Pai -- The CouchSurfing Collective

so where did we leave off?

after our first night in pai, skeelow and i decided that we would make the most of our experience there. we decided that we would take our scooters up into the mountains to look for this natural hot spring that visnick told us about.

the trip was pretty crazy. we only had to go about 10 km, but we went through some serious farm country on our way there. all around, there were turnoffs for new age spa type places with promises of massages, hot springs, and rikki, which is some sort of newfangled type of yoga that the peaceniks like. visnick's directions were pretty clear. go past the first turnoff, head towards jim's elephant tours, keep going past the other elephant place, and then go to the second resort place. there, we would find the best hot springs in pai.

the elephant tour places were a trip. first of all, as we approached them, the aroma of elephant shit filled the air. we had to weave and dodge all sorts of dung piles and even almost ran smack dab into a group of tourists on elephants. by the way, we were told to never go on any of these tours because of the way the trainers and guides treat the elephants. they beat them with metal hooks until they submit. we saw some of it firsthand and it was disturbing, to say the least. it was like going to the zoo, but getting to see the behind the scenes version of what happens. elephants are intelligent and they can cry; its distressing to see such a magnificent beast subjected to torture, but thats how they do it in asia.

so after a few wrong turns, we ended up at the place that we thought that visnick was talking about. most of the natural hot springs in pai are very far from being natural in the classical sense. the best ones have huge resorts build around them. these are the places that the rich tourists go with their families. you get to stay in a bungalow right next to the spring, and the spring itself is harnessed into a swimming pool type thing. the place we went to was a little bit smaller than the rest. the lady who worked there also doubled as a massage therapist and herbalist. skeelow and i got there, changed, and soaked our motorcycle wounds in the therapeutic waters.

after soaking for a while, we played some frisbee on their well-manicured lawn and laid out in the scorching sun for a little bit. after a refreshing shower, we decided to head back into town. on our way there, we happened to pass another place that visnick had mentioned: fluid.

fluid is one of the weirder places in pai. first of all, its not much more than a gigantic, olympic sized swimming pool surrounded by some grass. inside the main place, there was a gym where you could work out and a place where the dudes who work there do natural bamboo tattooing. all of the people there had tats all over. most of the patrons had these new tats as well. people really get into the tat thing when theyre in a place like that. it costs the equivalent of about 3 dollars to use the facilities all day. when we got there, it was already an hour to closing and we weren't sure if we should shell out the money.

i asked the dude if i could walk the grounds a bit to get a feel for the place. one thing i should mention before i get into this is what visnick told us about fluid. he told us that if we wanted to meet hot chicks, fluid was the place to go. before going in, we actually peered through the fence to confirm that there were, indeed, hot chicks present. (there were.)

so as i was wandering around the pool, i noticed that a bunch of the people there were american. it had been a long time since skeelow and i had encountered americans at all. these appeared to be quite friendly and they all seemed to be together in some sort of group. one of the dudes complimented me on my tee shirt and we got to talking. he was from san francisco. that was enough for skeelow and i to decide to shell out the 3 bucks.

this is when the story gets weird. so skeelow and i break out our frisbee, which had been given to him by some guy named frank who had surfed on his couch in sedona. up until that point, that was the only thing i knew about couchsurfing.com. what it is is a website where you build a profile with pictures and descriptions of yourself, your philosophies, and your travels. through that profile, you can add friends and look at other people's profiles. the creed of the website is that as long as you have a couch available to be surfed on, you can go almost anywhere in the world and surf on someone else's couch. i know it sounds weird, but its a brilliant idea. so, say i have a place in san diego and someone from australia or something wants to come visit sea world, but doesnt know anyone and doesnt want to spend an arm and a leg on a hotel. that person sends me a message via the website and i can peruse his profile to decide if he is a good candidate to surf on my couch. i dont know how skeelow heard about the site, but that canadian guy frank contacted him through couchsurfing and skeelow left him his key. frank stayed for a couple of days, partied with skeelows homies, and gave him his frisbee as a token of his gratitude. thats how it works.

so, back to fluid. skeelow and i were throwing bombs to each other over the pool and chatting it up with our new american friends when one of them asked us if we were couchsurfers. i was utterly confused. i thought that maybe they had seen the logo on frank's frisbee (which was this innocuous canadian flag/eye symbol thing) and that was a sign to them that we were couchsurfers. i really didnt know. skeelow was likewise confused, but quickly told the frank story. we didnt really get a good response from them; we still werent sure who the fuck they were and why they thought we were of all things couchsurfers.

after getting in the water and joshing around with them some more, we were very surprised to discover that these people were, in fact, the founders and higher ups of the couchsurfing community. every six months, they choose a new place in the world to go and set up these "collectives", which are these kind of summer camp like things where avid couchsurfers volunteer 4 months of their time to help run the website. in return, they get free housing, food, fun, and the opportunity to live in an exotic locale with other couchsurfers. not a bad deal, if you can swing it. skeelow and i had just happened upon them as they were taking a group outing to the pool.

the couchsurfers were very nice to us. they invited us to come have dinner with them and party afterwards. skeelow and i could not have been happier to have met them. the collective consisted of people from all over the world and all walks of life. the main founder's name is casey. he is pretty much the man. he got the idea for the website and pushed and pushed for it. when money was tight, he contributed his own funds. when morale was low, he never got down. if you go to the couchsurfing website, you can read all about it. we met solani from india, weston from mexico, doogie from belgium, jelena from switzerland, and various others. there was even this older chick named virginia who had been a member of a german cult that featured blood orgies and group sex pecking orders. (she told us all about it over dinner that night. she also told us that she was working at some education center in chile or peru and had just traveled for about 48 hours just to get to pai so she could contribute to the collective. what a trooper.) we met shelley, who was only 21 and was in charge of doling out all of the money for the collective. we met hillary, a totally rad chick from northern cali whose job we cant talk about in this space. we met charish from australia, alice from san diego and various assorted other people. im telling you, it was kind of like a hippie commune with all sorts of people of all ages, creeds, etc -- but they were all working for the same cause and it was kind of beautiful altogether. i get kinda misty thinking about it now. the most important thing was that casey just happened to be turning 30 that night and we were invited along for the ride.

we ate dinner at this place that served some pretty authentic italian food. we had all different kinds of pizza and pasta and bread all on the couchsurfing dime. the place was owned by this thai guy who had spent some time learning the trade in italy and had brought his skills back to the homeland. he was extremely stringent in his ways and techniques and apparently was kind of the pizza nazi in those parts, very averse to any sort of criticism of his operation. after some initial awkwardness with the collective members, mainly consisting of the sort of "who the fuck are these guys?" looks we all know so well, we were readily accepted into the community. in fact, a number of the people who were not at fluid and had shown up for the pizza party actually thought that we were new volunteers who were there to help them out -- like virginia.

i should also mention that the collective was a fluid sort of place, no pun intended. there was a core group of people who were there the entire 4 months, but the rest of the community was made up of "part-timers", who came and went on a weekly or monthly basis. its funny, we found out later that they all live in this big house that they had rented in advance and ate their meals primarily in their office space. which was situated in a pretty sweet building/bungalow thing under the largest mango tree in thailand. all of the collective members had various chores and responsibilities laid out for them in minute detail. the part-timers, as it turns out, had the shittiest chores, like cleaning up after dinner and doing craftsy projects that were designed to make them feel more a part of the community. most of the people in the collective initially believed us to be new part-timers who had just arrived and had just happened to learn that they were out at fluid for an outing and had shown up because we really wanted to help. i guess that's why they were so friendly and inviting to us.

over dinner, we heard about a lot of the collective's exploits over the previous 3 months in pai. the place is so small that a large community of people all hanging out together was quite a conspicuous sight. almost all of them had been to almost every place in pai, so skeelow and i got some more tips on the places that we could go to have a good time. more immediately though, they told us that the collective was at a weird point because most of the founders were leaving for a week or so. casey, the head honcho, as i have mentioned before, was celebrating his 30th birthday that night. after the party, he would be headed to angkor wat first and to the jungles of thailand later to participate in the gibbon project, an ecotourism event where people pay a lot of money for the opportunity to view and interact with gibbons in their natural habitat. all of the money goes towards preserving their ecosystem and saving gibbons. it sounded like a blast, but skeelow and i couldnt afford it.

back to the birthday party: so after dinner, they invited us back to their diggs for some drinks. originally, they were planning on having some sort of bonfire celebration, but after a few calls and head scratching, they decided on the less ambitious plan of hanging out at the house, drinking, and then using the outdoor adobe sauna that they had on the grounds. skeelow and i were definitely in for that.

at the house, we got to take a look at their living environment. it was pretty much as we expected: 2 to a room and no hooking up. all of the people seemed to genuinely care about each other and were all pretty affectionate with each other, especially after boozing for awhile. after getting to know some more of the people who weren't at dinner and getting a little bit wasted on their booze, we felt right at home. then, they fired up the sauna.

the sauna is this big clay adobe looking thing that had a natural wood stove in the back where you feed wood for the fire. the fire, in turn, heats the adobe up to an incredible temperature. next to the sauna was a splash pool filled with cold water where you go to freshen up after sweating your balls off in the sauna. so skeelow and i borrowed some towels from the collective, stripped down, and headed in.

most of the members of the collective were hippie-ish, so they were very at peace with being naked around others. actually, to be more specific, most of the girls were pretty ok with being naked in front of strangers. i think skeelow and i were lucky in that most of the people in the community had been together for about 3 months and were very comfortable with each other. in any case, we saw a lot of beaver and even more tofu in our time in the sauna. it was a great experience because we never saw it coming.

after cooling off in the splash pool and going back in for more torture several more times, everyone decided that they had had enough so we continued drinking outside in towels and ended up getting pretty tipsy. casey seemed very happy that we were there and we wasted no time in complimenting him on what he as accomplished. he gave us heterosexual man hugs and told us that we could hang out as long as we liked. skeelow had read an article about him in some travel magazine, so he was especially enamored.

after some more drinking and schmoozing, we decided to call it a night. we jumped on our scooters and returned to the very romantic sun hut to retire for the evening. by the way, i cant think of many things cooler than bombing down an empty stretch of road, not knowing exactly where you're going, blitzed out of your mind. i kind of felt like james dean. lets just say that i really opened her up on the way back to the hotel.

we ended up getting back pretty late and discovered that these giant ants came out at night. they crawled right up out of the sink and were all around the bathroom. in the morning, they were all gone. there was also some sort of wild animal that kept making ridiculous noises just outside of our hut. if we were girls, we would have probably been a bit freaked out about it.

