Pióro

In Grade 8, I was very good friends with John Lee. We’d do what boys do in the suburbs: bike around, eat weggie-fries from the Red Rooster (a sub-standard fast food joint specialising in ‘chicken.’), go to the mall and once John even came to my cottage where we drank too much root-beer and got [...]

From the northern city of Chang Mai, backpackers can play National Geographic reporter/photographer. There are tons of companies that will take you trekking into the surrounding hills. Here you can sleep in a Karen Hill Tribe (Thai indigen) village. Pigs and roosters do their barnyard sounds right under your stilt-mounted bugalow. As you first walk [...]

I read somewhere that Thai massage is “pleasantly brutal.” That would be accurate. It’s not every day that I pay for two gas-pedals. Yeeeowsah!

There was a live-band performing one night at the Gecko Bar at Rai Ley beach. I don’t know what it is about the name, but there are tons of Gecko Bars in Thailand and there’s no evidence that it’s a chain. During the day, as Mar and I sat on the west beach, some ‘dudes’ [...]

The Surat Thani bus station has washrooms that remind Warren of university. This is the most Western bus station I’ve seen in Thailand. All the corners are finished and free of dust. There are stools whose seats are sections of tree trunks. The ‘Western’ music they play is some of the worst kind imaginable: John [...]

At Rai Ley beach, near Karbi, there are many, many beautiful cliffs, perfect for rock climbing. I decided that while I was there, I might as well try it. (Up to a few days ago, I had never climbed anything other than trees.) Agnes, Warren and I opted for the half-day intro course. On paper [...]

Longtail
To get to Rai Ley beach from Ao Nang, you need to take a longtail boat. These boats are the tuk-tuks of the sea. The stern of a longtail is smeared with motor-oil and mounted on top is an engine. From this engine protrudes a long shaft with a two-blade propeller on the end. The [...]

Tuk-tuks
Named after the sound they make, these three-wheeled buggies of death are ubiquitous around Bangkok. The government tried to outlaw these safety-hazards a few years ago with little success. In one of these motorised rickshaws, the driver straddles the stick-shift, the exposed car-battery sits near the left passenger’s feet and the lack of any [...]

In Bangkok, the ground-level atomosphere is a car-fart air-gravy.
As we came into town on the airport shuttle, I noticed we were on the wrong side of the road. I forgot about this arrangement the next day as I walked into traffic. “Well, if this was one of the other eighteen countries I’ve been to, it [...]

Matt’s reading the guide book. He comes across an entry about meditation classes. He remember a time when he was kinda interested in Buddhism. He kinda knows what dharma, kharma and vajra mean.
“Hey. A meditation class sounds really cool, eh?” says Matt.
“That’s a friggen’ dumb idea,” says Warren.
Matt is slightly taken aback.
“What do you mean?”
“Think [...]