... In the last year and a half since coming back from Asia, i have seen much and have done many many things ...  the most obvious of which is learning how to spell the word 'ridiculous'.  :P

Current Mood: amused

so i took my time in processing Cambodia... and then pretty much just didn't post anything about it until now.  but now, i'll try and relate what i saw in the same method that i experienced the country; in bits and pieces.  but the internet is expensive in Phi Phi, so here's the first of several...

"Shopping"
   I am not used to purchasing things the way that they are sold in Cambodia.  basically everywhere i go i am approached, no, swarmed by a group of small children shouting things like "you buy cold drink?" or "you want <insert souvineer here>?"  and one of my favs, "if you buy, you buy from me!".  then who could forget "maybe you buy when you come back."  mostly these groups were outside of temples, on roadsides, or by little market-areas.  the markets were even worse in that the shopkeepers or stand-keepers would lurk over my my shoulder and insist that i purchase everything that my eyes passed over.  Prices would be suggested, lowered, lowered again... rinse and repeat many many times every time i went outside.  Certain "types" of people seemed to attract this selling attention more than others.  Actually, I seemed to attract that selling attention more than others (who were not white, male, and looked like they *may* be financially capable).  it was this (among other things) that got me to abandon the travel-beard i was sporting for a while, thinking that a younger, more innocent look might suit better in this situation.
   the reason for all of this is fairly simple; most of the mony spent there goes to things like accomodations, plane tickets (etc), and temples.  these are all collected by the gov't.  the people don't see this revenue.  and as our driver (yeah, through our lodgings, we got a tuc-tuc driver for our stay) told me, even the small things like boat trips down the river to see the floating village are govt managed now.  so the boat-drivers get next to nothing, whereas they used to be the ones getting paid for *their* services.  needless to say, after learning this i slipped the boat driver a few bucks.  this should pay for AT LEAST a week of meals for him and family.  no kidding.  it's just strange to me to come into a place where all of a sudden I am the privelaged elite, and all of a sudden obligated (says me) to help out those with literally nothing.  usually i'm the poor student, and there even the few bucks that i could take or leave on coffee is INCREDIBLY meaningful to someone.  so yeah, that made a bit of an impact on me.  
   as serious as i make it sound, there were also some excellent side effects.  which can wait until i find cheaper internet, or get home.  whichever happens first.  
OUT!

i still have cambodia stories to relate, and i'll do that tonight (ya rly) after beaching.  BUT in the meantime, on our hotel TV here in thailand, i found a channel that shows ONLY DRAGONBALL (db, and z, maybe even GT).  i'm not even kidding.  all the way through, IN ORDER, no commercials, and the opening song only once every new arc.  i catch a bit every now and then when we're in the room, but it's so freaking awesome i could spit!  also, IT'S IN THAI.  w00t

I am still alive, yay!  Lack of vitality is certainly not the reason i haven't written in a while, nor the reason i've got so little to say today.  the reason is one of complete neural overload.  The past 5 days in Cambodia (specifically in and around Siem Reap) have my head pretty much filled-to-bursting.  Give me a few days to digest some of this, and I promise some good stories (or at least snippets of scenes that i extracted insight from) 
   until then, I'll be spending tomorrow on a bus back to Phenom Penh, and then taking a short flight the next day back to Thailand.  love to you all.

