Teman Negara jungle, Malaysia: by day and night

Taman Negara jungle by day

After being woken at 5am by the Imam blasting his call to prayer from the mosque next door, came a trek into the jungle to Taman Negara's forest canopy walkway. It didn’t start as the adventure I hoped it would, along a well-trodden and sometimes wood-decked path, and myself, Jo and Jen were a bit miffed. But it certainly finished as a real adventure, and you can’t grumble at the chance to trek in the jungle.

The jungle was quite dense, and comprised of 3 layers or zones of vegetation: the uppermost (canopy layer), somewhere near the heavens; the secondary layer, growing to a tree height I’m familiar with; and the forest floor layer of ferns, plants and new-growing trees.

The uppermost foliage layer is held 70-80m high by giant trees appearing to be racing upwards towards the sunlight, many like 1m diameter telegraph poles: dead straight until the first branch 10m or more above the ground. The largest trees have 3 or 4 triangular buttresses, shaped like giant European noses, to support their weight.

Buttress supporting massive tree

The second layer is of (for me) normal-size trees, some palm-like but with saw-blade thorns on their trunks. Down at the dimly-lit forest floor, the plants and flowers. Smothering and choking all are creepers that scale then hang from all trees: thigh-thick; plaited; creepers on creepers on creepers; and curving and spiralling around on the ground like fire hoses.

Typical jungle and Tarzan creepers (maybe 20m above the ground)

There were few flowers so little fragrance, only that of a damp forest. It was much quieter than I’d imagined too, with only rare bird chatter and mostly insect whistlings. Compensating, there was plenty of colour in butterflies and in leaves. Who said growing leaves had to green? I saw reds, yellows, shades of purpley green and even light sea-blue. A family of wild pigs shuffled and snuffled across our path and through the undergrowth and dense litter of brown leaves. Unfortunately, they were the only 'big' animals I saw, but I was content to watch the 2-cm body length ants, hairy caterpillars and British ant-sized black bees drinking the sweat from my forearm.

An opportunity to explore the forest’s high canopy couldn’t be missed, and was utter fear and exhilaration. The canopy walkway is 530m of rope-and-plank walkway (think Indiana Jones escaping the Temple of Doom on that rope bridge across the deep gorge, burning stones in his bag) as 9 sections hanging between 10 wooden platforms that circle giant tree trunks (think Ewok village, Return of the Jedi) about 45m above the forest floor (think 11 storeys up). [The forest’s values of measurement as quoted by a jungle warden.] As the rope bridges bounced and swayed I had infighting between my instincts: to keep going for the buzz and bolt from this toes-over-the-edge-of-a-cliff like situation. They compromised, with me tip-toeing along the foot-wide planks and only occasionally looking down, having minor heart failure every time the planks creaked. Stunning views of the jungle and river though.

45m high rope walkway through the jungle canopy

After a lunch of peanut butter and jam sarnies, we took a 6km hike through the stifling heat and humidity to the summit of Bukit Teresik hill. I’ve never been so saturated with sweat before, though really felt it’s cooling effects. Palmy fronds resonated to the shrill, metallic whistling of a cicada-like insect (1 or 1000s together?) of a pitch that resembled 12,000 Stretford Enders urging the ref with finger-in-mouth whistling to end a closely-fought match, and increased to that of a dentist’s drill. I had to put my fingers in my ears at times, and was thankful when all were silenced by the torrential afternoon downpour. And then the real adventure began.

Our steep descent down Bukit Teresik was on mud, using arm-thick creepers as handrails. We had to search for footprints to discern our route at intersections of animal/human tracks and dry stream channels. The leafy branches of recently fallen trees smothered all evidence of the track in places, and our way was occasionally blocked by 20m long and 1m thick Cadbury’s Flake bars: the decomposing, crumbling-in-the-hand remains of other fallen trees. Comparing the din made by the rain striking foliation above, with the little rain water that reached us at the forest floor, the canopy catches almost all precipitation, explaining the apparent urgency for creepers and leafy plants to get up there.

