Of Keys And Things . . .

This really isn't a serious blog post so feel absolutely free to skip it. If anything, it probably just illustrates how I'm a complete psychopath and very little else.

I mentioned awhile back I think that I wear my keys on a chain around my neck. Mat, from England, thought that these were some weird religious thing, and that dude who robbed me tried to take them but didn't (well I assume he wanted the silver chain, not the keys). Anyway, a few weeks back some guy asked me what the story with the keys on the chain was, and I didn't know him and knew I'd never see him again - I was on a bus with him, only going a short distance - so I thought back to Mat and decided to lie for no apparent reason.

I told him they were religious symbols. I told him the three smaller keys were symbollic of the keys to Heaven, Hell and Earth and the large one was supposed to be the key to home. He thought this was very cool, but then, slowly, the whole thing started working in my mind and now I think that's a really cool idea too. I'm sure he also thought I was crazy, which I am, but for making that up, rather than believing it!

While we're on the subject, I said I'd tell you about something else in my last post. See these little things tied around my wrist? I've been wearing these since tubing in Vang Vienn. One of them is from Bucket Bat and the other is from Q-Bar. They entitle you to a free bucket in each of those bars. Anyway, anyone who goes tubing gets one of these and very so often ya meet people who are wearing them and thus, conversation is born. Conversation that generally starts, "Woohoo! TUBING!" but conversation none the less. I met one such fella while rafting the other day, he still had his on too. It's actually a great conversation starter and gets you on to other things too, like where you've been and where you're going. But it's funny just how many people recognise that little thing! Also, it has been remarked by several people that they are also the Irish colours (sans the white) and I've been asked if that's why I wear them. Answer, no, it isn't. Though I do have this . . .

I got it in Chiang Mai at the fight night way back when. This I do wear because I'm Irish. Also because the other thing I was wearing on my wrist fella apart on me after about two weeks and I needed something else.

So there you go, that's all the crap I wear and the interesting conversations it gets me into.

That's it folks, talk to ya soon,

Shane.

Rafting on the Tully 16-12-10

About ten years ago, I went rafting on this river and I loved it, and I've been dying to get back here ever since. I've already been in Thailand and in Bali, and despite nearly dying in Bali, I wasn't in the least bit put off. Nor was the 200 dollar price tag a deal breaker.

Unfortunately, it did price Fran and Jo (see Chiang Mai and Bali posts) out so they didn't go with me, which was a pity, but I still found a decent guest-appearance crew on the river. You can see them to the right there. I'll get to some introductions later on.

I had to be up at half 5 to get out and down the road for my bus, but thankfully was able to fall back asleep shortly there after for most of the two hour drive from Cairns to Tully, where the river is. Hilariously, the second song to come on my MP3 that worning was Swept Away, by Flyleaf . . . Auspicious!!!

Then we got some tea and coffee and some breakfast and while it was a little early, I had to force myself to eat because I've done this a few times and it can be pretty gruelling paddling in the sun for hours on an empty stomach.

Once we got to the river we were given our life jackets, helmets and were organised into groups. The ideal number of people on a raft is 6, plus the guide. Most people tend to come in groups of between four and two so it tends to work out pretty well. There's also ways a few threes and there's always a a couple of ones (like me) so with some mixing and matching everyone's happy.

I ended up, through absolutely no machinations on my part, on a raft with five girls (which is cool, but actually four girls and another guy would have been ideal - sometimes you don't want to feel like you're just the "guy"). There was the Twins, who were twins from Brisbane, Elaine and Amy whose name I also forget, from Melbourne, and Didi the Dutch damsel, who just so happens to be a 2004 Olympic Tae Kwon Do medalist. Macca was our guide.

Everyone was a bit shy at the start but after the first rapid, Alarm Clock, we were much more awake and attentive, because we were wet and scared and had just gone down a rapid, totally dependant on each other. Macca was great too. His plan of attack for most rapids was, "Just keep rowing forward!"

And as you can see here, that was more or less exactly what we did as we went down that first rapid. Row row row your boat, gently down the stream . . . or possibly, row row row your boat, or we'll all fuckin' die!

In fairness though, despite there being more water, bigger rocks and higher grade rapids, thise place was infintely safer than the Bali experience. Travelling in a group, each of the 8 rafts on the river would work as a team to ensure that everyone got down safely. This was particularly evident at one of the largest rapids, called Theatre. Here, we stopped to spot for the first few boats down. Meaning Macca parked us up at the bank and went down by land to the bottom of the rapid, waited with a rescue rope for the first two boats, who them took over while be came back up to us and brought us down.

This way, if anyone falls out of the boat, there's someone around to throw out a rope or do whatever might be necessary to get them out of trouble as quickly as possible. That's more or less what I needed when I was in Bali. The last thing you want is people floating down rapid on their own. However, thanks to Macca, we had no serious incidents and managed to get down Theatre fully intact! Look at us celebrating!

