Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Alex's LiveJournal:

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Wednesday, March 22nd, 2006
6:52 pm	oh yeah and I lost my wallet again! Not much money in it, just the ATM that's the pain in the arse this time. Got loads of travellers cheques though The largest denomination this currency has is the 20,000 kip note. Which is a bit under $2 US. So you exchange $100 US, and you're walking around a fat wad of no less than a cool million. It also won't fit in your wallet, particularly if they're out of the 20,000 kip notes and you get it all in 10,000s. (Comment on this)
5:59 pm	22-3-06 Vientiane LAO LAND OF SMILES FULL TASTE OF HAPPINESS Crazy crazy country. It's not so much of a shock after Thailand, but I certainly wouldn't expect to walk down the main street of a town back home to have guys approach you, produce a bag of opium, weed or amphetamine and attempt to sell it to without any consideration that there may be police around. Also, "Beer Lao! Beer Lao!" seems to be exchangable with "Sabaydee" as the standard greeting. I entered Laos at the Thai border @ Huay Xai, crossing over to the Mekong. Hung out in the town for the afternoon / evening before attempting to make it to a village not far from there, only to find out that the Lying Planet placed the morning market in the north of town on their map, whereas it's actually in the south of town, so there wasn't much of a morning market to speak of when I realised what was going on. Headed up on a hair-raising Songtheow (small pickup truck with seats on the back) ride to Vieng Phu Ka. Had to have been at least 10 of us crammed in with bags of rice & god knows what else for 8 hours of dirt roads - not even - DUST roads. It equates to a sore head (from my head hitting the roof / metal things on the bumpy road), a sore neck and legs from being bunched up for so long, unable to move, and of course a sore arse. At one point on the ride there was a truck parked in the middle of the "road" - the road was about a lane wide, btw). So the songthaow driver looks at the edge of the road, at the steep enbankment / practically a cliff and decides to go that way. I closed my eyes, convinced that this was it for me - there was no way anyone could survive going off that edge, and the road was this fine dust so we easily could've. Met some people in Vieng Phu Ka & went on a three day trek to the hilltribes. I had no basis for comparison, but a couple on the trek had been travelling for 4 years & said that the trekking we did there was the least touched by tourism they'd seen. Left the kids in awe of our cameras, they just stared, mouths wide open at these strange things we'd brought in. And I tried to take a photo of these Akha villagers - yah I feel bad about doing that, like the human zoo experience, so I only did it once - the Akha women are extremely shy, but I got a couple to agree to it, only to have them turn around in embarrassment when I produced a camera. One thing we noticed heading down the "Akha trail" was that it was only women hauling baskets full of firewood/random things long-distance from the fields (could be a couple of hours away following ridges from the village). Then we get to the village and the men are just standing around, drinking, smoking and chatting. They're honestly the laziest bastards on the face of the planet. With breakfast they'd bring uot the Lao-Lao - this rice wine / ridiculously alcoholic crap. With lunch, out comes the Lao-Lao. With dinner, supper, morning tea, afternoon tea... bring on the lao lao. It wasn't until I went up to do some trekking in Phongsaly in the far north that I saw men doing work, like forging knives, doing some carpentry, actually building things instead of doing nothing. But they also spend a lot of time smoking tobacco from their bongs, and the women still work a lot harder. The capital of the province (Phongsaly) is a pretty small town, nice mix of Phu Noi, Yunnanese (southern-Chinese) and lowland Lao. Also meant I could use my Chinese, as opposed to my non-existant Lao. My trekking guide invited me around for dinner with his family, turns out he's a police officer during the week, trekking guide at weekends. He's also renting his house for $100 US a year, and can be bought outright for $2000, including land. No contact with foreigners was beginning to do my head in so it was off to Pak Beng for a slow boat ride down the Mekong to