Backpacking

Hey all,

Here we go again. This time I promise the blog entry will not be too long (due to a few less exciting weeks), but if you wanna hear the story about Mahta and the bird flu, please read on.

First, I wanna tell you all that I'm currently chatting (and webcam'ing) with some random Thai boy online.. he he. found the computer logged on to MSN and figured I'd start chatting. It's kinda difficult, as he doesn't speak any english, and my knowledge of the thai language is limited to ผมเสียใจ, meaning SORRY.. he he.

Anyways, back to the blog. Last time we spoke, we were chilling in Kuala Lumpur and I had ranted about the anus of Malaysia. Well, KL proved to be a bit better than that. We spent 3 days in this mega city, and I think we saw everything there is to see, and quite a bit of what's not to see. In other words, the city proved to be kinda boring. The Petronas Twin Towers, were kinda cool, but's that's about it. For those of you who have no clue what I'm talking about, think of Entrapment and Chaterine Zeta Jones (boys, no droolling on the keyboard). We did get a chance to go up to the Skybridge, some 41 stories above ground, and snap several pictures. Kinda cool.

After our three days in KL, we were excited to leave to see Henken in Singapore. We arrived in Singapore at 6.30 PM, after an 8 hour bus ride (with a bunch of Indians singing the whole way). By 7.30 PM, we had made our way to Henken's place, only to find the door locked, Henken's cell phone shut off and no Henken to be found. Finally, after a few hours and many rounds of cards, Henken showed up and brought us into his HUGE 3 bedroom apartment. Super nice!!! There's not that much to say about Singapore, other than their weird laws (you're not allowed to have a sip of water on the subway, and will we fined $500 if you do). However, we did have a very enjoyable time (much thanks to Henken's hospitality) and got to meet a lot of nice people. To sum it up, Singapore consisted of sightseeing, drinking and eating.. In other words, GOOD TIMES!

We flew back from Singapore to Bangkok, which by now seems like a second home, a week ago. The first day, we spent finding the Vietnamese embassy and handing our passports over to get a Visa. We got ripped off big time, but oh well. This is where the fun starts. That night, Mahta was beginning to show signs of the Bird Flu, and by next morning, the fever had set in. She battled the disease and ventured out, which resulted in puke on the street and high fever. We decided that anti-bird-flu-pills (antibiotics) was the right way to go, and after a brief chat with the pharmacist, the pills were ours and the road to getting better seemed set. OH NO, two days later, Mahta was hitting 40 degrees in fever, and was starting to hatch eggs, so off to the pharmacist Haakon went. She told me that the pills we had received were in fact COMPLETE SHIT, and would not have any effect on us non-Asians.. NO SHIT SHERLOCK... Anwways, we got some other ones, and have since then laid low, eating pills and drinking lots of water.. I think it worked this time.. It appears as if Mahta is less bird like and the fever has gone down. Cross you fingers that there won't be a relapse people..

Tomorrow morning, my dear twin brother, Mr. Halvor, aka the Nutcracker, arrives on Kao San at 8.32 AM, and we are really excited. I even promised him that he can partake in the "eating of anti-bird-flu-pills competition" with us.

Our next journey will take us to Cambodia on Tuesday morning, which should prove to be fun. It requires several hours of shit ass bussing, on shit ass roads in the middle of nowhere. We'll let you guys know how it works out.

Cheers,

Here are a few images from earlier this month. Scroll down for more pics.

Hey guys,

First I would like to apologise for the delay in updating this stuff. Internet in the places we went to in Thailand was bitchin' expensive, so we opted out of the updating. :-)
Sorry guys

Anyways, seeing that it's been a while, we better get started. In other words, find yourself a beer, kick your friend/colleague/brother/mum off the comfy chair and enjoy.

As I told you in the last blog entry, we left Bangkok that evening at around 6 o'clock to catch a night bus to Chumpon. We had a nice big airconditioned bus and everything was going great until the bus stops at 3 in the morning. "Probably just a bathroom break" we told eachother and went back to sleep. 30 seconds later some little Thai dude comes up to us and says "this is where you get off".. Ok, fun stuff. It appeared as if we were at some dinky little bus station in the middle of nowhere and we were shown a room with floor mats and a bunch of "thai style" pillows. Needless to say, the night ended up being rather uncomfortable, but by 6.30 we had finally boarded a van with 7 other people and ended up somehow by the pier. The next 2 hours were spent relaxing on a boat with 40 other backpackers on our way to Ko Tao. Amazing feeling!!!!