I can't remember the ins and outs of all the different rapids, but I'll give you a few highlights.

The next big one was the combo of Foreplay and Wet & Moisty. I fondly remember this particular rapid from the last time. This is where I fall out of the boat during Foreplay, got ground off some rocks by the raft and ended up going down Wet & Moisty on my own. Fun times!

This time it all went a bit better and while we all got thrown around a bit in the raft, no one went for a swim. We managed to get all the way down to the waterfall at the bottom called Orgasm (there's a theme here) where we were able to cool off from the hot sun!

After that we stopped for lunch, which by then we really desperately needed. I ate a burger and some sausage, though I'm pretty sure it wasn't a pork sausage. And I drank several dozen cups of water while I was at it. Also met a bloke who recognised me from my wrist bands but I'm going to tell that story seperately.

Double D Cup is pretty cool (and also kinda dangerous). It's not a big fall, but where the water hits the river it makes kind of a suction pool which if you get stuck in can spin you around for awhile and not let you up. This is actually where the rapid gets it's name . . . sort of . . .

Not long before I was here ten years ago there was a guide on the river for Raging Thunder, one of the companies that does the rafting course on the river, who was rather attractive and well endowed. Running this rapid as part of her normal day, the raft tipped and she got caught in the spin. Somehow, her life jacket came lose and was pulled off her, along with her top, so when she finally did come up, gasping for air, her clothes and life jacket were half-way down the river. After that the rapid was renamed in her honour.

Or so the story goes . . . it could be bullshit, but when I told it, Macca said that's what he'd heard, though he'd not been on the river back then.

It's not all plain sailing though. Sometimes things don't quite go according to plan. Sometimes, you look like this ->

I don't think this is a photo of the story I'm about to tell you, but it's fairly illustrative of the kind of thing I mean.

The plan was to go in at an angle so that when we hit the current at the bottom of the fall, the water would pull us left and away from a large rock. Instead, we went down straight and hit that rock head on, bounced off, spun round and went backwards down the river a bit. We call that Plan Z.

We stopped in a few places to swim round because it was so bloody warm that we were boiling inside our jackets and helmets, and we also stopped to jump off rocks and rather sheer sliff faces and I even lost my cheap 2 euro sun glasses because I forgot to take them off before I jumped off a particularly high rock. As soon as I hit the water they went swimming!

Eventually we got to the end and we dragged our boat up onto the shore and went off to change. Then we piled into the bus and headed back to Rafter's bar where we were to be sold much merchandise at extortionate prices!

By the way, this is the team, I meant to show you them before and I'm too lazy to scroll back up and insert this earlier on. Some things never change!

First there's Macca, our guide, twins 1 and 2 (Eyrn and Xanthia), Amy at the back and Elaine in front of her and then Didi behind me (that wasn't supposed to rhyme, it just happened that way).

Back at Rafter's we grabbed some drinks and I bought the DVD and CD of photographs from the day, which is where all of these came from. I was hoping to get some clips from the DVD up but the internet is so slow that it just isn't worth trying.

After rafters we packed back into a bus and spent another two hours getting home. By the time I got home it was after 7 and I was wrecked but feeling great.

That's something else knocked off the list! And a must do if you're ever here. Well worth the two hundred dollars.

Talk to you soon,

Shane.

We're off to see the Wizard, the wonderful wizard of Oz(tralia) . . .

6th - 10th December 2010


I suppose, if I'm going with that particular conceit, that makes my uncle Paddy the Wizard - though I suppose he is kinda Henry Gale-ish in some ways! (see what I did there? No? Don't worry about it!) He doesn't exactly own a balloon, but still.

Anyway, let's back up a little bit. I was just leaving Bali when last I wrote. Flight went without a hitch but when checking in my bags I was told I would need to pick them up again in Darwin at the baggage claim and then get them scanned and checked by quarantine and all that jazz. The Australians do not fuck around with that shit. Never, ever try and smuggle drugs into Australia boys and girls, because they will find them.

Got off the plane in Darwin and walked through to immigration. Went up to the nice, attractive lady and explained that I had lost my uncle's address in Cairns, but I could get it if I could get on the net. She said it was fine and just scribbled Cairns in the address box of my entry card, but then kindly informed me that I would need to follow her.

I was greeted by another, less attractive lady, and when I say greeted, I mean, by name. She had a sheet of questions with my name on it. It was all very informal and casual, but both of us knew one wrong answer and it was going to move from the hall into the nice little glass interview room beside us. Basically I think she was just making sure I wasn't sneaking into the country on a tourist visa with the intention of working. But they were on top of that! They were waiting for me, someone has probably known for a few months that I was coming in on that flight and I'd need to be interviewed.