Cadbury’s Flake tree

I was so drained back at Kuala Tahan village I could hardly comment even about the leeches Joe found in both his socks, so engorged with his blood that it dripped out of them as he flicked them off. The anti-coagulent they injected to ease his blood flow into their mouths certainly worked, as his wounds tricked blood for an hour after. I then had 23 hours sleep with only 2 hours awake time between, before deciding to explore the village for the rest of the next day. I emailed from a wood and corrugated iron shack where the husband yelled and groaned at his WWF wrestling Playstation game and the kids, in Spiderman outfits, watched violent sound TV or washed the Ssangyong Musso SUV out the front. I thought this was a jungle village?!

Kuala Tahan riverside village

A chap in the next dorm room, who’s been here weeks and done all the ‘deep’ jungle treks, talked about the efforts employed to preserve this jungle national park, or not. Poaching Thais, who cross their border and enter the north of the park, have reduced the tiger population to around 50 and logging continues, contributing to the erosion into the muddy rivers. Timber is transported away by local boatmen (and who wouldn’t take the offer of a fistful of cash?), with boat licenses that can only be granted by the national park. Yet 3 years imprisonment awaits a tourist who enters the park without a camera or fishing permit!

I hope the Malaysian government looks at the ugliness of most of its deforested and palm-tree plantation landscape and makes tighter measures for preserving this minor patch of remaining jungle.

Taman Negara jungle by night

As the jungle wasn't as noisily alive as I'd expected by day, I decided to investigate its symphony by torch and star light. I could have employed a guide for the evening for 20 Ringgit (3 quid), but with only 23 Ringgit to get me tomorrow's breakfast, lunch and potential 6-hour train journey to Kuala Lumpur, I went accompanied only with my sense of direction and 'no snake or spider bites please' wishful thinking. I wasn't disappointed.

There was much more activity than during the daytime, mostly insects as the loud, guided groups of Germans and Chinese kept the bigger animals away. I saw Huntsman spiders (I was told) camouflaged against licheny tree trunks, crickets with antennae many times their body length, thorny stick insects, caterpillars so hairy they were wearing Afghan hound coats and best of all, rows of glow-in-the-dark mushrooms (no, I hadn't eaten one first) that resembled a luminous row of mini-UFOs parked up on a parking lot log.



Spider at night (10cm across)


Camouflaged Huntsman spider (10cm across)

Who says a night foray into the jungle can't be fun? Kuala Lumpur next...

An afternoon with a Malaysian Orang Asli 'aboriginal' tribe

An afternoon with a Malaysian Orang Asli 'aboriginal' tribe

After a morning nervously stepping through the jungle canopy along high-supended rope bridges, I went to visit the Bat Et Tribe of Malaysian Orang Asli 'original people', in one of 10 villages of that tribe.

These nomadic forest-dwellers allow tourists to spend an hour gawping at them in exchange for Ringgit (Malaysian currency), upon which they are now semi-dependent for nutritious sugar and rice, although they still hunt for monkeys, porcupines, birds, squirrels. Other new additions to their diet include beef curry, noodles, cookies and lollipops. The houses are triangular and made of dry Palmy fronds laid upon wooden frames, sometimes with blue plastic tarpaulin sheets, another purchase with their tourist cash.

The village

The chief, John, was one of only a few men present, the rest out hunting for food or sandalwood, the latter to be sold for money. He sported well-used shorts beaaring a worn Spiderman motif whilst the women, almost all with a young baby clinging to her breast, were partially wrapped in colourful sheets of material. The 26 children wore ragged clothes if anything and played with the plastic carrier bags littering the ground along with Dunhill cigarettes boxes; the men are dependant on tobacco to maintain their stamina during long forays into the jungle. All but the chief were wary and suspicious of us, the women scowling at us or ignoring us, the children so shy they need 2 days of familiarisation before approaching a stranger. The children appeared subdued and Chief John (father of 9 of them) explained that they wait for the afternoon downpour before playing. It was surreal, standing in the central clearing of a nomadic tribe's jungle village in a blue Oxford cotton shirt and digital camera in hand. I felt like an ignorant tourist paying for thrills at a human zoo, and wanted to leave in shame. Intrigue at such a simple way of life, and determination to find out (and be reassured about) how they'll survive against outside modern influences and pressures, kept me there.

