause I can't stop staring at them, especially the little girls, and taking their pictures. And the monks too. I almost re-sprained my ankle the other day cause a bunch of young monks walked past and I fell off a curb trying to get their picture. I haven't considered at length what kind of trouble I would get into for kidnapping one, but alas I have no room in my backpack. If I were male and about thirty years older, I think this behaviour might be considered a problem...

Last time I blogged seems like ages and ages ago. From Bangkok we took an overnight bus to Chiang Mai, where I woke up to find that I had developed a serious, serious set of cankles. Kaje did a bit too, but I looked like I had elephantitis of the lower legs. Thankfully, they subsided after a couple days and I was saved the humiliation or torture of wearing long pants in this g.d. humidity. From Chiang Mai, we took a slow boat to Luang Prabang. The slow boat is a two-day journey on a big boat down the Mekong. It was a terrific way to see Laos, and was a lot of fun. We met lots of backpackers before and on the boat, and by the time we got to Luang Prabang it felt like we knew every backpacker we passed. Things got pretty rowdy on the boat though, to the point that people avoided staying at the same guesthouses as people from our crew. They kepy us entertained for two long days, though, so I appreciated their company. I always marvel at the drinking stamina/tolerance of Brits, Aussies, and the Irish...We did our best to keep up the first couple nights, hanging out in Luang Prabang's bars until they closed at 11:30 and then going to one of the few places allowed to sell booze after closing time--the bowling alley. That's what happens when you tear down Victoria's only bowling alley, people. I have to go to Laos to get my bowling fix. We bowled the first night among Thai locals and Lady Boys (soooo sweet...there was some disbelief among the men that this girl was really a boy, but it's all the knobby knees and the hands and feet...anyway, this ladyboy came up to me and grabbed my hair and compared it to a blonde streak in his/her hair. So sweet). That night, I only made it until 2am though. Kaje continued partying while I went home and nursed a fever. Obviously, when you get a fever somewhere like this, it's cause for concern. I laid there assuming the worst--malaria, dengue, typhoid, Japanese encephalitis--and wondering if cankles is a symptom of any of the above. Turned out it was just a run-of-the-mill cold, which is less dramatic but better, I think, for the outcome of this trip. The second night bowling, we weren't allowed to bowl because Bronwyn, a girl we'd been travelling with until today, got in an altercation with a bowling guy and called a girl who wanted to bowl with us a hooker, resulting in the people who ran the bowling alley stating that they hate white people (awwwwk-wwaaaaard....). Kaje was also going around smashing "cheers" with her beer bottle (Beer Lao...good stuff...and that's coming from a non-beer lover) and others' to the point that she smashed it and was banned from using bottles. Suffice it to say...no more bowling for us in Laos...


While in Luang Prabang, we took refuge from a torrential downpour and had our first traditional Lao massages. Mine was a touch disappointing, to be honest, cause the guy was waaaaaay too gentle. I kept wanting to say, "Come on, dude. Massage me like you mean it!" but he didn't really speak English so I just lay there doing mathematical calculations and figuring that it didn't matter if it was super gentle cause I could get ten of his massage's for the price of one of my RMT's massages at home, so what the hell? I kind of think doing math (and financial math no less) kind of defeats the purpose of a relaxation massage, but it was somehwat enjoyable none the less.



The day after our second night at the bowling alley, we managed to drag ourselves out of bed and get ourselves a tuk tuk (NOT a good idea when hungover) to a nearby waterfall, which was gorgeous. We hiked to the top, which was nothing short of challenging after a 4a.m. night, but it was well worth it.



My affinity for monk stalking got an excellent outlet this morning, when we got up and participated in the monks' collecting alms. At 6:00am (took the night off from bowling in order to make it up for it), there were hundreds of orange-clad monks walking in a procession down the streets, collecting their food for the day. We bought and gave them some bundles of rice in leaves and then just watched. Some of the monks here look not a day over 8, but apparently they have to be at least 14. I'm not sure if I believe it. Anyway, they're adorable and I'd probably kidnap one of them too if I could.



I adore Laos. The people are lovely, the food is terrific, the scenery is lush and green and beautiful. I wish we could stay much, much longer!!



I've decided to try and start writing shorter blogs more often because I've been trying to write this blog for days and get it all down and every time I sit down at the computer I feel overwhelmed and my mind goes blank. So from now on you can expect more regular, shorter blog posts...If anyone is reading...



Tomorrow we're doing the famous Vang Vieng tubing experience, which many a backpacker has raved about, some saying it was one of the best days of their life...we'll see...



Chels



RETRACTION: Please note that my blog of Sunday, October 19th contained an inaccuracy. Kaje would like me to clarify that she was neither gloomy nor miserable upon arriving in Thailand. The part about my gloom and misery, however, was entirely accurate.

Please forward all future mail...

...to Koh Chang, Thailand. You'll find me in a hammock in a Thai hut-style gazebo restaurant/bar on Lonely Beach, drinking delish banana shakes and reading my book and watching the spectacular sunsets. Once in a while, when the heat gets unbearable, I take a dip in the ocean, which is pretty much like bath water, and hope that "my" hammock is still available when I get out of the sea. Of late, I haven't been spending much time on the beach because I got a bit of an all-over burn our second day on Koh Chang...although I was wearing SPF 30, it seems my malaria pills have in fact made me more sensitive to the sun. Just what an albino like me needs, hey? Actually, the burn is fading into quite the tan...my version of a tan, that is.

We've spent quite a bit of our time in the last days with a very, very well-travelled British girl named Laura. We met her when she was laying in a neighbouring hammock and had a fresh coconut with a straw delivered to her table. I asked about it, she offered me a try, and we've all been "mates" ever since...that's one thing I love about backpacking--how quickly friendships begin, often with little more basis than the fact that you are both backpacking and both speak English...anyway, at night we've all been hanging out and having drinks. Kaje and I have finally managed to stay up past 9 p.m., which has been a great accomplishment. Our first night in our bungalow in Lonely Beach, though, we had an incredibly rustic room with gaps between the roof and the walls. In the night, there was the most bizarre, loud honking-type sound that sounded like it was right in our room. I was going to turn on the light but Kaje was like, "Don't! I don't want to see it!" so we didn't. When it happened again later, I did turn on the light but there was nothing there. It was creepy. We switched to a more enclosed, air-conditioned room the next day.

Actually, cancel that about my mail because I lied. We're in Bangkok now. I wrote that first part in my head while laying in my hammock but never got around to actually posting it because it would have required me to actually leave my hammock. Although we were planning on staying on Koh Chang for a week, Kaje and I have reworked our plan and are heading to Laos early in order to ensure that we have enough time to do the country justice. Yesterday, we reluctantly left Koh Chang. We took a "taxi" (a pick up truck with benches in the back) to the ferry but our driver was dicking around trying to find some more tourists to pick up and it took forever to get to the pier and when we did, the ferry had already pulled away...we were all moaning and berating our taxi driver because we had missed the connecting bus to Bangkok when the ferry threw 'er in reverse and came back for us. It was awesome. Can you imagine BC Ferries doing that for half a dozen tourists? Right, no, they won't let you on board if you're only eight minutes early for a ferry...