After that I picked up my bag at the baggage claim and went through quarantine, which is a very serious business. Basically, you declare everything you've done for the last few weeks and everything you've got in your bag, and try not to forget like me. Way back in August or September my cousin Niamh gave me a little bag of stuff for my travels, a 50c coin a mint, an angel medal, that sorta stuff - one of the things though was a set of miniture chopsticks, made of wood. Now, I remembered I vaguely I had the bag, but it's in the end of my bag quietly keeping me safe so I don't really pay it much conscious thought. So when I was filling out the form I completely forgot about it.

While it was going through the scanner though, it popped up and set off an alarm. Next thing there's a lady asking me to open my bag and having me go through it, where upon I find and remember the little bag. And the lady is not one bit happy when she sees the two little chop sticks.

She actually told me, after she'd cleared them, to "be more careful next time, you could get in a lot of trouble." Well, it's grand, because my next flight is out of Australia and home, where we're pretty crazy and paraniod about what you can put in a bag, but not quite as much as these guys!

Then, it was back to the check in desk and then back through security again. But the part of the airport I got into was the domestic terminal, but my plane was a stop over from Singapore going on to Cairns, stopping in the international terminal. At three in the morning they don't have anyone working the international security though, so they send everyone into the domestic and then open a second security checkpoint through there into the international departures lounge.

I bought a cake and a coke and settled down for them to upon the through way at 5, but they actually opened it at half 4. I'd barely touched the coke, but I figured it'd be grand since I was in a secure part of the airport, having been through security already . . . right?

God no.

Then I was randomly selected to be padded down by a large, balding man who looked like he might eat boulders for dinner, but it was only minimally invasive so who cares? Well, some other dude did care. He got very irrate, and there was shouting, and then he nearly got arrested, but there you go, some people are just stupid. You can't argue with airport police - you just can't!

Though, I did hear this one story from a friend of mine about a girl in skin tight pants and a skin tight top who got padded down . . . and you really have to wonder about that don't you? I mean, seriously. Unless she had like a giant Gregory House dimple that she'd filled in with contraband (FYI - she didn't), which seems unlikely.

Once I finally got in, I saw my uncle Paddy sleeping on a couch, but since he was sleeping I decided not to go and wake him up straight away. I figured I'd let him have a little nap so I found a seat nearby until he was ready for me! 

This here is my uncle Paddy by the way, though when I found him he didn't have the glass of wine - or "plonk" if you're in Australia. Also, for your reference, an off-licence is a bottle shop, a "goon" is a carton of wine, rather than some villian's henchman, "hectic" means "some sort of crazy, possibly dangerous situation" and "cold" means "Oh, I think the temperature has tipped ever so slightly below 20 . . ." or the thing that beers are.

Paddy had his wife, Murni, and her daughter, Sari, with him, so I got to meet them for the first time ever. For those that don't know, they're Indonesian, from Balikpapan Murni's English is pretty good, but Sari's is really really good. Like I noticed with a lot of the Japanese I met a few months ago, she has a very American twange to her accent which was weird at first, until I thought about it for three or four seconds and realised that that makes perfect sense. American teachers, American music and TV and film are bound to have a massive impact and unlike in Ireland or many European countries, there isn't an English speaking population that has developed it's own "accent" yet, so inevitably the only way a person learns to speak English is with an American accent.

A short flight later and we were in Cairns, but it was grand for me and longer for them because I had already cleared immigration and quarantine and they hadn't. Apparently they're a lot stricter in Cairns too, so it's probably a good thing I'd already had my little incident with the chopsticks.

Then it was a simple case of finding Paddy's rental car - he hasn't been around a lot lately so he sold his old car a few years ago but he'll be getting a new one soon. It didn't really take too long, considering we had little more that "it says cruising on the back" to go on.

I've gotten fairly used to the heat over the last few months, but still, it was pretty warm to wandering around with my bag on my back looking for a rental car in a carpark full of rental cars . . .

Then we found and it and drove out to my uncle's house (see right), where I immediately through as much of my clothes as I could into the washing machine because, knowing that I was about to have free washing for awhile, I'd let my supply of clean clothes dwindle a little . . . a trip like this can make you pretty fucking cheap!!!

Got that done, started airing out the house, and then it was time to jump back in the car and head back to the airport to pick up my dad!

It's nice, by the way, to see familiar faces after all this time. Like, actual familiar faces. I may have mentioned this before but concepts of familiarity become rather warped while backbacking on your own. Someone you met yesterday is a friend, and someone you hung out in a different city, a week ago, is an old friend . . . seeing actual familiar faces was a real change. Good though!

