Clement's World Tour '07. A New Beginning

West Coast Style

2008-04-26T09:18:00.004-04:00

The morning I left for Kota Kinabalu, we had no idea how we were going to get there. Theresa has done an amazing job of planning this dive/jungle escapade but she left some things open for us to do things on the fly. We wanted to get from Sandakan on the east coast of Borneo to Kota Kinabalu on the opposite side and there were several ways to do it. Hire a taxi and split it four ways, take the local bus, take the aircon tourist bus, or try to find a flight. In the interest of time (and comfort,) we decided on the plane and headed to the airport to buy tickets. Wellington and I got put on standby and started to make other plans, but luckily made the flight.

For a town I never heard of, KK is a very happening place. It's way bigger than I expected and there are lots of things to do. It is pretty cosmopolitan with lots of nightlife, shopping, wild adventures like whitewater rafting and mountain climbing are an hour or two away, and best of all there is a big five island national marine park Tunku Abdul Rahman, just off the coast. After one night's mistake of a scary local hotel, the four of us got a fabulous family room at the Daya Hotel and felt like we were living in luxury. We also discovered a fantastic Italian restaurant - who would have thougth I would be enjoying fresh, hand-made gnocchi in Borneo???

The next day, the girls elected to spend the day exploring the beaches of the island parks and Wellington and I went diving. Not just any diving, but diving on MY REEF! That's right, our dive spot for the day was named Clement's Reef - evidently a Course Director a couple of years ago discovered and named it and as soon as I saw it on the dive map I knew I had to get there. The reef around KK is not as good as Sipadan, (hell, what is?) they have a history of dynamite fishing and it showed. Dynamite fishing is when local fisherman, too impatient for lines or nets, toss lit sticks of dynamite in the water and wait for the fish to float up after the explosion. Easy fishing but unbelievably destructive to the coral and it causes permanent damage - which isn't good for the fisherman's long-term but they don't seem to think about that. Saw lots of big rubble patches, but also some encouraging signs of growth too - the park is making a difference I think. Still, the fields of coral rubble and encroaching algae were sad to see. Still, there was all kinds of good stuff to find - rays, nudis, and my new favorite crab - the Orangutan Crab! They are really cool looking but the best part about them is the underwater signal when you spot them. First you scratch your underarms in a monkey pose and then you make the fingers to thumbs motion for crab claws - I don't know why but it cracks me up. When I did it I made the "hoot hoot" noise of an orangutan in my reg when I scratched my pits...

Wellington and I dove two out of the three days we were there, spending one day lounging on the beaches and exploring all the park's little islands. At night, we wandered KK - trying all kinds of great local food at the huge local market, hitting an Indian restaurant during a blackout, and trying to find something fun to do while the girls went shop crazy. KK has lots of great shopping, and if I had brought along a sherpa, I might have indulged in some collecting.

KK was great - I am so glad we went and discovered such a neat little coastal town. It was nice and cosmo, had good local stuff to do, and of course any place with some decent local diving 30 minutes off shore is fine with me. Sadly, our time there came to an end and it was time to go. Not so sadly, actually, because our next destination was an encore performance of the awesome reef walls of Sipadan!!!

That's right, some of the best diving I hace ever done in my life - part 2!!! Only this time, with 5-star accommodations...

Debating whether or not to write about it, since I did before... Oh what the hell, it was so awesome again, I'll tell you all about it next time.

Salamat Pagi,
Clement

Jungle Boot Camp

2008-04-22T06:54:00.011-04:00

Wellington, my travel buddy in Borneo, described our most recent adventure as "Boot Camp in the Jungle," and in some ways he is totally right. There were no drill sergeants and no rifles (though there are rumors of head-hunting tribes around and lots of big crocs, so maybe an M-16 wouldn't have been a bad idea,) but things were definitely basic on the the Kinabatangan River.

There were lots of boots and it was definitely camping - in the mud!!

Just a couple of weeks ago it was the rainy season and the camp was closed due to the flooding. Now it's a bit drier (it only rains once or twice a day,) and the river is back within its banks, but the mud remains and it is everywhere. It is really sticky and soupy and loose and wet all at the same time and threatens to keep your boot as you walk away. Our camp consisted of some wooden huts connected by walkways and everywhere else we wore rubber boots (Wellingtons, how appropriate,) and slogged through the deep mud and leftover puddles. When we arrived by outboard riverboat and clambered up the bank, there was a big pile of dirty boots waiting for us - but none of them had sizes printed on them! So we kicked off our shoes and hopped around trying to put together a pair that fit our feet. It took a while, but I finally found some in the general range of my big hobbit feet (though the left was a half-size too small I am sure.) Then we shouldered our gear and headed to the camp, constantly pulling our sucking feet out of mud bogs all along the way. Once we got to camp, we were supposed to pile up the boots near the start of the boardwalk, but since we all took so long to find some that kind of fit, everyone snagged that pair and stashed them away for easy finding later. Since the insides of the boots were almost as sloppy as the outside, every excursion ended with a trip to the water buckets near the squat privys (yup, bucket baths too,) for rinsing with ladles of river water. Accommodations were wonderfully basic - plank huts with the smelliest thinnest mattresses I've ever seen right on the floor, and mosquito netting - that's it. Sharing with a bed with Wellington was cozy, but we were so beat from trekking in the mud several times a day that I slept great anyway. Unfortunately for him, he didn't. And he was kind enough to not accuse me of snoring. Each hut is covered in chicken wire to keep the monkeys out, but we needed to be careful in the dining area - there were always one or two looking to snag a bite. One of the guys in camp almost lost a jar of vitamins to them , but he charged them like a crazy man, with flailing arms and strange Irish warrior cries and the startled monkey dropped its prize and fled for the trees. There were also wild boars on the volleyball court, spiders in the heads of a size I haven't seen since the Seychelles, and a five foot long monitor lizard living in the puddle under the kitchen to avoid. Electric power was on from 6PM to midnight only and with one outlet for the four of us in the hut, the iPod speakers and Wellington's 20 hour Borneo playlist always got 1st priority!

It sounds like it was rough but I had a great time - boat rides and jungle treks at all hours to spy on the amazing jungle creatures is right up my alley. We saw all kinds of monitor lizards, strange birds, huge crocodiles, several kinds of monkeys (including the strange looking big-nosed Proboscis Monkeys,) wild boars, and insects and spiders galore. I politely declined to hold the scorpion (Jeez, I jumped out of a plane last summer despite my fear of heights, do I need to prove anything else to you?) I didn't get to see any wild orangutans or pygmy elephants but some in camp saw some of the cute apes on the trek back from the boat and we could hear them calling to each other every day. An added bonus was that the food at the camp was plentiful and fantastic, especially considering that every item has to be boated in and then carried up that 400m mud trail! One of the best times was when we played soccer with the camp staff in the mud. The guys working there were amazing, dealing with some hard work in difficult conditions, but I never saw one without a smile on his face and they went way out of their way to make sure we had a great time, all the time. If you are in the area, Uncle Tan's Jungle Camp is the way to go.

Sadly, our visit came to an end and we rode the river back from "Camp Kurtz" to civilization and by that afternoon we were washed, fed, and visiting the Sepilok Orangutan Sanctuary. It is an orphanage and rehabilitation center for baby orangutans with regular feeding times so you get to see the babies and older apes come in for a daily load of fruit to supplement what they find in the forest. I met and talked to some volunteers there and they were loving their three month programs! We must have seen 20 orangutans sweeping through for their banana lunch, they ranged in age from impossibly cute (less than a year maybe?) to grumpy old farts and everything in between. With their keen expressions, human-like hands and balding old man faces, they are very sweet looking and make you want to take one home. But they are also very powerful, and we saw decent sized tree limbs they had torn in two as easy as you would snap a chopstick!

That night we headed to the port town of Sandanak, had some dinner and poked around and Theresa and Katja did a little shopping. The next morning we were off to the airport and bought tickets to Kota Kinabalu, the site of our next round of diving...

Next installment: an amazingly cool city on the coast and a relaxing island sanctuary...

Salamat Pagi,
Clement

Finally Wet Again!

2008-04-16T10:46:00.002-04:00

I'm wet again, finally, and it is so good!! I've been dry to long and really needed to feel it!

I am back on the road again and back in SE Asia - which is now my favorite destination on earth. Sorry Caribbean, but despite your proximity to the east coast and some wonderful diving, the phenomenal reefs, awesome food and wonderful friendly people in this corner of the world completely blow you away.

I had not been diving since just before New Year's and was really starting to feel it in my bones. My hands needed to get pruny. I am so happy to be on this dive trip with my my good dive buddies Theresa, Wellington and the brand newly certified Katja!! My hair is salty, my neck is sunburned, I've got mask-marks on my face, and I am loving being back underwater - it feels like I'm home again.

I get wet a little sooner than planned when I arrived in Bangkok last week - turns out it was Songkran festival time. I had no idea what that was either, but it is Thai New Year's and they celebrate with a nationwide water fight. Everyone from 4 to 84 has a super soaker or a bag full of water balloons and they love to douse the farangs (foreigners,) as often as possible. Once I wised up and got my camera into a ziploc bag, I enjoyed myself and tried to make it fun for my attackers, pretending to be upset and then breaking into a broad smile. With some I pretended to wrestle for their watergun a little and one time wet-hugged a grandma who had just sprayed me - sharing the soaking back - she laughed and laughed! I walked past one open square where about a thousand people were having an all-out liquid melee and watched a while until attention turned my way and then skedaddled! What a great time - I wish I'd known ahead and gotten a soaker and managed to ditch anything I needed to stay dry so I could really go all out...

After a day in Bangkok, I hopped a flight to Kuala Lumpur the next morning on the way to a diving and jungle adventure in Borneo. I ran into my to German friends in the airport and we shared flights the whole way. Wellington showed up in KL looking a little bit harried - every flight along the way had been late and he had to rush every single connection for thirty hours or so - gotta love modern air travel... Someone once said the key to foreign travel is earplugs and a blindfold and after the screaming baby on my flight from KL to Tawau, I would add that an iPod is just as wonderful!

We landed after dark on the island of Borneo and hopped a taxi to Semporna, a small town on the coast where we would be based for our first several days. Most of the town is on stilts over the water and, though our hostel was pretty nice, the smell of the port and its inhabitants can be a little strong when the wind and tide are the wrong way.