Marraige in the tribe is a complex affair, usually between same tribers from different villages, as each village is essentially one extended family. When a couple like each other they acquire their parents' blessings then consult with the chief about a good day for the wedding. Then the villagers build a new house for the couple, to get to know each other in for the week before the wedding day. The morning after their first night they're asked,

"So how was last night?"

"Good." The couple spend another then another night together. "Not good" The wedding is called off.

To marry, females have to be 16 years old and capable of women's work: fishing; cooking; making a house roof. Males must be 20 years old and able to make fire, poison darts and a dart blow pipe, be able to survive in the jungle, and understand natural medicine. On the big day and evening there is a big party of traditional food, music and dancing.

Being nomadic, the tribe uproot every 3-4 months, when the local hunted food, and sandalwood, become depleted. After the chief has approved a new site, new houses are built then the villagers move all their belongings over a day or two. The village is also relocated after a death, as the old site must be bad or unlucky. A dead body is placed in a specially-built tree house, around 35m above the ground, and protected against the elements by a single-piece shroud of tree bark. Cooking utensils are placed by the corpse's left, and by the right hunting tools and personal possessions. A marker is placed at the foot of the tree but often washed away, thus the body often 'lost', too. Usually the corpse is checked after 2 weeks for natural decay then after 2 years, when the remaining bones are removed and buried. The tribe believe a body uses Nature to grow and live thus must be returned to Nature after death: as animals' food. With no Gods, the Orang Asli 'worship' Nature's spirits: rain; trees; lightning; moon etc.

As paying tourists, we were there to learn to make fire with just wood and also poison blow darts. We were fortunate to have the opportunity because when the tribe relocates away from the river, tourists are not taken through the jungle to visit. Chief John made fire in 10 seconds using a long, reed-like strip of lighweight Marantey tree wood, and rubbing it vigorously in a groove of a plank with a hole cut through. When friction-generated smoke appeared he added wood-shavings for a flame and fuel. He then cut 4 darts from a clarinet-reed-like strip of bamboo wall, the poison and the glue for the dart flights both the sap of the Ipoh tree. The dart launcher is a 2m long, dead straight blowpipe (of a special bamboo they spend up to a month searching for in the jungle), decorated with finely etched rings, like vinyl record grooves, that indicate the number of animals successfully killed. He flew the darts into the fin of a 20cm fish shape etched into a polystyrene board (yeh, polystyrene), from 25m away. His family won't go hungry with that accuracy! And then my turn, a pathetic effort in comparison, though I got the dart to go towards the target.

Chief John making poison blowdarts

Chief John 'killing his prey' by blowing poison darts through a bamboo 'gun'

So, can the Bet Et tribe continue their traditional way of life in a rapidly modernising and forest-removing Malaysia? Sighing, Chief John told us, "The current elders can, though it'd be difficult without rice and money. The children couldn't; they enjoy their cookies and ice-cream too much?"

The jungle train south through Malaysia

Another pre-dawn get up (4:30am) to catch the local 'jungle train' south to Jerantut for the Teman Negara National Park (jungle treks place).
The jungle railway is an incredible feat of engineering, cutting through 100s kms of mountainous jungle area, beside steep embankments, over rusty iron bridges and through tunnels fascaded by hefty stone blocks. How was this surveyed before its 1931 completion?
Through the morning mist I peered at hillsides of misty jungle, but also great tracts of single species plantation (rows of palm or rubber trees) extending for miles in each direction, and even worse, completely deforested hillsides of terraced orangey clay that host pathetic patches of grasses and is being washed out of rain-cut gullies. Why is Man destroying this beautiful chaos for ugly, only temporary, order? Thankfully, the further from civilisation the more intact the jungle.