We went to a huge bottle-shop on our way back and got some wine, a crate of beer and most importantly, some CIDER!!! Got some Bulmers, some Kopperberg and some other random kinds . . . yes, they had a selection! A SELECTION OF DIFFERENT VARIETIES OF CIDERS!!! I was excited, to say the least!

Then it was back for some lunch and some drinks and catching up and some more drinks. We cooked food on the barbecue - my first home cooked meal in months - for dinner! Mmmmmh! I ended up having a look at Paddy's internet and then setting the whole thing up. The modems and all were there so it didn't take too much effort. Apparently he'd scheduled some guy to come and set up that and the T-Box up the next day, and he was gonna pay this guy $150 to do it! People'll charge insane money for simple tasks! 

Then eventually there was sleeping, which was cool since I'd been awake for two days again . . . that keeps happening. It's not fun - though the Masters gave me a lot of experience dealing with it. 

Day two was a day of shopping and not much else, and I think I'll do a seperate post on shopping and stuff like that later in the week after I've done all my Christmas shopping so you can hang on for that! I bought myself Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep, though, which came out in Ireland two whole days after I left and I haven't been able to get my hands on it since! How fucking annoying is that? It would have been more use the last part of the journey, but there you go. I've some travelling coming up on the 2nd or 3rd of January so it'll be grand, I'll get stuck into it then.

We also bought two bikes in some place, one for Sari and one for whoever. And then, later that evening, I had the dubious pleasure of putting one of them together. I would have done both, but Sandra, Paddy's daughter and my cousin turned up with Glen (husband) and her two kids, Xander and Xavier, just as I was finishing the first, so I was able to stop instead! Course I had to finish it the next morning instead.

On Wednesday (day three) then, my uncle Fran arrived from Canada. We picked himself and my uncle's friend O'Brien up from the airport at about 4 and then headed back to the house, where there was more reunioning and more drinking! To the right is a picture of everyone. Bren (my dad, for those who are new), me (if you didn't know that, why the fuck are you reading this?), Sandra, my cousin, uncle Fran from Canada, and down in front pretending to be tiny, Paddy.

Funny thing I've noticed about Australia is that I find it impossible to sleep late. The sun comes up pretty early and it gets pretty warm and bright early, so by about 7 or 8 I'm normally awake, even if I lay in bed til about 9. Getting up some early then, you tend to be in bed a bit earlier than you would back home. Though, it gets dark at about 7 so you've normally had a fair bit of night by then anyway. It's a bit different to back home, where 9 is early, or even standard. Here, things that wouldn't open til maybe 11 are open at 9 and everything is closing up/closed by half-5 or six!

Eventually, Friday the 10th of December rolled around and it was time for the Wizard's 60th Birthday (remember who we started this calling him the Wizard? That's apparently not stopped yet). We left the house at about half-5 to be there for 6. It was in a local restaurant, Clifton Capers, and we had the whole inside booked. There were a few other groups seated outside, looking in, but meh, who cares about them?

I'm not even going to try and remember everyone who was there, but there were more familiar faces and even more Germans, because what part of my holiday would be complete without the persence of Germans. They're the new Irish, apparently!

There's Kevin and his wife Lyn, from England, who've moved over to Australia now, and their son Matt, their daughter who's name I've forgotten and her husband Scotty. There was Holmer (Paul Holmes) and Colleen his wife and Dylan/Dillon, who I met a few years ago. That mega-drive I have, and the games from it, I bought off Dylan a few years ago actually. For like a tenner. Fucking steal that was! Haha! Wins! Trevor and his wife Tess, who's house I was in last time I was hear, and Bill and loads of other people and I've just decided I'm giving up naming them because none of us really care who was there that much, do we.

As for the Germans, well the head chef and co-owner was a German and one of the bar staff.

Gibb, a guy my uncle knows from Scotland played the music, mostly old ballads/drinking songs, a surprising amount of which I actually knew, which was good. My uncle Fran, who does what Gibb does, but in Australia rather than Canada, played a few songs too, and even played Whiskey, which was awesome, though he plays the old Luke Kelly version, not the one that Thin Lizzy did.

Two funny stories about this song, that you may not know. I heard the first one from a girl I used to go out with, whose brother was there. Way back when, the first time Metallica ever played in Ireland, they seem to have forgotten that they had done a really awesome cover of Whiskey, and thus never rehearsed it at all, or even remembered how to go about playing it. Then the crowd started chanting for "Whiskey" and they couldn't play it, and basically the last half hour of the gig was the crowd screaming abuse and "whiskey" at the band, and the band trying to play other songs. Now, every time they come they play Whiskey as their third or fourth song.

The other story also happened a long time ago in the distant past of like 2008 (?) when we were in Nordweig for the first time and Charlie and Jonathan were just getting it on. Or possibly it was the second time we were there. But I'm pretty sure it was the first time. We asked Charlie to play Whiskey and she gave us a roasting because every crowd of Irish that wandered into the place ended up asking for Whiskey to be played! Because we are that predictable!