The bus ride was VIP, which the Lonely Planet said was the closest thing we'll ever get to feeling like a rock star. The only thing rock star about this bus was the fact that it had gaudy vibrantly coloured window dressings and multi-coloured lights. The bus leaked tons and was the most rattly thing ever. Laura tells em that if I found that travel experience miserable, I'm in for quite the shock in Laos and Cambodia. Bring it on. At least puking out the window of a bus or train will make for some blog material.

At a road stop on the way in, Laura and Kaje went to use the bathroom. Laura went into the first stall and Kaje went into the second. In Kaje's, there was no toilet or hole but only a big pile of bowling-ball sized rocks. Kaje, having never used a squatter before, was perplexed and asked Laura if she was just supposed to pee on the pile of rocks. hahahahahahahaha. Love it.

Tonight at dinner, a cockroach ran up my leg and into my gauchos. It was traumatizing.

Is it just me or are my blogs more boring this time around? No shenanigans yet, is the problem...Things just go too damn smoothly in Thailand!

Signing off....

And I'm back...

Day Two: I just came in from a swim in the Gulf of Thailand off the island of Koh Chang, and I finally remember why I came here. If you had asked me twenty-four hours ago, I would not have. It was a rough go the first thirty-six hours. I'd forgotten how hard jetlag can hit, how gloomy and miserable Kaje and I can get when jetlagged, and how culture shock can make you feel physically ill. This much I already knew. What I didn't know was how terrible Bangkok would be. Someone once told me that Bangkok is the a-hole of the Eastern World. I probably should reserve judgement until I return when I'm not jetlagged, but my first impression wasn't positive. My instinct was to get out of there as quickly as possible, and that's what we did.

I'm going to write again soon, because this blog is a little more impromptu than they usually are. We are probably going to stay on Koh Chang for a week, and I can't imagine that we'll be getting up to much in the way of shenanigans just yet because the jetlag and heat are still making me want to sleep more than anything else.

More exciting stuff to come, I promise!

Chels

P.S. It's hot here. Really, really bloody hot.

Thank-you, St. Christopher

So it's all over. I'm home. Four days late and with tonsillitis, but I made it in one ragged piece. Our last night in London, we met up with 88 from Portugal and his friends and slept in, almost missing our flight...except that our flight turned out not to exist. Zoom cancelled it and our travel agency neglected to tell us, so we spent two nights in Gatwick airport (three for Kaje) and two extra nights wasting time in London, very dejected and disappointed. I had finally made peace with going home, and missing my time in Victoria and spending extra time in a cripplingly expensive city was a pretty rotten end...to a fantastic trip.

So here it is:

In 102 days, I visited 29 cities/towns in 16 countries.

I slept in 42 beds; on 4 buses, 2 ferries, and 3 trains; in 2 airports and 1 train station; in a treehouse and in a cave.

I got stung by a wasp, bitten by many bedbugs, got food poisoning, and had an eye infection.

I had to beg for money on two separate occasions.

I lit my hair on fire, broke my glasses, lost my bank card, and dropped my camera off a one-storey balcony.

My travel companion got robbed and we were forced to separate for a month.

I got yelled at by a Portugeuse Surf Nazi, a Finnish albino, and an old Portugeuse woman.

I went to prison.

I am now home, unemployed, ill, and massively in debt.

IT WAS SO WORTH IT.


Until next time (i.e. until I can drag myself out of debt and go on my next adventure)...

European Chelsea

One More for the Road

OMG. I am writing my last on-the-road blog. This is it, folks. Except for the emotional jetlagged email I will no doubt write when I get home. I am in disbelief.

Last I wrote we were in Prague. Trying to like beer. Never did succeed in that regard, but I did drink a total of I believe 7 beer on this trip. Pretty good, I think. Kaje liked to pour some of mine into hers when I was turned away though, and I would turn back and be pleased to discover that I had yet to choke down less than I had thought...So how much beer I actually consumed, I couldn´t really say. Anyway, Prague was good. We met a couple young American student photographers in our hostel and went out with them. We started at Banditos, the Mexican bar across the street where we ate like seventy-four meals and had many cocktails, one of which had a bunch of absinthe in it. Crazy and very potent stuff. Then we went to an underground bar called Kenny´s Music Island, owned by an illegal Nigerian immigrant named Kenny who sold weed over the counter. Yeah, you read that right, and no, weed is not legal in Prague. I think I have said all that I wanted to say about Prague. To sum up: I loved it. Almost as much as Paris. It is a close second.

After Prague, we went to Berlin, although only for a day, which was not enough for a city with that much going on. We did a free walking tour with a yelling kiwi guy with a spitting problem...not so pleasant in places like Parisser Platz. He was a really good guide though, and took us to all the highlights. Berlin has so much history, obviously, with Hitler and all that, and the Berlin partition during the Cold War. The Holocaust Memorial was really cool to see--it just opened after 7 years of construction and red tape. I´ll post a picture of that and everything else in my last emotional jetlagged post...All in all, Berlin: cool city.

OK, where to next? Seriously, it feels like we have been everywhere in the last month. Right, Amsterdam. On our way to Amsterdam, we made the mistake of not paying attention to which train car we were getting onto. Unfortunately, our train split somewhere along the way and we were on the wrong half of it. But German people are really nice, and three different incredibly helpful German people helped us make our train, wihch we had to run for...like, fast, with our packs on. First time we have had to do that, surprisingly, since we come close to missing every single train we take.

So Amsterdam was great. Yada yada yada. Crazy. I nearly got hit by a tram...like, really really close. I had to leap out of the way because it was ringing its bell. Kaje was on the other side and thought I was a goner.

Does this blog feel as scattered and random to you as it does to me? That´s what happens when you do a mad dash through a whole bunch of big cities. It is hard to keep straight and very hard to write a cohesive and coherent blog about. So this is what you are getting instead.

Next was Paris. Kaje almost peed her pants when she saw the Eiffel Tower. We met up with Aaron from Vienna and went to the Eiffel-Tower-Picture-Taking-Spot and took 7,509 pictures. I am not kidding. I am fairly sure that we have an entire GB of photos of the Eiffel Tower by itself. With and without lights. Day at night. Kaje in front of it. Me in front of it. Me and Kaje in front of it. Standing, squatting, sitting, lying down, standing on our heads. It was ridiculous. In fact, there was a couple parked at this spot (this place had Park ´n Pash written all over it) and they were laughing at us. We spent three and a half days in Paris, and I reckon about two of those were at the Eiffel Tower. We did manage to do some other things in Paris. Kaje went off and did some Paris things that I had done before and I just wandered around and enjoyed Paris. This place means a lot to me, I think because it is where I had my (shamelessly quoting Oprah) AHA moment on my last trip--where Alyson left me and I decided to stay, etc. Love this place. We went to a photo exhibit of Robert Doisneau´s photos (the guy who took the famous photo of the couple kissing...not the war one, but the one where the guy is dipping the girl) and it was great. Anyway, to sum up, Paris: fantastic. Still my favorite city.

