I'm sick

Man

I ache all over. I'm not even sure what's wrong. All my joints are sore. Well not all of them, but most of them. Ow. Ow. Shannon was sick for two days, and I'm worried I've gotten whatever he had. That would be perfect for new years. At least I'm not vomiting like him. Ha, ha, he tried to find a circumspect place to vomit and just before he did a small family unit came and walked past right where he was.

I'm going to try and chili it out of my system.

Gabi and I have been intending to have a chili off for days now, but we haven't gotten it together yet, and personally I think she's scared.

We're in Ko Lanta now and I think it's like a family style beach. The beaches aren't as nice as Ko Phi Phi, but at least I don't feel like I'm somewhere in America (or even South Africa) in a Thai Style Amusement Park.

Oof.

Looks like my New Years is going to be pretty tame, but still can't be much more isolated then last year in Lalibela. They don't even celebrate New Years there, and it involved my team and I getting a bit drunk on honey mead and then going to bed.

My team at the moment and my team last year are about as different as can be. Last years team liked nothing better then to mission every moment, tick off all the sites and run to the next place, frequently with me dragging behind out of breath; this team likes nothing better then to sit down and read in nice places.

Different places, differents trips, different people, different times of life. It's all good though.

Ha, ha, a funny story from Ko Phi Phi. So when hanging out with Darryl and his gang we meet these South American girls; one of them a little cutie from Chili. Over the next day and a half, every single guy in the gang, plus a few Israelis, plus some Greek guys all spend hours c-blocking each other to win her over. I, never being much for competition, not much for sport, and not really willing to compete for Alpha Male spot, spent most of the time talking to her friend watching the other men compete with wit, sporting ability, drinking ability, and other sorts of courting rituals that men do when trying to prove their worth to a woman and their status as Alpha Male.

Of course no one thought to ask if she had a boyfriend. Ha, ha. 8 months long distance and she's saving herself for him. She loves him. Aw, cute. Men scatter and head for the hills, and then me, her, her friend, Darryl and the Israeli end up chilling on the beach.

When we get back to our room, the Israeli tells me he thinks he has fallen in love with her and wonders if he should propose, but she's Catholic and his parents would cut his head off being strict about that sort of thing.

Ah, funny old world.

Globalisation is bad, m'kay?

So I used to think of the essence of globalisation as the sharing of technology and brands; often hand-in-hand. The process is unstoppable because more efficient ways of doing things and making things are going to be attractive to anyone, and so why should we care if the stupid Americans invented everything first.

But in the South of Thailand there are almost no Thai people. They have modern technology, internet cafes everywhere, beautiful resorts and amazing beaches, but no Thai people seem to enjoy them.

Some of Thailand's most beautiful resources have been sold off to the international world, but that means the average Thai person has lost out. I wonder if they care. Or perhaps there are even better secret beaches that no one knows about. But even in the movie The Beach which is all about that secret beach, there were no Thai people on it.

What's with that?

Phi-Phi is nice, but I feel like I'm in a Thai Amusement Park rather then in Thailand, where they've hired some Thai people to run some of the shops for extra authenticity. You almost feel like an idiot trying out the small bits of Thai that you've picked up along the way, because most of the Thai staff just give you a slightly disgruntled look.

Before this I was on Railey Beach, well the beach next to Railey Beach, which is the more rural one. But even on this beach there are almost no Thai. Admitedlly all the staff everywhere are Thai and the Beach Bar Guys clearly run the beach and they're living there because they think it's awesome and don't really give two shits about the tourist. Order a drink; maybe it'll take 2 minutes maybe an hour, whatever don't rush them, they're chilling out. I liked them.

Before that I was at a place called Pine Bungalows which we stumbled across by accident after arriving in Krabi and realising that it was a town and not a beach at all. We were jostled into a pick up truck by a friendly Thai guy who was offering a relatively good deal on a bungalow and we had a night or two to kill before Gabi and Kirsten caught up with us. We assumed that everywhere was sort of close so if it sucked, we could just give them the finger and bugger off. But there was nothing else anywhere. A small village about 15 minutes of walking away, which consisted of two streets, one pharmacy and an internet cafe. There was a big picture of the king strung up along the road.

There were maybe only 40 bungalows, if that, and hardly any people there. It was like being nowhere on a beach.

I woke up that night to find my face and hair covered in ants and used Shannon's doom to kill those little bastards. Despite the sentence structure of the previous sentence, I don't actually mean I sprayed myself in the face with doom. First I brushed them off then looked at my ant infested bed, and said to myself: "Man is King." Then I doomed them.