Back to the party anyway. There were people, and there was food, lots of it, brought out on plates by a succession of girls who also brought beer! Yay for the girls with the food and the beer, it's a regular Valhalla! All of this food eventually culminated in a large and delicious cake, which looked a little something like this.

Or rather, exactly like this - since it's a photograph, not a painting. 

Everything wound up around 11 because in Australia that's about one in the morning and the guys working there really wanted to get home! Trevor's wife gave us a lift home because she wasn't drinking, which was cool considering I'd gotten lost the day before walking from there home and a ten minute walk turned into a forty-five minute wander as it slowly got darker and darker! I've gotten better by now though!

So we got back and eventually stumbled and clambered back into bed! And that's another thing ticked off the list! List, you say? Yeah . . . there was a list once upon a time!

Visit Sinead in Japan, get bamboo tattoo, have fun, other stuff, get to Australia for uncle's birthday, go rafting (spoiler - have done now), get home!

The list is more or less done (which is scary). Actually, I call that a list, really it was a plan, a very limited, undetailed plan, but still, a plan!

So this blog is more or less done, but before I do I'll provide a few photos of the locality, just so you can think of me as you wade through acres of snow, to get to your job that you hate . . . Sorry, stopping now!

The first time I came down to the beach there was a girl sitting just off the main path, in the world's most summer-y dress ever, a dress so summer-y it makes all of Sarah Lonsdale's dresses look like some kinda winter dresses, eating a coconut that was clearly from a nearby tree, and I thought to myself, yeah, that's more or less what I was expecting! It's a pity I couldn't take a picture of her, because there wouldn't be a better advertisement for coming out here than that photo - but for some reason pretty girls generally find it a bit weird and disturbing when you randomly start snapping pictures of them . . . For whatever reason!

It's a nice beach though, and it doesn't seem to mind me taking pictures, so that's good, right? Can't really swim off here at the moment though, because the box jelly fish are in, but there's swimming nets about ten minutes walk down the beach either way. You really don't wanna fuck around with box jelly fish. Sometimes there's string-rays and crocs too, so really, swim in the nets, or in your pool. Because everyone has a pool.

Time to finish up this one I think, hope you've enjoyed my first few days in Cairns - I certainly have! :-p

Talk to ya soon,

Shane.

The Hard Goodbye . . .

Or The End of The Middle And The Beginning of The End . . .

As this goes live, I will be heading for Bali airport, and then on to Darwin and then on to Cairns. When I started this particular adventure, I divided it into three parts. Japan, with Neena and Sinead (see right). Then South East Asia, comprising of Hong Kong, Thailand, Cambodia and Bali. This part I knew I would be doing alone, although that isn't really how it all worked out. It was, in my mind before I left, and in reality, the truly adventurous part of my travels. And then finally, there is Australia, where I will see my dad, my uncle Paddy and my uncle Fran, so at the least it will be filled with familiar faces. It's also a western country and should be filled, at least theoretically, with familiar things. Thus, while it will still be an adventure, it is not quite the same undertaking as Asia. This, I hope should explain my second title up there, and while I still have a ways to travel, the end of this is slowly rolling forth, and if this seemed a long way off when I first left, it now seems increasingly close.

And as I say goodbye to Asia, I want to say some thank-yous as well. Not least, I should be thanking Neena and Sinead, and I do, but more than them I want to thank the unfamiliar faces I've met along the way. Hopefully this is not a goodbye, and I will see many of you again, if I don't see all of you!

To start then, there is the Kyoto Crew, a mad bunch of messers who I hope are still loving their time away. Thank you for taking us into your fold, even if it was only for the briefest of days. You guys were great and I really loved that weekend . . . knacker-drinking by the river.

Next up, there was Mat and Dave in Bangkok, who were great drinking buddies and I'm glad ye followed me to Chiang Mai, hope to see you guys in Sydney. At the time, I really needed some company and I probably owe ye one for that!

Then there's Team Spicy, and probably too many to name you all. Actually, there's a few Team Spicys since I spent so long there. First up there's the crew from the night of the big party!

I can't remember everyone's name, but that's okay, because if I don't remember, then that's saying something in and off itself. Marc Taylor, for being awesome despite being sick. Kenny, for just being hilarious. Mat and Dave for being in Spicy after Bangkok. Kevin, for not being dead despite all my fears.

Special mention has to go to Josefin and Anna, who I just keep on running into, because you guys are really cool and I'm so very glad I met you and that I saw you again in Pai. That started the whole ball rolling I think. Siem Reap and Full Moon followed, but Spicy you shall remain, and if I don't catch ye in Sydney, I really hope to see you in Dublin for Shane's Grand Tour - and we'll head Galway too see gay Ryan. My word of honour.