Our next stop was unplanned before the trip. We wanted to see the German Christmas Markets and by the time we got to Berlin, they weren´t open yet. So we decided to stop by Cologne on our way to Frankfurt, to fly out. Cologne is where our friend Tobs lives. In order to explain why we decided to go to Cologne over every other place in Germany, you have to understand why we love Tobs so much. In order to explain that, we have to have our first...blog...REWIND...back to Rome...

OK, one of our final nights in Rome, we got moved to our third room in that hostel and met our new roommates, including Tobias from Germany and Emily from Australia. There were two other guys too but they were never around when we were, so we hadn´t met them. So one night, after several nights out until 3, 4, and 5am, we decided to spend a night in and catch up on our sleep. We went to be at 11 and passed out...then, in the middle of the night, I wake up (bottom bunk) to see a big, big man standing next to our bed, and Kaje (top bunk) having a little hissy. Turns out, Kaje woke up to find this big Frankenstein-sized man with his hand in her bed, sliding it towards her. So she (naturally) says really loudly, ¨Who are you? WHO ARE YOU?¨I thought this was a really funny thing to say to a guy who may or may not be trying to accost you, like ¨Who passes there? Identify thyself!¨ kind of thing, so I started to laugh. The Frankenstein´s Monster man disappears into the bathroom for a bit, then comes back into the room and is asleep in seconds. So Kaje is freaking out and she has woken up Em and Tobs and we all laugh and then Frankenstein starts snoring. Like, you have never heard snoring like this before in your life. Like, this guy needs an entire respiratory tract replacement because his is failing miserably. It was disgusting and loud and it kept the four of us up all night, from four until they left at eight. It was one of the worst but one of the funniest nights in a hostel on this trip, because we spent the whole night laughing. Kaje at one point called us ¨roomies¨and Tobs just loved this and used the word like every fifth word--imagine Arnold Schwartenegger saying ¨Roooooooomies¨ in his accent and you will appreciate how funny this is. So this night bonded us and we spent the next day with our little brother Tobs (he´s 19) and he uses the most awkward English phrases but is so happy and enthusiastic all the time, he is great. He sounds like he uses his German-English dictionary/thesaurus for everything and just picks the wrong words sometimes. He is good times, probably the most endearing person we have met on this trip.

So, naturally, we had to go see him. He and his younger brother Christian (Kiki to us), who is 18 but acts like he is about 43, came and met us at the train station in Cologne and took us around. We went to the Christmas markets, drank some gluvine (hot red wine...delicious) and ate traditional German food (enormous sausages) and drank beer (yuck) and laughed at our ¨Running gags¨(what Tobs calls our inside jokes). Then we went to Dortmund, a nearby city, where the boys live, and stayed at their house, which was so nice. Their parents were incredibly sweet and his mom drove us to the train station early in the morning to catch our train to the airport in Frankfurt. We stayed in a real house with a real family and rode in a real car. It was so nice, and made me realize that I might be OK with going home at this point.

Actually, this is how I feel about it...Hopefully those of you who are readers understand this feeling...

It is like when you are reading a really really great book and you get near the end and you don´t want it to end because then it will be over and you might not find another book this good for a long while. But then, you are near the end and you want to finish it, just to be done and see how it all turns out.

That is how I feel about the trip ending. We are on the home stretch. Less than a week to go, in the Canary Islands on what is meant to be a sunny beach rest period , except that it is cloudy and chilly (we had one great day...hopefully there will be more). We are both pretty burnt out, but trying to enjoy every last minute until our flight on Saturday...

Unbelievable.

Can´t wait to see you all!

Love,
Chels

Praha? Czech!

I know, I know, it has been awhile. That is because nothing particularly blog-worthy has happened since I last wrote. No incarcerations. No robberies. No jumping off cliffs. No begging for money from random tourists. We have been eating well, drinking lots of red wine, and wandering around nice cities. Some people might call this a trip-gone-smoothly. I call it poor blog material. And anything that is blog-worthy is not blog-friendly, you know? Life is hard.

So last time I wrote, I was in Bosnia. I don't believe I talked about our last night in Sarajevo, when this Aussie guy called Greg invited us to this wine party. At the mention of wine, Kaje and I were, of course, keen, so we were all over it. Turned out to be one of the best deals of the trip. We paid the equivalent of 10 euros and got a free wine glass and got unlimited wine from a bunch of wineries all over Croatia, Bosnia, and Hercegovina (sp?). AND there were tons of canapes, all made with truffles...You know, those fancy things worth thousands of dollars because only hogs can dig them up from under the ground? (I think that's the story). So we ate lots and drank lots and hung out with the sophisticated artsy crowd of Sarajevo. Yes, we were the least sophisticated people there, by a considerable and very visible margin. I was wearing jeans and Uggs and a yoga zip-up...I was way underdressed and I was a bit too excited about the bottomless wine glass. There were pretty cigarette rep girls wandering around in red cocktail dresses giving free cigarettes and lighting them for you. Greg was all over that. I smoked a couple, due to massive peer pressure from Greg and the fag rep girls. And Sadam Hussein was there. There is a picture on Shutterfly with him in it. Kaje is in the foreground, laughing, and he is in the background. That was the day he got sentenced to death, so I can understand why he needed to go out drinking. After we closed down the party, we went to the place where Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated, sparking the beginning of WWI, and re-enacted the assassination. Is that rude?

Next day, we headed to Mostar, where I wrote the last blog. It is a town on a river with a famous bridge. During the Bosnian War, the Muslims and the Croats (Christians) banded together to oust the Serbs, then turned on each other and bombed and shelled each other, including the bridge. It's been rebuilt now, but the Muslims and Christians still live on opposite sides of the river and hate each other. The city, like Sarajevo, is full of bombed-out buildings and there are bullet holes everywhere.

We finally made it to Dubrovnik, Croatia, after days and days of trying to get there. It was really pretty, but really dead. There's really not that much to say about Croatia, to be honest. We ate four Italian meals, drank a lot of red wine, saw a beautiful sunset, hung out beside some very turquoise water. Could have been very romantic...but, alas, there were no guys around. We headed up to Split and took a ferry back to Italy, where we went straight to Florence for some more fabulous meals, some more wine, loads of shopping, and a couple CRAZY nights playing asshole with a motley crew of maniacs. I'm not kidding about it being crazy. I would say it was about as crazy as a night playing cards in a hostel can get. Crazy.

Next was Vienna, which was beautiful. We wandered around, saw the Sigmund Freud Museum (which bored the bejesus out of me...the coach isn't there...it's just a bunch of photos and report cards and books in display cases...I thought there would at least be some Phallic ink blots or something, but nothing), the Belvedere (where the famous Klimt painting "The Kiss" is...very, very cool to see in person). We drank coffee in Cafe Central, where Freud, Lenin, and Trotsky used to play chess, and went to the opera "La Boheme" (the opera on which Rent is based). We got standing spots though, and we were exhausted (hungover) and way underdressed (again) so we only stayed for the first act. Plus we couldn't see much, because all the action was on the 1/3 of the stage that we couldn't see. Which is probably why our entry was only 2 euros. It was pretty cool just to see the inside of the opera house, though. And to see a sequence from Rent, only without the heroin and HIV and homosexuality.