hey guys, been a little while.  sorry!  these things happen, you know!
   of the places i've been, Pataya has been one of the wildest so far.  This is metropolitan Thailand as i've seen it depicted before, but with a vivid realism that pictures and video can't quite convey.  Unfortunately i don't have any good pictures of THAT part of Thailand, so i'll go ahead and try to explain...
   first of all, there are streetside vendors EVERYWHERE.  i mean everywhere.  they set the backdrop.  Next, add in about 300 different sounds and smells at any one moment.  Then factor in a whole shitton of old white guys (american, brittish, german, you name it) with twenty-something year-old thai girls.  ickums.  survival is an odd thing.  on top of that, add the general air of a holiday streetfair, and that might give a general idea of the streets ofthis place. 
   We did actually stumble our way into an actual fair held for newyears, and found some marvelous bubbletea for the equivelant of ~30 cents.  woo!  Yesterday in Pataya was our beachbum and street-wandering day.  both of which were excellent.  Today... well today was the tiger zoo.  Half zoo, half cirque-de-soleil style ircus, half petting zoo (three halfs, i know!)  i couldn't help feeling a little odd watching tigers do tricks they'd obviously been greulingly trained to do.  But how can i say no to petting baby tigers?  the answer is that i can't!  SO REDICULOUSLY CUTE.  
   In addition to tigers, they also had crocodiles, elephants, and pigs.  yep, pigs.  but the pig show was a little different... not tricks so much but rather only two things.  The second was racing.  the first was something that made my ears burn with anticipation.  "Pig Calculation".  I pressed our guide further, and he told me that they get the pig to do math.  adding, subtracting, division, multiplication...   I was going to see a math pig!  "ZOMG MATHPIG!!!!"  i said to myself, and possibly out loud a few times.  turns out the math pig had 6 digits on the floor to choose from, which he did in the correct order, to reveal treats underneath.  not quite a mathematician, nor stomping out digits... but at one point he did go berserk and tear up one of the floormats and shake it around viciously!  Lesson learned:  Five minus two equals destruction.  obviously.
    Tomorrow, the plan is to check out a Thai cultural thing (probably as circus-like as the Tiger zoo)  , get in a little more beachtime in, and then bus bak to Bangkok for our flight to Cambodia the following morning.  I'm really excited for this stop on our "tour". 

http://www.imagestation.com/members/SquarePuppet

that is a link to Katie's online pictures.  some of the time we'd swapped cameras to take various pics on one another, etc, but for the most part you'll be able to compare and see the differences in how we're actually seeing the trip.  you know, perspective and stuff! 

http://www.imagestation.com/members/SquarePuppet

first off,  shout-outs to connor!
next, I currently feel like Paul Atrides prior to being adopted by freemen (and thus, sans moisture-suit).  i'm pretty sure that if i can survuive this level of heat, i will have proven myself indestructible.... the locals here kinda chuckle and look at Katie and i pouring with sweat , and they'll nonchilantly make conversation, "hot today, isn't it?".  i'm sure this is a running joke for them (not even breaking a sweat).  I would like to see how they'd deal with snowfall...
   not that i have any room to bitch.  NONE.   i put only a small sample of my pics up on the flickr page so far, but more will follow once i have better internet access.  for sure!
   After spending only 3 days this country, I can say that it is possibly the most beautiful place i have ever seen.  for the majority of yesterday and today, Katie and i have hired a tuc-tuc to take us around top all of the sweet temples, palaces and other attractions in the former-Thai capitol known as Ayutaya (i'm almost sure i spelled that wrong).  as i learned, a tuc-tuc is a (usually) rad guy who drives you around in the back of something that is a mix between three-wheeler and pickup-truck, with seats and a canopy.  they'll take you all over the place, know the good places to go, and will wait for you while you're there because they'd prefer your business all day long.  i don't feel at all bad paying for this service because
1. it's rediculously cheap by even my college student standards.  make that former-college student now.   and
2. i would get SO rediculously lost here without someone who knows what they're doing.  that was not the case in Japan, we had maps, the streets were layed out well, the transit was easy to find, take and understand.  not so much here.  so i'll take the help i can get.
  
