The Edge Of Reality Is A Frayed Nerve

The day before my 2 year anniversary of leaving Canada I'm waiting for visiting hours at a Northern Thai prison. I sit in the grass discussing manifest psychology and drinking iced coffee. A woman stalks the crowd outside, hawking colourful balaclavas. The sun moves a little and steals the shade I was using. Jesse and I compensate.

The black vinyl seat of our rented scooter is getting too hot in the afternoon sun. I feel dehydrated and my right hand has an unidentifiable stench about it. Hand sanitiser is too pussy for a seasoned traveler, so I rub it into my hands when the crowds attention is called away for an announcement of the prisoners who have lined up behind the bulletproof glass. Our friend's name is called out in Thai. We hesitate. It's called again, this time with the prison guard flagging our attention.

Inside, Ikiu is remarkably happy, but the cigarettes we bought him cannot be passed through the speakerbox. He asks for 200 Baht as the timer goes off and he's drawn away from us. We oblige and he smiles. The two actions have no correlation.

Outside we transfer our money in. I recognise an old face from a distant time when I traveled here before. Peter is white, old, morally bankrupt and someone I could never trust. I like his stories. He tells us that Ikiu is in the can with his good mate, that his uncle is connected to the local mafia and that the motive of his crime was vague. The police exaggerated, but he did chase someone down with a Samurai sword on his scooter. I think of Kill Bill immediately. A new fondness for Ikiu sweeps over us.

Later we will join Peter for whiskey.

Hookerville

Hookerville, aka Datang, is the border town/slum/sprawling bordello of sin and kareoke between Thailand and Malaysia but mostly in Thailand. It's also the town where we spent our last evening on this, our epic journey to extend our Thai visas.

Hollywood Club

Oscar's Entertainment Palace Complex

Helo Bangkok

Erotic Kareoke

A Line Of Ketamine Off A Hooker's Ass

I also bought black market Gudang Garam Indonesian Kreteks for a buck and a quarter.

Me, I'm A Ramblin' Man

Ramblin' Man by Lemon Jelly...loving that tune all up and down the world these days. Here's a poem I wrote on a bus while smoking hand rolled cigarettes and trying to decipher Kerouac:

We're going, we're going
where?
hold on
stick head out window
of moving
bus
catch
breath
velocity forced
wind down throat
gasp
fight word out
Suph...an...buri?
How do you spell that?
"Chao Rai?"
"Lok Sip Baht!"
"120 togedder"

Forgotten Ramblings

Facebook: Blocked
youtube: Blocked
Blogger: Blocked
Twitter: Blocked
Flickr: Sporadically available
most proxies: blocked
My time in China: coming to an end.

I'll be moving on back to South East Asia soon...back to Thailand, back to Tonsai, back to two months of rock climbing and adventurous substance abuse (I only really just said that cos I know my Mom reads this).

I've (99% sure) landed a job in Tonsai working as a professional climbing photographer for OnTheRocks. Dream Job! Hot Damn! Come visit!

I've rediscovered a love for Michael Jackson. I guess that when stars fall out of the sky we are prone to mourning them with our love.

Speaking of stars, I've started to watch BattleStar Galactica. I know that some readers of this blog are saying "finally!" others are saying "lame!" and still others are trying to pronounce "Galactica".

Finally, I may have H1N1. Probably not though as I seem to be getting better and this seems awfully reminiscent of that time that I thought I had SARS the last time I was living here.

In Brief

I haven't written about my individual travel experiences for some time now as they seem to have all coalesced into one homogeneous learning experience. I look back now, not on highlights, but rather on the process of becoming something new, something rooted not where my feet meet the ground, but rather where my life meets experience. I look back now and no longer try to dissect who or what got me here.

Sometimes though, the important experiences draw an obvious connection to their end result. As simple as 70 metres of rope between my harness and a new friend's belay device.

The world is our testpiece.