Back to the Land of Smiles :)

There's just something special about Thailand.  It's as simple as that.

After our 3 month stint through Australia, Lui and I headed straight back to Bangkok for a little R&R before making our way to Europe.  The choice was simple.  We have friends in Bangkok, a lot of our luggage was still there and hey, it's kind of on the way to Germany!

14 days later, and needless to say, we were happy as clams.  Thailand is the hostess with the mostest!

Sadly, I have been slightly remiss in keeping my blog updated, especially because soooo much has happened between Australia and now.  This Thailand trip was back in the end of March!

The highlights of the trip was shopping (and plenty of it!), great dining, sightseeing, a few traditional and not-so-traditional Thai shows (more on that later), visiting friends and a fantastic trip to the beautiful island of Koh Chang (see above).  This blog post will really show you the very tourist side of Thailand as we were just being hard-core tourists on this trip.

Well, let's just jump right in it then.  One thing Thailand is known for is its ladyboys.  The word speaks for itself, but these are basically pre-operation or post-operation men who have, well, taken a proclivity for being the opposite sex.  And no, it's not just a hobby.  A world renowned show held in the Asia Hotel, called The Calypso Show, where dozens of ladyboys done up in all manner of costumes and makeup, perform some very impressive song and dance numbers.  Here's a taste.

Afterwards, they had the performers line up outside so you could take your picture with them.  And of course we did.

A few days later we made a day trip to the floating market about 2 hours east of Bangkok.  Despite having lived and worked in Thailand the previous year for 8 months, I never managed to make the trip.  Here are some shots from the day.

Paying for a delectable coconut.

Here's a little video clip going through some of the town surrounding the market.  I made an attempt to convince Lui to drink the river water for a 100 Baht ($3.3 USD), but that went nowhere.

We attended two traditional Thai items on the tourist list: the Siam Nirimit musical performance and the Chao Praya river cruise.  Both were great.  Here are some shots.

After the Siam Nirimit show.

During the dinner cruise.  This is the Wat Arun.  It poured in the last 20 minutes of the cruise, so we docked for a while right in front.  The shots were awesome!

 

With the traditional demon dancer on the boat.

Our 4-day trip to the island of Koh Chang can only be described as Über fun.  We made zero hotel or transport arrangements, which is one of the great things you can get away with in Thailand.  Sure, during tourist season (Nov-Mar) it's good to book ahead, but usually you can score a fantastic place by just walking in.

And that's exactly what we did.  Check out this little video I made of our view from the bungalow we stayed in the day we arrived.

We "scootered" around to beaches, watched the sunsets, snorkeled and, last but certainly not least, did an elephant expedition!  Here are some shots of the highlights.

Buffet breakfast.

 

Our elephant. 

 

Me in the front "seat".

Afterwards, everyone had the chance to go swimming and wash the elephants in a little nearby creek.  Out of the whole group of 15 some odd people, me and some other European guy with a funny accent were the only ones that jumped in. 

 

 An island we stopped by for lunch on our snorkeling trip. 

Well, I've filled you with quite the update today.  A lot to take in.  I've still got tons of news, pictures and videos from our Europe trip and updates on what's happening now.  And I promise I won't have such a big lag between posts :))

I made a slideshow of some of the best pics over our time in Australia and the trip back to Thailand.  I've included it below, along with some final pics from these somewhat recent adventures. 

And the slideshow...check it out!

Thanks for reading!

Sydney: The Heart of Australia

After surviving The Kalumburu Experience -- our 3-month remote, aboriginal adventure -- we decided to visit the beautiful city of Sydney and make our way back to Thailand for a little fun before heading to Europe.  The Sydney stop was just what the doctor ordered after being isolated from civilization for over 3 months!

We had the fantastic good fortune of Couchsurfing with an Australian couple in their gorgeous 4-bedroom house just 20 minutes from the central business district.  I couldn't recommend Couchsurfing enough.  In fact, the husband was a retired tour guide!  He told us all the best places to visit, eat, etc.

We were in Sydney for just 3 days.  We visited the Hyde Park Barracks, the Taronga Zoo, Manly beach, (too many) downtown malls and feasted ourselves on a buffet dinner cruise in the Sydney harbor.  You just can't beat it!

The harbor bridge and opera house, iconic Australian landmarks.

The central business district, downtown Sydney, with a massive chess game in play!

The lovely Lui.

Saint Mary's Cathedral on a bright, beautiful Aussie day!

The freakishly high Sydney tower.

The Hyde Park Barracks were a wonderful window into the fascinating beginnings of both the Australian colony and the city of Sydney itself.  A UNESCO World Heritage site, the barracks were constructed in 1819 and provided lodging for convicts working in government employment in Sydney until its closure in 1848.  Though it was not a prison per se, it was very tightly regimented with severe punishments for stepping out of line. 