We had one crazy night in Vienna, thanks to Red Bull. Red Bull comes from Austria, so it is really cheap there, and Kaje and I were a little low-energy, so RB&V was the drink of the night...I ended up (accidentally) having seven Red Bull, which beats my record from last summer, and had some strange physiological and psychological effects. (Calm down, Mom, I'm fine. My heart has resumed its normal beating pattern and the shakes have subsided). Anyway, we had a good time and stayed up very, very late. So when we finally started to fade and went back to the room, four of us in our dorm were having a little chat and trying to find my camera, which was lost temporarily. Unfortunately, I'm realizing that I can't tell this story without being able to affect an angry Finnish accent and posting a picture of our long-haired Albino Finnish roommate, who we called Adolf. We were buds with Adolf earlier in the night, but he had gone to bed early as he had to work the next morning. See, Adolf actually lives in Vienna, but stays in a hostel. So we don't really have that much sympathy for him. He is staying in a dorm. In a youth hostel. Noise happens. So anyway, we're all making our way to bed and looking for my camera (overhead lights were off) and Adolph, who wears a black satin sleep mask over his eyes, sits upright in bed and yells (imagine the white-blonde ponytail, the sleep mask, and the Finnish accent now) "F*** you, asshole!" Initially, we froze in confusion. He said asshole, singular. Who was he addressing? Then he followed up with, "Take your town meeting somewhere else!" Tom (T-Dot), our Kiwi roommate, said, "What's a town meeting?" And Adolph said, "It's where people go to talk a lot." We thought this was pretty hysterically funny, so Adolph didn't get the response (silence) that he was hoping for. He moved out of our room the next day.

We are in Prague now, and it is beautiful. It is my favourite city yet in Europe...Paris has been bumped. We haven't had loads of fun yet, but I am making a valiant effort to like beer. I figure that if I am going to become a beer-drinker, the Czech Republic is the place to do it...But I don't think it's in the cards for me. I'll probably keep faking it as long as I'm here, though. It's cheaper than water...

The end of this trip is coming way, way too quickly.

I miss you all!

Love,
Chels

Without further adieu...

OK, OK, I get it. You want pictures. I dont know if this is because of the whole "a picture is worth a thousand words" deal or if you would just rather see some pictures than read my looooong verbose blog posts, but here is a start. If this works. We all know how much I suck at computers.

This is a very random assortment and I know there are some duplicates. I will add more and put some captions on them when I have time/figure out how. The older people in the photos, to answer many many questions, are not fellow inmates but two homeless people who lived in our hotel in Thessaloniki (possibly not so much a hotel as a homeless shelter). They were hilarious. The video we have of them is priceless. The first are from London TWO months ago, the beach ones are from Sardinia, then most are recent...prison, etc. They will all be explained in due time. This is just a taster...

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AYt2jZs5Zs2Llw


Hope this works. Otherwise you will have to wait some more.

Does This Mean I Have a Criminal Record?

Never in my life have I been so at risk for a deep vein thrombosis (DVT). For those of you readers who are doctors, MOAs or die-hard fans of Greys Anatomy, a DVT is a blood clot that forms in your leg--often after long periods of inactivity--that can travel to your lungs and kill you. I have spent the last three days sitting down. Literally I am pretty sure that I could count the number of steps I have taken in the last three days.

So last you heard from me, Kaje and I were preparing to take a 20-hour train to Zagreb, Croatia. Well, Eastern Europe threw us quite the little curveball in the form of a stern customs official 1.5 hours in to our journey. We were asleep when he came to ask for our passports, then took a look and said, "We have problem." We didnt even know what country we were leaving or entering, but as it turns out, it was the Former Yugloslav Republic of Macedonia (I wrote this out instead of "Macedonia" because it sounds a lot more sinister, no? And sinister is what it was...) and Canadians are not so well beloved by Macedonia. We apparently did not have the requisite paperwork, which needs to be applied for 48 hours in advance at a consulate. So the police officer ordered Kaje and I to get our luggage and deboard the train. I am thinking that we can just give him some money, but instead he put us in jail. OK, not jail jail, but a holding cell in the police station--an 8 by 10 room that was regularly monitored by angry Macedonians. We were left in there for 13 hours without food or water (although we did get a heater, which was nice because it was FREEZING) and were only allowed to leave to use the washroom. It was insane. At first, Kaje and I did all we could do--laughed a lot at the weirdness of being in JAIL, said "dont drop the soap" when she went to the bathroom, did Sudoku puzzles, and ate bananas and Nutella. That worked for about six hours. Then the angry Macedonian said that we would be extradited back to Thessaloniki at 5pm (OK, extradited wasnt the word she used but it seems appropriate). 5pm came and went...6...7...then we were told that the train that was supposed to come was a few hours late as it was encountering troubles at the Yugoslavian border and would not be there until 9 or 9:30. This is where I started getting angry and yelling. Kaje kept saying that she really wished we had a pack of cigarettes because it would just be really appropriate to chain smoke in jail...especially when I was having one of my little rants.) The time kept slipping by, no one was telling us anything, the staff changed over, they had our passports, and...the train that was supposed to be coming for us (the only train) was stuck at the border of a country that DOES NOT EXIST. This concerned me a good deal. Tod, our new American friend who reads Platoan philosophy on train rides, put it best: If a train is stuck in a country that isn`t, is the train? Hmmmm...So I started ranting and getting really paranoid. And then, suddenly, it was over. A disappointingly friendly police officer (because really, it makes for a much better story if we get treated badly the whole way) escorted us onto a train, gave us our passports, and said good night. In our passports, we now have a Macedonian entry stamp with another big "REJECTED" (or whatever) stamped over top.

We had to spend the night in the train station that night, which wasnt cool, especially if you remember my last post about lack of sleep and showers...So after arriving back at Square One in Thessaloniki at 1am (17 hours after leaving) we slept in the very dodgy, very cold train station and got on a train to Sofiya, Bulgaria early the next morning. This train was supposed to arrive at about noon, in time for us to transfer to Belgrade and on to Zagreb, but again things did not go according to plan. Our train broke, had to have its engine replaced (this is only beginning of Eastern European dodginess, seriously), then sat at EU customs and Bulgarian customs for well over an hour each. So we arrived four hours late, missing our connection. We had met some new friends on the train--a Kiwi Maori girl named Pita and an American dude (the eleventh child in his family!) named Tod. They were a lot of fun, and honestly were a godsend for this situation. It was -10 in Sofiya and could not have been much warmer inside the station, where we had to wait for five hours. So we picked up a Slovakian dude named Lubor and a British chap named Oliver and drank liters and liters of cheap Bulgarian red wine from plastic 2L jugs. It was actuallz really decent wine and we had a good laugh, waiting there and spending the equivalent of 10€ (which is about 19 of their currency...which we called the Bulgo) on more food than the two of us could have hoped to eat and six hot chocolates from McDicks (a McDonalds, by the way, that did not have fries or burgers...crazy). It was actually a pretty fun time, considering the fact that we were freezing in the train station (despite wearing about fourteen layers each) of a country that we never planned or wanted to visit. We all got on an overnight train to Belgrade that night, where Kaje passed out in her bunk to the degree that every time one of the millions of customs officials came to our cabin, she didnt wake up, despite yelling and poking. The Serbian customs man was all concerned and asked me, "What is wrong? She is ill?"