Misty morning jungle :)

Plantation :(



Bare-stripped hillsides :(

By 10am the mist had evaporated and the train and sediment-laden Willy Wonka rivers (of colour and viscosity) meandered sluggishly between 2km high, triangular mountains covered in pristine jungle, and past trees housing families of grey monkeys. Every 20 minutes or so the train stopped at stations ranging from barn-like, with platforms and benches and built with old railway sleepers, to nothing more than a bus shelter beside a dirt track and a couple of wooden shacks. The steep embankments cut along hillsides were so close to the train that I couldn't lean out the window without being whacked by branches.

One of the 'big' train stations

The train itself is a REAL train: one of the 3 carriages an art deco dining car, air con provided by doors and windows permenantly jammed open (though the wind was like a giant hairdryer on full heat today), the chug and jerk of the deisel engine and carriages held together by great rusty hooks visible below the between-carriages planks. I can see why railway enthusiasts get enthusiastic; broad and comfy seats, and similar-minded train geeks marvelling at the great views.

In the dining car, eating a banana omelette out of a newspaper sheet containing an article about the Thai golfer Pornpong Phatlum, the stark behavioural differences I've frequently observed between Western and Muslim males were being played out (there were few women ever in the dining car). Whereas the Westerners chat, read or dreamily gaze out of the window, the Muslim men and teenage boys just sit and unashamedly stare, frown and look a little disgusted at us over their treacley coffees, or gaze with sleazily half-closed eyelids and tut (in frustration that they don't have it?) at white women or the chests of Western-dressed Muslim girls. When the teenagers sat opposite us occasionally spoke, the comment seemed derogatory and the reply usually a sneer.

I returned to the civility of the other carriage just as we arrived at another shed-like station, boarding boys wearing fake Man U, Liverpool, Arsenal, England and Brazil shirts, or hand-me-down InUtero tour and Linkin Park T-shirts strolled cockily down the train. I thought this was supposed to be the jungle?! In contrast, the 20 or so schoolgirls who also boarded wore purple and lilac headscarfed uniforms and were too shy to smile or take the carriage's only seat, next to me.

Prettily-dressed multicultural commuters

After 11 hours we finally pulled up at Jerantut, and took a minibus along a tarmaced road through jungle (I know, I know, hyocrite) and mile after mile of depressing palm plantation to Kuala Taman village, the gateway to the 130 million-year-old Teman Negara jungle...

