Thursday, December 6, 2007

world's birthday balloons...

to think, a mere 11 days from now i shall be snuggled under layer upon layer of down filled blankets... spooning sister dearest, mariah carey merry christmas on full blast in the background and fresh buns rising.
this also means that i only have 10 days left of my "trip-of-a-lifetime" and must embrace it to the max.
yesterday was one of those days for the books.
fresh pineapple, sunny skies and a foot massage on the beach, followed by a pylon orange pedicure...
i woke up at 4 am and couldn't fall back asleep so i started "a boy of good breeding" by miriam toews and finished it just minutes ago.
oh my woooooooooorrrrrd. that book made. my. life.

the afternoon was spent prepping for the big birthday celebration that evening.
i blew up (and tied-for the first time in my life) balloon after balloon after balloon with a boy named 'world' at my side. the 7 year old birthday boy was going mental with excitement and then started shooting down all my precious balloons with his stupid plastic dart gun that he got for his birthday....little brat. that evening seaflower was swarmed with beautiful little thai children and we sat around eating sticky rice and laab (spicy minced chicken with cilantro) all night. YUM.

today we're gonna spend the cloudy afternoon in the kitchen at seaflower and take the lovely Sri up on her offer of free cooking classes! she offered to lend us the kitchen and teach us to make our favorite dishes...i can't WAIT!!

we have 4 days lefts at seaflower and then we are heading back to bangkok for one last day of shopping and sights and then shabam we're flying back to KL and home!!!

gotta run.
time to cook.
see you cats face to face shortly!

fritz. or scully

Saturday, November 17, 2007

i blew up a cow...

no, i didn't actually...but the option was available...

so today was an adventure and a half...
there's no better way to start your day then by shooting an AK-47...
doug and della should be proud.
we are still in phnom penh and today we did a city tour which included a shooting range, the killing fields, the russian market, S-21 museum and the royal palace and silver pagoda.
the shooting range was by far the highlight...the other things we went to were very interesting but incredibly depressing...
we got to the shooting range and immediately had a menu plopped in front of us.

AK-47 with 1 magazine (25 bullets).............$30
Tommy Gun with 1 magazine (25 bullets)........$30
hand grenade (1).......$30
M16........(25 bullets)$30
M60 (machine gun)........(50 bullets)....$60
rocketlauncher (1)..........$200!!!
anti-aircraft (50 bullets)....$60

you get the picture...
some of those guns were HUGE!!
i shot the AK-47 and it was innnnntense. not a lot of kick back, but enough to scare you everytime...it was really loud too, but MAN was it fun!

after we left the shooting range we went to the killing fields...mega downer.
just in case you don't know what the killing fields are all about i will give you a quick briefing:
it's basically a number of sites in cambodia where large numbers of people were killed and buried by the communist regime Khmer Rouge.
the massacres ended in 1979 with a total death count of between 1.7-2.3 MILLION people of a population of about 7 million. ridiculous...
there's a large building called a stupa filled with the skulls of the victims...

once that was done we headed to the russian market...nothing like a bit of shopping to try to cheer a person up...don't know what made it russian. looked pretty cambodian to me...

next on the list was the S-21 museum...another downer visit...
it's a museum dedicated to genocidal crime....it used to be a high school and was later used as the notorious Security Prison 21 ...it's pretty messed.

after that we got a bite to eat and then went to the Royal Palace and the silver pagoda...

tonight we're meeting up with our friends from ireland-vince and veronica, for dinner at a place that claims to make food "just like your mums"...we'll just see...
we bumped into them last night at a wonderful restaurant called "friends" which is a non-profit organization that helps street kids and their families...and the food was amazing to boot!

tomorrow morning we are leaving at 7:30 for yet another bus, this time to siem reap.
a few days there and then back to thailand to meet my brother!!!

gotta run, dinner awaits...
love love love
fritz.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

angelina and her sidekick sambeth bo...

well my passport is quickly filling up...
today marks the 9th country of our journey so far...
everywhere we go the countries keep getting better and better and Cambodia is no exception.

we left saigon this morning at 8 am, circled around the block for about an hour picking up more stragglers and then went on our merry way.
the travel agent told us it was a 6 hour ride in total...that included stops and going through customs, getting everything stamped etc...
well if that were true we would have been here 4 and a half hours ago...
and of course i got sick approximately 15 minutes before our bus was set to leave.
i won't bore you with bus stories, we got here safely, 10 1/2 hours later and so far i am loving this place.

