Dear Jared,
Got another letter from Lane today – Lane, that great constant in my life: you can always count on him for consistency knowing that he’s not going to have a whole lot of updates living in a Zen center baking bread everyday. Somehow, though, he’s a lay monk that happens to be girl crazy. It’s a crazy oxymoronic situation trying to live a celibate life when you’re as horny as him, but what is Lane if not a paradox? I’m actually going to see him and the rest of the family, in addition to Emily, in just a month’s time. Yeah, I decided to head home during the semester break.
And now for 2 questions:
So guess where I am? If you guessed Idaho, then you're incorrect. I'm in the city of Kota Kinabalu in the Malaysian state of Sabah on the greater island of Borneo, and guess what? It's not half as crazy as it sounds. Kota Kinabalu is a city of 270,000, and while the downtown doesn't exactly have skyscrapers – well, maybe a few – it does have a Starbucks, Esprit, plus at least a few Mercedes Benzes that I saw. The downtown is situated along the waterfront over which the sky is populated with crazily shaped clouds. Ben and I took a bus into the city from the airport, which took about 15-20 minutes. It didn't take long to walk to our hostel - a rather modern and clean environment with hot showers (not that I've taken advantage of them) and free internet. We're in a dorm room with six beds, though we only met one of our sleeping mates so far, a Dutch woman whom we walked around the city with this afternoon. We stopped by the office in town to check on the status of us being able to hike Mt. Kinabalu tomorrow and it's not looking promising. We have accommodation at the bottom of the mountain, but everything at the middle of the mountain is completely booked and has been for months in advance. I know what you're thinking: why don't we just hike the mountain in one day and cut out the middle man (being the mid-mountain accommodation), but the problem is that you must have accommodation booked on the middle of the mountain before you can get a climbing permit, which is necessary to hike the mountain. Regardless, Ben and I will try anything and everything to make it up that mountain tomorrow, keeping our fingers crossed that maybe somebody will cancel and open up room for us. It's sad because Mt. Kinabalu was the initial attraction that drew us here in the first place, so I'll be damned if I don't get to see that sunrise at 4,095 meters overlooking the edge of the world.
We showed up at the mountain on Sunday morning, and spent the whole day unsure about whether we'd be able to hike the following morning. The odds weren’t looking so good, but there were several other people in the same boat lacking the necessary accommodation near the top in order to obtain a climbing permit. Monday morning rolled around, and after some back and forth wheelings-and-dealings, we were able to obtain a permit on the condition that we hike it all – up and down – in one day. After seeing all the other puds, older seemingly unfit women and their little children managing the climb, Ben and I figured “how hard could it be?" So with our own little Malay guide Nordan, we started up the mountain at a brisk pace - a pace that would soon prove to be quite unmanageable.
So after the beautiful views and the 2.5km hike back down to the rest stop, it felt like we were done, and then we realized we still had another 6km to hike down. Many people had told us the hike down would be harder than the hike up, but I disagree. The hike down was infinitely easier, though incredibly taxing on my joints. The trauma of going down rugged trail has left my knees experiencing an arthritic sensation previously unknown. The last stretch of the descent was particularly boring and monotonous, as by that time I was ready to be done.
The plane to Mulu was quite small, with a capacity of approximately 25 people (give or take 25, I’m not so good at guesstimating). Everyone aboard was a tourist, mostly British, though we only filled up about 1/10 of the seats (the math is really starting to get complicated here). Looking out the window fro my seat, I saw mostly undeveloped blankets of green below interrupted only by the squiggly lines of brown rivers, making the earth look as though it were various puzzle pieces neatly fit together. How long could I survive if dropped into this middle of nowhere?
