23rd – 24th November
Actually, that’s not strictly an accurate title, there will also be taxis, a ferry and an airplane involved in this particular blog.
It starts at about five past five in the morning, with my alarm going off to wake me up in time for the taxi bringing me to Thongsala, the main town and ferry port on Koh Phangan. The next thing that happens is that I press the snooze button, because I stayed up talking to Laura and then Neena until well after I should have. Clearly a masterstroke on my part.
After twice pressing the snooze button I finally got up, showered and did my tattoo aftercare crap, which in fairness to machine-tattoo-aftercare is nothing. Rather than put a clingfilm bandage over it, I just put some olive-oil concoction on it instead. Then packed up my last few bits and pieces, left my key in reception. It was still dark and clearly no one was up – though after about fifteen minutes Vinny, one of the Scots boys appeared in taxi. I dunno where he was coming back from, but I assume it was some sort of pub.
Got picked up, brought out to the ferry, was offered sandwiches by numerous Thai ladies, and probably they would have been very nice, but I can’t eat at six in the morning. Unless I’m drunk, like. And haven’t been to bed yet. Which, let’s face it, has probably happened . . . let’s try not to recall a certain seven in the morning declaration that Jonathan and Nate should go to the shop and get a bottle of vodka . . . Oy, why are you thinking about that time! I said not to recall! Not to recall!
So, the ferry filled up pretty quick but I had a half decent seat. They played this ridiculous movie starring Michael Trucco as some sort of missile-firing technician man for the army, who helps to blow up a meteor that’s going to destroy earth or something. I think he had a daughter played by actress about his own age, but maybe he had a brother, or a son. Anyway, he had someone, and that someone liked someone else who they weren’t supposed to because they were the general’s kid, and the general doesn’t like Michael Trucco for some reason or another. I didn’t actually watch the film, or rather, I watched bits of it while listening to music, so I might not be too clear on the more subtle points. I got this much though, it sucked.
God Trucco, you’ve gone down in my estimation. Who’s Michael Trucco, you might be wondering. He’s that guy from either One Tree Hill or the OC who was someone’s uncle? I think. I saw him one time. There was a car crash? He might have been in it? Or saved someone? Possibly the guy who played basketball?
Still no idea who I mean? He’s Anders from Battlestar, you know that guy who played Pyramid, frakked Starbuck a lot and married her even though her and Lee should have been together and then he got shot in the head?
Why the hell am I even talking about Anders?
So, I’m on a ferry for about two hours and then afterwards it takes about twenty minutes just for everyone to get there bags because organisation is not a skill they’ve developed in Thailand. After that, short walk off the pier to where the buses pick us up. Literally no one knows what’s going on. Not even the staff. Ran into the two German boys from Full Moon, was talking to them for about three seconds and then they called my bus. Or a bus. But I got on a bus, a rickety old piece of shit that I initially thought might be the shittiest bus I’d ever been on. Ever.
An hour later we got to another terminal, and we got on a minivan, and let me tell you, this was DEFINITELY the worst bus of my entire, bus filled trip! Holy crap, it was one thing that they squeezed nine of us into this thing, but then they had to fit in our bags. It was so funny I nearly killed myself. It was only for about five hours though, so thank god for that! And I actually slept for quite a bit of it.
Once we got to Hat Yi we went to the bus office and I got talking to this other fella who was heading to Singapore like me. He, of course, was from Galway, a little older than me, but not that much. Sound though, and nice to have someone to converse with now and then too. We had about two hours to kill, so I stayed with the bags while he headed into the mall across the street and then he came back, minded the bags and I did the same. Grabbed some food and used the much cleaner toilets there than in the bus office.
Bout six (12 hours after I started this journey) we get on the bus, chat some, mostly about fuck all and then about Lord of The Rings and the new Hobbit film, because he sees that’s what I’m reading now. This bus is like the fucking king of buses though. Reclining seats, comfy ones, huge amounts of leg and arm room, storage space for bags, free water, blankets – holy shit, this is awesome!
Eventually we settle down, headphones in, and try and kill a few hours until we get over the border. This takes some doing. First, the Thai border, but that was pretty easy, then back on the bus, and we drove, with about a million other buses and cargo trucks, down a mile of road that took about an hour, to the Malaysia border. Off the bus and we queued for another hour to get our Malaysia visas. It was soul destroying. But after that it isn’t so bad, we’re back on the bus, and a short hop down the road we hot a rest stop with food. And internet, I discovered as we were leaving. Terrifyingly, I get a message on Facebook from Sarah saying she’s glad that I keep people updated on where I am because she knows I wasn’t in South Korea or Cambodia. Well, I thought, that’s great, except I know people in Cambodia! What the FUCK happened! And then the bus pulls off before I can find out what happened or whether they’re okay. Turns out, they were. They might not have been if they hadn’t stayed out the entire night before drinking and decided to do nothing the next day, but what does that teach you?
Drink saves lives. Yeah, that’s what that teaches you. I’m sure of it.
Settling in for the night, I go to grab my book light, only to discover it got knocked on in my bag at some point and now the battery is dead. Fuck, no book so. I played with my phone some, but then I eventually started to get tired and after winning five straight games of Mahjong you really kinda get bored. And I’m not in the mood for any of the more serious ones.
Eventually I got to sleep, though I woke up a few times during the night, it’s okay though. We stopped again about 6 (24 hours in) and get off for a stretch and some breakfast, but I still don’t eat that early. Just can’t to be honest. I walked around a bit, get a cold water. It’s all good.
Then it’s back in the bus, and only three hours to Singapore. Except, I learned, it’s not 7, it’s eight. Malaysia is an hour ahead. Cool, but since it takes us four hours to get to Singapore and an hour to get through passport control because some of the others get searched and some get lost, it really doesn’t matter. It was half-12 Singapore time when we get to the bus stop and then I jumped in a taxi to the airport and was there by one.
All good, except the KLM guys weren’t at the desk yet so I couldn’t check in. Fantastic. Downstairs to the food court and I grabbed a steak sandwich, and started to feel a lot better. I decided to wash up and change in the bathroom so I actually ended up feeling a lot better while I was waiting for the gate. Checked in no bother, though when she saw my passport the check-in desk lady tells me I used to look so pretty. Thanks love, sorry I wasn’t here six years ago. And then into one of the fanciest airports I’ve ever been in. There’s even a cinema, but it was two and I wanted to do a few things and not be rushing to the gate, so I skipped it. Next time! I swear!
Got on the net first of all and found out the Maltese Falcons were not dead, which was a relief, though the stampede in Cambodia is still fucking awful. I suppose in a very general way, it probably means less to a lot of you guys – not because you’re heartless or uncaring, but because you weren’t there, in that city, in that place, two weeks ago. I’m not saying I cried or got upset, but I think the reality of it might sink in a bit more. Someone I saw, someone I met, might be dead today. Of course they might be dead for other reasons, and people I met in other places could just as easily have died since I met them too. It’s just something that preyed on me at the time.
I went looking for batteries for my booklight second. The electronics shop didn’t have any, so they sent me to the pharmacy (God knows why), who then sent me to the watch shop, who sent me to the music shop, (they’re all fairly close to each other so I didn’t flip out and kill anyone, don’t worry) and eventually I got sent to the bookshop . . . who didn’t have any.
Now, you’re probably thinking, oh crap, Shane’s in a bookshop, I know what happens next. And you’d be absolutely right. That is exactly what happened next. I went in looking for two tiny little batteries. I came out with a new booklight and two books . . .
I’ll come back to these books later though. First, I’ll just run through what happens next, which is uneventful to say the least. I got back on the web, read some stuff and chatted to a few people, mostly Anna, Josefin and Jo-Anne. There are charge points for phones and laptops all over Singapore airport, so I was able to charge up my phone and laptop again, since both were running more of less on fumes at this point. My flight was at 6 (five on the time I’m on, which brings me nearly to 36 hours, give or take).
The flight was pretty uneventful, but I did have my own TV so I watched 30 Rock, Modern Family and Samanatha Who? And then read some of one of those books I bought.
Landed in Bali at about half-eight, maybe nine, and had to go through immigration, which basically means PAY MONEY to the man, and then found a taxi driver who knew my hotel and by about half ten I was in my room in a nice place, and getting into the shower to scrub myself a new kind of clean!
Now, the books. Well, here’s the deal. Neither is all that good, and neither was bloody worth interrupting Lord of The Rings for!
The first one you may have heard of, it’s called the Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho, and if you’ve read this and you love it, you should probably stop reading now, and you should never, ever, ever tell me that you love that book. I’ve been hearing about since I left, people telling me how good it is, how it’s made just for travellers, how it’ll open your mind and all this shit.
One guy, who was pretty sound, and who I don’t actually think was trying to be insulting, put it like this: “If you’re travelling, and you haven’t read The Alchemist, you’re a cunt.”
Unlike some other things I’ve read, that I read just so I could actively dislike them, I really did expect to like this book. Honestly, and I even tried.
It was just soooooo full of shit and drivel that I couldn’t even stomach some of it. Coelho has managed here to produce of complete pulp mysticism and somehow managed to dress it up as “interesting” fiction. Destiny is the subject of this text (or maybe I’ll call it “rag”), and the power of excepting destiny. The premise here turns on God being a benevolent creator who’s got out backs, rather than a deluded tyrant shoving his jackboot into the back of our skulls . . . actually, God’s probably not either. In Coelho’s work, we have the free will to choose between destiny or stagnation. Destiny is always somewhere else, some other place, and the simple act of GOING is enlightening.
