The (Mis)Adventures of Matt Lyon

bSo the trip to Kuala Lumpur was a bit longer than expected. 4 hour ferry to the mainland. 1 hour overcrowded bus ride the the transport hub. 4 hour wait for the connecting bus. When it shows up, there are 7 seats too few and since its supposed to be an overnight bus, we protest and after an hour on the side of the road the driver arranges for a minivan to transport the spillover. We drive at a snail's pace and after 5 hours arrive at Hat Yai around 8PM. At this point, the bus driver forgets all his English leaves 40 travelers at a hotel, waving. Long story short, all of us arrange for a bus to pick us up in the morning to take us across the border and to Kuala Lumpur. Staying in a hotel instead of the bus was fine with as we had added in 2 days buffer before our flight to Borneo but others weren't as far-sighted and had planes to catch the next day. Lots of screaming and yelling. Another 10 or so hours of travel the next day landed us in KL around 8PM the next night. We stayed in a hostel with no windows in Chinatown. The manager had a pet monkey. Mildly entertaining. Mostly saddening. We spent 2 days wandering KL, but generally ended up at the Petronas Towers, once the tallest buildings in the world, wandering the pristine mall and taking in a midnight showing of Avatar 3D. On January 6th we boarded a plane for Sandakan, Borneo. About 20 minutes into the flight, the captain comes on and tells us there's been a problem and we have to return to KL. We were supposed to circle for 20 minutes to burn fuel. 2 hours later we were still circling and Meghan had worst-case scenarios worked up in her head. Thankfully we landed safely, but with no explanation as to why we circled so long or what the problem really was. Everyone deplaned and boarded a new plane. Meghan was having none of it. After about 90 minutes of going back and forth we decided we would try again in two days. So we went back to KL, got a nicer hotel room and spoiled ourselves with Italian dinners and movies. Dr. Parnassus. Could've been so much better. Two days later we successfully made it to Sandakan. We passed the taxis offering rides into town for $8 and got the bus for 50 cents. A small triumph against overcharging travelers. Sandakan was nice but not great. It allowed us to get our feet wet in Borneo and we arranged a trip into the jungle. We arrived to Bukit on the Kinabatangan River in Sabah and spent 3 days on river and jungle treks, searching for Orangutans, Probiscis Monkeys, Elephants, Kingfishers, Hornbills, Crocodiles, among others. It was really great, although the Palm Oil trees sometimes came right up to the riverbanks. Its really sad. A lot of Malaysia Borneo has been sold out to foreign Palm Oil companies and enormous swaths of land have been bulldozed to make way for Palm trees. Along with the trees go the ecosystem and habitat of countless species. No doubt many many animal and plant species were made extinct because of this. It is a total disgrace and we all use palm oil without ever really knowing it. Like so many things in this world, the products we use tend to have a significant effect on the environment and of course the corporations are none too happy to publicize these inconvenient truths. Unilever, for example, makes everything from peanut butter to shampoo, all with the help of palm oil. It is a real shame. (Step off soap box.)

After Kinabatangan, we took a bus to Semporna, the eastern tip of Malaysian Borneo and gateway to SCUBA paradise. A night at the Dragon Inn, a 'floating' hotel and a scramble to find a dive shop we liked landed us in the worthy hands of Sue Keevil, a lovable Brit. She sorted us out and the next morning we were on a boat headed to the island of Mabul. On the way we got to see Semporna from the water. I like to call it the 'Venice of the East'. Row after row, canal after canal of stilted houses and hovels. An amazing way to live. We arrived to our homestay on Mabul and spent a total 8 days diving and drinking, drinking and diving. Funnily enough, a kid we met at the airport in San Pedro Sula Honduras last year showed up as our divemaster on Mabul. We shared a bus to the coast and had dinner together, then parted ways the next morning. He's our motherloving dive instructor in fathercuddling Borneo. Small world once more. The island is a meditation on balance between the rich and the poor. A smattering of dive shops on stilts and inland, villagers just living. You can walk around the whole island in about an hour. There was a resort on the other side, a literal stone's throw from shacks. The unluckiest on the island weren't even on the island at all. "Sea gypsies". Filipino refugees living on boats, 'docking' at low tide. When it rained, vigilance was needed day and night to bucket out the water. They fish and cook on the boat. Pretty wild stuff. Anyway, we had an amazing time diving unbelievable sites. Among the strangest encounters were ornate ghost pipefish, lionfish, cuttlefish, parrotfish, frogfish, stonefish, reef sharks, nudibranchs. Google any of these and be prepared for a wild ride into Mother Nature's mad laboratory. Just downright weird, most of them. We got our Advanced Open Water certification. We did a night dive, got into some pitch black bizarro realms. The mind is a funny thing, likes to make something out of nothing. A fun little trick is waving your hand in front of you and seeing it light up with phosphorous. I loved it. The wreck dive was also a trip, looking for pieces of eight on the fingers of skeletons. Not exactly, but surreal nonetheless. Seeing the wreck appear out of the blue with thousands of fish all moving in synchronicity was a nice little mindscrew. I love diving. Love it. We did 3 dives at the famed Sipadan, the place Jacques Cousteau described, “I have seen other places like Sipadan… 45 years ago. Now we have found again an untouched piece of art.” He was right. An island in the middle of the Celebes Sea, with a towering coral wall that is just teeming with sea life. Anything and everything can be seen there. It is fantastic. I highly recommend you go. Now. I'll wait.