Stepped outside for some fresh air and came back in and looked at all the tiny, twisted little ant corpses lying over my fresh-ish linen. I felt a bit sad for them, but they crossed the line. They messed with my hair. I tried to go back to sleep and lay there for a bit feeling very sick because all I was doing was breathing in poison so I went for a walk to the beach and sat and looked at the sea by night and it was pretty.

There are a lot of South Africans in Phi-Phi. It's weird. Part of the reason I went away was to get away from South African things, but "if you hide in mouse holes, the cat-claws will find you. There are bears in every cave." That's a misquote from Rumi.

Especially weird was to run into Darryl Bernstein who was my best friend in school and I haven't seen him in years. That was nice, if surreal.

Phi-Phi's okay, but so far not really the highlight. I'm looking forward to getting off this rock tomorrow.

I wouldn't look here for a day or three

Railey Beach, the one without the resorts, sucked me in for four days. Now I've found myself in Ko Phi Phi which I certainly didn't expect to go to. Oh well, life's tough. It's expensive to internet here, because they like milking the tourist-cows. There are no Thai people here except for those that work here. It's weird. Lots of amusing anecdotes to share, which possibly might allow for further expoundation on the nature of the human psyche, but now's not the time. I'm going to try write up a few blogs in the appropiate order on pen while I do sweet-eff-all tomorrow on the beach and then stick a bunch up in a go, but I wouldn't wait for it.

On Christmas Day

There is no snow here, just a wide clear bay surrounded by giant craggy cliffs covered is beautiful greens, a small hamlet that consists of beach bars and beach restaraunts and bungalows and the sun is hot and scorchy.

It's too nice here to even contemplate blogging, but maybe I'll get bored later.

Tracy McGivern wins the prize for best research!

Origins and related words

One theory of the word's origin derives it from farangset, the Thai pronunciation of français, the French word for 'French' or 'Frenchman'. France was one of the first European nations to establish cultural ties with Thailand in the 17th century, so to Thais at that time, 'white man' and 'Frenchman' were synonymous. Others say that in the Ayutthaya period, land was given to the Portuguese merchants to conduct their business at "Baan Farang" (Guava Village).

Another explanation derives the word from the Persian word farangi which refers to foreigners. It comes from the word "frank", meaning Franks or French. The reason for this is the fact that the French were the first European nation that helped the Ghajar Kings modernize the Iranian government, in particular with the establishment of customs, in Persian: gomrok. Long before English, until around the 1960s, French was the foreign language of choice for educated Iranians. The abundance of French words in the Persian language attests to this fact.

By another account the word comes through Arabic ("Afrandj"), and there are quite a few articles about it. One of the most detailed treatments of the subject is by Rashid al-din Fazl Allâh: See Karl Jahn (ed.) Histoire Universelle de Rasid al-Din Fadl Allah Abul=Khair: I. Histoire des Francs (Texte Persan avec traduction et annotations), Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1951. (Source: M. Ashtiany)

Farang is closely related to the Khmer word Barang.

In Tamil, the word that refers to Europeans (most specifically to the British) is parangiar, presumably because Tamil does not have the "F" sound. Many South Asian and Southeast Asian languages, including Malay, also use this word to denote foreigners.

http://www.farangdingdong.com/ - this is the first link that comes up when you google farang.... ha ha ha

so whilst we all know that wikipedia is dubiuos they seem to have sourced part of this explanation from a text in a publication out of leiden which is a dutch uni...

you may have been onto something with the arabic/ amharic link if any of the above is accurate

happy plagarism

xt

Layering memories over memories

It's funny how the human mind works. You hear a phrase, let's use 'China Town' for example, and all the connotations that you as a unique individual have of China Town come rushing to the fore. Perhaps it's memories of experiences in a China Town somewhere in the world, perhaps it's images from the weird fantastic 80's movie Big Trouble in Little China starring Kurt Russel, or perhaps, as in my case, it's the memory of someone telling you that they were staying in China Town.

So once the mind hears the words, it references them against your memories for connotations, and once those connotations have been found, certain obligatory emotional states are recalled, depending on how you felt about whatever your own personal connotations might be.

The amazing thing about the mind though is that it doesn't mind replacing connotations of concepts, so long as you engage with a physical reality that allows newer, stronger and more immediate connotations to overwhelm the major memory.

A girl I know told me that when she broke up with her boyfriend of three and a half years she couldn't go to any of the places where she had strong memories of that person for nearly six months, but perhaps she would be able to have engaged with those places if she had found ways to create fresh memories. Certainly that's what I began doing.