Sure, travel broadens the mind, and all, but I think the case there is overstated. Some of the most intelligent and indeed wonderful people I know (I probably mean you) are at home right now. Many and most of you have not done this mad travel thing that I’m doing, and as far as Paola Coelho is concerned, that makes you less than me, but more importantly I think, it makes you less than him. You can’t know as much as him, or be as good a person as him, if you haven’t “followed you destiny” and left where you are. Destiny is never, somehow, in the place a person is.
Basically it goes like this, there’s a Spanish kid, who becomes a shepherd so that he can travel. He’s even pretty good at it and his flock increases, and he’s excited about going to this town he was in a year before, because there’s some hot girl he fancies there. However, before he gets there, he has a dream and goes to a gypsy to have it interpreted – he’s told he has to go to Egypt to find some treasure.
Later he meets a man who offers to help him, and appears to be some sort of strange mystic man. He gives him some magic stones to help him know what to do. So, he sells all his sheep and heads for Egypt – first he heads to Tarifa, where he gets conned out of all his money and ends up spending a year working for a crystal merchant in order to make more. Here is where it gets really annoying. The merchant is constantly derided by both the boy and by the authorial voice because he does not desire change, nor travel, but is content with his shop and his life. Fair enough in some sense, one should always be open to change and improvement, but it’s laid on a bit thick. The juxtaposition f the wise boy who’ll fly off after a dream and the stupid merchant who looks after his business and family is just a bit much after awhile.
Then the boy has his money and heads off with a caravan of traders through the desert to some Oasis where there is an alchemist. There’s an Englishman there too, who likes to read books. Eventually, when they get to the oasis, a war has broken out between local tribesmen. Some of these tribesmen decide to attack the oasis but the boy has another dream vision and warns them in time. He also meets a girl, who falls instantly in love with him, as he does with her.
Then he leaves with the alchemist, gets captured by some tribesmen and convinces the wind to destroy them by telling it some shit about God or another. Then he gets robbed, goes and finds more treasure and runs back to the girl. The end. (By the way, I get that the whole wind thing is a metaphor - it's just not a very good one, or a well worked out one)
I can see why this book might appeal to someone about to go on a journey. It confirms everything that they might want to hear. Travelling will make them a better person, it’s what they are supposed to do, they will be able to do it because it is what they are meant to do. Rubbish, travelling is fun and it polishes the edges. Reading a book like this four months or so into travelling, you can’t help but be astounded at the naivety of its dogma, of its simplistic look on things, on the sometimes harsh realities of travel, of the trouble and the dangers and the idea that simply willing something to be a way will make it so. Coelho wants to sell you something, more than most authors I’ve ever read, and remember, despite my prejudices, which are many and wildly unpredictable, I am still quite well read, he wants to sell you something – and the thing he seems to be selling, is that he is better than everyone else because he embraced his so-called destiny.
Let me tell ya a secret, even if there is a God, there’s no such thing as destiny, and if there was, it wouldn’t be a good thing. Destiny would mean that God needed, or demanded something of you. The last person in the bible who had a “destiny” ended up nailed to a cross, begging his father to save him, and ended up a dead man. Resurrection aside, I still don’t think the Catholic version of destiny is anything to be chasing after.
Do what makes you happy. Do what you want. And whatever Paolo tells you, God isn’t going to save you. I might, if I can, and other friends of yours, but once you start relying on God, as Malcolm Reynolds once said, “that’s a long wait for a train that don’t come.” Do what you can, do what you will, don’t expect it to be easy, but hope that it will be worthwhile, and it probably will be okay. Cynicism aside, I believe happiness is possible. I just don’t believe blinding diving after destiny has done anything except get people hurt or killed. Paolo Ceolho is a bloody idiot if he believes otherwise. And it’s not like I’m adverse to praying to Gods or having faith – since I’ve been giving thanks and saying prayers at temples from Japan to here, it’s just that the ideas espoused by this book infuriate me!
And there there’s the very clear misogyny lurking beneath the pages. Oh the girl can’t go with him. She should stay at home and wait for her man to come back. All the characters of consequence in the novel are men, the women mere shadows who serve the purpose of gratification for men, even the merchant’s daughter in Spain, who the boy assumes has married some other person in his absence. None of the women seem to be able to travel, to learn, to follow destinies laid out by God. Nah, they sit around and wait for menfolk to come and love them. Fucking bollox.
I’ve never been so annoyed with a book that I can ever remember. God it pissed me off.
Anyway, there was a tenner well wasted. I’d try and sell the book, but I don’t think I could take money for it! Ha! Anyway, I hope you didn’t like the book, and I’m sorry if I’ve offended you. And if I have, tell me, and I’ll tell you more subtly and with references to the text, why I hate this book, and maybe I’ll tell you some other books that I think you could read, that might change your opinion of Coelho and his crappy mysticism.
The other book was Law of Nines, by Terry Goodkind, who I used to love when I was about 16, but who I’ve not read in a long time. Now I remember why, all flash, no substance really. Ah well, better luck in Australia I hope. I still have a few books on my list, hopefully some of them are going to turn out a bit better. For now, back to Lord of the Rings!!!
So anyway, I’m in Bali, you aren’t and there’s two books you should never, ever read.
Talk to you soon,
Shane!
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Koh Phangan; A Tale of Moons, of theft and tattoos, of drinking from shoes, of Germans and of FUN!
16th November - 22nd November
Welcome to Koh Phangan, the island of light and sun, the island of darkness. If you've never heard of it, this is where the monthly Full Moon party occurs in Thailand. And if you've never heard of that, well neither had I until a few months ago. Basically, it's a huge piss-up/rave on a beach in Thailand. It's pretty decent.
It started in and around 1985 when the first party was improvised for a group of tourists in the area. The full moon tends to be a time of celebration in Buddhist culture anyway, and any number of actual religious festivals occur around the same time as the various full moon parties. Actually, if you remember, there was one such festival occuring in Laos the night we were in Pak Beng (see the slow boat blog).
Anyway, from the first party of about 30 people this has grown into a massive party, attracting as many as thirty to fourty thousand in the high season. The music is mostly party stuff, R&B, techno, dance and hip-hop, which is not my favourite, but sometimes you just have to drink the lemonade when life gives you lemons, right? Or maybe you could sell the lemons and buy an apple, I don't know. Philosophy was not what I came here to do.
But my time on Koh Phangan doesn't start here, it starts at 9 in the morning on Koh Samui with a Swiss guy who was catching the same ferry. He's a journalist. I forget his name. And I never saw him again, so I have no idea why I'm even bringing him up.
So it really starts with jumping in the back of a tuk-truck (my name for the converted pick-up trucks that serve as taxis here) on Haad Rin pier, having randomly chosen a beach to look for somewhere to stay from the guide book. I picked Baan Kai because it's not that far from Haad Rin, where the Full Moon party takes place, and it's not too far from Thongsala, the main town on the island.
"Take me here," I said, and there he took me. I got off at a place called Munchies, which was nice and ended up being my base for the week. It's run by Andy from Newcastle, though it's owned by his girlfriend Kay and her family. It's been around about 30 years, but it recently got done up and rebranded and all that. It's all bamboo huts and bamboo everything else, though the bed and shower were nicer than a lot of the places I've stayed recently.
Andy's dad was around that day and night, and although I forget his name he was, and remains, a lovely man, a very English sort of guy, not from a rich background, worked on oil rigs all his life, but decent like. You know the sort of person I mean, even if you don't think you do. Think of one of your friends parents, whose door you could turn up at in the middle of the night, when the friend wasn't home, and they'd still bring you in and give you a cup of tea and a bed. Think of Martin Sheen in the Departed in that scene where he brings Dicaprio in for some food, he was like that.
Didn't do much that day, just sat around in the sun and read Stephen King's It, which I have have read before and which I lent to Neena about a year ago and she still hasn't finished because she sucks - Nah, I'm kidding, it stands at 1378 pages and takes some bloody going. But it really is one of his best books. It concerns seven children in the summer of 1958, and their adult selves in 1985 and charts the jounrey from child into adult, and the loss of something in between, and the struggle to recapture the power of childhood, the innocence and the imagination that gets lost between youth and adulthood. Also, it concerns their struggle to defeat an ageless monster in the form of a clown praying on the children of Derry, Maine, murdering dozens over months every 27 years. It's a book about magic, and about growing up and if you can stand the work of reading the whole thing, it's a fabulous read that will make you remember some of the best things about being a kid, and some of the things that you really have to hold on to as you get older, like the friends you had back then.
Had a few pints with Andy and his dad and two Mexican guys that night, but when I went to bed I hit that wall I mentioned before, the one that fucked me completely, and the next day was spent in an exhausted and painful stupor, and some of the next day too. Nothing much to report here so maybe it's time for some photos of where I am? Yes, I think so . . .
Jealous??
In the distance of that last one you might actually be able to make up Koh Samui under a bank of clouds.
It was such a gorgeous place. If you look over to the right of Samui you can see the islands where The Beach was written. It was filmed on Koh Pi Pi, but that's where the book was born (and yes, books are born).
So, eventually I got better. Some of my friends from before had turned up on the island in the mean time so I went out one night to meet them. These were the two Aussie girls, Cork and Bekaa, who you may remember from various Laos postings. The Germans had also arrived, but only just and weren't up to heading from Thongsala to Haad Rin that night! Pity though!
Anyway, headed out to Coral Bungalows in Haad Rin for a pool party, but I was a careful bunny that night. There are stories you hear, about people getting robbed and mugged and stuff, and while this is fairly rare, it still makes sense for those travelling alone to travel light. And this was a good idea since it seemed for me a bad moon was rising in the night. Actually, to be fair, Andy did warn me that Coral was a shithole and I'd be better off going somewhere else.