We had to bid a found farewell to all of our new friends and our new home and set sail for Kota Kinabalu. Kota Kinabalu is the biggest city in Sabah, but was a bit of a disappointment. Meghan got a viral infection and was bedridden for about a week. So our time was spent laying around watching movies and surfing the interweb. I caught the Saints Vikings game on ESPN dot com. Just the gameday play by play, which had my jumping up and down at every update. That was really the highlight of the week to be honest. We saw the hospital. That was neat.

So we flew back to Kuala Lumpur and went straight to the bus station and caught a night bus back to Hat Yai Thailand. Goodbye Muslim America, hello Land of Smiles (for the 3rd time). That morning we spent an hour eating breakfast and then hopped a van to Krabi. Got to the pier in mid afternoon, put our stuff on a longtail boat and made the 20 minute ride to TonSai. Oh what a delight! Clear Turquoise water with jutting rock formations and white sand beaches. Our new Argentine friends found a couple of bungalows 50 feet off the beach for $12 a night. It's yet another paradise. Rock climbers come the world over to this beach. Imagine climbing up a rock wall 90 feet up then looking out to the most beautiful beach with limestone formations offshore at sunset. Guess its hard to imagine. SUCKERS! I kid, I kid! It was amazing, though. I highly recommend it this also.

A couple days after we arrived, Meghan's friend Colin came with his man friend Dave. They stayed at Rayvadee Resort. $800/night. Amazing. But still not worth the $784 difference. The pool was amazing though. Looked right over the beach. It was nice having him there because it gave us an excuse to go out, which we have rarely done on this trip. It was a good place to do it. We found this place called Small World tucked into the forest. Had cheapish drinks and firedancing tightrope walkers. I kid you not. It was just about the coolest thing I've ever seen. I have a video that will be on facebook once I return. Our time on Krabi was great. One day we went kayaking, one day went rock climbing, one day went caving and hiking. Then it was on to Koh Phi Phi. I wasn't too happy about this, as I've heard its just a built up tourist trap. It is. But I had no choice as it was Dave and Colin's choice. I forced myself to have fun and drink buckets of booze and party all night on the beach and fire jump rope, and fire limbo, and jump through a ring of fire. It was hell. Gosh I am a spoiled little shit. Brian and Emily from Madison joined us in Phi Phi as well. They are teaching English in Korea and jumped ship without papers to be with us. I jump roped with Brian. It was bromantic.

We said goodbye to Dave and Colin, who headed to Phuket while we took an overnight bus to Bangkok. We had to connect in the same hub where we waited for 4 hours for the connection. This time it was 20 minutes. Matty likey. Bangkok Khao San once more, but this time just for 4 hours. Jumped online then headed to the local bus station for bus to the border to Cambodia. At the border the tourist police tried to rip us off. Yay, Cambodia!!!

We hired a taxi to take us the 1 1/2 hours to Siem Reap, home of Angkor Wat!!!!!

Luang Prabang was generally nice. Very relaxing days with a nice hotel room in a place called SokDee (Good Luck). Great Mekong sunsets and mellow night market ramblings. Our friend Karen got food poisoning without our knowledge. Andrea had to take her to the hospital. While in the emergency room, she was with a bunch of bus crash victims. Nothing too serious from what I hear, but they kept coming up to her and asking for money. She kind of shrugged them off, as you regrettably have to do too often over here. You can't help everyone. But then she realized these people were going straight to the pharmacy to buy medicine. A couple things about communism in poor countries: All the social securities we associate with communism/socialism ie education, healthcare, food stamps tend to be nonexistent. If you are sick in Laos, your family has to kitty up the money for your care. If you are imprisoned in Laos, your family has to come feed you. Or you starve/eek out a living trading anything you have of value to inmates with fat families. Another thing that just occurred to me: Lots of American contemporary Country songs praise working hard for its own sake. Lots of Communist countries praise working hard for its own sake. Yet the two groups seem to be diametrically opposed. Just goes to show not much is what it seems.