This room is a great re-creation of the living inside the barracks, showing just how packed it could get in there.  Part of the "experience" were these sounds of men moaning in excruciating pain while you laid in the hammocks. 

Lui however makes it look quite comfortable.

The Torango Zoo was probably my favorite.  I love watching and petting all these cute, fascinating creatures of nature -- big and small.

Lui just chillin with a little kangaroo.  That's just what she does (mostly on weekends).  No biggy. 

Our view of the Sydney Harbor from the bird show.  Spectacular!

This is Petey the Pelican.  He was giving me the "411" on the best night spots in downtown.

These fellas got a little mixed up somewhere along the way.

 
I got the cold shoulder from my emu friend here.  I think he was just in bad mood that day.  He certainly didn't want to talk politics...

Our final evening was finished off with a gorgeous (and delicious) dinner cruise in the Sydney Harbor.  Our boat was a large catamaran.  We cruised around for 3 hours, taking in the sights of the harbor and Sydney skyline.  Great memories.

Well folks, that just about does it for Sydney.  Next post will be about our return to Thailand for a little 2 week vacation.  Then it's Europe!  Ooooh boy.  You better be ready!!

Thanks for reading!

The Kalumburu Experience: Part 2, All Things Wild

Mmmmmm, fresh fish.

When given the choice to work in a retail store in either an inland mining town or a kooky, funky (and just about every other "-y") aboriginal community, the choice was clear: ADVENTURE.  Kalumburu was just that. 

The land surrounding Kalumburu is that of pure, almost completely unadulterated, wild Australian Outback.  The ocean, just some 25 kilometers from the town, offers spectacular scenery, fantastic fishing and experiences unlike any other. 

A few of the government workers of the community invited us fishing on a number of occasions.  Both Lui and I knew hardly a thing about fishing, but of course that was half the fun.

And the excursions wouldn't be in true Outback style if we didn't have the rough terrain.  Everybody in the community has to have a 4x4 vehicle or there is simply no way to get around.  The trips always involved driving over rocks, through creeks and plowing our way through mud.

A little snippet of the route.

This is me taking advice from Giacomo, as we perch upon rocks, in our attempt to catch the infamously elusive Barramundi fish.

Fishing with my new "baldy head" hoping less hair will attract the fish.  Maybe...?

Later we were invited out by a lovely couple named Mark and Rose.  Mark is the true, consummate fisherman.  He has a room in their house dedicated entirely to fishing gear, maps, books -- you name it.

And of course fishing isn't all about "The Catch."  You've got to have your breaks and safely enjoy the sun a little.

Lui with Mark and Rose.

We were truly lucky to have been brought to these wonderful fishing spots.  They really afforded some fantastic scenery.

This is Lui humorously experimenting with a hammer she found.

We caught a big mud crab, catfish, giant travelly, mangrove jack and last but not least... a 250 pound shark! Whaaaaaat?!

I spent 20 minutes reeling the guy in as he swayed back and forth, closer and further from the reef, until he finally was at our feet.

This picture demonstrates the excruciating pain in my side (literally) as I fight with the underwater beast.

And yes, we did let him go.

Here's the video as I pull him right up to the shoreline.

Now if you think all this fishing business is wild, you should try playing basketball with the locals!

Every few weeks, the community organized a basketball tournament.  A lot of the community gets together at this outdoor court and watches everyone play for 3 or 4 hours.  Many of the aborigines play with their shoes off as they normally don't wear shoes anyway.

I decided to try my skills, having being unpracticed for nearly 2 years.  Needless to say, with their height and agility, my short white self found it quite tiring.

This is me warming up with some of the kids.

For a few weeks they had been having difficulty with the lights on the court.  They would go off sort of randomly.  And because the community is so remote, an electrician had to fly in to fix them a week later.

Then of course we had some neighborhood friends we made along the way.

This is Blipper the blue tongued lizard.  He hung out in our garden and always came by when we left out food on the porch.  His legs are so small compared to his body and he's about a foot and a half long!

This cute little guy was always trying to come in the shop.

A large, hairy spider we found in Lui's gardening shoe one morning.  He was about 3 inches wide.

And lastly, this was our favorite pet friend, Frederick the Frog.  He came into our house on about 4 different occasions; we believe through the washing machine pipe.

All in all, Kalumburu was highly entertaining, something of a 3-ring circus at times, leaving us with riveting stories to tell for years to come.

We flew out after having worked there for just over 3 months.  We stayed in a slightly larger town called Kununurra before heading to Sydney.  The gentleman we stayed with was a 63 year old Aussie who loved the outdoors.  He showed us everything he could, including a nice waterfall and creek where we jumped off the cliffs to our hearts content.

Since then we've visited Sydney, returned to Thailand for 2 weeks and are now in Berlin, Germany.  We are departing for Italy tomorrow where we'll spend a week seeing Milano, Venice and Florence, whereupon we'll depart for a 2-day trip to Paris, France before heading back to Berlin.