Luang Prabang. Bumped into one of the guys from Bangkok getting onto the boat. These random encounters happen all the time travelling, like ALL the time. Spent a couple of days chilling out in Luang Prabang, soaking up the atmosphere. The entire town is world heritage listed, mostly for its temples, but the French colonial buildings there are fantastic as well. Loads of cafes, Buddhist monks walking around or just hanging out, draped in their orange cloth, and laid back stalls & restaurants along the Mekong. I didn't really think I'd find a more chilled place - until we moved on to Vang Vieng. The main activity in Vang Vieng is tubing - you pay your $3.50 for the day, jump on a tuk tuk, who then takes you - along with your tyre - a few kilometers from town upstream. Then you get out, jump in the tyre, head out on the river. Doesn't sound like a lot, but the river is surrounded by spectacular cliffs and mountains, and the river, in deeper parts, is flanked by bars with flying foxes over the river and/or high jumps into the river. You just head in that direction and the guy working there with a bamboo pole points it out to you when you're in range, grab it and get dragged over to the bar. The jumps & flying foxes are safe enough - there's no safety regulations but I've never heard of anyone breaking their neck on rocks, the Lying Planet would have mentioned it. After a day here, and witnessing some serious torrential rain storm, we moved onto Vientiane - I needed a visa extention & a Cambodian visa. Have so far checked out the Beer Lao / Carlsberg brewery & Buddha park - a collection of Buddha & Hindu god statues, some extremely bizarre - in one corner of the park is a round building with a spire, you crawl through a demon's mouth to get in. Inside are three levels filled with sculptures - the bottom level is hell, with grotesque torture & death scenes, the middle is like filled with all these snakey type folks, and the top is, I guess, heaven. I also discovered black and white photos if you're following my photobucket. And that my camera can do that thing where only one colour comes out, the rest is black and white, and that it's easy to do :P Gotta try to get a shot of some monks like that - black and white photo, only colour in the shot is the orange of their clothes (or whatever you call them). (Comment on this)
Thursday, March 2nd, 2006
10:13 am	leaving Thailand Okay ATM card arrived a couple of days ago so it's nice to have money for a change (after 2 weeks). Wanted to hug the woman at the embassy when she handed me the envelope with the card inside, but there was a security window between us so I just settled for a quick "thank you" and left. To get celebratory buckets. So I'm leaving for Chiang Mai this evening via the overnight bus, then taking another bus to Chiang Khong, spending the next night there before crossing the Mekong into Laos. I didn't end up buying a new phone here (got some good prices for a Nokia 7610 but no predictive text?? And the section on the menu named "muvees"?) so it's email all the way and I don't expect internet services to be reliable in Laos so... yah. Also will be in remote areas for a bit (going off the beaten track in a country a bit off the beaten track) when I arrive. Will be mostly keeping clear of the areas where the insurgents are meant to be though. Started my anti-malarial tablets last night... and apparently woke up in the middle of the night crawling around and screaming. The screaming must've woken me up too because apparently I suddenly came to, apologised and went back to bed. And I thought sang som dreams were crazy. Every time I get on the Sang Som (thai rum) I have these vivid dreams. More of the same bizarre dreams I get, but the Sang Som dreams are something else. I wake up and don't know if I've dreamt it all. Sometimes it's nothing - but sometimes it's a real worry, and I actually have to ask people weird questions. I get dreams like that occasionally, but I always get these Sang Som dreams if I've had a couple of drinks - and I mean even from literally a couple of drinks. Anyway I expect to be in Laos for 3-4 weeks, then Cambodia for about a week, before I head back to Thailand. Gonna miss Bangkok, was here with friends I met on Koh Phangan, a good sized group too, but over the past 2 days everyone's left. Then I was walking down Khao San road and ran into Sofia (Swedish friend was travelling with for a few weeks in Malaysia and