August 2005

First Time in Bali

Well, this is certainly one of the most beautiful places that I’ve ever seen in my life.

I arrived here yesterday afternoon from Bangkok, although shortly after my last blog I escaped Bangkok for Ayutthaya which is the old capitol of Thailand (before it was burned down by Burmese). I had never seen ancient ruins like that before; these were the kind of landscapes that I had only seen in exotic photographs. Nothing in that city looks to be less than 500 years old. The wats (temples) there are constructed with super decayed stone blocks and bricks and are adorned with often headless Buddah figures (vandals have stolen the heads, evidently). I got fantastic headless Buddah photographs.

The flight from Bangkok to Bali was four hours long, and I had no idea that Bali was so close to Australia. I believe I’m a three hour flight from the closest Australian international airport. I’m not sure if there was even a single Thai person on the flight, which was pretty much filled to capacity by white tourists which was pretty disappointing. But then I find that they’re all going to Kuta, which is the southern most beach in Bali where all the resorts are. Thank you family for not being sucker tourists; we’re staying 80 minutes from the airport in central “jungle” Bali, about an hour from any beach. The largest road within a half an hour of where we’re staying is a tiny two lane road filled with people on scooters; cars are very rare, and I think that I have yet to see car which is less than 10 years old.

This place is lush beyond my wildest imagination. It’s bright green and fertile, but somehow not overgrown. The temperature is perfect, but ocassionally it’s slightly humid during the day. The entire island smells of the sweet fragrant flowers, and everyone is as nice as everyone in any one place could possibly be; very similar to Thailand. No one hassles you to buy anything (I’m looking at you, China). On the way to where we’re staying we drove over a bridge which is several hundred feet over a pretty large river; I was instantly and vividly filled with the thought that I’m in an Indiana Jones movie.

I have more to write, but no time. I will write about the Monkey Forest, the Cave of the Elephant, the incredible place where I’m staying, and the other places and things I’ve seen when I get some more time.

End of the Tour

The tour is finished and I left Nanjing this morning at 8:50am and arrived in Chengdu just before lunch time.

Last night was a blast, but it’s actually really great to be back. We celebrated the last night of the tour together like we had meant to the whole time. Kim, Kimmy, myself, and new recruits Nina and Rob. We chilled at the Xinjiang barbeque place I went every night just down the street from our hotel. I said goodbye to the guy who fixed me the barbeque every night that I was in Nanjing; tried to get him to write his name in my journal so I could remember it, but he couldn’t write at all. Kim and Kimmy wrote a page or two each in my journal, in yearbook style. “It’s been a fun 3 months, etc”. Kim wrote his in Norwegian though, which makes it pretty special to me.

I actually had a number of epiphanies last night. It most likely had something to do with smoking bud for the first time in almost 2 months, but I reflected on the tour and made a few observations that I hadn’t been focusing on when I had my mind on other things. Coors says there’s another tour in November for 3 months and said that there’d be a position available for me if I want it. It allows me to set a good goal; I have to have my infrastructure up and running by November. If I don’t, maybe I’ll do the tour again.

I leave for Bangkok in 14 hours. Tingting is a asleep just a few feet away and I’m trying to type as softly as I can so I don’t wake her. I’m going to pack as lightly as I possibly can for Thailand and Bali. A weekends worth of clothes, my camera equipment, and hopefully a mini external hard drive that operates on a laptop hard drive that I can buy tomorrow before I depart. If not, I’m worried about running out of space for digital photos since I definitely don’t want to bring my computer with me. Too heavy, too expensive, too much hassle. I don’t picture northern Thailand being the type of place where you need a laptop. I don’t even really know what I’ll be doing there, but I picture it more to be swimming in rivers and hiking in jungles than on AIM or checking gmail.

I guess I haven’t written about tonight, which is what my original intent was before sitting down at the computer after arriving home.

I knew that I had only one night in Chengdu and I only had time to see a few friends, but I went to Scotty’s place and met Tenzins friend Jovian from San Francisco. Kimmy is also staying at Tenzins place for a few days. We walk down the street to meet up with Scotty who’s eating on the street with a table full of Xinjiang guys. They’re all speaking Xinjianghua and I cannot understand a word. It sounds like Arabic to me. We’re drinking beer, they’re getting sloppy off baijiu. Scotty and Jovian drink baijiu with them and get fairly wasted pretty quickly, but it was a pretty enjoyable cultural exchange of sorts.

Scotty is definitely the biggest pothead I’ve met in China (he has 12 year old dread locks), so of course he had a pocketfull of hash. He invited the Xinjiang guys back to his place where the living room is full with like 8 people, half of them looking like they’re from Kazikhstan. We smoke some hash and as if on cue, a guitar comes out of nowhere and these guys are jamming the fuck out, singing and everything in whatever language they’re speaking. Jovian pulls out an MPC-2000XL (hip hop production hardware), loads a bay of samples, and sits Scotty in front of it. It’s hard to describe what followed, but it was like a terrible car accident of a rhythm, but was hilarious because the situation and the atmosphere of what was happening was so extremely bizarre. They jammed out for an hour or so, passing the guitar around, all these guys could sing (almost more like a wail) and play guitar simulatenously. I thought they sounded like Gypsy Kings. Pretty fast rhythm on the guitar with a slower, almost raspy vocal style.

New country tomorrow!