Tales From a Female Traveller

Farewell Kelly the Kia

Let us all bow our heads for a moment's silence to mark the passing of my trusty automobile, Kelly the Kia. She was blue, she was fast and she was my first car... oh how we'll miss you Kelly Kia... and Kenny Kia will now be lonely without you. Things will never be the same.

posted by Lucyspeak @ 9:23 pm 2 comments

How many people can you pack into a photo booth?

http://au.blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-a6zLd1M9bqXYFufi8VqDDClTLg--?cq=1


"Hello. Where are you from?"
"Australia?"
"MELBOURNE!!??"
"No, Sydney."
"Oh. Well I like Melbourne more."
"Yeah, so do I!"

This is a typical conversation I've had after meeting quite a few people in different countries. I love this response because even though Sydney is home I do really like Melbourne and this answer just confuses the hell out of people and gives me a good old laugh at their expense.

Anyhoo.. the answer to the Title's question is 4. Me and 3 friends crammed ourselves into a black and white photo booth on Chapel Street in Melbourne when I visited in August to photograph a wedding. Between going from Thailand to Dubai I flew back through Sydney to Melbourne. After the wedding B, me and a couple of old friends from highschool decided that we would have a night out on Chapel street, so Kate and Nicole met B and I at the Yarra train station and we all headed out for dinner at a fancy Italian restaraunt.

I was surprised by the weather in Melbourne as it didn't seem to be as cold as I had expected. Although the previous night B and I took a bus/train trip to a big shopping centre and I was so cold I had a zip jumper, my green jacket and B's huge coat on and I was still cold, but once the rain stopped and the sun came out it was actually quite pleasant and the wedding went over smashingly. Kelly looked so beautiful and Cliff looked just as handsome in his Tailcoat suit.

So that night, after years of not seeing each other, was catch up night, and it was almost as if no time had passed at all. We chatted constantly and laughed like old times so when we were walking down Chapel Street and saw the black and white photo booth (and after some wine with dinner) we all decided that we would have our picture taken together... so... in we cram, with B going first and me, Nicole and Kate heading in afterwards. It was a tight fit but we managed pretty well. When we all got out... or rather... fell out of the booth... and looked at the photo, it had turned out so well that we just had to have a strip each. So.. 3 more times, we packed ourselves in, rearranging every now and then to make sure everyone got prime position in front of the camera.

We had been taking such a long time at the booth and had been laughing so hard at the results when a crowd started to gather. First up was a lovely gay couple we all teased like school kids as the made out in the booth and next up was a bunch of local guys who I ended up having a "longest hair competition" with... I won of course...

After we had all gotten over the laughter at all the photos and chatted with the local guys a little we decided to head to a local bar where I refused to drink the stale wine they served me and it was getting on a bit in the evening so we decided to call it a night and go and get some sleep since we were all exhausted from the wedding.

As we walked along the street we took photos of anything and everything, including a guide on how to cross the road, the window display of a store that was showcasing a massive handbag and we also had our picture taken with a busker who I'm quite sure was certafiably insane... but nonetheless funny as he chased after someone across the street suddenly...

The next day B and I went into the city and took a ride on a carriage and found a fantastic vintage store an had an all around great time. I really liked Melbourne and once I'm done with the world (which will probably be never) I will go back there for more than just a few days.

posted by Lucyspeak @ 7:40 pm 1 comments

“Welcome to Alaska” - Arriving in Cairo – FINALLY

http://au.blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-a6zLd1M9bqXYFufi8VqDDClTLg--;_ylt=Aod2DTfsbqXXyeUpdDVPnbLUdeJ3?cq=1

My time in Dubai was almost overshadowed by my excitement about getting to Egypt that when I finally got on the plane I just crashed out from all the pent up exhaustion. The flight was okay and I made sure I was awake to see the plane fly over the Suez Canal and the Red Sea and it seemed to take FOREVER for the plane to make its descent into Cairo. When it eventually landed I was so full of emotion that I was torn between bouncing in my seat with excitement and bursting into tears of joy like brides do at weddings. I just couldn’t believe I was finally in Egypt and I had worked so hard for so long that it almost seemed like I was in a dream. It sure was a dream coming true and the only thing that sucked that was I had no-one with me to share my childlike excitement with. I know that a lot of you, especially B and Jess would have given their right arms to be there and as the plane taxied along the barren looking runway of one of the ugliest airports I’ve ever seen, I thought of my friends and how I missed them and wished that they were seeing this crap airport and feeling the same emotions I was. To me, it didn’t matter that the airport was as shitty as an abandoned military base after being shelled, or that it was swelteringly hot, or that it was the most confusing experience of getting a visa… all I cared about was the fact that I was actually IN Egypt, a place I have been fascinated with nearly all my life.

When I was younger I used to have this rubber mummy toy that I got as part of a Halloween toy package. I fashioned a Tutankhamun Sarcaughagus out of scrap cardboard and re-created King Tut’s death mask of plastic and copied the Egyptian designs with permanent marker from pictures I had in my set of Encyclopaedias. I’m quite sure my Nan still has that little coffin with the rubber mummy somewhere. I loved movies like Cleopatra and The Mummy (the originals) and even the old black and white Tarzans and I would read stories about Akhenaten changing Egyptian history through a book (by Cyril Aldred) my wonderful but late Pop once gave me. I actually still have that book displayed on one of my many bookshelves at home along with a now more massive collection of ancient history texts and novels and it stands as one of the first things that introduced me to my love of history. So I just could not believe I was touching down on Egyptian soil. To finally see, after all this time, everything I’d read about, all the things I’d learnt and seen while doing my degree, is simply an experience no words will do justice in describing.