for the next week, shelley kept inviting us over to hang out with the collective. the place they were staying was this house owned by this guy named dave who was an expat from the US. in fact, he was from somewhere in western massachusetts, but hadnt been back in the states in like 15 years. it was weird talking to him because he had come to thailand, pulled a thai wife, and had had a kid with her. her name was wahlin. the house was named in her honor: wahlin house. if you guys ever get a chance to go out there, hit up dave at the wahlin house. you wont be disappointed. there are musical instruments all over the place and, of course, there is a sauna.

dave spent most of his time next door at this bagel bakery that he owned next door. for a while, every morning, i would go into his bagel place, order a coffee and a bagel with cream cheese, and watch cnn international or something like that with dave. dave is of the opinion that our government is out to get us in some way. he is also a big subscriber to the theory that the government was behind the events of 9/11. he even insisted that we watch the newest "loose change" video on the subject. (if you havent seen any of those documentaries, check them out. they'll blow your mind. the latest one is really tightened up and has lots and lots of convincing footage and commentary from higher up officials and experts. you may never look at 9/11 the same again. and to me, thats probably a good thing.) dave's bagels, coffee, and muffins were tremendous, by the way: fresh, homemade, and delicious.

next door to daves bagel place was this store owned by this other american expat named willow. he was almost 80 years old and had been in thailand for some time. willow's wife was a good 50 years younger than him and was part of the ahka tribe, one of the many mountain tribes of that region. i dont know how the hell willow pulled her, but she would spend most of her time making traditional ahka clothing and wares and willow would sell them from his storefront. we never got a chance to meet his wife because she was back with her people doing something or the other.

willow was a hell of an interesting guy. he grew up in some shitty place, moved to san francisco as a young man, got super into speed and somehow gutted his way through medical school with an 11th grade education. he got super into LSD and other sorts of hallucinogens because he was there during the heart of the hippie movement in the 60's. after graduating from medical school, he apparently kicked his meth habit and started getting really into marijuana cultivation. in fact, he was so fascinated by the whole thing that he quit whatever he was doing, presumably medicine, and moved out to the hindu kush mountains in pakistan to learn how to make the highest grade hash. he also picked up some farming tips out there and now has a permafarm somewhere in the hills behind his property. i cant remember when or how he got to thailand, but it was well after he had been doing whatever he was doing in pakistan and india. he was in pretty good shape for his age given his drug history and he really enjoyed shooting the shit with me whenever i came by. in fact, most of the time, willow sat outside of the store and read cheap science fiction novels. crazy motherfucker, right?

the collective had all of their meals either at restaurants or, more frequently, in their workplace. every day, a caterer would make a ton of food -- enough for 30+ people -- and lay it out in big trays, buffet style. because so many people were gone that week, shelley told us that it would be perfectly ok for skye and i to have our meals with them. so almost every day for a week, skeelow and i had our meals paid for. they even started inviting us out on their group excursions. we went to another set of natural hot springs, did more sauna, went out at night with them, and ate their food. in return, all we had to do was be cool and sometimes clean up a little. not a bad deal.



[editor's note: due to a cease and desist notice from the CS upper brass, this post has been edited to better serve everyone's needs. while i'm flattered that anyone at all is still reading this blog, and am duly impressed that i received word of my infraction less than 24 hours after this post was written, i would have to say that those people who are truly concerned that the content of this post would be damaging in any way should step back, take a deep breath, look in the mirror, and decide if this is really something that is worth devoting time and energy to. to all of my other readers, i apologize for not being able to give you a consistent account of skeelow and my travels. hopefully, this allays everyone's fears. to quote the notice: 'as we all know, these things can take on a life of their own.' if you guys want to get the real story, let me know.]



after way overstaying our welcome, skeelow and i decided that we had to move on with our journey. we had places to go and things to see. pai could not have worked out better for us: we made some cool new friends, got to experience the couchsurfing collective firsthand, and had most of our fun activities paid for. we couldnt thank the couchsurfing community enough for what they did for us. we actually could have qualified as short-termers except that we did absolutely nothing to advance the website. we were lucky that most of the higher-ups -- the decisionmakers -- liked our style and our company so we were never asked to leave and were always welcomed with open arms.

i want to take a minute to pimp the couchsurfing website. go to couchsurfing.com and set up an account. it takes no time and it allows you check out the situations of people from all over the world who are open-minded and love to travel. i promise that you won't be disappointed.

by the end of the week, the community was going on a rockclimbing excursion back in chiang mai. we were invited, but skeelow and i had to be moving on. after taking a break from the hub bub of the big cities and being unexpectedly accepted into a really cool situation, we were ready to embark on the next part of our journey: lao.





[PS THANKS COUCHSURFERS! if any of you are reading this, you guys were fucking the coolest ever. i want you guys to know that any and all of you can surf on my couch anytime.... if i ever make it back home, that is.]

Pai I -- initial impressions

this entry is long overdue. i am writing this today, nearly four months after the actual events occurred; but the story is fresh in my mind and i wanted to get it down in cyberspace before it was too late.

i have been waiting for the proper motivation/inspiration to take on this entry. at least, that's what i've been telling myself. the truth of the matter is that i've simply been too lazy and self-indulgent to sit down for an hour or so to pound this out. pai represented an oasis of sorts for skeelow and i, so i promise that i will do my best to recount most of the things that made it such a special place for us.

we had first heard about pai in siem reap, cambodia when we encountered a couple of dudes who were biking across southeast asia on expensive road bikes like lance armstrong on acid. one of the guys was from belgium and the other was from germany; they had both been in asia for quite some time and had really hit up a lot of places on the way. somehow, and i dont know how, the two of them met up a couple of weeks previous to our encounter, had discovered that they were both doing nearly the same thing, and instantly became travelling buddies. it was interesting because since neither of them spoke the others' language, they were getting by on their nearly spotless european english. it was kind of awesome, actually. the two of them were sitting side by side, shirtless on a couch outside of our guesthouse, smoking weed and ripping on each other with cheesy jokes in accented english.

skye and i, also shirtless i believe, approached these two guys because they seemed like cool dudes who might like to smoke with us. as i had mentioned before, you can get the shittiest weed you've ever seen just about everywhere in cambodia. there are guys on motorcycles that approach just about anyone who doesnt look cambodian to hawk their stress. skeelow and i actually had the boy who worked at our guesthouse knock on our door with a sack full of schwag -- stems, sticks, and seeds mostly, with that "stomped-on" quality that we all know so well -- just because we looked like the sort of guys who would be into that shit. and you know what? we were more than happy to take it off of his hands.

anyway, i digress. so these two guys, let's call them hanz and franz, were lamenting the fact that franz had had his 2000 euro road bike stolen somewhere in siem reap. (btw, you should see the "roads" in cambodia. if theres anything that reminds me more of the phrases "desert wasteland" or "landmine city", i dont know if ive seen it. think about the last scenes in mad max or the part in tank girl when lori petty is riding with ice-t in that atv -- thats what it looks like. no infrastructure, no people, all dust and craters; "barren" would be a nice way to put it.) so without a bike, franz could no longer achieve his dream of biking from germany to australia (or something like that). he had been on the road for almost a year and was understandably bummed out. he had even made fliers with a photo of his bike and his contact information to hand out to other travellers. good luck with that one... i think we was teetering somewhere between the decision to go home or to somehow acquire another bike in cambodia to continue his journey. again, good luck with that one.

we got to talking to them about thailand. since we were going to be headed right back to thailand after cambodia (or so we thought), we wanted to ask their opinions of several places we heard were cool. we had never heard of pai before, but hanz was adamant that we go check it out. all he said was, "you guys should go to pai ... im serious. go to pai!" you dont often hear ringing endorsements of places while traveling like that and besides, hanz and franz seemed like relatively credible sources, as they were smoking ganja with us at the time. that's about all we heard of pai at that time, but those two dudes really put it in our heads -- and we were eager to check it out for ourselves.

back to the semi-present: as i mentioned in the previous entry, chiang mai was not the awesome mountain refuge that we had expected. the one good thing about it was that it was a 5 hour bus ride away from pai. after having our fill of chiang mai, we boarded a bus headed directly to pai the next morning. there was a good mix of people on our bus: mostly foreign travelers (white people) and some other random asian tourists, either chinese, korean, or rich thai.

pai is situated pretty high in the mountains in the northern part of thailand near myanmar, so our journey there from chiang mai, which could be considered to be in the mountain basin, was windy and disjointed. however, because we were basically driving through a lush rainforest, it was cooler and sunnier and more peaceful than almost anywhere else we had been on our journey to that point. halfway up the mountain, we had to switch buses at this makeshift kiosk deep in the mountains. what's so cool about places in southeast asia is that there are people who live in the most remote places you could ever imagine. you can be driving through some seemingly impenetrable wilderness on some shitty dirt road where the mountains seem to go straight up on all sides and encounter one of the locals, usually with a bundle of sticks or something on his or her back, appearing out of the jungle like moonlight graham in field of dreams, only in reverse, if that makes any sense. any normal, big westerner (me included) would never be able to negotiate that sort of severe terrain, let alone carry sticks or some dead animal on our backs or strapped to our heads while climbing. these people seemingly do it with ease, although im sure it still sucks a great deal. remember when i was telling you guys about the kid in cambodia who helped guide us through the rocks? same deal.

after four and a half hours of windy ascent followed by windy descent, we ended up in pai. skeelow and i had no idea what to expect. for one, the place seemed really small. as we headed in towards the town, there seemed to be a preponderance of these sort of "new-age" spas and hotels all around. it's kind of like the feeling you get when you just arrive in sedona, arizona or santa fe, new mexico, or aspen for the first time. you really cant believe that most of that stuff exists or that there would be people who would shell out good money to attend these places. but pai is definitely one of those places.

when we got to the bus station, which was actually this guy aya's motorbike rental/minibus chartering store, we were amazed to see so many westerners all around. it was like going to petaluma or one of those other rich hippie enclaves in northern california. most of the people there were hippie travellers, wearing their fisherman pants and working on their dreads. there were almost zero thai people there. that was the first shock. there were vendors all around selling the usual thai stuff: fresh squeezed fruit juice, smoothies, pad thai, etc -- along with some other more unique hippie stuff like knit caps, hemp jewelry, and assorted cool clothing.

the first person we talked to was aya. he was actually chinese by blood. his parents moved out to thailand from china and he was born and raised there. but aya could speak some damn good chinese, so i spent most of the time rapping with him in chinese even though his english was almost flawless. think about this: pai is such a remote, insular place that aya's policy is to allow everyone and anyone who gets off one of his buses to borrow a motorbike free of charge for a couple of hours to go look for a hotel. you literally step off the bus, and there's a bike for you. all you have to do is take the key, hop on, and drive off. they don't even take your passport as collateral. aya pretty much has pai on lockdown. his business is the only one in the whole town that offers buses to other places. his is also one of only two places in the town that offers motorcycle rentals -- and the other one is probably his as well. you can get any sort of motorcycle from aya. he's got those huge off-road, 500 cc bikes as well as manual and automatics and scooters. it's perfect, because pai is mostly inhabited by overly macho british types who really get off on buzzing around on their bikes and hippies who like to ride off into the mountains. aya must make a fortune.