we have spent $3 dollars each in the last hour and that includes our guest house for a night AND dinner...it's really really cheap here...
we're staying right on the lake, our guest house is sooooo dope-hammocks all over the place, Christmas lights are up and it's all built on top of part of the lake...just a really cool, laid back atmosphere.
speaking of dope, we were already offered large quantities of weed at least 4 times in an hour and pizzas can be made "happy" for only a dollar, so crazy...

the only thing so far that i haven't enjoyed is the CONSTANT bombardment of locals trying to sell you crap.
there are little mini sambethe bo's running around pant-less trying to sell photocopied books or postcards. the kids are unbelievably cute, but i'm not interested.

tomorrow we're gonna go to the killing fields, and a shooting range to shoot a cow possibly, as well as the national museum and the silver pagoda....should be a fun day!

well,it's been a long day and by bum is sore from sitting so much, so i'm outta here.

love love love
fritz.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

ho chi minh city

okee dokee...
so we've been in ho chi minh city for about a day and a half now and we leave tomorrow morning for cambodia.

we left nha trang two days ago and were lucky enough to squeeze in a beach day before we left!
there was a typhoon that hit central vietnam this week.
it rained for the first two days we were there and was supposed to continue but the sun managed to stay out long enough to hit the beautiful beach for an afternoon with our friends we keep running into...
we spent the day soaking up the sun, drinkin cheap beer and keeping the little kids from selling stuff to us. this one little girl put a curse on me for not buying a pack of mentos off her...she told me i was going to have ugly babies, IF i would even be able to have babies at all. but if i did they would be ugly as sin.
later on that day we went out for mexican food and then wandered to a bar for bellini's and to watch the manchester united game live (they are HUGE fans to put it mildly).
the next night we were all ready to leave and there was a big misunderstanding at the place where we were meant to catch our bus...the guy in charge told us that the busses weren't running to saigon, but he meant hoi an....
apparently there was crazy flooding...neck high water, so all busses were cancelled.
luckily we had just come from there and missed out on the bad weather...

and now we're in hcmc (saigon) and before we know it we're outta vietnam and into our 9th country of the trip!

so we are staying in a hostel on the 5th floor....but if you wanna get technical (and i do) it's really the 7th floor.
our backpacks were pulled up to our room with a home-made crane thru the home-made sky-light (a hole punched through the roof) and we had to trudge up 16 flights of stairs. retarded...

today we took a taxi to what we thought was dam sen park, but ended up in the wrong part of town, walked around aimlessly for a bit and then hopped on the back of two guys' motorbikes.
OH.
MY.
WORD.
i think my knuckles are still white!
the traffic out here is completely ridiculous, but hey i'm alive so it can't be that bad...???
dam sen park ended up being pretty much an abandoned theme park...it was very odd.
the rides weren't running but there were a handful of people wandering...
they had a bunch of creatures and figures made out of dishes...a bird made of spoons, dragon out of plates...it was pretty neat.
the highlight for me was definitely a swan ride paddle boat on the lake...i've always wanted to ride in a swan, don't know why.

well that's all i got for now...

love from saigon.
fritz.

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

hoi an-nie k style.

hello from hoi an, vietnam.
the town that has forever put me in debt.
my mastercard will never be the same.
and neither will my shoe rack/closet...

this town is pretty much my version of heaven, seeing as how i have giant feet and picky taste.
on every corner and in between there are little shops with rows and rows of fabrics/leathers and samples of shoes and coats, i knew i was in trouble after 5 minutes of walking around here.
basically if you can dream it (and pay) they can make it. in a day.

so far my boot count is at, ummm...11 i think.
4 jackets, one dress and i just handed over my credit card to derek...
i am like an energizer bunny in this town, it's retarded.
thanks to me our hotel room reaks of leather...i love it!

the weather has been pretty lousy, and it looks like we're in for more...
there is a typhoon heading our way shortly....but hey i'd take rain over snow any day.
we had planned to go to Hue after we were done in Hanoi, but the town was completely flooded so we just stayed on the bus and came straight here to hoi an.
one or two more days and then we are off to nha trang and then down to ho chi minh city.
in a week we will head to cambodia for another week and hen back to thailand to meet mike!!!
time is flying by, it's absolutely ridiculous...

i should header...gotta meet with the tailor and pick up the last of my boots!
see you cats in 6 weeks.
peace
fritz.