But thankfully, Karen fully recovered in Luang Prabang while Meghan, Andrea, and I got a slow boat up the Mekong for a 2 day travel excursion. A slow boat is basically a long wooden boat maybe 50 feet long with a huge monster of a diesel engine. It is covered, yet is open air. It has wooden seats, but some have old car seats nailed down for the first class passengers. It sells beer. So we load up, maybe 10 westerners and 10 Lao and slowly head up the river. We immediately become surrounded by beauty. Huge rock formations, sandy beaches, tiny villages tucked into the mountains, people fishing, swimming, bathing, and playing on the banks. Locals got on with handfuls of food or a basket full of chickens, or a wall fan, would stay on for a few hours and the boat would stop on the bank, and they'd get off and be greeted by their family, and you realize that this person probably traveled at least 2 days to bring what they had in their hands back to their family. It may seem like a poor life, but it is only seemingly so! They aren't tied down by mortgages and credit card debt and car notes and bratty kids who just threw their iPhone on the floor and are demanding another one. None of that Western shit applies here, and I am sure they are exponentially more wealthy spiritually and familially without all that Prozac and Valium and Ritalin that we consume to help us just get by. One thing I've learned over here is that you are only poor if someone tells you so. With movies and television and cell phones, people in the city know they are 'poor' compared to the West, and it is a shame because you see the wanting, the envy. But in the country, people seem to be so content with what they have. They are never in a hurry to go anywhere, will spend hours cooking dinner, and can meet with a friend at any hour, at the drop of a hat. That doesn't sound like poverty, that sounds like what all the working folks in the west are working for. Just a little chicken soup while we work in our little ticky tacky cubicles.

So we spent the night in Pak Beng, the village that just so happened to be halfway between Luang Prabang and the Thai border. We went out with Andrea and and a man from Germany-can't remember his name just now, and James, a bloke from where they call guys 'blokes'. A great dinner and conversations ranging from drugs in England to real poverty in Cambodia to...wait for it...American politics. Drank a little too much beerlao at the encouragement of Andrea, the not-so-closet lush of the group, and went to sleep in the upstairs of a family's house with my head spinning and my mind still floating downriver.

The next morning whilst boarding, I confirmed my suspicion that a couple travelers on the boat were indeed speaking Czech. I had a brief broken language conversation with them and bid them a hezky den. Another glorious day on the boat playing cards, reading, pondering, waving to naked children playing riverside, and generally loving life. That evening I invited the Czechs to dinner. Lo and behold, Ondrej works at Commerzbank, my old teaching ground in Prague! It dawned on me that I had seen him wandering the halls of the IT department and here he is on the Mekong in Laos! Small world! Really nice to brush the rust off of my Czech and get excited about the possibility of stopping there 'on the way' home.

And so it was time for us to hire a tiny shuttle boat across the river. Goodbye Land of a Thousand Elephants, hello Land of Smiles. This time we made a beeline to Bangkok and before I knew it I was back on the dreaded Khao San Road at 4am. Khao San embodies all the culturally bad things about backpackers in SE Asia. There are English pubs, McDonald's, KFCs, Burger Kings, 7-11s, t shirt touts, tuk tuk drivers, women in faux hilltribe garb selling wooden croaking frogs, and Thai hookers. I guess its not all bad. It would even be pretty fun if it was Bourbon Street or if you flew all the way to Bangkok just to party. But arriving after an overnight bus is walking into a world of depravity without the lubrication of alcohol to lessen the blow. But thankfully we had an out this time. Al NaChiangmai is back from living in Chicago and was more than happy to show us around. The next night he and his friend drove us around in her Mercedes and gave us a tour of the Old Town. We ate at an outdoor restaurant and then went to a Jazz club called Brown Sugar. A great night with great friends. We met Al a few more times to go shopping, play pool with his dad, and drink and talk about Thai and American politics and his culture shock after living in America for college.

