Back on the road by daminou

Sabaidee,

(english follows)

Aujourd'hui est ungrand jour: celui ou nous reprenons la route. Bon en fait on est reparti hier de Bangkok, et apres une nuit dans le bus, nous voila de retour, encore une fois, au Laos; Vientiane, que nous n'avions pas encore visitee, et ou nous devons faire le visa Chinois...

Je ne reecrirai pas un nouveau panflet contre les ambassades, ca me fatigue, ca m'enerve, mais ca change rien au fait que ce soit les pires enemis de l'homme libre! Notre premiere demande de visa depuis Hanoi s'etait pourtant tres bien passee il y a 5 mois; or depuis, sous couvert de securite relative aux JO notemment (dont tout le monde connait le caractere tres tres dangereux), nombres de lois ont ete adoptee pour rendre plus difficile l'obtention dudit "bout de papier"... Il y a deux mois, c'est une reservation de vol qu'il fallait presenter, reservation qui s'obtenait assez facilement et sans payer le moindre sous par Laos Airlines; c'est donc ce que nous avons essayer de faire ce matin... juste avant de nous faire renvoyer! Motif: il faut desormais, non plus une simple reservation, mais un billet d'avion confirme avec la preuve de paiement! Quel foutage de gueule!
Traduction: la Chine n'est accessible que par avion!
Traduction pour nous: on l'a dans le cul pour notre voyage par la Terre... Oblige de payer quelques centaines d'euros pour prendre un avion depuis Luang Prabang pour survoler la frontiere et se poser le plus tot possible de l'autre cote!

Bref.

Aussi frustrant que cela soit pour nous, je ne souhaite pas m'enerver etperdre la quietude d'esprit durement acquise par deux mois de pitw en Thailande!

Ce qui ont lu le precedent post ont surement compris que le sentiment d'etre "invite" que j'avais ressenti lors de mon premier sejour en Decembre s'est entirerement confirme! Le mois d'Aout s'est deroule sur le meme doux rythme: Kho Phayam chez Nok & Jeab (et la bande des joyeux marrons couleur locale: John, Yan, Georges, Dan, GeckoMan...) et ou nous avons retrouve le Nazmon, le Flan, le JB, et Emile; KuraBuri chez Pern et AndamanDiscoveries; Bangkok ou j'ai passe plusieurs week-end epiques, profitant enfin de l'occasion de decouvrir la ville de l'interieur grace a Nanthawan, Su Ann, Laura, Sam et Jesse!

C'est donc quand meme difficilement que nous quittons la Thailande, ou nous aurons au final passe presque 4 mois cette annee. Nous savons neanmoins combien nous aimons les gens de ce pays, combien nous nous sommes fait d'amis.
En ce qui me concerne, je n'ai plus de doute quant a ma prochaine "destination de vie"...

Cela dit, nous apprecions tout autant de reprendre la route, de pieuter dans un bus et de se reveiller la gueule dans le cul a une frontiere, entoure de tuk-tuk drivers, de changer de monnaie encore, et d'explorer la ville avec le sac sur les epaules pour trouver une bonne chambre! Nous allons rester a Vientiane le temps de faire le visa chinois, qui est la seule et unique route possible pour rentrer, meme si cela signifie prendre l'avion. Nous retrouvons ma pote Wan ce week-end a VangVien, puis le bon Wim, illustre franco-blege au combien sympathique, a Luang Prabang.

Voila, j'arrete de faire des pronostics sur la date de retour. De toute facon je vais dire une connerie ...

A bientot quand meme!




Sabaidee!

Today is the day we hit the road after 2 months in Thailand!We actually left Bangkok yesterday, and after a night ride in the bus, here we are again: Laos. We hadn't visited Vientiane yet, and we have to apply here for the chinese visa!