Anyway, the night was good fun, although I will say one thing - pool parties clearly attract more guys than girls and early in the night it was fine, but the later it got and the more drunk idiots were in the pool flexing their muscles and almost literally fighting over the girls, and pawing them, the more annoying it got. I wouldn't be in a rush to run back there and I sure as hell wouldn't advise you bring any girls there, because you may end up wanting to punch some tool in the face. That said, there was a fair few of us so we were okay.
Also worth mentioning, I met a girl from Limerick who spent last year teaching in Firhouse Community College, coz you know, the Shamrock effect, coz it wouldn't do to meet people who were completely foreign or anything! Nah, there were New Zealanders and English and South Afrikanners too, but that one deserves the most mention.
Anyway, bout three I decided to jump ship and head on home. There was already a fair crowd getting into the taxi, so I had to sit in the front - my first mistake involves not getting out and sitting in the back as soon as a spot opened up. Anyway, everyone else got out first, which I assume now was design, and then as we were heading back to Munchies, the dude reaches down near my leg and comes up with is little bag, which appears to be weed.
At first I think he wants to sell it to me, but I have no interest - believe it or not. If I wanted weed, I'd by in the safe confines of the hostel, where Ton, the Thai barman has plenty and isn't adverse to passing around a few joints at night. So really, I don't want this guy's weed, and I tell him so.
Except he isn't trying to sell it to me - or when I refuse he changes his tack a little. After a few minutes I realise, he's saying this weed is already mine - and that he's going to drop me outside a police station unless I pay him two thousand baht. Which I don't actually have.
And he's not impressed. Neither is his friend on the other side of the car, who's presence means I can't just get out. Shit.
So I tell him, fuck it, drop me at the fucking police station, I'll take my fucking chances and we'll see which of us ends up in the prison cell. At the time I didn't think I had a snowball's chance in Mount Doom, but I didn't really see as I had much choice. I haven't got the money and there's a chance, minor as it is, that I can talk to a cop, unless the cop is in on it. Which is highly likely sometimes. There's also the chance I could get Kay or her dad (a bit of a local legend apparently) to do me a solid, maybe.
But we never really got that far. Instead, his friend just kinda pinned me and he checked through my pockets. Not that I struggled. Thai guys are tough, and most of them spend at least some time as kids in a Muai Thai gym, plus there's every chance they'll just stab you.
So I let him rifle though my pockets and take my money, all 400 baht of it. Which is both very little and a fair bit. It's only something like 8 or 9 euro but at the same time, that goes a lot further over here. It's at least 7 drinks, maybe two nights drinking or three meals, so in my mind at home it'd be worth about 30 or 40 quid depending on if you were in Dublin or somewhere else. You know?
Plus they didn't even drop me at Munchies, which is probably clever of them because the security guard there probably would have got them arrested instead. Which would have been awesome. However, if they keep pulling that shit they're probably going to get themselves into fucking trouble. Turns out, they probably aren't Thai, but Burmese. A lot of them come over for Full Moon week and try to rip off tourists. The local guys aren't so interested because they make a hell of a lot off tourists anyway, and the standard of living on the island is pretty good. That's not to say that they never rob anyone, or get them into trouble, but it's a lot less likely. And if they are caught, the local guys, their peers tend to take a very dim view of them doing anything to endanger the one source of income on the island - tourism. So basically, it probably wasn't Thai people, which actually makes me feel a bit better, because I've come to quite like the Thailand people. They've a fantastic sense of humour, and are generally lovely people, though more so up north than in the south. Moral of the story, eh . . . well basically it's don't carry much around, stay in groups as much as possible and let the dudes rob you, coz I heard about a guy on Full Moon who tried to fight back and ended up cut up, lying a puddle of blood until someone found him in a gutter and got him some help.
Anyway, walked back to Munchies and when I arrived in, there were still a few lads up and about. Though Andy was fast asleep in the hammock behind the bar.
This is probably a good time to start introducing people, all of whom arrived some time after me, but they were all good folk, and helped make Koh Phangan a great week.
First of all there's the Australians, Karl Woodberry - known as Woody or Berry - who's a comedian in Australia. Then there's Simon Wright who is a musician with a band and everything. We'll get to that though. His girlfriend, Hannah and her friend Kiah. These guys were awesome, they're friends of Andy's/Andy's friends and Simon and Hannah had been out before.
They were actually here for a holiday but also to put on a comedy/drinking games night on the 20th, the night before Full Moon.
Then there were the Scots; the two Daves, Bean, Finny (or Vinny?) and Baz. Sometimes you worry when you see a group of lads from Ireland, England, Wales or Scotland arriving somewhere (though, you worry much more and are generally proved much more correct if it's a group of lads from the States or Australia) because it can go either way, but this time it was definitely cool. These lads were awesome.
Also around were a bunch of other English guys, a mixed gender group of English, Josh from England, and long haired English guy, two Swedish girls, A Dutch girl and her French friend, a Canadian girl and her friend who I never met and may not have actually existed. Seriously.
All and all, it was a good group to have around.
Anyway, Dave and Dave were up, drinking at the bar, so I was telling them about getting robbed. Not-shaved head Dave (actually I'll go with Dave Stewart since that's both his name and easier) bought me a pint, which at the time I took, but I got him back the next day. We ended up sitting up awhile chatting and then I went to bed (having already taken the time to bitch on Facebook).
So let's move on to the day of the drinking competition. I was kinda bored and restless and had been talking about tattoos with Andy for about an hour, so eventually I said, you know what, fuck it, let's do this shit! So what did I do?
I got in a goddamn taxi, went out to 3 Tattoo as recommended by both Andy and Ton and I got fucking inked!
Anway, this is our crew, once everyone had turned up. I'll try names, but I forget some. Back row - Australian guy, German guy, Lisa, Josefin, Sly, Me. Front Row - Canadian girl, Gabrielle, Anna, Casper.
So someone eventually brought out some body paint and we got to work on writing ridiculous stuff all over each other, coz you know, why not? This to the right is Sly's mustache! And left is all of us lads showing off our glowyness under a darklight! YAY!!!
Mine says, "Shane Shane but different!" which is a turn on the Thai and Laos phrase "Same Same But Different!" Literally everyone says it, but until Josefin no one thought to apply my name to it . . . it's coz she's such a comical genius. Speaking of Josefin, I wrote on her too. She wanted to be multi-lingual, so she had some German and some French already. Where's the Irish!? I wrote "Na bi ag caint!" And for some reason she was displeased to learn that the phrase she had plastered over her back effectively means, shut up! I got a slap for that one.
Then we went off in search of buckets and the beach, and along the way ran into Fran an Jo-Anne, though that was the last we saw of them. Finding people on that beach was not an option! I did run into Bekaa and Cork later on too, but randomly and by chance.
We got a bucket into us, which is basically a naggin of cheap whiskey, a can of coke and some ice. Sounds like a terrible plan right? Yes. Indeed it is.
Then there was some wandering and some getting up on a fairly unsafe wooden platform to dance. It was awful music, especially when someone played a terrible remix of Nirvana's Let Me Entertain You done all pop-like and shit. But we got through it. And had more buckets.
And later that night, as I watched the third naggin of the night going into the third bucket I realised, a) it was a good night and b) this was a terrible idea. And it was - by the next day. I was surprisingly undrunk at the time, though I did switch to water after that one!
What else can I say? Full Moon is a drunken romp of an experience, you can get very fucked up if you want. I was offered drugs several times that night, and I'm sure at least one was a cop. I'd actually love to know, coz it'd be a pretty handy skill to have, if I could actually spot an undercover cop! You know, for the life of crime I lead back home . . . Okay, so it'd be useless, but I'd still like to be able to do it.
We found one guy in a bad way, and I had to check on him and wake him up. He was passed out on the ground by one of the dancing platforms and was a definite target for some robbing, but he want off then and hope he went home but I honestly doubt it.
Some others found other people, later in the night. Some just passed out, some who'd been hit and some who'd been cut, most of them quite drunk. This is a reality of Full Moon, though it's easy enough to avoid, it's also probably pretty easy to stumble into.
If you ask me, tubing in Laos is way more fun. I've done a Full Moon, and I'm in no rush to go back, but I'd go tubing tomorrow!
Anyway, somewhere between 4 and 5 we left. I had no watch or nothing with which to tell the time, and three buckets so don't judge me. Me and the Germans all were going the same way so I shared with them. Actually, I could probably have stayed a little longer, but they were leaving and I wasn't going looking for anyone else so it seemed like a smart plan to leave with them. I'm glad I did. Got dropped off at my door, fell into bed, once I managed to get my key into the lock, drop it, find it and get it back into the lock that is. Woke up a few hours later to the sound of the Scots coming home, went out to chat to them and get some water and then went back to bed . . . God that cheap Thai whiskey is a pain! Eugh!
Not much to report from that day, other than being hungover and reading enough to finish It. Though that night Simon played a bit for us in the evening (actually he played nearly every night but this time I remembered to grab the camera) and I made these two videos just for you guys.
Simon Wright playing Van the Man! - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gBvy2UYV58
And this one is especially for Sarah, especially since I asked him to play it, just so I could make this video, just so I could put it here. I know other people like the stupid song, but I really doubt any of you like it as much as she does. So, Lonsdale, this one is for you - in actuals! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PqQe9NuOgo
Though, the bit where he stops in the middle is probably not directly aimed at you . . . Don't take that the wrong way!
After that there were some tearful goodbyes, because I was leaving at 6 in the morning on a long, long trip to Bali.
Koh Phangan, you were great! Maybe see you again some time!
And guys back home, I'm another week closer to seeing your shining unbearded faces again! Unless you've grown a beard in the last while . . . Which would be fine.
Talk soon,
Shane.
Welcome to Koh Phangan, the island of light and sun, the island of darkness. If you've never heard of it, this is where the monthly Full Moon party occurs in Thailand. And if you've never heard of that, well neither had I until a few months ago. Basically, it's a huge piss-up/rave on a beach in Thailand. It's pretty decent.
