Relaxing in Khao Lak – sun & rain 3

Priska leaves at 6:50 am. She’s going on a 2 day / 1 night liveaboard. I’m also checking out today, but only at 2:30 pm. So as soon as the sun appears around 9:30 am I head for the pool – one last time. At noon I have breakfast at “Stempfer’s Cafe” – one last time. There I meet Chris. After checking out of the resort I go to the internet cafe to check my emails, and I meet Chris again. At 19:30 I get my luggage from the resort and as it’s raining – again. I walk to the “travel agency”; by the way you cannot compare the travel agencies here in Thailand with travel agencies in Europe or the US. They are often just a table and they also do laundry and sometimes have internet access. All-in-one. (Pictures will follow soon.)

It’s 8 pm and it’s raining. I’m standing at the side of the road, waiting for the lady from the travel agency to hail the bus. Otherwise the bus won’t stop and I don’t know which one to hail. At 20:15 she hails a bus. I want to put my backpack where the luggage normaly goes (the bottom of the bus); but this upsets the busdriver. He just wants me to get in. So I get in. Inside the bus it’s pretty dark. There are no other travelers, only a few Thai people. The lady from the travel agency said the bus was going to be packed – it’s not. It’s half empty. Good for me. I pick the 2 seats in the front, put my backpack on the floor (thank God I bought that raincover in Vienna just before I left!!!), put my small bag on one of the seats and go to sleep on it. Yes, ON it. It’s important to sleep ON your belongings, at least the valuable ones. Although Thailand has been very safe so far, I don’t want to be careless and then regret it later… Just before I’m falling asleep I see something in the shadow in front of me. It’s about 5 cm long and crawling slowly. I think it’s a cockroach (Kakerlake), but decide that I am too tired to move to another seat and therefore decide to not want to find out what exactly this animal is. I’m just hoping it’s crawling AWAY from me, not towards me. I am lucky, I do not encounter this roach or any other roaches on the bus.

We stop a few times so people can go to the bathroom. It’s the usual Thai squat toilets (pictures to follow) with no toilet paper. I carry my own toilet paper.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squat_toilet

More conversations & decision making time

My room has a/c and also a TV. In the morning and evening I usually watch “BBC worldwide”. This is a channel showing international news 24/7. This morning I suddenly hear ”In Austria…” and “… issued a statement today that Petzner was not romantically involved with Joerg Haider.” Can you believe this: amongst all the international news THIS is what they report about Austria - by the way, the ONLY thing they have reported about Austria since I got here on Tuesday! This reminds me of Bulgaria. When Agnes and I were in a hotel in Sozopol we also watched TV there, some international news channel, and all they reported about the upcoming elections back then was about Haider, Strache and their right-wing parties. Come on. Why not try to give a more balanced view of the political parties?! It’s kind of disappointing that these newsmakers seem to have a rather onesided view of the Austrian political system. It makes me wonder how much I can trust the news they report from other parts of the world…

I started the day with having breakfast at the Sawasdee Terrace, a place close to my guesthouse. There I noticed for the first time here in Bangkok a traveler (traveller for the British) who was listening to his iPod. It was funny, because in NYC it’s so normal for people to listen to their iPod (it seems like everybody has one there), but here it’s completely different. People were looking at this guy as if he was weird. And it really was a little strange in a place were lots of backpackers were having breakfast and talking to each other. He almost seemed anti-social. After he left another guy sat down at the table next to mine and soon we started talking. His name is John and he is the first American I’ve met so far. He was talking really loud with a thick American (Californian) accent and people started looking at him and then he explained to me that this was his first time traveling abroad and he always sort of knew that people stereotypically think that Americans are “loud, ignorant and a little stupid” (his words!), but he really tries to show people that Americans are better than that. He was a little confused about how negative the perception of Americans is once you get out of the US and he went on and on about this… Poor guy! So today’s conversation was a little different (not as much fun) from the ones I had the last couple of days, but it was still interesting to talk to him after having lived in NYC for the last 6 years.