Ever since I started diving, one of the destinations always mentioned in a respectful hushed voice is Sipadan. Coral, walls, sharks, exotic macro - it is all supposed to be here in abundance and the fabled huge variety stretched my imagination. Turns out it is completely true. I simply cannot believe the dozen or so dive sites around this tiny island can have so much going on of everything divers fantasize about. Towering vertical walls, massive schools of fish, darting colorful tropicals, exotic little creatures, big pelagics cruising through looking for a meal, bright healthy coral covering almost every square inch of space. It's all here. I should have known I'd be happy when I heard our first dive site was named "Turtle Patch!" Oh and did I mention I've seen turtles on every single dive so far (10 and counting...) and saw a dozen greens and one loggerhead on just one dive yesterday!! I am in heaven! I have literally swam around a coral head and bumped into the beautiful shell of a sleeping green turtle, who could barely be bothered to move away... Oh and on top of all the sharks (white-tips, black-tips, and hammerheads,) I also dove through a school of about three thousand five foot long barracudas. Wow wow and again wow. And did I mention the nudibranchs? Yes, they are here too, in an explosion of wild colors and styles - we even got to watch some hot nudi on nudi action today... I am now spoiled forever, but will just have to survive. T, Wellngton and I have come up from dives just laughing in amazement at everything we have seen - there is just nothing to say!

Katja has been plugging away on her open water since we arrived and T and I jumped in to help a bit today for her final two cert dives. She is now PADI's newest Open Water Diver and ready to take it all in.

So we are leaving tomorrow to go do some jungle trekking. Go figure. We are booked for a three day river rafting and jungle adventure. Between my fear of centipedes and Wellington's terror of leeches and the prospect of crapping in a bucket for the rest of the week, you gotta wonder, "Why are they leaving?" And honestly, I am wondering the same thing.

Wish me luck!

Ciao and it's great to be back with you!
Clement

Itchy Feet

2008-04-09T00:20:00.005-04:00

Well, you had to guess this was coming... I leave for Borneo on Thursday.

First let me backtrack a bit to let you know what I've been up to and how I've been doing re-adjusting to home.

These last two months, I've kept busy with friend and family commitments, getting to know my almost year old nephew Andrew, (when I left he was basically a lump on a blanket, now he's taking steps!) a couple of weekends of snowboarding, settling in to Charlottesville, DC United games and going out and making new friends.

My Nana, Violet Burtt, turned 100 in March and we had a great family and friends party for her. She made the local papers and a TV news crew showed up so that night, there she was on TV - dancing to "Y-M-C-A!" Really. She had a great time, but was a little tired after all the excitement. Friends have come down from DC to visit and we've explored C-Ville's nightlife, hit some wineries and gone hiking on the Appalachian Trail. I even joined the local scuba club! I also spent a week baby-sitting my six year old nephew CJ (we had lots of fun breaking my sister's rules, please don't tell her!) and ran a 10K last weekend. Whew, I've been busy!

Life in the states is a bit weird and I've really felt a little out of step. I am continually astounded by the choices we have - multiple strip malls each with basically the same stores over and over again. You spend so much time in third world countries assessing where to get things you need and mentally marking them for future reference, ("hmm this store has a brand of shaving cream I recognize, or a cookie I might try,...") yet when I do that at home it feels almost silly. Driving was weird too - when I first got back on the road I felt like I was flying when I was really almost always 10mph under the limit. And if you know me, I tend to NOT be under any limit ;) Also, the things we worry about as a culture seem less important to me now - I've seen some poverty and pain, people in desperate situations, damaged environments and poor outlooks. We in the western world and especially in America don't always realize how truly lucky we are just to be fortunate enough to live here in the midst of such prosperity and opportunity. Not everyone here has it easy or perfect, but even the poorest person has chances for survival that millions of people around the world couldn't dream of. I realize we all have essentially won a genetic/geographic lottery by being born in America, and it has changed my view of things quite a bit. Makes it kind of hard to worry about J Lo's baby pics, who is still on American Idol, or what some politician's advisor said about somebody else.

I've really missed the diving - I haven't been in the water since Zanzibar and man, am I dying to get wet! So when my German friend Theresa (you might remember her as my dive buddy in Thailand,) told me she and a friend from home were heading to Sipadan, on the Malaysian part of the island of Borneo, the wheels started turning in my brain...

At first I was a bit reluctant, after all, I've already been to Malaysia and wouldn't be earning a new passport stamp for returning. "Wait a minute," I realized, "how silly is that - turning your nose up at a trip to one of the greatest places for diving on earth because you cannot tick off a new country on your mental map of the world? Get real!" So I looked at my schedule (open) and finances, (grim but WTF,) and made it work. Now my friend Wellington is coming along so I've even got someone to travel with, (finally.)

So here's how it's gonna work - roundtrips were expensive so when I noticed a cheap one-way fare to Bangkok I jumped on it, planning on working out how to get home later. So I've got a little over three weeks in Malaysia where we plan to do lots of diving in a couple different areas, go rafting through the jungle, visit an orangutan sanctuary and maybe climb a mountain (though after Kilimanjaro, that's not really high on my list...) Next, I had to decide what route to get home. If you read my blog from last August, you might remember that I realized that by traveling west around the world I was actually getting a day younger. Well I decided to knock another day off my age and come home in that direction. Now I just needed to decide where to stop - I played on kayak.com for a while, tracking airfares, and dreaming about destinations. I checked fares to Munich, Krakow, Dubai, Istanbul, Prague, Moscow, and finally found

a really cheap one to London. Hey, I've never been before so it appeases the passport snob in me, and I've got some friends there I can hit up for tour advice (and maybe a couch or two...,) so the choice was pretty easy. Now I've got 10 days in the UK and am still deciding what to see. Not doing so hot on the couch hunt so far, but I've got a trusty Risk Steve's in hand and we'll just have to see what pops up!

I don't have a fare home yet, but I plan on being back around the 12th so that I'm here for my sister's birthday and also a week ahead of school.

Yup, that's right, I said school. I'm taking summer classes locally in C-Ville to get ready for Grad School in Marine Bio. This summer are Chemistry and Bio2 (plus labs,) so wish me luck as I embark on a completely new stage of my life. I'd love to do more work with turtles but really, anything involving the amazing life to be found in the undersea world is so exciting.

Boy, it feels good to be writing to you again, I hope you keep reading and enjoy the next chapter of my journeys...

Stay Wet,

Clement

Last Stop: Spain

2008-02-11T23:23:00.005-05:00

When I decided to add Spain to my round the world adventure, I was suddenly flooded with advice. Way more people than I expected have vacationed or lived there and they all had very strong opinions on what I should visit during my ten day stay. Since my best friend's little sister Lulu (or Elizabeth, hey I've known her since she was a kid, I can't get my brain around the "new" grownup name,) lives in Madrid, it was a given that I would base there and take advantage of her years of experience (and her couch!)

Leaving Italy was hard. No problems or anything, it's just I really loved my time there and there was so much more I wanted to do. Oh well, next time...

I landed in Madrid in the middle of the afternoon and followed Lulu's directions to the bar where she had me wait for her to get off work. A couple of cold beers later, she popped in and we eventually headed to her apartment. Later I met her boyfriend Mike (not Australian, amazing!) and we went out to dinner. Spaniards are known for eating late and the restaurant we went to doesn't even open until 9PM! We had a long leisurely dinner and then we walked all over town and they pointed out the sights at night. It is really a late night town, the streets and bars were with people and we even saw parents with kids out walking around after 1AM!

The city is filled with Plazas and grand boulevards and I spent days wandering around local neighborhoods, sampling Spanish cuisine at tapas bars, and seeing the sights. Madrid has some of the best art museums in the world - the Prado, the Thyssen, and the Reina-Sofia where I spent a long Sunday afternoon with Lulu and Mike. I have a very large print of Picasso's Guernica, it's one of my favorites of all the prints I own - his vision of a horrible Nazi bombing during the Spanish Civil War and the power and anguish the he projects in the tortured figures is so compelling.

This massive piece is displayed there along with many of the sketches and studies Picasso drew as he prepared to paint it. I could have spent hours just looking, it seemed every time I was about to turn away I would notice a new element of figure that I never noticed before in my much smaller copy. One night, Lulu found us a true Flamenco show in a tiny out of the way bar. While the singing is not exactly one of my faves, the whole effect of the musicians and the dancing in the dark smoky club was fantastic, and I would really recommend seeking out a good local show when you visit Spain.

One day I took the high speed train to Toledo, a small city with tons of history. This medieval shows off a blend of the cultures that shaped Spain through the centuries. Moorish, Christian and Jewish influences are visible in many of the old city's buildings. There are some pleasant little museums and I really enjoyed the views from the old defensive walls of the town. Many of the streets are tiny winding alleys that reminded me of Stonetown in Zanzibar - must be the Arab influences...

Barcelona is a city I've always known I would visit and fall in love with, so I couldn't wait to have my friend Vicki show me around - but then she went and got an internship and decided to stay in the Seychelles a while (who could really blame her, I mean - c'mon, wouldn't you want to stay in paradise and play with turtles for another 10 weeks?) So when I visited I was sadly on my own. The hostel I picked turned out to be fantastic, and its location on Passeig de Gracia could not have been better situated for visiting this wondrous city. I walked down the famous boulevard Las Ramblas, poked around the Barri Gotic and El Raval, looked in on markets, drank wine at a cafe overlooking the harbor, and sampled yummy Catalan cooking. There were some great art museums here, too, MACBA (contemporary art,) one specifically for Picasso and one for Miro. Definitely my kind of city. One day was my modernista day and I visited all the buildings and parks created in this style. The greatest examples of the genius of Gaudi, the Father of the movement, is la Sagrada Familia, probably the most stunning cathedral I've ever seen - and it's not even finished yet! Started in the late 1800's, artisans and architects are projected to be working to finish Gaudi's masterpiece sometime in the middle of this century...

Two more recent jewels of the city are its fantastic aquarium (with a walk-through shark tunnel,) and all the Olympic venues on Montjuic. I made the long long walk up that hill before noticing there is a special graded metro train that makes the steep trip. The restaurants in Barcelona are amazing and my last night there, I had one of the best meals of my entire trip with my roommate Maddie. Then we barhopped around the city and wound up dancing until 4 or 5 (I think...) I was a little groggy the next morning, but all I had to do was survive the short jet trip back to Madrid.

