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[13 May 2004|09:55pm] |
three day trek in the hills of northern thailand.
ate wild mangoes, lychees from trees. didn't get shot by the grove owner.
crazy tour guide who had a nervous breakdown half way through out trip, contemplated quitting/retiring in the deepest of the jungle.
smoked opium with the tribes people, it costed 100 baht/pipe... before the tourists came: 5 baht/pipe.
smoked a big bag of weed that our guide gave us before riding our elephants.
bamboo rafting in smelly poo water. had to wade in it when we got stuck on rocks.
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[13 Apr 2004|02:54pm] |
no wonder there is such a big problem with the disease in asia...
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[12 Apr 2004|08:32pm] |
classes are already over, and exams start in a couple of days. the last 11 days have been full of 'when was the last time you experienced something for the first time' situations which were both good and somewhat unpleasant but kinda cool in the end.
background info: we went to phuket/ko samui/ko phangan and then jay and i took off to borneo for the second half of the reading week.
first time i have ever...
... witnessed monkeys doing it - we were touring phuket and stopped at the 'monkey buddhist temple' where monkeys were just shagging left and right. they almost always do it doggy style.
... been violated by a thai lady boy - ok, so i thought they were not-threatening as long as you did not show that you were interested. but while at patong, walking around the tiger entertainment area, a lady boy latched on to my arm trying to woo me and have drinks with him/her. after a few shakes of the head and struggles to free my arm, she/he swooped down with his/her free hand and snagged my package. not just a friendly tap, might i add but a full out grab. out of all the guys, only i got the special treatment. so unfair.
... smoked shisha out of a hukkah - really cool little buzz thing going and damn stylish. the best part was the falafel that the food stall also offered.
... partied overnight at the full moon party - disappointed to report the lack of emphatamines in my bucket of red bull and vodka. however, ko phangan is a spectacle and a really good time. ppl passed out on the beach from 10pm onward, a rumoured shooting of a tourist by the police and thousands of people raging and partying through til sunrise.
... hitched rides from randoms - first and second time, actually. in a bind and a rush to get to the airport for our flight to borneo, jay, eddie and i hitched a ride in some guy's pick up truck and had a nice suntanning session back there. we spent more time suntanning in the bed of some guy's pick up then we actually did on the beaches in thailand. the second time was after mount kinabalu when jay's knees didn't work anymore and no showers for three days.
... hiked at 4000 metres above sea level - the hike up the mountain was a pretty tough one, especially for jay and his altitude sickness/crumpling lungs. we almost had to ration 4 power bars, a bag of nips and twisties for 3 meals, because we didn't have any malaysian money. luckily some bruneian oil pig couple was nice enough to exchange thai baht w/ us even though they weren't even headed to thailand. i made the summit for sunrise which was definitely worth the sore legs for three days that followed.
... squat shat - not a very pleasant experience at all, but it had to be done atop mount kinabalu. good news, no shit landed on my pants. i am now somewhat prepared for the horrific toilet conditions expected in cambodia/laos/vietnam.
... witnessed a shipwreck - ferrying from labuan to brunei, we ran into a storm and looking out of the starboard side windows, a broken ship 3/4 below the water with three crew members clutching to floating pieces of their boat could be seen. it was kinda crazy, and funny at the same time because the captain had one of those funny captain hats on with a vest and no shirt and hairy and looking like a drunk.
... watched bruneian youth taking tae kwan do lessons - not because it was a tourist thing to do, but because brunei is probably the most boring place to ever visit. jay and i were looking desperately for something to kill hours with before the sun would go down so we could sleep, but obviously did not succeed. impressive was the mosque built in honour of the sultan's father though. travel advice for brunei: don't travel to brunei.
soo after 11 days, it was great to get back to singapore. jay left this morning and karishma was awesome enough to accompany me all the way to and back from teh airport to see off jay. she spent the rest of the day with me skating on ICE and later on my friends celebrated my bday with me and surprised me w/ a cake and beers and - best part - kevin gave me a replacement hang ten t-shirt, equivalent to the one i lost at the sentosa party!
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[28 Mar 2004|10:04am] |
so i finally got a visitor. jay arrived last week and we headed to kuala lumpur for the F1 Grand Prix. sooooooooooo awesome. much more exciting than on tv. doesn't feel like 5 hours either when it's live. so he spent the week in malaysia and is now in singapore waiting for next week when we head to phuket and borneo.
the party of the term has to be this past thursday's house party, thrown by the coolest guys: Sandilen from Mauritius and Mauret from Morocco. they rented a chalet at Sentosa and bought an entire fridge's worth of beer. apparently, i'm an idiot and got extremely hammered and somehow managed to lose ALL of my clothes. t-shirt, shorts and sandals. i'm kinda pissed because it was my hang ten tshirt and reef sandals. but mostly, it's hilarious because i continued to party the whole night in only my boxers. so now i'm pretty hesitant to leave my room because all the europeans and other randoms i don't know laugh at me every time i see them.
yesterday, another great day, cheryl, took us around the east end of singapore and showed us where all the good food is. so we had this food tour, and then went to milie's condo for a humongous poolside bbq feast. i was thinking it was gonna be a little party maybe a hamburger and hot dog, but these girls went all out. a whole day of eating food ended with an outing to zouk. jay got extremely wasted and i am wondering how his hangover is going to treat him...