I will no again spit out the hate i have against ambassies, as anger is not good for me, and it does not change the fact that theyare the worstenemy of free men. Our first encounter with chinese officials 5 month ago in Hanoi had not been a problem; but in the last month many new laws were voted for the "protection and securityof us of all"... THANKS! 2 month ago one had to provide a flight reservation to apply, what was at the time easy and free by Laos Airlines; easy then did we think when we got to the ambassy this morning with our papers... 2 minutes later we were back to the starting line! Obviously it is not that easy anymore and we now need a confirmed flight ticket, and a proof that you have indeed paid!
So you can only get into China by place.
And we're already fucked if we want to go back to France overland! We'llhave to take a plane just to flyabove the border... what a shame!

Anyway.

As frustrating and irritationg as it is, i wish not lose the hapiness that i built up in Thailand during 2 month!

Whoever read the previous post probably have an idea of how sweet my life has been! Well August was pretty much the same: chill out with friends and make new ones: KhoPhayam with Nok, John, Georges, Gecko Man...; KuraBuri with Pern and AndamanDiscopveries Team; Bangkok that i finally got to discover from the inside thanks to Nanthawan, SuAnn, Laure, Sam and Jesse!

So we can't help feeling a bit sad leaving Thailand where we afterall spent almost 4 month this year. I love the people here as much as i love the friends i've made! As far as i am concerned i have no more doubt about my next "destination for living"!

Nevertheless it's good tobe back onthe road, hit the night sleep in the bus, arrive at the border at no time in the morning, change your money once again Kip, bargain your tuk-tuk ride into town, carry your 25kg backpack around till you find a room...
We'll stay inVientiane to make the visa and meet my friend Nanthawan with whom we'll spend the week end in VangVien. Then we should meet Wim, a great franc-belgium mate met in China, in Luang Prabang... and then we'll see what happens!

We're back on the road and on the way to Europe, but i wont any guess on when we'll reach it! Surprise... for you and for me!

I'll see you soon!


daminou

Thailand, it's just another month in paradise...

Sawadee Khrap! Hello, Salut!

As I have recently been terribly lazy to give anyone news, I beg you all pardon. And as most of you understand English and a lot of my friends don’t speak French, I shall write in English. Moreover for professional reasons (haha funny to use this word “professional”) it can’t do me any bad to practice a little my writing skills!

So here it is: what’s been going on here since last month? For those who didn’t know I came back to KuraBuri in Thailand just a month ago to visit my friend Pern with whom I wanted to start a business around here. I was afraid to come here during rainy season as Kuraburi is sadly famous for being the one place in Thailand to be the more drenched by tropical storms between June and September… but if one is to live somewhere, one ought to be sure he can take it all year long! And fortunately, our good Karma is still traveling with us, and just as miracle happens, the rain stopped the very day we arrived “home”! The two weeks before we got here, it would rain non-stop for over 15 hours a day, which was seriously getting on most farangs’ nerves as Nicolas and Renska, both volunteers at the NATR, told us! But here we are, and apart from the violent but short daily rain around 5pm, the weather is back to what I expect it to be: sunny and terribly hot! Welcome back to the smily and sunny side of our planet!

So that’s how, a month ago, and for the first time of the year, I put down my backpack which, since then, still hasn’t moved. Home, sweet home! My bed has well be a carpet in the living room when Flo is sleeping in Pern’s room, I nevertheless feel home again: with a bathroom where I can leave my stuff after shower (don’t laugh: it does make a big difference!), and what’s even better in everyday life, something I had terribly missed for the last 10 month: a kitchen! How good it feels to be able to cook your own food once in a while! In Thailand food is so cheap and tasty that it is most of the time more expensive to cook than to go out for lunch or diner, but still: it’s good to cook for friends! And friends are indeed the best point in having a home where to live. Of course we’ve had friends during this trip: from India to Japan, we can’t say we ever felt lonely because of all he wonderful people we’ve met. But again, it’s a different feeling when you’re friends are always around in town, when you can go to their place to check out on them, when they stop at your place because they know where to find you! Or when the shopkeepers in town greet you because they got used to having you in town! It’s a feeling all of us probably know, including me, but that I feel grateful I’ve had a chance to rediscover! Especially with such beautiful people as the one who live in KuraBuri: Pern of course, that I could never thank enough for showing us around and hosting us, Kelly and Bohdi, two great exemples of farangs living a meaningful life abroad, the sweet Sirikanjana (Auw) because you need a close friend to talk to about everything, the crazy Mai, P-B, P-A, P-Tui, P-Nut, SomSan… and of course the “muslim lady” for the best KFC (KuraBuri Fried Chicken), and the guy from the laundry place for his cooler than cool shirts everyday!

