Still Kickin'

So far I've seen I fair chunk of Nepal. I've walked through a snow filled valley, gone white water rafting, rode on the roof of a bus with the locals and yakked out the tourist bus, twice. I've stayed in freezing little tea houses perched on the edge of mountain and drunk beer in front of the fire at the nicest joint in town. I don't really have much time to elaborate, we're off again soon on another hike up to 3000 m and I need to grab some snacks for the trial.

The Things I Do...

I read a certain person was generally in favour of the blog, but remarked that they'd like to see a couple more photos. I tried uploading for a fair chunks of time but ultimately failed. You're just going to have to put up with words, probably until I reach thailand.

Knowledge is Power

Yesterday morning I couldn't sleep so I got up at 5 am and went for a walk down to Durbar Square, which is like the old center of the city containing the old palace and heaps of shrines and temples dating from the 16th century. I walked around and looked at the old buildings but after a while they all sort of look the same. Today I went back there as part of the tour and the guide told us all the stories and histories of all these places. The building I thought was pretty crummy when I was alone was actually the residence of a living goddess and we got the whole back story and the do's and don'ts of dealing how you deal with a living godess. Tommorow we hit the hills and gradually work our way up to larger hills. In Nepal it's not a mountain unless its snowing and ice capped.

When In Rome

"You smoke ? You buy hashish ?" every five meters as I walked through Thamel, to me it seemed like an unreasonable amount of street peddling. It turns out that there was a massive hindu festival on and it was the one day of the year where you can smoke hashish, and 300 000 people converge on a shrine downtown. The holy men get naked and cover themselves in snakes and everyone has a massive session. I missed out the most of the festivities because I was in transit from side of the town to the other but all the employees and guests at the hostel I stayed at were well into the spirit of the day. The first person I talked to was from from Scarborough and the third was someone starting a PhD in lasers, which is quite bizzaro. Today the tour starts and I'm waiting the around the hostel eying people off and sometimes hoping they will be part of the tour and sometimes hoping they won't.

How's the Serenity.

After being continuously hassled on the streets of Hong Kong and being convinced that the taxi ride from the airport in Bangkok would be my last, I deicided that I needed to relax. So I blew off the "tourist ghetto" of Thamel in central Kathmandu and headed off for two nights in Bodhanath, the Tibetian enclave about 6 km form the centre of town. It is quite an amazing place. It has the same little alleys filled with people hocking their wares but replace the foul sewer smells of Kowloon with sweet smelling incense and the dodgy hustlers with Buddhist monks. At the centre of town is a massive buddhist monument and at dusk the whole community comes out to circle it in clockwise direction, they just stroll around spinning the prayer wheels and chatting. Even the stray dogs in this place have a look of calm contemplation on their faces. The Hostel I'm is run by a monastry and the lousy monks next door woke me up with their drumming and tibetian horns, but it's really quite hard to stay angry at a bunch of monks.

Hizzle to the Kizzle

Well I made it through Hong Kong and now I'm sweating up a storm in Bangkok. I've got some happy snaps taken by yours truly to show off to the world. Regretably few instances of me standing in front of something with an awkward look on my face, they seemed to be a hit with you guys.

Formatting will not be an issue with this blog, I'm sure you can match the description to the picture.

a ? Kowloon at night. Straight off the plane from Perth I decided I could just leg it to the Hostel. I was all alone and the sity seemed to be getting darker and emptier. I kept my heading and came across the bright lights and general mayhem of Kowloon at 11:00 on a sunday night.

b ? My Hostel Room (Cell). Because of my supreme organisational skills I put my check in time at my hostel as 11 am and they had promptly cancelled my room. They called up their mates two doors down at chunking mansion and crammed me into a windowless 4 by 6 foot cell on the 17 floor of the building. There were piles of trash in the corner, large indian men harassing me on my way to bed and you had to get out at the 16th floor and walk up a flight of stairs to get there. The stairwell contained the worst smell I have ever smelled, like some one to bake a turd and vomit pie.

c ? One the alleys of Hong Kong. I forgot my camera when Pia showed me round some of Hong Kongs well know places so I snapped a picture of an alley on my trek to the airport. Hong Kong is basically a giant shopping mall connected to each other by interesting little alleys.

d ? The Wing. Because my work in laser based gold spectroscopy is so well regarded I was able fly business class from Hong Kong to Bangkok. Here I am kicking back with a beer in the pre flight lounge of Cathy Pacific. Free beer, wine, noodles, internet, ps3 and a miriad of people to service your every need. The actual business class flight wasn't so interesting, I slept straight though.

These are just a couple of pics from the trip so far. Tomorrow I fly out to Kathmandu and will probably be away from computers after a few days in Nepal. I'm looking forward to hitting the trail.

H to the K

I made it to Hong Kong but due to unprecidented clerical error I forced into a most horrible and disgusting hostel in chungking mansion. I'll elaborate on that ordeal later, for now I present to you, the viewing audience a slide show created by Pia documenting our day oot and aboot on the mean streets of Hong Kong.

http://www.slide.com/channel_finder?pcid=3z1FpEtzroj8gOewXQzgDpSCsjaJ6Yv7Y1aAjDKC8iE&referrer=emci&view=large

(copy and paste bitches, I've got better things to do than dick around with html).

I can't decide... Brain Aneurism.

Phillip K. Dick or Hunter S. Thompson ?

Bodhnath or Putan ?

Funky fresh or fully functional ?

What is the least number of socks I can get away with ?

All these questions and many more weigh heavy on my mind. I'm just going to have to follow the lead of my Nepalese brothers and go with the flow of the Tao.