We all had to part ways this morning in Belgrade, which was quite sad. Going through an experience like Eastern Europe with people reallz brings you together...like war, you know? So Kaje and I jumped on a bus to Sarajevo, which is where we are now...

(That last part was all written two nights ago and saved because I was too exhausted to type anymore. It is now November 5 and I will continue where I left off...)

Sarajevo was amazing. It was incredible to see a place that so recently was at war, and that has evidence of this fact all over the city. We took a tour and visited to tunnel where Sarajevoans passed through to Bosnian Free Territory during the siege, for food and water. It was FREEZING and during the four years that Sarajevo was surrounded by Serbs, they had no water and no electricity, and there were daily shellings and bombings. There are bullet holes in buildings all over the city, marks in the sidewalks where bombs exploded (many of which are filled with red paint and called "Sarajevo Roses") and buildings completely gutted by bombs. On our way into the city, the guy from our hostel who picked us up at the station did not speak any English but every time we passed a building that had been bombed, he would point, make a bomb sound effect, and say matter-of-factly, "No money. No resolution." We thought this was pretty funny but then when you spend some time in the city, it isnt funny at all. The city is beautiful and the people are obviously pretty amazing. The guy at our hostel said that it was the best and worst time of his life, because the people of the city--who could have fled if they wanted to--stuck together in a way he has never seen before. Sarajevo is the coolest mix of religions--it is known for its religious tolerance. There are mosques, Jewish synagogues, and Christian churches within a square mile of each other, and our tour guide said that the most relevant question you can ask and the best way you can judge whether you like them is not by asking which religion or ethnic group they belong to, but by asking which football team they cheer for. I could rave about the city lots more, but I wont...I will just say that it is difficult to describe what is so special about Sarajevo, but it is really, really special.

OK, there is much more to say, but no time or energy to say it. More later!

Love you all!
Chels

Teasugaranddenim, Turkiye

If you're wondering, "Tea-sugar-and-denim" is how tourism people tell lingustically-challenged English-speakers to say for "thank-you" in Turkish. It sounds close enough. You'd think we'd manage to learn at least one word properly in each country, but Turkish is a challenge.

If any of you is in the least bit envious of my adventures in Europe, please consider the following. In the past two weeks I have:
-taken five overnight buses;
-slept in a bed infested with bed bugs;
-slept alternately upright and on the floor of the Athens airport;
-had 1 hot shower. You can't get bloody hot water in Turkey. Even in Pamukkale, the place that is positively bubbling over with hot mineral water, you can't get a hot shower. Ironic.

I am dirty. I am exhausted. I probably smell, but am so used to it that I don't even know it. (Just kidding, I smell like daisies).

But I love this place...especially Turkey. I am back on EU soil now, having reluctantly left Turkey three days ago. I shed a tear as I sailed away.

Olympos was terrific but starting to slow down. The first night there, I hung out with two Argentinian girls living in London and a Spanish dude from Barcelona. I was happy to just listen to them speak Spanish most of the time but they all spoke fantastic English as well. I really have to get my French skills polished up again. I feel shamed by my monolingualism when everyone in Europe needs fingers--sometimes on both hands--to count all the languages they speak. Shame. We all went up to the Chimaera, these mythological fires up this mountain. They're campfire-sized fires that perpetually burn and scientists don't know why. It smells like there is some sort of gas involved but it is supposed to have something to do with an ancient god being imprisoned by the mountain...or something. Educational, hey? Whatever, it was cool. Olympos is supposed to be pretty crazy but there wasn't that much going on when I was there, especially the second night. I was quite ill anyway that night...So Olympos wasn't quite what I expected but it was relaxing and mellow and now I can say that I have stayed in a bona fide treehouse. Check that off the life's to-do list...

Speaking of which, a couple days later I checked a big one of the life's to-do. I went paragliding in Oludeniz, this amazing beach near Fethiye. It's said to be the best place to do it in the world and I believe it. It was spectacular. Right before I was meant to go, I thought about my dad going parasailing in Mexico and looking down and seeing a big knot tying two pieces of rope together...I wondered if Turkey was more or less safety-conscious than Mexico, but didn't have time to really think that one through because I was ordered to run down this mountain slope...I was freaked as I started running but then I figured that I was strapped to a presumably-not-suicidal guy, so he probably checked and double-checked all equipment with due dilligence. It was a pretty cool feeling, running, running, running ("Keep running!" Mel, my "pilot" kept saying) and then you're running but your feet aren't touching the ground anymore and you lift off. Very cool. Mel got a little ballsy towards the end and started doing acrobatics and it made me feel really ill so we had to land...but it was amazing. It is like floating. Coolest way to end my time in Turkey...That, and a late late LATE night out with a massive group of Canadian girls from my hostel, led by the hostel's Turkish staff. Trouble, those Turkish boys. Nothing but trouble. I finally got to smoke the Turkish water pipe but I didn't really like it much. Every time I smoked it (because it is so easy to smoke) it gave me a major headrush and made me dizzy. Orhan, the hostel guy, told me that he had had the waiter put hash in the pipe, and everyone was laughing at me (they were all older than me and were laughing at me like I was this foolish young girl) becaues they thought that I thought I was high. All I felt was a headrush from all the tobacco, being the one person in Europe who doesn't smoke. Everyone kept telling me how "cute" I was. Not cool. But a good night all the same, and no help to my sleep deprivation.

I am in Thessaloniki now, waiting for Kaje to arrive by train this afternoon. It is three weeks to the day since we split up and I am stoked to be a duo again. I love how many cool people I have met in the last two weeks, but it gets sad saying good-bye to people every day or two. Tomorrow morning we leave on a 20-hour train ride to Croatia...I am going to try to sleep the entire way.

Love,
chelsea

I'm working on the pics but the last three internet cafes I have used don't have USB ports. You don't believe me anymore, do you? You think I'm making all these people and places up...

Turkısh Delıght

Day 8 ın Turkey and I have not yet been bombed or kılled. Take that, all you skeptıcs.

The last you heard from me, I was on my way to a Turkısh bath, an actıvıty that my new New Zealander frıend Holly suggested to me because ıt was POURING raın (actually not long after I publıshed that post the power went out and stayed out all afternoon and the streets started floodıng). At that poınt I dıdnt thınk the lıghts would go back on ın tıme for the Turkısh bath and I sat ın the damp terrace of my hostel under my towel--poor excuse for a blanket--and thought ın despaır that I would never be warm agaın. Wrong. The lıghts went back on twenty mınutes before I was due to meet Holly and I am so glad they dıd. The Turkısh bath was fabulous. We went to one ın a hotel rather than the more tradıtıonal one ın Fethıye town because we were told that "tradıtıonal" mıght be Turkısh for "lax hygıene standards." They gıve you thıs plaıd tablecloth-lıke thıng to wrap yourself ın. I had brought bıkını bottoms because I knew that there would be people watchıng and I can go European ın the sense that I dont mınd takıng my top off but the bottoms stay on...I'm a good gırl, remember. Holly dıd not realıze that I was doıng thıs and went naked but ran back and put her underwear on when she saw what goes on the ınner chamber...

