Road Trip

I have been remiss in posting to the blog whilst I have Taiwaned. While the pace of life and adventure has slowed it has not stopped or dulled. I have no excuse. I have spent a lot of time stalking Facebook while listening to my wedded friends argue in their gated, five level, vaulted ceiling, $600 cnd a month condo.

On top of a lot lot of happy and dark/depressing stories I have yet to tell about Thailand and Laos, there is an incomplete story about the trip to the unpronounceable mountain park on the books.

Also, in an attempt to go bugging (looking for bugs) with a South African girl in the midget mountains near to "home", my excellent sense of navigation led to us exploring, heavily drinking, drugging and contemplating in a local abandoned amusement park, complete with a tea cup ride, carousel, giant hatched dinosaur eggs and a shady, or boards completely missing suspension bridge, all of an elevation much lower then the very stunted mountains visible from everywhere. Can not forget the peeing for distance contest (which I lost... to the girl.) It is amazing how fast nature reclaims anything abandoned and man made and that it doesn't negate the fact that I lost a peeing for distance contest to a girl even though it was a distance over pavement, down a slope, completely dependent on bladder volume type affair.

I also went indoor shrimp fishing and got Shanghaied into a Ford Focus by a Taiwanese family to another town and a private karaoke room. Subsequently, being me I rocked their worlds with the power of old country songs, left and got waved in by another group of friendly locals to an open bar. My long term, recently wedded,  newly fathered, PHD questing and suddenly/aggravatingly responsible friend somehow overcame my chorus of fag and quitter commets (apologies to my gay and hopefully understanding of my rural Alberta upbringings/I was trying to coerce a drunken friend of the same disposition to not suck.) Anyway he left me in the middle of a suburb of a major city, armed with a local vocabulary of hello, pork breakfast sandwich, thank you, and bottoms up. Friendly locals providing free booze led to my using two of those four phrases.

The first taxi was less then helpful in getting home. The police at the station didn't even know the name of the town I was trying for. Luckily the second taxi found me well to Dakeng circle which, is within walking distance from the secure community which I was frequenting.  How I got from the circle to the condo or burnt my tongue, I can not explain.

So long story only slightly summarized, I am heading out on a five to eight day, circumnavigation of Taiwan (unexpected scooter death omitted from estimated travel itinerary.) I will head south from Taichung down the center, mountainy parts of Taiwan for two nights (ok so not really a circumnavigation,) stoping to tent camp and search for bugs with my entomologist friend. Upon treating with his wife on the southernish tip of the country I will leave my friend because of his lame school, financial and family obligations. I will scooter, by my lonesome, up the unfamiliar and lesser occupied eastern coastline before trying to make it back across similar but different aforementioned central mountainy parts of the island to my friends inviting if not dysfunctional home. The Spot GPS tracker will be on, batterie and my memory of changing batterie permitted.

We leave 12:30 pm Taiwan time weather and wife being factors beyond our control. If I learn something on this trip there will be another blog or many to follow. If I don't or get caught in a rock slide or slide my scooter under oncoming traffic... only digital silence.

Oh Loathsome Sunrise

As a younger man I worked drilling rigs. They taught what I could do myself and taught me how little can't there is in the world with some creativity and a team. They paid for my university, a truck, my first trip to Asia and eventually film school but the most obvious thing rigs gave me was the sunrise. Two weeks on one week off.  Every morning, one week out three as the twelve hour shift wound down I would find my way to a railing a platform to watch the sun break over the trees or fields or mountains. Every one was amazing, a sign of an end to a long slow night or a hard dirty shift but it was always beautiful and never unwelcome. On this trip I have seen way more sunrises then any unemployed nearly thirty person should and every one has been hard. Every one was the end to a night of memories, a sign of friends moving on and one step closer to that long flight out of Neverland. It's upsetting to me that time and relative age has the power to taint and twist the meaning of something as simple as a sun doing what has always done and will do long past times we care to think about. I do not feel a old as lost and constantly wandering as I am but I do pay respect to time, change and reality.  It is time to go to bed old man.   

A Long Weekend In The mountains Part 1

I left Dakeng, mid afternoon, on a scooter accompanied by two other bikes and a small car. Our destination, an unpronounceable national park in the mountains to the east. The three hour ride almost ended five minutes in as I was waving at my friend Wes while driving 60 km\h towards the red light of a busy intersection.

Soon we were winding our way through mountains and valleys of Taiwans interior. Everything not of man is green here, unlike the dusty north roads of Laos or the flat, fugly middle parts of Thailand through which you must pass on the way to it's various paradises. Here all the little roads are paved, the cut banks reinforced and the ditches concrete to keep it all so. There are lines on the road but more importantly, people pay attention to them. They even put mirrors on the sharper corners to prevent accidents (thank you). Winding up, down and around on my little scooter I quickly knew that this was the most beautiful place I had ever been. The green is amazing but not as amazing as the the amount of different trees and plants that it represents. From palms to bambo all the way through to varieties that must be related to the poplar and then straight up evergreens. With the little drive ways, cute colourful roadside houses and valley towns it seemed to me that I must be driving through a Miyazaki animation only I didn't notice any airships or wizards.

We stopped at a betel nut stand to pick up the last of our supplies and have a beer. The owner seemed friendly enough so one of the expats in our convoy (also named Josh) offered him some Redman chew telling him it is western betel nut. We talked amongst ourselves for a moment before noticing that the betel nut guy wasn't looking so well. Josh Too had neglected to inform our new friend to spit out the juice.