It started in and around 1985 when the first party was improvised for a group of tourists in the area. The full moon tends to be a time of celebration in Buddhist culture anyway, and any number of actual religious festivals occur around the same time as the various full moon parties. Actually, if you remember, there was one such festival occuring in Laos the night we were in Pak Beng (see the slow boat blog).
Anyway, from the first party of about 30 people this has grown into a massive party, attracting as many as thirty to fourty thousand in the high season. The music is mostly party stuff, R&B, techno, dance and hip-hop, which is not my favourite, but sometimes you just have to drink the lemonade when life gives you lemons, right? Or maybe you could sell the lemons and buy an apple, I don't know. Philosophy was not what I came here to do.
But my time on Koh Phangan doesn't start here, it starts at 9 in the morning on Koh Samui with a Swiss guy who was catching the same ferry. He's a journalist. I forget his name. And I never saw him again, so I have no idea why I'm even bringing him up.
So it really starts with jumping in the back of a tuk-truck (my name for the converted pick-up trucks that serve as taxis here) on Haad Rin pier, having randomly chosen a beach to look for somewhere to stay from the guide book. I picked Baan Kai because it's not that far from Haad Rin, where the Full Moon party takes place, and it's not too far from Thongsala, the main town on the island.
"Take me here," I said, and there he took me. I got off at a place called Munchies, which was nice and ended up being my base for the week. It's run by Andy from Newcastle, though it's owned by his girlfriend Kay and her family. It's been around about 30 years, but it recently got done up and rebranded and all that. It's all bamboo huts and bamboo everything else, though the bed and shower were nicer than a lot of the places I've stayed recently. To the right, my home for a few days. Or perhaps my house. If home is where the heart is, then it doesn't do to call any of these places home, no matter how attached I get.
Andy's dad was around that day and night, and although I forget his name he was, and remains, a lovely man, a very English sort of guy, not from a rich background, worked on oil rigs all his life, but decent like. You know the sort of person I mean, even if you don't think you do. Think of one of your friends parents, whose door you could turn up at in the middle of the night, when the friend wasn't home, and they'd still bring you in and give you a cup of tea and a bed. Think of Martin Sheen in the Departed in that scene where he brings Dicaprio in for some food, he was like that.
Didn't do much that day, just sat around in the sun and read Stephen King's It, which I have have read before and which I lent to Neena about a year ago and she still hasn't finished because she sucks - Nah, I'm kidding, it stands at 1378 pages and takes some bloody going. But it really is one of his best books. It concerns seven children in the summer of 1958, and their adult selves in 1985 and charts the jounrey from child into adult, and the loss of something in between, and the struggle to recapture the power of childhood, the innocence and the imagination that gets lost between youth and adulthood. Also, it concerns their struggle to defeat an ageless monster in the form of a clown praying on the children of Derry, Maine, murdering dozens over months every 27 years. It's a book about magic, and about growing up and if you can stand the work of reading the whole thing, it's a fabulous read that will make you remember some of the best things about being a kid, and some of the things that you really have to hold on to as you get older, like the friends you had back then.
Had a few pints with Andy and his dad and two Mexican guys that night, but when I went to bed I hit that wall I mentioned before, the one that fucked me completely, and the next day was spent in an exhausted and painful stupor, and some of the next day too. Nothing much to report here so maybe it's time for some photos of where I am? Yes, I think so . . .
Jealous??
In the distance of that last one you might actually be able to make up Koh Samui under a bank of clouds.
It was such a gorgeous place. If you look over to the right of Samui you can see the islands where The Beach was written. It was filmed on Koh Pi Pi, but that's where the book was born (and yes, books are born).
So, eventually I got better. Some of my friends from before had turned up on the island in the mean time so I went out one night to meet them. These were the two Aussie girls, Cork and Bekaa, who you may remember from various Laos postings. The Germans had also arrived, but only just and weren't up to heading from Thongsala to Haad Rin that night! Pity though!
Anyway, headed out to Coral Bungalows in Haad Rin for a pool party, but I was a careful bunny that night. There are stories you hear, about people getting robbed and mugged and stuff, and while this is fairly rare, it still makes sense for those travelling alone to travel light. And this was a good idea since it seemed for me a bad moon was rising in the night. Actually, to be fair, Andy did warn me that Coral was a shithole and I'd be better off going somewhere else.
Anyway, the night was good fun, although I will say one thing - pool parties clearly attract more guys than girls and early in the night it was fine, but the later it got and the more drunk idiots were in the pool flexing their muscles and almost literally fighting over the girls, and pawing them, the more annoying it got. I wouldn't be in a rush to run back there and I sure as hell wouldn't advise you bring any girls there, because you may end up wanting to punch some tool in the face. That said, there was a fair few of us so we were okay.
Also worth mentioning, I met a girl from Limerick who spent last year teaching in Firhouse Community College, coz you know, the Shamrock effect, coz it wouldn't do to meet people who were completely foreign or anything! Nah, there were New Zealanders and English and South Afrikanners too, but that one deserves the most mention.
Anyway, bout three I decided to jump ship and head on home. There was already a fair crowd getting into the taxi, so I had to sit in the front - my first mistake involves not getting out and sitting in the back as soon as a spot opened up. Anyway, everyone else got out first, which I assume now was design, and then as we were heading back to Munchies, the dude reaches down near my leg and comes up with is little bag, which appears to be weed.
At first I think he wants to sell it to me, but I have no interest - believe it or not. If I wanted weed, I'd by in the safe confines of the hostel, where Ton, the Thai barman has plenty and isn't adverse to passing around a few joints at night. So really, I don't want this guy's weed, and I tell him so.
Except he isn't trying to sell it to me - or when I refuse he changes his tack a little. After a few minutes I realise, he's saying this weed is already mine - and that he's going to drop me outside a police station unless I pay him two thousand baht. Which I don't actually have.
And he's not impressed. Neither is his friend on the other side of the car, who's presence means I can't just get out. Shit.
So I tell him, fuck it, drop me at the fucking police station, I'll take my fucking chances and we'll see which of us ends up in the prison cell. At the time I didn't think I had a snowball's chance in Mount Doom, but I didn't really see as I had much choice. I haven't got the money and there's a chance, minor as it is, that I can talk to a cop, unless the cop is in on it. Which is highly likely sometimes. There's also the chance I could get Kay or her dad (a bit of a local legend apparently) to do me a solid, maybe.
But we never really got that far. Instead, his friend just kinda pinned me and he checked through my pockets. Not that I struggled. Thai guys are tough, and most of them spend at least some time as kids in a Muai Thai gym, plus there's every chance they'll just stab you.
So I let him rifle though my pockets and take my money, all 400 baht of it. Which is both very little and a fair bit. It's only something like 8 or 9 euro but at the same time, that goes a lot further over here. It's at least 7 drinks, maybe two nights drinking or three meals, so in my mind at home it'd be worth about 30 or 40 quid depending on if you were in Dublin or somewhere else. You know?
Plus they didn't even drop me at Munchies, which is probably clever of them because the security guard there probably would have got them arrested instead. Which would have been awesome. However, if they keep pulling that shit they're probably going to get themselves into fucking trouble. Turns out, they probably aren't Thai, but Burmese. A lot of them come over for Full Moon week and try to rip off tourists. The local guys aren't so interested because they make a hell of a lot off tourists anyway, and the standard of living on the island is pretty good. That's not to say that they never rob anyone, or get them into trouble, but it's a lot less likely. And if they are caught, the local guys, their peers tend to take a very dim view of them doing anything to endanger the one source of income on the island - tourism. So basically, it probably wasn't Thai people, which actually makes me feel a bit better, because I've come to quite like the Thailand people. They've a fantastic sense of humour, and are generally lovely people, though more so up north than in the south. Moral of the story, eh . . . well basically it's don't carry much around, stay in groups as much as possible and let the dudes rob you, coz I heard about a guy on Full Moon who tried to fight back and ended up cut up, lying a puddle of blood until someone found him in a gutter and got him some help.
Anyway, walked back to Munchies and when I arrived in, there were still a few lads up and about. Though Andy was fast asleep in the hammock behind the bar.
This is probably a good time to start introducing people, all of whom arrived some time after me, but they were all good folk, and helped make Koh Phangan a great week.
First of all there's the Australians, Karl Woodberry - known as Woody or Berry - who's a comedian in Australia. Then there's Simon Wright who is a musician with a band and everything. We'll get to that though. His girlfriend, Hannah and her friend Kiah. These guys were awesome, they're friends of Andy's/Andy's friends and Simon and Hannah had been out before.
They were actually here for a holiday but also to put on a comedy/drinking games night on the 20th, the night before Full Moon.
Then there were the Scots; the two Daves, Bean, Finny (or Vinny?) and Baz. Sometimes you worry when you see a group of lads from Ireland, England, Wales or Scotland arriving somewhere (though, you worry much more and are generally proved much more correct if it's a group of lads from the States or Australia) because it can go either way, but this time it was definitely cool. These lads were awesome.
Also around were a bunch of other English guys, a mixed gender group of English, Josh from England, and long haired English guy, two Swedish girls, A Dutch girl and her French friend, a Canadian girl and her friend who I never met and may not have actually existed. Seriously.
All and all, it was a good group to have around.
Anyway, Dave and Dave were up, drinking at the bar, so I was telling them about getting robbed. Not-shaved head Dave (actually I'll go with Dave Stewart since that's both his name and easier) bought me a pint, which at the time I took, but I got him back the next day. We ended up sitting up awhile chatting and then I went to bed (having already taken the time to bitch on Facebook).
