And so I'm back...

Ahh... Nice to be abroad, but still there aint no place like home, where the bed is soft and the water is clean.
After a rather lenghty flight home and hardly any sleep I returned to my birthplace to get some R'n'R before the next adventure.
Walked out of the airport in a T-shirt. Rather suicidal considering the temperature was freezing but that doesn't matter.
Spent the day with the family and even had time to visit Shervin... Nothing has changed, well except for me but that only on a few accounts. Still as uncertain what to do with my life and still unsure about the meaning of life. But a few things have been learned along the way.
Live true, or lie to yourself. But most of all, I learned alittle about how my instincts work. When they are helpful, and when they're not. Still I learned to trust them alittle more than I did before...
That more or less concludes the spiritual insights of BIATCH part I.

Kuala Lumpur

Well, guess what. I'm back again at Kuala Lumpur International Airport.
But having 9 hours unil my next fligh, I decided to extend my Asia trip to include Malaysia. So I cleared customs and immigration and went off to Kuala Lumpu City Centre, where Petronas Twin Towers stand. What a magnificent building. Thats more or less what I had time to see before it was time to head back to the airport to relax alittle.
So now I've got Malaysia in my passport aswell. Yay!

Edit: Funny, of all the places I have been I have yet to see two sunsets that are the same.
Another edit: mmm. Nothing like cold Lager at the airport... just a few more hours to go... Everyone going about their Biz, only faces passing by and yours truly being one in the crowd. Everyone is rushing by, even those who have hours left until their flight leaves. I gues airports are that kind of a place... Everyone's going somewhere and fast. Regardless if it's necessary or not.
But not me for once... My rushing days are over for know. I've got one week of R'n'R in Sweden before we hit Central America like a hurricane on a calm summer evening... Supposedly, th Yanks hav their springbreak in March, and many go to Cancun (our second destination). Could get interesting.
Sorry for not posting pictures but lately it's been hard to find anything as good as Koh Tao to puton the blog... But I assure you I'll post som nice and/or discriminating pictures later on... Note to self. Worthless coffee at KLIA... Good beer however... Still that doesn't even nearly compensate for th instant stuff they are serving here.
Godspeed to Micke. Enjoy Bangkok buddy and send my regards to Dave.
Regards to everyone back home! I'll be back in a jiffy, or spliffy... No jiffy I think is the correct saying... Regardless. See ya'll soon.

Last day of Part I

Funny how time flies when you just bum around in the city.
These last few days in Phnom Penh have been quite rewarding eventhough they have not kept the same fast pace as most of the trip.
Our days mainly consist of visiting some interesting sites (The Palace and stuff like that), relax by the pool at the V.I.P. Club, soaking up the sun, driving around town on our motorcycle and simply enjoy ourselves.
Phnom Penh is a lovely city (sure it smells but Asia in general does that) .
But today, it was time to finish our business here in Asia and prepare to go home.
Things todo/done today
Relax by the pool
Eat icecream (believe it or not I haven't actually had any icecream during this whole trip)
Get a full body massage (costs pennies but Lord I feel like a new man)
Buy pirated movies (lets face it, it can't be original for $2)
Eat a traditional Khmer meal (been there done that all the time)

Well, that takes care of business. The massage was great. Just what a backpacker needs after a month of travelling.
And so, it is time to end the day with food of some sort.
Until next time (airport Kuala Lumpur)
Goodbye

And so we're back at our Asian headquarters

Bangkok...
After a nanosecond of consideration and the memory of the Siem Reap bus still burned into our memories, we decided to take the easy way out, so we bought planetickets. A little more expensive but I promise you, well worth the cost. I mean, the Siem Reap bus you definetly want to experience at some point in your life, but I personally recommend that you keep it in the "once in your lifetime" file. The flight took us about one hour. Compare with the bus which took 16 hours. We arrived an Phnom Penh and everything is the way we left it. Hot, humid, blazing sun and a distinct smell of sewage. We were greeted by Mickes family and we had lunch. What luxiouries. Food, drinks, a bed for myself, hot water... Quite a contrast to the conditions we have been living in (I tell a lie, We had food and drinks). And just as easily as we arrived, our personality changed from fast paced to lazy bums watching Battlestar Galactica on TV, eating salted peanuts and having no energy to move. But what the hell. I kind of needed one day of total brainless activities. And we're only staying 5 days more and then its back to Sweden. After that it's going to be 2 months of rather hectic Central American travel but that lies in the future.
Time to do something now instead. Or when I think about it, maybe tomorrow... Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. This day is going to waste anyway so there's no point in trying to salvage anything. I'm just going to ride it out.
Can't help of thinkin about Koh Tao. The diving, the feeling, the place, everything... Would be fun to do a Divemaster there but thats in the far future, and Koh Tao is just a memory.
But all well. Let's see what we can do in Phnom Penh.
To be continued.