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[24 Mar 2004|04:39pm] |
Things I miss about Canada:
- lack of humidity
- maple syrup on everything
- multi-grain bread/pitas
- hummus
- Subway sangwiches
- granola bars
- Morty's burgers on Sunday night
- the Simpsons
- good looking, trick-ass Asian girls
- Morty's wings on Wednesdays
- Concerts!
- ... to be continued
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[08 Mar 2004|08:35pm] |
exchanges are great except for this week. i should probably remind myself that i am actually in school right now. so this week has been busy, saturday i spent the whole day faking raw data for our study, sunday i spent the whole day plagiarizing articles and the monday i spent the whole day bullshitting results. phew!
anyways, on saturday we went to the karaoke bar. it was one of the private room deals. sooooooooooo fun/funny because we were absolute animals and severely drunk. at one point i went to take a pee and on the way back, i was looking in other rooms. ppl were just chilling, sitting on the couches, passing around the microphone. then i get to our room and i look into the wnidow and ppl are jumping up and down on the sofas and EVERYONE is yelling (not singing) at the top of their lungs. the table was moved out of the way so as to create a private dance floor. i was in hysterics wondering what normal ppl were thinking of us. by the time 4am came, they were booting us out and this was when shirley, sandilen, guillaume and i decided to go to Lola. cover charge was 28 dollars at 4am. ridiculous!! luckily shirley, with all the hookups all over town, got me in for free. lots of hotties, i guess the hot ones only come out after the bars close and sleep when the sun comes up. no wonder i never see good lookin's around.
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[04 Mar 2004|02:50pm] |
Despite the ladyboys and smelly air, Bangkok has quickly become one of my top five cities in the world. This entry might sound like random blabber jabber, but i just want to get this down so i will remember tomorrow.
our first thai massage was a weird one. we went into a massage parlour hoping to be massaged by sexy thai ladies. but there were only 3 ppl working. 2 men and 1 pudgy lady. we thought it would look bad to walk out, so we defeatedly asked for massages. the pudgy lady led us behind these curtains where the massage beds lay, and left us for a few min. the uneasiness was felt among all of us, until we heard young-ish female voices from behind the curtain. all of a sudden, 5 or 6 girls walk through the curtains and begin to massage us. from what i had heard, thai massages are supposed to be somewhat painful, so i thought something was up when the massages that i paid a hefty 5 dollars for felt like no more than a gentle pat on the back. turns out, the thoughtful pudgy lady realized that we didn't want men massaging us and called her university friends to come instead. it ended up being more of a hanging out w/ thai university girls sort of deal than a thai massage. but it was all good because the pudgy lady ended up becoming a nice friend after the week we were there and also, the hottest of the uni girls likes brandon/kevin........ long story.
even though i had a slight idea of the amount of prostitution that went on in thailand, i was rather surprised at how bad it really was. we walked around this area called Sukhimvit Soi Nana but the walk was rather brisk and cut short. every single bar is packed full of prostitutes (which seems to be such a waste because thailand has some sexy girls and it's shameful to say, but there are some sexy ass prostitutes around that town - was never tempted). they just throw themselves at you; it becomes rather intimidating, which is why we left real soon. the barkeepers don't mind it because, for every man that the hooker gets, she has to pay a bar fine (commission). we learned the whole system from this sleeeeeeeeeazy english bloke who roomed at our hostel and told us his idea of a "regular massage" as opposed to "special massage" ends with a blowjob.
i think the only sightseeing we saw was the grand palace, as thailand is still a kingdom ruled by some king guy. it's funny because they have posters and pictures of him all over thailand, but they always use candid shots of him where he looks like such a dork. don't kings have portraits and stuff? i dunno. anyways, the majority of our time was spent on khao san road. really chill street with lots of street vendors and drinking beer while walking around is all good. the food was great, we enjoyed pad thai for 50 cents, spring rolls for 30 cents, cans of beer from 7-eleven for 60 cents, kebabs, squid and even fried grasshoppers/beetles/larvae that we bought from a really gargantuan lady boy. we also did a lot of shopping on khao san road. sometimes buying the actual product isn't as fulfilling as bargaining for the best deal. you have to bargain for everything there. tuk tuk rides, bus tickets, food, blahblahalbhalhba........ we ended up buying like 25 tshirts from this one store because they were selling us to them for like 3 dollars each. what also ended up happening was me going out on a date with one of the shopkeepers, sai. she looooooooved me, and i don't get to say this often - so i will take this opportunity to toot my own horn (one reason why i think thailand is amazing. good looking girls that actually like me. haha). and no, she wasn't a transvestite ladyboy. this morning i went back to the store to say bye and she was like, 'don't forget me.' shucks, i felt somewhat special.
