Category — Ramblings

I love traveling. I am sure most people are happy with spending one or two weeks a year at a holiday resort. For me now, it would hardly be worth the effort. The problem for me is that with each day passing you know you are one day closer to the end of your holiday. I suppose I even wonder myself why I want to spend months on end staying in cheap hotels, traveling for hours on crowded buses and trains – living out of my suitcase.

I am now reading “After Dark” by Haruki Murakami, one of my favorite authors and he tells a story, that really explains why I love traveling so much.

“Three brothers went out fishing and got caught in a storm. They drifted for a long time until they washed up on the shore of an uninhabited island. It was a beautiful island with coconuts growing there and tons of fruit on the trees, and a big, high mountain in the middle. The night they got there, a god appeared in their dreams and said, ‘A little farther down the shore, you will find three big, round boulders. I want each of you to push his boulder as far as he like. The place you stop pushing your boulder is where you will live. The higher you go, more the world you will be able to see from your home. It’s entirely up to you how far you want to push your boulder.”

“So the three brothers found three boulders on the shore just as the god had said they would. And they started pushing them along as the gold told them to. Now these were huge, heavy boulders, so rolling them was hard, and pushing them up an incline took an enormous effort. The youngest brother quit first. He said, ‘Brothers, this place is good enough for me. It’s close to the shore, and I can catch fish. It has everything I need to go on living. I don’t mind if I can’t see that much of the world from here.’ His two elder brothers pressed on, but when they were midway up the mountain, the second brother quit. He said, ‘Brother, this place is good enough for me. There is plenty of fruit here. It has everything I need to go on living. I don’t mind if I can’t see that much of the world from here’. The eldest brother continued walking up the mountain. The trail grew increasingly narrow and steep, but he did not want to quit. He had great powers of perseverance, and he wanted to see as much of the world as he possibly could, so he kept rolling the boulder to the very peak of the high mountain. There he stopped and surveyed the world. Now he could see more of the world than anyone. This was the place he would live – where no grass grew, where no birds flew. For water, he could only lick the ice and frost. For food, he could only gnaw on moss. But he had no regrets, because how could look out over the whole world.”

I have made use of the free wifi where I am currently staying in Chiang Mai and added a travel forum to this site to handle the hundreds of queries I receive each day on traveling in Asia (not really but I thought it sounded good).

Starting a forum takes a bit of time, but since I like participating in forums, I thought I might as well be doing it on my own site. I still have change the default template (look) of the site to make it a little more pleasing on the eye, but it is a good start for now.

And who says I am not working hard!

My office for the day.

If you haven’t realized I am back in China writing my Beijing Olympics blog.

Here are some pictures of my new home.

I am in Beijing now. It is a holiday this week in China so I decided to just fly up to Beijing. The hotel in Shanghai was a little expensive and I decided I am too old now to stay in dormitory rooms.

I plan to stay here for at least the next couple of months, despite the cool weather and I put a deposit on an apartment today. After about 6 months of living in bungalows, bamboo huts, cheap hotels, sometimes smelly hotels and hostels with shared bathrooms it will be nice to unpack my bag.

The apartment is one bedroom with a kitchen and living room. It is about US$500 a month. I know you can get cheaper rooms, but it is harder to negotiate if you are only staying a short time. The building is pretty new and it is fully furnished and includes internet access. It is about a 15 minute walk from a subway station and a short bike ride from central Beijing.

I am about to get on a plane to Shenzhen. It is about a four hour flight. I am flying on Air Asia and they fly from a smaller airport away from the main airport in Kuala Lumpur. The facilities are still ok, and they have free wifi throughout the airport.

From Shenzhen it is a twenty hour plus train ride to Shanghai. Beijing is further north, but takes about the same time. My plan is to visit each of the event cities for the Olympics. I like traveling on Chinese trains. They are slow, but fairly comfortable. I picked a few new books to read on the way. My bag was even over the 15kg limit.

I didn’t see enough of Malaysia, but I hope to get back some time soon.

I put in my application for a visa at the Chinese embassy yesterday. They said it would be ready by Wednesday. I wanted to get a move on, so I paid for the express visa and pick it up Monday morning. I booked my AirAsia flight to Shenzhen today for Monday afternoon. I bought just a one way ticket. It seems this is more of a problem with the airlines rather than the immigration.

The flight from KL to Shenzhen was just over $200 – not bad but it would have been cheaper if I booked it earlier. I watched Geelong beat Collingwood last night. I walked by an English pub and it just happened to be on. The pub was full so I sat down at a table with some English guys. They had no idea what was going on, so I had to explain a bit of the rules.

Took the bus from Penang to Kuala Lumpur. The bus had only three seats to a row, and were more like sofa chairs. It also wasn’t busy which is also a plus.

Hotels are more expensive in the capital and budget places are mostly dorm rooms. I wanted to have a good night sleep, so I got a nice room for at least tonight. When I get to China, I will probably only stay in dorms so I might just have a bit of luxury here in KL.

Walking around the streets to night, the atmosphere was pretty lively and looks as though there are some great places to eat. Tomorrow’s mission is finding the Chinese embassy and then I want to check out the twin towers, which aren’t too far away from where I am staying – the golden triangle as it is called here.

I caught the ferry back to Penang today, about a two and a half hour trip. I have been in Malaysia for around 10 days and I really like the place. I always thought that it was more expensive than other South East Asian countries, but it is comparable to Thailand and since the baht has been so strong lately, I think in could be even cheaper than Thailand.

I had a huge bowl of noodles tonight from a street vendor for just 3 ringit (US$0.80). I had heard beer was more expensive, but I went to a reggae bar last night and they were selling Tiger beers for just 4 ringit. The bar had a live band who play every night. They are a great band and the Malay singer is unbelievable. He looks more Samoan and plays percussion when he sings.

It was a little bit sad to leave Langkawi. I had some fun nights going out and it is just a beautiful layed back kind of place. Malaysia is mostly muslim but they don’t seem too strict. Not all restaurants sell alcohol, but there are still plenty of bars in the tourist destinations. For South East Asia it seems to have more order about the place. People actually wear helmets when riding motor bikes.

I know now it is low season and there aren’t too many tourists around, but you just don’t hear about Malaysia as much as say Thailand, Bali or Vietnam. Perhaps it is better to keep it a secret from the rest of the world.

I took the ferry from Georgetown to Langkawi this morning. There are only two ferries operating now at 8:15 am and 8:30 am. The later one stops off at another island. It is only a 2.5 hour trip.

I took a look at the beach and the water looks beautiful. The place I am staying is pretty simple and a little walk from the beach, but the owner is friendly and they have free wifi, which is pretty amazing for a cheap bungalow.

I booked for four nights and I think I will enjoy just staying here for the next four days.

If you would like to stay there, you need to book through the internet. The place is called Zachry’s in Langkawi. There are cheaper places to stay, but I have heard of thefts from places on the beach. Zachry also has plenty of DVDs to watch if you just want to chill out watching a movie.