Gettin' Kicked Out to Malaysia!

A forced vacation.

That's right.  

You see, there are upsides and downsides to any country.  But sometimes there are downsides that can become upsides.  It's all how you look at it.

Why, you may ask, do I get a "forced" vacation?  For a complete answer, you'll have to ask Thai Immigration.  To make a long story short, in applying for my 1-yr business visa, me and the company I work for were taken for a ride through a spool full of red tape.  In the end, I had a day to leave the country before my visa expired. The easiest country to renew my visa was...

MALAYSIA!

Beautiful Malaysia: the southern bordering country to Thailand.  An eclectic mix of Malaysian natives, Malay-Chinese emigrants and their progeny, fantastic Indian culture and a large Muslim religious influence replete with mosques, attire and tradition. The country runs the gamut.

The closest Thai embassy was on the island of Penang, which is just off the coast. The island is quite large and boasts malls, museums, national parks and a UNESCO World Heritage Site called Georgetown.

I was accompanied by the lovely Luise Neumann -- the best company I could ask for.

The bus ride from Bangkok to the island was about 20 hours.  And sadly for the both of us, we simply cannot sleep on buses (or trains or planes, for that matter). Needlessly to say, when we arrived, we were completely wiped out. We spent the first day recovering.

After taking another day and a half (basically) to purchase a new camera, we were finally on our way to capturing some of the beauty of the Malaysian culture.  Oh, and if you ever plan to come to Malaysia, just be careful with your credit cards.  Malaysia is on the top 10 list of worst credit card fraud countries in the world. Don't ever let your card leave your site.  And only trust reliable vendors.

Here are some shots we captured from one of our first nights there.

As we made our way toward another beach, we stumbled upon this eerie, abandoned Chinese school.  There were trees growing through it and all kinds of other funky things about it that completely piqued our interest. 

The following day we drove around Georgetown, made a few stops here and there, then made our way to the national park at the end of the island.  Here are some shots from along the way.

I think one of the coolest encounters from the trip was the abandoned 1800s graveyard.  Graves from 1864, 1859, even 1806!

We also stopped by a mosque, built over part of the ocean.  They call it "The Floating Mosque."

Inside the mosque.

Our arrival to the national park and along the beach. 

As we continued hiking, we noticed a sort of village of houses floating on the water about 500 meters or so from the shore.  It was really interesting. 

Here are some shots from the next day and our visit to the Little India area they had in Georgetown.  The food was amaaaaazing. 

Here are some miscellaneous shots from the trip. 

Stayed tuned next time.  I've gotten a little backlogged on all the blogging.  Plenty more excitement to come!!

Close, Easy and Beautiful Koh Samet

If it's one thing I can't stress enough about this beautiful country, it's the islands and their enthralling beaches.  I can't even count the number of islands off the coasts of Thailand.  One of them (Koh Samet) is quite close to home, just a 4-hour drive.  It's a common spot for Thais to visit for the weekend to get away from the city.  The island is just gorgeous.

I went for a weekend with a group of recently befriended Canadian teachers living just a few minutes from me.  Sadly, Tyler 1 and Amanda did not join me for this trip :(  Life does go on.

On our first morning there, we were greeted with lovely weather, despite it being monsoon season here until October.  It couldn't have been better.  We took a stroll along the beach and got some lovely shots.

Before leaving for the island, Tyler 1 charged me with the task of renting a scooter and making it to the very end of the island without turning back.  Sounds simple.  Ha!  Hardly.  Koh Samet is shaped like a dagger.  The hotels, docks, etc are all located on the north side.  There's a very beat-up, unforgiving dirt road that goes the whole distance to the south.

We braved that road.  We braved it to the bitter end.  The four of us rented 2 scooters with one person riding on the back.

The trek took us about 3 hours.  We made a few stops along the way: found a more-exclusive beach, an abandoned heliport, a water reservoir, had lunch, blah, blah, blah.  Some shots from along the way.

The heliport.  Chopper-men.

A beautiful butterfly along the way.

On this cliff (pictured above) we met a whole group of Chinese people.  We took various shots for them and they took some for us.  I started asking them how to say certain words in Chinese and we talked about ping pong.  Then, of course, we had to get a picture.

Neeeeeee hoooow!

To say the road was difficult or challenging is like saying Chuck Norris is just an actor.  There were times when our scooters got stuck in deep crevices or nasty potholes.  Then there were the insanely steep slopes. But the best was when we got combinations of the two: deep crevices and potholes in insanely steep slopes.  Good times.

Then, finally, we reached the end of the island.  It was worth every bit of that treacherous drive.

We drove back and found our way to the beach restaurant that has the nightly fire show.  It first started with a few fireworks.

Then we weaseled our way to the front where we were close -- actually too close -- to the action.  This was a fire spark shot our way.

For the finale they changed things up from fire to fireworks.  It was awesome.

This video gives you an idea of just how close we were.  

The next day was spent pretty much just hanging out.  We relaxed on the beach, played frisbee and enjoyed the lovely weather Mother Earth continued giving us. 

Here are some miscellaneous pictures from the trip I think you'll enjoy. 