Then there's Fran and Jo-Anne, who I saw so briefly at Full Moon, and then ran into in Bali - glad to have met you and I will definitely be seeing you guys in Cairns, but please, no more early wake-ups! Another two people I hope to see in Dublin - I really better start brushing up on my tourist crap! I'm afraid I don't have a good picture of you guys so you'll have to do without! Don't think me rude!

In Pai then, there was Steffan and there he met James, who we all met on the Slow Boat to Luang Prabang. Glad I met you guys, and I'm glad your Gibbon all worked out. Maybe I'll see you in Amsterdam Steffan. Thanks for teaching me how to ride a bike and thank fucking God I didn't manage to kill myself!

Back in Chiang Mai there was Matt and Chris and Duncan, my second Team Spicy and my Laos travelling buddies, my Tubers, if you will. It was great to meet you guys and I'm really glad I went back to Chiang Mai when I did and that I waited to get the boat with you guys. 

Then, the fathers and mother of Team Spicy - Noom, Lpong and Sow. Seriously, you guys rock and I think my trip would have been a lesser thing had I not stayed at Spicy. I have sent people your way, and I intend to keep on sending them until I run out of people! I hope I get back to you one day!

In Laos, there were some awesome people, and we made a new little Spicy Family for a day or too, and it was good to meet you all. Especially all of you people in this picture.  



Then there was Cork and Bekaa, who were good enough to put up with me until we hit Vientiane, and then to ask me out again on Koh Phangan, even if I did get robbed that night!

Also, gotta say hello to the Irish girls I met in Vang Vienn. Especially Laura Creegan's sister Amy . . . because it wouldn't do not to meet someone you're vaguely connected too anyway.

To the Maltese boys, funny fuckers that ye are, glad to have met you! Glad to have lost to ye at bowling as well!

Then there was Hannah who I met on the bus. And then Domnic from Donegal, and then the crowd of Limerick girls. Certainly made for an interesting night in Siem Reap.

Finally, there's my Munchies Crew, the Scots boys, and Simon and Woody and Hannah and Kiah and all the rest, and thanks to Andy and Kay for running the show and making it such a great place to stay! Was so very worth it, even if I didn't win anything for drinking two beers out of an old shoe.

And last but not least, to Larros, for the entertainment value, you were priceless, but still I wish I hadn't met you. There's always bloody one. Still, I hope you aren't dead, but by rights you probably should be.

So thanks to everyone who has made my adventure so far such a pleasant and amazing experience. I really hope to catch up with many of you again and I really really hope that if you ever make it to Dublin I'll be able to extend a very warm welcome to you, and repay some of the fun that I've had. This adventure of mine would have been little or nothing without you all.

Go Raibh Maith Agaibh! (That means "thank ye" since I've been learning to say it in other languages, I might as well try and educate the rest of ye!)

Know that I will miss your company as I go along the rest of this way, and it will be lessened for each of you that I do not see again!

And to Asia in general, goodbye - it's a hard goodbye, and I will remember you fondly, despite tuk-tuk drivers and dodgy roads and 40 hour trips from place to place. I came looking for an adventure and I found better than I hoped.

Australia, you have a lot to live up to!

Shane.

Bali - We're not in Thailand anymore, Toto!

24th November - 5th December

So, as you might imagine, if you read my last blog, I was fairly tired when I arrived in Bali. I was only supposed to stay one night in the first hotel, but the next morning I woke up about five minutes before check-out so I decided to stay an extra day. A day I spent mostly in the pool and with my books and music blaring loudly through my headphones!

I stayed in the Ari Putri hotel and it's an awesome place. Though anywhere half-nice in Bali is *really* nice, and I have stayed in some lovely hotels in my time on this fair earth!

The day after that I headed out to Kuta beach, which I had already been warned was not that nice and that I probably wouldn't like it. Well, those people who warned me - dead right.

If I ever do become a super-famous novelist, and then ever set a book in Bali, this is a quote I want to remember - "If God made Bali, the Devil shit out Kuta."

Actually, it isn't that bad. It's just that I've been travelling in some lovely places, a lot of them rustic, or simple, or at least not super-commercialised. Kuta is like the antithesis of everything I have been loving about this trip. It's just full of Australians, mostly young and mostly pissed, on a week or two week holiday. It's basically like some of the Spanish islands, or Crete maybe. I'll put it to you this way, imagine you're on holiday somewhere and the people in the room beside you are a group on their Leaving Cert holiday . . . no imagine you're the only person in the entire area not on a Leaving Cert holiday. It's basically like that. It's okay, but it's not what I can away for you know?