Thanks for reading!  Many more posts of recent travels to come!

The Kalumburu Experience: Part 1

There are moments of experience in every Man's life that he or she looks back on and says, "What was I thinking?!"

Kalumburu was, simply put, one of those experiences.

Ah yes, I will take up the bald-headed business in a little bit.  Just hang in there.

As of today, I have not done a blog post for a full 3 months!  And this time it is actually not due to laziness or my "writing muscles" simply failing me.  Being some hundreds of kilometers from the nearest "connected" town means having limitations in the way of communications.  And in my case, Internet, an important means of communication and information, was almost dictatorially limited.  Needless to say, posting pictures, videos, etc was simply out of the picture during my entire duration in this remote aboriginal community.

Kalumburu sits as the Northernmost inhabited settlement of Western Australia.  It consists of roughly 400 people, almost all of which are indigenous descendants of those having lived on the Australian continent for some 40,000 years.  In contrast to Western civilizations, such as Europe and America, the aborigines did not develop infrastructure, communications facilities, etc over the course of their history.  They were a primitive people with very practical means of surviving in one of the most difficult and sweltering climates in the world: the Australian Outback.  The tribes from the Kimberley region have been exposed to Western ways for only some 120 years.

Here's a couple that we hung out with while fishing in the nearby river.

Working 6 days a week in one of the only two stores, we saw and dealt with nearly every person and family in the community.  And a major part of the community that cannot be overlooked is the children.  Probably a full third (or possibly more) of Kalumburu is children.  So many kids you can't even count.  They came into the shop daily for candy and their school lunches.  Some of them were adorable. 

This is little Garth.  We called him "Garthy Shmarthy".

Some of the other little ones. 

Their history and culture is something unlike anything I've ever seen.  I could give a short history and description but it would be so horrendously incomplete.  Wikipedia provides a good breakdown, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_Australians

As for Kalumburu itself, it started as a Catholic missionary settlement in an area called Pago about 20 kilometers from its current site.  In 1937 water supply problems forced the missionaries to move to 

Kalumburu, situated on the King Edward River where water was abundant throughout the year. 

The foundation and some wood posts from the previous monastery at Pago, 105 years old. 

The missionaries established housing, medical services, a bakery, etc for the aborigines.  For decades they oversaw the activities and families in the community as it slowly grew.  Aborigines came from the bush to live and work in the community.  In the 1970s, the responsibility and supervision of the community moved from the mission to the Australian government.  The mission still remains, with a priest, a church, youth center and store. 

The current site of the Kalumburu mission. 

For a number of decades, the mission and people of Kalumburu were pretty self-sustaining. They had cattle, they grew their own crops, made their own bread, etc.  They sold crops and meat for needed materials and supplies.  Only two barge shipments came a year for things like flour and sugar.  

This is no longer the case today.  Here are some pictures of the old bakery. 

The old mission nursing center.

The day after Christmas, the guy who handles much of the mission's functions took us for a little tour around the paddock they own.  His name is Michael or "Mad Mick" and he's been working there for 40+ years!  Yowza!

And here's a little clip of our walk to and from work every day.  Kalumburu has too many stray dogs.  Sometimes the dogs would approach us -- and not always for a friendly pet.  This little guy though was quite harmless, I must say. 

Now I'll explain the shaved head.  When you're in a community like this, it's easy to say that you're pretty disconnected from regular society.  You are physically detached from paved roads, supermarkets, movie theaters, bars and such.  And you're also detached from your friends and family so it's kind of like, "Hey, what the heck; I've never shaved my head before."  

So on my birthday, Lui shaved my head and forever then I was known by the community as "BALDY HEAD."  The kids would say it in their funny accent and then they wanted me to say it, which I of course repeated back to them with my version of their accent.  It was fun. 

I also experimented with some other not-so-fashionable looks. 

Before we left, we said goodbye to the only two Kalumburu police officers.  One thing they said to us that I'll never forget is that the two of us had done something 99% of Australians haven't done, which is live and work in one of these communities.  It truly was an experience. 

So much has transpired since our departure from Kalumburu.  We've been to another part of the Kimbereley for a week, traveled to Sydney for 4 days and made our way back to Thailand for 2 weeks.  In just two days we'll be leaving for Berlin, Germany.  Deutschland... Jaaaaa!  Everything happens so fast when you travel.  Nearly impossible to keep up!

Stay tuned for Part 2, which I can promise will be quite entertaining.  Here are some miscellaneous shots from  some of our excursions and around the community.

The vehicular graveyard.

Enjoying a refreshing beverage with one of the locals.  They spend much of their time in the day outside on their porches, lawns and walking around.

Enjoying the beach.

A beautiful humongous Boab tree, very common to this area of Australia.