Leaving Bangkok

First things first.
Adsense shut me down (F#ckin ars.....), so there goes that bowl of rice a day... Oh well. There are other ways to make ends meat.

But back to Bangkok.
For me it's impossible to either love or hate this city. It's both I must say. We spent most of our days cruising along the better parts of Bangkok, looking at shops in Siam discovery centre and such, saw the palace and all that stuff. The polution is bad in this city but it isn't Lund we're talking about right?
The nightlife is awesome here and if you have the cash, you can do whatever you want. The dancing places however... Quite surprised to see so many working women everywhere. And it's not the good ol fashioned standing on the street corner offering their services type.
We went to a couple of places and it was filled with women almost killing eachother to have a dance with us. To bad one quite quickly realises that it isn't just my elegant charm that drives them to me. So in the end, we kind of drew the generalisation that almost all asian girls on the dancefloor were working (probably including a rather tall asian girl with a conspicuisly large adams apple). Not the best Valentines day I must say. Going out clubbing and realising that almost everything had a pricetag. But, why let that ruin the entire evening. A dance is always free of charge, although quite obviously, alot of Western tourists were quite willing to take their new found friends out of the club and somewhere else. But ya'll know me. I don't play that game.
But now it's time to leave Bangkok and go back to that lovely country in the East, Cambodia, to see the rest og Phnom Penh and to end the Asia section of the BIg Asian and cenTral american CHallenge.

More news as it pops up.

Back in Bangkok!

Hello everyone. After a brief 10 hour busride we arrived in Bangkok. I can feel the divingabstinence kicking in already.









So this is how it's been. As you can see, Koh Tao was a tropical dream, we kicked back at the restaurant by the beach (we lived about 1 minute walk away from the beach) when we didn't have anything better to do. Diving started at 07:30 so we had the whole afternoon and evening off. We saw he annual diving festival.
As you all know, Micke and I decided to do the open water course and You're all pretty well updated except for the last night of diving...
The 11th:
the adventurers woke up after a calm but warm night. No side effects from the day before (as diving was in the morning, it was not recommended to drink alcoholic baverages in excess the so close to the diving). we met up with our excellent instructor Alex, the the briefing and went into the water. First dive was a Deep dive which I combined with Nitrox. The downside with nitrox was that I had to carry to heavy as hell tanks from the diveclub to the boat + my own diving equipment... Not a fun story.
We prepped, did the buddy check. The buddy check is simply to check a few things on your buddy diver. BCD, Weightbelt, Releases, Air, Final Ok. BWRAF for short or any of the following phrases to remember it easier: Bruce Willis Ruins All Films, Blonde Women Really Are Fun, Big White Rabbits Are Furry or whatever is easiest to remember. I think you guys can guess which one was the most popular one...
After the Buddy check, you jump in the water in whichever way is comfortable for you (given you don't lose any of your equipent that is, that usually irritates the instructors somewhat).
The deep dive was awesome. We did a mathquiz on the bottom to see who was intoxicated by the nitrogen (I wasn't) and then just swam around and enjoyed the view and all that.
That dive was followed by a Navigation dive, where me and Micke got to practice our elite compass skills (ahh the good ol' days of navigation at Bladins). Pretty fun but there are more awesome things to do.