Even getting the visa was an exciting process and it’s probably the one page in my passport that I am most proud of. I disembarked from the plane with my spirits high and my anticipation even higher and when I reached customs there were so many people lined up to get through that I knew it was going to take an age. So I decided to take my time and try and soak up my surroundings for a while. All this and I wasn’t even out of the airport yet!! I actually got a little confused and just decided to join a line and wait my turn and I hadn’t read anything about visas in the Travel Bible because I was too exhilarated when the plane flew in that I completely forgot I even had it with me. So I had no idea about how to apply for the visa, all I knew was that it was a visa upon arrival. As I was standing in line I heard a couple talking and realised they were Australian and when I turned around they were just behind me in the line.
“Are you as confused as I am??” I ask them jokingly, to which they laughed and said in unison “Totally confused!!” It turns out that to apply for an Egyptian Visa you arrive at the airport and turn up to one of the travel desks, say a Thomas Cook, and tell them you want a visa. They then take your money and hand you two postage stamps. In all the thrill that was going on I just said “THANKS!!” with a stupid big grin on my face and raced from the Thomas Cook counter to re-join the customs line and it wasn’t until the long pause of the line forced me to look at what had been stuck on the page in my passport did I realise I had been given postage stamps. For about 3 seconds panic rushed through my body and my heart stopped. Had I just been ripped off and bought postage stamps and been stupid enough to believe that it was a visa? No… turns out that it’s actually THE coolest visa on earth and the stamps are actually quintessentially Egyptian. So once I realised what was going on, my heart resumed its fast paced excited beat and the huge smile happily returned to my face.

After I made it through customs unscathed I burst out of the airport doors into the second most shocking heat I had ever felt (the first most shocking being the heat in Dubai). I paused in the shade of the entrance to arrivals looking out at the billboards with pictures of King Tut and Queen Nefertiti and taking in the smell of Cairo and was so busy relishing in my moment that I barely noticed or heard the small Egyptian man offering to give me help. “You need help?” he says enthusiastically to me. “No thanks.” I say back to him and immediately switched on my internal rip off radar. Unlike the visa, I knew it was going to cost 60 Egyptian Pounds to get from the airport to Downtown Cairo and not a penny more. Anything under 60 was a bargain, so when he offered me a cab for that exact amount I took him up on his offer and he swiftly took the cart that was holding my bags and races off towards the lift down to the parking area. I actually had to run to keep up with this little guy… his legs were short but boy could he move! He was quite accommodating too and was full of useful information, turns out that he was actually an official tour guide working a second job as an information officer at the airport so I was just lucky he approached me because cab rip offs in Cairo happen every second. Even my cab driver was amazing and as he drove me at incredible spend out of the airport security check and through the streets of Cairo towards Downtown he pointed out every single significant monument, building, area, person or crack in the wall along the way and even had an interesting story or historical fact to go with it.

When we arrived in Downtown the traffic was horrendous and I was at that point thankful that the price of my cab was fixed rather than metered because it took quite a while to get through. I originally had picked out the Lialy Hostel from the Travel Bible to stay at and when I arrived and hauled myself up the stairs to the second floor I was told that they were full. I was preparing for a situation like what would have happened in Thailand where they could care less about getting you a room that when I asked if they could recommend somewhere else I was taken aback when he not only recommended The Rameses II/King Tut Hostel on the main backpacker strip of Talat Harb, but also sent his porter to take my pack and guide me personally to the hostel. Talk about service!!
So off we both trudged off to the Rameses II. We stepped out into Talat Harb and the chaos that I witnessed was just amazing, there were so many cars and people. Cairo is unlike any city I’ve ever been in, not only are the cars gridlocked and blasting their horns at every interval, but the people on the sidewalks are also gridlocked and I get the distinct impression that if the people in Cairo had in-built car horns, then they too would be blasting them and joining the great Cairo Car Horn Orchestra.

I had to actually keep a slight half run going to keep up with the porter who had raced off down the street as I was ogling at the scene on Talat Harb, but if I stopped for just a second I would lose sight of him and have to jump up to try and catch a glimpse of where the heck he’d gone because he wasn’t looking back to make sure I was following, he just charged his way through the crowd and crisscrossed his was through the traffic. I soon learnt that this is the ONLY way to get anywhere on foot in Cairo. Head down, hands on bags and charge ahead. Most of the time walking on the road is a better option that the sidewalk because there are so many people that to get anywhere you have to slow to the most frustrating pace. We’re talking slower than the tortoise in Aesop’s fable about the Tortoise and the Hare…. thus the road is a better option, plus all the cars are stopped in traffic anyway so there’s little danger of much happening and even when the traffic gets going, navigating your way across the road is easier than crossing the road in Bangkok, but just as hectic. People simply either go around you or slow down to let you across, even if you’re not on a pedestrian crossing.

When we arrived at the Ramses II I was so thankful that I had a room to myself with a private bathroom and a tv and I just crashed out for a while. Afterwhich I just roamed the streets of Downtown Cairo for a while and ran into a guy who wanted to show me the market. He seemed nice but my instincts were telling me otherwise and I found a way to ditch him. I really just wanted to walk around and navigate by msyelf and when you're following someone you can't do this. So he insisted he walk back with me..(I lied about which hotel I was in and he wrote down his address in Arabic which I said I would get translated and meet him at 7.. yeah right). So my first few hours in Cairo were quite good... Egypt... Bring It On!

posted by Lucyspeak @ 6:43 pm 0 comments

This is me at my Grad from Sydney Uni... I actually just posted this to see if it would work.. so here goes...

posted by Lucyspeak @ 6:37 pm 0 comments

Camels at the Pyramids of Giza

Remember folks, that the link at the top of the blog takes you to the photos that correspond to it.

http://au.blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-a6zLd1M9bqXYFufi8VqDDClTLg--;_ylt=AvyhoQLzZW7tkrGwG2hV7cXUdeJ3?cq=1

Foreword: Taken directly from Amelia Edwards’ classic travel memoirs ‘A Thousand Miles Up the Nile” I shall introduce this blog instalment with a rather amusing excerpt from her ‘Assuan to Elephantine’ chapter. Here Amelia professes her outstanding dislike for the camel, which just so happens to coincides with my lovely camel ride around the Pyramids of Giza.

“… Taken from this honest calling (transporting cargo) to perform in an absurd little drama got up especially for the entertainment of tourists, it is no wonder if the beasts are more than commonly ill-tempered. They know the whole proceeding (of hauling around tourists) to be essentially cockney and they resent it accordingly… The camel has its virtues so much at least must be admitted; but they do not lie upon the surface. My Buffon tells me, for instance, that he (the camel) carries a fresh water cistern in his stomach; which is meritorious. But the cistern ameliorates neither his gait nor his temper, which are abominable. Irreproachable as beasts of burden, he is open to many objections as a steed. It is unpleasant, in the first place, to ride an animal which not only objects to being ridden, but cherishes a strong personal antipathy to his rider. Such however, is his amiable peculiarity. You know that he hates you; from the moment you first walk round him, wondering where and how to begin the ascent of his hump. He does not, in fact, hesitate to tell you so in the roundest terms. He swears freely while you are taking your seat; snarls if you but move in the saddle; and stares you angrily in the face if you attempt to turn his head in any direction save that which he himself prefers. Should you preserve, he tires to bite your feet. If biting you feet does not answer, he lies down….”