During our two days in Mulu, we explored the four major caves there. For some unknown geological reason to me, there are tons of caves in the region, but only a few are open to the public, one of which is Deer Cave, the most expansive cave in the whole wide world. While the caves were really cool, it was a weird part of the trip for me because I'm not exactly sure how to properly enjoy myself sightseeing caves. I found myself struggling to understand how exactly one seizes the enjoyment in cave viewing. It’s not like we were spelunking or doing any adventure caving (though that is an option if you’ve got the time and money). It didn't help that I found it incredibly challenging trying to capture the caves in photos because of their vastness and darkness, and capturing for me is often times what makes sightseeing enjoyable, maybe because it adds some meta dimension. Regardless, the caves were most impressive. Being there reminded me of that horror film, “The Descent,” in which a bunch of girls go caving in Appalachia and come face to face with subterranean monsters. It was all the more eerie when I wound up walking one-on-one with our guide who’s indigenously from the area and he told me about a great many weird things that go on in the caves. In a manner of total honesty he said, “I’ve been in this cave and others before when no tourists were here and nobody else was around, and you can here vivid voices and laughter coming from what sounds like a large group of people. It is believed that many people have died in these caves, but we’re not supposed to talk about that kind of stuff. Even the scientists who come here to do geological research and other studies have witnessed really bizarre things, but they keep it all very hush hush because it could seriously damage our tourism.” It sounded all the more spooky hearing it in that fantastic cave as we lagged behind all the others.
It would’ve only been $17.50USD per person for Ben and I to share a bed in the airport hotel, but $17.50USD could afford us five meals or more at Smoothie Blues in Thailand (the Western food joint five steps from our apartment), and probably ten meals if we got them anywhere else. We’re trying to be budget travelers, so we just slept in the airport itself on the floor. For some reason, most airports don’t provide anywhere to sleep, and Kuala Lumpur’s Air Asia terminal is no exception. They made their chairs as uncomfortable as possible, hard plastic ones lipping up at the edges so you can’t lay down on them unless you want an indented spine. By comparison, the floor was our best bet, even though I felt the eyes and stares of strange people burning into me all night. It was freezing as well, and on numerous occasions I was awakened by multifarious pieces of trash hitting me from the hands of people who’d either missed the nearby trashcan or just plain mistaken me for one. The airport sanitation worker also insisted on sweeping up by my head every thirty minutes like clockwork.
Malaria pills – check
In the afternoon Ben and I took off on our motorbikes once again, this time for some leisure riding up the mountain past Doi Suthep (the famous Temple overlooking the city) and off into the Hill Tribe villages about 20km away from where we live. It was a pretty ride, which got a little cold as we sped higher up with the wind slapping against our bare arms and legs. The Hmong tribe village was not exactly what one would expect from a tribal people as it was comprised of the same kinds of craft and purse and jewelry shops as you encounter all over Chiang Mai. They didn't live in huts or anything, but rather tin shacks with corrugated roofs decorated with satellite dishes. It was a town obviously struggling to maintain part of its traditional lifestyle in the face of modernity while apparently not having the best go of it. The people there spoke better English than most of my university students. Supposedly there are less touristed hill tribe villages further away.
Our afternoon exploits left us feeling like we got the most out of our motorbike rental. We ate dinner with Leah at this restaurant called the "Art Cafe", which turned out to be much more expensive than what was listed in the guidebook, and while my turkey burrito (with Thanksgiving style turkey) was pretty good, it definitely wasn't worth 165 baht, plus they didn't even give us free water which is a total sham when you're paying that much for a meal in Thailand (conversion: $5). On the ride back it was torrentially downpouring, even though we had already waited half an hour for the storm to lessen, but no such luck. I couldn’t see and was sure I might die since my glasses were completely spotted with rain drops and fogging up pretty bad. Guess it's back to the trusty ole' songtaews.
I arrived in Vienna on the morning of the 12th where I met Daniel the Swede at the airport. My flight landed slightly before his, so when he emerged from luggage claim, I was there waiting for him with a silly little sign that I’d drafted up in the interim. It was a passionate reuniting that saw us fondle each others’ balls a bit and rub facial gruff together in hopes of creating fire, then it was time to explore Vienna a bit. We walked around the city on foot, breezing past all of the churches and various other minor 
architectural feats because Daniel and I are such jaded travelers, though I guess the Parliament building was nice enough. Maybe it’s because people don’t know how to walk properly in Vienna, but we were accidentally bumping into someone every five minutes, to which they would meet us with harsh words and pumping fists.