Theroux Mk II: S. Thailand and into Malaysia

Considering S. Thailand and N. Malaysia are separated only by a 50m wide river, they are worlds apart: from the culture and religion to the desire to exhibit machine guns.
The 6:30am train from Hat Yai, to Sungai Kolok on Thailand's southern border is a feast for the eyes of anyone who’s spent too long in the European or Korean (or pretty much anywhere else for that matter) rat-race. My carriage companions slept or tried to sleep through the first hour's chugging and rattling through misty forest and wooden, stilted houses in homesteads without land-protecting walls. By 8am there was enough heat and light to evaporate the steam and reveal people working by hand in a grassy and forested monsoon-flooded land (October to March on this coast), bulls knee deep and white crane-like birds flitting around.
By Yala, most of the women boarding the train or zipping around on mopeds wore headscarves and ankle- and wrist-length dresses; men no longer stood to offer their seats. Minerets and pointed-arch windows peered over the house roofs at the soldiers and plainly-dressed teenagers holding machine guns. Seven armed soldiers boarded my carriage at Balo and were alertly attentive when a passenger shouted, into his mobile phone, and spun again when the brass bell was struck for the first of three times to signal the train's departure. Entrances to official buildings were protected by barbed barricades. , Dan the Thai Physics teacher was certainly right when he advised me yesterday not to go to Yala or Pattani due to the danger of, “Dangerous, not Buddha people [Malay Muslim Thais]”, and I wondered what rebels or cause all this military hardware was protecting us from.
The train continued past forested mountains, coconut palms and rubber tree plantations, the only man-made structures the black telegraph wires and posts always by the train’s side. The occasional stilted village surrounded a shiny, white and green, brick mosque, often gold-domed.
At the border town of Sungai Kolok I stiffly and nervously alighted and strolled through immigration, then across one time zone and the Kolok Bridge spanning the rivery border, flanked by rickety-stilted huts ankle deep in murky orange water, and into Malaysia. Here the men were much more hostile, frowny and pushy than their grinning counterparts across the river, though the women were smilier with life and at me. The full, Kota Bharu-bound bus had only nine males, and many head-scarved women moving this way and that between seat headrests to stare at the token Westerner who’d just boarded. Young ladies, lean and elegant in their long and colourful silks, giggled at my, ‘God I feel like an alien’ shrug and smile; the men continued to just frown. The bus cruised past houses rarely stilted or wooden on a road occupied by Peugoet and Proton cars rather than motorbikes. At 13:26, the roadside was thronged with robed and white-capped men streaming into the mosque of skeleton concrete and scaffolding, no waiting for building to be finished to praise Allah. Street signs surprisingly displayed the Roman alphabet, not the Arabic script that, for some reason, I’d expected. And not a firearm to be seen!
Kota Bharu, a Muslim stronghold and capital of this region, I know nothing about other than that the chilli fried rice and jelly with ice-cream is delicious. So a wander around the mosque and night market is on the cards before the next train journey, south through the Malaysian jungle. I pray there are less machine guns on that one.

(A) Paradise found: Ko Payam (island)

Just spent a week on Ko Payam island, off the Andaman Coast of Thailand (where the 2004 tsunami hit) and only 13km from the Myanmar maritime border. As I don't possess the descriptive ability or superlatives to convey what paradise this island is, I'll attempt to give some impression of life here as a narrative of a few day's adventures and banter.
http://andaman-island-hopping.com/islands/phayam.htm

Sunday
After a muesli, watermelon, pineapple and honey breakast in a wooden shack resting on a talc-powder beach and 10m from the lapping and bath-warm aquamarine sea, my taekwondo accomplice Anna announced, "There's a nice walk a couple told me about. It's about 20 minutes along the beach, across the river, past the Burmese sea gypsy village, and through the forest to the 3km long beach." Sold! Swedish Anna and Eric, Anna, and I strolled off along 'our beach', watching the crabs scuttling to their burrows, and picking-up, inspecting, then tossing aside, wave-rounded chunks of colonial coral.

Our beach

Occasional stilted shacks peeped around the palm tree line, and there wasn't another soul in sight. At the beach end we unexpectedly met a mangrove forest/swamp, with tree trunks looking like they were balanced atop giant antique bird cages of roots, at this low tide. The mud was ultra-fine, squelchy, sticky, splodgey, stinking and graphite black with decaying biomatter. Vertical spikes of chopped choots were bloody sharp, yet it we all laughed at the ridicularity of the situation: bikini or shorts clad and 'wading' and sometimes slipping through this knee-deep ooze.
"Did they purposely forget to tell you about the swamp?"
"Are you OK?"
"Grand! This is my most exilarating mangrove swamp trek yet."
After crossing the river (up to our necks with cameras held aloft and paper money in mouth for safety, and at the nick of time as the incoming tide tugged at our legs) we strolled into the Burmese refugee village. Scrawny children and roosters shaded under bamboo huts beside piles of domestic refuse and scrap metal, whilst adults eyed us with more suspicion and without the smile typical of Thais. The Burmese refugees are a group of nomadic sea gypsies, one of many bands illegally inhabiting this area, who’d set up camp at the end of the beach until the 2004 tsunami destroyed their village. They were granted land and financial support to build a settlement by the Thai government and some Texas organisation on the condition they adopted a religion. Now a rickety bamboo hut church sits near the river, though I wonder if they have embraced the Bible’s teaching as they have their new land rights?
After receiving direction toward the path leading towards Aow Yai Beach, we wandered through areas of seemingly undamaged tropical forest, complete with Tarzan-style plaited creepers, a myriad of flowery fragrances and colours, and butterflies with the size, colour and flittish flightpaths of bats. Past acres of rubber, banana, coconut and cashew nut plantations I dreamily strolled, until Eric reminded me black snakes, like those he’d leapt back from 5 minutes previously, are more scared of stamping strides. I think I heard a monkey shriek, though the island has few monkeys now. The Burmese have eaten them, apparently. Why is a majority group so quick and keen to blame the minority for changes and problems?