Nonetheless, if we return to China Town for an example, I will never feel the pang of jealously I felt knowing this person was in China Town, whenever I hear the word China Town, instead I will imagine insanely crowded streets, full of Chinese people, Chinese signs hanging off buildings, shops full of dried animals such as sea-horses, wares of shark tales, disgusting and delicious things cooking on the street, not being able to move because I am stuck in a human traffic jam, red and gold everywhere, stepping off a cramped street full of hawkers and ware-sellers to accidentally discover a series of ancient temples dedicated to Buddhism, Confuciasm and Taoism, beautiful, calm, peaceful, back into the thronging fray, struggle struggle, stopping for a beer somewhere extremely dodgy that still has a small Buddhist shrine, everywhere in this goddamn place has a small Buddhist shrine, some more walking and then back onto the much calmer streets of Bangkok in a car/bike engineering/repairing district. There were surprisngly few stupid farangs there.

Farangs are stupid. On Ko San road all the tuk-tuk's charge 200 Baht to get to the train station. Walk two minutes off the road and you can get it for 50. A word to the wise. Sometimes two minutes can save you 150 Baht. Plus I heard of a stupid farang who drive a scooter into a ditch. Ha, ha, ha, stupid farang.

Farang is Farengi in Amharic (Ethiopia) and Foreigner in English. Would anyone like to research the etymology of that for me? The best research will be posted on this blog, possibly as my own work.

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Pantless in Bangkok

I forget that in a place like Thailand trying to book a ticket on the morning you want to go somewhere is stupid, because in a place like Thailand you can actually book tickets. That's another problem of cross-comparison.

My first night in Bangkok was cool. Th Ko san is cool. We overshot it and went straight to Chang Mai when we arrived, because it seemed more time efficient, especially as I know I'm leaving from Bangkok and so can wander around there on the day or two before I go.

We spent yesterday hopping on trains and hopping off trains, quickly examining smallish towns and then moving on. We slept through our first intended major stop, and only realised about three hours later, but the train was actually an excellent idea. I sometimes forget that a major part of travelling is the actual, well, travelling from place to place, and that seeing the landscapes shift and change into forms previously unseen by mine own eyes, is a wonderful experience on it's own. It's not all about temples; it can be about mountains or jungles or rice paddies or small strange houses on the sides of roads nestled in the oft awe inspiring lands. I haven't done such a long train trip since going to Habonim Camp; really, it was nice, nice.

At the last minute we decided to stay in Bangkok instead of Ayuthaya, so that's a place I might never see, because we're being fly by the seat of your pants travellers, and really, in a foreign land, no decision is a bad decision. We decided last night that we'd like to go to Krabi, but instead of booking as soon as we decided, we decided we'd book in the morning. Dumb us. Spent the entire morning trying to find a way to get there instead of doing anything, because all the goddamn tickets were sold. We're going overnight on a train and bus combination to Krabi, and had to pay about twice as much as we should have, because we didn't plan far ahead enough.

Therefore, it's completely acceptable to fly by the seat of your pants, as long as you ensure you are wearing a belt, otherwise you might find yourself confused and pantless in Bangkok, instead of belting it towards your destination.

Variety versus specifity

A question that I wondered about a lot on my last month excursion and which I've found myself wondering about again on this one, is which has more value, speed or specifity?

Is it better to hit a million places and taste a little of each, or to hit a few places and really indulge in each.

A million flavours? A few good meals?

So far I've mimiced my previous travel experience, by heading up North super fast, stopping at a few places, taking lots of long bus and train trips and marvelling at the landscapes. This would surprise everyone I travelled with last time, because I always wanted to move slower, and try and understand each place a little more just by slowly walking thorugh it day by day and drinking coffee at random places and seeing how it lived, instead of seeing it's sights. But that's how I've started this trip.

But now I'm in Bangkok and about to go South. And I think the South will be slow and easy and I'll probably only go to a few places and spend time in each one. Maybe I'll be qualified to answer that question after this trip. But I probably won't be. Maybe there isn't an answer. Certainly they both have value.

I rode a far more shrewd and deadly beast than an elephant

First off, it's important to know that I'm alright, and second off, it's important that someone prevents my mother from reading this. The reason that I'm beginning this with that, that being I am in fact alright, is because according to the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy stress and anxiety is the primary cause of death for 90 percent of Sapient life in the universe, and just as Douglas Adams warns the reader that the thermonuclear warheads launched at the spaceship Heart of Gold containing both the infinite improbability drive and Ford Prefect, Zaphod Beeblebrox, Arthur Dent, Trilcia McMillan and of course Marvin the Paranoid Android, from the ruins of Ancient Magrathea by a telephone answering service, will result in nothing more then a bruised upper arm and the accidental death of a very surprised whale, so too I begin by warning the reader that nothing has happened to me aside from a slight cut above my right eye, a bruise on my right knee, and a short-lived headache. The reason that it's important to prevent my mother from reading this is because, once again, much like Arthur Dent I never listened to some of the things she told me.