Rudi had set us up at a really nice bed and breakfast of sorts down the road from him and right next to the church where the marriage would take place. Our room looked like a quaint version of a sample room right out of an Ikea catalogue, though much of the furniture was actual Ikea. We dropped off our bags and headed over to Rudi’s for a meal “not very representative of Austria” consisting of wraps, pute (what we call Turkey), and various “add to your liking” vegetables and condiments. There was an attempt at guacamole, so I
was a very happy camper. Also in attendance at the dinner were Rudi’s fiancée Bianca, a girl named Chelsea, and her psychic mother Lori. Chelsea was once a camper of Rudi’s when he was head counselor and choir master seven years prior at Austria’s very own “Sound of Music Camp.” How Bianca wasn’t disturbed by the Lolita-esque dynamic is beyond me. On the walk back to the B&B, Daniel and I found ourselves asking the question of how we even wound up here in the first place. How well did we even know Rudi after all?
The wedding was held at a fancily architected Catholic church.
The next two days, we did all the touristy things one does in Rome, though I missed out on the Coliseum and Roman Forum, which they had already gotten out of the way before I arrived. I had arranged for Emily and I to have our own hostel each of the two nights we were there. The first night we had a really nice room somehow obtained on a fluke, so the next morning we had to move to the hostel’s other location – confusingly enough, the hostel had three locations, all located on opposite ends of the city. They weren’t even really like hostels, but more like rooms rented out in a private flat. Both nights it was ridiculously loud outside our window. Why the city of Rome chooses to empty its dumpsters at 3am is perplexing, and why it takes an hour to do so is an even greater mystery. Our bed at the second location was elevated in the middle, so every time Emily and I came close to embracing, like a modern take on the chastity belt, the peak would hurl us down our respective sides. Maybe I’m exaggerating a bit. The bed in the first hostel location wasn’t comfortable either, and the following few nights, our bed at the campsite in Sorrento was even worse. The bed in Sorrento was actually two beds squished together with vicious protruding springs on the attack against our vulnerable backs and sides and stomachs throughout the night. There was also the nuisance of being sandwiched between the noisy restaurant/drinking area and our cabin cluster’s community picnic area. All this talk of dolorous beds made me forget to mention that between Rome and Sorrento, we stopped off for some pizza in Napoli where it was born. The dough tasted like Naan and the men in Napoli tend to make gross amphibian-like faces with fluttering tongues at passing by females. I’d take a slice of NYC style over Napoli’s finest any day, but that’s not to say Napoli doesn’t make decent pizza, it’s just that I prefer Pizza Hut. 
Sorrento was beautiful, just like Ems, so it had that much going for it. During the days we took trips to Capri and Positano. On the boat to Capri, it was reassuring to learn that Europe has its share of white trash as well. It was also reassuring to see people with BMW’s camp out in Sorrento at the same place as Contiki tour constituents, and doubly reassuring to see that Australians – with merely a population of 30 million – are still taking over the world. As the Australian backpacker I sat and ate Kebobs with in Istanbul said, “Oh gosh. Do you think we’re worse than the Japanese?”
It's Olive from Little Miss Sunshine
Truly, we're from Positano; no tourists here.
We took a mini-bus to get there on a road that had plenty enough of dips, climbs, and curves to make me nauseous. Accompanying us in the bus was a quiet Australian and an obnoxiously affectionate and big-schnozzed Israeli couple who couldn’t keep their hands or lips off of one another. Ben and I had a good chat to help pass the time, though at one point the Australian said to himself but loud enough for us to hear, “Americans are funny.”
Nell, Alexis, & Leah
Once in Pai, we set out for our guest house, which turned out to be located on the main river in town – the kind of muddy river that you think of when envisioning a stereotypically bucolic Asian landscape. While walking along a quaint little road, we passed a sign that read:
"Laundry
20baht
monkey"
I was confused, but not for long. As I turned my head around, I came face to face with a baby monkey tied to a post and looking me in the eye. It scurried around within the available slack, futilely reaching for bananas that must have seemed within range to the tortured soul. 
We rented motorbikes and set out exploring. We were gonna go with bicycles, but the guy at our guest house advised against it, saying that the roads would be too steep. Sure enough, he was right. There was no way we would’ve made it on bicycles.