We’ve seen a lot of things traveling from place to place during ten month, "for sure man", but we would have missed something had we not settled down for some time in one place! The beauty of the everyday life that, above everything else, I sometimes fear! I might still be afraid that my days ever get ruled by “habits”; nonetheless it was great to know that I would meet Auw or Mai around 5pm at the dam in the jungle after my daily bicycle tour, and that I would have the football game with the kids from the neighboring school at 6:30pm (I know I suck at playing football, but those kids seriously rule: they have no shoes, a flat ball, and a more or less wild field to play so they have to build their game on collective play: beautiful!)!...

Of course, as I am still a happy-to-be-on-holidays-party-boy, I haven’t spent the whole month on a daily routine, sweet and sabai-sabai (= pitw) as it might be! Thanks to the students from UCLA who were here on a study-project we got to party quite a lot! I got my ass kicked at every single card game I played with Dara, but kept my pride at the drinking games! We also enjoyed some exquisite barbeque on the nearby and wonderful Ao Khoei beach for Jeab’s farewell party and Pern’s birthday. Both nights taught me a great lesson: SangSom is the worst alcohol! Easy to drink, it makes you totally handicapped the next day: don’t even try to do something as it is doomed to failure, whatever that task might be. I remember my uncle Alain’s friend telling me a few years ago to be careful with the rice whiskey from the Mekong, as it makes your hair grow inside before you finish your glass… I should have listened to his advice! Another great party was the raegge concert of “Job to do”, a fifty year old dude with his band, on Karon Beach in Phuket. This was a perfect concert: good music, with some guys from the public sometimes coming on the stage to sing a song with them (something that would never happen in France!), a beautiful beach, good atmosphere, and the most spectacular concentration of beautiful women I ever witnessed!

This month also gave me the opportunity to visit the surrounding islands: I went a couple of time to the small Koh Phratong with Pern as she works with fishermen villages and schools there, and got to meet some beautiful Thai families. I thought these people still lived in a traditional way, not affected by the crazy way our planet is changing, through people’s lure for money. If it is still true today that their life is very traditional, their situation might change very fast in the next few years. Indeed the communities are facing a big dilemma on their lonely island: modernization has reached them through TV (although it can only run a couple of hours a day on generators), and of course they want more: more comfort with 24 hours electricity, more money by eventually renting bungalows to foreign and Thai tourists: but how can one make them understand that money is going to change their very way of living, in proportions they can't imagine nor fear? How can one make them understand that they are going to lose control over their life?… On the other hand the government wants to create a national park from this island to preserve it. If one could see here the probably best way to keep big investors and resorts away, the locals fear this decision, as it would mean the end of the fishing activity around Koh Phratong, and the end of their de-facto ownership over the land… That’s indeed a tricky situation this island and its people are facing: will it open to tourism and take the risk of being spoiled by the impossible-to-keep away resorts like so many of its sisters, with the specter of Phuket only a few hours south? Or will it become a national park and keep its beauty like Kho Surin?

