So much to do, so much to say!

Ok, so it has been a while since our last blog update, and for those of you following us on facebook.com also, you might be a little more up to date on what has been going on.  From here on out, I am going to try (and Chelsea says she is too) to just write a little blurb each day about an experience.  The trouble right now is that so very much has happened in this last week that it is hard to sum it up into something shorter than a Stephen King novel (I am about to finish “The Dark Half” and I can honestly say now I think I do not care for Stephen King!

First of all, let me start out by having you all watch this video.

White Rhino Porn was shot using only actors that were above the age of 18. If you are not of the legal limit to watch such
 things as White Rhino Porn, you need to proceed to the following site. www.disney.com

The above video was filmed in Chiang Mai.  We got to have some many crazy animal adventures there, it was really fun. 

          Anyways, after we were in Chiang Mai / Chiang Rai for a couple weeks, we headed to a small hippie town in the Mountains named Pai.  We hung out for a few days and did nothing except listen to Thai bands, take yoga classes with a crazy yoga teacher, and hang around a bunch of hippie European’s.  Kind of cool, mostly annoying.  Don’t get me wrong, Pai was great!  The vibe of all the white people is what was obnoxious to me.

         The drive too and from Pai was horrible.  It was like a ride along with the Blue Angels.  Switchbacks the whole way, with a crazy Thai mini bus driver taking these turns so fast I swear we were pulling multiple G’s.  On the way there, me and Chelsea both got sick.  On the way back, Chelsea was already puking all over, so we overdosed on a bunch of motion sickness medicine and were knocked out the whole ride back (4 hrs.)

        Then, for several days we got sick.  Stomach flu, then fever.  Being sick in Thailand really sucks.  Chelsea got it first, on the night we were supposed to go to the Ping Pong bar with our Thai friends.  Hah, she got sick and was puking, I tucked her in and said “I’m off to Ping Pong” and made the popping noise with my mouth.  She really wanted to go. 

        Lets just say there were some very interesting tricks involving balloons, darts, coke bottles and cigarettes.  No actual ping pong balls.  I’ll let your imagination do the rest for you.  The awkward part for me was hanging around the club in general.  Our Thai friends paid to have all the dancer girls come “sit” with us.  Essentially, they pour your drinks for you, laugh at everything you say, allow themselves to be groped, and try to make the big sale to you.  I felt like I was giving the girl that sat with me a break – I poured her a shot of whiskey, and she sat next to me (not on my lap).  I spoke my four Thai phrases to her and she smiled, then left and went and talked to my friend Bly.  “Your American friend is awkward, and scared of me” she complained.  I agreed with her one hundred percent. 

        Of course when you go to a club like “Star 6” with your six crazy Thai buddies and drink a good share of 100 Pipers Whiskey, trouble is bound to happen. 

        I just took a shot with Bly, Teen, Red and Jack when the girl that was ‘sitting’ with me grabbed me from behind by my scarf and pulled me up onto the stage.  Everyone is laughing.  Evil Woman starts playing in the background, as my Thai friends help the girls tie me to the floor spread eagle.  I am pretty nervous, and my nerves manifested themselves as laughter.  I was cracking up.  What the hell was going to happen?

        Well, four Thai strippers did a choreographed dance all around me.  It involved all sorts of ridiculous things, all incredibly funny, all at my expense.  It started with a girl pretending to grind her high heel into my crotch, and ended up with them pulling up my shirt and whipping me with some sort of thing!  Embarrassing, but knowing showbiz I gotta say that it was quite the show.  The girls thanked me and bought me drinks (hah!) they were actually really nice about it.  Bly, Red, Jack and Teen – if you are reading this, thank you for giving me one of the weirdest experiences in my life.  That night when I was at a hooker bar in Bangkok, tied spread eagle to the floor, being whipped by a girl in leopard underwear as a bunch of unattractive old men laugh at me and the girls cheer.  Chelsea really wishes she was not sick and could have been there also!