So here ıs how ıt goes. You sıt ın thıs round marble steam room wıth seats around the perımeter and steam whıle the staff (all male) ın the mıddle (also ın tablecloths) work. We waıted for ages and were startıng to feel pretty loopy and neglected but ıt turns out the old guy ın charge was doıng ıt for our prıvacy so we dıdnt have any pervy men watchıng. Whıch was nıce because they lay you out on thıs mıddle marble bench thıngy and lıterally scrub you down from head to toe wıth these exfolıatıng gloves and flıp you thıs way and that...It felt really strange at fırst. The guy who was scrubbıng me was lıke 20 years old tops and was very strange lookıng. It was a bıt uncomfortable at fırst but we both got really ınto ıt. You should see how much dead skın rolls off you ın layers. It ıs sıck. At fırst I thought ıt was just me and that the unfortunate-lookıng attendant guy was judgıng me quıte harshly but Holly had major skın moltage too. Maybe ıt's just backpackers...Unfortunately ıt scrubbed off the bıt of tan that I actually had (serıously I was accumulatıng color...very very slowly but I had 5 weeks' Medıterranean sun goıng on....GONE). After that you go ın thıs serenıty pool thıng (very cold) for a couple mınutes then you come back for bubble actıon and massage. They take thıs mesh bag and put ıt ın soapy water and then blow ın ıt and ıt makes a huge bag of warm bubble-bathy-bubbles, whıch they squeeze out all over you. It feels so cool, havıng the bubbles roll all over you, and they massage you through the bubbles. Then they rınse you wıth warm water, wash your haır, and exfolıate your feet a bıt. Then they wrap you all up ın towels and table cloths head to foot, plant you on leather chaıse loungers for an hour and let you dry off and chıll out whıle you drınk Turkısh apple tea (SO good). Then the old guy--because he was a bıt sweet on Holly I thınk--gave us a mud facıal, whıch was not supposed to be ıncluded, and then moısturızed our faces and gave us each a head massage. Then ınstead of lettıng us walk home he called the hotel car servıce and had ıt drıve us to the bus statıon. It seemed a shame, gettıng so squeaky clean for a 12 hour overnıght bus rıde. I was defınıtely the cleanest gırl on that bus but that ıs not sayıng much really, ıs ıt? To sum up: Turkısh bath about the best 25 Turkısh Lıra (12.5o euros) I have ever spent. Too bad I am already dırty agaın.

So I booked ıt to Istanbul ın hopes of better weather, and got ıt. It was beautıful there, and buzzıng. It was the fınal weekend of Ramadan, whıch meant that people were startıng to party ın antıcıpatıon of the holıday and beıng able to eat and drınk agaın. It was a pretty cool tıme to be there because everythıng was lıt up and pretty. The one grıpe I have about Ramadan though ıs the frıggın' 10-year-old drummer boys who walk around the streets beatıng theır drums at 4am to wake everyone up to eat before sunrıse. Fırst of all, only 20% of the Turkısh populatıon actually fasts relıgıously. Second, pretty sure they have alarm clocks. Thırd, the sun comes up at 6:30 or somethıng rıght now. Wake us up at 6! On the fınal day of Ramadan the drummer boy goes around kınd of trıck-or-treatıng, and people gıve hım treats and money for provıdıng the servıce. If he came to me I would gıve hım an apple wıth a razorblade ın ıt. Of course I'm kıddıng. That ıs just the twısted sense of humor of a gırl who gets woken up at 4am every nıght...

So Istanbul was gorgeous. The skylıne ıs unreal, especıally at sunset. I could not capture ıt photographıcally, but ıt was amazıng. The Blue Mosque was absolutely beautıful ınsıde and out. I could not belıeve that the women had a tıny lıttle room at the back to pray ın, but I am not goıng to take that subject on...I was so over Catholıc churches by the tıme I got to Turkey but mosques are pretty cool. My second day there I spent a rıdıculous amount of tıme ın the Grand Bazaar wıth a bıg Aussıe boy named Mıtch. I was so glad he was there because wıthout hım I would have been eaten alıve. Fırst of all I would have bought everythıng for theır fırst asked prıce, whereas wıth hım I paıd about 25 to 40% of what they asked for. Plus the male attentıon that I was so pıssed off about ın Greece ıs consıderably worse ın Istanbul. They actually follow you down the street and then they keep poppıng everywhere and callıng your name (whıch you now realıze you should not have gıven them). At the same tıme the Turkısh people are really ıncredıbly kınd but ıt ıs hard at fırst to decıpher whıch ones are sleazy and lookıng for somethıng more (to sell you a carpet or have a drınk and whatnot) and whıch are nıce...Anyway Mıtch deflected all that--he actually got all the attentıon from the guys ın the Bazaar, who kept tellıng hım what a lucky man he was. That was funny cause he ıs only 18. Anyway the bazaar was awesome. The gold just gleams and ıt ıs massıve--I thınk there are 2400 stores or somethıng. That nıght we went out partyıng ın Taxım Square, and got home as the Lıttle Drummer Boy was out and about...

I dıdn't do much else ın Istanbul except wander around and hang out wıth the people at the hostel--a very cool crowd. My last day there I was a hurtın' unıt and so I walked slowly around the cıty and then got on another overnıght bus (worst way of travellıng ımagınable but necessary to do such a bıg country ın such a short perıod of tıme) to Cappadoccıa, a regıon ın Central Turkey. Honestly you should see thıs landscape. I thınk ıt ıs fınally tıme to put some pıctures up because I cannot descrıbe thıs place or the place where I am rıght now. The landscape ıs so dramatıc--ıt was all created by a huge volcanıc explosıon mıllıons of years ago and the result ıs the crazıest place I have seen. There are these formatıons called "Faıry Chımneys" whıch are these towers of volcanıc rock and these valleys that are all rıppled and layered that look lıke merıngue dollops...And there are caves everywhere, created by early Chrıstıans for protectıon and to practıce theır relıgıon on the downlow. They used chısels to make these massıve ıntrıcate houses and churches wıth columns and domes...As some of you know, feats of engıneerıng blow me away (because I can't even fathom the process of buıldıng them...lıke the London Underground...and THAT was done wıth technology lıke jackhammers) so thıs place left me dumbstruck. There are also underground cıtıes that go up to 12 floors down wıth bathrooms and wınerıes and kıtchens etc...All done ın the 6th-12th centurıes...You have to see ıt to belıeve ıt. I took two days of tours of Cappadoccıa wıth the same group, whıch was actually pretty cool. Really good group from all over the world and of all dıfferent ages. The tour guıde, Ahmet, was so funny and had the funnıest accent but he fancıed me and ıt all was a bıt awkward. He kept askıng me to have dınner wıth hım but I had made plans wıth these Canadıans I had met and all the moms ın the group kept sayıng "Don't you dare go." So I saıd no and he turned on me a bıt the second day. It was sad because he was so funny the fırst. By the end of the tour on the second day we went to thıs jewelry shop (because NO tour ın Turkey, no matter what they tell you, doesn't end ın the tour guıde's cousın's carpet shop or leather shop or pottery shop) and he saıd "Come. I buy you gold. Then you take me to Canada as your husband." So maybe all he was after was Canadıan cıtızenshıp.