So after this, having resolved the visa issue (when and where to get which visa for which country), I am checking with a few travel agencies, some specialized in scuba diving, how much liveaboards to the Similan Islands off Thailand’s West coast in the South cost. Once again, the information I get is inconsistent: some say, the SImilan Island Marine National Park is not open yet due to the fact that the monsoon isn’t over yet - lasting longer this year than usual. Aha. Some say, it will open Nov.1, and one travel agent in a scuba diving shop tells me that the Similan Island MNP is already open. But the diving gets better later in the season (which lasts until the middle of May on the West coast). Interesting. Furthermore, as I’m not booking my scuba diving trip here in Bangkok, I am trying to find out where to do that: Krabi, Phutek, or Khao Lak? After having enough varying information, I sit down in a cafe to read, think, and decide what to do. I feel unbelievably free I am so happy that I decided to do this trip around the world – by myself.

Decision making time is over and here’s the result: I’ll be going to Krabi first, to visit Ko Phi Phi (a beautiful island, famous from the movie “The beach” with Lenonardo DiCaprio) and also Phang-Nga. After a few days there, I’ll head a little north on the West coast to Khao Lak; there I’ll book and go on a liveaboard trip to the Similan Islands. By the way, a liveaboard is when you stay on a boat for a few days (and nights obviously) to scuba dive straight from there. I already did that once in Austraila in 1999 when I got my scuba diving certificate with Ulli. It was great – we both liked it so much that we stayed a few more days to get our advanced scuba diving license :) I hope that by going to Krabi first, and then to the Similan Islands MNP, the monsoon will be over by the time I go scuba diving, but I’ll still not be hitting the main tourist season. (According to my guidebook Ko Phi Phi is way too overcrowded from Dec. – March.) After that I’ll be coming back to Bangkok. I’ll skip the East coast in the South of Thailand, as I already went there in 2006. I also will not spend much more time in Thailand (having traveled here for 4 weeks in 2006), but head straight to the very North of Thailand, to the border town Chiang Khong from where I’ll cross over to Laos. There I would like to take a boat down the Mekong river… But that’s enough of a PLAN for now

Now that I know what I’m doing, I head straight to the travel agency next to my guesthouse to book a train to Krabi, well actually a bus. The trains are fully booked until Tuesday and I want to leave on Monday at the latest. So I get the ticket for the VIP bus, leaving Bangkok at 6 pm on Monday, arriving in Krabi at 9 am the next morning. VIP buses come with a/c, reclining seats and toilets. I still would have preferred the train. I love the overnight trains in Thailand! But this way I don’t have to change from the train to a minibus in Surat Thani, so that’s ok and also a little cheaper.

Bianca – hope you had a wonderful wedding! I’m sorry I missed it!!!

I bought my RTW-Ticket today!

I bought my ROUND-THE-WORLD-TICKET today I’ll start Mon, Oct.20, 2008 in Zuerich and the stops will be: ZURICH – BANGKOK – AUCKLAND – NADI – LOS ANGELES – NEW YORK CITY – ZURICH. As of now I’m planning to travel in

• Southeast Asia (Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and possibly Malaysia) for 3.5 months (Oct.-Jan.),
• New Zealand for 5 weeks (Feb.),
• Fiji for 3 weeks (March),
• skip LA,
• then reach NYC at the end of March/beginning of April
• From there I’ll probably go to South America either with Verena or by myself for 2.5 months (April-June).
• Then back to NYC at the end of June/beginning of July,
• maybe a last trip to visit Jenny and her family in Florida in July,
• and then back from NYC to Zurich at the end of July

Of course, this is only a rough outline, more of an idea on how to spend the next 10 months, but by no means a fixed itinerary!!! I might change my plans, well the amount of time I spend in each country, as I travel. The nice thing about my ticket is that I can change the dates

We don’t sell tickets around the world here often ;-)

After spending a few days at the Attersee visiting friends, I am getting more and more used to living in Austria again and the advantages of just having returned to my hometown: catching up with old friends and family, enjoying the good food and that Austria is a beautiful and peaceful country. However, this small town I grew up in is surrounded by mountains (the Austrian Alps). And as lovely as it is, after a few days here, something usually happens that reminds me why I left many years ago: the limitations of this place.

1) Today I went to a travel agency to inquire about a plane ticket around the world. It turned out that not many people inquire about this kind of ticket; on average 1 TO 2 PEOPLE PER YEAR buy such a ticket at this travel agency.

2) When I tell people that I am planning to travel for a few months (possibly a year) by myself around the world, they look at me as if I was … insane, or maybe, JUST DIFFERENT. And here it seems that I am different compared to the rest, whereas in NYC there are so many different people, that it doesn’t matter. But then that’s also the nice thing about being back here: that I matter to my friends and family and that they care and worry. If only some worried a little less