When I got there, it was Carnaval, so Mike, Lulu and I watched part of a parade before going out for an awesome Paella dinner. The next day we wandered through street markets, ate tapas at tiny local places, shopped some more and then went to the movies when we couldn't take the rain anymore. I went online to find out which teams were playing in the Superbowl and at 12:30 AM, headed to an irish bar to watch it. Not too surprisingly, the place was almost deserted, with only about seven of us watching the game. Through the first three quarters it wasn't very exciting, and the situation was made worse by the fact that the Spanish feed doesn't show any of the highly anticipated commercials. When the game paused, (and it sure paused a lot!) the feed was just a long range shot of the entire stadium from deep in an upper deck corner. It got pretty boring waiting for the next play to start, and the halftime show took forever, so I wasn't too upset when the staff closed the bar and tossed all of us out at the end of the third quarter around 3:30. Little did I know how good a game it would turn out to be and of course I missed the best part...

I really enjoyed Spain, while not flashy and covered with touristy options like Italy, it has a good feel with lots of low key things to do. The museums are top-notch, the transportation options were easy and everywhere, and the food and drink are great and despite the saggy dollar, not too badly priced. The people are more reserved than in other countries, but the combination of uniquely Spanish things to do and visit made for a great stay. One difficulty that surprised me was the language. I've picked up a fair bit of Spanish traveling in Mexico and around Central and South America, but with the accent, the speed of delivery and tone range spoken, I could never figure out a thing anyone was saying in Spain. I did like the whole concept of getting a plate of tapas with every round of drinks you ordered, and was very amused that if you order a Biquini, you get a grilled cheese sandwich. Even funnier was the number of mullets on display - I had hoped this horrible hairstyle was dead everywhere in the world, but no - the Spanish male thinks it is a cool expression of coolness.

After Madrid, the next stop was home so the next morning, I packed my bag for the last time and said farewell to Lulu already feeling some nostalgia and an urge to be on the road again. I think I've got the travel bug bad - a condition made obvious to me on my layover in Heathrow. With several hours to kill, I caught myself in front of the travel section at the Borders books, rifling through the guides and had to laugh at myself. Not even home yet and already dreaming...

I've been home now for a couple of weeks - the family is visited, friends recontacted, cell phone activated and even Voodoo has forgiven me my long absence. My backpack is completely empty for the first time in months and looks pretty forlorn. There is still some sand in the corners though...

What's next? Who knows? But no matter where I end up, I will always have this wonderful journey of world and self-discovery to look back on and smile.

Plus, I'm a whole day younger!

Thanks for traveling along with me here, I hope you enjoyed it almost as much as I did...

Clement

All Roads Lead To Rome…

2008-02-08T13:28:00.000-05:00

Even at Four AM.

It was good to escape the menacing streets of Kenya and head for the reportedly safer streets of Europe. My flight to Rome connected through Heathrow the day after a runway accident there had made the news even in Nairobi, but I was still surprised by the impact it was having over 24 hours later. So a plane misses the runway – there were no serious injuries, just drag the wreckage out of the way and get on with it. But not at Heathrow, there they decided to close one of their two runways to investigate. I’m confused a little bit but then again I’m not so smart, wasn’t the problem that the plane missed the runway, why close it? So while I managed to escape on time a riot-torn African city where the government has possibly stolen power, hundreds had been slain, and tens of thousands are homeless refugees, in England the next leg of my flight was five and a half hours late while authorities looked at some torn up grass. Ahhh, civilization. So I grabbed a meal, found a comfy spot and started to read the new Lonely Planet I bought for Italy. (Holy shit, books are expensive in the UK!)

I finally landed in Rome at 3:30AM, long after the public transport options had closed and shared a taxibus into town with six other travelers. For 30 Euros apiece!!! Already I was getting the authentic ancient Roman experience - being treated like a Sabine. Dropped at the door of my reserved hostel at 5AM, I vainly knocked on their locked door for 15 minutes before pulling out my Lonely Planet to see what other options were available in the neighborhood. Squinting at the text and tiny maps by streetlight, I wandered several streets and knocked on several doors before luckily finding Freedom Traveler’s Hostel near Termini train station.

I slept through the free breakfast the next morning and got a late start on my sightseeing, but still managed to pack a lot into my day. With a tourist map in my fist, I headed to a street market to get myself some warm clothes - after months in Asia and Africa, I was freezing my ass off! Before this trip, I had always hated haggling, but I must have learned well in the markets of Thailand and Zanzibar, because I left a trail of upset salesman in my wake. Wearing my new black jeans, faux Gucci belt, black turtleneck sweater and a black coat, (when in Rome…) I walked all over Rome for hours seeing sights I’d only read about – the Colosseum, the Forum, Spanish Steps, the Vatican, Trevi Fountain and the Parthenon. I wandered through winding cobbled alleys into astonishing statue filled Piazzas, stopped for coffee in tiny cafes and sampled pizza or gelato whenever the mood struck me.

After walking around for eight hours or so, I dragged my tired butt back to my room and met the roommates I had tried not to disturb the night before. Anne from Gaucher college and Naomi from Australia (another one – is there anyone left down there at all?) had been in Italy for a little while and gave me advice for my visit. The next morning, Anne took off for Naples and Naomi and I headed out to explore. In between frantic searches for Twix bars and gelato, we actually saw lots of stuff. Vicki had advised me to avoid the line at the Colosseum by getting the ticket for both at the Palatine Hill, so we visited there first, enjoying great views of the city and centuries of ancient Roman ruins. Then we waltzed past the people in line like J Lo at a nightclub and were soon imagining ourselves as gladiators waiting to enter the arena for a fight to the death. Compared to modern sporting arenas, the 50,000 seat Colosseum is nothing special. But then you recall it was built almost two millenniums ago by people using only muscle power and it is astonishing. I wonder if Washington DC’s RFK stadium will still be around in the year 4008? Doubtful.

We spent the rest of the day exploring Rome on foot, finding all kinds of cool back-alley shops, cafes and cathedrals. We had lunch in fabulous Piazza Navona - my favorite in all of Rome. After hours more wandering, I took pictures and watched the sun set behind the Vatican. Crossing the Tiber to Castello Sant' Angelo, we stopped and watched ice skaters circling endlessly before finding a tiny trattoria for dinner and a bottle of good wine. It seemed to be locals only and many very satisfying courses later, and after some wrong turns, we headed home.

The next several days were a blur of sights, museums, famous works of art, cathedrals, great food and wine, and passing time in piazzas. There was always a fun crowd around the hostel, so finding people to eat, wander and go out with was easy. I took a walking tour with Will, one of the staff, who seemed to know all the out of the way cool stuff and good stories I like in a tour. We even went inside a Capuchin Church crypt where over hundreds of years, the monks had used their brothers' bones to decorate the rooms. The tour included some sights I had already visited, but Will's insider stories made them fresh and interesting.

I decided to spend a couple of days in Florence and Will had recommended I stay at D'Archi Rossi Hostel, and once again, he scored big. It was a larger place and I stayed in a 12 person dorm, but the place was clean, had lots of hot water, and was amazingly painted with murals by all the guests. looking at the replicas of Italian works of art, modern interpretations, and original pieces, I felt distinctly untalented. It seemed the norm in Europe was fun hostels with lots of cool programs and I gladly took all their advice and enjoyed the city. For a tiny city, there was tons of history, and signs of the taste and power of the Medici family was everywhere. Highlights included Il Duomo Cathedral, Botticelli's Venus at the Uffizi Gallery, and Michaelangelo's massive David. I think I hit every art gallery in the city! All in all I packed everything there is to do in Florence into just a couple of days, and even had a fun night out in a local Irish bar (the only place showing soccer games.) I had gone there to meet up with my hostel roommates (Adam, Kevin & Sean from where else - Australia,) who were hours late. I think they were actually blowing me off, so imagine their surprise and disappointment when they walked in to find me sharing a table with four American girls - a bunch of students from GWU taking a year to study art at the local Florentine University. We talked art, travel, sky & scuba-diving and DC for hours until the bar closed and I headed back to the hostel where all my roommates were long in bed. I bet they are still wondering about "that old American guy."

The trains to and from Florence were fantastic, just like the rest of the public transportation system seemed to be, especially in Rome. The Metro and Buses are easy to figure out, maps are simple, getting tickets a breeze, it's all in perfect shape, and it goes everywhere you need to be. The direct line to the airport, the Leonardo Express, has to be one of the nicest trains I've ever ridden but it was sadly taking me away for my flight to the last stop of my world tour - Spain.

Ciao for now,

Italy Notes And Musings…

2008-02-08T13:20:00.000-05:00

After a week of museums, sculpture, cathedrals, Roman ruins, Renaissance Palaces, and the Vatican, my only question is: how is there any marble left on the planet?

After six months of wandering through parts of the world that might seem a little sketchy to the untravelled Westerner, (seedier parts of Bangkok, Communist Viet Nam, remote areas of Muslim Indonesia, tragic Cambodia, plus Africa with all its strife and corruption,) it was in Rome that Bank Of America decided there was too much “unusual activity” on my ATM card and locked me out of my account! What does that say about BofA’s opinion of Italy? Funny, but definitely a pain in the ass.

While I think Italian is a beautiful language, and appreciate its flow as well as its history, any two people speaking and gesturing together seem like they are having a full-on argument.

Italy is the home of the exotic sports car and the names just roll off the tongue. Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati, Lanzia, Alfa-Romeo, Aston Martin…, huh? Yup, the only stop-me-in-the-street exotic sports car I saw the entire time was an English one - an Aston Martin Vantage, driven by a fat hairy old guy in some really nice clothes. The car looked fine enough to be Italian though…

I have been warned repeatedly about crazy driving in Italy and that every driver here acts like a frustrated Formula 1 racer. After the streets of Bangkok, Singapore and Saigon it seemed pretty tame. I did have lots of troubles crossing streets however - almost every country i've visited has been left side drive and it seemed I was always looking the wrong way when I stepped out! Some very close calls...

Holy crap, everyone smokes a lot! It’s worse than a coffee break at the tobacco farm.

Everyone said Italian men and women are all outrageously beautiful and wonderfully dressed in the most fashionable clothes. I would agree that there were lots of pretty people there, but not that many more than in any other city I’ve visited. As for fashion, well I’m definitely not the one to come to for advice but if high-fashion means ugly high-heeled boots I last saw at a Bon Jovi concert in 1987, then sure – everyone in Italy is fashionable. Everything else they were wearing looked really cool though.