Thailand). And a few days before that was walking around and bumped into someone I met in Kuala Lumpur - the night after I left KL she was scammed out of AU $7000 - decided then that I shouldn't be complaining about losing 7000 Baht ($250) and my SIM cards. Couple of other random things - met someone whose official job title is "Shaft Puller" met someone whose name - exact spelling - is My Tottie. "Ultra Romance" and "Ultra Paradise" seating available at the cinemas in the restaurant of the guesthouse I'm staying at there's a statue of two elephants humping ALSO Went to a two day festival featuring Futureheads, Maximo Park, Ian Brown, Snow Patrol, Stereophonics (who cancelled last minute!), Placebo, Franz Ferdinand & Oasis - really cheap - bought tickets to the back section & stealthed our ways into the front :D Also went to see 50 Cent the other night - with a bunch of other scrawny white people - never been to a rapper's show before, but it was great! They kept inserting gunshot sounds throughout the songs at random points, it was like they had someone's kid sitting on a keyboard out the back hitting buttons randomly. These gigs costed like 1/5th of what they would back home. Gotta run! (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, February 25th, 2006
11:36 am	ahoy there! Currently in Bangkok for a few more days Had a minor drama on Koh Phangan involving having my wallet stolen (not to mention my phone short circuiting the night before) so I'm just waiting on my ATM card to arrive, then I'm off to Cambodia & Laos. Tired! (Comment on this)
Sunday, February 5th, 2006
3:48 pm	Koh Lipe - Krabi HEY! I'm staying on Hat Ton Sai near Krabi at the moment... survived the 10 hour trip from Koh Lipe. So Ton Sai's like this quiet beach, about 200m long, surrounded by 80m cliffs, with these steep paths going to Rai Ley (woo! package tourists!). Most of the people around here are rock climbers so... not late nights peoples. Also it's Bob Marley's birthday today so there's this festival on with heaps of roots & reggae bands playing so I'm not gonna be contactable for a few days. I'm staying in the crappiest hole I've seen so far this holiday :P Almost as crappy as my place on Koh Lipe which, aside from a few things, was actually pretty decent (especially for 200 Baht ($7) a night). I was actually pretty used to the pets in my bathroom - 2 little frogs, 2 big spiders & 1 small one, 1 snail, and this massive toad which came to visit every now and then. But on the second last day this 20cm+ centipede crawls out of the drain and around the edge of the room, starts climbing the bamboo divider between that and the bedroom, and was weaving in and out of the bamboo. That was just about enough, until I picked up the soap and found this massive bastard of a spider underneath, which started making tracks up my opened toiletry bag. Didn't have the balls to knock it away & close the bag so I just left. I'd met someone the previous day who had a centipede in her bed one night & apparently the stings burn like rubbing chilli into your eyes. Anyway they were both gone when I came back, but there was a spider in one of my bags when I went to pack >( not happy. Point is, new place is crappier, but less critters, and the lesson to be learnt is LEAVE UNATTENDED BAGS CLOSED TO AVOID SURPRISES. Koh Lipe was niiiice... sad to leave there, but having 3 Baht (about 10 cents) seriously cripples your ability to eat in a place where meals start at 60 baht, so it was time to leave the hammocks. Did some drift diving while on the island, was pretty cool coming up after the dive & looking around to find yourself 500m from where you started, but crap visibility. Plan: To be in Koh Pha Ngan by the 13th (next full moon), then Khao Sok, Bangkok, and over to Cambodia. There's an idea of going to Taiwan to teach English when money runs out but who knows (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, January 26th, 2006
5:54 pm	Journey log... Gonna try to keep this up to date, but already it's wrong. I've been here longer than that, think the discrepancies might arise with Langkawi or Lanta... places I've been, number of nights I've stayed. Singapore (6) Malaysia Melaka (3) Kuala Lumpur (2) Taman Negara (2) Cameron Highlands (1) Georgetown (Penang) (2) (Pulau) Langkawi Island (6) Thailand Ko Phuket (3) Ko Phi Phi (1) Ko Lanta (17) Ko Phi Phi (2) Satun (2) inc. visa run (Comment on this)