After a few days in Bangkok it was time for us to head south to the southern island of Koh Pha Ngan, home of the world famous Full Moon Party. Another overnight boat and a sunrise ferry had us on the island by mid-morning. A nice little bungalow on the northwest side of the island 100 feet from the beach. Perfect. We spent Christmas and New Year's there, 10 nights in all. It was really nice to 'settle in' and not have to pack and unpack and repeat. Our days were spent reading on the waveless beach and our nights were spent enjoying great Thai food at slightly steeper prices. For Christmas and New Year's Eve we went to the parties. Christmas was a nice warm up to the real thing a week later. Here's the gist: Huge soundsystems pump out mediocre electronic music. Fire dancers. Black light body painters. Clubs selling weed and mushroom shakes. Endless homemade bars line the top of the beach selling Thai whiskey and coke buckets for $5. Think a child's sand pale filled with 2 pints of whiskey or vodka and your mixer of choice. Plus about 10 straws in case you are 10 girls who enjoy letting perfect strangers take pictures of you all drinking at the same time and the fellatio innuendo therein. But it is fun enough. I got hit in the back of the head with a flying 24 oz beer bottle.

The next week is a bit of a blur. We woke up, ate homemade sandwiches and laid at the beach. Period. The NYE party was a bit different from the Christmas one. Firstly, this was a true full moon party. It was also a blue moon party, meaning two full moons in the same month by some definitions. It was also New Year's Eve. Whereas Christmas had maybe 5,000 people on the beach, NYE had upwards of 30,000 people on the same beach. The music was better, the bonfires were bigger, the people more energized, and the party lasted much longer. The downside: waves of shards of beer bottles were cutting everybody's feet. In short there were lots of nice and fucked up people doing lots of nice and fucked up things. Meghan literally dragged me away from the jungle soundsystem at sunrise. I lost my shoes.

On the ride home a car passing us ran over a dog. The image melted into my brain. Meghan looked horrified. We got back around 8 am and I laid in the hammock on the porch listening to the Grateful Dead coaxing my mind down from its overloaded night. I marveled in the fact that, while it was 8am in Thailand, it was 8pm in Atlanta and Miami, and the festivities were just underway at the Panic and Phish shows. I wanted to stay up another 12 hours just to be conscious while my friends were throwing down. A homesick morning to be sure.

A sidenote: Its funny how what we read affects our perceptions. Meghan was reading Obama's autobiography at the time and he was scolding fellow revelers all night about how irresponsible and juvenile they were being. I was reading The Right Stuff and first man in space Al Shepard was judging who amongst us had it and who didn't. Obama scoffed at my hedonism while Al saw plainly that Meghan was completely devoid of that righteous stuff.

We woke up New Year's afternoon to the dive shop owner up the road asking if we wanted to dive the next day. Dazed and confused, we gathered our wits and decided, yes, we would dive in the morning. We loaded onto a huge diver's yacht with about 20 other divers and headed to Sail Rock, a dive site between Pha Ngan and Tao with a towering rock shooting up out of the water 30 meters and down into the water a few hundred meters. It was Meghan's and my first dive in a year and our divemaster jumped in and said "Going down!" With waves lapping and boats crashing around us, we both wondered if we had remembered anything about diving. As we released the air out of our BCDs and went under we both had a mild panic attacks and had to shoot to the surface. Shit, can we do this? We both comforted each other and took a big mental breath and went under. It took several good breaths and a lot of mental hula hoops to realize that we would be under water for the better part of an hour. But after the jitters wore off, it was two great dives. Fish from all over come to this rock to feed and it was hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of fish surrounding us. A strange surreal experience that quickly shook off my hangover and left me beaming.

After ten days of doing nothing slowly and everything quickly, it was time for us to head to Malaysia.

Thailand was a blast, but we must leave it for now and head for Laos. The overnight trip was a bust. Minivan 12 deep and mostly asshole Australians. This might be a good time to speak about the different backpackers in Southeast Asia. They are divided not necessarily evenly into 4 groups:

1) Piece of shit Aussies traveling from party town to party town, making a mockery of them and all places in between.

2)Piece of shit Brits traveling from party town to party town, making a mockery of them and all places in between.

3)Liberal people/animal/treehuggers intent on learning as much about the countries, cultures, and environments they tread lightly upon.

4)French people.

Meghan and I would identify most closely with Group 3, but must woefully come in contact with the other groups and cringe acrimoniously when locals assume we are part of Groups 1 or 2.

Anyway, we had to spend a dreadful night with Group 1 on the bus to Laos. Loud, rude, and drunk, they made me ashamed to speak English. But, as their description suggests, they skipped Vientiane (read: cultural capital) and headed straight for Vang Vieng (read: mountainous paradise ruined by an onslaught of Groups 1 and 2). So we had a few days respite.