After the dive I went on to do an exam in Nitrox handling (got 100% right) and then just relaxing at the beach.
The Night.
The final dive on Koh Tao was the notorious Night dive. As tradition goes, we bough a few beers, loaded everything into the boat and sailed away to watch the sundown from the boat. After the sundown and it was darker than Bokskogen during winter, we geared up and went into the water with a torch.
The darkness engulfed us as there wasn't even anything that the torches could shine on. The only thing that could be seen was the divebuddy and a weak reflection from Kytes silver fins. but at 6 meters all that changed. There was bottom. We could actually see it on 12 meters depth. We swam down and were welcomed by: sleeping fish!
We saw trigger fish sleeping by the bottom, bat fish swimming around, BIG Barracudas hunting for Batfish. It was great. Everything was the same but totally different. Everything reacted to the light from our torches. The barracudas used us to find fish (using the light from our torches to zero in on fish) while most other fish avoided the ligh (most likely due to the barracudas).
When we switched off the light, the light was illuminated by flourescent algae. You could see the algae shining up whenever we moved. Quite an experience.
But all good things must come to an end, especially our very limited air supply so we went back to the boat and celebrated our AOW certification.
We had a few beers with the instructors and went back to shore.
Now... Here is the thing. This was our last night on Koh Tao, we didn't have any diving the next morning so we figured it was time to hit the bars and clubs.
We had a beer or two at Buddhaview together with Phil (he was at Chiang Mai aswell), Jenny and Chilts (plus two really drunk swedes) and then went on to some other bars. Alot of dancing, some drinking and alot of philosophising. It was a great time. at 04:00 we started to get alittle tired so we decided to head back and go to sleep. Now, it was a bit difficult to find a taxi for the regular 50 baht so just walked on until...
Micke and I found a cab that would take us for 50 baht per person. That is a pretty good deal so call for the group but what do we see? Chilts had found a car with the keys still in it (owned by some other diveclub) and of course started it up and pulled up. In my resonably stable logic I decided that Grand Theft Auto wasn't the way I wanted to end my Koh Tao stay so Micke and I had to pay for taxi... Well back at Buddhaview, we met Phil and Jenny and we could only see the dust from Chilts stolen car as he drove off to get rid of the vehicle somewhere. I bet the diveclub he stole it from is going to wonder what happened to their car but that is none of our concern

now.


What a night I tell ya.
Well, now its time to see what Bangkok has to offer.

Until next time

Cheers

Quick update

Hello friends.
Just wanted to give ya'll a quick update of what's happening here.
We began the Advanced Open Water course yesterday (with Papa Alex), did the Multilevel, Peak Performance Bouyancy, Deep dive (30m, unfortunetly I didn't really feel any nitrogen narcosis but that could have been due to the EAN32 I was using) and Navigation dive. I've got the Night dive left which should be really be a kickass experience.
But I'll update the blog a bit more when I return to Bangkok and I'll upload a couple of pictures from the boat and such there.
Right now I've got to study a bit about Nitrox safety (PADI being an american organisation is rather paranoid about everything). Exam in an hour.
But as I said. I'll give ya'll more when I return to Bangkok (tomorrow).

Cheers

Martin

Diving

What a couple of days this has been. We've written our final exam for the Open Water course, gonna get the results back today, done our final dives and if everything goes right, by 17:00 GMT +7 today, I'll have my certificate... But thats not enough. I need more. I really need it. We've decided to start the Advanced Open Water Course tomorrow. Probably gonna add a Nitrox course (36 percent oxygen instead of 21) to that. This means of course longer dives.
We wake up at 06:30 (it's a pain but what can I do?) and do two 40 minute dives. Awesome. I've seen all kinds of stuff down there, including a Clown fish (Nemo). Poor little fellow... Anyway, we get back at lunch and then have the days off to soak up the sun, kick back, have a few beers and enjoy our selves. You just gotta love diver mentality. Dive in the day, party during the night. There was a divers festival on the island last night with constant live performances from 18:00 to 06:00. Didn't stay that long but what a party! The festival constited of two things. Bars and bands. Hardly any food around...
Today, we did our final dive at 20 meters (officially 18 but it's not always that easy to control bouyancy). It's funny how alot of the fish isn't scared of divers at all. I actually almost touched a fish before I saw four rather unproportionally large and pointy teeth in it's mouth. Kind of decided not to chance irritating it, I have medical coverage but why risk it.Oh yeah, the final dive was videofilmed. And of course, when there is a videocamera around, you need to do whatever it takes to entertain the audience. Me and Micke made total fools out of ourselves but what can you do when you're a camerawhore. It's gonna be cool to see if it turned out anygood. Might actually buy the DVD...

Other news: I'm eating rather well (has to do with the rather cheap prices and large variety of food offered around here), maybe a bit to well... Needto cut our budgets somewhere but lets worry about that problem abit later shall we?

Koh Tao baby yeah!