On my third day in Cairo I decided to do a tour of all the Pyramids from Dashur to Giza (including Memphis and Saqqara where the great Step Pyramid of Djoser stands, all in chronological order). The day had been going really great and I had managed to thwart all attempts by so called “Tourist Police” offering me rides on camel back around the sites. I had made it all the way through and even shot off a few frames of an Arab letting his festy camel “kiss” him without giving any Baksheesh (tips) to anyone and it was getting on in the day, so I pretty much had to rush my way through most of the older pyramids in order to get to Giza before it closed. Giza was supposed to have been included in my little day trip package, meaning I was supposed to actually enter the Giza grounds and wonder at the Sphinx for the first time in real life, except that’s not exactly how it happened. You see, an old friend of mine had specifically warned me AGAINST accepting any camel rides into the desert, and instances of assault have been known to happen, so with this in mind as my driver takes me to the back of the Giza Pyramids where the stables are situated I told myself that I would just refuse to get out and that would be it, I would be taken to the main entrance gate.

Of course though, this did not happen. We pulled up and I politely abstained from exiting the car explaining that I didn’t want to ride a camel at all.
“No no, cheap price.” My driver says.
“I really don’t want to, but thanks anyway.” I respond.
At that point, an older man approaches my window, sticks his head inside the 3 inches it was cracked and yells in my face “CHEAP PRICE, CAMEL ROUND PYRAMID, ALL ENTRANCE, 120 POUNDS!”
As you can imagine this took me by surprise so I say “No thank you.” and ask my driver if we could please go to the main entrance now.
“No no.” he says “Tourist entrance no good, this better price, all entrance fee included, to much at tourist gate, you believe me.”
I was getting a little frustrated at this point and the horrible little man outside my window was still yelling at me and that’s when I realised that this was where my driver was to get his commission for the day and that he wasn’t leaving any time soon, at least not until I accepted a camel or horse ride. No amount of protesting on my behalf did any good and in the end the little man was yelling at me so much that I could see the veins in his neck bulging due to the anger that was dwelling up at my refusal to get out of the car. But I really did not want to get on any camel, I really don’t like camels all that much. They’re okay to look at and they make great photos but I really don’t like riding them. I had ridden a camel once before and remember distinctly hating it that much that I swore I would never get on another one. So when I found myself in the most ghetto part of Giza with two not so trustworthy Egyptian men yelling at me to get on one, I thought it best to comply for fear of being taken prisoner until I yielded. Besides, how long could it take and how bad could it possibly be?

So… out of the car I reluctantly exit and straight away my bags are snatched from me and I’m hoisted onto this diseased looking creature that the stable boy had retrieved 20 minutes ago and stood there intimidatingly waiting for me to relent. In went the tripod to the saddle bag, on went my backpack to the back of the saddle, up got the camel in the most violent way possible, on hopped my adolescent “guide” and off we all strolled AWAY from the pyramids. Now just to get an idea of what it’s like to be on a camel as it gets up, I shall insert another paragraph from Amelia’s book.

“…Now the lying down and getting up of a camel are performances designed for the express purpose of inflicting grievous bodily harm upon his rider. Thrown twice forward and twice backward, punched in his “wind” and damaged in his spine, the luckless novice receives four distinct shocks, each more violent and unexpected than the last. For this “execrable hunchback” is fearfully and wonderfully made. He has a superfluous joint somewhere in his legs, and uses it to revenge himself upon mankind….”

After having my back almost slipt in two from the getting up of the camel this sudden detour away from my intended destination took me by surprise and I immediately enquired as to where the heck we were going and why on earth we where going in the wrong direction. Apparently, the “tourist entrance” is in the opposite direction to the “dodgy rip off entrance” which is halfway out in the freaking desert (yes Kate, I know, I should have listened). As we rode through the slums of Giza all the warnings my friend had given me about accepting camel rides were running wildly through my brain. Would I get raped? Would I get murdered? Or worse… would I get robbed of my cameras?? Too late to back out now I thought to myself and I tried to put it all out of my mind as the first sight of the Great Pyramid appeared above the shifting sand dunes.

But this was the most difficult task I have possibly ever undertaken. So uncomfortable was the ride that I kept slipping forward in the saddle and inadvertently spooning the kid that was my guide which made the both of us, and probably the camel as well, more than a little awkward. To ease my load a little I had entrusted the kid with my film camera with its attached red filter and I of course, took the expensive digital, I still did not trust anyone from the slums, even if it was a sweet little innocent looking 12 year old stable boy of supposed reputable reputation. So I was a little more than eagle eyed at every point he shifted the camera around on his neck to make it a little more comfortable to wear.

Things were going smashingly until he must have decided that we weren’t going fast enough (note to ALL readers, camels are not MEANT to go fast), for he lets out this horrible guttural sound which scared me half to Hades and the camel protestingly went from a slightly uncomfortable rolling walk, to a hell on earth type gallop that threatened to launch me out of the saddle at every uneven, awkward pace and send me face first into the blisteringly hot sand below. This, I hated every second of and my attentions were soon torn away from what I think might have been an amazing view of the Pyramids to my right and I forgot completely that they were even there, for all I could think about was how the hell I was gonna manage to not fall and break my arse. Now, you’d think that riding a camel might be a similar experience to riding a horse. Well, you’d think wrong. So wrong, in fact, that it’s more like trying to ride a pissed off alligator, because those rugs that they throw over the saddle rubbed my thighs red raw, but the only way to hold on was with my legs, like riding bare back on a horse! Miss Edwards describes below exactly what it’s like to ride one of these horrid creatures…

“… His paces, however, are more complicated than his joints and more trying than his temper. He has four; a short walk, like the rolling of a small boat in a chopping sea; a long walk which dislocates every bone in your body; a trot that reduces you to imbecility; and a gallop that is sudden death. One tries in vain to imagine a crime for which the peine forte et dure of sixteen hours on camel-back would not be a full and sufficient expiation. It is a punishment to which one would not willingly be the means of condemning any human being – not even a reviewer….”