The smallest note in the European currency is the 5 Euro. I like the one and two Euro coins and think America should come up with a good design (one that’s not almost exactly the same size and shape as the quarter. Maybe polygonal or something?) and get rid of the dollar bill. The only down-side is how heavy the change on your pocket gets and it’s surprising how quickly it adds up to real money!

Art!! Food!! Wine!! Italy is heaven on earth!

Quickie: Europe And Home

2008-02-02T07:44:00.000-05:00

Hey all, Iºm in Barcelona (awesome city, looking for a job here...) Italy and Spain posts are coming, I promise. Just been busy running around Europe.

I am home in the States on Monday night (has it been that long already, seems like I just left!) and checked in on US news today (to find out who is in the Superbowl actually - is it this weekend?)
I noticed that the US economy lost 17,000 jobs last month AND ExxonMobil posted record profits. I think that was the exact same news when I left... To quote the great Yogi Berra, it seems like deja vu all over again!

Ciao,
Clement

Kenya, A Little Scary...

2008-01-29T06:07:00.000-05:00

The day after returning from Kili, fresh from two great meals, three looooooooong hot showers, and a fantastic night’s sleep on my Splurge Hotel’s Queen size bed, I met my Kili guide, Arushaa, and his wife for lunch and a little shopping. First I set him up with an email account and showed him how to use it – he wants to start doing some guiding without the tour companies taking the larger share of the money, and I think the web is the small business’ key to the future. Then we went to an open air secondhand market and we found me some jeans and a pair of shoes. I’d been noticing strange American t-shirts all around Africa – "Lake HS Class of ’98," lots of college t-shirts, political slogans, work softball team jerseys, and a memorably profane one from a Fire Dept in Elkhart Indiana; now I realized where all these shirts were coming from! When you donate old clothes to charity, those that don’t get sold in the States are sold in bulk to people who ship them to Africa where they are resold cheaply to the locals. I wondered how long it will take for all the ones I gave away last April to get here, and half expected to spot one.

Then I bought Arushaa and his wife lunch at a tiny locals place that was really good. As I sat there at a common table rubbing elbows with the Africans on either side of me, eating I have no idea what, in a place whose conditions would have horrified me seven months ago, I realized moments like this are what I’m really going to treasure from this trip. It’s meeting people from all over the world, making friends and learning about their lives and how they look at life.

At 2PM I caught a shuttle bus to Nairobi for a three day visit before flying to Rome. With the recent post-election riots and mayhem on my mind, I had my eyes peeled for trouble but the only thing I noticed was squads of geared up riot troops on many corners.

The next morning, I met Waswa, a connection of Arushaa’s who owns his own business doing Outward Bound style team building and consulting with Kenyan companies. We decided to go to Hell’s Gate National Park for a day of mountain biking with all the herd animals I’d only seen from a safari truck before. We went off road to work our way closer to the animals and I followed gazelles, antelopes, and zebra until they got tired of me and wandered off. I chased some families of warthogs and tried to approach cape buffalo – but it was they who drove me off with their defiant formations and intimidating size. I didn’t want to push too close as I wasn’t sure I could pedal faster over the uneven terrain than they could run! It is safe to bike because there are no lions, but leopards have been occasionally seen and we kept out from under trees where they like to sleep on low branches during the day and ambush prey when hungry. Later we parked the bikes and climbed down into a beautiful gorge, past geothermal vents that give the park its name.

After a long drive back to Nairobi with a great conversation that could have lasted all night, I ate at the hotel bar and watched a French League soccer match. Due to the planned opposition rallies, I decided to stay in the city the next day and carefully poke around the city. After the game I watched the local news which included some pretty graphic footage of police shooting two protesters at close range with AK-47s, then kicking the wounded men on the ground as they died. Later, CNN had a story citing “alleged reports” of the deaths, and I wondered how they had missed the local footage, which didn’t look very “alleged” to me.

After breakfast the next morning, I headed out to look around. There were many people out but most businesses were locked up tight. All I saw were lots of riot police and some groups with clubs shooing people away. After the second time I was stopped by police or troops (I couldn’t tell the difference,) in riot gear, I was getting worried. They checked my passport several times and kept asking if I was a journalist as they reviewed the pictures on my camera. I wasn’t sure of the better answer and decided to hole up in the internet café across from my hostel for the rest of the day.

On my way to the airport the next morning, my taxi got stopped at a roadblock where the police tried to shake me down for not wearing a seatbelt in the backseat. Saying it was my responsibility to know the local laws, they were sorry but they “would have to take me to police HQ.” I just stayed calm, refused to get out of the cab, admitted nothing and kept saying they there was no reason to arrest me for that. When they finally did pull me out of the car, I just said that I lived in DC and to make sure they called the US embassy so someone would meet us at the station. That’s when they put me back in the taxi and waved us on. After, the taxi driver said it’s a common police scam to stop cabs on the way to the airport, invent an infraction and try to get bribes from foreigners worried about missing flights. What a racket!

Nairobi looked like a pretty modern, western style city at its center, and the rest of Kenya seemed intriguing too. It’s a shame I couldn’t see more of it.

Next stop – Rome!
Arrivederci,
Clemente

Slogging Up Kilimanjaro...