4:58 pm	The Visa Run Experience There's this song by the Streets which has the chorus: Today I have achieved absolutely nought In just being out of the house I've lost out If I wanted to end up with more now I should've just stayed in bed like I know how and that is EXACTLY how I'm feeling today. It's the second time that I'm really feeling my inexperience at travelling solo, and my absent-mindedness. In 7 hours I went on 5 seongthow (they're like mini utes with a cover over the tray & seats there) trips & a long taxi ride. Only thing I achieved was crossing into Malaysia for a minute then back into Thailand to renew my visa. Started off heading towards the pier so I could get to Tarutao National Park (bunch of islands in the south). Took a seongthow to a nearby town then managed to find the right one to the pier. This is in a part of the country where nothing's in English and like *NO-ONE* speaks English, so this was a bit of a mission. Then clever Alex kicks in (while waiting for the ferry, having already bought the ticket) & decides to check his passport to see exactly how many days he has left on his visa. Uh. Kinda expires today... ...refund, 2 seongtows back to town, decided to go to Kuala Perlis in Malaysia for the day. Other option was Langkawi which I don't want to go back to, mostly because it's further & more expensive than the mainland. Get another overcrowded seongtow to the pier on the OTHER side of Satun... only ferries to Langkawi this afternoon. So the last option was a land crossing, 60km away. By taxi. So even if I was only paying for their petrol it was gonna be heaps more expensive to do it this way. But did it anyway. So it took me a total of 7 hours from start to finish & a lot of messing around with the language barrier... but I got my visa for another 30 days :D Actually today was no more expensive than any other day I've had in Thailand, but it should've been a LOT cheaper. So just to catch up, I was on Koh Lanta for 2 & a half weeks (kept getting stuck, met heapsa great people), have done my open water divers course & 6 dives in some incredible places. Like the movie "The Beach". The beach parts were filmed at Maya Bay on Phi Phi Lay. Went diving around there. On one of the dives (Hin Daeng), a dive around this rock that sticks out like 2m from the surface in the middle of the ocean (in like 70m water!), but is like a cliff wall dive under the water... one group from our boat went one way around the rock, we went the other. Bumped into them down there, & using diver's sign language... we missed a 5m whale shark by like a MINUTE. So cut up about that. Saw some incredible stuff down there though. And it's not just the coral life, or the marine life, but even just the experience of being down 20m, suspended there weightless, unable to see the surface at times, & just having this other physical dimension to deal with. Oh yeah and like practising negotiating rocks & stuff by just breathing differently, heaps of fun. My instructor told me that to get his experience up he went to Ko Tao & spent 20 days on a boat, cleaning & changing over air tanks, etc, in exchange for a bed & free dives, so I'm thinking I might try and look for that sort of work when the peak season finishes. ALSO. Advanced divers course at the Similan Islands (in the top 10 dive sites in the world). Really wanna do that. Expensive but. Also did some kayaking & caving in Lanta, & am now proficient at THE MIGHTY MOPED. Provided it's auto. And it wasn't the result of kayaking, just to clarify. It's easier to clarify things later than it is to learn to phrase sentences properly. ALSO Might stop off on Lanta again for a bit. Made friends with this guy & his wife who were both working at the bungalows I was staying at, said I can stay with his family for a bit "when" I come back :P Aodi the Firespinner. Awesome guy. Was a Muay Thai boxer, fought in Bangkok 6 times & won 5 of those matches, but retired a year or so ago. His job at the bungalows is going to Phi Phi every day, going on the ferry & talking to people to get them to stay at the bungalows, and when he's back on Lanta, works as a waiter. Anyway, it's strange that - at it was for me before I left - the tsunami has sort of faded like 9/11 did. I mean it's remembered, but in the past. But actually being here is totally different. Phi Phi's still being rebuilt, still some vacant lots along the beach where you know there was stuff before. They're overdeveloping that place now too >( Phi Phi's