Ko Payam forest

Finally, a well-earned breather at a shack bar for cashew nut milkshakes before the long walk along the golden arc of Aow Yai Bay. This isn’t as nice as our beach, with its motorbike tracks and half a dozen bathers on its 3km length. Interestingly, the sandball-making crabs here left them in spirally rather than the starry patterns littering our beach: cultural and industrial differences between the E and W-side crab populations. We only got a kilometre further before the need for iced ginger, lemongrass, lemon and honey tea. Back in the forest, away from the noise of scooters and electric generators was bliss, before a scarlet sunset on a wooden verandah and being bitten by red ants that didn’t let go until I tore them in half. At 6pm our generator starting filling the air with its resonance for the 5 hours electricity a day it allows us, and at 11pm gave us 5 seconds of flickery notice to grab the candles and matches before all was dark and starry and quiet.

Monday

Today's chosen new adventure sport was slalom kayaking, and where better to learn than your local mangrove forest/swamp.
Rob and I paddled a mile along shore to where the mangrove trees met the beach and waded ashore for a rest. It felt odd, stepping out of the sea and having to wear shoes due to the risk of snakes, spiders, biting ants and ankle-tunnelling parasites. Anglesey this is not! Paddling up the river, flanked by densely packed trees with roots above ground, as if the trees are perched atop antique bird cages of bare limbs, then lush green above high tide mark, was utterly silent.

The mangrove

Hawks and eagles spiralled above, and at the first river branch a tiny sandy beach was crawling with inch-long crabs, each with one claw the size of its body, the other normally proportioned. These 1000s of crabs were all waving their giant claws in slow and seemingly synchronised circular movements above their heads. Forking left and left and left up progressively narrower, shadier and stiller tributaries, the water changed from greeny blue to a murky treacle brown and seemed like it hadn't been disturbed for a long time. Finally I was unable to paddle without striking tree roots, and as we about-turned all was eerily silent. If it had been a film, here was the point the music and conversation stopped and the giant anaconda slid into the water in the out-of-focus background. Thankfully, it didn't get us and we returned to the open sea, tight-turning, ducking and weaving round and under partially submerged and mollusc-impregnated tree trunks and roots.

In the evening, I explored the rusling noise, that I presumed was rats in plastic bags the previous night, coming from under our stilted hut. What a surprise to see fist-sized hermit crabs arduously dragging their conch homes through the leaf litter and into their burrows.

Local nectar (hiding hermit crab for scale)

Making a birthday cake for Rob tomorrow....

There's only one stop. Seoul to Bangkok

Packed up at 7am and left the Kobos Love Motel, where my school had put me up, and South Korea, bound for Bangkok. The motel was an interesting venue to stay and I'll miss the free internet and 50 inch TV screen, but not the Korean TV shows or the bedside condom packets and 'I Love You' desensitizing cream (to show how much I love her?), that I was tempted to rub on my forehead to numb the mundanity of 3am essay marking. Then off to the airport, kindly escorted by Mel and Jo, and onward to Hong Kong then Bangkok.