2008-01-21T16:37:00.000-05:00

My flight to Tanzania had a layover in Nairobi, so on the southbound leg, my window seat included a great view of Mount Kilimanjaro. Her snowy peaks and crater burst up through the clouds into the sunlight and seemed to almost scrape the underside of the jet's wing as we passed overhead.
"I 'm going to attempt that?" I asked myself, trying to calculate how much worse 5896m (19,457 feet) is than the 13 thousand or so feet I endured skiing in Colorado last year. "Well, I am going to give it my best," I decided, worrying a little about the 30%-50% failure rate the guidebooks claimed.
Cut to: a couple of weeks later.
In Arusha, there are probably 50 companies running treks up the mountain and there are almost as many different ways to make the climb. There are around seven routes of varying difficulty and scenery, then you decide how many days from five to eight or nine with the longer trips offering more acclimatization time. Of course more days = more money. Next decide how "gourmet" you want to travel. There are all kinds of amenities and services offered from meal quality to better lodging and bedding. I even saw one group with a tiny, tented, private port-a-potty! No sharing the nasty wooden hole in the floor outhouse for these climbers. Of course more luxuries = more money! I got pretty lucky and found a group doing one of the routes I was interested in, Machamé (scenic and not too crowded but one of the harder routes,) leaving the day after I got back from safari, taking six days and in my price range - hooray! They even had cold weather and trekking gear I could rent.
So early in the morning, I joined a French couple, Christelle & Christophe (another language workout!) who live on Reunion Island near Mauritius, and set off with 12 porters and a guide up the mountain.
The climb is broken up into reasonable daily hikes to allow for some acclimatization and not completely exhaust the tourists. Our first day we were supposed to leave from the Machamé entrance gate at 1700m, but our van broke down a kilometer short of that so we had some bonus hiking right at the start at no extra charge. It was a very pretty hike through the green rainforest, moderately strenuous most of the way, but it got a little steeper after we broke through the treeline and approached our goal. Four and a half hours after starting, we arrived at our first night's camp at 3034m and found the porters had pitched our tents and dinner was almost ready. We all went right to bed after eating and I tried to sleep all bundled up in my chilly little tent.
Day 2 started with breakfast at 7:30 (porridge! - am I back in the -Seychelles?) and then hiked another 4.5 hours up to 3800m with great views most of the way, but the clouds closed in and it started raining just after we reached camp at 1:15. The rest of the afternoon was acclimatization time and we all napped after Christelle, who is a biology and geology teacher, worked on my French. Christophe has just a little English, but Christelle's was about level with my French, so conversation was pretty easy. It was a cold, cloudy, and cold (did I mention it was cold?) camp with some weird sci-fi looking plants growing in the rocks all around.
After a very cold night (-10°C) we woke up to sunshine glinting off the frozen tents and a beautiful view of the high peaks and glaciers up on Kili's summit. I had slept badly due to the cold - Nature Beauties gave me a crap tent and sleeping bag. And who designs a thermal mat that is narrower than a person? Every time a part of my body touched the ground off the mat, I was quickly wakened by cold seeping in through my layers. If I didn't lie like King Tut with my arms crossed on my chest, not moving at all, I kept waking up and I could feel exhaustion beginning to take its toll. I was chilled as I don't think my gear was designed with this kind of camping in mind. That day, we hiked six hours up to Lava Tower at 4600m and back down to Barranko Camp which is just under 4000m, to get more used to the altitude. It was bloody cold and even planning to wear most of the clothes I owned, I was not looking forward to that night. I had a solid headache due to altitude and effort despite hydrating like crazy. And peeing every hour made sleep even more difficult. I was worried what the next day would bring...
All the clothes did not help and I spent a mostly sleepless night trying to find the warmest position and then not move. After a quick breakfast that I really didn't feel like eating, we packed and hit the trail on a long ascent to altitude for our last camp before the summit push. The combination of altitude, hard climb, cold and lack of sleep were beginning to exhaust me and I felt awful all day. By lunch the hike and altitude robbed us of our appetites, and we huddled out of the wind behind some rocks, staring at bag lunches we barely touched. I forced down what I could and packed in a liter of water on top of that. I knew dehydration in the thin dry air must be avoided and I swallowed the icy water knowing that we would at least get a breather every time we stopped to pee. After lunch, conditions got worse - colder and wetter - and Christelle started getting sick.
Staggering along, I caught my mind considering ways to quit and end the misery and controlled it by forcing everything out and just counting my steps. Left foot odds and right foot evens and trying to focus on any interesting numbers I passed.
34- my lucky number...
1066 - William the Conqueror...
1492 - Columbus...
1776 - Declaration of Independence...
1968 - my birthyear...
1990 - college graduation...
2002 - CJ is born...
2068 - I turn 100...
3434 - lucky number twice.
Soon they lost all meaning as I moved slowly up the mountain and I really had to focus during the breaks not to lose count. Christelle got sicker, puking every couple hundred meters, and I was now fighting the nausea and taste of my own old food. "What is that awful taste? Hard-boiled egg? I threw mine away at lunch, can I be fighting down yesterday's lunch?!?" The step count grew until after six hours of hiking, finally we stopped at Barafu camp, altitude 4662m.
Step count - 7192.
The plan was to nap, grab some dinner, then sleep for a couple more hours before rising at 11:30PM for a midnight start on the summit climb - hoping to arrive around dawn.
Here is where I got lucky. I had been trying to come up with a better way to sleep and decided that half my trouble was the mummy style sleeping bag that I just could not get comfy in. So this time, I put on all my warmest clothes and lay down directly on the thermal mat with the unzipped sleeping bag over me like a blanket so I could lie on my side, which was all but impossible before. Our guide Arushaa had noticed my struggles with poor gear and the cold and dug up some decent socks for me. Between the two, I got a decent nap before dinner and felt a little better.
By then Christelle was so sick she could not even get out of her sleeping bag - she wouldn't be going any further and would head down to a lesser altitude as soon as possible. The thought of eating turned my stomach and Christophe had it worse - all the difficulties we were sharing, plus a ton of worry about his girlfriend. We stared at the food for a while, and I eventually managed half a bowl of soup with a piece of bread crumbled in, two spoonfuls of plain pasta, and some tea. Chris only had soup and I struggled to encourage and cheer him up in French. Then it was back to our tents for some sleep before the midnight hike.
As I zipped the flap, I noticed how the strengthening winds were rattling my tent and I thought it might blow away if me and my pack weren't inside holding it down. Every time I needed to pee, I stayed inside and used the water bottle trick I had discovered in the Serengeti. Only this time, I augmented my new sleep system by huddling around the warm bottle until its heat faded. When I woke with a stuffed nose, I just blew it right into the sleeping bag without even uncovering my head, "I've only got to sleep in it one more night," I thought as I drifted back to sleep, "my snot is the next guy's problem." This way, I managed to get another decent five hours of shuteye.
I awoke to a porter calling my name, quickly dressed in my planned ascent clothes, drank the cup of tea, and downed the cookies he left. The wind was really buffeting my tent as I put brand new batteries in my headlamp and mentally got ready for what lay ahead in the dark on the frozen hill.
Decent sleep made all the difference and I felt pretty good. My blood was up and I just knew my goal was within reach. Determination took over and now I just had to get it done.
Then Arushaa came and I crawled out into the frigid dark to begin the final climb to the summit of the highest mountain on the continent. Chris was nowhere to be seen as we started out, but I barely gave it a thought and just focused on keeping the beam of my headlight on Arushaa's boots and trying to step in all the good spots he used. "Poley poley," I thought, rerpeating the Swahili words for "slowly, slowly," over and over again in my mind. Step step breathe. Step step breathe. An hour and a half in, my head lamp died - the batteries killed by the cold. With chilled fingers like dead meat, I struggled to reinsert the half batteries I had pulled out in my tent, and opened my jacket to put the dead ones close to my body where they might get some more life as they warmed. The constant wind gusts were trying to knock me off the exposed rocks and for the first time, I feared not making it for reasons other than my own exhaustion or reaction to altitude. I knew I had the mental strength to drag my body to the top and well beyond, but "What a shame," I thought, "if I failed because of no lights or a fall in this shitty wind!" When the second set of batteries gave out, I pulled out the the dive light I usually keep on my BC and had luckily brought along as a third backup. Poley Poley, higher and higher.
Even though I could no longer feel them, I kept wiggling my toes and fingers, trying to keep the blood flowing. It hurt every time I scraped the snotsicles off my nose, so I figured I was safe from frostbite there, at least.
Around 5AM, the divelight died and when Arushaa seemed a little frustrated while I was switching back to the headlamp and changing out batteries, I almost snapped at him, "I brought TWO flashlights and THREE sets of batteries," I raged but kept it inside, "and you didn't bring shit - so get off my back!" This time, the rewarmed first batteries lasted no more than 20 minutes, and I was about to chuck it off the mountain. But Arushaa came through and scrounged two AAA batteries from another guide, and with the one leftover I remembered sticking in my pocket from the four-pack I had opened in the tent, I thought we would have light until dawn. Back to the climbing, up through the wind and the cold.
I was still plodding along, somewhere deep in my own mind where it wasn't cold and painful, when suddenly Arushaa was hugging me, "Congratulations," he shouted in my ear, "we're here!" and I realized that it was light enough to see and the slope had gotten more gradual. We had reached Stella Point, not the top top yet - that lay several hundred meters up, but was just a 45 minute walk instead of a climb through the really thin air. Looped on the lack of O2, I staggered into the wind on to Uhuru Point, arriving at 6:20AM, just over six hours after leaving camp.
I dragged out my camera, inserted the battery I'd kept warm against my body, and took some pics at the wooden sign. It was cloudy and the top is pretty flat so there wasn't really any views. I pulled out a sign I made as a joke for some GVI friends and found some people to pose with it. The relentless wind tore one of the pieces from someone's grasp and it was instantly gone forever - I didn't even bother to look. I just tried to shoot what was left before it got snatched away, too. Drunk with success and the thin air, I put the camera away and pulled out the Mars Bar I'd carried all week to celebrate and almost broke a tooth on it, "We'll eat that later," Arushaa cautioned, "you'll just throw it up, here." And with that we started back down.
Now I noticed the exhausted and desperate faces of those on the way up as we passed. "Almost there," I cheered them, "you're doing great!" I tried to give them some of my energy to make it. Few noticed and soon I was far enough down that I felt silly saying anything so I just looked at them, wondering who would quit. Lots had, I realized when I compared the numbers of people I saw around the summit with the hordes that left camp back at midnight - the cold and altitude had taken their toll.
We descended back to Barafu Camp to the east and soon the sun cleared a peak and shone horizontally under the clouds, warming me as we almost skiied down a dusty gravel slope. I could have slipped and fallen all the way back to my tentand not cared - I had made it! I'd been scared my body couldn't handle the altitude, but it had. I'd survived days and nights of dreadful cold I'd never expected and wasn't prepared for. I totalled the hours of climbing in my head and realized that I had hiked 4.3 km vertically and 26.5 hours to the summit in five days! Finally I reached camp around 9AM where Arushaa let me sleep for an hour before waking me with a quick bowl of soup and then we were off for another three hour hike to that night's camp down at 3089m.
I rolled into Mweka Camp on rubbery legs with a small smile and asked Chris & Chris how they were doing. Her stomach was lots better and they hugged me and we shared my Mars Bar. I know Chris could have made it, physically I think he was stronger than me, but I also think he had to stay with his girlfriend. I told him this and said he had made the right decision and he looked relieved. Then this Quebecois guy named Simon showed up and we talked in French until dinner. How did I get stuck with the only three French speakers on the mountain?? It was OK, though, I could follow most of it, and they talked slowly and helped when I needed a translation. Simon works in Montreal as a Survival Instructor (!) and incredibly he had summited in the dark before 5AM, took two pictures and was back in his tent by 6:30 - when I was still at the summit. Wow!
The next day was a quick morning walk in shorts and a t-shirt and we descended quickly in the newly thick-feeling air. At the gate, we signed out of the mountain and I bought the porters a round of beers (at 10AM!) to thank them for the amazing job they did. Their job is very difficult, walking with huge loads balanced on their heads at twice the tourists' speed, while we were struggling with a light daypack. By early afternoon I was checked into my "splurge" hotel and was vainly trying to run them out of hot water.
The grand totals? - Six days. 34 hours of hiking. 1600m to 5896m and back down, about 8.6km of vertical change, (actually way more with all the ups and downs in between.) Four huge blisters and about 2kg of weight lost. Most importantly, I'd found inner strength and resolve I never knew I had. Arushaa said the summit temp was -13°C and we had gone up in the worst wind storm on the mountain in five years.

I believe it.

-Clement

Wild Kingdom

2008-01-15T15:49:00.000-05:00

One of my most vivid childhood memories was watching two nature shows on TV with my family: "The Undersea World With Jacques Cousteau," and "Mutual Of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. I'm sure everyone knows the French diving legend, but the other show (What was Mutual of Omaha anyway? A bank? An insurance company? Why Omaha? Did they do business outside of Nebraska? And what is so Mutual about it?) was as memorable for the amazing wildlife footage as for its host's wacky upswept hair. Every week, they brought new exotic wildlife right into my suburban home from all over the world, sparking a boy's imagination and generating an interest in animals and exotic destinations that has at least partially led to my present adventures.

Wild Kingdom and Jacques Cousteau eventually gave way to cable and my love of National Geographic and The Discovery Channel so it should be no surprise that the first thing I did on arrival in Arusha, Tanzinia, was to book a safari. I soon found a six day safari group that was looking to cut their price by adding a fourth member - that meant a good price for me, and since their plan included many of the parks I wanted to see, it was an easy decision to make.

The next morning I arrived at the safari company to find that things had changed a bit - for the better. Two of the other clients were held up by the violence in Kenya, so it was just myself and an Aussie named Libby to start and the others would try to catch up later.

Our first stop was Tarangiri National Park, and I could tell it was going to be great when we spotted impala from the entrance and an elephant only 500m inside the gate!! We spent the rest of the day riding around the park, standing on the seats for a great view out the open-topped Land Cruiser as our guide and driver, Bekka, described all the wildlife he was finding for us. We enjoyed close encounters with several herds of elephants, troops of baboons, some ostrich, giraffes, warthogs, waterbok, velvet monkeys, dik-diks, and even a lioness snoozing near her kill.

Next to a stream full of impala and a about 20 elephants drinking and tossing mud around with their trunks, I looked over at another approaching safari truck and one of the pasengers looked sorta familiar...

"Annette!" I called out, and sure enough, it was my friend - also fresh from dorm three and The Seychelles Experience - now enjoying Africa with her husband, Tim and we shouted updates to each other as our vehicles passed. Of course it's such a small world that when we camped for the night in a Maasai village, they were in the very next row of tents.

The next day we visited Lake Manyara Wildlife Conservation Area for more safari action, this time less wooded and skirting the edges of a massive lake where we spotted hippos and clouds of flamingoes. We also saw our first herds of zebra, cape buffalo, and wildebeest. Two of the zebras were injured and hobbling and the harsh reality of nature meant that they were probably someone's dinner that night of the next - and judging by the white bones scattered here and there on the green grass, there were definitely predators nearby...

The Lake was definitely better than Tarangiri, and we were beginning to see the massive amounts of wildlife Mutual Of Omaha promised. Annette had said that our safari route and park order was perfect - each would be better than the next and I couldn't wait for the next day and the legendary Serengeti!

The next morning, Libby and I awoke early and rolled out of our sleeping bags and tents to find our almost private tour had grown by one - the Swedish and Dutch girls were stuck in Uganda and had to cancel, but we were joined by Petr, a Czech engineer. So three people in a seven seat Land Cruiser was a hardship we would just have to endure and we got to know each other a bit on our morning drive to the next National Park.