Another island we got to spend a week on is Koh Phayam: not yet a Babylon-prostitute like Phuket or Ao Nang (Krabi), never again a wildlife-protected paradise like Koh Surin. As we saw it during low season, the place totally seduced both Flo and me; especially Flo who left today to go back there for a couple of weeks! It stands somewhere in between, as what could be called a backpackers’ paradise, an international place of peace, with only one 'road', non-dirt trail would actually be a much more appropriate definition, connecting the peer to the two main beaches: Ao Yai and Kaow Kwai. I stayed in the French owned Ao Yai Bungalows, and had a revitalizing week: surf in the morning (fighting against the waves for Flo), cycling in the afternoon when it was not raining too hard, good food in between in company of Wilow and her baby Zeira, and the cute Nok who runs the place. What else to say? How could I even try to describe the feeling of cycling in the jungle after the rain, when sun has come back and you feel like you're in a sauna, with steam rising from everywhere, and the temperature barely bearable? We did nothing but time flowed quite fast before Pern joined us for the week-end! We also got to witness the strength of a tropical storm one day when it did not stop raining the whole day, and we could hardly see 20 meters ahead because the rain was so strong!

We also hitch-hiked our way to Ao Nang, a few kilometers from Krabi. The province is one of my favorite place in Thailand for its beautiful beaches, crystal pools, hot waterfalls, rock-climbing spots… but this is one place where the tourism industry has unfortunately spoiled what Gaia had done so well. Ao Nang is a sad exemple of this trend, and, as if our karma didn’t want us there, a credit card problem made us leave, that we feared for a week would make us come back to France earlier! With only 140 Baths (not even 3Euros) and the room and motorbike still to be paid for, we realized that my credit card did not work… we kind of panicked, made our way back to Pern’s, and after arguing with my bank on the phone, the problem disappeared… by itself… We don’t know what happened!

The phone call to my bank was nonetheless very surprising, if not extremely upsetting. I first called on a Tuesday to explain them my problem (the credit card did not function since Saturday, but I had to wait as banks do not open on weekends nor on Mondays): the first reaction of the dumbass who answered was to tell me I should have called a week ago (that is to say before my problem occurred), as the lady in charge of my account was now on holidays for a week. I had hard time keeping calm, but after we managed to negotiate that HE would take care of my problem, he told me in both a surprised and angry tone: “well what do you think I can do for you?” As he was obviously taking me for a fool, and as I was scared they would do nothing but oblige me to come back in France, I kind of let my patience get lost and answered that if a dumbass like him, working for the bank I entrust with all my money, and pay 15 Euros a month for a stupid credit card, was not able to give me another answer to such an easy problem, there would be some serious problems when I got back home! Of course I could do nothing… After that I told him I wanted a new credit card to be sent here, and that was the end of it. The next day the card was working again…

Flo had a similar problem 6 month ago when his credit card expired (a problem he had previously met his account advisor about): after the fax he sent to let them know that his survival abroad was totally depending on them giving his new card to his brother as agreed, he never heard of them again… Amazing isn’t it: you entrust a bank with your money and no one even bother answering whenever you have a problem! Fuck them: I hate banks for what they are, I despise them for what they stand for, and I pity myself for depending on them so bad…Anyway. One can’t do without a bank can he? It’s still quite helpful for travelers…