skeelow and i had decided to rent the nicest place that we could find because it was the offseason there and the housing prices were relatively cheap. after driving around on rickety bridges, zig zagging the shores of the mekong, we settled on this sort of romantic place called the sun hut. it was situated about 3 km out of town, but since we had already worked out an agreement with aya to rent the bikes (for the equivalent of 6 dollars a day), we werent worried about transportation to and from the place and were kind of excited to have to drive so far off the beaten path to get home. according to our lonely planet guidebook, this place was great. it had a vegetarian restaurant, laundry service, and cabin-like huts that had attached bathrooms and soft beds. skeelow and i chose a double with a single bed for our purposes. each hut was named after a zodiac sign. i think we got virgo, but im not sure. when we were scoping out the room, we met this guy who we simply called "visnick" after one of our friends with the same name who he reminded us of. visnick was busy trying to hit on these two dutch girls who were about six inches taller than him and hot. he kind of had this whiny, know-it-all way of talking. he told us that he had come to pai every summer for the last six years and that the sun hut was a good place to stay. i think he was there to show the place to the dutch chicks, but they passed on it. in all, we were paying about 8 bucks a night between the two of us, so we couldnt complain.

the main thing about pai is that you dont really have to pay a lot to stay there. they have these bungalows all along the river that cost something like 2 dollars a night. each one has a dingy mattress, no mattress, and a loads and loads of mosquitoes. most of the travellers that we encountered had decided to stay in pai for awhile and had chosen to stay at one of these huts. we felt a bit high brow for deciding to shell out the extra six bucks a night.

another thing about pai is that everyone (or at least every guy) has a scooter. you can park them anywhere you want, gas them up at the gas station, crash the shit out of them, and not wear a helmet. it's all up to you. as a consequence of this, we saw more incidents of nasty road rash than anywhere else we had been or would be going. it was incredible. everyone had at least one story about bailing off of a bike either because a.) they were too drunk, b.) they were too inexperienced, or c.) they had too many people onboard. i have to admit that i fell off of the bike several times, but pulled the "jump off the bike while throwing it down routine" every time to save myself from being one of those cautionary tales that we had heard so much about. still, i left thailand with some scrapes and bruises on my legs -- but it was nothing that a little natural hot spring action couldnt take care of. we'll get into that later.

after checking into the sun hut and officially renting our bikes from aya (like everyone else, we forewent the option of paying a 3 dollar deposit for a helmet.), skeelow and i settled down at one of the open air bars on the main drag and got some beer. inside, they were broadcasting some UFC matches and skeelow and i were getting into it like good americans do. at the table next to us, there were these two chicks who were speaking english. we mostly ignored them and eventually, one of the chicks turned around and asked us if we were canadian. insulted and confused, we asked them how they could possibly mistake our accents for being canadian. they told us that they were in fact canadian from british columbia and that because we had west coast accents, we all sort of had the same accent. skeelow and i vehemently denied those charges and pointed out that BC people just wanted to be like californians, causing the possible confusion. no matter though -- one of the girls was pretty damn hot.

they had just finished a long trek in chiang mai and had just taken the bus to pai that evening, just like us. they told us that the trek sucked (big surprise) and they were looking to chill out for a day or two before moving on. we told them that we were over jumping from place to place and that we were going to probably be there for a week or so. i dont know what happened, but somehow they were taken with us and agreed to ride with us on our motorbikes to some bar in some other location. this was a great coup for us because we had always thought that the bikes would be good for picking up chicks. it worked out perfectly: skeelow had one girl holding on for dear life and i had the other. plus, since we werent all that good at riding those bikes yet (especially with another passenger aboard), the element of danger was ever present and the ride turned out to be rather exhilarating -- probably more for us than for them, but who cares? we were practically high-fiving each other the whole way there.

we went to this bar called bebop that featured a bob marley cover band (all thai hippies, by the way, with dreads, tats, and everything). after catching up with the girls and talking about traveling and teaching and canada, another singer came on who could be best described as the thai janis joplin. she had wild and crazy hair, always wore this ratty babydoll dress, and had a voice like louis armstrong. i actually thought she was a dude or a transvestite or ladyboy or whatever at first, but no, she was a chick. it was horrible and strangely captivating at the same time -- like a traffic accident you cant avert your eyes from. after janis, there was this dude who went on and played the best version of cocaine that ive ever heard. we called him the thai jimi hendrix because the only songs he would play were jimi and clapton songs -- and he was fucking good.

one more thing i need to mention about pai is sort of the white elephant in the room in the town. because the thai authorities take drugs so seriously, it is super super hard to find weed in pai. the only way you can get it is to ride up the mountain towards the waterfalls and hope that a local dude (one of the aforementioned mountain people that appear out of nowhere like a gorilla in the mist) jumps out of the bushes and flags you down. if you are brave enough to stop, he will most likely offer you some shitty weed. about half the time, though, this is a setup and there is a policeman waiting about a kilometer down the road to pull you over, search you, and haul you off to thai prison (think return to paradise or brokedown palace). we had heard horror stories from many many people about trying to score weed in pai, so we werent about to chance it. so all in all, pai is the hippiest place known to man, full of white people hippies and thai wannabe hippies, but you cant score weed unless one of the locals trusts you. so basically, no one can get any weed.

after the bar, the canadians were tired and cranky from their shitty trek. we drove them back to their hotel and made tentative plans to maybe go check out the waterfall the next day that neither party really expected to keep. (one of the canadian girls was hot. she was either full japanese or half japanese and we wanted to see her in a bathing suit. does that make us evil?) after dropping the girls off, we went to 7-11 to get some grub before going home. there, we once again encountered visnick. skeelow spent a good 15 minutes schmoozing with him and got the lowdown on all the cool places in pai. in fact, visnick broke it down in categories: if you want to go to a pool where there will be hot chicks, go to fluid. if you want to get the best crepes in town, go to ____; if you want to get some pretty good mexican food, go to apple pai; if you want to watch the sunset with a girl, go to this waterfall, etc. visnick was an attorney who lived in connecticut and he spent his two weeks' vacation every year coming to pai. he said that at first, he would go to the thai islands like kopagnon, where most backpackers go, but eventually, he decided to come exclusively to pai because he liked it so much. it was too bad we couldnt have picked his brain some more, but he was flying out the next morning. gotta make those benjamins.

after a long day, skeelow and i went to bed thinking that pai was going to be cool and that there was a lot of potential there. we wouldnt discover the real extent of it until the next day.

Chiang Mai

for the longest time, we had been hearing from people who'd been there that chiang mai was some sort of oasis of hot chicks, gorgeous mountains, and a bustling nightlife. in fact, papa skee, who had been to thailand several times before, recounted an interesting story to us: apparently, his good buddy flew a bunch of his homies out to chiang mai to celebrate his birthday. what resulted can only be described as some sort of grotesque sex orgy, where the five of them handled 30-odd girls in about 4 day's time. if that doesn't make sense, that's good, because its not supposed to make sense at all. suffice it to say that the dude who was having his birthday party was determined to spend as much money as he could on booze and women, and managed to drop about $5000 in less than a week.

we had been hearing two main things about chiang mai from travelers we had met on our journey who had been there: first, that after cambodia, chiang mai would be a place where we could kick it with other backpackers in hostels and go "trekking" through wilderness -- whatever that means -- and second, that chiang mai supposedly has the hottest girls in thailand, which we were determined to judge for ourselves. (we were panning through some of papa skee's photos on his digital camera and came upon some shots of the aforementioned birthday extravaganza -- and we determined that yes, those girls were pretty hot.)

what we would discover in chiang mai is, up to this point in my travels, perhaps be the biggest disappointment of my extended trip.

this is not to say that people can't have fun in chiang mai; it's just a report on the situation we found after spending two memorable weeks in cambodia.

i'll start from the beginning.

first of all, skeelow had had enough of cambodia and wanted to get out of there. this was in part due to his prolonged stomach illness that sapped him of his strength, energy, and overall good looks. as i said earlier, when we met up with him again in phnom penh -- and this was after he had been eating solid food again for 2 days -- he looked like a ghost. i guess he may have also been a little bitter that jason and i had so many interesting stories to tell about our nights out that didn't (couldn't) include him. all i know is that by the time we got back to phnom penh, he was jonesing to leave -- and i couldnt really blame him.

the problem was, jason and i had some unfinished business that we wanted to take care of in phnom penh, so skye and i decided that it would be best for him to head to chaing mai a day early and check the place out before i flew out to meet him.

after spending hours unsuccessfully trying to book flights through air asia's website at various internet cafes, we finally gave up and booked tickets through a travel agency and pretty much got ripped off. to make matters worse, i didnt account for the motorcycle traffic in the morning in phnom penh and missed making my flight by about 5 minutes. i haggled with the people behind the counter, but there was nothing i could do. at the last minute, one of the nicer girls advised me to immediately head over to the bangkok airlines counter to purchase another flight to bangkok so i could make the second leg of my flight. begrudgingly, i went to the ATM, pulled out some more useless cambodian money, and bought a ticket for a flight leaving in like 45 minutes with cash. then, i had to pay a $25 exiting fee to the nice fellows in the cambodian government.

after all of this, i was off. the flights themselves were pretty normal. on the first flight, i sat next to this girl who had a real bigtime job in phnom penh that involved making name brands and marketing them. she was nice enough.

the real bitch of the whole situation was that now that i was on a different flight to bangkok on an airline other than air asia, i had to basically run off of the flight, fight my way through customs, pick up my bags at the bangkok air terminal, and rush over to the air asia counter to recheck my bags in for the second flight. that sucked, but i made it.

when i got to chiang mai, skeelow had emailed the name of the guesthouse he was staying at. he said that the pool was freezing. wonderful.

skye and i spent most of our time in chiang mai searching for cool things to do. he met some gay, old french guy by the pool named michel who was super-tanned, super-old, and wearing a super-revealing speedo. michel told him that he was a professional sailor who had spent most of his adult life gallivanting around southeast asia, serving as a guide to rich tourists. he told skeelow about awesome places in the phillipines and indonesia.