        After Chelsea got better, I got immediately sick for two days.  Fever, stomach flu.  This caused us to overstay our VISA by four days (we would rather be sick in Thailand than in Laos) but eventually we got up north to the border and took the boat to Laos.  On the Thai side of the border there were signs all over the place that said if you do not go through customs and get your stuff checked, you could go to jail for several years and have a big fine.  So we went to customs, and there was not a single person in the whole building.  Great.  Thailand has been full of these self contradicting experiences.  What do you do?  In America maybe you would wait and try to get ahold of someone, but when your boat is leaving and nobody understands English you just get on the boat anyways.  Turns out customs on the Laos side did not really give a shit either.  It was interesting to cross this border, and then think about Texas where they build an actual wall/fence and give some dudes some really big guns and tell them to guard it.  “Guard the border bro, gotta watch out for those hard working Mexicans.  No hardworkers getting’ in here!”  That’s all I will say on that…

        We hung out in an unremarkable border town called Huay Xiay for a few days, then caught the slow boat to Luang Prabang, where we are residing now.  The boat trip was amazing.  Two entire days floating down the Mekong River, beautiful scenery.  Essentially, I was on the “Slow Boat FROM China”, someone got the old song title mixed up.  The seats were pretty uncomfortable, but we could get up and walk around the little boat.  Not much, but enough to stretch out our legs.  We also got to know a bunch of other travelers!  Tim and Lisa from the UK were great (we drank a lot of SangSom whiskey with them) and Joel from Eugene.  That’s right, we found another American in Asia.  Wow.
Those are the boats to the left!  And it is kind of hard to get the effect by looking at the picture below, but we were winding through some serious jungle, with the occasional little village here and there, herds of water buffalo, and giant rock formations sticking up out of the middle of the river.  It is the dry season, so the water level was really low.
        Now we are in Luang Prabang, and we will hang here for a few more days and figure out where we want to go in Laos.  They have really nice stuff here, we want to buy it all up.  Tons of silk, and the most outstanding fabrics and tapestries I have ever seen.  Unfortunately they are large and heavy, too heavy for my backpack!  I am debating spending a hundred bucks to be able to ship 10 Kilo’s back to the USA….


Cheers,

Mack

I thought I was safe...

I thought I was safe, but twenty days into Asia I have been struck with a stomach bug.  As I sit here waiting for the Imodium to kick in I will write a little blog!  I know this is disgusting, but I found this online!

Thank you www.wikipedia.org for being so informative.

Over the past few days we have been doing so many things that honestly it gets a little overwhelming trying to write anything about any of it. I will just give you guys a heads up as to what we have been doing over all.  

We left Bangkok two days ago.  We were going to try to catch a sleeper train to Chiang Mai but those were sold out for the whole week so we took the Sprinter Train.  Basically, a half step down in comfort and a little more expensive than taking a bus.  I really do not know what the benefit is.  We got on the train at 6:38 pm and got off of it in Chiang Mai at 7:20 am the next day.  It was hell trying to sleep on that thing!  

One of the weird signs you have to deal with.  I understand the image, but whats with the WC?

Our friend June (Miss Thailand Competition) was letting us crash at her pad in Bangkok for several days before we left, and her husband Mr. Tongchai is very nice and owns a huge company in Thailand.  Anyways, he called ahead for me and Chelsea and basically 'marked' us as VIP personnel for Chiang Mai.  We have had two tour guides the whole time we have been here, under the orders of Mr. Tongchai, and we have a home for as long as we want at the Chiang Mai "Night Safari".  The coolest zoo you have never heard of.  

It is the Jurassic Park of mammals.  Every night they take you out on these tram rides where you can see all sorts of animals in their natural habitat at night.  White Tigers, Lions, Hyena's and other predatory animals as well as elephants, a million types of deer, giraffe's, ox, buffalo, monkeys and so on and so on.  Oh, don't forget the LadyBoy show and the restaurant's and ........ bungalos/rooms for rent?  Totally awesome, totally weird.  I was really tired, but Chelsea actually had a hard time sleeping because our house was right near where the lion's and hyena's were, and they are super loud at night.  Our guides Bly and Rain are totally fun and entertaining to hang with as well.

So awesome!

It seems that one of the themes of this trip for me is to see all this stuff that is not allowed in America because people are so scared to be caught up in a lawsuit.  Sooo much of the really fun stuff we have done would be soooo not even a consideration in the States... and honestly, I agree!  I think we watched a 4 ton elephant do "crow" pose (yoga pose where you balance on your arms) less than 3 feet away from a class of 4th graders.  Like, the elephant was leaning over the kids.  It is interesting, America makes rules about things because of the exception - the one idiot, and Thailand just lets that idiot go hug the panda and get mauled.  