In Swahili, Sirengit means "endless space" and long before we even approached the park entrance, I completely understood how the Serengeti was named. Formed when huge amounts of volcanic ash covered an older mountain range so only the occasional tip pokes out, the park is a vast flat grassy surface where animals roam everywhere. Our safari truck sped down a lonely unpaved track, across the dry grasslands and gently rolling hills. We passed Maasai villages or Boma with adorable kids frantically waving and yelling "Jambo! Jambo!!" and lean tall traditionally dressed tribesmen watching their herds of goat and cattle and gently shooing away some wildebeests and zebra tagging along for protection.

All signs of man apart from the long, straight, dirt road disappeared once we crossed into the National Park and it really began to feel like the Africa in the wildlife shows. Small groups of antelopes, impala, and zebra grazed together under the scorching sun from horizon to horizon as far as the eye could see. And the wildebeest were starting to mass together for their annual migration, not yet in the millions, but definitely in clumps of thousands. We drove through this magic environment for two hours with only an occasional stand of acacia trees or a kopje interrupting the vastness. It was here on one of these rocky islands that I got to see a young male lion, dozing like a prince on the sun, his half-grown mane styled like the Beckham faux-hawk - wow!

Our campsite was in a woodland area next to a riverbed so part of Bekka's evening briefing was a little off-putting: absolutely no food in the tents, and "if you need to get up to pee, shine your flashlight all the way around in a circle and look for eyes reflecting back from the dark." He recommended gathering a small pile of rocks next to the flap of our tents to chase animals away and wondered why I had only grabbed a couple?

"If whatever is out there doesn't leave after I've thrown this many stones at it, I've already pissed myself so it won't matter any more," I explained to the group's laughter. No one was laughing later that night when we heard the coughing grunt of lions and things breathing and sniffing around the tents. It's amazing how thin the fabric of a tent gets when your imagination is running away with you. It turned out two lions did roam through in the dark but most of the noises were from some hyenas in the bush and a pack of warthogs looking for scraps. I could have sworn something huge was testing the strength of my shelter all night. It was very sobering to see those big kitty pawprints in the dust right next to your tent in the morning light... After that, I started keeping an extra empty water bottle in my tent every night and then quietly tipping it out every morning in the bushes.

We had about two full days in the Serengeti and roamed all over. We saw many prides of lions, some with cubs, a leopard snoozing on a branch, hippos, a croc, and best of all - a cheetah moving through the tall grass! They have long been my favorite animal and I was hyped to get to really see one in the wild! Everytime we passed a herd of gazelles after that, I was secretly hoping to see a blur of yellow and black spots to ruin their day, heh heh heh.

Libby, Petr and I were a pretty good spotting team by our third day in Serengeti, and had seen so much that we were barely calling out sightings to each other unless there was something unusual to see like a baby giraffe or elephant, or vultures circling some doomed animal in the distance. Our last sighting before leaving that Park was just the bottom four inches of a leopard's tail as it snoozed on a branch obscured by the leaves, and we didn't feel like hanging around for an hour to see if it moved.

We packed up the camp and were excited to be heading to the famed (and almost unpronounceable,) Ngorongoro Crater National Park. After another long dusty drive across the savannah and herds of everything barely flicking an ear in our direction as we sped by, I convinced Bekka to make a slight detour so we could visit Olduvai Gorge, where the Leakey's made their amazing Australopithecus Boisei and Homo Habilus discoveries I studied in school. The gorge is not breathtakingly pretty, but it is awe-inspiring to look in and think that our ancient ancestors, as tiny and hairy as they were, once stood up, made basic tools, and walked around on the very earth I was standing on literally millions of years ago. It gave me the pricklies, anyway, and the museum was quite good.

That evening we arrived at the scenic Crater Rim and set up a camp as the sun set and the temperature plummeted, giving me a little unpleasant preview of my coming Kilimanjaro expedition... So cold I could barely sleep as the wind whipped around, I heard the familiar sounds of hyenas sniffing through the camp and suddenly remembered the bag of trail mix I had forgotten to store in the truck. So I huddled in the dark, headlamp and leatherman pocket knife at the ready, but I guess that hyenas don't like raisins, nuts, and M&M's too much so they wandered away after a while. Not a great night's sleep...

As the sun rose, we drove around the rim of the huge volcanic crater to the entrance road and headed down. The extinct structure is almost a kilometer deep and ten across so the view was fantastic! On the floor we headed towards the lake, passing elephants, buffalo, ostrich, zebra and gnus (same as wildebeest but the word is shorter and I'm getting tired of typing the longer one,) along the way. The lake had a pink tinge to it and when we got closer, we realized it was a huge flock of flamingoes, standing on one leg, scooping food from the shallow water. We spent the rest of the day cruising around getting very close to all the animals and I had a few highlights from the day. First was a black rhino trotting towards a morning drink or mudbath in the lake - this completed our "Big Five" (lion, leopard, buffalo, elephant and rhino - basically all the stuff that can eat you or stomp you to a pulp,) and we were all pretty excited about it. Next was the lion vs. buffalo standoff we watched until the lions gave up and wandered off into the river brushes. Though I think the 15 safari trucks jockeying for the best view had as much to do with it as the group defense tactics of the buffalo... At lunch, some kind of huge eagle swooped down and snatched a big piece of food right out of Petr's hand, scaring the crap out of all of us! Last was following some vultures to a group of hyenas tearing into something they must have just brought down an hour or so before - gory but cool - a true wild kingdom moment. Ngorongoro is especially terrific because the place is so scenic and all the abundant life is concentrated on the crater floor where they roam around almost uncaring of the humans trying to get a glimpse into their lives.

Too soon, our time was up and Bekka turned the car back towards Arusha and the end of our safari. We dropped Petr on the way, and Libby and I went to dinner at a rooftop lounge right near our hostel. It was not a big night as I knew I was leaving for a six day climb to the peak of Mt. Kilimanjaro in the morning...

I'll try to get the pics up soon - they are absolutely amazing!

Usiku Mwema,

Clement

Very Quick Update And Medical Question...

2008-01-14T09:30:00.000-05:00

Hi there,
Tanzania wonderful.
Safari Incrrrrredible!
Just came down from Kilimanjaro this AM - I made it!!! (I'm the only one of group who did...) It was VERY hard, Lynne, Marc & Mike - it was way harder than the Boiling Lake. According to guide, the wind was the worst in 5 years, and the temp was -13!!
Here's the medical question for any of the RN's or MD's who read this:
My rental cold weather gear completely sucked, from the sleeping bag to the tent and clothes, too - especially the gloves. Although I never had any signs of frostbite like the whitening or grayness or blisters, my wedding ring finger tip has no feeling (no jokes about my related symptom of apparent lack of appeal to the opposite sex, please,) more than 35 hours after summiting. Color is normal, response to pressure is the same as all the other tips, and the skin temp feels the same as the other 9, too, just no feeling.
Any idea what this is?
Ahsante Sana,
Clement

There's Sand In My Toes

2008-01-02T07:59:00.000-05:00

Zanzibar has many sides. Indian Ocean paradise with swaying palm trees overlooking crystal blue waters and pristine white beaches. Mysterious marketplaces where the senses are overwhelmed with the scents of a hundred spices and the sounds of haggling in another hundred foreign tongues. A historical crossroads of trade and power between ancient East, West, and African cultures. I managed to find all three in my short week on this tropical island off the east coast of Africa.

I had planned to visit for a week of fun dives and unwinding on the beach after months of working hard in the Seychelles, but finding a place to stay where I wanted was turning out to be impossible. I finally settled on a small beach lodge just outside the main town for a couple of nights, and would plan the rest of my stay from there. I spent some time exploring the twisting alleys and markets of Stonetown. I visited local museums, ancient forts, and art galleries. I dove in warm waters (medium vis,) with beautifel reefs teeming with fish and healthy coral. (And found some cool new corals - GVI has made me a coral geek!) The rest of my time I lazed along the miles of white sandy beaches in Jambiani. Running along the tideline at dawn, reading and relaxing in and out of the sun all day, and enjoying fresh seafood by torchlight under the stars at night.

Now it's my last day on a beach and there's sand in between my toes. There's also some in my ears, my hair, my pockets, the velcro on my watchband, and by the tiny itch I'm feeling I bet there's a grain or two in my butt I must have missed in the shower, too. It's Zanzibar sand - very white, powder fine - the kind that is hard to get rid of - and I know I will be finding gritty traces of it in the things I'm carrying for a long time to come. It will mix with the sand I've picked up from all the beaches and islands in Australia, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Sulawesi and the Seychelles I've visited, and soon the dust from the African Savannah and historic cities of Europe will be added to it.

These tiny unintentional souvenirs join the more conventional ones I've picked up along the way - lots of pictures, some t-shirts, and a gift or two. But what's really special to me are the things I've gained that are less tangible but just as solid - experiences, friends, stories, attitudes, outlooks, lessons, new perspectives, and the chance to share it all with you here.

I can squish my toes around and make little sand piles because I'm just finishing breakfast and that's one of the perks of sitting at a table on the beach. I'm enjoying Jambiani, on the east coast of Zanzibar where the almost deserted beach runs for miles in both directions. Blue green waters lap quietly and warm tradewinds waft traces of seasalt and exotic flowers across my browned body. I take a sip of my tea, stare down the gecko who seems to be debating a raid on my last piece of pineapple, and concentrate to fix this moment in my mind. Sadly, these are the last few hours of sun, sand and sea I will have for a while. After this meal, I will be heading inland to mainland Africa and eventually on to Europe and home to the States, so I don't know when I might have another magic moment like this. I'm not looking for pity, (after this trip, it's not likely you'd give me any, anyway,) it's just I've come to realize I'm a person who is called to the sea and it's unsettling not to know when I'll see her again. Soon, I hope...

A last chestful of ocean air, a long glance towards the blue horizon, and a half-hearted attempt at rubbing the sand off my feet just before I don my flip-flops and I'm off...

Stay wet and a little sandy,

Clement

PS: Now I'm ready to head to mainland Africa for a safari adventure!

The Most Stunningly Beautiful Girl...