Well. After the most comfortable bus rides EVER (comfy seats, blankets everything!) and after a trip with a catamaran which could make a sailor seasick we arrived at Koh Tao, a beautiful Thai island. We jumped off, went to Buddhaview diving and began our diving course the same day. Just gotta love the pace we have...
Those who have done the PADI Open Water Course know what I mean when I say that the theory behind diving is mostly selfevident. Anyone with just basic physics knowledge wouldn't have a problem. After a little theory it was time for the moment of truth. Diving in a pool. It is now that people decide if diving is for them or not. We prepped our gear, and went in and below. What a feeling! It was so abstract to be able to be underwater for so long. It took a while to get adjusted to the way of breathing (deep, slow breaths and don't use your nose unless you want the mask to squeeze your brain out of your ears). But it was cool. Really cool.
After the dive we did what most divers do. Eat greasy food and drink lots of beer. One downside is all the tourists but hey, it keeps the prices down for the diving and I got to practice my german a little. We met a couple of pretty friendly swedes here. Anna, Marie, Anna, Anders and Viktor. Cool people.

Today it was even more theory but we got on a boat, went out to Mango bay and did our very first nature dive. I can't even describe the feeling. We practiced maneouvers in the water first (bouancy and all that stuff) but after that we swam to a coral reef. I swear those fish have something against me. They ( a whole frickin group of them) swam up like 30 cm away from my mask and just looked at me... Our whole group was surrounded by them (perhaps because we threw in a few cookies earlier that they devouered greedly) There also was a trigger fish here but it was simply minding its own business and didn't bother us( four rather nasty teeth that don't mind having a bite from your suit or face if you enter their territory during matingseason)
Swimming was total weightlessness (I know that isn't true because ofcourse we were influenced by gravity) simply swimming around, controlling bouyancy with the amount of air we had in our lungs. Doing flips and all kind of stuff. Great fun! And the corals! In my days on land I have yet to see something as beautiful as that (sunrise and sundown perhaps can stand the match but this was something really special). Colours everywhere... And the best part, the ocean was really warm today, like 28-30 degrees. Nice and comfy. It sure is going to be something awesome when we finish the course and we are most probably heading on the the Advanced Open Water course directly afterwards. Get some Nitrox training and such... I think I can really get into this sport. Alot of techniques to practice, alot of skills to learn but its really awesome. Worth every effort.

The life on the resort is quite pleasant. Great bbq every evening, divers, divemasters and instructors in the bars partying all the time. Great feel to this place. Its great to simply kick back after dives and relax at one of the restaurants located by the ocean. Food is not that expensive. You can fill your empty stomach for meals costing 150 baht. And if you're still bored by the bars and restaurants, you can go to another part of the island and go to clubs, discos or whatever.

I hope everything is going well back home.
Miss ya'll

Sincerely
Martin

From Bangkok to Chiang Mai and back, Let the sausage fest begin!

We took the overnight bus from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, we arrived at 07:00 and started our trek at 09:30. No rest, just asskicking. As our group was gathered, we suddenly realised there were only dudes on our trek. 5 Brits, 2 Isrealis, 2 Canadians, 2 Swedes (that's us), a japenese dude and 3 other people of unknown origin. As the brits put it, it was a real sausagefest, in comparison to the fannywagon with 9 chicks and 2 dudes. Now that must have been a real trip. But as there were no women on our trip we could what real men do best. Fart. And we did it loudly and proudly! The trek began with a 3 hour trek up the mountain through the Thai jungle up to a small hilltribe village where we spent the night. Our host was a Mr. Wee who tried to minimise our longing for the opposite sex by doing a rather poor, but funny "lady boy" impression. It was like: Hey sexy boy, would you like to come over? Call me! Hey Sexy boy! You must have seen it to get it. I realised one thing about the brits. Alot of cursing. It was "cunt" this and "bollocks" that and "I bet those two guys on the fannywagon are getting alot of drillling done right as we speak". Not to mention their constant longing for Sweet Mary Jane. After the trek up the dangerous and challenging Thai terrain, we were pretty beat and we spent the evening just talking crap and exchanging stories by the fire in the village...

The following morning, we were woken by something which most of us believed was Burma invading Thailand, or the villagers hunting pigs with large caliber rifles. For some apparent reason (anyone who knows of a special holiday around the 3rd of February in Thailand is asked to enlighten me) the villagers decided that they should blow up their whole stash of fireworks at 06:30... Well, after the explosions began, the whole town was up, including the roosters, hens, pigs, dogs and God knows what else.

The day began with a rather nice walk down the hill to a waterfall where the adventurous trekkers decided to take a bath (not that we had to care for our hygiene anyway, only dudes around). The best thing about the small villages was how friendly ereryone were, especially the kids who had a hell of a time bugging us trekkers and trying to get our attention.

The trekk continued along the stream to another waterfall and then on to our new sleeping quarters. The trek wa good, alot of different terrain with varying difficulty. Quite enjoyable but I thank God that I brought my boots. Wouldn't have been very entertaining trek otherwise. Quite alot of people got wet during the trek (Gore-tex saved the day).