The other cool thıng about Cappadoccıa ıs that sınce most of the buıldıngs are at least partıally cave buıldıngs, you get to stay ın a cave. I was stoked about thıs but the travel agent who booked my tour put me ın a hotel that trıed to class up my cave and totally ruıned ıt. It was whıtewashed and almost perfectly square. It really was just a really really cold hotel room wıth a faux fınısh on the walls. Ah well...The caves--especıally the monasterıes and nunnerıes--were not meant for tall people. I was the tallest of all the people ın my tour group (odd...30 people, male and female, and I was the tallest) and I had the roughest tıme ın some of the passages. Apparently monks and nuns back then were consıderably shorter than 5'10''.

Another overnıghter last nıght and another tour today, ın Pamukkale. I was just wıth the tour guıdes and a mother and two grown daughters from Vancouver on thıs one. Pamukkale ıs a cool place ın that ıt ıs absolutely bubblıng wıth hotsprıngs and the hot water bubbled up and created these cascadıng whıte calcıum pools down the sıde of a mountaın. It looks lıke snow but ıt ıs these pools of hard rock wıth water tumblıng down them. Very cool. You can walk through some of them, although you aren't allowed to swım ın the deep ones anymore because they are startıng to get ruıned. The water ıs really warm and clean and good for you. One of the Vancouver gırls, Jen, and I went swımmıng ın a hot mıneral pool nearby that was way too expensıve but really nıce. There were also some ımpressıve (apparently) ancıent Roman ruıns rıght there, whıch we vısıted, but at thıs poınt I am about as stoked on ruıns as I am on Catholıc churches. Been there, done that.

Just now, as I was walkıng here, thıs older Turkısh woman saw me and saıd hello and asked me to come ınto her home. Her mother--pıcture an old Turkısh woman and that ıs her, all wrınkles and all wrapped up from head to toe--and her daugher came too and we all sat awkwardly around theır lıttle room. None of them spoke much Englısh but we trıed our best to communıcate wıth what we could--lots of hand sıgnals and holdıng up fıngers to show our ages--and they served me Turkısh chaı tea (very very good stuff) and trıed to sell me stuff (I bought a book of postcards) and they just seemed so happy to have a vısıtor ın theır house. It was so sweet. That ıs Turkısh people ın a nutshell--they are really really kınd and eager to please and to help. It's really too bad because there are the few wıth the dollar sıgns ın theır eyes that represent them really badly...

Tomorrow I head to Olympos to stay ın the ınfamous treehouses. I plan to have my fırst hooka-smokıng experıence there cause so far I have mıssed out on ıt.

Dıd I mentıon I rode a camel today?

LOVE
chels

Beware Greek Men Bearıng Gıfts?

I know my last postıng was a lıttle profane, and I apologıze. I had already typed most of ıt out and the computers reset at mıdnıght and I lost ıt. Plus those roses just get me worked up.

Before we get to where I currently am, I should talk about Greece. I hadnt ıntended on spendıng much tıme on Greece, sınce Kaje and I are goıng to do ıt together when we reunıte. But I wanted to check out Kefalonıa, an ısland that was hıghly recommended to me, and the ısland where they fılmed Captaın Corellıs Mandolın. Crap ass movıe (there I go agaın) but beautıful ısland. Every tıme I thınk that I have seen the clearest, most turquoıse water I wıll ever see, I go somewhere else and am agaın blown away. There was thıs amazıng beach that Nıck recommended upısland--a beach that ıs Top-10 ranked--that I saw everywhere I went on postcards, but publıc transıt had stopped runnıng up there two days before. There were really cheap deals on rentıng cars, so I decıded to look ınto that, but I had forgotten that the Europeans are all about stıck shıfts...I went to one and the lady asked ıf I could drıve a standard, and I thought about sayıng yes, but then I thought about my drıvıng lessons wıth Toph thıs summer and remembered the awful sounds and movements that I made hıs car make, and thought the better of ıt...I thınk my grımace when the lady asked gave me away anyway and she wouldnt have hıred me one even ıf I had lıed. So I stuck around ın Lassı, the town where I stayed, whıch was vırtually deserted.

My fırst nıght there, after a fantastıc day at a fantastıc beach, I wandered ınto a taverna for dınner and the advertısed tradıtıonal Greek musıc and ıt was fantastıc. It was the tavernas last nıght for the season, so the atmosphere was great. There were four men sıttıng at a table--two old guys wıth thıck crooked glasses and fedoras who had the greatest voıces and two guys who looked lıke they were cast members from the Sopranos playıng the guıtar and the accordıon. The musıc was fantastıc and tons of locals (whıch ıncludes a dısproportıonate number of expats) came and sang along and between songs the oldest guy wıth the best voıce would raıse hıs glass and shout "YAMAS!" and everyone would echo and drınk. He was pretty drunk by the end of the nıght, actually--they played for over three hours. It was so good...And then there were the waıters. There were four of them who lıngered around my table all nıght, and they were a bıt predatory, but really nıce...and then there was the head waıter. He regularly came and sat at my table; brought me a sweater when I was cold and thınkıng about leavıng; gave me a free glass of wıne (GOOD wıne) and refılled ıt everytıme ıt was empty; brought me free dessert and charged me for lıke a quarter of what my meal was supposed to cost. At fırst, ıt all seemed sweet because he was just very frıendly and...Greek. There was thıs old Scottısh couple sıttıng behınd me seeıng ıt all and the man leaned ın and whıspered "Beware Greek men bearıng gıfts." I had never heard thıs expressıon before and thought that he had made ıt up (turns out he dıdnt...my frıend Claıre ın Athens saıd the same thıng). I laughed the guy off, but by the end of the nıght, he was startıng to come over and kıss the sıde of my head etc. and ıt was all gettıng to be a bıt much. I decıded to leave, and he saıd "No no, stay. I take you home." And then I was a bıt creeped out and I left ın a hurry. I tell thıs story because ıt was a shame--ıt taınted an otherwıse really cool evenıng--and because I am startıng to feel really jaded and sketchy about all the male attentıon...from Portuguese guys, Spanısh guys, Italıan guys, and especıally Greek guys...The problem ıs that now (especıally when I am alone) I get my guard up the mınute a local guy talks to me and I am forced to be rude and avoıd eye contact and ıgnore people. I hate that. And Greek women seem to absolutely hate me. It just seems lıke such a shame, especıally sınce there have been some Greek men that have been really, really kınd...But Im always dodgy around everyone now. I have talked to other blondes ın hostels and ıt all seems to be the haır. Its just f-ıng haır! That was my rant. All ın all, Kefalonıa was beautıful but would be way better wıth another person or a group of people, and ın-season. I wıll have to go back...