geography is such that there's like a narrow strip inbetween these two big hilly cliffy mountainy bits, and all the accomodation's in the middle, on the narrow strip. The tsunami actually came straight on, perpendicular to this narrow strip, wiped everything out. Lanta (visible from Phi Phi, maybe 1.5 hrs by boat) was hardly even touched, it's laid out pretty much exactly perpendicular to Phi Phi & there's not much on the part of the island that was hit. The story I was getting to is this: Aodi the Firespinner's story, as he told me the day before I left, lying in a hammock, is that he was on Phi Phi on the 26th of December 2005, doing his thing, normal day right. The first tsunami wave came, he manages to grab a tree, the water hits & he's a couple of meters under, but still holding on. After the first wave passed he made it to a rooftop and watched the second wave... and all he could do was put his head in his hands... and I mean he's on the verge of tears when he's telling me this. He lost 2 friends in it & can't go swimming or anything anymore. Is that called Aquaphobia or something like that? Anyway, actually having been to Phi Phi & seeing how it would've hit, you can totally understand the trauma. It's remembered, but they're still feeling it. So that brings us to now. I'm in Satun, in the south, was talking to this cabbie last night - first person I met here who could speak English - he's living in Satun but works as a cabbie in Hat Yai - popular for Malaysian men who come across the border for a night or two to a non-Muslim country with a bit of a prostitution problem, right you're getting the drift - , but he's having some probs atm with the insurgents in Songkhla province, driving away tourists. No probs here in Satun though, which is just as well seeing as a couple of Buddhist monks were abducted & decapitated (if I'm not mistaken), just in the past few months. Yeah that's going to buy independence. Probably skipped over a week or so, might fix that up later. Also don't forget photos are at http://photobucket.com/albums/c81/sotoo I'm updating it when I can, the photos on that page are ones I've recently uploaded (but I have some older photos to put up still), and there are more photos in the Malaysia & Singapore folders in case you didn't notice. And before you complain about me not being able to take a straight photo, YOU try taking a decent photo from a boat. K bye! (Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 10th, 2006
9:37 pm	Hmm... will catch up soon... But just to let you know I'm on Koh Lanta (near Koh Phi Phi) at the moment, starting my open water diving course tomorrow. Today, against better judgement, I learnt how to drive a moped. In about 2 minutes. Tried three circles around the lawn then went for a drive. Nearly stacked it once, but managed to survive the trip into town. Lots of big utes driving past. I seriously could not imagine having the guts to drive a moped around places like Bangkok (not that I've been there yet... but it's apparently worse than KL). okay BYE! (Comment on this)
Friday, December 30th, 2005
8:21 pm	Thailand... In Phuket atm til after New Years Eve... Number for the next while is: +6669494836 (Comment on this)
Friday, December 16th, 2005
6:18 pm	Malaysia phone number / quick update My number in Malaysia is +60172124063 for interested parties Took a bus up to Kuala Lumpur today. Am currently travelling with a Dutch chick, met at the hostel in Melaka so we're staying in KL until tomorrow, just soaking up the fumes before we go to feed the mosquitos and leeches of Taman Negara (jungle!). Need to get out of the cities so I'm definitely looking forward to Taman Negara. Also craving some beach in a huge way, Melaka has swimming flags but swimming there probably would resulted in radiation poisoning. I'm not sure if I want to stick to the west coast & head to Penang, or go for the nicer beaches up north on the east coast. Still haven't met any Aussies. Only Europeans & a kiwi. Gotta run, just got a call, it's beer o'clock at the hostel and all is well! also: started loading a few photos to http://photobucket.com/albums/c81/sotoo didn't have time to put more up but they'll come soon! (Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 13th, 2005