(SIDENOTE: did you know that in some places in the phillipines, they don't bury their dead in the ground but instead, place their bodies inside of trees? so apparently in their tradition, a person is assigned a tree in some cemetery-like location and for his or her whole life, he or she carves exquisite depictions of his or her life and loved ones all over the bark of the tree while also carving out a large hole on one side of the tree. when the person passes on, he or she is literally stashed within the tree itself, right in the nook that he or she had spent his or her whole life carving... and you can go and see these places. they're mainly on islands that you have to take boats to, and traditionally, you can only go at night.... so from what i've heard, it's pretty fucking creepy. by the way, how fucking bullshit is it that we have to write "he or she" or "he/she" to make a sentence grammatically correct? i mean, can we petition the official department that decides these things and ask them to make "they" or some other word OK to use? i mean, that last little interlude reads like shit, and it's only partially my fault.)

michel also gave us a package of extra-strength immodium AD, the most potent anti diarrheal medicine known to man. he had also advised skeelow to drink the water that white rice is cooked in, which is interesting because that is the old-time traditional chinese remedy for an upset stomach. it's funny how different the west is from the east. here, they're absolutely averse to taking any sort of unnatural drug; in the west, we take chemicals for just about anything. which works better? in my opinion, for the little things like diarrhea, fever, cough, etc, i think it's probably best to stay away from that chemical shit. but, if you have, say, cancer or something severe and life-threatening like that, i'd go with the western medicine, just to be safe. in my experiences, i've never heard of a root or animal part that could cure cancer -- but maybe i just haven't seen enough stuff. but i digress. by this point, skeelow and i were pretty much backed up with all of the medicine we had been taking, so we were good on that front.

we hit up a lot of the open air markets in the old city that had probably the coolest stuff to buy that we had seen on our journey to that point. we met some guy who designed these sweet tee shirts that we liked a lot. we each bought like 5 we wore them almost every day for the rest of our time together. in fact, i am wearing one today. we even got the guy's email address because he wanted to see if we could market them to some stores when we got back to america. im telling you, the shirts are cool. trust me.

other than tee shirts and smoothies, there really wasnt much else for us to do... we decided against taking a trek through the mountains because it was going to occupy too much time and we had heard numerous horror stories about the shittiness of the whole ordeal. again, after being in cambodia for so long, we were looking to chill out. we had heard about some reggae area in the city, but never found it. everywhere we went, there were bars full of prostitutes begging us to come in and have a drink. to us, chiang mai was just like bangkok -- and we had had enough of that for a lifetime, thank you very much. again, we ran into a bunch of scumbag foreigners who were only there for the tail. by the end of the first night, we wanted no part of chiang mai.

the only thing that we discovered that we could do that we might not have been able to do elsewhere was to rent scooters without any proper operating licenses. we asked the guys at our guesthouse and one of the dudes went out and promptly brought two scooters back to us, one of which was being ridden by a kid of about 12 years old. they cost 200 baht a day, which is about $6.

neither skye nor i had ever really ridden a motorcycle before; in fact, both of us pretty much were against the whole idea of it. all throughout thailand, we had met travelers like ourselves who had all sorts of injuries ranging from road rash to massive head wounds from attempting to ride scooters. we didnt want to spoil the rest of our trip by incurring some sort of grievous injury, but chiang mai was such a disappointment, that we overlooked this danger and sped off into the harsh chiang mai traffic.

the city itself is interesting. the whole time, we were hearing (from travelers, lonely planet, etc.) that chiang mai was some sort of gorgeous place where the air was clear and the mountains were high. we didnt exactly find this to be the case. first of all, the place was polluted as fuck. there were tons of cars and motorcycles and all sorts of things that you wouldnt think youd find in a small city.

another thing we heard was that the city architecture was magnificent: an old city surrounded by a new city separated by ancient city walls and a moat. again, i am sad to report that there is absolutely no difference in the old and new cities save that one is within this moat thing, if you can call it that, and one is outside of it. the city walls have long been taken down and the moat thing is nothing more than a 30 foot wide sewage system that looks the same from just about any vantage point. one good thing about the moat was that it helped us initially figure out where we were relative to our guesthouse, which was just inside the old city.

i dont want you guys to think that all of our time in chiang mai sucked; it didnt. when we finally got going on our scooters after some initial hiccups, we headed out of the city towards the mountains. there was this giant temple on the top of one of the distant hills called doi suthep. from our guidebook, this seemed like the place to go in chiang mai. we had heard about all of these amazing waterfalls that you could drive to, but we discovered that they were extremely far away and had to be tackled early in the day to make it worth it; otherwise, we would be left in the mountains after dark on scooters that we didnt really know how to ride. so doi suthep it would be.

we brought out a big chiang mai map and tried to find it ourselves, but for the life of us, every place we went turned out to be a dead end. we ended up asking some monks after another failed attempt left us over by this small temple that definitely was not doi suthep. what we eventually discovered, after numerous pit stops, was that we had to go through chiang mai university to get to the doi. it didnt make any sense, but to this point in our stay, nothing about the place had made any sense at all. that was how it was going to be.

another thing that we had heard was that doi suthep was extremely close to the city and that we could even proceed there on foot if need be. again, not at all the case. the temple is about 16 km up this giant, windy mountain that has cars and trucks and tour buses and motorcycles running all up and down it.

it was on this windy stretch of road that skeelow and i finally became one with our scooters. we had no other choice. we slowly got used to banking the other way while taking sharp turns and using the horn while passing slower vehicles. the experience was liberating. i cant describe it in any other way. if you guys ever get the chance, do some scootering. you wont regret it, even if you do get some road rash along the way.

when we got up the the temple, it was already late in the afternoon. most of the tourists were descending the long steps to the temple as we were scampering up them. along the sides, there were the regular trinket hawkers and fruit salespeople that we were used to at this point. we got some awesome fresh squeezed OJ and headed up the steps. we found out that it cost some nominal fee to go up into the actual temple if you are a foreigner -- and only if you're a foreigner. it was cool though. skeelow didnt throw his normal hissy fit. we were on such a high from the scooter ride up and it was for a good cause.

the whole temple was adorned with opulent statues and decorations that were covered in gold leaf. because of its location atop a giant mountain, the view from the edge of the grounds was amazing. also, because it was so high up, the weather wasnt so hot and the air was much cleaner than down in the city. all in all, it was a good experience. it was nice to be out of the city if but for just a little while and it put an exclamation mark for us on an otherwise dreary experience in a place that we thought would be dope.

we had to leave quickly because it was getting dark and kind of rainy. the last thing skye and i wanted was to be stuck up on that mountain, or worse, on the road down. as we bombed it down that windy road, we discovered that going downhill was a lot easier than going uphill on our scooters, contrary to what we had believed. i guess thats why you've got to try things out for yourself; no matter what other people tell you about something, if you haven't actually experienced it, you may as well be reading fiction. we had to try chiang mai out for ourselves to discover that it wasnt for us and we had to overcome our fears of motorcycling in traffic to discover that we really actually loved it. to this day, i still crave the freedom of a motorcycle. there is no better way to see the place you are and no more convenient way to get around than on the back of your own scooter. that, my friends, is no lie -- but you're going to have to try it out for yourselves sometime to really get to know what im talking about. who knows? maybe you'll love it too.

ok, enough with the whole "take home message" crap; let's wrap this up. by the way, im sorry if this post kind of sucks. ive been writing it while trying to watch "into the wild" for the first time while sitting on darcy's couch. it's kind of not working out that well, so i apologize in advance if this post has little to no structure in its ramblings. the movie is making me think about my life, my travels, and my place in the world. if you haven't seen it, you should. i'm enjoying it very much right now.

so back to chiang mai: skye and i made it back to our guesthouse safe and sound, jumped directly into the freezing-ass pool and washed the sweat off of our bodies. that night, we went out again in search of fun but ended up just going to mickie D's because we were both sick of thai and other ethnic food by that point. had a filet o' fish, some fries and a coke. they were delicious. it was the first time that we had capitulated to one of the many mcdonald's along the way. sometimes, you just need some good old american home cookin' by some of the esteemed graduates of hamburger U. you know, it doesnt matter where you are on earth, mcdonalds always tastes the same and it was that consistent shittiness that made us feel so at home while we were eating it. im telling you, even if you never, ever eat that shit at home, you will at some point along your travels think to yourself, "hey, you know, i could really use some mcnuggets or a big mac or some fries right now." you dont believe me, do you?

the next day, we would be headed to pai, a little mountain oasis about 5 hours northwest of chiang mai where we believed we would be free of the hot weather and rampant whoreishness that had characterized our time in thailand to that point.

Phnom Penh for one last spin

so when i left off, i was writing about sihanoukville, on the cambodian riviera. after our nightly escapades of non-stop drinking, our daily excursions to the beach, and being devoured by the nastiest mosquitoes this side of hanoi, we were more than happy to go back to our home away from home, lovely phnom penh.

jason and i were excited to meet up with joe the tuk tuk driver again. we missed our scheduled bus back to the capitol because for once, a bus left at exactly the scheduled time and we were left sucking dust as we careened towards the station in a shitty tuk tuk. the people at the station were somewhat sympathetic to your travails and allowed us to take the next bus back. this bus didnt have a bathroom on board, but jason was pretty well recovered from his near-death experience so we made it back to the city without much fanfare.

when we arrived, we checked back into the okay guesthouse and met up with skye again. he looked like shit. he had lost a good 10 pounds over the last week and his clothes were literally hanging off of him. (he's not a very big guy to begin with, so his prolonged illness had really taken a tone on his chiseled physique.) i reassumed my position as skeelow's bed-partner and jason checked into a single. we immediately sent our clothes to be washed and headed down to the common area for some western food. there, we met some friends who had been in sihanoukville and recounted our experiences with them. jason and i had two things on our minds: hang out with joe, and buy a bunch of shit from the russian market to ship home.

we met up with this dude named jon (his full name was jon michael laine) from finland. jon had been living it up alongside of us in sihanoukville and had some fresh tattoos to prove it. im not going to tell you guys what jon does for a living, but suffice it to say that it's not really on the level, and that snoop dogg would be more than happy to know him.

jon hadnt really spent much time in phnom penh yet so jason and i determined that we would take him out and show him a good time. jon had hooked up with this cheeky australian girl on the beach named ash who was 19 and had been travelling with her mother, a handsome woman in her 40's. he was in the middle of telling us about how he had had to wait until her mom left to consummate their relationship, so to speak, when like magic, joe appeared again. he was wearing a new getup and had a pair of shades on. he was in great spirits. we hugged hello and immediately took off for the russian market with jon, ash, and some fat chick who was ash's friend.

when we got to the market, we only had about half an hour to do our shopping. jason and i were to be leaving in two days -- he for a quick tour of vietnam and i to meet skeelow in chiang mai, thailand. we proceeded to run through the hot as fuck market bargaining for goodies. we both got some sweet fake watches for cheap and other assorted souvenirs. we were determined to trust the cambodian postal service to get our loot back to the states. neither of us were sure if it was a good idea, but we didnt really see any other alternative. after a harrowing 30 minutes, we met outside, dripping in sweat, each carrying bagfuls of stuff. after eating some fried bananas and drinking fruit smoothies, we deposited out things back at the guesthouse and set out to see the sunset over the mekong.