Thursday

The little of Bangkok I saw in a jet-lagged stupor on the airport bus was a mix of Old Nicosia, Chicago and Beijing. Just another Asian city, I guess. I woke from an exhaustion coma on Ko San Road, Oh! the sights and sounds of Bangkok's traveller street: Jack Johnson, Roy Orbison, Chelsea shirts, 'English breakfast 40Baht', stalls offering an abundance of tack or forged TEFL certificates, driver's licenses and presscards, and thankfully some Thai people and food. Queuing to get money, a tough, skin-headed Glaswegian we'll call 'Jimmy' surprised me with his confession of living here in a temple to learn Thai massage from the monks. Wafts of coal-roasting chicken kebabs teased my hunger but I opted for the safer triple choc Cornetto. The heat and damp were creeping up and my drenched chest seemed doubly uncomfortable after Korea's sub-zero temperature and lip-crackingly dry air. Ko San seems to me like an Ibiza without a beach so getting south to a small, non-traffic island next to Burma can't come quick enough.
Rob turned up an hour later as I devoured yoghurts (probably the best way to ingest the new tummy bacteria) and we taxied to an electronics mart before an exhilarating dash on a 'tuk tuk', through the most polluted and hectic streets I've ever been on. Our motorised 3-wheeled scooter taxi driver offered to charge us only 10B (16p) for the ride if we made "only 1 stop" at a travel agent that gave him a 500B petrol coupon. He even suggested driving us across Thailand to the Malaysian border, but that 4km ride through Bangkok was enough for me.

Typical 'tuk tuk' taxi

The street cafe lunch of Thai curry was indescribably delicious: a coconutty chilli green soup full of vegetables, roots, leaves and quartered fruits that resembled a fusion of lime and fig. The only vegetable I recognised was the carrot. Among the stream of women peddling bracelets and wooden frogs that 'croak' when their spiny backs are scraped with a stick unexpectedly and shockingly came a toothless pensioner who wasn't quite with it, who was offering herself sexually for 30p. Drifting behind her was the biggest congregation of Western people I've seen in a year, and I couldn't help staring at hips and thin lips and pointed noses. I was also reminded how much I don't miss bad postures and drooping shoulders, and Radio 1 DJ-like southern accents suggesting, "Roight! Let's get straight inta da mixa", which I presume is related to partying and not cement? So many of these hippie wannabes were probably Guardian-reading law graduates and I couldn't control my laughing outburst at, "Tarquin, come here", followed by, "Well, what's your bloody name then?", from a gangly and miffed-looking Tarquin.
I made it 22 hours without imodium!
Rob and I discussed how the West will be able to compete against Asia in terms on manufacturing; the sheer volume of cheap goods I've seen marketed in Asia is just suffocating. "Ah! but they can't beat us on health and safety or bureaucracy". As if to reinforce his point, Rob led us to a bar called The Petrol Station, which unbelievably is a closed-for-the-evening Esso petrol station. Spread across the forecourt were tables and seated Westerners drinking 'buckets', 1 litre buckets filled with rum, ice, coca-cola and Red Bull, dispensed from a VW campervan-cum-bar complete with DJ and decks at a shelf where the rear window once was. Smokers dropped their ash and cig ends onto the concrete between the petrol pumps, with no thought about whether petrol had been spilled there earlier in the day.

The petrol station bar

The Thai people are extremely friendly, smily and open. Yes I'm on tourist street and they want my money, but I feel they are much more genuine than that. Oh! the Thai ladyboy urban myth is fact! Many of the male bar/hostel staff are so effeminate: long hair held up with pretty clips, camp voices, slapping Rob's bum on the street, and the internet cafe 'chap' has a padded bra under his white tank top that shows off his big and toned biceps.
My first, "where next?" was answered by Anna and Jo and tonight Rob and I are overnight bussing south to Ranong and a small island, Ko Payam, just of the coast of Myanmar/Burma....