And you have no idea how right she is. Every moment on camel back is torture. I even thought that the darn thing was going to collapse under me every time there was the slightest of inclines for his legs were shaking that much that at one point as we tried to descend from a particularly large sand dune, the darn thing just stopped mid hill and refused to go any further, so my “guide” had to give in and force the animal back up the dune so it didn’t collapse halfway down. Amelia describes this experience beautifully.

“…They grinned, they sniffed, the snorted, they snarled, they disputed every foot of the way… I never heard any dumb animal make use of so much bad language in my life…”

And it’s true, it really is like the damn thing is literally swearing at you for daring to assume it will happily take you down a slope you yourself wouldn’t dare walk.
Now, all the camels around Giza look pretty much the same, the colourful tasselled head dresses, the woven blankets that are used as a cover to the saddle, except some look a little more worse for wear than others. My camel was most definitely one of the worse for wear camels, and you just know that in a few months he will be retired and sent off to the slaughter house to become a meal for a poor Egyptian family.

“… they all have gay (colourful) worsted tassels on their heads, and rugs flung over their high wooden saddles, by way of housings. The gentlemen of the Fostat (another ship in her convoy) had ridden away hours ago, cross-legged and serene; and we prepared to do likewise…” I could not agree more with Amelia here, every single Arab seems to have no problems at all riding a camel, they make it look so easy.

“…They urged their camels into a trot, and tried to look as if they liked it. The Idle Man and The Writer (Amelia and her travelling companion) wreathed their countenances in ghastly smiles, and did likewise not for worlds would they have admitted that they found the pace difficult. Such is the moral influence of the camel. He acts as a tonic; he promotes the Spartan virtues and if not himself heroic, is at least the cause of heroism in others…” Spartan virtues is exactly what you have to talk yourself into. You just have to grin and bear it because its WAY too late to get out of it. Not only did my “guide” like forcing the beast to trot, he liked making it gallop, and if you remember what Amelia says above about the gallop, it almost killed me.

When we arrive at the rip off gate we’re confronted with a dodgy tourist policeman and straight away my little “guide” and this twenty something rent-a-cop start having it out, leading me to think that we weren’t actually going to be let into the Giza grounds and I would be turned away having just ripped myself off of 120 pounds. Their argument went on for at least twenty minutes while I just sat there closed mouthed contemplating ordering my “guide” to just turn around. I can never tell, however, if Egyptians are actually arguing, or if they’re discussing the current weather conditions because the language is so vocal and violent looking (like the way Italians talk with their hands) that it always looks as if they’re having a massive argument. So here I am sure that I wasn’t getting in when all of a sudden the rent-a-cop takes off the string of barbed wire covering the massive whole in the tallest metal fence you’ve ever seen and lets us pass through. Although I am almost positive he kept bitching and moaning about it as we strolled away towards the pyramids… almost… could have been a wish for good luck… you never can tell.

So we’re strolling closer and closer to the pyramids when I ask my “guide” to stop so I could dismount to take a photo, plus my thighs were that raw that I was afraid they’d start bleeding if I didn’t. So… having my back broken again, down the camel goes, swearing all the way and off I hop. I grab my camera from my “guide”, put the viewfinder to my eye and see colour! “hmm, that’s weird.” I thought to myself…”I shouldn’t be seeing colour, I should be seeing red and black..” and that’s when it hit me… the expensive red filter I bought specifically for the purpose of these photos was gone. “SHIT!!!” I exclaim as my “guide” looks at me quizzically. “MY FILTER!!!” I looked on the ground, I looked in my pocket, I looked in my bag… it was gone. Then I remembered I was with a ghetto kid and I say to him “Do YOU have it!!” seeing as he was the one carrying the camera and he immediately replies “No. Sorry.” And looks at me with these huge brown eyes. Now you can bet yourself that at that point in time, after a ride that has completely realigned every bone in my body and starting to burn in the hotter than hot sun, that I wasn’t believe a single word this kid said to me. And I feel just terrible for the way I reacted. I honestly was convinced that this kid knew exactly what a filter was and how much he could get for it and was hiding it somewhere after he skilfully lifted it from my camera while he was being a “gentleman” as he carried it for me during the ride. So pissed off was I, in fact, that I had a little tantrum and kicked a few rocks and swore a few words. At this point, the poor little guy was so distressed that I was unhappy that he says to me “please wait with camel.” and starts heading off into the desert to look for my filter. As I watched him walk off into the desert and disappear behind the dunes the camel decided it was a good time to regurgitate and re-eat the food it had for breakfast. There’s no other sound like it, and no other smell, it’s simply disgusting. So there I stood, the pyramids in front of me and my guide walking off into the desert behind me leaving me alone with a camel that resented me.
‘That’s it.” I thought to myself. ‘I’m gonna get heat stroke and DIE and no one will ever find my cameras!!”
“BUUUURP!” went the camel as if it could read my mind.
“What are you looking at?” I accuse at it…
“BUUUURP… GAAAARRR.” It responds.
“Well it’s not your fault I suppose.” I say, softening a little as I remembered I liked camels when I wasn’t actually ON them. “Sorry that I’m riding you. But look at the amazing view.” I say to him, trying to explain my reasons for enslaving him. “How could I not?” And at this point, I think we both reached an understanding and when I decided to let it all go and pull out my camera, he practically posed for me.
“Work it baby.” I say to him, now at this time, completely delusional from the sun…
“BUUUURP.” He replies stoically as he moves his head a little to the right.
Eventually, my little bonding session with the beast came to and end and back came my little guide. “Sorry.” He says to me almost tearfully “I walk all way, I not find. I sorry.”
“That’s okay.” I say… it doesn’t matter now. By this time I felt so terrible that the little guy had actually walked all the way back through where we came and had come up with nothing and was so worried that I was having a bad time when I refused to get back on the camel, that he ended up taking the rug off the saddle, putting the softer, cushioned blanket over the saddle and reasoned with me to get back on the camel, probably fearing that in the time he had left me in the middle of the desert I had gained heat stroke and would collapse if I walked. So he helped me back on and walked himself.