the mekong flows through the center of phnom penh and the city is built around it. we decided to brave the mosquitoes as joe hurtled his tuk tuk towards one of the lakeside guesthouses. the one he chose was called 'same same but different', a common phrase that cambodians use to represent something or some situation that on the surface seems the same, but in reality is very different. hard to explain. suffice it to say that this term is pretty much universal in cambodia. everyone uses it to their own whim, even the backpackers.

the guesthouse had a sweet balcony-type thing at the end of it that bordered the river. after thinking that we had long missed the sun setting, we were surprised and pleased to find that the sun was going down just as we got there. the patio was filled with all types of backpackers who had gotten 'stuck' in phnom penh, only their experiences were vastly different from our own. for one, all they seemed to be doing all day was to recount their old travel war stories while smoking mass quantities of pot and drinking beer. we spent some time schmoozing with the others as well as partaking in some of the festivities. joe was in terrific spirits and was rolling up a storm. after awhile, we went inside to go play some pool on a less-than-perfectly-flat table. jason and i joshed around while skye ate his obligitory banana pancake.

after a few hours, skye begged off to go to bed because he was leaving early the next morning; he had had enough of cambodia and was moving on to greener pastures in chiang mai, where we had heard the guesthouses had pools. jason and i wanted to continue our authentic cambodian experience, so we asked joe to take us to the baddest-ass local spot he could think of for some dinner. we asked everyone to come with us, promising them the experience of their lives. only ash, her friend, and jon agreed to come with us.

joe took us to a restaurant that we had been to several times before. it was open to the air and served a variety of the best basil beef ive ever had. they also had a big pot of soup with noodles that we were craving. when we got there, joe met up with some of his tuk tuk driver friends -- 4 to be precise -- and we got to drinking, eating, and making merry. one of his buddies was this very well spoken guy who had taught himself to play the guitar. this dude was amazing, and soon, we were treated to a mini concert consisting of that guy on the guitar, joe on vocals, and the rest of us clapping and banging on the table. we must have raised quite a scene.

during the course of the meal, we were offered (and i ate) a bunch of assorted bugs and some barbequed snake. they were delicious. we probably stayed at that restaurant for 3-4 hours hanging out. by the end of it, we were all full to the brim and pretty much tuckered out. joe asked me if i wanted to go out to a local cambodian nightclub with him. he seemed to think that by working together, we could pull any chick in the joint. i agreed to go with him and we sped off.

the nightclub was probably the craziest place ive ever been in my life. the place was 100% local. i was the only non-cambodian in there, and i still looked kind of like them, so it was ok. we ordered some overpriced beer and sat at a table by the window which overlooked the mekong. after awhile, joe asked me to come out to the dance floor with him.

the way the nightclubs work in cambodia is pretty strange. first of all, all of the music is live. there was this totally effeminate dude with crazy hair up on stage with this hot chick who was kind of dressed like a prostitute. behind them, there was a DJ spinning phat beats. the sets were super short: just two songs where everyone crowds to the floor and kind of gyrates around without touching each other -- one fast number followed by a slow dance -- and then there is like a 15 minute intermission when everyone goes back to their seats and chugs beer while wiping the sweat off of their brows. this went on ad infinitum.

when joe asked me to go out there with him, i was pretty nervous. for one: cambodian people are like the most bashful people in the world. they can't dance worth a lick because it's super disrespectful to touch anyone else. we headed out to the dance floor and kind of did a little circle around the place. there were old people, young people, and ladyboys. everyone danced like a foot from each other, so i was left kind of dancing by myself, feeling awkward.

then, the real music started. i dont know if you guys have ever seen this on TV, but the set they were doing was the traditional cambodian dance set. when the song came on, all of a sudden, people stopped what they were doing, and started prancing around in a big circle around the dance floor. everybody moves at about quarter speed with their hands tilted upwards, fingers up and curled, thumbs in -- praising buddha, i think. what you do is follow the person in front of you while moving your hands slowly around in a kind of bollywood-style motion. the song was very traditional and slow and lasted way too long for my comfort. joe had to teach me how to do the dance and i basically mirrored him. the thing is, the people out there were having the times of their lives. everyone was just smiling with their eyes closed in ecstasy.

after the first number, the second song was a traditional cambodian folk song with steps that reminded me of the kind of square dancing you learn in elementary school gym class. one step to the left, one to the right, two steps back, et cetera. the thing is, there was still this formal thing you were supposed to do with your hands where you spread your fingers apart and kind of wave them over your crotch to the rhythm of the song, which again, was very slow. after that much culture, i begged off the floor and headed back to the table for the intermission.

after this, we drank and smoked, and left.

joe told me we wanted to show me some 'hot chicks', which i immediately read as meaning 'whores'. i begged him not to go, but he was on a mission. against my protests, he drove me out to his favorite brothel and basically forced me to go in there with him with the unassuming words, "let's just take a look.....hot chicks!"

the minute we got there, i was completely sketched out. for one, this was no normal brothel like you see in thailand. the place was a totally seedy storefront with a bunch of unsavory types hanging around outside. again, i begged joe to turn back, but he was undeterred. we followed some guy who joe said was his friend into an empty room and then through a dirty hallway into a room that can be best described as a cross between a high school locker room and a concentration camp gas chamber. there was a bench that ran around three sides of the room and on it were some of the saddest, most pathetic looking prostitutes that i have ever laid eyes on. most of them looked like they were 12 and were pretty much either chewing on their hair or playing with their gum or both. all of them looked very very sad. the guy pulled up two plastic chairs for us and we sat there looking at them like they were zoo animals while smoking cigarettes. through it all, joe kept asking me which ones i thought were hot. i told him that i just wanted to get the fuck out of there.

finally, joe capitulated and we took off, but not before he questioned my manhood and asked my why i wouldnt go to bed with them. apparently, joe likes his whores. i told him that he was welcome to go fuck as many as he pleased after he dropped me off. when we got back to the okay guesthouse, we made a date for him to bring us back to the russian market the next day for some hardcore shopping. he agreed to meet us around noon the following day and we parted ways.

the next morning, over breakfast, jason and i bought a cell phone for joe from jon, the fin. joe was nowhere to be found. we asked the other tuk tuk drivers if they knew where he was and they told us that he had gotten too drunk the night before and had gone back to his real house away from the city to sleep. we were left without another option. we asked one of the guys who had had dinner with us the next night to take us to the russian market.

when we got there, jason and i were pretty much over it, and were trying to find the nearest post office. we asked everyone who looked like they spoke english, but apparently 'post office' doesnt translate well into cambodian. most people looked at us like we were crazy. all they would say is 'DHL', which is the service that most foreigners use to send stuff back home. we knew that DHL would cost us an arm and a leg, so we persisted. eventually, we gave up and decided to see if we could find phnom penh's famous driving range. the thought of hitting some golf balls in a third world country tickled our fancy, for some reason.

SIDE NOTE: jason is a professional golfer, almost. he went to loyola marymount on a golf scholarship and decided that it wasnt for him. but he still caddies at the riviera country club in LA and has pretty much been doing golf shit his whole life. in fact, he made a small fortune with a website called 1daysports.com, a website that sells golf equipment at the lowest prices on the web, but only sells one particular product a day. basically, you have to log in early to see what's for sale and then you have to buy it before it runs out. when the product is gone, you have to wait until the next day to get another deal. he sold the website for a bunch of money and embarked upon his travels. as we speak, i think he's in europe right now.

so jason and i asked a tuk tuk driver to take us out to the driving range that some british girls had told us about. it was right in the center of town and it was very upscale, by cambodian standards. the people hitting balls there were definitely rich; everyone had new, super nice equipment and really expensive looking outfits on. the thing that surprised me the most about the place were the number of rich cambodian women who were literally ripping the shit out of the balls with deadly, trained precision. we got to talking with some of the people, and not to our surprise, they all turned out to be cambodian people who were on vacation -- back home to the motherland for some good, cheap fun. most of them lived in other countries and were somehow very wealthy.

jason and i each hit a bucket of balls and he gave me some tips that really improved my game. he was amazing, as he should have been. we played "lob the wedge into the basket" for awhile. it was hot as fuck and we were sweating up a storm. luckily, every basket of balls came with a complimentary frozen wet nap. after we were done, we asked the people at the range about the postal service. again, we were handed a DHL form. at this point, we decided to give up.

that night, joe made his first appearance of the day, looking refreshed as ever. we went out with jon again and hit up some spots like same same and ate at another local spot. joe was really sad to be parting ways with us, but we assured him that we would come back to see him. i still stand by this promise. we exchanged email addresses and we told him to get a number for that phone we had given him. jason and i had to be up early to continue traveling. he was headed to hanoi. i was going to chiang mai, like i said earlier.

the next morning, joe was there, as promised to take me to the airport. jason and i parted ways with a heterosexual man-hug and we were off. cambodia would now just be a fond memory for us; we had places to go and people to meet. people like joe made the whole experience worth it for us. despite the seedy conditions, the rampant mosquitoes, the heartbreaking poverty, and the like, we felt uplifted by the spirit of the people there. for the rest of my life, i will have a very special place in my heart for cambodia -- especially phnom penh. i felt as though i grew up a lot there and even looking back at it now, some months later, i wouldnt trade the experiences i had there for the world.

