Nearly home
I'm in Singapore and flying to Darwin tomorrow and catching the train back to Melbourne. So for all in Melbourne I'll be home in about two weeks. Since my last email I've travelled down through the tourist-popolis of Laos, Cambodia and Thailand. Through Malaysia which was a pleasant suprise. I knew the food would be good but I didn't expect to be so impressed with the Indian, Chinese and Malay fusion. Its refreshing to go to a country which is developed, everything works and the people are not white. This email is more of a reflection on my trip. I've been gone a little over a year, have traversed the Silk Road from start to finish, Venice to Xian, followed one of the routes Marco Polo took to get to China, made the pilgrimage to Amsterdam, went to a country that no one recognises and have now visited around 60 countries. I am not too sure how many kilometres I've travelled by train, bus, truck and car, but I know I never want to do this again. So many rides of discomfort where I thought I might snap that I can't name the worst or make a top ten. Next time I travel its by bicycle or foot.
Bangladesh, Thailand, London – Mash up
I'll start off my final thoughts on my most recent, though definitely not last trip to Bangladesh, by saying that in the end Bangladesh was normal. I had and have friends there, we talked shit, got wasted, the only real difference was that we caught rickshaws around instead of cars and public transport. As soon as i got to London i realized how completely far out I'd gone. Not to say that Bangladesh is not normal, everything is normal or nothing is normal, nevertheless for me and where I'm coming from it was pretty out there. Thats also not to say that London is like Melbourne, its different but......its all pretty difficult to describe.
Thailand & Bangladesh – From the heart of Bangladesh
I have flown into insanity ,although its starting to make a little more sense now. I have had a barrage of experiences and all I can say is that it is definitely NOT boring. So where to start.... Since my last email was from Bangkok before the Song Karn, the Thai New Year maybe I'll start with describing this. The Thai's definitely know how to have fun, or maybe I just misunderstood it all but from what I can tell the whole country has a three to five day water fight, its classic. I met up with some pretty cool people for it, on the first night we went to the infamous pat pong area. This place I have avoided on my previous visits to Bangkok because of my dislike for prostitution, or maybe not my dislike but that of the different forms of exploitation in the world I find this one of the more abhorrent, if the women are in no situation except to go into this, but but....too many issues I won't go into here, nevertheless I went along there with a few people and we had a pretty ballistic time, maybe cause it was Thai new year the women weren't as they were portrayed in Koyanistqatsi (ahhhh my spelling is shocking). They all seemed in a pretty good mood running around with water guns drenching everyone. This was an all round pretty good night.