We never actually went to the pyramids during this little excursion as after all of that the darn thing had closed and it turned out that the ticket price wasn’t included at all, we were doing the dodgy. So I saw the Sphinx off in the distance, took a few shots and we headed back to the dodgy gate. The whole way I had my eyes glued to the ground in the vain hope that I would find the filter, even though I still half believed that my little “guide” had lifted it. When we arrived back at the ghetto stables I dismounted that camel as fast as I could and made for my driver’s car like I had just robbed a bank when all of a sudden I hear “MISS… MISS!”
“What now.” I thought. “More baksheesh?” And as I turned around, here was my little guide standing with the filter in his hand. Apparently, as we were galloping along at breakneck speed on our way to the dodgy gate, that it had fallen off the camera with all the jolting around it received before my guide offered to carried, and fallen straight into the saddle bag.
“OH MY GOD!!” I shout. “YOU FOUND IT!!!” I’m pretty sure that I waffled on for a few minutes about how wonderful a kid he is as the whole stable just stood there and stared at me in complete confusion.

So I take my bad behaviour to be a lesson learned for the future. I was most definitely ripped off with the whole camel ride scam and so sure that my little guide had stolen my filter that my paranoia stopped me from letting it all roll off and instead turn it into a good time of seeing the pyramids from the sand dunes. And all heat stroke induced delusions aside, my camel conversation wasn’t all that bad. We’re now old friends!

Afterward: I am officially the world’s biggest idiot. In my haste to see everything there is to see in Egypt it seems that I have accidentally deleted all my digital photos from my trip to the earlier pyramids from Dashur, Memphis and Saqqara, including the pictures of my little guide walking off into the desert. So folks, unfortunately, you’ll all have to wait until I can develop my films. I’m such a moron and I feel like I could just cry over this tragic loss. Let us all take a moment to reflect…

posted by Lucyspeak @ 2:20 am 0 comments

“Love Mom” The Queen’s Birthday in Thailand

http://au.blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-a6zLd1M9bqXYFufi8VqDDClTLg--;_ylt=AnP9Ez3cxAci5RLKBYe5dvbUdeJ3?cq=1


Foreward: I originally wrote this on the actual day of the Queen’s Birthday, August 12 2006, but I have had little time to upload to the blog as many of you know. So now, exactly a month later I share this with you.


I arrived back in Bangkok after another wonderful all night bus trip except this time I came back more than just sleep deprived, I have a massive cold. So I am going to whine for the next line or two… here goes… my head hurts, my nose can’t make up its mind between being runny or blocked, my sinus’ are going mad with sneezing fits and I have an awful chesty cough… why does this always happen to me? I always seem to be the one getting sick. ARGH. B and I travelled through 4 different countries together and not once did he get sick, me on the otherhand, I got sick in every place we visited. Go figure.
Okay, so now that my "woe is me" moment has passed I’ve got my vitamin C tablets, my orange flavoured strepsils and some antihistamines and more importantly… WINE! Yes folks, that’s right… a glass of wonderful, tangy sweet red wine. I can already feel those antioxidants killing off those uninvited germs. Be GONE with you germs!!! **takes another swig from her glass**
So here I sit, in the first restaurant I ever ate at with B in Khao San, reflecting after a crap bus ride (I think I dribbled all over the place, but the woman next to me used me as a pillow for most of the ride, that’s okay with me, I was more worried about giving her my cold.) and a hard time finding somewhere to stay. At the moment I am in a placed called the Grand Palace or something with Grand in the title at least and it’s absolutely terrible. If you’ve seen the movie "The Beach" and remember the room Leo Dicaprio’s character stayed in, then you know exactly what I am talking about. My room is more like a sauna than a bedroom. It has two single beds, one of which my pack gets all to itself, it has a single tiny fan on the wall that faces the beds, the door barely locks and it’s positioned on the point of a Y-intersection of the corridors that lead to the communal bathrooms where the taps over the sinks don’t work. There are no actual closable windows, there are just holes in the walls on both sides of the corridors and they are blocked up with either wooden slats or the remains of what where the original glass slats, much like they use in those 70’s built fibro houses with outback dunnies… you know the one’s… you can take them right out of their slots!! The curtains are mouldy and they barely cover the length of the windows and there is constant traffic in the hallways on both sides… and this was the second room I chose. The first room had no slats in the windows at all, just some fly screen mesh and a board to two, so I requested to see a different room due to it "not being safe" (ha… what a joke) and this one is the best of a bad bunch. The good news is that I’m only paying for the one bed instead of a double room, so it’s costing me about 100 Baht. I think I have lost a few pounds just sweating my way through the night. Anyway, I had all these great aspirations of getting off the bus and getting a Tuk Tuk to Siam Square to stay, but it seems that my cold had other ideas and I barely made it off the bus without coughing my guts up, so off I trudged along Khao San and ended up at the Grand Palace because the place that B and I first stayed at was full.
I chose this restaurant because it is supposed to be showing Ladder 49 tonight and I thought I might get my fireman fix (for those of you who don’t know my fireman obsession goes back to childhood when I would have tantrums when I heard a firetruck if I wasn’t taken out to wave to it. So that childhood obsession has become, well… let’s just say you girls would understand… ha ha ha.) I don’t think the movie is actually going to be played however, even though I asked and was told it would be. The movie that was supposed to already be playing was not and instead I got to watch a documentary on Maradonna… yay… so I’m guessing that no movies are playing tonight. About halfway through the Maradonna docco the channel was changed and up came the main square in Bangkok filled with thousands of people and then I realised that it was a public holiday for Mother’s Day – The Queen’s Birthday.
As I was eating dinner, a nice chicken steak with French fries and salad, the festivities for the Queen’s Birthday started and I joined in by lighting a yellow Buddhist candle and humming along to the songs as best I could with the staff of the restaurant while we all watched the fireworks crackling and lighting up Khao San. The Queen, like the King, is so beloved by the Thai people that 90% of the population are wearing light blue T-shirts with "I love Mom" written on the front to celebrate her seventy sixth year. She is a beautiful woman even in her aged years; her hair has greyed and her face is fuller as is her figure, but that friendly smile and those warm eyes shine through. Like most royalty though, she is mainly depicted in her ideal state; young, thing and graceful and it’s the same way for the King. It’s a very traditional way for royalty to be depicted and even as far back as Ancient Egypt where most Kings and Queens were depicted in an idealistic way (with the exception of Egypt’s Akhenaten), so it is still quite common for the ideal to be the norm when presenting royalty to the public.
It’s nice to be included in the cultural events like I was here at the restaurant tonight. I have no idea what the songs I was humming to were about but I understood the feeling and the meaning of them. This is a time to celebrate the birth of the beloved Queen of Thailand and joining in is an experience to remember. As people chant things like "Long live the King and Queen of Thailand" I think about our own monarchy and how no loyal tributes could match the one’s going on here tonight. With a King and Queen so loved as the rulers of Thailand, it’s no wonder he is the longest reigning Monarch of the 20th century.
Afterward: I never got my fireman fix.