And as for accommodation, well in Kuta it's either very nice and very expensive, or it's very cheap and very shit. So after one night in a very shit place I decided I'd speed up my plans and headed out to Ubud a little early.

I'm glad I did. It still wasn't that cheap, but God was it nice! Check this place out! It's basically built around a bunch of working rice paddies and it just looks amazing. If you look to the right there, I lived on the top floor of the second building!









As you can see, gorgeous scenery all round, flowers and statues everywhere. You could "sight-see" just walking around the hotel grounds!

The staff were so lovely as well. They were friendly, but not in the sort of annoyingly sycophantic way you sometimes get in Bali/SE Asia where you're sometimes left wondering if the only reason someone is being nice is because they walk a big tip. One of the days it started raining at about 1 and it didn't stop til 6, and I was basically in the hotel restaurant the entire afternoon because I couldn't get wifi anywhere else. Can't get it in the rooms, which is fine because you can get it by the pool and more or less everywhere else, but because of the rain, couldn't sit by the pool. Anyway, was just downloading stuff and writing up some of that last blog and chatting to the attractive (married) girl there and she didn't seem to mind that I wasn't buying anything and was clearly just using all the bandwidth because some American dude complained his was going really slow . . . I said nothing!

And on the good days, I could sit by the pool and just let the stuff download in peace while I swam and read Lord of the Rings, which I have been demolishing at a ridiculous pace. If I'm not careful, I'll have read the whole thing in two weeks!

Haha, loving it!

This, by the way, is the pool! The awesome, awesome pool, which I think I saw more of than anywhere else in the whole of Ubud! There's (what I presume is) a kid's area at the front there, and then the deeper pool as you go back. Nice and cold too, when you're basically melting away in the sun. I'll be a nice shade of black by the time I get home if this keeps up.

I sat in that third chair . . . nah, I'm kidding, I sat somewhere different all the time. I'm not that much of a psycho . . .

The second day I went out white water rafting, got picked up at about 9, which was far too early, so I mostly slept the entire way to the rafting spot. What can I say, I dislike mornings, also, I think I might still be on Thailand time, or possibly some other strange unreal time.

The rafting was cool but the equipment was a bit shit and I'm not sure my guide was all that good, we got stuck a few too many times along the way, going down the wrong way past a cluster of rocks or whatever.

And then there was the tipping out! We hit this one rapid and me and a guy from Singapore went out the side, not really much choice, we just went. Now, I was holding on, but while they were getting him back in the raft was still moving and when we hit the next rapid my grip went and I got ripped away from the boat and taken down the river. It was probably only three or four minutes, but three or four minutes is a long time on a river like that. Most of the time it was okay, I can swim, I was in a life jacket and I was able to cheap fairly afloat, but in a few spots, where the rocks were higher I was getting beaten left right and centre and pulled under quite frequently so I actually did get a little worried in places. Not that I panicked or anything, but there was definitely a moment where I was forced to think, "Jesus, this would be a really shit way to die."

Eventually I washed out into a deeper part of the river and that was better. I was able to get my feet down, grab a rock and just hold on until a raft turned up. This wasn't my raft, but they still pulled me on board and we went down one more rapid, me dangling out of the back, before my own crew caught up and took me back aboard.

I'm not gonna lie, when we stopped for our break about ten minutes later, my hand was shaking like nothing else. That'd be the adrenaline, rather than anything else by the way! Nah, at least some of it was fear.

Still I loved it, I just wish I had a video of the whole thing! That'd make an awesome post! Ah well, maybe when we go in Australia.

So got back to Ubud around four and swam in the pool, showered and stuff and then found I couldn't actually sit down because my legs and backside where bruised to bits! Damn rocks! Why couldn't you be more soft and caring???

But anyway, em, what else did I do in Ubud? Not really a whole hell of a lot! I did some shopping. And I went to the Monkey Forest. This is a nature reserve in Ubud, which also houses an old temple complex. It's basically what it sounds like, a forest full of monkeys. It was pretty cool though. Monkeys are funny, and cheeky little fuckers too!

There are signs everywhere warning you about these monkeys, telling you not to provoke them and to only feed them in the presence of wardens because they can be quite unruly. I saw one jump up on a guy's leg and pull a bottle of water from his pocket, then run down the path with the bottle of water. It then opened said bottle, tipped it upside down until it was empty and tried to drink from it afterwards . . . stupid monkey.

I saw one try to nick a girls backpack too, but a warden rushed over and scared it off! Brilliant.

There was another Aussie girl who was just saying, "Oh God, oh God, this is hectic," over and over as she legged it for the exit! Very funny. Dunno why, but they didn't seem to bothered about picking on me. Maybe I look mean or something!

As I mentioned (I think) there was also a temple complex in here, and one of these temples has a small graveyard for the monkeys attached to it! The little graves you see there - I'm 90% sure - are all for monkeys!