Meghan and I left Chiang Mai and got on a local yellow truck for a 4 hour drive through the northern Thai Hills, stopping in Samoeng and finally Pang Term. We walked across a bamboo bridge and through a few rice patties to reach Second Home, our home for the next 10 days. It was lovely. We met wonderful people from Thailand, Brazil, South Africa, Quebec, and Switzerland.

The rules:

1) Breakfast at 7:45AM.
2) Organic Vegetarian food only.
3) Work if you desire, desire your work.
4) Cook what you want, eat what you cook.
5) Respect all living beings as sacred.
6) Group meditation at 7:30PM.
7) The Eightfold Path is your guide.
8) Above all, follow your bliss.

And it was fabulous. We weeded the crops, planted new ones, and built a clay herb garden.

In between work, we laid in hammocks, conversed in philosophy, practiced walking meditation and mindfulness, read, ate, and played with the dogs.

We walked to a neighboring village and passed out used shoes. Amazing the reception we got. Some of the happiest people I'd encountered up to that point, and that was just the welcome we received before we displayed our 'gifts'.

After meditations at night, I was the most tranquil I think I've ever naturally been. Calm and quiet. Slow movements. Silent walks into the field to lie down and ponder the infinite stars, the most of which I think I've ever seen. Contemplative DVDs, watching "The Power of Now with Eckhart Tolle"--highly recommended.

A marvelous 10 nights, which sadly, had to come to an end. Meghan and I said goodbye to the farm, which had truly become our second home, and caught a 6am yellow truck to Samoeng.

We got dropped off in Samoeng with a 2 hour wait for the truck headed to Pai, a once-sleepy hippie mountain village, now a staple stop along the backpacker tract. After a tortuous and tormentingly bumpy 5 hour ride, we stopped. Pai? Doesn't look like what we envisioned. The driver got out and pointed to the wat (temple) across the road. "You sleep. Tomorrow Pai". But its 3 in the afternoon! We want to go to Pai today! "Pai no. Watchan. You sleep." And then he hurried us out of the back of his pickup and took off. Great.

We looked around and found about a dozen or so villagers all staring at us. The guys drinking beer and smoking. The women running the shop. People on bikes stared at us as they passed. Even the dogs were drawn to us. Thankfully, we had been in Thailand long enough to not worry. Thai people are wonderful, and I felt totally safe. It was more of,0" wow, this is the most excitement/white people this village has seen in a while."

The villagers managed to track down an ex-Monk named Oxy who learned English in the monastery as well as working as a restaurant worker in Pai--which we learned was 70 kilometers away. So much for hiking or thumbing it. He was able to arrange a room for us behind the shop where we were dropped off. We walked through the shop, out the back, past the bathing grandparents, suckling puppies, and various farm animals, and up to the second floor of the backhouse. This was obviously where the large extended family stayed. We were offered a mattress on the floor, a pillow, and a lock on the door. This was all a step up from our accommodation at second home, which was an adobe shack with leaves for a roof.

After we settled in, Oxy took us for a tour of the village. They got electricity 10 years ago, we learned. We were introduced to his grandfather, who was weaving his umpteenth basket. He spit a mouthful of blood and smiled a red, toothless smile. I thought it was a great and inspiring thing to see an aging man accepting his lot and still working, staying active. Meghan was a bit freaked out.

Oxy took us to see a pig that was being caged. He told us it was awaiting slaughter once western medicine forsook one of the villagers, as it inevitably does. A sacrifice, to the village spirit. This perplexed me, as he said he had been a Buddhist monk. I had read about laypeople practicing Buddhism and Animism hand-in-hand without seeing any contradiction, but a monk, I thought, would be more disciplined in purer Buddhist teachings. "To the village spirit?" I asked. "Yes of course," was his reply. "Everything around us has a different spirit, and we must sacrifice to them and keep them happy. Even the electricity has a spirit." I did not inquire further.

Once the wonderful and humbling tour was over, we had dinner with Oxy and his friends. We bought everyone a round a beer and tried to play cards. It became a mix of a few games but achieved its purpose of making us laugh and breaking down the language barrier.

The next morning, we hopped the yellow truck to Pai, arriving by 11am. We found a riverside bungalow, complete with bathroom, for 6 bucks. We went out, had some lunch, and hit up the much-needed internet.