Sidenote: The Origin of the Name

without further ado, the return of the fivedollarsandabucketofchicken blog.

before i get started, i feel that it's probably my duty to explain to you guys why exactly the blog is named as it is. in fact, im not sure why i didnt put it in the first post. this has nothing to do with travelling in asia or five dollars or friend chicken; the origin of the name can be traced back to one rainy evening in new orleans, just a day or two before the start of the last new orleans jazz fest before hurricane katrina hit.

it was 2004, just about 6 months before george bush jr. was inexplicably reelected to serve another term as our commander in chief. i was working for a nonprofit organization called 'mobilizing america's youth'. my buddy eric and i were canvassing the southern portion of the united states for our organization's very ambitious "march across america", which was basically a cross-country winnebago trip where a bunch of college kids played house...but thats another story for another time. our goal was to GOTV, which means "get out the vote"... a cutsie term that "rock the vote" and other youth voting organizations made up that basically means, "get lazy young people to care about politics enough to exercise their american right to vote for their own leaders" or something to that effect.

our "boss", david beaumont smith, was a good friend from college and he used our being in new orleans as an opportunity to celebrate his birthday as well as to do some much-needed political schmoozing. so dave flew out and met us when we were floundering in the disgusting heat and humidity of houston, texas and the three of us made the 5 hour drive to the crescent city, which by the way is entirely on an elevated freeway over the deep bayou swamplands.

we left houston in the afternoon and got to louisiana in about 3 hours. by that time, it was dark and we pulled over to get some gas just across the border. i remembered hearing from somebody that it was legal to carry an open container in louisiana...or at least we thought it was... i mean, people carry their drinks around on bourbon street all the time, right? how else could mardi gras happen?

so we walked into he mini mart attached to the gas station and we asked the guy at the register what the deal was. what we really wanted to do was to buy some alcohol and consume it in the car as we were cruising into new orleans. as you all know, this is mucho illegal almost everywhere in the states (cause the states is pretty much gay). so this is what happened: the guy behind the counter was this big ol' southern hick with a deep southern/creole/bayou drawl that kinda made him sound like foghorn leghorn. he was a real nice guy and honestly wanted to help us out. he said that he always drank in his car while driving, but some cronies in the state legislature were trying to push through a law that would forbid regular, law abiding citizens from drinking while driving. so he picks up the phone and, i shit you not, calls the county sherriff, whose number i assume he has memorized or on speed dial.

the conversation went something like this:

"sheriff...i got some boys over here who wanted to know about the laws in louisiana.... they wanted to know if it would be alright if they bought some beers and drank 'em right there in the car while they were drivin'.....oh yeah?..... well that sure clears things up..... oh yeah, everythings goin' just fine out here...yep......well thanks, sheriff.....you have a good night."

at this point, we thought that our goose was cooked, so to speak, but with a big, friendly grin, the guy behind the register declared that he had OKed it with the sherriff and that we could indeed drink in the car without any problem. we asked him if we had to hide the beers if we passed a cop or anything. he kind of looked at us like we were crazy and asked us why we would do that. so that was that. we bought 4 bottles of 'mad dog 20/20', she shit we used to get drunk on in high school that has like 4 flavors: green, red, blue, and purple -- and we were off to new orleans.

that last little bit of a story has nothing to do with why the blog is called what it is, but i thought that you guys might want to get a feeling of where we were and the kinds of people we were dealing with.

there was this other time in louisiana when we went to this local diner that was set off the street a little ways in the woods. the place was packed so we decided that it had to be good. the scene was straight out of the fifties. literally everyone in the town was there eating. this was a little podunk town east of new orleans. the football team, all the cheerleaders and their parents and grandparents and whoever the fuck else was white in the town were there. (so i guess 'everyone' isnt really the correct term to use here -- let's go with 'every caucasian person' and be done with it.)

we sat down to order, and this 16 year old, britney spears lookalike comes over to take our order. we ordered our meals....i think i ordered the country-fried chicken-fried steak, because it had two 'frieds' in it. literally everything on the menu was fried. im not kidding. they had fried ice cream, fried bananas, fried snickers, fried pork chops....and here's the kicker: after we all made our orders, the waitress asked us how we would like our corn. huh?

apparently, they also deep fry corn on the cob in louisiana. i was astounded. i ordered it immediately, along with some fried alligator and a fried onion blossom thing. we ate our meals with ketchup and thousand island dressing and got the fuck out of there....the locals were eyeing us....and at that point, i realized that i was probably the first asian dude they had ever seen that wasnt on tv. awkward and illuminating.

so back to the five dollars and a bucket of chicken story:

so dave, eric and i -- because we were actually 'working' -- had each brought along a dapper-looking suit and tie getup so we could impress the political activists and leaders that we were lucky enough to get a meeting with. all along the way, eric and i hadnt really been able to utilize them ... for fear of coming across as douchebags. but on this occasion, dave had obtained for us an invitation to this big deal crawfish boil that this woman, peggy wilson, was having at her house.

she lived in the rich part of new orleans in a plantation-style house that had a big courtyard with a big gate and statues outside of it. dressed in our best suits and braving the rain, we hopped in a cab that took us out to her estate. she greeted us with big hugs and kisses at the door and warmly invited us in. her house was amazingly well decorated. everything was old and tasteful. it was just as you would imagine an old, southern, rich-white-person house would be... right down to the old baby grand piano with the bust of somebody dead and famous sitting on it.

ms. wilson told us that her next door neighbors were none other than the esteemed archie manning on the one side, and trent reznor on the other. she even complained that trent would sometimes play his music a bit too loud. we were pretty much in awe at this point. after some very awkward, but genuine meet and greets with the family and friends that were there, we were led into the kitchen area where most of the partygoers were there were gathered. we were told that there was a keg of beer outside and the three of us immediately got to drinking it.

we were the only people even remotely dressed up for the occasion. apparently, crawfish boils aren't really meant to be a big deal in new orleans. most of the people there were in shorts, tee shirts, and tank tops. most of them also appeared to have eaten a little too many fried corn on the cobs, if you catch my drift. so here we were, these three preppy yankees, trying to fit in with an intimate family gathering. this is why we started hitting he booze pretty hard.

they had hired this professional crawfish boiler to make the food, which by the way, is absolutely delicious. they said he was the best in new orleans, so im guessing he may have been one of the best in the world. the boil consisted of a bunch of crawfish, ears of corn, halved new potatoes, some scallion, and a bunch of cajun spices. the dude made the boil in this big cauldron that he had set up in the yard next to the keg.

after a few minutes of drinking and schmoozing, we were called inside to start eating. this is when the story starts to get exciting. we literally had no idea how to eat crawfish, let alone eat them at a fancy schmancy crawfish boil while wearing suits and ties. ms. wilson asked her daughter in law to show us the ropes. this thirty-something southern belle comes up to us and, without hesitation, grabs a crawfish in her hands, rips it in half, and proceeds to suck the brains out of one end, and tear the other end apart with a combination of her hands and teeth, all the while making this slurping, sucking sound. needless to say, we were very impressed. i guess thats why they were just wearing their yardwork clothes...this was going to get messy.

for the next hour or so, we sat with the wilsons at a table covered in newspaper and the crawfish king kept bringing in shovel loads of crawfish and piling them in front of us. as i said earlier, the food was delicious, but probably not so nutritious. we sucked and slurped with the best of them. the food was spicy, so we were crying, sweating, and constantly blowing our noses the whole time. with our meal, we had beer and white wine. everyone was getting kind of tipsy by the end of it all and ms. wilson began to open up to us a little bit.

dave had told us that she had run for the governorship of louisiana and had narrowly been defeated. again, we were very impressed. we didnt bring this point up until after we had talked about what we were doing, what our plans were, and why we wanted to get young people out to vote. she was very polite and hospitable to us and we were charmed.

we got to talking about that ill-fated election in the course of conversation. we were simply curious about what it was like, what she had learned, etc. that's when the old southern woman began to get a little saucy. she started lamenting about how corrupt the politics in louisiana were and how everyone in the government was corrupt in some way. she talked about kickbacks, bribes, scandals, everything and pretty much prefaced, for me, what happened in the city when the hurricane hit less than a year later.

then she uttered the magic words: "are you boys going to go and get the blacks to vote?"

umm... yeah

"those blacks -- they'll vote for anyone and anything someone tells them to. in the election that i lost, i was winning until the very last minute, when the democrats went and bussed a bunch of them blacks out to the polling places..."

umm... so what's wrong with that?

"them blacks... all you have to give them is FIVE DOLLARS AND A BUCKET OF CHICKEN.... and they'll vote for anyone ... they'll do anything you ask them to do!!!"

after this, we didnt know what to do. nodding and smiling, we politely let the conversation go towards greener pastures. then we got the fuck out of dodge. again, you have to remember that i was the only non-white person there; it became readily apparent at this point. actually, it hit us like a ton of bricks in the face -- people in the south are still racist....even the nice old ladies that run for governor.

we made an excuse about how we had to meet some girls out on bourbon street and made a mad dash out into the rain. ms. wilson, ever the proper host, offered to call us a taxi. we politely refused and said that we wanted to give one of those famous new orleans trolleys a ride. she kissed us mightily on the cheeks and told us we were good boys with a good cause. we thanked her and started off into the night, not caring if our preppy suits were getting wet. it was time to go... we had overstayed our welcome.

And....We're back!

so after about a two month hiatus, i've decided to continue writing this blog. obviously, a lot has happened over the last two months that will not make it into these next few posts, but i will try to recount some of the more amusing stories that i can remember to give you guys an idea of what ive been doing with myself all this time. again, the purpose of this blog is to inspire others to let go of their everyday lives -- regardless of how exciting or mundane they may be -- and for even just a week or two, go out and see what the world has to offer.

(im pretty sure that last sentence was grammatically incorrect, but i cant seem to figure out how to make it more coherent.... any suggestions?)

im not sure who is still reading this; i know i wouldn't be... but if you are, thank you! a special shout out to darcy, who keeps insisting that he wasnt the only person who was reading my posts.

Sihanoukville

so ive just found out that in china, where we currently are, blogspot is blocked, but blogger is not. therefore, i will be able to post entries, but have to go through a proxy server to view it. since this blog isnt really for me to view in the first place, the entries will go on. as always, i am about 3 weeks late in writing this entry. not to worry, though. this is the point at which we decided to slow down our travels a bit, so each entry should be long, detailed, and ultimately should give you guys a good idea of the city or region it covers.

without further ado, sihanoukville, the crown jewel of the cambodian shoreline.

in the morning after our escapades at the heart of darkness bar, we awoke quite excited to finally go to a place where there is a beach. we had heard great things about the place from j-hizzle and could not wait to see these things for ourselves. the bus from phnom penh to sihanoukville was as advertised: weak AC, tons of locals, our bags stacked in the middle aisle, and a lot of mosquitoes. at this time, we had already decided to slather 95% deet all over ourselves and risk the skin cancer.

