Train Journeys and Time Travel, Summer Adventure Part 4

"Alright, alright.  Think of it like this: jump ahead, ten, twenty years, okay? And you're married.  Only, your marriage doesn't have that same energy that it used to have, you know.  You start to blame your husband.  You start to think about all those guys you've met in your life and what might have happened if you'd picked up with one of them, right?  Well, I'm one of those guys.  That's me you know, so think of this as time travel, from then, to now, to find out what you're missing out on.  See, what this really could be is a gigantic favour to both you and your future husband to find out that you're not missing out on anything.  I'm just a big loser as he is, totally unmotivated, totally boring, and, uh, you made the right choice, and you're really happy."

"Let me get my bag."

Perhaps it is because my favourite movie is Before Sunrise. 
Maybe it is because the book found lying in a hotel room in Manila was the Namesake. 
It could be because I am a believer in fate and a romanticist deep in my soul. 
Maybe a combination of all of these things, but I find train journeys are sometimes the best part of a traveling experience. 

Like standing at the tip of an ocean with waves lapping up onto your feet, and all you hear is roaring, and all you see is blue as far as the heavens, you get to thinking.  You can come up with some of your best stuff, your best writing, ideas, dreams, oceanside.

Like when you are driving up that nearly deserted path to El Nido in the darkness and you see the sky exploded in stars, its something magical that rattles you inside.  You can think some of your best shit staring up into the heavens.

The same goes with train rides.  I was looking forward to taking a choo-choo train all the way from Kuala Lumpar to Bangkok far more than actual events.  Does it surprise anyone why trains always play some key role in a book's story: where an epiphany occurs, where violence is (deaths, vagrants, thieves, crashes), and of course, in the best romances, its where people find love! 
Didn't Anna Karenina jump in front of an ongoing train?  The beginning of the Namesake tells the story of how a son is born and named Gogol after train journey in India that nearly takes his father's life.  And in Before Sunrise, thats where Jessie and Celine meet.

"Train journeys are about possibilities."

So after landing in Kuala Lumpar on the last leg of my journey, I took a seven hour train from KL to Butterworth, right near the southern border of Thailand.  After an eight our layover in the early morning at Butterworth, where I hopped onto a ferry and explored some areas of Malaysia, I got onto another train, a second class sleeper, which was very comfortable, private, and affordable (50$USD).

I headed up through all of Thailand until I reached Bangkok in a nineteen hour train journey.  I got to share  this journey with a funny friend, a couple of books, some warm beer rattling in a cup holde, some card games, shadows of leafy trees dancing past the windows, and the cling clang sound of metal and tracks. 

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Finally into Bangkok!

If I had it my way, which next time I will, I would have spent the entire time in Thailand as it was my top destination.  As it turned out, I only had a couple days instead of the planned eight days.  Anyways, only another reason and motivation to head back soon!

Jeepneys and tricycles rule the Philippines, but in Bangkok, its Tuk-Tuks!

Too much excitement after 19 hours of train travel.

I ate pad thai almost every day at every meal.

The fishes LOVED the dead skin on my feet. It was a worthy feast :S

The first night in Bangkok was the Queen's birthday!

Some very pretty dutch ladies to past the time with.

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Cheetahs, Tigers, Lions, Oh My!

My favourite part of the day had to be snuggling up with a two month old baby tiger and an eight month old baby cheetah who licked my leg and ate pieces of pork off my hand. 

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Elephant Riding and Bamboo Rafting 

Time Travel
Being in Asia is a lot like time travel.  After all, I can tell my kids "you know, back when I visited S.E Asia, I could get a beer and a meal for only 100 pesos!"

Anyways, I have exhausted myself in documented this vacation, but I am glad I did so I can revisit it later down the road.  I hope you all have enjoyed my adventures and storytelling also.
Comments, opinions, or just some plain loving is very much appreciated and encourage and highly sought after.
Cheers to being back safe, a little wiser, a lot more travel hungry!

Language and Love, Summer Adventure Part 3

"Give me your eyes. I need sunshine."

Riding in a tricycle in Puerta Princesa the day I had terrible food poisoning.

While in Manila, I learned that the Philippines is the third largest English-speaking country in the world. After living in South Korea for almost a year and sometimes never uttering a properly formed English sentence in an entire day, it was nice to haggle, argue, flirt, and charm with the locals without having to wave my hands up and down, point at items I needed, and mis-pronounce words in an attempt to slow down speech to comprehensible levels.

Being an English teacher in a country so eager and hell bent on learning English as quickly as possible, I have developed this feeling of superiority to the Koreans who can't speak English.  Parents here do everything possible to make sure their babies get a head start on learning English and speaking it well.  Street signs, store signs, and menus are scrawled in both Korean Hangul as well as poorly spelled and badly conceived  English sentences.  I know it is not right to feel superior for knowing a language I grew up learning in a country who has it as an official language, but it makes me feel greatful too.  Especially when I'm here in Asia and I meet women my age there, and I see their lifestyle, their workloads, their aspirations, and limitations, it makes me thank my parents, love them a little bit more for taking me away.  (Because Canada is the shit, son!)