So let's move on to the day of the drinking competition. I was kinda bored and restless and had been talking about tattoos with Andy for about an hour, so eventually I said, you know what, fuck it, let's do this shit! So what did I do?
I got in a goddamn taxi, went out to 3 Tattoo as recommended by both Andy and Ton and I got fucking inked! A little about this process - bamboo tattooing is expensive by Thai standards, because it's harder and also traditional and takes a long time to build up the skills involved. What I got was a fairly sizeable tattoo aswell. But it was well worth it. If you've got a tattoo and want to know what it's like, well the needle prick is a bit sharper than the machine, but it's also lighter in that its not so fast and heavy as the machine needle beats down quite fast. So went in and two hours later, out I come with a new tattoo. It reads,
Son of Man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images
This is a line from a TS Elliot poem, The Waste Land, that I have been in love with since my first year in college. Conrad Brunstrom (also my supervisor for my thesis) read a bit of it for us in a lecture on poetry and I went out and bought it that day and read it twice that night. I've probably read it a hundred times since then. I've also written at least two essays in it and have included quotes from it, sometimes this quote, in many things I have written since then (in many ways this line inspired that story Confusion I wrote back in second year). It was written in 1922 and mostly concerns itself with the fear that came after the devastation and social upheaval of World War I, and the realisation that earth might not be such an ordered safe place after all, that terrible, awful things happen in the world and that God might actually not be actively out there, making the world a better place. Fundamentally, it is about the end of the world as it was, and the fear of what it might become. This particular line is about the impossibilty of knowing everything, or of knowing anything for certain, that things can happen that we might not have expected, and that we should never presume to have all the answers.
Back at the hostel and it was time to prepare for the drinking night!
There weren't loads of us, but there were enough. The Germans were supposed to come, but they couldn't in the end, but that's okay, I don't hate them - or do I??? Nah, it just meant I had to find another team. So me and Dave Stewart and Josh were one team.
Woody, a comedian back in Oz, was the MC for the night. And he is actually pretty funny. As with most good comedians, his job was to make fun of us for the night.
Round 1 was clearly our best. It was based on that shit American frat party game, beer pong. But with a twist. Two players from each team sit on the floor, one a distance away and the other with four cups of alcohol in front of him. Each cup has a number of points associated with it. In a minute, the further player throws ping pong balls and tries to get them in the cup, if he misses the other player catches the ball and throws it back. If he gets it in, the other player drinks the cup.
We went last and were aware that we didn't need to do that well to win. In fact, we did do well. Dave threw and I drank. Getting three cups, including the fabled fifty pointer, we scored 90 out of a hundred points! Off to a good start!
Round 2 was golf, by which I mean kids golf. And it didn't really involve any drinking. You just had to hit a ball into a little plastic thing with four holes, each with different points. Josh took his turn here, but Josh can actually play golf, so that's probably why we didn't get a single point.
We took a drinking break here, which means we drank just coz, rather than because we had to. Then it was back for Round 3, which involved the beach and broomsticks.
Three people from each team (the whole team in our case) stood out on the beach. You drank a full beer ran a distance to a broom, put your head against the top and spun around ten times before running back and tagging your next team mate who does the same thing. So I down my beer, ran to the broom, spun round and round and then ran straight back . . . except I was dizzy, so I actually ran to the left and really I more fell until I went head first into a girl on the other team and sent her fucking flying across the beach because I'm not light. At which point, rather than be a gentleman and help her up I ran fucking straight for the rest of team to bring us in second.
Later, I did apologise somewhat.
Round 4 was air guitar, but I got shitty Sweet Child of Mine, which doesn't start as rocking as you'd think. The last team got fucking All Along the Watchtower, which I could totally have done something better with, but seeing as I have long hair, and can swing it around, I did manage a repectable 7 points.
Round 5 was the sex round.
We had to invent a new sex position and demonstrate it. And you may remember that there are three guys on our team - akward! So we had to borrow a girl, who was a pretty good sport, even when Dave couldn't hold his weight and fell on her. That pretty much killed us though. Nil point!
I said, "We'll do her again!
Woody said, "I'll fucking bet you would!"
Classic Woody!
I forget what Round 6 was. I think it involved drinking.
Round 7 was the decider. This was the Shoey Round. You drink from an old shoe. To make it worse, not one of our shoes, but a random hostel shoe. Yes, awesome. Who had the balls to drink from this chalice? Who do you think? Shane! I've actually done this before at another games night. Michelle or Sinead might remember but not too many others.
We needed points badly, so I drank two whole beers from that shoe and it wasn't all that pleasant. And then some bitch drank upside down from the rafters in a skimpy top and stole my points even though she spilled most of it on the floor. Skimpy top trumps beard though, that's pretty much a Law of the Universe.
So we didn't win. We had fun, and we stayed up drinking anyways so really, who cares. We did finish up bout three though, because Full Moon was the next day and there really wasn't any point in being too wrecked for that.
Actually at this point I had to leave Munchies, because it was booked up for Full Moon, but I knew that was gonna happen and I'd already booked in next door. In actual fact, my new room was closer to the Munchies bar than the old room. Funnily enough, and I take this as a personal compliment, Andy told me not to bother paying my bar tab until I was leaving the island, that he'd keep it open for me. That's something considering he didn't have my passport details or my credit card, but I suppose just as I've learned to make calls about hostels and how good they are from a glance around, hostel managers must get plenty good at calling whether or not guests are going to be shit are not too. As it went, I moved next door, came back every day and made sure to pay my tab and for my rooms my last afternoon. Because why wouldn't I?
Not much happened the next day other than my moving, just the gear up for the night. I had a beer with the Scots and then jumped a taxi out to Haad Rin where I was meeting the Germans, Josefin, Anna and Lisa, but when I got to the place they weren't actually there yet. However, the other people they were meeting copped that I must be the other guy so they were like, come join us, drink! So I drank!
Anway, this is our crew, once everyone had turned up. I'll try names, but I forget some. Back row - Australian guy, German guy, Lisa, Josefin, Sly, Me. Front Row - Canadian girl, Gabrielle, Anna, Casper.
This photo is interesting for another reason. The guy who took it has a brother, and his brother is Monty, of this place, in Dublin! You know the place? You've totally walked passed it a few times, I know I have! Small world huh?
Mine says, "Shane Shane but different!" which is a turn on the Thai and Laos phrase "Same Same But Different!" Literally everyone says it, but until Josefin no one thought to apply my name to it . . . it's coz she's such a comical genius. Speaking of Josefin, I wrote on her too. She wanted to be multi-lingual, so she had some German and some French already. Where's the Irish!? I wrote "Na bi ag caint!" And for some reason she was displeased to learn that the phrase she had plastered over her back effectively means, shut up! I got a slap for that one.
Then we went off in search of buckets and the beach, and along the way ran into Fran an Jo-Anne, though that was the last we saw of them. Finding people on that beach was not an option! I did run into Bekaa and Cork later on too, but randomly and by chance.
Anyway, here's us all at the big sign, where I'm sure everyone goes to take this exact picture, but still, tis awesome so fuck you! Or, possibly, I love you and you're cool? Better? Yeah, a bit better!
Then there was some wandering and some getting up on a fairly unsafe wooden platform to dance. It was awful music, especially when someone played a terrible remix of Nirvana's Let Me Entertain You done all pop-like and shit. But we got through it. And had more buckets.
And later that night, as I watched the third naggin of the night going into the third bucket I realised, a) it was a good night and b) this was a terrible idea. And it was - by the next day. I was surprisingly undrunk at the time, though I did switch to water after that one!
What else can I say? Full Moon is a drunken romp of an experience, you can get very fucked up if you want. I was offered drugs several times that night, and I'm sure at least one was a cop. I'd actually love to know, coz it'd be a pretty handy skill to have, if I could actually spot an undercover cop! You know, for the life of crime I lead back home . . . Okay, so it'd be useless, but I'd still like to be able to do it.
We found one guy in a bad way, and I had to check on him and wake him up. He was passed out on the ground by one of the dancing platforms and was a definite target for some robbing, but he want off then and hope he went home but I honestly doubt it.
Some others found other people, later in the night. Some just passed out, some who'd been hit and some who'd been cut, most of them quite drunk. This is a reality of Full Moon, though it's easy enough to avoid, it's also probably pretty easy to stumble into.
If you ask me, tubing in Laos is way more fun. I've done a Full Moon, and I'm in no rush to go back, but I'd go tubing tomorrow!
Anyway, somewhere between 4 and 5 we left. I had no watch or nothing with which to tell the time, and three buckets so don't judge me. Me and the Germans all were going the same way so I shared with them. Actually, I could probably have stayed a little longer, but they were leaving and I wasn't going looking for anyone else so it seemed like a smart plan to leave with them. I'm glad I did. Got dropped off at my door, fell into bed, once I managed to get my key into the lock, drop it, find it and get it back into the lock that is. Woke up a few hours later to the sound of the Scots coming home, went out to chat to them and get some water and then went back to bed . . . God that cheap Thai whiskey is a pain! Eugh!
Not much to report from that day, other than being hungover and reading enough to finish It. Though that night Simon played a bit for us in the evening (actually he played nearly every night but this time I remembered to grab the camera) and I made these two videos just for you guys.
Simon Wright playing Van the Man! - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gBvy2UYV58
And this one is especially for Sarah, especially since I asked him to play it, just so I could make this video, just so I could put it here. I know other people like the stupid song, but I really doubt any of you like it as much as she does. So, Lonsdale, this one is for you - in actuals! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PqQe9NuOgo
Though, the bit where he stops in the middle is probably not directly aimed at you . . . Don't take that the wrong way!
After that there were some tearful goodbyes, because I was leaving at 6 in the morning on a long, long trip to Bali.
Koh Phangan, you were great! Maybe see you again some time!