Pai is a town more by word of mouth than in its own right. It was once a sleepy village, but somehow hippie backpackers latched onto its lazy riverside appeal and its intentional isolation (the town matter-of-factly boasts that it is 762 mountainous curves from Chiang Mai). And while it is a beautiful town situated in the pristine northern Thai hillsides, it has little to attract Thais other than the opportunity to rub elbows with Westerners. The nightlife is first rate, though, and Meghan and I were happy to get sauced after 2 weeks of living the straightedge lifestyle.

One day, we rented motorbikes--Meghan's first experience was markedly better than mine--and went careening into the countryside. We went to Pai Canyon, which is a strange natural formation of reddish clay that made a puzzling maze of two-foot wide walkways with 100 foot dropoffs. I forced her to walk much farther than her comfort allowed and I loved seeing her squirm, especially when two retired ladies passed us along the way.

We also visited a WWII Memorial bridge as well as a few waterfalls. But the best part of the day was just cruising the countryside, passing elephants and flowered trees, letting the wind wash over us, and seeing Meghan smile from ear to ear. It was great.

Pai was too short, too sweet and Meghan and I headed back to Chiang Mai for just one night before heading to Laos!

So after the overnight train to Chiang Mai, we checked into our swank $10/night hotel with AC, hot water, and BBC and CNN Intl. Just in time for nonstop coverage of the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down and....wait for it...domestic terrorism! Hurray! Ugh, what I nightmare in Ft Hood, eh?

Anyway, we decided to go north to Chiang at the time we did to participate in the Loi Krathong Festival. The quick rundown of the festival is: We all have bad emotions that manifest themselves inside of us as demons. These demons need to be let out, but only inspecific ways or else it will be bad for us and everybody else. (See:Sarah Palin) Apparently demons abhor pretty flowers wrapped in incensed banana leaves. Can't stand em. Hate them so much, in fact,that when one lets one of these silver bullets go in the river, the demons fly out of you with such abandon that you enter a state of purifying bliss. And you get to clog up the river with banana leaves at the same time! Win, Win!

Chiang Mai's festival is also famous for releasing wire-framed cylindrical paper lamps. Its simple: Take a kerosene coil, attach it to aforementioned lamp. Light the coil, wait for the noxious gas to build up inside the lamp until it becomes airborne, and Poof! You've got a beautiful, glowing, flying environmental hazard! How magical! But wait, where does that fireball land? Not here, you say? Goodenough for me!

Oh I wish we could do this five nights in a row, and throw in fireworks for good measure? Wait, you've not only got fireworks, but noisemakers? Ok, I've 'heard' those dinky things they sell in the States called 'noisemakers'. I want real, loud, "I think the hotel's been bombed at 4 am" noisemakers. You've got those too? Great, I'll take a gross. But wait one more goddamned second, surely there have to be legal restrictions. Noise ordinances, disturbing the peace, etc.

Oh, they've been lifted for the festival, and the boys in blue have been seen setting off fireworks on duty? Bingo Bango Bongo I love this town.


I'm really not that cynical about the Loi Krathong Festival. It was magical and romantic for Meghan and I. We had a blast. However, we did run into a landed lamp about 50Km away on our elephant trek a few days later. No doubt there were a few animal casualties caused by all of that magic.

Meghan got a head cold after about 5 days in Chiang Mai, so we had to postpone our trip to the Buddhist farm. So, with Meghan tucked into bed watching a dubbed 17 Again, I went off looking for some trouble. Look no further than the moped rental agency, young man. I'd never ridden a moped or motorbike in real life, but kicked butt in MotoCross on Nintendo, and that chick from Miami was always riding that thing all over campus in college. How hard could it be? I'd soon find out. It went something like this:

Me: How much for a moto for the day?

Lady: 100 Baht (3 bucks)

Me: OK

Lady: You ride before?

Me: Never.

Lady: Here go (revs throttle)
Here stop (squeezes brake)
Here start (points to key)
OK bye bye

And off I go onto the busiest street in the city. By busy, I mean no traffic lights, no stop signs, no land dividers, cars, trucks, buses, tuk tuks (big motorized tricycles with seats on the back two wheels),motos, and pedestrians and vying for about 2 lanes worth of space. But hey, at least its a boulevard.

OK, OK, I can do this. I drive my 50cc a few blocks, holding my sliver of the road, getting dirty looks from tuk tuks and getting passed by small children on more powerful engines, but hey, I'm really doin' it! OK OK but don't get too over-confident, Matt. Let's try to take some turns at an intersection. So I pull off on a side street and arrive at a 4-way stop.