The temples themselves were pretty nice, though they're all closed to the public and you can only see them from the outside. They're open air temples though so you can get a pretty good view of them. They seem to be mostly Hindu orientated, which makes sense since most of Bali's population is Hindu, with a significant Muslim population. This makes a bit of a change from where I've been before - Thailand, Laos and Cambodia are mostly Buddhist countries.

One of the really cool things about this whole place - and much of Bali in general - is the stone carvings everywhere. There's a selection of them as you scroll down. You'll find these everywhere in Ubd and Bali. In fact, as you drive from place to place, many of the villages seem to deal prodominately in the production of large scale sculptures of fantastic quality. This is the kinda stuff I reckon places in the West pay millions for. Some of them were really fantastic.

There's some I particularly liked, though I have no pictures, made from black stone left over from various volcano eruptions on the island. These are really cool looking.

This fella at the end is one of my favourites. There's also loads from the hotel put I figure you're probably going to get sick of looking at these so I'll just put them all up on Facebook and you can scroll through them at your leisure? Fair plan?

So what else did I do in Ubud . . . well nothing really springs to mind actually, which probably sounds a bit boring but other than the day of rain it was actually quite pleasant. In some sense it's nice to be chilling out and on my own after a couple of hectic months. Hostels are great but it's been really nice to have a private room for the last while. You don't need to worry about needing to piss in the middle of the night, or about needing to get something out of your bag when everyone else is asleep and you can read with the lights on instead of with a booklight! It's quite amazing!

So then after Ubud I had to head back to Kuta, but only for a day while I found somewhere to get a leather jacket, which was actually easily accomplished. Went in the afternoon and had it the next day. It helped that there was one more or less my size ready made that could be taken in quite easily, though I must have looked at about 15 different designs. This one is quite sober actually. It kinda looks like a grown-ups jacket . . . God, what have I become. I may have to festoon it with badges, though I'd rather not. It's a bit new to start poking things in it just yet!

Finished in Kuta, I didn't really want to spend any longer there than I had to so headed back to the Ari Putri hotel where I started in Bali - letting things come full circle if you will!

Dumped my stuff in my room and threw on my swimming stuff and headed straight for the pool, but as I was walking to it, I saw this familiar shape, and for a second I was like, nah, can't be, but then I realised, yup, that's Fran . . .

Fran is from Reading and if you glance back at the Chiang Mai post this is the same drunk lady who woke me up with a torch in the face to tell me she really enjoyed her trekking. Jo-Anne is here too, just finishing off a PADI dive course! Small world though, eh?

Actually, funny story, when I was leaving Kuta the hotel guy was like, "Awh, why are you leaving?" and rather than be honest and say, "Coz Kuta is a shit hole and I hate it, I went with, "I'm going to stay with some friends." I thought I was lying, but I guess someone out there has my back after all!

So just hung out by the pool all day and then later that night we went and got some food down the road. There was a fairly terrible live band planning old 80s and 90s music, including a full cover of Sweet Child of Mine which I'll be honest, nearly killed me.

Afterwards we headed back to the hotel pool and despite the fact that it was dark, and late, and we'd already have a few drinks, they proceeded to provide us with more alcohol, while in the pool. In Bali, the worlds "health" and "safety" have yet to be strung together you see. Anything goes!

For some reason I didn't sleep well that night. Went to bed at one, woke up at four, eventually fell back asleep, woke up at 6, then 7, and then 9. Read for a bit and then eventually wandered down to the pool for more sitting around doing f-all on my last full day in Bali!

I could tell you about the day . . . but really it went pool, book, pool, lunch, pool, book, pool, book, etc . . .

So unless you want me to tell you about Lord of The Rings and what that scamp Frodo was a-doing, we'll just assume it was a pleasant day.

Me and the girls went for dinner in the Cat & Fiddle Irish bar and while it wasn't in the least bit Irish the had a half decent live band and they had CIDER!!! It was Bali cider, but it was good! And way too easy to drink!

And then when we'd had some drink and some food and were sated we headed back to the hostel. Fran has an obsession with the Rattlin' Bog so I brought my copy of the Feckin' Book of Everything Irish down to their room so she could copy the lyrics while we played a few games of shit head. We also read through the "phrases" section while playing and eventually it turned into a game of how many of these does Shane know. Most as it turns out.

Some of the favourites from the night were:

"Did you get your gee."

"I'd ate the tyres of the ruck that brought her knickers to the launderette."

"She's bet down with a shovel."

I won most of the games of Shithead, but pivotally, lost the final game! Doesn't really matter who wins shithead, you see. It only matters who loses!

So that's Bali my friends . . . I'm all set to leave now and head for Australia . . . Scary!

Talk to you soon,

Shane.