posted by Lucyspeak @ 11:55 pm 0 comments

My Grandmother Was a Splasher: My time in the islands

http://au.blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-a6zLd1M9bqXYFufi8VqDDClTLg--;_ylt=AgqObgKuM6mrN0u7c4mzXq3cdeJ3?cq=1

So I know it’s been some 3 or 4 weeks since my last post and I honestly am sorry for not updating, but it’s been a bit of a busy world for lil’ ol’ me of late. As you know, after B went back to Sydney, I decided to travel a bit of the Islands starting with Phuket. After Phuket’s charms wore off I moved onto the island of Krabi which I ended up liking very much apart from my crappy accommodation.
KRABI
Called the Star Guest House and located right across from the main pier in Krabi Town, I picked it right out of the Travel Bible at the last minute because I slept my way over on the boat, not giving myself enough time to locate somewhere appropriate to stay and when I arrived I immediately kicked myself for doing so. Despite its blue and yellow coloured paintjob, the Star Guest House could have been re-named Star Hovel, for it literally was the best of a bad bunch. But I refused to pay anymore than 100 baht a night and I was sick of all the taxi drivers trying to get commission by taking me to hotels they had struck deals with and the staff were so friendly that I just gave in and decided to stay.
The first night was a little rough as my room was just a wooden box with old fashioned shuttered windows with no glass in them, a small light overhead and a bed… that was it. Not to mention the Irish girls that decided to sit on the rotting balcony all night and gossip about everyone they knew back home (why is it always the Irish keeping me awake??). You see, my little box happened to be directly off the rotting balcony and they took up residence right outside my little hole of a window, so they may as well have just come and sat on my bed for they were that close to me. So my mp3 player sure did come in handy that night.
It’s been strange travelling in countries where people do not sleep. Right outside my little Star Hovel was where the locals set up the night market, which is really just all night food vendors, so you get used to constant noise. Not only do people not sleep, they eat at any time of the day, including having their main meals at 3am. It’s almost as if they eat so late (or early as it may be) because during meal times that we are accustomed to, they are working in their shops or tending to their houses or farms, so they seem to eat at odd times. There is also no set time to eat anything. Feel like a coke and some green curry for breakfast? No worries!!! Or how about some fruit and yoghurt for dinner? You name it, you can get it anywhere, anytime. There is no concept of accepted scheduled meals and anything goes so it’s not so strange to eat Pad Thai at 6am for breakfast, and a lot of the time meals are accompanied by beer, great news for all those alco’s out there. So basically, if you’re an alcoholic, middle aged, single man who’s rapidly approaching his used by date in the western world, you can come to Thailand and live like a King!
Have I set the scene for you yet?
Krabi Town wasn’t as bad as it seems though. The central part of town is where the main shopping hub is and it covers quite a few blocks and also houses a relatively small 3 storey department store with its very own KFC. It’s like walking into a K-Mart, Wal-Mart or Grace Brothers store that has never been tidied which makes for a pretty hectic looking department store and feels more like Paddy’s Markets than Grace Brothers…(yeah yeah, I know it’s Myer now but hey… I’m clinging). There are stalls all over the place and the bottom floor is home to a Coles or Woolworths like store and a bunch of tables showcasing the newest seasons make-up, a Pharmacy where almost anything is available over the counter, a Dairy Queen (A Wendy’s for my Aussie readers), a KFC with only Zinger flavoured chicken... can you imagine that.. NO original recipe!!! Maybe the Colonel doesn’t trust the Thai’s not to rip it off like they do everything else and sell it at record prices….. so it’s pretty much just like shopping in a mall at home. Strangely though, the main square boasts traffic lights that are held up by Neanderthal looking statues…. really , they’re Neanderthal statues… I asked around to try and find out why an Island in Thailand has statues of cave men as the main square attraction but no one seemed to know anything about it.
I found a nice café up the street from my homely Star Hovel and frequented there for breakfast which almost always blurred into lunch as most of the time it rained and it was nice sitting with a book and unlimited pots of tea to watch the world go by with. I did however, go on a nice little sea kayaking trip which I booked through the lovely women at my Star Hovel. I was the first to be picked up in the morning and met an Englishman named Steve who taught English, an American girl travelling alone and had the pleasure of running into that wonderful couple from Manchester, Nine and Paul. For those of you just tuning in, I met Nina and Paul on a horrific bus ride from Bangkok to Phuket and ran into them in Patong Beach where over a bucket…. Yes you read right… a bucket of Sang Som Whiskey and 7 bottles of Red Bull I managed to get myself completely blind. Can’t remember much after I stood up and walked from the Tiger Bar, but I’m pretty sure it was one of the best nights of my life… I am never, however, touching another bucket.. ever... ever again unless it’s filled with water to save some kids from a buring house fire, but that aside… NEVER! (think neon yellow Exorcist like vomit and you get the idea). So anyway, back to the Sea Kayaking… turns out I was the only moron who chose to do a half day tour while the others all got to paddle off in this big group. It suited me because I only had to share the kayak with the guide so my vision wasn’t blocked as I tried to take photos. It’s a fairly long paddle out into open water and then you enter a Canyon in which the mountains are like nothing you’ve seen except for in travel brochures. My guide cut up and fed me unripe pineapple and as my stomach twisted I watched him throw all the off cuts straight into the water arguing with myself about whether or not to say anything about water pollution, but it was better than throwing things like plastic bottles into the water which won’t break down over time. (which I’m sure they do, but like any westerner with a so called “superior” value system, I didn’t see it so I decided it didn’t bother me that it was bio-degradable material instead of those plastic bottles). The Kayak trip itself was cut relatively short, because after my guide tried to convince me that there were crocodiles underneath us a massive storm hit. We paddled on for a little while until it was raining so hard I could no longer see the pineapple of my conscious floating around me. It was just too hard to see anything at all so we decided that it would be better to start paddling back to shore as it was quite far out. “You no worry.” He would say to me. “We no fall out.” He would reassure as the ripples we paddled through earlier turned into a massive swell that nearly capsized us more than once… I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I could care less about falling out of the kayak, as long as my camera stayed dry I was peachy, and thanks to the dry bag they gave me at the start it did. Could you imagine if we had’ve actually capsized… crocodiles and large swell aside… the only thing I would have worried about saving would have been the camera… SAVE MY BABY!! We even stopped on our way back to shore to fish out of the water a plastic 2L coke bottle, so my conscious was restored and I felt all big about my environmental awareness-ness again.