OK, right turn. Easy enough.

As I make the turn I actually have a detached view of my synapses arguing:

Old, seasoned authoritative driving synapses: Right turn into right lane.

New, pip squeek Thai driving synapses: No, left lane in Thailand, dummy!

Old, seasoned authoritative driving synapses: Listen, you, I know what I'm doing. 12 years of driving experience talking.

New, pip squeek Thai driving synapses: NO! 0 days in Thailand, you fool! Get in the left lane!

Old, seasoned authoritative driving synapses: Oh shit you're right! Abort turn, just go straight!

New, pip squeek Thai driving synapses: You're going straight, but still into the right lane you idjeeut!

Old, seasoned authoritative driving synapses: Screw this, I'm out of here. (Enter Jessica Rabbit into stream of consciousness.)

SCREECH! SLIDE! SCRAPE!

No major bones broken. Legs still intact. OK I think I'm alright. Just a minor scratch on my toe and a loose side mirror. Confidence...drained. Ego...shrunk. People I know in the city...0. No witnesses to tell my friends.

OK, back at it then. Left lane, moron. Left lane.

So after the little incident at a major intersection in Chiang Mai, I took a little more time getting used to the new force between my legs. Never a bad thing. And, after several somewhat shaky but incident-free turns, I made my way out of town.

OK so its been a while since I've emailed and a lot has happened. So, where'd I leave off? Bangkok. Right. Wow, that was a lifetime ago. So we never went to the Thai island, opting instead to head north and stop at a few places along the way. First stop was Ayutthaya. About 100km north of the capital, Ayutthaya boasts stunning Khmer-style ruins and an amazing inner-island. The city is well over 600 years old and was the seat of the Siamese for a good long while. Anyway, Meghan and I took a bus there and met a Belgian couple along the way. We spent the evening together taking a boat tour of the city, and stopping at ruins and temples (wats). The night market was our disembarkation point and a tasty Padthai was fried up for about 60 cents. Noodles, veggies. Sprouts, Nuts. Yum. Meghan and I rented bikes the next day and toured the city. Sweltering heat, but no matter, we're fresh packers and can handle a little perspiration.

The next day we got to the train station to head for Lopburi. 13 Baht for a 90 minute train ride. That is 35 cents, people. We were so proud of our travel prowess until the train rolled up overflowing with human flesh. Hot, sticky, grabby, dirty human flesh! But not the sexy kind. The kind that is trying to sell dried fish and lukewarm soda to the heaping masses. It was a long hour and a half to say the least.

But we successfully made our way to Lopburi, the land of monkeys! Hot, sticky, grabby, dirty monkeys! And what a relief they were! As legend goes, a band of monkeys came in from the surrounding forest and set up shop in some temple ruins. Then they mated. And they mated some more. More mating occurred. Probably some buttscratching/sniffing to break up the monotony. Then back to the coitus! After a few generations of hot libido action, there were nearly more monkeys than people. And the people, being good Buddhists, couldn't bring themselves to killing the buggers off. So, they basically gave them the block of the city containing the ruins. You pay about 50 cents to get into the temple area and are immediately overwhelmed by an attack from air and land. Big and small macaques barraging you from all directions, using all their limbs to climb all your limbs for no other seeming purpose than to eat your hair. Cute! And getting them off is a world of pain. Swinging wildly is an understated way of describing my actions. Somehow, these flea-biters just think I've become a living merry-go-round, and as soon as I've flung one off, 2 have jumped back on. At first I felt bad for the babies. But after a few harried minutes of this monkey business, I was using the smaller ones as cannon fodder for the more pugnacious among the aggressors. A lessor soul might have been more craven, and alas, many a Chinese girl was humbled and humiliated that day, but I: I, my friends, showed the monkey a thing or two about what it is to be a Lyon. By the end of it, I was using butt munchers as javelins. I took home the gold for Monkey Toss.

What is that saying about "If you give a mouse a cookie?" Well, if you give a monkey a temple, it will want a city. The temple has the majority of the monkeys, but the surrounding city blocks are also crawling with simians. They hang from the power lines like urban vines. They inhabit rooftops like treetops. They use phone booths to make mating calls. They even wait for cars to stop to cross the street like....well there's no real jungle analogy for that, is there? They cross the street like flipping pedestrians! We have pictures to prove it!

After we'd had our fill of monkeying around, we soaked up some internet rays, then headed to the night market for grub and our first of many encounters with urban elephants. Just walking around, eating bananas out of tourists' hands. Master in tow, of course.
Well, Lopburi was merely an action-packed day stop and that evening, we hopped an overnight train to Chiang Mai, the capital of Thailand's North.