we were told not to miss the infamous tiger show while in bangkok, so we decided we would go to Patpong and let our eyes be amazed. i THOUGHT it would be like a show-show, w/ stadium seating and ushers and stuff, but really, these tiger shows are in these nasty "strip clubs". also, i totally forgot about the prostitutes hanging out in places like these and had one of the worst experiences of my life there. no regrets though - we saw girls use their hoo-hoos for the craziest things. blowing out candles, shooting ping pong balls, air darts to pop balloons across the room! but all the while, some very VERY nasty prostitute was sitting in my lap rubbing her crotch on my thigh. i wanted to punch her in the back of the head because she wouldn't stop, but i also didn't want to cause a scene, you know? well, at least i could say i went to a tiger show in bangkok now. that's all i would ever want to say about that anyway.
we managed a trip to ko samet in the middle of our holiday which is a small national park island 3 hours south of bangkok. really neat atmosphere - very low key, but still... a lot of hookers and lady boys. beyond that though, there is fresh seafood and beach bbq's, no high rise hotels, just little bungalow huts that line the beach and can be rented for about 15 dollars/night. we rented motorcycles and toured the island and managed to find some weeeeeeeeed. you would think that it was easy to buy weed on a thai island because of that movie the beach, but it was pretty hard, first the bartender said no, we don't do that stuff here, then the guy at the front desk was like, sorry, my friend doesn't have anymore, so finally, the random sketchy barbecuer of fish and other such foodstuffs on the beach was able to provide. i don't know if it sounds weird that we went to the front desk/bar, etc, but you really can't tell the difference between drug dealers and beach bungalow workers. anyways, it was all good because i was super high even before the joint was done. and brandon experienced his first stone-age on this thai beach which is also cool.
ohhh yah, cool little follow up with the pudgy lady masseuse/fortune teller... we met up with her friends and herself on tuesday night for drinks and to flirt with her university friends some more and they showed us around a tad bit. the next morning, she nursed my friend Steve's mashed up leg from a motorcycle accident from ko samet and also brought us food. so now we have a new friend and may be seeing her and the sexy university friend in phuket in one month's time. as for my shopkeeper friend, she works 13 hours a day and gets two holidays a month, so she will remain a pleasant memory.
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[04 Mar 2004|02:20am] |
well, not much has happened in singapore since the last time. just a whole bunch of partying - hungn out with the 'singaporean champ of DJ-ing' but he didn't get us anything free or into any MTV Asia awards or parties. so consider him useless. ha.
last weekend i went to the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia with Sherry, Angel, Joyce and Eddie. i absolutely adored it. 1812m above sea level, they have this tea plantation that spans many many horizons. tea leaf pickers make 20cents/kilogram of tea leaves..... worst job ever, minus assitant crack whore. but we, being lazy and to show it pays off, hitched a ride in a tea leaf tractor which drove us up and down the rolly polly hills of the plantation. the factory thing wasn't working that day so we didn't get a tour, but had a cup of tea. i don't know a good cup from a bad cup, but it was definitely a good time for a tea.
the next day, we hiked a 4 hour hike that felt like a 60% hill both ways. really nice hike, the view at the top was shite though. the peak was covered w/ trees and high grass so we couldn't see anything. one of the best parts of cameron highlands was the relief from the humidity and heat of singapore. i didn't sweat for 3 days which is now a new record in my long list of records.
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| it's mine, its good. is that permanent ? |
[30 Nov 2003|12:36am] |
hurry up so we can break shit in peoples faces ??
i saw the building we treashed in the summer. remember geodetics ? its measuring earths angles using gravity as peoples lifes work. did i tell you about the fire @ the underground city ??? i was gonna call you !! there was beersomke cumming out !
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[29 Oct 2003|10:03pm] |
so cool, last night i went to see douglas coupland and others read at the international festival of authors. this guy dan rhodes - i want to read his book - he's hilarious. afterwards, i went to the penthouse suite at the westin harbour castle where the festival hosts the authors. we were allowed there cuz my friend works for the festival. so we were hanging out w/ these weirdo scottish lesbian authors who teach at cambridge university and mexcian poets and shit. free booze, free food. can't go wrong.
douglas coupland is a freak. i think he's on drugs when he does public functions. but cool writer.
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[31 Mar 2003|10:32pm] |
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van morrison - moondance |
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i watched City of God last night. holy cow. that is an intense mofo of a movie. nothing like gun-toting gangster slum kids in brazil that makes you hold your breath for 2 hours. oh yah, i wish i was this guy benny... "the coolest hoodlum in the city of god".
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