This guy was doing this for like half an hour!!

Burying an adorable beach dog in the sand.

One of the more secluded beaches on the island.

That's all folks.  Thanks for reading.  Ya'll come back now again, ya here!!

Survival 101: Driving in Thailand

The air is warm but the wind blows mercilessly.  The sky thickens like a swarming host of locusts bearing down on a luckless farmers innocent crop.  I look down.  The speedometer reads a solid 100.  Kilometers that is.  My mind fills with crafty plots to evade the inevitable.  But it is for naught.  It always is.

I continue.  There's no alternative option now.  I'm too far along.

The innumerable potholes, nay, craters, with their maniacally unknown concavity, cut out of the ever-changing yet never-actualized road of construction, peer up as if to say, "Never in a million years, young Graves."  The long rode this lone, intrepid sole must traverse each day may forget, but it never forgives.  I ponder.  I deliberate.  Will I make it?  Has my ever-fluctuating karma sided with me today, for reasons I know not what of?  Could it be?

No.  Never.  Not on treks like this.  The odds will forever be stacked against a mere mortal as myself.  God himself rolls these dice; always in his favor.

A blackened, near cancer inducing plume of exhaust emits from the sickly tailpipe of a large semi truck as I wind my way past.  My mind races in anticipation of my next move in this chess game of carbon-combustion. To blink rattles my bones.  For at this clip, this pace of play, every subtle motion is amplified.  Every turn of the head, every throttle movement, every shift of momentum: we're in the big leagues now.

But then it comes.  Mother Nature struck her domino and the whole army toppled.  Noah's Arc has nothing on this.  It seems so carefully planned, so ingeniously plotted.  Like a cabal of seedy henchmen or a snare so fiendishly rigged to catch its prey.  I scream inside.  I may have a large line-up of asphalt adversaries, but nothing like...

...the RAIN.

Hard-fallen.  Dispassionately cool and so very unsympathetic.  It wins.  I must complete my trip, though now poorly clad in a wimpy, blue translucent poncho.  Ugh.  But deep down, we both know I return tomorrow.  I may be human, even foolhardy at times but perseverance bears a picture of me in the Oxford English Dictionary.  I will not stop.

____________________________

That was a relatively poetic dissertation of my Monday drive home this past week.  Driving in Thailand can be quite intense at times, in fact, most times.

I hope it illustrated just how dramatic one can be when caught up in a race home against the afternoon, monsoon-season clouds that have recently seem to appear DAILY.  A constant battle: can I make it home from school before the "Great Deluge."

The rain truly isn't that bad.  It can actually be kind of exciting.  You just need to make sure your valuables are stowed away, because despite a poncho, you'll be soaked, at least from the stomach down.

Not to sound presumptuous, but you haven't experienced driving until you've drivin a scooter in Thailand.  To fully describe it in one blog post would be quite the injustice.  I think I may write a book down the road.  A lone, intrepid sole just trying to make his way home after a long day of teaching hyper, "over-suggared" Thai children.

Here's a video recently shot of a small section of my drive home from school.  I have to give major props to my cohort Tyler 1, for his impressive camera skills as he winds his way in my wake, keeping me in frame the whole time.

This is us weaving through cars at a red light.  The red lights in Thailand can last as long as 3 minutes!  So the line of waiting cars can stack up significantly.  This is where having a scooter kicks a solid gluteus maximus. Commutes can be cut in half or even more by driving a scooter.

Here's another video.  Don't try this at home.  And don't worry mom and dad, I am a VERY responsible driver.  I know my limits.  I've only had 3 accidents since being here -- JUUUUST kidding.  No accidents.  No worries :)

Then you've got the more rural roads, which I occasionally take to see the countryside or drive to the ocean. It is very beautiful in the backroads, which are just 5 minutes from the school I teach at.  This is a video of one of the rural roads I take to see the ocean.

I think any video game development company would find their stocks quickly rising if they created a game about survival driving in Thailand.  The obstacles are innumerable and sometimes quiet entertaining, to say the least.

Field crabs, stray dogs, cats, roadkill, scooters and vehicles without brake lights, people, styrofoam, plastic bags, buses, police officers, monitor lizards...oh yeah, the list goes on...

An evening drive will prove just how silly some of these things are.  Many stray dogs will sleep right in the middle of the road.  People driving scooters down the wrong side of the road with NO lights.  If you thought you had to be alert during the day, oh brother, nighttime is where it's at.  Sadly, I have no nighttime driving videos, particularly because they wouldn't come out well and it's a little on the dangerous side.

Then there's the issue of Bangkok traffic.  Fortunately, I drive opposite of Bangkok to go to work.  But I've recently spent a few days there and, WOW, is about the only word that sums up just how bad it can be.

These'll give you a pretty good idea:

So if you're going to commute to, from and/or around Bangkok, take the BTS (Skytrain), subway or have a scooter.  To drive a car is simply to whittle weeks, possibly whole months, away from your life.

I'll stop at that for now.  Here are some final shots of some of the more rural roads I've traveled on near the school.

Thanks for reading!  Next post coming soon!