Today we went up to Chiang Rai, where we rented a speed boat and went on a tour of the Golden Triangle.  The Golden Triangle is the point where Thailand, Myanmar (Burma) and Laos meet, separated by the Mae Khong River.  Historically tons of illegal activity went on here, drug trades, selling of illegal things (like slaves) and there has been a lot of fighting over this territory.  It was really weird to see Thailand in comparison to Laos and Burma.  Thailand had hotels, restaurants, temples, houses, everything built along the banks of the river.  Totally modern.  Laos had little huts and shops built on top of the bank of the river, and when we went there we found a huge market.  Very dirty, very cheap.  All the Lacoste you could ever want.  This is where I drank Cobra / Tiger Penis whiskey.  (See video).  

When looking at Burma, you could see nothing. Only dense dense jungle, and a gigantic casino called Paradise facing the Thai border.  Gambling is outright banned in Thailand, so a Thai native cut a deal with someone in Burma to build a gigantic casino to try to attract people over the border.  A few problems with Burma :  Child Soldiers, giant armies of them.  Land mines.  War.  Extreme poverty.  Unless you are in the army, your children cannot go to school.  Less than 1% of people have cell phones.  Less than .1% of people have internet access.  People cannot move there, people cannot leave.  We met two refugees from Myanmar in Thailand, they were our raft guides.  They left their families and hiked through the mountains for three months in order to escape the communism.  They had nothing, and they now have nothing.  They have to stay in the woods in Thailand so that they do not get deported, so they work as rafting guides for one of the elephant camps where they make 100BHT a day, about three US dollars.  Then, they take half of that and send it to their parents back home.  However they said they love Thailand because they can choose what they do here.  They each went to high school for three years, and one of them could speak basic English.  They were really cool, we gave them a good tip.

Anyways, it was frustrating to see a giant Casino just over the border of a country that has so many problems.  Our guides told us it was not safe for white people to go to Burma, so we did not go.  They said the problem is not with the average Burmese people or families, but with the police and soldiers.  One of our guides knows a woman in Myanmar and said that for every 500 Kyat that she made, she had to donate 450 Kyat of it to the soldiers in her town so that they continue to keep them safe.  What..?

Something smells a little fishy...

Fishing

    Yesterday me and Chelsea rented a charter fishing boat to take us out fishing for the whole day.  Juke, Erk, Samsong, Wipa and Lamp came with us.  I wanted to do something for the guys since they have been looking out for us this first week and driving us around, cooking for us, and bargaining for us so that we get the best deal.  The captain looked like Jack Sparrow - and although he spoke no english he sure understood when we told him that!  We hit three different fishing spots off the coast amidst a million of these little islands off the Navy base.  The first one, was forty meters from a big rock sticking out of the ocean.  We dropped our lines and immediately were catching tons and tons of fish.  Little tiny guys, the size of a small bass.  You can keep any size of fish you catch here, so we were loading up on all sorts of tropical, six inch fish.  I asked Lamp what they call the fish and he said they have no name, so I could just call them "Spiny Yellow Fishy".  Ok!  Chelsea caught a bunch, I cought a couple and Erk was going to town.  At one point, Juke caught two at once!
    The second spot was on the other side of the rock - not much luck though.  Deeper, a few different types of fish.  I cought some sort of red fish that was supposedly worth a couple hundred Baht in the market.   Since nobody was catching anything, we busted into the food.  Juke had prepared for us a feast (as everyone we have met here has).  It was deep fried chicken and pork ribs, sticky rice, Long Gong (fruit that is like those little jello cups from uwajimaya) and varius deserts and beers.  We ate and ate and ate, all day long.  I told him that his fried chicken was better than KFC, but not better than Ezell's.
    Then we went to the deep water spot in order to catch big fish.  Now the action slowed down.  Erk cought some sort of deep water monster rock fish, and I reeled in (after Jack Sparrow hooked it) some sort of expensive fish, similar to a tropical salmon.  About 4 kilos, said it was worth over a thousand baht at the market.  We took that fish back to Juke's house, small, navy housing, and he turned the one fish into a feast for ten people.  So much food, we ate and ate and ate, then sat as people took pictures with us.