2007-12-31T09:31:00.000-05:00

The most stunningly beautiful girl I've ever seen in real life, I met at an internet cafe in Zanzibar town.
There are certain places whose names evoke the mysteries of the far corners of the world and the fabulous riches or exotic beauty our imaginations hope to discover there. Bora-Bora, Bali, Persia, Rio, Fiji, and Zanzibar are some of mine, (notice how many end in vowels?) Just the way the names sound rolling off my tongue promises wondrous adventures. We can all think of places that excite our minds and tempt our senses, I bet yours have exotic names too.
Zanzibar had been an Indian Ocean and Far East trade hub for spices, gold, ivory, and slaves for 800 years before the Portuguese stumbled over it in the 16th century and it remained a crossroads of commerce under all the countries that have controlled the island ever since. Stonetown, the oldest part of its largest city and port named Zanzibar town, is a maze of skinny, winding cobblestone streets whose Arabic style buildings seem to rise up and almost meet overhead, dimming the passages below. Scooters barely squeeze by the merchants displaying their goods on low tables and rugs, but every so often, you wander into a sunny courtyard or tiny green park.
With my diving finished for the day, and seasalt crystallizing in my eyelashes, I stopped into a tiny internet cafe for a glass of fresh juice and on hour or two of contact with the modern world. . I remembered I had until a 31 Dec. deadline to complete a DAN Instructor update online and I worked my way through its 75 pages, trying and mostly succeeding in not getting caught too blatantly visually eavesdropping on the surfers next to me. Of course I had noticed her when she stepped through the door, even the fans pushing the warm air around the room paused their sweeps for another look. I concentrated even harder on my own screen as she sat down next to me, testing my strength not to gawk at her like every other guy around her was doing and probably had been doing since she hit puberty.
That's why I jumped when she tapped my arm, "Are you a Dive Instructor?"
So I'm not the only one who looks on other people's screens! "Yes," I replied, "at least until I quit my job to go traveling. Are you a diver too?"
She has her Open Water and is friends with a girl who teaches at a dive shop in Ras Nungwi, the island's northernmost point where I'd been trying fruitlessly to find a room for weeks. It turns out her friend is pulling her hair out, trying to handle a group of 130 Swedes visiting for the New Year who want to get certified, (no wonder I can't find a room there!) and is desperately looking for help.
"Shoot, I wish you'd found me yesterday," (truer words have never been spoken,) and visions of a place to stay, free diving and a chance to teach the Swedish Bikini Team will remain forever unfulfilled - I had just bought a plane ticket to Arusha for the next day. Even though I very regretfully declined and couldn't help her friend, we kept chatting and after I finished the update, (I think. I hope DAN will let me know...,) I found myself in the cafe across the street, listening to her sultry voice and trying to place her enticing accent. She has long wavy dark hair insouciantly (I've always wanted to use that word,) gathered up in a clip, dark-golden olive skin, and a big glint of mischief and intelligence shining from her deep brown eyes. I realized that without a doubt, Nadine is the most stunning woman I've ever seen outside of a magazine or movie screen. And she eclipses most of them, too.
Ahhh, Zanzibar... we trade backgrounds and stories. Mine, you know. Hers? Single and dumped like me. "Mostly from the UK," with an Irish Mom and Pakistani Dad (now I get that accent.) She's spent the last six months here in Zanzibar volunteering with HIV+ children, (a saint too!) She's impressed by my GVI project and the AIDS volunteering I did with Triad Health Project back in Greensboro. Next stop? Amsterdam with friends just fell through, so it's off to Buenos Aires on her own to work on her Spanish and learn to tango. "Hey, I just did that!" She wishes she were going on a safari too, and tells me how much I will love Rome and Barcelona - another person in love with that city, what is it about Barca?!
For an hour she's been ignoring her chirping cell, but I need to catch a share Dala Dala across the island at 5, and her friends are waiting... So with the goodbyes I get the European cheek kiss, but three times - left, right, left - what does that mean? I thought it was just two? Then she asks if I have a cell# while traveling but I don't so I give her my email instead, (so if this post suddenly disappears - you'll know why.) As I cross the street, I look back to a warm smile and a fingertip wave from the hand holding her cell to her ear.
Ahh, Zanzibar...
Nakupenda,
Clement

"I Like To Move It, Move It..."

2007-12-28T12:20:00.000-05:00

Every time I think the word "Madagascar," I mentally picture Gary Ridley singing the Disney song "I like to move it, move it..." in that funny voice on the Costa Rica trip and crack myself up. The name Madagascar also conjures up images of exotic wildlife prowling lush green jungles. Since it's estimated that 85% of the island (the fourth largest in the world,) has been deforested by humans trying to scratch some wealth from the land, that might not be the reality on the ground anymore but I managed to encounter some of what remains in the parks and reserves of Andasibe and the Perinet.

My buddy Zeph/Jeff collected me and all my stuff at the Sakamanga at 7AM and after dropping my excess dive gear at his home, we headed east on RN7 (National Route 7 - paved and two lanes, mostly,) for three days of trekking, nighthikes and hopefully, some amazing wildlife encounters.

The 130km journey wound through the mudbrick villages and rice fields of modern Madagascar and there were some startling reminders of what that entails along the way. Scorched hills and muddy rivers showed the result of slash and burn agriculture. Bare peaks and open pit mines reflected the the local population's scramble for wealth on this resource rich island.

Saddest of all was the hourlong backup where everyone left their vehicles to watch while the local gendarmie cleaned up the 36 bodies from the previous night's bus accident. It had overturned on a dark curve and rolled down a 30m embankment into a flooded rice field below. As I stood back and watched the gawkers running and jostling for the best view, I couldn't help wondering if CNN had picked up the tragic story like they sometimes do. I decided W's blather, Hillary's latest non-answer and spin, or Mitt's hair had probably gotten the airtime. Standing on that crowded yet lonely hillside,I don't think Ive ever felt more disconnected from home...

LIke all tragic traffic jams, this one eventually cleared and just a couple of hours later, I was hiking up a hillside finding brilliantly colored chameleons, geckos, and butterflies. Well, to be honest, my guide was finding them and I was frantically snapping pictures while trying to figure out how he was spotting them all when all I could see was a tall wall of thick green foliage.

That night, I took a night walk through the rainforest guided by Prosper, a Park Ranger friend of Zeph's. Although we only found just a few chameleons and geckos and only one fat-tailed lemur, I count the two hour trek as a success mostly for its challenges. First of all, it started raining, (shocking - in the rainforest!) about five minutes after we left the Ranger Station and just didn't let up the whole time. No problem, I was using a waterproof flashlight and put on my rainslicker. Of course, the flashlight died just over halfway through our walk, (damn rechargeables, I don't think I stayed up that late reading the other night...) At one point, I felt something strange on my lower lip against my teeth, and I cautiously probed it with the tip of my tongue. "Cool and slimy - must be a piece of leaf," I thought, but when I tried to brush it away, it held on to my lip! "Oh Shit! A Leech!!" I realized as I tugged it harder and harder, "I've got a leech in my mouth!" A strong pinch where it had attached to me got it off and I flung the twisting bloodsucker into the jungle. Back at the Ranger Station, Prosper used a lit cigarette to remove the three on my legs and arm. I never mentioned to him the one I soundlessly yanked off my lip - I was just glad I didn't scream like a girl.

The next morning, light was just beginning to show in the east when I was awakened by the haunting calls of the Indri Indri, the largest of the lemurs, who are territorial and like to let the neighboring groups know it nice and early so no there's no confusion. As I breakfasted on fruit and croissants on the terrace of my lodge, I could watch the family moving through the treetops as they called out to each other. Now THIS is the Madagascar I was dreaming of! The rest of the days were a blur of parks, reserves, and a four hour hike led by Prosper's brother, named confusingly (or maybe not,) Prosper. The wildlife seemed intent on finding us and I saw five different species of lemurs, some bright new chameleons and all kinds of cool birds and insects. But we needed to go to an enclosure to find the seriously endangered Fossa. Though they don't look as evil as in the Disney flick, they were a very impressive animal - kind of a cross between a big cat and a monkey. There are pics of all of these on my Flickr page...

Back at the lodge, I played two hours of ping-pong with Zeph, then had a Christmas Eve dinner with a Belgian family I'd just met. We drank THB beer and played pool until they kicked us out and shut the bar. They were divers, too and showed me the most amazing photos from their trip to the Galapagos last year - a white whale shark!! I never heard of such a thing, and if I hadn't seen the pics, I probably wouldn't have believed it.

After breakfast on Christmas morning, Zeph drove the four hours back to Tana, where he had invited me to have dinner with his family. Along the way, he pointed out some Zebu to me. They are essentially a big ugly ox with a really tall hump and some exotic horns, and he promised me it would be part of the meal - obviously hoping for a reaction.
"Already had some," I coolly replied, describing my meal at Sakamanga.
"Not the traditional way my wife makes it," uh-oh, what was I in for? Among the Malagasay dishes using rice, chicken, fruits, manioc, yams, beef, and nuts was Bouche du Zebu, (Zebu mouth,) prepared with onions, peppers, and vinegar. Afraid to ask what specific part of the mouth was used, I tried it and found it interestingly firm and really tasty. This trip is definitely about trying new things...
Then Zeph and his two college aged kids dropped me at the crappy hotel I booked near the airport, (bedbugs!! And who charges a dollar for two pats of butter?!?) and very early the next morning I was off to Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, on my way to Zanzibar!

All for now - Tatty Christmas!
Clement

Mythical Madagascar

2007-12-28T10:55:00.000-05:00

"To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive"
-Robert Louis Stevenson

The Seychelles are technically in Africa, but I didn't feel as if I'd really arrived on the fabled continent until I left the airport in Madagascar. Although many of the people still resemble their Indonesian ancestors who settled here long ago, the shacks, red dust, raw smells and teeming population of this huge island are plainly something new and different.
While I genuinely like Madagascar and hope to come back to explore it more fully, many of my experiences here are, at best, ambiguous and trending to the negative.
Back in the airport, I stood in the immigration line listening to some poor man who claimed to be from Tanzania but had "lost" his passport, as he tearfully begged the uncaring airport authorities not to be sent back to Dubai. As most of the watching crowd laughed, he knelt on the floor and sobbed on the shoes of the customs bureaucrat, and I wondered "What was he so desparate to escape?" Visions of abusive virtual slavery in the home of some Arab oil-prince flitted through my imagination. What fears motivate a grown man to sob and grovel on the floor in front of hundreds of callous strangers? He seemed completely petrified of returning to the Mid-East. Unfortunately, life is not like the movies with a resolution to everything and I'll never know the answer as I hesitated to get involved and soon my golden US passport carried me through the gates to the country beyond. Maybe I'm just a sappy liberal American, but I hope he's OK.