Once at Ko Tao we were greeted by 40 Thai people trying to sell us diving courses. The island is 7 km long and 3 km wide and acts as the home to more than 35 dive schools. Competition was in other words kinda rough. At this time, we didn't really know what to do. None of us knew much about diving and everyone we talked to offered us "the best diving experience on the island".. hmm Lucky for us however, Mahta had met Chris, an American guy, on the boat who had been to the island 3 years earlier and was going back to the same school to do more dives. Kickass!!! We finally had an independent dude we could trust. We jumped onto the back of the pickup truck with these guys and drove 3 minutes to the dive shop to talk to the owner. She ended up being a super cool chick and we got what would prove to be an absolutely killer deal. Also, as a complimentary service, all the dive schools gave free accomodation for 4 nights, so we were now off to pick our place. We ended up with a pretty shitty bungalow, but for the price we paid, we didn't really care. Kickass.

I'm not going to bore you with the details of our diving, but it was some of the coolest stuff we've ever done. Everyday worked out pretty much the same. For the morning part, we'd meet up at the dive shop (we being: Mike, our super cool dive instructor, Bill, Chris's American friend, and the two of us) and learn about diving for a few hours. The afternoons were spent on a boat diving, relaxing and talking shit. All in all, we had 4 dives and saw some super cool fish, including the real Nemo. We had an unreal time and I really wish I could go back and do it all again.

As mentioned above, we did our course with Bill and Chris, two American guys from Colorado, which we got to know real well over the course of the next week and a half. We spent our last night at Ko Tao celebrating the opening of the World Cup and our graduation into the PADI system. It was a great night except that we slept in and almost missed our 9:30 ferry the next morning! Should've invested in a better alarm clock, we're working on it...

So, we left Ko Tao and headed for Ko Phangan for a full moon party. The ferry ride was pretty rough considering the aching hangovers, but we managed. We arrived to an overwhelming amount of taxi drivers yelling "Haad Rin, Haad Rin!" (where the full moon party takes place) but we took Chris' advice and stayed at Haad Yuan, a beautiful and peaceful beach. Our bungalow here was definitely a major upgrade and it treated us well. Well, except the ginormous spider (10 cm wide) haakon found. Turns out what is ginormous to us is only normal to the locals who laughed hysterically at our reactions.

Time flew by at Haad Yuan.. the full moon party was alright, it was more like a commercial festival than the party we were hoping for. Quite the site though! We spent a few days tanning, and Haakon managed to turn himself into a tomato regardless of the 30 SPF sunscreen! It's okay though, he's recovered.

On June 14th, Mahta decided to have her birthday.. What a day.. We spent the afternoon doing a 2 hour long jungle hike and the evening drinking vodka buckets (complements of the owner of our hotel). Also, earlier that day, we had met a super cool Israeli couple who provided us with music all night. The guy was a progressive trance DJ and spun some really crazy stuff. We drank and talked trash pretty much the whole night. By this time, the 4'5 (150cm) tall, 45 kg heavy Thai owner was drunk as shit, but nevertheless had a great time. (P.S. Haakon managed to get his hands on a chain of 250 firecrackers which we fired off that evening... Fun stuff) Also, just to make the night that much better, one of the people working at the resort had baked a cake for us all to enjoy. WOW, how's that for service....

We spent 6 day on this fantasy beach of ours, but had to eventually leave for Malaysia. It was a sad departure as we had become really close to Chris and Bill. The Israeli couple and the resort people had also made a huge impact on our stay. Definately a place we would like to come back to..

We jumped on a bus early morning on Thursday to get to a place called Butterworth in Malaysia. The bus ride was really shitty (15 hours on a small mini bus...), but we managed to get the anyways. That is, we ended up at an island instead, called Penang, but close enough. This is where I will have to bring out the nasty words... Coming from beautiful Ko Phangan to this place was like going from heaven into the anus of the world. The place was dirty as shit, the rain went through the roof and into the "hotel" rooms and it stunk like ass.. What a place!!!

We spent the evening trying to find a decent place to eat dinner, before settling for some shitty pub food. NOT HAPPY!!!
The next morning, we checked out of our "high" class $10 a night hotel and ended up at a much shittier place for $5 a night... wooohooo... We're moving deeper into anus. It's like I've always said, if you're going to try something shitty, make sure it's done right..

The day we spent at Penang island turned out to be really good though. We rented a motorbike and with Haakon driving and Mahta hanging on for dear life, we managed to make our way around the island.

The next morning we left for Kuala Lumpur, which is where the fairtale trip goes on pause. We're spending a few days here in KL before we head down to see Henken in Singapore. We're super stoked about getting to bug him for a few days and will update the blog as soon as we get some more good stories.

P.S Iran's lost two games and Mahta is being laughed at by the locals...