Up in the park we got moved into our third floor room. Made for eight people it had two bathrooms and large raised hardwood sleeping platform set up with thin cushions, pillows and blankets. As Wes and his wife Anne did their best to organize their things tidally in corners, I was content to let my backpack puke it's all into the middle of the sleeping platform to find my camera and pipe.

After a good amount of beer we set out to look for bugs (Wes' job). The first we came upon was a beetle, Wes explained, who's defense mechanism was to mix together two reacting chemicals and eject them at a temperature around 105 C. Wes demonstrated the fascinating nature of the insect by grabbing not one but two of them and cursing a lot as he put them into a vile whilst his fingers burnt. We searched a while longer and decided that the rest of the night would be better served visiting and settled down at a rock table on the edge of the woods. 

    

So This Is Taiwan

My first day in Taichung, Taiwan:

Woke up 

Coffee

Watched the Oilers stomp the Flames live

Mcdonalds for a double cheese burger

Went to Costco and bought socks, shoes and beer

If it weren't for all the Taiwanese people staring and pointing at me and the complete lack of giant pickup trucks with cow balls hanging of them I could swear I'm back in Alberta.   

Last Day Of Squirrel

After a month and a half of adventure I am releasing the squirrels into the wilds of Cambodia to fend for themselves. As I wish them the best of luck, I will be leaving Laos on what is sure to be a brutal fifteen hour bus ride back to Bangkok. After two nights of suck town I fly to Taiwan to visit some good friends. The field journal should stay active as I will still be having adventures and there are still a lot of Laos stories that have yet to be told.

Tracker Fail

So my amazing GPS tracking system hasn't been working very well. It requires lithium batteries which I just can't find over here so I have been jamming alkaline batteries into it which work for about an hour and then as they please after that. Luckily we have not been to that many place in the last three weeks so here are some sat maps for Don Det and Vang Vieng in Laos.

Trekking Part 3

The trekkers made it to the village, tired but upbeat. "The hardest thing I've ever done" was uttered more then once. Reports said that our drunken guide had the worst of it, often falling behind and pleading for the group to wait for him as they called him names and pressed on. 

Home for the night was a long house on a big hill over looking the village and valley below. The twenty foot tall deck was made of widely spaced bamboo under thin reed mats which always left you with the feeling that you were about to step through. Our bedroom for the night was three bug nets covering a half dozen thin sleeping pads. The shower was a plastic waste bin full of water and a smaller bucket to get the water over your head. The American and Swiss girls were less then impressed with our accommodations. I asked them what they had expected, knowing that they were going to stay in a mountain village with no power. The response was a silent stare to the tune of "your an asshole." 

It was on our sketchy deck with the amazing view were we met a nine year old girl named Dala. A little shy at first, Dala was soon climbing the wall of the our hut to show us how she could monkey across the room swinging from the rafters. She went and got her eight month old brother, bring him up the steep two by four stairs on her back. He looked to have clubbed feat and Chat told us that he would never walk, but impressively he could sit up and make pretty good time scooting across the floor on his bottom. 

Some ladies in traditional dress who I think were part of Dala's family came up to the deck with some handy crafts as Dala went to the kitchen area and started a fire and boiling water in preparation for our meal. The adults took over the cooking while we sat on the deck mats and played Bullshit. Dala flung herself on my back and held my cards randomly shouting out the numbers she knew in English. On top of being the loudest back pack I have ever had she also destroyed my no fail, Bullshit strategy.

Chat had took a long nap and slept off most of his drunk. A little humble and possibly embarrassed he helped serve us a fantastic meal of green curry chicken, soup, and freshly made chili sauce. The sun set and little Dala got some wood and made a fire in the brazier that centered the deck. We managed to procure a bag of brown looking weed and a bamboo bong sealed up with candle wax. Chat, still feeling helpful, brought us a big kitchen knife and wooden block for the chopping and sorting of materials. Candles were lit and stuck to flat rocks as the night got easy. The bong made its rounds always seemed to be lost as it wouldn't stand on it's own and had to leaned up against some thing if not in hand. Adriana got the quote of the night for, "I'm not sure if that is the bong or the deck." Short of rolling papers, Michaela voted me most useful for ability to painstakingly emptying the tobacco out of cigarettes and repacking them with the aid of a pipe cleaner.

There were lots of extra sleeping mats, pillows and blankets but there were very few bug nets in comparison so the group decided would sleep in a big pile, Wild Things style. Brock, Damian and I started reconfiguring the long house's gear, double stacking the thin mattress', adding extra pillows and blankets before reinstalling the bug nets.

Back out on the deck one of the girls asked what it was like in the new sleeping quarters. "Do you know the Tajma Hall?" She nodded in the affirmative. "Yeah well it's a shit hole compared to the pillowy, bambo, palace we have created." Everyone laughed and the illusion held for about ten minutes. There was a terrible screem from inside the hut. Damian and I ran over meeting Chat at the door. Tiff had found a big cockroach in her shoe and another on the wall.

It's funny how simple the formula for a good time is and how universal. You start with a deck/ beach/ campsite, stars, fire, good people and then season to taste with alcohol and whatever other party favors are available. It was hard looking forward from that deck knowing that eventually I would end up in a crowded city or beach bar somewhere, listening to a remix of a song that sucked in it's original form and had gotten worse in the mixing. I let the thought drift away for the decidedly happy present. We finished our night talking, laughing and inventing with our endless supply of empty beer cans, pipe cleaners and candle wax before crawling into our netted, tree fort palace.