In Chiang Mai, Ben and I don’t really find it necessary to own motorbikes because of the availability of song-taews, not to mention we’re both little woussies, but riding on the motorbike for the first time would be like a paraplegic one day waking up to discover a newfound control of their legs(not that I can say what that's like). It gave us a new found mobility previously unfathomable. And let me tell you, it was exhilarating – riding out of town into the countryside of fables and zipping around on those little death traps of ours. It was probably the act of riding the motorbike itself that proved to be the highlight of my trip. It reminded me of going out on Jetskis when I was younger and rules didn’t exist on the wide-open seas (or in my case, semi-contained lakes). 
When you ride on a jet ski, there isn’t really a destination, it’s just the act of speeding aimlessly around that makes it so much fun, and thus was the case with the motorbikes, except we had super cool destinations available as well (like the waterfall and Temple on the Hill). Did I mention that Ben was my passenger? There wasn’t really much debate as to who would be the driver. Sounds eerily like a metaphor for our relationship…
After an afternoon of motorbiking in and around Pai, we’d seen ourselves a Chinese village, the waterfall (at which only a chubby nine year old Thai boy had enough balls to go down the ad hoc waterslide created from a section of smoothed out rock as an entirely all Western audience looked on in amazement), and the solo landing strip in the middle of a field that is officially known as Pai’s airport. Oddly enough, there were a few times I turned my motorbike on and it would then turn off immediately (yeah yeah, I was giving it enough gas). Luckily this was during the downhill portion of the journey, so I was able to coast even with the engine off like Kerouac in “On the Road.”
Retardedly spelling out PiA in the countryside - a sad attempt to make the newsletter
As darkness settled, we grabbed dinner at an Italian restaurant, making it something like the fifth time in seven days that I was gorging myself on pizza. The restaurant didn’t seem to be doing so well on this particular night as every party that came in after us subsequently wound up leaving within a few minutes. Maybe there was some correlation between that and the fact that they never got around to bringing us the goat-cheese salad that Nell ordered (note: Nell is one of the PiA girls). They did wind up bringing out Leah’s goat-cheese salad though, and ironically enough, their goat cheese tasted like nothing of the sort, but rather more along the likes of Mozzarella.
With our stomachs full, we moved onto a bit of boozing, first at some entirely Thai afterwork-type hangout blasting a dubbed version of “Bean” on TV, and then a series of entirely Farang infested watering holes, several of which request taking off your shoes before entering. While that’s all good and nice, it didn’t seem like particularly shrewd policy after I accidentally shattered a glass and everyone was precariously walking around barefoot.
My buzz didn’t actually kick in until we got ourselves a bucket of SangSom and coke. SangSom is this cheap Thai liquor that tastes pretty similar to rum. At some point while in transit between bars, someone drunkenly rode their motorbike into a ditch right in front of us. There were plenty of people around to aid in his rescue, some of whom we got to chatting with. They were a crew of British kids, and after the girls headed back for bed, Ben and I were left in their care. Most of what I remember involved ranting about my cultural inferiority complex that tends to spill out after a few drinks whilst in the presence of people with seemingly fancier accents. I’m pretty sure Ben and I also offered up our best Cockney impersonations which were passé even before we began.
Cut to scene: Ben and I made it back to our room and the conversation went something like this:
“Whoa” I said, laying my head down on the pillow. “I think I’ve got the spins.”
“Really?” he responded. “I don’t really feel that drunk.”
“I didn’t either, but now that I’m lying down I feel it a lot more.”
Ben hit the lights. A few seconds passed.
“Ok” he said. “I’ve got the spins now too.”
I came home and couldn't sleep, so I did the logical thing: went insane for a bit. I couldn't bear to eat at the university today either. One can only handle the canteen food subsidized at 15 baht per meal – the equivalent of 40 cents – so many times in a row before reaching a nausea plateau. At least that seems to be the case for me, who knows about everyone else.