After missing our flight, we rented a scooter for 300 pesos/a day and let the sound of the engine drown out our pain.

In a jeepney into town. My G10 could've captured this picture without blurring me :(

Story: In Thailand, while driving in a van with about nine other people on a tour to ride elephants and whatnot, my friend and I were talking loud and boisterously about the events of the night before, being sometimes cocky, arrogant, personal, adding some jokes about Korea in our dialogue, and declaring our shared ignorance of the dutch people and culture. Of course, we do this all the time in Korea, at a higher level of assholeness, insulting and banishing ourselves, others, and Koreans all at once, but in Korea, we are protected behind our English shield.  No one can understand us when we delve into personal matters in the subway, at the bus stop, while waiting in line at Mr.Kebab, or wherever else regretfut secrets and sinful stories need to be told.  But, on this bus, we later learned that two of the men were Korean with very proficient English skills and two other guys were dutch, which I did not learn until much later on the trip when I happened to ask them where they were from.  Needless to say, they were humourous and hopefully did not get insulted by our jokes.

"Ill believe in anything."

A Nasty Hangover. A Four-hour Date. and A Marriage Proposal

The first night in El Nido, myself with four mates were enjoying ourselves during dinner, playing the "would you rather" game amidst guzzling down cheap drinks on the beach.  As some of us dispersed into clubs and bars, the other Canadian (born on my exact birth date), a joyous me, and a French-speaking Belgium brought a bottle of rum and gin along the beach until we found an abandoned boat situated next to our hotel.  We climbed on board and spent hours drinking and sharing stories. 

Meanwhile, a local man, also 23 (I think) came to warn us we might get in trouble for being in the boat, but we managed to coax him into joining us.  Sharing stories, personal histories, while refilling our drinks, we spent the night in good spirits.  Anyways, the next morning, amidst the nastiest hangover of the trip, I missed the island hopping tour of that day.  By the time I came to, I got dressed, left the hotel, and tried to find the restaurant my drinking buddy of the night before was having lunch at.

On my way through quaint streets lined with huts selling clothing, food, and convenience store items, a man on a motorbike calls out my name. I turn, a bit of nausea floods me for a second, but I manage to throw out a kind smile.  He says "Do you remember me, we drank together last night." "Ohh!" I respond.  He says where are you going and I said I am looking for this restaurant, do you know where it is.  I am under the impression he does and is taking me there as I hop on the back of this strange dude's bike.  He doesn't take me to the restaurant as any place in El Nido is only a ten minute walk from the beach and my hotel. 

He drives out of El Nido on towards Corong Corong, the next town up.  We stop at his house where I am introduced to Elle Needo (real name, Perry), his beautiful sister who me and my two boys talked to briefly on the phone the night before, and other family members.  I thought it was the friendliest thing ever, a local showing me around his island, meeting his family members.  There, they fed me noodles, an ice cold commercial ready bottle of coke, and gave me a pack of cigs.  I was  extremely sick still, kind of happy and appreciative at this act of sweetness, but also a bit annoyed because I just wanted to find my friends.

Anyways, after about half an hour there, I thought I was being taken back home on the motorbike. Nope, this man drove all the way up to Corong Corong, parked his bike, and we walked for almost two hours, first down this muddly swampy pathway secluded by bushes, in order to find this beach where eventually, a long eeeeeeventually, there would be some restaurants/hotels.  Now if you would call El Nido the "town", Corong Corong's hotels and beach resorts are so very hard to get to that it would be the suburbs.  And there were only foreign couples there.  As we walked along the beach, it started to rain, so I was muddly, hungry, nautious.  I was still up for it all until I realize, it hitting me hard across the face all of a sudden, that this was not a random act of friendliness by a local like I experienced before, but a date!  He was asking questions like "what do you like in a man" and before I knew it, he said "you have to come back and bring your mom and dad and family and you can live in my house on my land." Some "I will miss you's" were thrown in there and that about sucked away all the happiness I had in me at that ime.

Ehm, I don't think I am too committment phobic, that word doesnt exist for people my age, but the moment this dude mentioned me living with him like he had a burning chance in hell,  I was unresponsive, pretty pissed off, and didnt try very hard to hide my boredom and discomfort.  I avoided anwering questions, and although I would smile a little and give one-worded responses beacuse I am a polite Canadian gal, the last thing in the world I wanted was to get stuck in a strange place that wasn't El Nido with a strange dude who thought all it took to woo a girl (from another world) was a motorbike ride to a secluded beach.  Hellz no.

Anyways, never saw him again and when he dropped me off and tried to walk me to my hotel, I was Miss Bitch.

The point of this story is that from this trip, I learned that men from all over the world are gross.  And sometimes you wholeheartedly believe that they just want  to be your friend because thats all you want. And then you realize they just wanna get in your pants. And it makes you sick to your stomach and it makes you lose faith in selfless acts of kindness.  (This was extremely evident in Angeles, north of Manila where young Filipina women were bought by a slew of disgusting, wrinkly, old, caucasion men.  But old Korean men can be gross and perverted too.) 