After a few photos posing like a moron with my paddle my driver took me back to my Star Hovel and during the hour drive I almost died from exposure. I had no change of clothes (because when the hell else has it EVER stormed in Thailand, rainfall every afternoon, sure... but a full blown typhoon like storm.. forget it) and I was soaked to the bone, so sitting in the space cab of a ute with the air con on freezing wasn’t the best thing for my health. I was even that cold after I showered back at the Hovel that I had to upgrade in clothing from a wife beater singlet to an actual T-shirt!!! Imagine that. That afternoon I sat on the rotting balcony (seriously, it really was rotting, the floor had massive holes in it and the railing was literally rotted away, but I figured if the Irish girls could sit on it all night without falling through the floor, then I was safe) and read Lonely Planet’s “The Kindness of Strangers” and met a really nice German girl whom I seemed to have a lot in common with, married friends, travelling alone, single.. blah-de-blah… it was nice. But I decided to leave my comfortable little hovel in exchange for 3 days of rain on the infamous Kho Phi Phi Island (where they filmed the Beach).
KHO PHI PHI
Kho Phi Phi was great, and the walk up to the view over the island was breathtaking, but I have to say that I had THE worst room in all of Phi Phi… can you guess why? Let me help you. You see… my room… which was located on the ground floor, was directly under a room an Irish couple were staying in. Yes… that’s right…. Irish… and this time… it wasn’t pool sicks bashing on the floor above my head or gossip about why the best friend of a cousin’s sister is sleeping with her mother’s pool boy or whatever, it was the sound of hell. That’s right… hell. I think he must have lost every single item he ever had and each time he would try and find something he would yell out “Where the fook is moy belt?”…or something to that effect, she would reply with something like “holding oop tha paants yer waarin!!!!”, and when they weren’t arguing about a lost item of clothing, they were… literally… fooking. If you get my drift, so that fabulous mp3 player came to my rescue once again. I’m going to take a stab and speculate that all the missing clothing pieces were possibly due to the fact that they were ripping them off each other more-so than actually wearing them. So… it went something like this…. Drag a few items across the floor boards, bitch that you can’t find your socks, give up looking and get busy, sleep, wake-up, drag a few more chairs across the floor boards, bitch that you can’t find your shirt, get jiggy with it.. etc etc… you get the idea… So it’s safe to say that I put off going back to my room as long as I possibly could.
On the morning of my check out I had gotten everything ready quite early to get off the island as quickly as I could and as I opened the front door, guess who was walking down the steps from the room directly above me? I panicked and quickly slammed the door shut so as to avoid the awkward moment I would have had the displeasure of sharing with my noisy Irish neighbours. The realisation for them that I could hear everything they did and the embarrassment for me not being able to look them in the eye would have been too great, so I didn’t risk any form of awkward obligatory hello’s and promptly hid behind my door until they were far enough out of sight and couldn’t relate me as their neighbour. It would have been like having to see your parents after you had accidently walked in on them the night before… **shudders**…. Don’t snigger, you’ve all done it!!
KHO SAMUI
Next stop was Kho Samui, the island most travellers use as a stop over or home base to attend the Full Moon Parties on Kho Pangan. I spent around a week and a half on Samui and stayed on the second most popular Lamai Beach (Hat Lamai, the first is Hat Chewang but was way too crowded for my liking) which I actually liked the most out of all the Islands I had stayed on. Lamai had all the things Chewang did, only on a smaller quieter scale and welcomes families rather than 18 y/o school leavers looking for a place to party. Lamai is not without its Charms though and on my first day there I ate at the Outback Restaurant where I had a social learning exchange with my waitress. We talked about how much we make and about our families and she even helped shed light on why many Thai women opt for western men in favour of Thai men. She told me that she was at one time married to a Thai man and had fallen pregnant with their first child, but he had come home drunk one night and beat the crap out of her which caused her to lose the baby. After that, she decided that she wasn’t going to put up with it, divorced him and vowed never to marry a Thai man again. She is now happily married to a middle aged Western man. So things aren’t always as it seems. It’s so easy to judge the things that you see in Thailand and the things that go on between middle aged western men and young Thai women but when you hear stories like that it sheds a whole new light on a socially frowned upon situation. Sure there are lonely, western men out there looking for companionship at any cost, and sure there are gold digging young Thai women looking to find a western man to give her and her family a better life, but there is also a large number of legitimate couples, and in a lot of cases, it’s due to the fact that Thai men seem to be abusive to Thai women (This is, of course, a vast generalisation). The conversation I had with my Outback waitress was quite enriching and both of us came away with a greater understanding of each other’s cultures and when I saw her again a few nights later we chatted away like old friends.
Lamai also has a more quiet beach compared to the supposedly more popular Chewang and the beach’s sand changes from one end to the other. In the Northern end the sand is formed by large grains the size of rice which give a nice massage to your feet as you walk, and to the southern end where Grandmother and Grandfather rock is (massive rocks on the shore in the shape on men’s and women’s genetalia strangely enough) the sand becomes so fine that it’s like powder between your toes. The water is warm and blue, the sand is white and the sky is spotless and of a night you can see the lights from the fishing trawlers. Most nights you can sit on the beach and watch the impressive colours that the electrical storms create out at sea, but it barely rains and if it does it’s mainly in the afternoon, and even then, it’s only for about 20 minutes. I stayed in a hut on the northern end of the beach called Beer’s House the first few nights and moved to a private room on the southern end of the beach called the Sea Breeze the rest of the time which was a great place. Great service, great rooms, great part of the beach, great spot in the main street and great people. Because I had booked in a few days early, the bookings got mixed up and the room I was supposed to get (a fan room with no private shower) went to someone else and to make up for it they gave me an air con room with a private shower for 300 baht less than the normal price, so I was more than happy. The owner was also happy that I didn’t yell and scream about the mistake and was only too willing to give me a discount on an otherwise out priced room.