Plane tickets to Austria just went up three hundred dollars over night. I could kill someone. Not really, but still, I feel sick about it. I knew I shouldn’t have waited, but Rudi – the one getting married - didn’t respond to me soon enough with the “a-ok” and the computers at work yesterday wouldn’t load the payment page properly. Maybe if I hold out a bit longer a deal will present itself. See, I’m supposed to go to Europe for Rudi’s wedding. I know what you’re all thinking, Why are you going to Europe when you’re in Asia for a year…Shouldn’t you be exploring Asia? And yes, it is damn expensive, but you see, I made a promise a long time ago to Rudi. Plus there’s another pull that I’ll get to in a minute. Rudi – if you make your way back to the earliest postings on this blog – is a good friend (whom some refer to as the Austrian Kenny G.) that I made in Australia while on a trip comprised of international students traveling along the eastern cost. It was “the east coast odyssey”, though much less an odyssey than per se a romp of sorts. Beyond the majority of Americans, there were three Europeans on the trip: Rudi, Daniel, and Jonathan. Jonathan has pretty much left the picture since becoming a father back in Denmark. Who would have ever thought a child shakes up your priorities? As for Daniel, the Swede, I can’t get him out of my life. He obsessively stalks me everyday on Skype and Gmail chat, seemingly in this for the long haul. Daniel will also be making his way to the wedding in Austria, thus making it a reunion of sorts. We better not have to share a bed.
I’m actually at the middle school right now having finished up with my daily dose of 7th graders. Thankfully, my last class after lunch was serendipitously cancelled due to some sort of assembly. Still, that didn’t stop the last class before lunch from ruining my day. The first three hours were fine, but I was ready to murder the last class. I decided to test out having a quote of the day, though I should’ve known in advance that metaphors would be lost upon such little buggers. Today’s quote was by Will Rogers and went as follows (try not to laugh): “Why not go out on a limb? That’s where the fruit is.” So after first hour met me with universal faces of incredulity, for the subsequent periods I added a visual aid for clarification. I drew an incredibly lame tree to illustrate a “limb” and defined the word “risk” for them. You know, because going out on a limb is like taking a risk, right? Anyway, I also drew some fruit hanging from one of the tree limbs and captioned it “this could turn out to be the best fruit ever”. Then I pantomimed for the class what it meant to go out on a limb by awkwardly simulating climbing out on a tree branch. If that wasn’t enough, I further explained that the risk of going out on a limb was that there existed no such guarantee of not falling or the fruit being delicious, but that if they didn’t try, they’d never know. Still, after all this hand-holding, in the initial 15 minutes I’d allotted, most of the students hadn’t even managed to copy down the quote. So I made my way around the room and worked with various kids on an individual basis. “Write down something” I said. “Anything! Don’t worry about drawing the tree, I just put that up there to help you. I want you to tell me what you think this quote means in real life. What does it mean to not know if you don’t try? What are some things that could be considered ‘going out on a limb?’” So after another 10 minutes, as I made my way around the room, everybody was still fixated on drawing their trees. I was infuriated. “FORGET ABOUT THE TREE” I screamed while erasing the tree off the board. “I swear to God, if another one of you keeps drawing that tree, I’m gonna strangle you. Write, don’t draw. Got it?”
I got the vaccination for Japanese Encephalitis (JE) the other day at the hospital. It’s a 2-shot vaccine, so I have to go back in another week. The hospital was fairly nice and not half as ghetto as I was probably expecting, though the waiting rooms seemed to be a little packed. Maybe they’re like that back in the states and I’ve just never noticed, probably because when you go to get a shot you don’t mingle amongst the people with eye patches and gauzed heads. Back in the states, the vaccination costs something just shy of $400. Over here it’s something like $15 in total, plus it doesn’t have any of the risky side effects that the vaccination carries over in the States. Kind of ironic that my parents had me get vaccinized for Rabies, but not JE, which actually seems to be the much greater risk over here. Even though most of the everyday people I encounter in Chiang Mai have never even heard of JE, the doctor at the hospital who I spoke with was quite aware of its seriousness and 100% recommended the shots. After I get the next shot, I can go and camp out in rural Thailand, naked under the stars and free of mosquito repellent. That’s actually probably not the smartest idea because I still have to worry about other mosquito-borne diseases like Dengue Fever, not to mention that mosquito bites suck in general, but it’s still fun to think about.
On other fronts, I had my first teaching experience with the 7th graders yesterday. After being introduced to the entire student body during an early morning assembly, I’m pretty sure it’s not too much of an exaggeration to say that life went downhill from there. It was grueling. Teaching five hours of the same class to completely out of control 12 year old kids is kind of like being Bill Murray’s character in Groundhog Day (only without the devious perks). You have to do the same thing over and over again, all the while being forced to maintain some semblance of interest in a class full of kids who talk at the top of their lungs except when they’re called on and then they turn into little church mice.