So a quick rundown:

Flew into Tokyo last Wednesday after leaving Tuesday. Flights were good, Yusuke Asakura of SHC fame picked us up at the airport. Went to Akihabara, which is a crazy Electric Town. Stories upon stories, buildings upon buildings, bazaars upon bazaars of electronics and accessories. It is nuts on a grand scale. Estimated at 35 million for Tokyo and its burbs, the city puts everything in America to shame. Like humiliating, cry in your soup shame. Spent the next day sightseeing, typical tourist stuff. Nothing out of the ordinary if illegible writing, hoards of Asians, urban shrines, lights so bright midnight feels like noon, pachinko parlors, screaming sushi chefs, short-skirted schoolgirls, smoking businessmen, and the most crowded and complex train system these Alabama eyes have ever seen is ordinary. And chopsticks.

What a blast.

The next day, after Meghan got bit by 'Tiger Mosquitoes'--an insect of questionable existence--the 3 of us headed to Nikko, the Japanese town of shrines. The motto is 'Nikko is Nippon'. Maybe. A little too many folks with cameras for my taste. But hey, I was one of them. And at least we were nearly the only Westerners. Beautifully crafted shrines and temples. It is the home of the Shogun warriors, sworn to protect the people of Japan. I felt like I was in Ninja Scroll. Some really interesting prayer rooms and legends surround the area and I was happy to have a translator. We will miss YuCrunk.

After sleeping in a forest lodge run by a monk, we went back to Tokyo and Meghan and I met up with John Alexander of Fairhope/Prague lore. John is a man of all cities, so to speak. A chameleon of a man, yet he keeps his roots. He and his Japanese fiancee (congrats!) take us to what else but Karaoke. And what a time it is! So much better than American. You have your own soundproof room to belt your heart out. We ran the gamut. The Doors, Sir Mixalot, Alan Jackson, Limp Bizkit, B-52s, Weezer, Biggie Smalls, Ricky Martin, and some Japanese flavor to name a few. I was way hoarse, but no complaints here! Then on to the hipster barrio for a little shisha hookah action. Nice hippie Japanese folk. Grateful Dead as we arrived, turned into some Phishy noise as the hours turned wee. Strange juxtaposition, but an absurd laughable life this is anyway! Then to an Andy Warhol-inspired bar with surfing movies playing projection stylee.
The next day, John and Maiko took us to an art festival on the outskirts of the city, off Tokyo Bay. Nutso bananas. Everything from traditional Japanese art to anime, photography, light art, performance art, live music, interactive art, bondage, artists painting as it happens, robot art, zombies, video games, sex art, minimalist, abstract, post-modern, terror, death baby dolls, and Hello Kitty.

We came and left with a subway with no human controller. A 30 minute ride between skyscrapers with no visible hand at the wheel. The urban jungle is growing a brain.

This morning we said our goodbyes to Yusuke, a wonderful host!!!!! Thanks so much you made our time in Japan unforgettable!

Now in Bangkok. Near Khaosan Road. Overrun with Westerners, but at least they're of the groovy laid back ilk, and not a bunch of people from Birmingham. I hate Birmingham. Just stuffed ourselves with $1.50 amazing Thai food and about to plan the next few days before heading to a Thai island perhaps? Or maybe a national forest? We shall see! I hope all is well in the States. We are doing well, although it is near 90 degrees with no A/C. Maybe a week will get us right.

If you've been to the region, let me know, I'd love to hear some stories/suggestions!

Good luck and good spirits!

Hello All. After nearly 3 years of silence and at the behest of my beloved, I've decided to post my emails to people more important than you.

They are of my current 6 month trip around South East Asia. Enjoy. Or don't. Go back to refreshing your facebook news feed, then.

I am so fucking sick of living with 5 girls. Most of whom are just self-absorbed drama queens who love to cry almost as much as they love America's Next Top Model. I'm not sure which is worse. Watching girls cry, or watching girls watching girls cry.

I need testosterone. I need my friends. I have mostly well-wishers, in that they don't wish me any specific harm. Yet.

I need to not feel pressured to keep dumb conversations about who the fuck knows. I need to get outside of downtown.

I need to get blackout drunk on Big Sleaze concoctions.

Well, my wishes will come true. I'm making a trip down South and the end of June. June 22-July 2 to be exact. And not a moment to soon. I've seen every episode of Sex and the City. Every fucking one of them.