(SIDE NOTE: deet is the cute asian way for saying 'DDT', which is a chemical that is banned in the states. i dont necessarily think that deet is bad for you in the classical sense; i mean, it dries your skin up like a motherfucker and kinda makes your face burn if you put too much on, so it cant be good for you, but we chose to believe that that would be it. most western travelers are deadly afraid of using too much of it; we decided that the rewards (namely that you wouldnt become mosquito fodder) outweighed any perceived risks. for those of you that dont know, DDT was banned in the US in the 70's in response to a book written by a woman named rachel carson called 'silent spring' -- some of you may or may not have read about it in high school. basically, the book details the struggles of the american bald eagle, the symbol of our nation, and the effect of DDT on its ability to survive. because the bald eagle is at the very top of the food chain (save for us humans, of course), any chemical that affects lower portions of the food chain, like fish or worms or whatever, is magnified thousands of times upon the animals at the top. before the ban on DDT, farmers used to spray it indiscriminately over their crops to kill pesky insects that could damage their crops. DDT works to breakdown insect exoskeletons, essentially melting bugs to death like the wicked witch of the west. when this chemical washed away, it would enter the water supply and enter the bodies of lower animals like fish, other insects, worms, etc. by the process of biomagnification, the chemical would reside at higher levels in animals like the bald eagle. the effect of DDT on bald eagles was seemingly minor, but turned out to be devastating. it caused their eggs to have thin shells, meaning that once the mothers sat on the eggs to incubate them, their weight would cause these eggs to break. as we all know, you cant make a bird with a broken egg. DDT decimated the bald eagle population in a very short period of time; conventional wisdom dictates that if the chemical had not been banned, many birds like the bald eagle would now be extinct.

by the way, this is also the reason why we are warned against eating too much salmon, as mercury runoff in our streams, rivers and oceans have fixed in many fish like salmon. because we are much higher on the food chain than fish, if we eat too much of it, we can get mercury poisoning, which isnt a pretty sight -- it basically gives you MS. so, if you are pregnant or thinking about getting pregnant, do not even think about eating fish. ain't biomagnification a bitch?)

so we get on the bus and take another shocking ride through the impoverished parts of cambodia, where, as i have said, there is literally nothing but almost naked people sitting in makeshift huts, doing what they can to survive the harsh weather and dust storms that plague the region. anyone who complains about their way of life in america should really go out there and see it for themselves. the ride took about 5 hours.

we arrived at the bus station for sihanoukville and immediately were inundated by tuk-tuk drivers and moto drivers asking if we had accommodations or rides to our accommodations yet. after a bit of negotiation, we agreed upon the price of $3 for 4 moto rides to serendipity beach, the backpacker beach. our guidebook sold sihanoukville as an up-and-coming backpacker retreat, where you could drink and smoke to your heart's content without shelling out big bucks. skye mentioned when we got to the beach that he thought that it would be less built up; jason and i looked at him like he was insane. there was nothing there but a bit of construction, some shitty hotels, and beachfront bars that were not much more than grass huts with some chairs.

we checked into a nicer spot (mostly due to the fact that papa skee is 58 this year) that cost $16 a night for two people. jason and i shared a room and papa skee and little skee shared the other one. unfortunately for us, our room lacked one essential quality: AC. and sihanoukville is one hot and humid place! luckily for us, our place was right at the mouth of the only street leading down to serendipity beach, so going out and coming home were a breeze for us.

we arrived just at sunset and were able to kick off our shoes and enjoy the crimson sun setting over distant islands and fishing boats the first night we got there. we met these two british guys who had spent the last 6 months building houses in phnom penh. we thought that this was pretty hardcore by any accounts. then we found out that they didnt blaze and worked for some christian missionary program and we were a bit less impressed. they had a really shitty shuttlecock that we used to kick around with some local kids. (a shuttlecock is one of those chinese, weighted things with a big feather at the top. basically, you kick it around like a hacky sack and try to keep it up. in phnom penh, we saw tons of kids playing this game and believe me, its very difficult to do. but these kids were like whizzes with the shuttlecock; i guess thats what happens when it is the only thing you have to play with.) jason played for hours with this little girl; by the end of it, they were using their hands instead of their feet. skye and i broke out the frisbee and started hucking it around the beach. most of the locals had never seen such a thing and were enamored with our skills. even the brits sucked at frisbee.

for dinner, we all walked down the beach to one of the furthest spots, a bar that advertised 'happy food', which is a code word for weed food. unbelieving, we all ordered some happy pancakes and shakes as well as some not so grubby food. papa skee and skeelow were obviously floored by the happy food and got all smiley. papa skee even kissed skeelow a couple of times. he was having the time of his life. i didnt so much feel anything, but was happy nonetheless.

later that evening, we went out to the bar that was closest to us, the 'nap house'. we found out later that the place was owned by a french-cambodian guy named ya-ya whose father, edouard owned the place next door. the official beer of cambodia is called angkor (of course) and the brewery is in sihanoukville. as a result, all of the bars have angkor draft for $1 a glass, or less. jason and i drank some brews and played pool with some maybe-hookers on a nonlevel table at the nap house for several hours. in that time, we met many travelers who had gotten 'stuck' in sihanoukville. they told us that you could stay there almost for free, party all night, do whatever you wanted, and even find a place to work, if you can speak english or french. we also met this guy named ash who told us that he was a professional international party thrower, if that makes any sense at all. he told us that the nap house was his bar and introduced us to his hot fiancee (who may or may not have even known him at all). he then told us that he had a bunch of hot chicks waiting for him at this other bar off the beach called 'utopia' and that he needed a couple of wingmen to come with him. we thought he was hilarious, so we decided to go with him to utopia.

it was at utopia that jason and i discovered that we were perhaps 2 of 4 total americans in the whole city (with skeelow and papa skee being the other two). we were treated like local celebrities and met every hot chick in the place. we also met this cool kiwi guy named corbin and some other interesting fellows, including a half-black british guy we kept calling lewis hamilton. (lew hamilton kept uttering the phrase, "im really interested in what you blokes have to tell me, but i have to warn you: im massively messed right now!" this would be a rallying cry for us for the duration of our stay in sihanoukville.

utopia was off the hook. there were tons of western backpackers all around and the beer flowed like wine. ash turned out to be patently full of shit because he started getting butthurt when we started hitting on his chicks. douchebag. we found out that they would gather a bunch of 'hot chicks' at the bar and take them out on boat cruises every friday. jason and i, as studly americans, were invited, of course. after chilling for a few hours and meeting some cool peeps, we took off for our hotel.

the next day would be a big one for us. we woke up, went to the beach, got some more happy pancakes, got full massages for $5 apiece, and basically waded around in the water with local cambodians, playing frisbee and soccer until it got dark. papa skee wandered off and did his own thing for awhile and eventually, either the happy food or the runs got the better of skeelow and he retired as well. jason and i would be ready to go all night.

we went back to the nap house, hung around, and then started making our way down the beach, hitting up each bar, meeting the owner, and getting drinks. most of these guys were just young burnouts who had discovered the area, learned that they could put up a bar on the beach for $4000, and had saved up for half a year and come out to do it. a lot of them were gritty to the max. most of the people who owned shit on that beach were either british or french. most of the travelers who were there were also of the same ilk. (british birds are not all that great, as it turns out...but im sure you all already knew that.) we met this guy named 'jonny' who was a cambodian guy from phnom penh whose friend owned one of the bars. jonny had come out to run the bar for him and basically divided his time between promoting parties at his bar, lighting bigass bonfires, spinning poi (which is that firespinning shit the hippies do at raves in our country...you know what im talking about.... jonny spun the manly staff with fire at the ends. he and his friends were amazing, by the way), and fucking drunk english bitches. quite the life. we found out later from some other skeevy brits that jonny was actually the cambodian national champion in ahn bak, which is a very brutal form of fighting similar to muai thai -- lots of shins, elbows, and striking. we heard a story about how jonny's father, who was a previous champ, had trained him to the point where you could punch him anywhere on his body, and he wouldnt even feel it. they also told us about this time when some local khmer dudes tried to rob someone at his bar and he had chased all 8 of them down the beach, caught them, and had beaten all of them down at the same time -- to the point where he had broken his wrist and had just kept on punching and punching and punching, because he was in the ahn bak zone. needless to say, we didnt know any f this stuff when we met him. jason and i just basically decided that if jonny came back to the states with us, he'd pull a ton of chicks. go figure.

jason and i ended up spending the entire night out on the beach meeting people and getting shitfaced on drinks that we bought and were bought for us by our adoring fans. (like i said, we were kinda like celebs -- the only two guys from america, and california at that.) at sunrise, we saw lewis hamilton again and tried to explain to him why american football was better than rugby. (the brits have this big hangup about the action stopping all the time in american football, and how theyre all pussies because they wear protective gear. we told them that they were fucking insane and that if they didnt wear pads, you would probably see a fatality every couple of games. we also described to them the enormity of the people who play football and how they run faster than most soccer players. we told them that they would run full speed at each other -- sometimes 30 or more yards -- and then spear each other with their helmets. this has got to be more brutal than rugby, which to us is kind of homoerotic: a bunch of dudes in short shorts rolling around in the muck with each other. also, it's fucking boring, right?) in any case, this is when lewis hamilton uttered his famous phrase -- over and over and over again.

before going to bed, we each got the 'english breakfast' at one of the bars that was owned by this belgian guy. we got eggs, toast, bacon, and tea. it was a good way to end our evening. at this point, unbelievably, papa skee made his return. it was probably 5 or 6 in the morning and we saw him posted up at the nap house, drinking a beer. we told him that he was a legend and that we were heading down to beach to find some food. he told us that he was going to post up for awhile longer -- we didnt argue with him. he was basically blacked out. much to our surprise, about 30 minutes later, here comes papa skee stumbling into the belgian guy's bar, in high spirits. he ordered himself a long island iced tea, chased it with a beer and a bratwurst croissant, and proceeded to order himself another long island before jason and i even knew what was going on. about an hour later, we decided to call it a night and asked him if he wanted to come home with us. like the legend he is, he refused and ordered himself another drink. this is when jason and i decided that we had better make sure that papa skee did not pass away on this trip.

the funny thing is, after we left and had gone to bed, papa skee moved over to one of the comfy beach chairs and passed out. when he woke up (or rather, when one of the french guys woke him up), he learned that he had been robbed by a stranger in the night. they had taken the money out of his wallet, left him like $10, left all of his cards and IDs, and had returned his wallet back into his pocket. to borrow a phrase from lew hamilton: this guy was massively messed. this would not cause much of an issue for anyone other than skeelow, who was pretty pissed about it himself. papa skee rolled with the punches and basically decided that that was the cost of having fun. i think i love papa skee now.

theres not much more to say about sihanoukville. the rest of the time is pretty much a blur. i can only recount small snippets of stories that may suit your fancy.

here's one: skeelow was basically laid up with what we were calling 'sihanouk's revenge' for almost 3 days before he decided to call it quits and went back to phnom penh early to stay in a place where they had doctors and AC. for most of his time there, he would make frequent trips from his bed to the toilet to the shower back to the toilet. there was a point at which he couldnt even walk more than 50 meters from the hotel down the beach in either direction for fear of having an accident in his boardshorts. it was hilarious. he was a trooper about it and really tried to hang out, but as we all know, when you got the runs, youre basically peeing out of your ass every 15 minutes, so it was very difficult on him, and on us.

on one of these particular days, jason and i decided to hit up this weird looking, super out of place casino that was just a little way from our hotel. i forget what it was called, something lame. we had a bet going that we would find one dollar blackjack tables inside. we were also wondering who in their right mind would be gambling in cambodia. we ended up pleasantly surprised, but a bit weirded out as well. the entire place was empty save for a couple of japanese tourist dudes and a bunch of staff and dealers that kind of just milled around like cattle. jason and i each changed $10 apiece and got to gambling. we were wrong: the lowest table was $2-$50. we were pretty close though. we played for about an hour, going up mostly, doubling down when necessary and basically cleaned up. then, they brought in the killer dealer and she proceeded to wipe us out. but it was funny: we never actually went down to zero, so by the end of an hour, i bet the last $5 i had on one had and jason did the same. we ended up breaking even and walked out of there with $10 each. sorry, sihanoukville casino. we found out later that you can get free massages and drinks while you play; funny how they didnt offer them to us while we were cleaning up...

i have one more good story that i need to get down here before i forget it. this should be inspiring to you guys.

so skeelow and papa skee had to head back to phnom penh earlier than jason and i: skeelow because of the revenge, and papa skee to catch his flight back home. that evening, jason and i had gone extremely big and had stayed up until about 9 in the morning. again, before going to bed, we had eaten english breakfasts after drinking like fishes for about 10 hours. about two hours after retiring, jason woke up and proceeded to vomit uncontrollably for about 4 straight hours. the whole time, i was asking him if he would be ok to take the bus back to phnom penh. at some point, we decided that if we did go, we would have to take the 'luxury bus' that had a bathroom on it. i went out and tried to book the last bus, but it was too late and all the spots had been filled. dejected, i returned to the room to find the door locked and jason missing. for the next 6 hours or so, i hung around with my new friends and ate and drank and made merry.