And guys back home, I'm another week closer to seeing your shining unbearded faces again! Unless you've grown a beard in the last while . . . Which would be fine.
Talk soon,
Shane.
Your regularly scheduled blogging returns . . . NOW!!!
Sorry, it's been ages since I've been on this thing. I'm sure you've been waiting with baited breath!
By way of an excuse, I was really fucking tired - and then I was busy being drunk!
Basically, I did quite a bit of travelling in a very short space of time. Some of which you know about, some of which I'll tell you about now . . .
A quick recap prehaps . . . 2nd November, 5 hours to Vientiane; 4th November, 27 hours to Siem Reap; 9th November, 6 or 7 hours to Phnom Penh; 11th November, 16 hours to Bangkok; 13th November, 15 hours to Surat Thani; 14th November, 5 hours to Koh Samui and then finally, the next day, 2 hours getting to Koh Phangan . . .
I was supposed to spend longer on Samui but the weather was crap and it was hitting Samui before it hit Phangan so I headed out there for some sun, knowing there'd at least be less rain than on Samui. Twas a great idea as it turned out.
Though, the night I spent on Samui I did meet some nice people, including Vicki the accountant from London, who joined me for a discounted dinner in the hostel restaurant, which was awesome coz I hadn't actually talked to anyone in about three days, not since I'd gotten off the bus in Bangkok. I mean, I talked to hostel staff and people I was buying things from, but no "regular" people. Then after that we and some other people in the hostel watched Red - which is just such an amazingly brilliant film! John Malkovich is the man!
Then it was off to Koh Phangan, and Munchies, where I spent the next week - but that's for a different blog (coming later on today). I'll just relate one part of the story here, and it's not that nice a part for me.
After all that travelling, I hit a wall. A solid, heavy and hard wall made out of sleeplessness and too much caffine and sugar, adrenaline fuelled days of just trying to keep awake enough to get from the bus to the hostel . . . I hit that wall and I bounced off it and landed in the dust. For about a day and a half I had a headache, I was exhausted, I had no appetite and I couldn't even think straight! Not pleasant . . .
So ladies and gentlemen, don't hold it against me that I wasn't here, chatting away to you, because I really would have like to . . . I was just in pieces, on the floor, so wrecked I could barely even read. Honestly, I thought I might die. Funnily enough, and this might be a good thing, during all of it, unlike when I was sick in Hong Kong, I didn't want to rush home, didn't want to just get the fuck out and come back to all of you, I just wanted to get better so I could go back to having fun. That's some way I've come in the last few months (not that I don't want to come home and see you all, I just like that I've still got two months left before then and that there's plenty more interesting things to see and people to meet along the road).
And speaking of the the Road, you might think that I hate the Road after all of that travelling, but I don't - though it was nice to spend a week in one place after so much moving. But the Road is not a thing to be hated, or cursed. You have to be careful of course, to be weary of it certainly, because it is untrustworthy and it will go where it will, not where you want, but if you respect it, it will take you along its course and leave you safe. A poem to leave you to muse upon, perhaps -
The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And wither then? I cannot say.
by Bilbo Baggins of the Shire.
One day I walked out of a door, 145A Carrigwood, a white door in Dublin, and stepped upon that road, an followed a familiar course, that led from way to way, until all the roads were different, and upon that road I have met many people, some who I hope too see on the road again, and some who I hope will follow the road to my white door some day, or to other doors where we may stop together and take our ease in each other's company, but my Road, the road I follow and that I am thankful to be on, this Road leads from place to place, and eventually the way will lead me Home again - just not yet.
*End of sentimental crap*
Much love,
Shane.
By way of an excuse, I was really fucking tired - and then I was busy being drunk!
Basically, I did quite a bit of travelling in a very short space of time. Some of which you know about, some of which I'll tell you about now . . .
A quick recap prehaps . . . 2nd November, 5 hours to Vientiane; 4th November, 27 hours to Siem Reap; 9th November, 6 or 7 hours to Phnom Penh; 11th November, 16 hours to Bangkok; 13th November, 15 hours to Surat Thani; 14th November, 5 hours to Koh Samui and then finally, the next day, 2 hours getting to Koh Phangan . . .
I was supposed to spend longer on Samui but the weather was crap and it was hitting Samui before it hit Phangan so I headed out there for some sun, knowing there'd at least be less rain than on Samui. Twas a great idea as it turned out.
Though, the night I spent on Samui I did meet some nice people, including Vicki the accountant from London, who joined me for a discounted dinner in the hostel restaurant, which was awesome coz I hadn't actually talked to anyone in about three days, not since I'd gotten off the bus in Bangkok. I mean, I talked to hostel staff and people I was buying things from, but no "regular" people. Then after that we and some other people in the hostel watched Red - which is just such an amazingly brilliant film! John Malkovich is the man!
Then it was off to Koh Phangan, and Munchies, where I spent the next week - but that's for a different blog (coming later on today). I'll just relate one part of the story here, and it's not that nice a part for me.
After all that travelling, I hit a wall. A solid, heavy and hard wall made out of sleeplessness and too much caffine and sugar, adrenaline fuelled days of just trying to keep awake enough to get from the bus to the hostel . . . I hit that wall and I bounced off it and landed in the dust. For about a day and a half I had a headache, I was exhausted, I had no appetite and I couldn't even think straight! Not pleasant . . .
So ladies and gentlemen, don't hold it against me that I wasn't here, chatting away to you, because I really would have like to . . . I was just in pieces, on the floor, so wrecked I could barely even read. Honestly, I thought I might die. Funnily enough, and this might be a good thing, during all of it, unlike when I was sick in Hong Kong, I didn't want to rush home, didn't want to just get the fuck out and come back to all of you, I just wanted to get better so I could go back to having fun. That's some way I've come in the last few months (not that I don't want to come home and see you all, I just like that I've still got two months left before then and that there's plenty more interesting things to see and people to meet along the road).
And speaking of the the Road, you might think that I hate the Road after all of that travelling, but I don't - though it was nice to spend a week in one place after so much moving. But the Road is not a thing to be hated, or cursed. You have to be careful of course, to be weary of it certainly, because it is untrustworthy and it will go where it will, not where you want, but if you respect it, it will take you along its course and leave you safe. A poem to leave you to muse upon, perhaps -
The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And wither then? I cannot say.
by Bilbo Baggins of the Shire.
One day I walked out of a door, 145A Carrigwood, a white door in Dublin, and stepped upon that road, an followed a familiar course, that led from way to way, until all the roads were different, and upon that road I have met many people, some who I hope too see on the road again, and some who I hope will follow the road to my white door some day, or to other doors where we may stop together and take our ease in each other's company, but my Road, the road I follow and that I am thankful to be on, this Road leads from place to place, and eventually the way will lead me Home again - just not yet.
*End of sentimental crap*
Much love,
Shane.
Friday, November 12, 2010
S21 and The Killing Fields
Before you read this post, please note - This post contains disturbing images, some of which depict the physical remains of deceased persons. Those easily upset or disturbed, or those ethically opposed to viewing such images should not continue. I have no wish to offend or upset anyone.
However, my intention with this blog was to illuminate on the salient points of my trip and I believe it would be a diservice to the victims of the Khmer regime not to accurately portray what I have seen today. The decision to include these images was not taken lightly, nor was the decision to take such pictures an easy one. The ethical question of being a "tourist" in such a location is a difficult one, but one that I believe can be resolved so long as the proper respect is given. As such, I have taken these pictures so that people who will never visit Cambodia, S21 or the Killing Fields will have a somewhat accurate idea of what happened there. It is not my intention to be disrespectful, and if some of you believe I have been as you read this post, I can only offer appologies.
With that in mind, a short bit of history.
In 1975, the Khmer Republic was overthrown by what is today referred to as the Khmer Rouge. This name is given to those who were followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, the organisation which seized power in Cambodia, funded and armed by Vietnamese Communists.
While parading itself as the saviour of the people, the regime quickly turned to terror tactics, murder and even genocide in order to reshape the country as they pleased. Pol Pot, the leader, and his cadre wanted to make Cambodia a self-sufficient agrarian communist country, but went so far as to deny external medical supplies to the people, so that there was little or no real medicine available to the population. Many thousands died of treatable diseases, including malaria.
Suspected "capitalists" - professions, citizens from urban regions and especially intellectuals - were the targets of initial purges, but soon anyone with dissenting views became a target for an increasingly paranoid state.
Much like during the Nazi regime in Germany, those who had no interest in the political views of the party were conscripted into the workings of the regime or signed up before they could be conscripted forcably, simply because they would be executed if they failed to. Many of these people then found themselves as soldiers, prison guards and executioners. Of these, many were in turn imprisoned or executed as the state began to purge itself in a fit of paranoia.
The death toll is considered to be somewhere between 1.4 and 2 million - about half were executed while the rest died from starvation or ill health - in a country that probably only had seven million people in 1975. In percentage terms, a greater portion of the Cambodian population died under the Khmer Rouge than Jews died under Hitler.
Such things as this should never be easy to talk about, and one suspects that the true gravitas of the places I visited today will be incommunicable but there seems to me a real responsibility to try. When I was thinking about this earlier, I thought of a quote from a Battlestar Galactica character, Saul Tigh, speaking about the impending death of his unborn son and his love for the mother: "I don't need to say it. I shouldn't need to say it to anyone. Isn't it enough that I feel it? Shouldn't need to spout the words; I feel it less with words. Just let me Gods-damn feel it and I'll fill the frakkin' room."
To be honest, I often agree with him, and hate false cliched responses to emotional situations or events. I agree that it is enough to feel something and not need to dress it up in words. But words are important too, and sometimes it is necessary to speak of things, so that others can understand where you are, in your own head, as well as so they can learn some of the things you have learned. Hopefully, I will manage to convey something more than the simple words "it was awful" and the absolute nothing that such a bland statement manages to convey.