So. If my little sisters are reading this, I would like to say: we are taught to respect our elders so much that when an older man stops and tries to have a conversation with us, out of politeness and I guess duty, I do so.  Sometimes its with the sweetest intentions, but at other times, mid way through, you want to punch them in the nose and taser them.  So, little sisters, just be careful and cautious, and know that although there is kindness in everyone, other times, if you need me to stun gun someone, I'm an e-mail away :)

Oh, what a depressing ending to this story, but I will leave it with pictures of my first snorkelling experience where, get this, I saw a Green Sea Turtle, a sea cucumber, a Finding Nemo clown fish, and Dori! Not to mention the most beautiful coral ever!

Me with my super cool tourguide, Donde, who personally took me snorkelling with him.

I had to wear the kid's lifejacket.

Poison fish we caught along the way.

A delicious feast!

El Paradise, Summer Adventure Part 2

"Let's dance in style.

 Let's dance for a while.

 Heaven can wait, we're only watching the skies."

Island Living

To get to paradise, it'll cost only seven hundred pesos, five to seven hours in a nicely air conditioned van, and a lot of ass fat to endure a long and bumpy ride through one very poorly managed road.  Half of the road to this couple's haven is paved, but the last stretch into this tiny secluded portion on the northern tip of Palawan Island is rocky and vomit-inducing. 

However, tourists have to pay a two hundred peso "Eco-tourism development fee", good for up to ten days, which may help in paving the rest of this road in the future. But, more accessibility will mean more tourists, which may ruin what makes El Nido, El Paraiso.

But, it would be silly to neglect mentioning the ride into El Nido altogether.  Afterall, it is the journey as well as the destination that makes traveling great.  As you can imagine, there were endless views of foliage as we were driving through trees and jungle, there were lots of wild dogs and cats on the path that made me yelp several times in fear that we had hit one of them, a World Vision hut, and what had interested me most, was that occasionally along this pathway you could see families walking in a line in the darkness of night (I left the airport at 7 and made it to El Nido around 2 am).  The families would walk on the side of the road, some of the older children holding the hands of little ones, some holding other things, fathers holding infants cradled in their arms, and mothers carrying torches to light the way.  I wanted to know where they were going in the middle of the night. Where they lived. My perfect vacation getaway as their everyday.

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The Darkness

I got a single room in a hotel for four hundred pesos a night ($9USD), right on the beachside with the ocean in view, sweet drinks on hand, and the sweetest landlady ever, who nearly begged me not to leave so soon at the end of the week. 

I guess this is a typical island habit, but the electricity was cut off from around 3am to 5pm everyday, so during  daylight, there was no way to use a computer, charge your MP3 player, or get a pina colada.  But on more than one occasion, when the electricity was supposed to be on, something would happen and it'll shut off.  So, you may be sitting at a beachside restaurant, digging your feet in the sand, waiting for a drink, listening to the live guitar strumming of a local musician, when the lights turn off on you.  And it gets dark.  A darkness you are not used to because darkness simply doesn't exist in city life.  Not real darkness anyways.  That darn sky again and its continual surprises!

Anyways, the waiters quickly have candles and flashlights on hand, somehow food is still prepared, the music keeps playing, the stories still get told, and people laugh, drink, and good times are had.

 

 

 

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Island Children, Island Dogs, Island Generosity

Since I was there during the off season, there were only about one hundred tourists, mostly couples, as it was the epitome of a secluded romantic get-away.  My tour guide for the island hopping trip said he knew everyone on the island.  To test this, I took out my camera, and showed him a picture of the cutest island child I have ever seen. "Oh, thats the son of this person and this person," my guide, Donde, told me.

"...Let us die young or let us live forever. We don't have the power but we never say never. Sitting in a sandpit, life is a short trip, the music's for the sad man. Forever young. Do you really want to live forever?..."

The people on this island were amazing. It was a lot cheaper than Manila, it appeared that I was being ripped off less here (although this cannot be either confirmed or denied), the children were tanned and easily amused, and the island dogs were loving and cuddly. 

A sweet moment? Arriving at my first El Nido beachside bar after finding a guesthouse and having the mother/owner ask me my name.  Her calling me by my name (and pronouncing it correctly) every time after that.

Telling her I wanted to try chicken adobe because a local told me it was Philippino cuisine. Her bringing me some of her family's adobe to try some. 

A sweeter moment? Giving a two year old boy named Dexter 20 pesos to buy candy for himself and his playmates after he sung the English alphabet to me and SP.

Me with my first island dog, Rover. (Photo by SP)

 My second  island dog that I named Elle Needo.

 My third island dog named Blanca (named by SP)

Cutest island kid ever.

"So let's just stay in the moment, smoke some weed, drink some wine. Reminisce, talk some shit, forever young is in your mind. Leave a mark that can't erase neither space nor time, so when the director yells, "Cut!" Ill be fine. I'm forever young."

Some more El Nido Photos:

The view outside Cliffside Guesthose, where I went at 2am upon arrival, 200 peso/night

 Getting rained in: pork adobe, watermelon shake, a book, a journal, camera, and cigs.