I never rode an elephant; instead I rode a much trickier beast. A deadly scooter. We decided it would be fun to scooter around the area of Pai, as there is almost no traffic, and extremely beautiful mountain passes and scenery, and so terrified as I might have been, we rented a scooter and helmets and set off down the road. The first 8 kms were fine, although I did provide much amusement to the entire town of Pai as I breaked and stopped and speeded and stopped and flung my legs out and wobbled and prayed to god and tried again to make the damn scooter go straight at a reasonable speed. Despite this most humbling of beginnings, I felt within 20 minutes I had the beast under control. Oh, the foolish vain fool that I am. Nothing is under my control; the universe scoffs at any who believe so.

The previous year in Ethiopia was the last time I rode a bicycle, which is not a scooter, as it has no engine, and that time I provided intense amusement to my girfriend at the time (that she-devil) by being extremely bad, nervous and sweaty. When I finally got that bicycle going I peddled like there was no tomorrow down an Ethiopian highway and felt high, as I realised it was working, I wasn't falling off, I was going straight, and then I felt confused as I realised none of my team were anywhere near me.

I returned to my starting point to find that they were all waiting by where we had rented the bikes, and I had sped off in the wrong direction. Most embarassing. We then bicycled, me poorly, to the castle of Haile Sallasie, which looked a lot like a townhouse, but showed magnificent views of Bahar Dar.

I constantly lagged behind, and was an embarrassment to all concerned, and a big part of that reason was because I couldn't figure out how to down gear my mountain bike, and no one would take five minutes out to explain to me how it worked, simply citing: "Oh, it's easy." Thanks for nothing. When I discussed this with Shannon, he said: "Well, it sounds like what you were trying to do was right. It is easy. I bet the gears were broken, and so it wouldn't down gear properlly. Hey you want to rent bikes with gears or without?"

The time before that that I engaged in the world of two wheeled transport, I was in the Drakensbergh at age 12, hit a rock and still show a scar on my hand from where it connected with the ground as I shot over it, grazing my entire body.

On my gearless scooter, however, I soon became fearless, as we scooted through the beautiful scenery, wind in my hair, up hills, around corners, down hills, around more corners through a 'mountain village' which is far more ramshackle and far less romantic than it sounds, to a waterfall, which doesn't neccessarily beat a lot of waterfalls in the Drakensbergh in South Africa. We arbed around there for a bit and returned home, I now a fully confident Scooter rider, wondering why the hell my mom was so against anyone ever getting on one of these beasts.

Then I accidentally drove off a road into a deep ditch, which was fortunate because the bike couldn't crush me. My head bounced against the dirt bank, but fortunately I was wearing a helmet and escaped unscathed. Well relatively.

A slipper had come off and I was half lying in a river with an upside down scooter next to me. Suddenly Thai people everywhere. Moments later Shannon appears. About six of us grab the bike and turn it the right way up and we drag it on to the road. It seems unbroken and still starts. I clamber back down and search for my flip flop which I find. Shannon checks me and notes no injuries except for a think cut above my eye. We work out it was from my sunglasses being rapidly pushed up into my face. Small cut on foot. Sore knee. Otherwise alright.

The most annoying thing was that I was slowing to a stop, and I should have just turned the goddamn controller to the left away from the drop, but instead I slowed and so I didn't even voom off the edge of the road majestically flying through the sky towards my doom, I sort of went putt, putt, putt, almost stopped, ooooooohhhhh noooooooo..... slooow drop, tumble, bang.

I only realised I should have taken some photos of my upside down bike after I got back on the horse and drove it back to town. I don't know if I'll ever ride one again, but I think it's important that I rode another 4km's after my near death experience if only to prove a point to somebody, although God knows who that somebody is. Maybe it was myself.

Despite all of that I really enjoyed my scooter ride. I even enjoyed my accident. It's funny how the things that scare us are the things that are often most enjoyable. And that the things we hold on to are often the cause of one's greatest pain and sadness.

Embrace the fear, and by doing so, release the clamps of the past, I suppose. Or maybe that's naieve. Who knows? Who cares? I'm alive and that's the important bit. Oh, that and always wear a helmet. Crap. Thank god for that helmet. Bounce. Oof. Yeah. Someone prevent my mother from reading this.