ps, this i where we're staying tomorrow for a little less than $20 a night.  a swimming pool has never EVAR looked so good =)
http://www.hotelthailand.com/kanchan/riverkwaihotel/gallery.html

hey guys... so much has happened since last i wrote...  Being busy and being without the internet is a double-whammy in terms of playing catch-up, but i'll try and it it as chronologically as possible:
   First, Nara:  Nara was a beautiful little town, slightly touristy, but understandably so. There was an oldtown, a mainstreet of shops, yadda yadda, but the main attraction here was Nara park.  ALL of the beautiful temple/museum/scenery attractions were here.  there was also a marvelous open area with deer.  I should correct myself and say that the deer were all over, but ESPECIALLY prevelant in one main clearing.  this is because there were tons of vendors selling deer-biscuits, and people buying them and feeding the deer.  simple enough.  the hilarity (for me) was watching people feed one or two deer and then get hit by a nearly-literal wave of deer who are also hoping to catching the food-bus.  Also a star of the park was a big temple which housed a BIG (and i mean frigging HUGE) buddah statue.  really breataking, i assure you.  the temple itself was also nothing to shake a stick at, but i knew what i came for.
   After Nara Katie and I spend our last night at our  Ryokan in Oji (about 20 minutes away from both Nara and Osaka, directly between the two)  I really loved this little guesthouse.  SUPER special, and one of the highlights of the trip.  when you get the chance, ask me and i'll gush about this place to you.  do it!
   The next day was Osaka.  Like good little tourists, we saw the Osaka palace and the floating garden observatory.  both of these places would be much better explained in pictures than having me blather about them.  
http://www.flickr.com/photos/55901698@N00/sets/1116225/
We also saw an awesome sketch artist in front of the Osaka palace, and had to partake.  the result was humerous enough for me.
   After Osaka, we took the shinkansen (read: bullet-train) to Tokyo again.  Upon dropping our stuff off a the hostel, we went to the Harajuku shopping district... A word about Harajuku:  it is the place you see in the weird books about Tokyo kids.  you know the ones i'm talking about, the kids with the crazy colored spiked hair and gaudy clothes that make them look like the spawn of a gutter-punk and a circuis clown.  well, i was on the lookout... and was actually kind of disappointed by my findings.  i found a bunch of gothy alternakids and some girls in crazy dresses... but nothing all-out.  it was okay though, because i found enough amusing stores to make the trip worthwhile.  My favorites included "Condomania", a sotre full of novelty condoms, "Store my Ducks", sadly NOT duck-storage, and a handfull of rediculously expensive "punk" stores.  What i learned is that i can't afford to be a punk in tokyo.   
   Next day was the Tokyo International Anime Convention, and i don't need to tell you how excited i was about that.  but just in case, the answer is EXTREMELY.  it was not quite what i was expecting... and possibly not even as grand as SakuraCon in seattle, but i had a great time nonetheless... and what i didn't get at the con, i more than made up for a the JumpShop at the tokyo dome.  WOW.  i feel that i did REALLY well in the self-control category here.  it might be a sign of my growing maturity, or my developing enlightenment and tendancy away from the burden of material goods, but more than likely it's a direct product of my having to carry around everything i get (as well as all i brought with me) on my back for another 4 weeks.  maybe a nice mix of the three?  i'll let you keep your comments to yourself on that one.  thanks.
   after that rousing time in Tokyo, we went to the mountains to get away from it...   but it appears that my nettime is running short, so i'll just say that the mountains were beautiful, and that we went to a snow-monkey park.  there were literally monkeys all over the hillside who came down to eat and chill in the natural hotsprings, and they didn't care that people were there one bit.  i think i made a connection with one of them.  but we're done with the mountains now, we spent an uneventful night recuperating at a hotel near the Tokyo-Narita airport, caught our flight outta Japan early this morning, and are moistly in Thailand right now.  i say that only because it is about a bajillion degrees (Celcius) here and i'm losing moisture faster than i can drink water.  (but not THE water, only bottled lest i catch the nasties)   
   love to you all, and i'll see you again in a few
-r

ps, in the meantime, there's more pics up on my flickr, and while not all commented, they're all in sets so you know roughly where they are.  yay!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/55901698@N00/

edit: <dead link.  nm.>

so i did indeed post pictures last time.  however this site's setup buried them so deep that even i had a hard time finding them again.  so i think a link should fix that!

i'm in the process of updating my flickr page also, it should be much more navigable.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/55901698@N00/

Nara was excellent today: I'll write about it and more tomorrow