(side note: our favorite place to go eat was this place run by a french chef named lionel called 'le petit gourmand', advertised as a french brasserie. the food was pretty gourmet and the dude was hilarious. on this particular evening, he had hired a bunch of local khmer musicians and had set up a bed across the street from his place for them to sit on and play. from what i could tell, he was paying them in angkor pitchers. anyhow, his food was great and he rolled spliffs all the time while he was behind the bar. this dude was probably around 50 and very very french. hilarious.)

so i was hanging out with the french guy and who shows up but jason, looking super refreshed. we exchanged pleasantries and he told me about his ordeal: not long after i had left to book the bus and use the internet, jason had crawled out of the room, commissioned a moto driver to take him to a doctor, and had been driven about 25 minutes out of town to this chinese guy who ran a hostel and did some medicine on the side. god knows how he kept his stomach in check for the moto ride. for the next 4-5 hours, he had laid on a bed with fans on him, drinking down IVs. every couple of minutes, one of three girls would rewet a towel he had on his face and stomach to keep it cold. this process went on for the entire duration of his stay. in all, for basically saving his life, jason gave the chinese doctor $50 and the moto driver $4. he appeared to be a new man and was even eating solid food.

the next morning, we woke up and it was raining. we decided to take a little hike around the other side of the beach to check out the other bars and bungalows there. we walked for a little bit and had to seek shelter from the rain at some other bars, which sucked by the way. when we got to the end of the beach, there was this little rock outcropping that blocked our path to the next beach. out of nowhere, this teenage cambodian kid shows up and offers (though body language) to take us over the rocks. as big americans, we were having a bit of difficulty negotiating the rocks, so we agreed to follow him. he grabbed our water bottles and bags and basically walked without his hands over treacherous terrain, always looking back to make sure we were still with him. at one point, it began to rain and he guided us under this tree that the locals use to hide from the rain. at this point, we asked him what his deal was. he told us that he was 15, went to school during the week, and liked to hike around on the weekends. whatever. we asked him to take us to the next beach, souka beach. he guided us over these rocks until we reached a steep staircase that led down to the next beach. we paid him a dollar and he asked for two. all business. we paid him and thanked him and headed down.

souka beach was one weird place. for one thing, the beach was for all intents and purposes deserted. all along the beachfront was this 5 star hotel by the same name. i guess souka is a large japanese company that had bought the beach outright from the cambodians and had put up this super opulent hotel in the middle of nowhere. as we walked up, we noticed that they had a outdoor pool with a bar. jason and i tried to play it off like we were hotel patrons, but even as obvious americans, we were called out. they wanted $6 apiece from us just to use the pool. they had a huge spread of a buffet there that cost $24. this was all too much for us, so we told them to beat it. we decided to walk the grounds of this hotel to see if they had a golf course or a ping pong table. the whole way, we were confronted by hotel staff in golf carts who asked us where we were going. we told them that we were looking for the ping pong table and they kept directing us in strange, often contradictory directions. to walk the grounds from one end to the other took almost 45 minutes. they had a well-maintained garden and a huge dragon statue. these were also very out of place, to say the least.

i am unhappy to report that we did not find a golf course or a ping pong table, but it was not for lack of effort. we got to the end of the beach and made the decision to push on a bit further towards a small fishing village in the distance. we decided that because anything goes in cambodia, we could perhaps ask one of the local fishermen to take us out on his boat to do some fishing. when we got to the village, we were shocked and appalled at our surroundings. all around there was garbage: in the water, on the sand, in the huts, everywhere. there were also chickens and ducks that roamed around freely like they were pets or something. clearly, whenever they needed to eat one of them, some person would simply go outside of their huts to the water, grab whichever bird they wanted, and killed it right there. we were a bit wary of bird flu. i dont know if you guys have seen that ad that they show late at night with that bearded white guy in a cambodian village... i think its the one dollar a day for one child thing. "an mei is a 5 year old girl who lives in this tiny fishing village in cambodia. all she wants is to go to school and learn, but she cant because there isnt any money. for just a dollar a day, you can make an mei's dreams come true. we can make a difference, one child at a time." this place looked EXACTLY like that.

all of the fishing boats were pretty much rickety old canoes that had been beaten down by the ocean. they were no more than 20 feet long and had a single outboard motor to guide them. we did not think that anyone here would be able to speak english and we almost gave up. just as we were turning around, the owner of the local restaurant (if you can call it that) came out and started talking to us in pretty good broken english. we asked him to consult with one of the fishermen who was going out to see if he would take us; they spoke and the fishermen quickly agreed to take us for $25. jason and i saw this as an opportunity to give money directly to the people, and god how these particular people needed it. we asked if the restaurant dude would come with us to translate and to cook the fish for us on the boat. he quickly agreed and scurried back into his hut to get a stove, a pot, some dishes, spoons, and sauces. he also sold us some ramen noodle packets, which, by the way, is basically the only thing these people eat on a regular basis. after this, we waded out to the fisherman's boat and we were off.

it was around dusk when we headed out and jason and i were worried about catching malaria after being eaten by mosquitoes on the water. to our surprise, there were no mosquitoes and the water was extremely still. the moon was out in full force and we had a peaceful, almost cathartic ride out to this special spot where the fisherman knew there would be fish. we dropped anchor and went to fishing. the operation was so simplistic that im sure they were doing to same thing a thousand years ago. instead of rods and reels, they had a wooden spool think with fishline wrapped around it. the hooks were all handmade from junk and the sinkers were old padlocks and pieces of metal. it took them awhile to set everything up, but we caught a lot of fish initially. the first one i got, i couldnt even reel in because, how the hell are you supposed to reel in a 3 foot fish with your hands? after we figured the operation out, we both caught some smaller fish and the restaurant dude and the fisherman killed and cleaned them right in front of us. the kicker to the whole thing was when, after the sun had gone down, the fisherman lit up this huge oil lantern and fastened it to the edge of our boat. the restauranteur told us that this would be to attract squid. apparently, they are drawn magnetically to bright lights, much like moths. as some points, the fisherman would take out this big net and literally pluck squid out of the water. he even got a pretty big one. everything we caught went into this big pot of soup and they grilled the fish over an open flame and handed the food back to us on plates, with a little fish dipping sauce. we ate to our hearts' content and gave the rest to the fisherman and the restaurant guy; they refused at first, but after we insisted, they ate voraciously.

we could have done this for a couple more hours, but the sky turned black and we were told a storm would be blowing in. they didnt want to take a chance with our lives, and we thanked them for it. we had agreed that they would drop us off at serendipity beach after we were done an on the ride back, we saw lightning in the distance over the ocean. it was pretty surreal. finally, we saw the bright lights of serendipity beach.

on our journey back, the restaurant guy told us of his sad story. he said that everyone in that shitty village had once lived on souka beach and once the japanese company had bought it, they were forced to clear out. now, they dont even let regular khmers walk on the beach at all, let alone hawk things or offer services. he said the hotel cost over $1000 a night to stay at and often, it would be full. (jason and i thought that this little part was bullshit because we barely saw a soul on our walk of the grounds.....but who knows, maybe people do pay over $1000 a night to stay at a 5 star hotel in the middle of a poverty wasteland. i'd rather go to hawaii or something, but who knows?) he told us that another japanese company had bought one of the small islands off of the more built up beach, victory beach, and was building a bridge from the beach to the island, with each room costing well over $2000 a night. all of these things, he said, were good because it meant that the locals could make more money. i wasnt so sure about this. we knew the beach on the other side of serendipity was owned by the russian mafia and that in order to get anything done in cambodia, you have to bribe the local police and the military. if you are a foreigner, they have to right to bulldoze your place at any time, without recourse. and now, cambodia was going corporate. if you guys want to live for cheap and have your own bar, this is the place for you, by the way.

we pulled up in our rickety fishing boat right in front of the nap house. we gave them $30 total and thanked them profusely. that amount of money could probably feed the entire village for a month. they told us that if we had any friends who wanted to do the same thing, theyd be happy to oblige us again. we told them that we would ask around. as we got out of the boat, all of the other travelers and backpackers were a bit amazed at our story. unfortunately, we didnt find them any more business.

one more point: the kids in cambodia are so intelligent and savvy and wise, you would not believe their ages. i spent a good 3 hours rapping with this local kid who sold bracelets and stuff on the beach. i told him that i didnt want to same shit everyone else had; he told me that i was in luck because he knew how to make bracelets himself. for the next 3 hours, he and his little buddy made me a cambo flag bracelet, two sweet bead geckos, a friendship bracelet, and another sweet, unique bracelet. during this time, the kid told me all about cambodia and answered a lot of questions i had about it. he pretty much spoke the best english of anyone i had met in cambodia to that point, save maybe for our friend joe yan the tuk-tuk driver. all these kids want to do is go to school and make better lives for themselves; that's it. and their government is corrupt and prone to infighting and civil unrest. the people are kept down and are given essentially no rights. i also learned all that stuff about the 'taxi girls' and voting from him. i wish i could have adopted him myself and taken him home with me. we parted with me telling him to go home, tear apart all of his shitty bracelets that he was selling for 50 cents apiece and to make those sweet cambo bracelets and geckos instead. he could sell them for 3 bucks apiece, if he wanted to. i told him that this would be the best way for him to stand out and make more money. he agreed with me wholeheartedly and i gave him $10 for his troubles. man, i hope he turns out ok.

and....we're done! thats pretty much all ive got to say about sihanoukville. it claimed skeelow early on and jason did a yeoman-like job of avoiding another pitfall. he rallied like a champ and ive got to commend him on that. i thought that he was going to die -- seriously. sihanoukville ended up being one of our favorite places on our journey. it taught us a lot about cambodia, the people, their spirit, and ourselves. for that, sihanoukville will always hold a special place in my heart.

more phnom penh in the next entry. (free tibet)