Some things shouldn't be cross compared

It's important not to cross compare and therefore inadvertantly judge some things, such as girlfriends, art forms, speech impediments and the differences in the culture of catching buses. But the human brain was originally designed for cooling the blood and not for thinking, and so, inanely, but frequently, it does attempt to compare incomparable things, which really, is just a silly thing to do.

Cross comparing catching buses in Ethiopia, which is where I was a year ago to this day, to catching buses in Thailand, which is where I am now today, is comparable to cross comparing consuming beef from a cow to consuming a crunchy apple from a tree. Correct, they're both food, but that's where the comparison ends. Yet, while I sat on the bus, which cruised up a mountain and showed me spectacular jungle views... well... I kept on hating the bus because it wasn't an Ethiopian bus, and then hating those Ethiopian buses because they weren't this one. I wanted there to be an ideal bus, the perfect bus, the bus I wanted most of all... But which bus is it?

In Ethiopia one needs to be at the bus station before the sun rises, at 6 in the morning, where one waits in a seething mass of black faces, wrapped in "gabi's" against the cold, and the gate to the large 'terminal' opens, where a sandy, dirty parking lot is full with buses, and the hundreds, nay thousands, nay millions of people surge forward pushing, yelling and fighting to get to their buses, as various bus drivers yell and scream the name of their destinations, but the noise is so overwhelming that it's impossible to hear what they're yelling, and you bump and push and struggle as if you're lost in the rapids of a river, until almost by fortuitous chance you encounter someone who happens to be yelling your destination and you send half your party to fight for seats, and the other half struggles through the crowd getting on to the bus to behind the bus, where you have to put your luggage on the top yourself or else be charged extra. On the bus ride the windows are all closed and it swelters. If you open one, all the Ethiopians look confused, and eventually someone will lean over and close it.

In Thailand you walk into the paved bus terminal, which has signs, where you can book tickets, and where uniformed officials ask in English in a worried manner if you know where to get tickets, and if you have tickets, if you know where your bus is departing from, and if you do, if you're having a good time. There are multiple buses here, and you can purchase tickets beforehand. When the bus arrives you sit in your official seat and the bus driver personally puts your luggage in the luggage space underneath the bus. We went on the non-airconditioned bus, which was over 100 Bhat cheaper, but not only were all the windows open, but so were the doors. It was cool in those mountains, and I can't imagine the virtue of air-conditioning at such an altitude.

The experience in Ethiopia was amazing, insane, and beautiful; the experience here was tame, easy, and beautiful. Eating beef involves the death of a cow, the cutting of meat, the cooking of meat, the eating of meet. Eating an apple involves plucking one off a tree. They're both food, but so fundamentally different, and obviously I'm allowed to enjoy both, just in different ways.

Pai is nice. Tiny. Huts. Bars. Westerners. Some Thai people. Just met some British people and got a bit drunk with them and then ate some Spicy Chicken Soup, Tom Kai Gun, I think, but perhaps I'm wrong.

Tomorrow I might ride on an elephant.

Nookie is good, but a foot massage is best

I was this close to proposing. Really I was. I didn't care that she was fat and old and her elbow was the size of my head. It's not about what's on the outside after all, because frequently the outside is a disguise, a lie even, no matter how shaggable. That fat old Thai lady knew how to massage a foot like no one's business, and as I chilled out on a comfy chair on that street corner, with a pillow behind my head whilst watching the bustling Sunday street market in Chang Mai, I realised that you shouldn't judge a person on what they look like, nor on if they can speak English, nor on a romantically charged shared history full of turbulence and ups and downs, nor on the size of their elbows, because what truly matters in a person is how well they can massage your feet. This is a lesson we would all do well to remember.

Also it's important to try new things. Like deep fried cockroaches, which don't taste like chicken, but instead taste like the shell of a prawn, or frog and chili stir fry, which does taste like chicken stirfried with chili, except with more bones. I never pictured frogs to have bones, but I suppose if they didn't they'd be worms or possibly snakes or else very unstable life forms that wobble a lot and can't hop.

Although I have a suspicion we're staying in the 'uncool' area of Chang Mai, and not by the river where I suspect the party is. No all we got is terribly old and impressive temples full of giant gold Buddhas who are stern looking and have gone on diet, and don't have fat bellies and certainly aren't laughing, but look a little like a slightly stoned assassin, vaugely out of it, fully confident, and potentially dangerous with a sword.

So far Thailand's alright.