11:16 pm	7/12 - 13/12 Singapore -> Malaysia Arrived in Melaka, a dive of a small city on the west coast of Malaysia named after the sound of an automatic weapon, a few hours ago so I thought I'd take the time to send you all a hello. I ended up spending 5 full days in Singapore, which was probably a bit more than necessary, but better staying too long than not enough. Spent friday wandering around, first visiting Little India & Kampong Glam - more like Kampong Scam! Talk about camera drama. More on that later. I was feeling pretty chipper about things so I decided to follow up with a visit to Changi WW2 Chapel Museum, and far less depressingly, Pulau Ubin (foresty island singapore getaway). Escaping Ubin unscathed by the wild dogs chasing my bike, and fortunate to have the bike not fall to bits like it felt it was about to (all SG$3 worth of it), I visited the Singapore Zoo on saturday. Being not much of a zoo person I had my doubts, but its reputation held up and there it was - a 2-toed sloth, which I inevitably spent a good portion of the afternoon watching to see if it moved. It didn't. Also discovered at one of the 2 KFC stores in the Zoo, that "fast food" in Singapore has a completely different meaning, and that the girl serving me, despite the long queues, would have been amongst her own in the enclosure with the sloth. Public transport is interesting in Singapore. It's super efficient, it's just a right pain the ass to figure out how to get anywhere that's not near a train (MRT) station. Plus the military and police propaganda in ad space on the trains was a bit of a warp. I also keep taking left turns instead of right. This doesn't make navigating a large city any easier, and could create some issues in Thailand, landing me in Burma instead of Cambodia. Spent the next few days hanging out with a French guy who studies in Brisbane, a giant German guy (himself a tourist attraction / photo opportunity for tiny Asian girls) who studies on the Sunshine Coast, and Mel & Tom, ex-Brisbane. Wandered through museums, temples, Chinatown, took photos in the Stonemasons' HQ. Stray cats fighting in bushes, over-the-top cheese of Sentosa island, cable car over Harbourfront (views of the city!) to Mt Faber, largest fountain in the world, endless shopping malls and markets, Singapore is a lot of fun. Zoukout, a beach dance party @ Sentosa island happened on saturday night. Had decided to avoid it based on the cost, but ended up paying a SG$28 (AU~$25) cover charge to Attica night club anyway. The place is nice as, but was practically empty, met an Australian ex-pat couple there, and after the formality of insulting each others hometowns (customary amongst Australians, of course) we discovered the reason the club was empty was because of Zoukout. Bummer. Camera drama (boring section): bought a camera - and haggled out a good deal for it - Canon Ixus 55 + 512mb mem card + 1Gb mem card + case + card reader - SG$690 inc tax - AU~$550. Awesome. I just had to go to Canon HQ with my receipt to pick up the 512 card & the reader. So went on a mission there, only to be told they'd already been claimed - by the shop that'd sold me it. the manager there called the shop & sorted it out, I'd go back and pick them up for no cost. Getting back to the shop at Sim Lim, I was told I'd have to pay extra for it. The guy had changed the deal! After some drama I managed to get it, this guy tried pulling so many stunts during the original deal let alone this time. I actually had to call the manager at Canon (really awesome helpful guy), speak with him, then get the shop assistant on the phone to him. So the assistant shoved the card & reader in my face, told me he'd lost money from the deal & told me to get lost :) truthfully, he probably HAD lost money on it considering the RRP, but we had a deal, and no one screws me over. ... except for the cabbie at the Malaysian border town... Tom and Mel were fantastic guides to the city, full of info you could only get from locals, and great fun to hang out with. Thanks so much guys, you made Singapore a lot more worthwhile. Keep emailing me if you're bored, I need contact with people from home. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, December 10th, 2005