S21 was a notorious prison in Phnom Penh where suspected dissidents, high ranking or otherwise, were taken to be interrogated and held. Before becoming a site of torture and death, it was a school. Walking around it, some of the original blackboards are still in place, and you can see where the walls have been knocked through to turn rows of classrooms into prison-cells. Stains still mark the floors.
Several of the rooms have been left as they were, while others have been turned into photographic memorials.
I'll take you through it as I saw it. The first thing you notice is how much like a school the three buildings look. There's an eerie strangeness to that, because you know what you know, and cannot quite equate the two things together. It gets easier when you notice the fourteen white tombs in front of building A. A mass grave that was discovered in that area, several years ago. After this you notice the exercise poles, once used by students but turned into instruments of torture by the regime. Prisoners would have a their hands tied behind them and then the rope would be used to hoist them upside down until they lost consciouness. Afterwards, they would have their heads submerged in a far of filthy water to bring them out of it, after which the interrogation would begin again.
During processing the prisoners were made aware of the ten rules of the prison, which I will let you read for yourself -
1. You must answer accordingly to my question. Don’t turn them away.
2. Don’t try to hide the facts by making pretexts this and that, you are strictly prohibited to contest me.
3. Don’t be a fool for you are a chap who dare to thwart the revolution.
4. You must immediately answer my questions without wasting time to reflect.
5. Don’t tell me either about your immoralities or the essence of the revolution.
6. While getting lashes or electrification you must not cry at all.
7. Do nothing, sit still and wait for my orders. If there is no order, keep quiet. When I ask you to do something, you must do it right away without protesting.
8. Don’t make pretext about Kampuchea Kromin order to hide your secret or traitor.
9. If you don’t follow all the above rules, you shall get many many lashes of electric wire.
10. If you disobey any point of my regulations you shall get either ten lashes or five shocks of electric discharge.
The first floor of building A was where high ranking prisoners were interrogated. Iron beds and clamps to lock the prisoners are in each room, one to a room. These were people to be interrogated alone. Upstairs, the rooms might have two or three beds, indicating that man people where tortured in each room. Often the interrogations would continue without a break, for hours or days, with rotating shifts of torturers.
The spent ammunition cases which appear in most of the prisons were used as toilets.
The third floor is probably the least affected place. It retains its blackboards, a creepy vision of reeducation camps which existed throughout Cambodia, or prehaps merely an awful juxtaposition against which one may view the torture a floor below.
The bottom floor of the next building contains both pictures of the victims and also of Pol Pot and his cadre, all those who led the regime.
Building C was the main prison area. It is wrapped in a web of barbed wire and there is only one gate. The classroom were converted into small cells and the walls knocked through, presumeably to make easier for the guards to keep an eye on the captives.
The last building contains extracts from the only stories of the only fourteen people thought to have survived S21, as well as similar extacts from the biographies of those who were forced to work there, often fearing for their lives if they did not do as instructed by the their superiors.
The first thing you see and probably visit is a large stupa, or Buddhist shrine for relics. It functions as both a memorial and a shrine and is a place for silent contemplation of the deaths that occured here. From outside it is a beautiful building. At the front it is possible to get flowers and a stick of incense which can be left as an offering at the front of the shrine. You can also make a donation here.
I took the flowers and incense and left my donation and entered the stupa. This tall structure contains 5000 human skulls in ascending shelves. Although I knew what I was about to see, it was still a surprise, the slow damning awareness of exactly how many of there are. 5000 is a number. Seeing so many actual skulls was something else. Seeing the broken ones, clearly beaten in or smashed was difficult, strange and affecting.
At this point I made the decision to take some photographs, which is allowed, though it becomes ethically vague. I hope that those of you who look at them now will be aware that I have taken them specifically for you, so you can appreciate both what I saw, and more importantly, what the Khmer Rouge did.
Following this, I spent several minutes actually praying, not to Buddha, or to God really either, but to whatever was listening I suppose, that some day, sites and sights like this need not be repeated. That we might outgrow our ridiculous penchant for violence at some point.
There are a few more pictures I would like to show you, but first I will explain exactly what the Killing Fields are. As part of its purges, the Khmer Rouge would collect state "enemies" and transport them to places like this. At first it was only a hundred a year, then only a few hundred, but eventually it was a few hundred a day.
People would arrive by truck and immediately executed, but as the number of people increased they had to start imprisoning them for the day, and continued into the killings long into the night.
The tree to the right is referred to as the killing tree. Children were beaten to death against it.
The bodies of the dead were then dumped in mass graves all around the field. Several of these have been excavated. In some of the graves, the bodies found have been headless (hence the skulls collected for the shrine). These graves are scattered around the area, but many have not been uncovered. Currently, it has been decided that no new excavations will take place. However, when there are strong rains, relics come up from the ground, mostly bone fragments and teeth, which are collected and put on display.
It's a strange thing, to walk in that place. Wouldn't it be nice to say that this was Cambodians killing each other? That it is nothing to do with us?
But we really can't. We may not have raised such a literal Golgotha, but we have our death camps, our own horrors. This place belongs, not merely to the Cambodians, but is a burden and a failure that rests on all of us. Not just because of international failures (of which there were plenty), but because humanity as a whole continues its genocides in other regions, in other counties.
It reminds me of this song, Right in Two, by TOOL, about these angels sitting watching mankind and wondering why God would have given them free will.
"Angels on the sideline,
Baffled and confused.
Father blessed them all with reason.
And this is what they choose.
(and this is what they choose)
Monkey, killing monkey, killing monkey
Over pieces of the ground.
Silly monkeys give them thumbs,
They forge a blade,
And when there's one they're bound to divide it,
Right in two."
People often say things like, "How can God let this happen?" And the simple answer is that he did not let this happen. If there is such a being as God, and I am by no means convinced of that, He gave us free will, and with that we have chosen an endless cycle of violence and oppression. Given the gift of intelligence, we made knives and swords and went out to slaughter our brothers and sisters. To call the Khmer Rouge a Cambodian tragedy is to ignore its context within the wider angle of the Vietnam conflicts of the period, to ignore the Cold War in general, more recent genocides in Rawanda and Yugoslavia, to ignore Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Auschwitz, and even further, the Somme, Carthage, the fall of Troy and an endless lists of other cities and other countries.
I won't preach about how it's time to put an end to this, time to stop, because people just like you an me have known that since ong before the Romans burned Carthage, massacred its women and children and salted the earth. People have always known this kind of violence in wrong.
That's the really sad thing, that we remain such silly monkeys, ready to tear each other apart for our own little piece of nothing that we so jealously guard. We know it, and yet it happens again and again, in cycle after cycle. One wonders, if in a thousand years, if there is still a humanity, if it has burst out into the stars to colonise other planets, will it be other races we practice our genocides against, or will we still be slaughtering each other by the bucketful?
Pity I don't have an uplifting, "but-it's-all-okay" punchline for you here. I wish I did, it'd be nice - and I could probably do with it more than you anyway! But it just isn't there.
I'll cheer up for next time,
Shane.
However, my intention with this blog was to illuminate on the salient points of my trip and I believe it would be a diservice to the victims of the Khmer regime not to accurately portray what I have seen today. The decision to include these images was not taken lightly, nor was the decision to take such pictures an easy one. The ethical question of being a "tourist" in such a location is a difficult one, but one that I believe can be resolved so long as the proper respect is given. As such, I have taken these pictures so that people who will never visit Cambodia, S21 or the Killing Fields will have a somewhat accurate idea of what happened there. It is not my intention to be disrespectful, and if some of you believe I have been as you read this post, I can only offer appologies.
With that in mind, a short bit of history.
In 1975, the Khmer Republic was overthrown by what is today referred to as the Khmer Rouge. This name is given to those who were followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, the organisation which seized power in Cambodia, funded and armed by Vietnamese Communists.
While parading itself as the saviour of the people, the regime quickly turned to terror tactics, murder and even genocide in order to reshape the country as they pleased. Pol Pot, the leader, and his cadre wanted to make Cambodia a self-sufficient agrarian communist country, but went so far as to deny external medical supplies to the people, so that there was little or no real medicine available to the population. Many thousands died of treatable diseases, including malaria.
Suspected "capitalists" - professions, citizens from urban regions and especially intellectuals - were the targets of initial purges, but soon anyone with dissenting views became a target for an increasingly paranoid state.
Much like during the Nazi regime in Germany, those who had no interest in the political views of the party were conscripted into the workings of the regime or signed up before they could be conscripted forcably, simply because they would be executed if they failed to. Many of these people then found themselves as soldiers, prison guards and executioners. Of these, many were in turn imprisoned or executed as the state began to purge itself in a fit of paranoia.
The death toll is considered to be somewhere between 1.4 and 2 million - about half were executed while the rest died from starvation or ill health - in a country that probably only had seven million people in 1975. In percentage terms, a greater portion of the Cambodian population died under the Khmer Rouge than Jews died under Hitler.
Such things as this should never be easy to talk about, and one suspects that the true gravitas of the places I visited today will be incommunicable but there seems to me a real responsibility to try. When I was thinking about this earlier, I thought of a quote from a Battlestar Galactica character, Saul Tigh, speaking about the impending death of his unborn son and his love for the mother: "I don't need to say it. I shouldn't need to say it to anyone. Isn't it enough that I feel it? Shouldn't need to spout the words; I feel it less with words. Just let me Gods-damn feel it and I'll fill the frakkin' room."