Sunday, October 28, 2007

conical hat mania...

oh lord

where to begin

we are safe and sound in hanoi, vietnam
this city is the most overwhelming of all the cities to date.
and i don't think i could date this city long.

we arrived last night around 6 pm and it is never fun arriving in a chaotic city when it's dark. we met a canadian couple on our bus from vientiane to hanoi...thank goodness.

ok i will backtrack...

so vientiane was great, it was a holidsay weekend...the dragon boat races were taking place and the whole entire city was closed down and partying..so fun!

we left cara in vientiane and left laos around 7 pm.
the hostel we were staying at was so great...the owner was a blast...we shared a couple beers before we left and he biked my carry-on down the street for me.

he warned us...the bus to hanoi was in NO means a VIP bus.
nope it was pretty much a public bus.

us and the two other canadians were the only white faces for miles seeing as how most backpackers spend the extra buck for lush seats and a toilet and a dvd player on the bus. not these faces.

the bus driver and his assistant were not the nicest of people we have met so far. they would not allow us on the crap bus until 5 minutes before we left. all the locals had been getting the good seats and getting comfy for hours. they chucked our bags thru the back window behind the back seats of the bus....along with a 42" tv and a new fan. great.
we were finally allowed on the bus and we claimed the last seats that weren't in the back and i was quickly removed from that spot seeing as how i'm white. the bus driver came and grabbed my arm,pulling me out of my seat and pushing me towards the back. great. with the tv.

we got the only seats on the bus that did not recline. our vents were open and full blast and broken. the mean man was sitting behind us while waiting with all his tower of pillows for his turn to drive. he was the reason we couldn't recline.

did i mention that the bus ride was 24 hours thru the mountains? GREEEAT.

so we start going finally and after about 6 hours we stop. for good.

apparently the border only opens at about 7 am, so we waited from 1 am till 6 am in a parking lot in the middle of laos, and strangely half our bus got off and didnt come back till it was time to go....i think they must have found beds. shoot. you'd think the bus would leave later and go straight through, but apparently that would be too convenient for everybody.

we finally reached the border after about 1 hour of actual sleep (i'm trying to ween myself off of gravol so i had to sleep without help...not very successful...it was easy to cross but very confusing...i'm glad we've had some experience before with land borders...otherwise we would not have known what to do.

we got off our bus, got stamped out of laos, left our bags on the bus, walked for half a mile to the vietnam border, got stamped in, went and got our bags and then went thru "customs" and then got off the bus again and walked past a rope which was blocking off entrance to actual vietnam, thru security and back on, continually dropping dong for random health quarantine and other fees. so silly. dong is the currency here in vietnam. 16,896 d=$1...it's a good thing dad passed down the mental math gene to me...

we had ONE stop for food and bathrooms for the remainder of the trip...
i had to stop and pop a squat in some old ladies cornfield while half the bus watched.

everyone on our bus was wearing a windbreaker circa 1992...

we passed a truck full of logs and i thought of shope remple (spelling?) and his cutting down of trees business. i laughed for a solid minute. one time he lost his watch while cutting down all 50 of our evergreen trees.

vietnam traffic is unimaginable. honestly. i can't even describe the controlled chaos. our bus driver LOVEDDDDD his horn, but so did every other person on the road. all you hear is a constant hum of the horn and it's almost as if there is an invisible unspoken middle lane. right between the two regular lanes. so you have a single lane going in either direction and then a middle lane for people passing...but it works in BOTH directions. if i didn't start biting my nails on that bus ride, i never will.
i wish i could explain how absolutely retarded it is....and that was BEFORE we got into hanoi. oh man...retarded...

we got a taxi and headed straight for the old quarter and ended up wandering into many full hostels and ended up splurging $25 for a night in a super lush hotel. i took my first bath in 6.5 months this morning and it was the best thing ever.

i'm gonna go have a bowl of pho (noodle soup) and then wander around the old district taking pictures.
we have a date with the post office this afternoon...time to empty my bag and make some room...

so far i think vietnam is going to be my favorite country yet...
fritz.

Friday, October 19, 2007

luang prabang

sabai dee...
i love love love this country.
i think it could very well be my new favorite...
everything is so lush and green and so relaxing and of course ridiculously cheap.
luang prabang is a little town of about 26,000 right on the mekong river.
the mekong river is the color of butterscotch pudding
there are about 3 or 4 main streets and everybody rides their bikes while holding an umbrella.
you get a fresh, hot baguette with practically every meal.

today we rented bikes for 10,000 kip ($1) and explored the area...it's just so lovely.
our guesthouse is $2 a night...
at this rate i could live here for months without going into debt!

tomorrow we're off to the waterfall and then the following day we are heading to vang vieng to hop in an inner tube and float down the river, beer lao in hand.
laos is an alcoholic's version of heaven. a shooter will set ya back 20 cents. buy one get one free during happy hour...insane.

we're all getting over some form of sickness...ear aches, fevers, etc...too much moving around does that to ya...so we are laying low, eating healthy and getting some fresh air and this is the perfect place to do it.

this blog is not at all exciting...i'm gonna quit while i'm ahead.
fritz.