11:38 am	7/12 - 9/12 Brisbane - Singapore 9/12 Singapore day 2 Visited some fantastic temples & mosques around Little India and Kompung Glam (spelling? The Muslim quarter anyway), spent the morning there then headed over the the Changi Chapel & Museum, dedicated to the POWs from Japanese occupation in WW2. Seriously depressing... so took a ferry over to Putau Ubai (spelling again!?!), an island just off Singapore with these crazy old Chinese villagers. Hired a bike & spent the afternoon racing around the trails :P got photos of some fantastic Chinglish signs :D Again, met up with Mel & Tom in the evening, wandering around the Esplanade & surrounding area, showing me around a bit more which was great. Mel was reciting the history of all these buildings... was like having my own tour guide :P There was a bit of a worry with money (had like SG$5 to last me the weekend!) but money got transferred over last minute so it's allll good. 8/12 - Singapore day 1 Spent the morning and early afternoon wandering around Little India getting my bearings, checking out the markets... ended up at Sim Lim tower trying to get a good deal on a camera... after some serious haggling & them trying to rip me off I bought a Canon Ixus 55 (at the last minute the guy was suggesting a different battery & even a different camera for the same price(which I later checked out - retails at about $50 less than the ixus 55!)) a bit cheaper than it would've been back home. Met up with Mel & Tom (ex-Brisbanites) for dinner & some wandering around the main shopping district (around Orchard st), showing me around a bit. 7/12 - Brisbane -> Singapore Not much to say... flew out of Brissie at 8:45pm... massive holdups as the singer from Atomic Kitten was on the flight (coming back from being part of the reality TV show "I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here"). Ended up at the hostel in Singapore around 2am (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, December 1st, 2005
11:57 am	Reopening livejournal... Summer 2005 trip! Loose itinerary: Singapore (leaving for Singapore wednesday 7th December) - Malaysian peninsula - Thailand (south/central) - Cambodia - Vietnam - China (Guangxi, Guangdong, Hong Kong) - Laos - Thailand (northern) Going away drinks: Sunday 4th from 2pm @ the Chalk Hotel (on Vulture st @ the Gabba) I'm intending to put some photos up online, depending on what internet access is like and if I can find an image host that'll give me plenty of upload space Leaving the old entries up from my last trip overseas... so everything below this point is from my China trip in 2003 (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, July 31st, 2003
3:15 pm	this goes down as my favourite quote EVER "Sure it looks legal but in reality it is surely lacking." -Nikkea de Villiers, regarding our contracts Yes, things are surely fucked. (Comment on this)
Thursday, July 17th, 2003
4:11 pm	oh, and before leaving this really cool tunnel under the main river in Shanghai (with really weird psychodelic lighting), a couple of us decide to use the bathroom. There was an open door that said "Visitors Stop", which we interpreted as a polite way of saying "toilet". So we wandered in and were chased by someone who worked there :P Turns out it meant: "Vistors: stop!" and was in fact the staff room (1 Comment |Comment on this)
3:35 pm	Shanghai is SO. DAMN. COOL. Where I'm living is quite far from the middle of the city, but it's a massive city, so that was sort of to be expected. Cab + train works and ends up costing the same (provided I have some friends split the EXORBITANTLY OVERPRICED taxi with me) as it would cost to get to the middle of weifang from where I was living. The summer camp I'm teaching at is really good. There are HEAPS of foreign teachers at this camp, including some brits who are only two years older... My room's really small, but I have AIR CONDITIONING (it's really hot atm) and it's really clean and stuff. Shanghai is soooo much different to where I was before. Things are really expensive here, but I really want to hit some clubs on saturday night, so the plan is to get have some drinkies with some people in our dorms (all the foreign teachers are in one building), then head out. Went downtown yesterday afternoon and evening, visiting The Bund, taking a cruise down the river, and just wandering around until I couldn't wander anymore. It's a really cool place during the day, but at night it gets so much better. So ... saturday night :D Most people in the downtown area can speak at least a little English, so it's no problem getting directions or anything. Leaving Weifang was a little sad, but Shanghai is so much better, so I'm over it :P Although I had to pay Y200 in excess baggage, which was CRAP... just because of my pipa and guitar :/ but the plane didn't crash, so *shrugs* Classes are really convenient. We