To be honest, I often agree with him, and hate false cliched responses to emotional situations or events. I agree that it is enough to feel something and not need to dress it up in words. But words are important too, and sometimes it is necessary to speak of things, so that others can understand where you are, in your own head, as well as so they can learn some of the things you have learned. Hopefully, I will manage to convey something more than the simple words "it was awful" and the absolute nothing that such a bland statement manages to convey.
Several of the rooms have been left as they were, while others have been turned into photographic memorials.
During processing the prisoners were made aware of the ten rules of the prison, which I will let you read for yourself -
1. You must answer accordingly to my question. Don’t turn them away.
2. Don’t try to hide the facts by making pretexts this and that, you are strictly prohibited to contest me.
3. Don’t be a fool for you are a chap who dare to thwart the revolution.
4. You must immediately answer my questions without wasting time to reflect.
5. Don’t tell me either about your immoralities or the essence of the revolution.
6. While getting lashes or electrification you must not cry at all.
7. Do nothing, sit still and wait for my orders. If there is no order, keep quiet. When I ask you to do something, you must do it right away without protesting.
8. Don’t make pretext about Kampuchea Kromin order to hide your secret or traitor.
9. If you don’t follow all the above rules, you shall get many many lashes of electric wire.
10. If you disobey any point of my regulations you shall get either ten lashes or five shocks of electric discharge.
The first floor of building A was where high ranking prisoners were interrogated. Iron beds and clamps to lock the prisoners are in each room, one to a room. These were people to be interrogated alone. Upstairs, the rooms might have two or three beds, indicating that man people where tortured in each room. Often the interrogations would continue without a break, for hours or days, with rotating shifts of torturers.
The spent ammunition cases which appear in most of the prisons were used as toilets.
The bottom floor of the next building contains both pictures of the victims and also of Pol Pot and his cadre, all those who led the regime.
Building C was the main prison area. It is wrapped in a web of barbed wire and there is only one gate. The classroom were converted into small cells and the walls knocked through, presumeably to make easier for the guards to keep an eye on the captives.
Next, I travelled out to the Killing Fields, specifically the field at Choeung Ek. There are many sites around Cambodia that were used as execution grounds and contain mass graves. This is perhaps the most famous and the most easily accessible.
This place is much more like Dachau. The air here has a quality of silence almost impossible to reproduce. Those who have been to such sites, and so many of them exist, will know what I am talking about and those who haven't just won't understand what I mean. I often wonder if the sense of silence, of a hushed deathly stillness, is real, or if it is something we bring with us to such places. I have no more answers today than I have had before. It is more than just the quiet of solemn respect. Words are simply not spoken, and when they must be, there is a hushed, funereal whisper to them. I mean it when I say funereal too - it is not just some melodramatic conceit I've conjured up. It is not like when you are quiet in a church. It is quiet the way you are quiet in the presence of a body, in the presence of the dead.
I took the flowers and incense and left my donation and entered the stupa. This tall structure contains 5000 human skulls in ascending shelves. Although I knew what I was about to see, it was still a surprise, the slow damning awareness of exactly how many of there are. 5000 is a number. Seeing so many actual skulls was something else. Seeing the broken ones, clearly beaten in or smashed was difficult, strange and affecting.
At this point I made the decision to take some photographs, which is allowed, though it becomes ethically vague. I hope that those of you who look at them now will be aware that I have taken them specifically for you, so you can appreciate both what I saw, and more importantly, what the Khmer Rouge did.
Following this, I spent several minutes actually praying, not to Buddha, or to God really either, but to whatever was listening I suppose, that some day, sites and sights like this need not be repeated. That we might outgrow our ridiculous penchant for violence at some point.
There are a few more pictures I would like to show you, but first I will explain exactly what the Killing Fields are. As part of its purges, the Khmer Rouge would collect state "enemies" and transport them to places like this. At first it was only a hundred a year, then only a few hundred, but eventually it was a few hundred a day.
The tree to the right is referred to as the killing tree. Children were beaten to death against it.
The bodies of the dead were then dumped in mass graves all around the field. Several of these have been excavated. In some of the graves, the bodies found have been headless (hence the skulls collected for the shrine). These graves are scattered around the area, but many have not been uncovered. Currently, it has been decided that no new excavations will take place. However, when there are strong rains, relics come up from the ground, mostly bone fragments and teeth, which are collected and put on display.
But we really can't. We may not have raised such a literal Golgotha, but we have our death camps, our own horrors. This place belongs, not merely to the Cambodians, but is a burden and a failure that rests on all of us. Not just because of international failures (of which there were plenty), but because humanity as a whole continues its genocides in other regions, in other counties.
It reminds me of this song, Right in Two, by TOOL, about these angels sitting watching mankind and wondering why God would have given them free will.
"Angels on the sideline,
Baffled and confused.
Father blessed them all with reason.
And this is what they choose.
(and this is what they choose)
Monkey, killing monkey, killing monkey
Over pieces of the ground.
Silly monkeys give them thumbs,
They forge a blade,
And when there's one they're bound to divide it,
Right in two."
People often say things like, "How can God let this happen?" And the simple answer is that he did not let this happen. If there is such a being as God, and I am by no means convinced of that, He gave us free will, and with that we have chosen an endless cycle of violence and oppression. Given the gift of intelligence, we made knives and swords and went out to slaughter our brothers and sisters. To call the Khmer Rouge a Cambodian tragedy is to ignore its context within the wider angle of the Vietnam conflicts of the period, to ignore the Cold War in general, more recent genocides in Rawanda and Yugoslavia, to ignore Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Auschwitz, and even further, the Somme, Carthage, the fall of Troy and an endless lists of other cities and other countries.
I won't preach about how it's time to put an end to this, time to stop, because people just like you an me have known that since ong before the Romans burned Carthage, massacred its women and children and salted the earth. People have always known this kind of violence in wrong.
That's the really sad thing, that we remain such silly monkeys, ready to tear each other apart for our own little piece of nothing that we so jealously guard. We know it, and yet it happens again and again, in cycle after cycle. One wonders, if in a thousand years, if there is still a humanity, if it has burst out into the stars to colonise other planets, will it be other races we practice our genocides against, or will we still be slaughtering each other by the bucketful?
Pity I don't have an uplifting, "but-it's-all-okay" punchline for you here. I wish I did, it'd be nice - and I could probably do with it more than you anyway! But it just isn't there.
I'll cheer up for next time,
Shane.
One for the boys . . .
9th November 2010
This one is for the boys . . . but ladies, you can look as well.
GUNS!!! BANGS!!! EXPLOSIONS!!!
Okay, no explosions. But definitely guns!
I CALL SHOT GUN SHOTGUN!!! (I call 9mm! Prizes if you get that joke and aren't Neena)
One thing I will say is that it's surprising how easy to pull back the reloader thing is. It's actually not as tough as they sometimes make it look in films. Very smooth.
The kick on this thing was mad, you'll see it in the video. I still have a bruise from it slamming into me, over and over. But it was so worth it. You'll also see me pop a round out by accident without firing it. I think it was just because I liked cocking it more than firing almost! So awesome though!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dc5TASRcJrw
And last put not least, I'll just give this picture a mention. It's not my favourite, though it's pretty awesome, but it is the one that has garnered the most attention from all of you guys! You seem to love it. I've even been told I look like a terrorist (thanks Jo-Anne!)! How awesome is that! I was going for freedom fighter from the future war against the machines, but hey!
So that's it boys! Guns for teh wins!
It was awesome!
Talk soon,
Beardslinger out!
This one is for the boys . . . but ladies, you can look as well.
GUNS!!! BANGS!!! EXPLOSIONS!!!
Okay, no explosions. But definitely guns!
Bout 35 mins in a tuk tuk from the hostel in a shooting range, run by the Cambodia army. You get there, you get givin a menu, and then you pick your guns. I won't lie, this is an expensive trip, but something I've been planning for a few weeks now, and every so often you have to splash out on some fun.
I started with the AK47.
But before we start let me relate a little story that I think of every single time someone says AK47. Way back when we were in tranisition year we did this radio project, with Blackrock and St. Michael's. As part of it, we interviewed our principal, Mr Murphy (Carrie's dad to some of you and just a complete lunatic to some of the rest of us). At the very start of the interview, he made what we have all always hoped was a joke, but probably wasn't.
Speaking about his job, in his weird mixture of Russian and Kerry accents (he's not in the least bit from Russia) he said, "Some days I'd just like to line up all the students and shoot them with an AK47 . . . you're not recording that are you . . ." And we were, but obviously we couldn't use it! Pity though that nobody still has that recording!
At first when he put in the slot thing, I was a bit like, meh - that sucks - but after firing it I was happy it was there. The kick on that thing was insane! It was also cool to see the little flare of flame bursting out the nozzle like a weird corona of some kind (corona is not just a beer, it's like a halo on it's side).
And as you can see, auto-fire just eats through bullets!
Next up, the handgun. This was really cool, but still the kick was unexpected. It really was strong. Not uncontrollable after some practice, but still, more than I would have expected. I did pretty well with this actually. Most of my shots hit near the centre and one hit the bull's eye. Again, all the BB gun shooting comes in handy sometimes . . .
Also, the gun kept jamming. I'm sure I could have sorted it, but the guy was very insistant that I not mess with the guns myself. At least while loaded.
And then my personal favourite, what I was really most looking forward too! And my favourite photo as well . . .
One thing I will say is that it's surprising how easy to pull back the reloader thing is. It's actually not as tough as they sometimes make it look in films. Very smooth.
The kick on this thing was mad, you'll see it in the video. I still have a bruise from it slamming into me, over and over. But it was so worth it. You'll also see me pop a round out by accident without firing it. I think it was just because I liked cocking it more than firing almost! So awesome though!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dc5TASRcJrw
So that's it boys! Guns for teh wins!
It was awesome!
Talk soon,
Beardslinger out!
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