Another night, another night of little or no sleep. It was frickin icecold. We had our camp right by the river that took whatever heat it could from land and passed on. Quite cold I must say. And louder than mine and Konrads Rammstein evenings. But we made it through the night, woke up and it was time to do all the touristy stuff. We rode on elephants, went white water rafting and finally bamboo rafting. Quite a chgallenge to race on a raft made of 6 bamboosticks with 5 people on it but we did it.And won...All this touristy stuff was alot of fun although we had our doubts about if the elephants were well taken care of.. They looked a tad fatigued... Still don't know. But everything was one hell of a time!

We then finally returned to Chiang Mai at 16:00 to take the bus to Bangkok at 18:00.
What a trek I tell ya.

Bus to Bangkok, another night with little or no sleep. I can't sleep on a bumpy bus but we arrived in Bangkok today, went windowshopping for electronics at NBK ( at least I did, Micke endulged in his urges and bought a cellphone) and finally ended up lost in Bangkok. Not a city you want to be lost in I must say. 15 million people... We ended up for some reason in an all Thai neighbourhood and we were the only skinny whiteboys around... Not the place to be when you're a stupid tourist. So did we take our chances? Hell no! We took the first cab that drove up and went back to the safe Khaosan Rd. Ahh...

But now it's time to head of to Koh Tao to do some diving! YEAH!
More news as it comes up and hopefully there'll be an internet cafe on the island. But until then... Take care.

A small bulletin: As we slowly watch how our financial resources are disappearing, we suddenly realised the value of money. We can get a bowl of fried rice for 20 baht here, or $0.50 so click away on the banners :).

Cheers!

The day of bad luck. The trip from Siem Reap to Bangkok

The 31 January can be officially be called a pretty bad day for the brave and handsome travellers from the north. It all began...
06:00, we woke up to take the 07:00 bus from our hotel to Bangkok. The trips works like this.
You take a bus from your hotel t the Thai-Cambodian border, walk over, and take another bus from the border to Bangkok. Shouldn't be so hard now should it?
Well, allow me to tell you more.
The bus finally arrived at our hotel not 07:00 but 07:30. Big deal? not really except for the fact that the so called bus is actually an old "civilian" marked minibus with no ac, no fans and by the time we pick up all the travellers into the bus, making the fate of sardines in a can to look like blissful heaven in comparison. Well, we drove around Siem Reap, picking up travellers and by the end of the morning, we were so cramped that in case of an emergency, there would be absolutly no way , NO WAY we would be getting out of the bus, let alone alive.
the bus left Siem Reap at about 09:00, taking us to what the bus driver attemted to convince us was a road. It was orginised dirt with lots of big holes in it. the 200 km took us 6 hours to drive, making the average speed 33km per hour. In comparision, the 300 km to Bangkok from the Thai border took 3,5 hours. In a nice AC bus.
Anyway. Moving on (slowly) we passed a couple of small villiages (and there was a cool monkey). You could really see the poverty but I was struck by how friendly people were to everyone (even when they weren't trying to sell something). The Khmers are really friendly people. More open then anything I've seen in Europe.
Well, about 15:00 we arrived at the border, did all the bureaucracy necessary to leave Cambodia and enter Thailand. And just as we passed the border, there was surprise number 2. There were so many travellers from Cambodia that they had to get another bus, and yours truly didn't of course make the first one. 2 hours later, just as me , Micke and our fellow travellers were considering an uprising, looting and murder, our bus arrived. after that we though, it was downhill. AC bus, nice and comfy and I actually got some sleep. Nice and smooth ride.
In Bangkok we had booked a room at Marco Polo guest house and I'll let the picture speak for itself. 5 sq meters, a bed with a mattras made of wood, a shower with cold water only and no toiletpaper what so ever. one had to do it th asian way: use a shower thingy for ones bum. But it was roof over our heads and that was what mattered. But I wouldn't recommend the place.
We had bad luck all the way from Siem Reap into this morning...
But today was a better day. Micke and I went shopping at Siam Paragon and Siam Centre. Great places . I wish I could afford the stuff they were selling. After we returned from our windowshopping spree, we payed for the trekking in Chiangmai and the diving at Koh Tao. The dude at Buddhaview who arranged all of the diving and trekking was really ncie and friendly. We're leaving in 1 hour. I hope all is well in Europe.
Yours truly.
Martin