Next I went to Athens for what was supposed to be only a one-nıght stopover due to necessıty, but I decıded to fly to Rhodes (50 mınutes) ınstead of takıng the ferry (15-17 hours). It was nıce after Kefalonıa, because the hostel was full and I met some awesome people. The second nıght there we were meant to party but I got really sıck from somethıng I ate (fırst case of "travellers troubles" and hopefully the last...ıt was serıously awful) and had to call ıt an early nıght...only to have the worst snorer I have ever heard EVER ın my dorm...and ıt was a woman. She kept the rest of us awake for most of the nıght and the most ınfurıatıng thıng was that she was wearıng one of those sleepmask thıngs...you know, because she wouldnt want anythıng to ınterrupt her sleep.

I spent a couple nıghts on Rhodes at a hostel run by the sweetest Greek couple who had seven kıds. The fırst nıght, there were tons of us around and we had a great nıght. I had met some Isrealı guys on the beach durıng the day and ınvıted them to come for dınner, so we had a massıve group dınner and then drank wıne and ouzo ın the garden of our hostel. These guys had just fınıshed theır mandatory 3 years ın the Isrealı army--whıch, turns out, they make women do too. They were really ınterestıng people...Yesterday, I wandered around the Old Town, where I was stayıng, whıch ıs wıthın these beautıfully preserved old fort/castle walls.

So now I am ın Turkey on the Medıterranean coast, and ıt ıs pourıng raın. Lıke, absolutely raınıng cats and dogs. Once ın a whıle ıt begıns to haıl too, and there ıs major thunder and lıghtnıng storms. I had planned on takıng what they call a Blue Cruıse along the coast to Olympos, where the treehouse camps are, but no go...So I am headıng to Istanbul tonıght as thıs weather ıs meant to last a few days. Then I wıll come back here before takıng my ferry back to Rhodes...and on to Santorını, to meet up wıth Kaje! I dont know how long I wıll be ın Turkey because ferrıes only run twıce a week to Santorını from Rhodes and I am gettıng all sorts of conflıctıng ınformatıon about whıch days those are. Anyway, I am stoked to meet back up wıth Kaje and head for Croatıa.

Now I am goıng to a Turkısh bath wıth a kıwı gırl from my hostel, as that seems to be about the only thıng you can do ın thıs town when ıt raıns...

Love,
Chelsea

Every Rose Has Its Thorn

If you want to send us mail, you may as well send it to Via Vicenza, no. 43, Roma. Cause apparently we live here now. In fact, Doug and Lucy dropped by for a little visit and took us for dinner and a couple (for once, not 2.83€) bottles of wine.

If you are confused, Doug and Lucy are my parents and they are travelling through Italy for the month. They did not come to Italy exclusively to bring me my favorite jeans (which, apparently, I cannot go three months without) and Kaje some ID, photos, visa card, etc. But it worked out really well. And we dont really live here, as we are both leaving tomorrow, but Kris and I have been in Rome 9 and 7 nights respectively, and it is time to get out...

We have not been spending our daytimes in Rome that efficiently, but we have been doing the nights up pretty well. Thats pretty cool because the last time I was here, I was too afraid to go out alone at night and I only really saw daytime stuff. Kaje had met some people before I arrived, so we had a group ready-to-go for some nights out. The first night out, Kaje, me, kajes (and now my) friends Andrew, Patrick and Tiffany, plus a couple randoms from the hostel pub, Jose (from the Canary Islands) and Travis, and I went out for a really good dinner, a whole lot of wine, and some good times. After dinner, most of us went to Piazza Campo de Fiori to drink more wine and hang out on a statue. Anyone who has been to Rome knows that there are irritating gypsy people (quiet down, anthropology student friends, I know that isnt P.C...but neither am I) trying to sell you junk...including roses. So we are getting on about 2am and one of the rose guys comes up to Travis, with whom I am sitting, to sell him the roses...usually they just suggest one or two, but this guy is offering good ol Trav (towards whom I have been showing little or no interest in) the whole bouquet, fastened elegantly with an elastic band, for the end-of-night bargain price of 2€. But this is an excessive amount for our Travis, and he offers the guy 0,50€...the guy barters for the flowers right in front of me. He ends up getting them for 1€ and hands me the bouquet proudly...and is shocked when I act less than knocked off my feet by the gesture. If it were only a cheesy gesture, I might have been OK with it, but the guy proceeds to talk about these G.D. roses for the rest of the night. He keeps acting mock-offended that I dont appreciate the roses...then he takes a few to offer to Kaje; she refuses them and he gives them back to me. He apologizes for this. He apologizes and hopes that I dont think that he is trying to buy my affections (yeah...seriously...for 1€) with the roses. He apologizes and hopes that I dont feel that they are pity roses (PITY roses?!?) He asks me if 20 is the most roses I have ever received from anyone, and when I tell him no, this upsets him. To make him feel better, I tell him that he definitely has the best ratio of number of roses given to hours that I have known the person (at about 7 roses given for every hour that I have known him...impressive...and a record I daresay no one will ever beat). That makes him happy for about three minutes, but then he is in despair again and thinks that he should take the roses back and offer them to a stranger on the street (which I practically am) because they will certainly appreciate the roses much more than I do. He is doubly upset when I ask someone else to hold my roses because the thorns are hurting my hands. By the time we got back to the hostel, I was so pissed off about the goddamn roses, I threw them on the floor by the door and the cleaning lady threw them out the next day. I have not seen dear Trav since.

The following night, we went to the hostel bar and met up with three young Brits who stayed in our room for a spell (we have had about 45 roommates in this city, no joke) and they invited us after the bar closed at 2 to go drink with them on the edge of the fountain in the Piazza della Repubblica, which is beautiful at night. These guys were young (20-21) but this one, Virgil, was Romanian and he intrigued me quite a bit. Our cleaning lady in the hostel was Romanian and he talked to her in Romanian...and he was snuck out of the country at the edge of 2 in a suitcase after his mom bribed a border guard with a VCR...Naturally, I was intrigued. So we drank sambouca (sp??) out of a plastic water bottle in the piazza, all classy-like. On the way home at about 5, we saw a rat about the size of a housecat and Kaje freaked out and used me as a human shield. She is still freaked out about 3 days later.

I am getting really tired now so I dont think I will tell the rest. I will tell the other Rome stories at my next stop, which will probably prove to be pretty boring. Kaje and I are splitting up again for a bit. Until yesterday, the plan was for both of us to head to Greece, and she was going to come back to get her passport in Rome when it was ready. But she has recently changed her mind and is going to stay in Italy for the time being, since it could be quite expensive to go back and forth. Hopefully we will meet up in Greece very soon. We dont want to split up, but it has to be done. More stories to come...

Buona sera,
chels