Another institution I despise even more is embassies, for they stand for nothing but self-suficience, ignorance, and obscurantism under the cover of a fake open-mindness and a so called safety. Of course they might be the one to help you whenever you get into troubles abroad. But shan’t they also help you make sure nothing actually goes wrong? Shan’t they also stand for the rights of travelers being abroad? Isn’t their existence itself a symptom of a world where one can supplant the idea of impervious borders? That’s what I used to think; regrettably not anymore. Not after every single French embassy in Asia (and I did call every single one of them, from Bangkok to Katmandu, New Dehli, Shanghai, Beijing, Vientiane, Islamabad…) refused to deliver me the necessary authorization to apply for a Pakistani visa! Why? Why did our stupid and getting stupider government decide that no French citizen could apply for the visa without this paper? When they couldn’t forbid the Pakistanis embassies to deliver their visa, they created this authorization and forbid all the French embassies to deliver the paper! What a shame for a government to forbid its citizen to travel and meet people, open their mind, go beyond their TV screen, discover what they can’t imagine or what they won’t believe, dare leave the mainstream to see, understand, or at least try to! Who are you to take such a decision? Have you ever even set foot in Pakistan to decide for everyone? And if you have, what else have you done but sell weapons to a government as corrupt as you are? What have you ever done to help Pakistan get better after all the troubles you have created, directly or by your passivity towards some greater power trespassing its international rights? I have gotten in touch by email (never got any answer) and by telephone with all the Pakistani and French embassies in Asia, I have spent the last two weeks searching through every forum on the internet for a answer and I finally got it: there’s no way but one to obtain a visa for Pakistan if you’re not in France: get to the border with China, that means in middle of nowhere, the highest place on the planet at the foot of the greatest concentration of over 7000m peaks, between the Himalaya and the desert, and try to bribe the Chinese officials to let you out even if you don’t have the visa for Pakistan yet. If you’re extremely lucky they might let you pass. Then the Pakistani official will deliver you the visa on arrival. That’s the only border control where they do it. Funny business to get into a country don’t you think?! I can’t believe governments are making it so hard for people to travel! What does it take to open a border? Commercial contracts? The abandon of one’s culture to the one and only dogma of economic globalization? What about the globalization of people? Aren’t we also walking this path towards unity, we budget travelers who just want to discover one of the most boycotted and starved country in the world? How come the weapons that we westerns produce can cross the borders, and not me? I truly think it is my right to go there, and I despise my government for it forbids me to, with no reasons I can think of, nor one it can give me.

I have taken the example of Pakistan and France, but I could multiply it, extend my deception to many more countries: China, what is this 2 days visa about during the Olympic games? And what did you keep me waiting two hours for, when you realized I was born in the USA? Does it make me suspicious? Russia, why do we need an invitation (30 USD) to apply for a visa (100 USD)? Mongolia, why don’t citizen from certain countries need a visa when I have to wait minimum two weeks to get mine? Am I more dangerous than any Israeli, or American? Are we even dangerous in any possible way? Do I, as an individual, have to pay for the shit my country is doing in international affairs?

Sorry I kind of got out of the subject here… but those questions have been bothering me a lot lately. And it makes me sad and sometimes angry to see this mess, the energy we lose in creating fear and hatred; especially when what the world needs more than ever is to understand the people we live with on this planet…

So finally I don’t know how to come back in France… There are still many options, more or less expensive, more or less complicated. I still haven’t given up on Pakistan, although I might soon have no more choice… Still if I manage to get there from China, I would follow my route through Iran and make my way into Europe through Turkey. As getting a Mongolian or Russian visa from Beijing is nearly impossible in this Olympic period (aren’t the Olympic Games supposed to stand for peace?...) we totally gave up on taking the Transiberian. The most likely to happen would therefore be China, Kazakhstan, Russia (transit visa from Astana), Ukraine, and finally Europe! Well there’s probably other options that I haven’t yet considered, and that might well arise, so who knows what’s going to happen!

For now I’m still in Thailand for a few weeks. I'll keep enjoying the sweetness of life here! I might go on a surfing trip tomorrow to Koh Rat, and then have a big barbeque party on Koh Phratong with my friends before i leave KuraBuri to meet Flo. Nazmon, a good friend from mine will most probably join us there on Kho Phayam. Then i ought to leave for China by the end of the month, and seriously start heading back west with France as a target.

Well good timing: I’m being told t rehe diner's ready, so I’ll finish here my long long post! I can't ask this delicious fish and squid to wait!

Thanks to everyone who had the courage to read all this post through!

Don’t forget that any news from you, even a line, is always welcome!

Love

damien