I pretty much lived like a local in Lamai and even tourists were approaching me to ask for directions (which I could actually give), I became a regular at the Rising Sun Restaurant for Breakfast and a fixture at the evening movies showed at the Will Wait Restaurants at dinner time. I attended Muay Thai (Thai Boxing) and cheered on little kids as they bashed each other’s brains in where I once again ran into Manchester couple Nina and Paul and ended up having drinks with them and another couple at the Bauhaus Bar til early morning. I also became a part of a group of travellers that come to Lamai every year. One woman, Marina, has been coming to Lamai for the past 15 years and is well known by the infamous Elvis whose show I attended and had a great time. Marina is actually the inspiration for the title of this post, for one morning at breakfast, which was always the time to talk about everything and anything, we got to chatting about Thai bathroom habits. I couldn’t work out for the life of me how on earth the Thai’s can go to the toilet with ZERO toilet paper, use the hose, bucket of water, and scoop provided and manage to come out completely dry which spun Marina into a storey about her Grandmother. Apparently when she was younger her Grandmother lived with her family and coming from an old Italian family she has similar bathroom practices to the Thai’s… “My Granny was a splasher.” She stated quite matter-of-factly to responses of hysterical laughter from myself and Julie. “She would go to the toilet and I would stand outside and listen to what sounded like a Tsunami, and when she would come out she would be completely dry, but the whole bathroom would be covered in water!!!” This was all too much and the stitches we gained from laughing so much was the only thing that ended the conversation for we fell into that “laugh so hard it was silent” laugh that we could no longer go on because we needed to come up for air. To this day I still haven’t been able to shed light on how the Thai’s can stay so dry after visiting the loo. It remains a mystery. So Samui was probably my favourite Island so far and one day I will go back and spend another few weeks just lazing about on the beach.
I also scammed my way into renting a moto. I wouldn’t normally lie and cheat to get anywhere or anything but I sure as hell was not going to give anyone on a tropical island my passport and made up some bullcrap story about how it was “lost” and my “friend” in Bangkok was bringing me a new one after I had applied for it via the internet… and this only came about after I was refused rental by a few Thai women. So when I came across a motorbike shop run by a couple of English guys I knew I had bagged a winner… I had to leave my NSW driver’s licence, but hey, having that getting stolen and re-birthed is way better than having it be my passport, rendering me stranded on an Island in the middle of South East Asia. After my little scam worked and I had a little triumph dance in my head, I happily rode around to all the other beaches going as far as The Big Buddha and back which took most of the day.
KHO PANGAN
I had decided that I was going to attend the Full Moon Party on the 9th despite my vow not to before I started my holiday, but without someone to travel with I was left to my own crazy devices and organised a speed boat to Kho Pangan through the Sea Breeze. Normally, there’s a party on Hat Rin (the beach on Kho Pangan) practically every night and anything is an excuse to hold a shindig; a full moon, a half moon, a quarter moon… hell even no moon!! If you’ve ever heard about a Full Moon Party then everything you have heard is 100% correct. Sex, Drugs and Techno music til you drop, and if you don’t want to partake in the first two options then you won’t be persecuted or shunned because pretty much anything goes, so I danced all night and drank very very little and guess who I ran into again? Yep! Nina and Paul from Manchester!! Amazing that on a beach of 20,000 people I end up running into the same people I bumped into on all the other islands. After Nina and Paul decided to call it a morning one of the guys from the group, Alex and I had to try and catch a speed boat back to Samui and it literally took hours. There are no wharfs on Pangan and instead of bringing the boats all the way to shore like they do to drop you off, they moor halfway out to see. So you have to wade through sometimes chin deep water just to get close to a boat only to find they won’t let you on because it’s not the boat you came in on. Alex and I tried so many different boats and were turned away so many times and time was running out because the last boat was at 7am and it was 6:30, the sun had risen already and there were hundreds of other people trying to get on the same boat. When the Sea Breeze boat finally came we had to push our way through the angry crowd just to get to the ladder and there were so many people doing the same thing that one guy actually got pushed under the boat. You’re so busy trying to get to that ladder that it’s easy to forget the propellers from the motor could knock you out of cut you open and as this poor guy went under, nobody seemed to notice. I have no idea if he was okay because I was hoisted up by Alex who had already gotten on the boat and I was too busy trying to keep my bag and camera try that it was too hard to check. The boat ride itself was hell. We were placed right up the front on these hard wood chairs and the stupid driver thought it would be a good idea to drive in the wake of the boat in front of us, so every time the wake hit our boat, it would lurch up out of the water and then slam back down again making this horrible cracking noise and all I kept thinking was that I hope we didn’t capsize. Apparently a few months ago that’s exactly what happened and everyone on board died. I can see how as the boat drivers seem to have little to no knowledge of sailing nor safety and the life jackets that they provided rarely fit if they actually had buckles to do up. So I was praying that my boat would come into Samui Safely. By the time we got back I was so cold that I had a hot shower (or as hot as the water will go in Thailand which is really only Luke warm) and hopped straight into bed where I slept until about 2pm.
When I had recharged after a full 24 hours of partying I decided to take a walk to the Muay Thai training ring and was invited to come back for a personal lesson by the number one trainer in Thailand. Unfortunately I was leaving the next morning and would be unable to attend my lesson, but the hospitality was there and I would have loved to have my own lesson in bashing someone about the head and body. When morning came I readied my things and said goodbye to Samui. It had been a good home for the week or so that I was there and I can see how people can come back 15 years in a row and still find it interesting. Goodbye Samui, hello 15 hour bus trip to Bangkok.

posted by Lucyspeak @ 12:54 am 2 comments