take it in turns to teach classes... so I'll take one class (for four periods (1 day of work)) maybe twice a week, then one of the other guys in my group will teach them, then another one... plus, classes for the foreign teachers are all in the morning, leaving the afternoon and evening free, which is hell good, but we have to work on saturday mornings. A total of 18 hours a week. Cruisy. I'd go out more if I wasn't so worried about money... the Lonely Planet guide said that drinks in clubs and pubs are like 40 Yuan (bout $8 Australian) so... maybe not... Anyway, I left my address in the dorm, so I can't post it atm. Tomorrow! My class today was so funny... the students here have much better English than those in rural Shandong (if they didn't there'd be problems) and a few of them were being so funny when I was getting them to talk. I'm having a lot of trouble getting my yahoo address going in this net cafe, so I may not be able to email for a little bit. If you send mail, send it to both my yahoo and hotmail account, because hotmail is working fine here. (Comment on this)
Monday, July 14th, 2003
6:54 pm	...so not too long after being told I'll be staying in Weifang (meaning I didn't need to pack by tomorrow), my agency calls and - well, I'm going to Shanghai to teach tomorrow! WTF? Anyway, I think my school's trying to organise it so that I go on wednesday instead... got an email from the agency and it's not really their fault so... I guess that's just the way it is in China. Last minute last minute last minute. So I've got mixed feelings about this whole thing. 1) I'd love to spend a lot of time in Shanghai. I'm excited about that. BUT 2) My pay is not getting raised by much and Shanghai is a LOT more expensive to live in than where I am now. I'm going to be really POOR :( Especially since I can't go to Beijing to get the money that I've been trying to get since a month into my stay. Looks like I'm going out tonight to say goodbye to my friends. Tomorrow is cleaning and packing day. WISH ME LUCK! (Comment on this)
Sunday, July 13th, 2003
2:45 pm	p.s. Can anyone tell me about what whiskeys are popular? And some popular drinks that involve whiskey? One of my friends is starting a bar in Beijing catering especially for foreigners, and wants to know what whiskeys foreigners like and don't like. Maybe dad can help with this? I just said stuff like Johnnie Walker, Jack Daniels... any names that I could think of. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
2:40 pm	Just a quick update, since I have class in 15 minutes. Things with Fujian have fallen through. I'm staying in Weifang until the end. I don't know what's happened, but I'm continuing to hear bad things from people who are there, so I'm glad I'm not going. Apparently there's no work for me there. Or the other teachers for that matter. Those who are there are getting sent to other cities. They're meant to be leaving in about two hours and they don't know where they're going to be sent! It's looking possible that I'll be home a week before expected, if my situation is the same as everyone elses, but my school may ask me to stay til the very end of my contract. Other than that... nothing terribly interesting has happened. Except that they made me eat scorpions. And "smelly tofu" (that's a direct translation from the Chinese name for it), which is the most RANCID food I have EVER smelt (doesn't taste great either). Also, I have a Chinese name: bai lin jie bai - white lin - forest jie - hero / great person ROCK! (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, July 6th, 2003
7:16 pm	Went to Qingdao yesterday and had a really good time. It's so different to any other Chinese city I've seen. It's green... the town planning is western... the people are modern... the buses are new... it's like it's not even a part of China. It's only 100km from here but it's so 1st world. It was so nice to spend time in a place that's more like home. Oh and the shopping. The shopping malls there are incredible. So I bought heaps of stuff I don't need. Qingdao's known (within China) has having the best beaches in China... but they don't compare to beaches back home. Plus most of the people there can speak at least a little English. Quite a lot of foreigners there anyway. And they had HOUSES. Western style housing areas. I couldn't believe I was seeing it. I'd like to go back there again someday. Now I'm bored. (2 Comments |Comment on this)