In the Disney flick, the lemurs and foosa all speak English, but in reality, Madagascar and its capitol Antananarivo ('Tana,) are beaucoup more French than the Seychelles were and my admittedly weak language skills got a high-impact workout. I stayed at the Sakamanga hotel, an unexpected cool and quirky midrange midtown place with funky rooms, decor and a neat vibe. It's owned by a neat older French couple and winds back through its own alleys and courtyards full of hidden treasures. I just wish their internet stayed open past 8.
http://sakamanga.com/ - stay there if you ever go.
Widely scattered over 12 steep red clay hills with reminders of its politically turbulent recent (2001) past everywhere, 'Tana is a crowded and bustling but definitely not modern city. Many of the streets are cobbled or packed dirt, most of the buildings seem to date from the colonial period, (which wasn't that long ago, come to think of it,) and very few are more than five or six stories high. The street toddlers - too young to be called kids - make the beggars of Asia seem like prosperous yuppies, and the smells and unspeakable debris from the local markets were enough to drive even me inside to the local restaurants for every meal. There I found French menus and meals at low prices but I should have wondered, "What is Zebu? I thought beef was le boeuf...?" I'll reveal the answer later...

I spent a day wandering the downtown area and local markets - doing errands, changing some money and making travel plans. Big Tana drawback - in Asia, there was a used book store on almost every corner and a book-trade shelf in every guesthouse. In Mad., I only found one bookstore, and it was Catholic where the only book in English was on local saints of the 19th century. Lonely Planet?- Forget it, I'd have to rely on the web...

Fat chance, there seem to be only two internet cafes in town and the radical one closes at 8PM, 6 on Sundays. It turns out the military semi-dictator, finally turned out of office in 2001, (but he's hoping for a comeback,) didn't believe in the web and the current president is trying to catch up.

Like I said, I really liked the eclectic Sakamanga - every room (I had three different ones in three nights,) was decorated differently and they were thoughtful enough to provide candles for the more romantic guests. Or so I thought, by the third night there, I realized the candles were in response to the daily evening 30 minute shower, which resulted in the daily evening multi-hour blackout. There's nothing like being jolted awake at 2AM when the ceiling fan and every light in your room simultaneously kick on.

I set up my Madagascar adventures with a cool local guide named Zephyrin, (Jefferson,) and we spent my last full day in Tana checking out the local history, palaces, and some markets scattered around the city. I capped it at a very nice French joint named Villa Vanille, (guess the menu focus,) with an awesome meal and carafe of Bordeaux. I caught a French family of six making fun of my language skills as I ordered from the French-only wait staff. But they can "Baisez mon cou" as my Grandpa used to say - the girls had faces only a Thoroughbred could appreciate and the boy's ears stuck out so far, they could hear things happening behind them better than in front.

Despite it all, Madagascar was really starting to grow on me and I eagerly looked forward to the next day's adventures in the jungle rainforests of the Perinet...

Au Revoir,
Clement

The Seychelles Wrap-Up

2007-12-28T10:00:00.001-05:00

As I sit here in Africa, (Africa man, can you believe that? Africa!) sipping a Tusker, watching Celtic v. Hibernia on the bar TV (weird, I know,) and sweating my ass off, (of course it's hot - it's Africa!) I'll try to wrap up my Seychelles experience for you.

But 1st - three important bits of info:
# of dives so far on RTW trip - 99
# of books read on same trip - 67
# of cold showers on the trip - I don't wanna think about it!

It's been over a week already, and I'm still finding it hard to believe GVI actually kicked us off the base. Oh, I know we had to leave, but still - we were all having so much fun..., how could they?

Here's a quick Seychelles story. I'm still not sure about the locals. A few Seychellois are really friendly, but the majority seemed pretty distant. I just don't think they know what to make of us volunteers. Are we tourists? - No. Permanent? - No. Spending lots? - Only on internet time, Seybrews and milkshakes. We're some kind of weird in-between people... The closest contact, (literally,) is on the bus into town. The local buses are very busy and crowded - SRO on just about every trip. The bus company could double the buses to take up the load, but at 3 Rupees a ride (30 cents,) why would they? The rickety buses wind their way up and over the mountain, riders swaying back and forth on every curve, and getting packed tighter and tighter with every stop. But despite the solidly packed aisles with straphangers the entire length of the bus, I never once saw an older lady forced to stand. Even the thuggiest LA gangsta wannabe automatically stood up to give his seat to the the print dress and straw hat wearing gray-haired lady as soon as she paid her fare. I felt like I might have made a small difference when I noticed the small smiles from the locals who noticed the times I was able to stand to offer mine. It's the little things we have in common that bring people together...

The Seychelles experience?? I had a fantastic time. Not that the diving was great or the accommodations all that plush. The islands are certainly very beautiful, the green of the mountains, the turquoise seas, and the dazzling beaches are the stuff of romance movies. But the reefs are still very damaged from the '98 el Nino and will most likely never compare to those in Indonesia or Fiji. Still, there was cool stuff to see and my experiences with whale sharks, mantas, sea turtles, lionfish eating octopus, and dolphins will always bring a smile to my face. What really made this volunteer experience so terrific was the people I got to meet and work with - learning reef life and research methods from the staff and interns, making close friends with a great group of like-minded volunteers, and sharing the joys of the ocean realm withthe local children we taught every week.
My best memory? It's tough to choose between whale shark dives, raucous parties, turtle tagging, table dancing (don't ask,) bread from scratch, hours long card games (Shithead, Asshole, Hearts, Truth-Or-Dare Spoons, Shit-Fuck-Damn, where did we get these names?) watching people line up for thirds for my jambalaya, soccer err - football games, and an amazing week on Curieuse, Praslin and La Digue. In the end, it was easy - having a Momma Hawksbill lay her eggs in my hand Thanksgiving Morning. Wow - definitely life-changing.
Oh yeah, and I like lentils now too.

Jambo & Nakupenda,
Clement

The Results Are In...

2007-12-26T03:06:00.000-05:00

If you hadn't already noticed, the polls on the "To Face Or Not To Face," poll are closed. And in a convincing display of commitment to new ideas and technology, Facebook won with over 60% of the vote. I have kept my promise and set up a page and have been having a great time with it. I just cannot wait until I get to somewhere where I'm not paying for each minute of internet time (here in Nairobi, it's $2 for 15 minutes!) "Sigh," I miss The Cove. Anyway, if you promise not to display too many compromising photos of me, come find me on it by my email address: clementberard@yahoo.com and I'll e-hug you, e-buy you a beer, or e-throw a snowball at you!
And for the two of you who didn't realize that choice C in the poll - "Naaah, you're too old..." was a joke - grrrr.

Tomorrow I'm off to Zanzibar, (confession: I could write that a thousand times and get the same silly smile on my face each time...) for a week of sun sand and diving.

I owe everyone a final Seychelles post and a nice long description of Christmas in Madagascar with Zebu meat delicacies by the fire. I'll try to find a cheaper internet cafe in Zanzibar to get it done.

Tatty Christmas (Malagasay)
et Bonne Annee!
Clement

Fun Dives!

2007-12-16T06:26:00.001-05:00

Hello from the Seychelles!
I'm down to less than a week to go here on the GVI volunteer project and it's hard to believe that ten weeks can fly by so quickly. It's been a wonderful experience, making new friends from all over the world, diving and doing research almost every day, and learning all about a country I'd never visited before.
Some of the coolest things I've picked up are the little things - how to cook for 30 people, bake bread from scratch, how good a hot shower really feels after a month of nothing but icy wet blasts, and how to hover upside-down two inches from a coral while writing on a slate. Also I'm finding facebook really addicting...
Our research seems to be done - we've completed the surveys on all the dive sites despite the monsoons blowing out our diving for almost a week - and it's all fun dives from here on out. On Friday, my buddy Chris and I found a school of about 30 mobular manta rays and 5 spotted eagle rays and followed them for a while. It was a sprint to keep up with them even though they were lazing along, swooping up food in giant graceful loops, and I was huffing and puffing when we gave up the chase due to dive time limits and ascended to the surface.
Yesterday, was another fun dive and while we did see three sharks, a giant stingray, two bumphead parrotfish and a turtle, we spent more time as a group messing around with each other. At one point in the dive, I don't think anyone had a complete set of their own fins - every time someone stole one of mine, I'd just grab one off the foot of whoever happened to swim by. I got tankhumped and did some myself and I laughed so much into my mask, I must have snorted half the Indian Ocean!
We have one more day of diving left tomorrow, then we have to clean up the camp and pack to leave Wednesday. We've been together so long it seems kind of unreal...
I'm supposed to be doing research on Madagascar right now (I'll be there Thursday, so you'd think I might be working on it a little harder,) but here I sit, writing this entry and procrastinating. Just not in the mood, I guess...
Ho-hum, maybe I'll go buy a chocolate milkshake!
Bye for now,
Clement

Seychelles When The Wind Is Blowing...

2007-12-06T07:05:00.000-05:00

I know I've been writing lots about how hard we are working here and all the good data we are collecting. Plus the nestings, and the taggings, and the snorkeling with whale sharks, yada yada, etc., etc., etc...

Well, I may have to correct that impression a bit.

Last Friday the day started off with a fun dive, and then we had the afternoon off. This happened because we are all doing such a good job that we were way ahead of our research schedule and had gotten lots of the research sites completely finished. So we threw an 80's party (I was sporting the preppy look - an Izod with the collar up, sweater over the shoulders, and jeans.) Then we had the weekend off for all the usual shennagins.

Monday was kind of windy but we followed the usual routine, and I did two dives in the afternoon as the weather worsened.
The first was an the 10 meter LIT Transect where I have to write down in a code what is under a tape meter every centimeter of the way. On a good day at a simple site, I can do three in about 45 minutes. This day I struggled to finish two as the surge sucked us back and forth over the reef.
My task for the second dive was to lay a 50 meter tape and track every species of hard coral, sea cucumber, octopus and lobster within 5 meters of it. As I hovered above the rocks and reef, struggling with a balky measuring reel, surging with the waves, I felt my leg crunch into something and looked down to discover a shin sprouting urchin spines like a black porcupine! Thankfully, it was a black spiny sea urchin and not the deadly (yes, deadly,) poisonous flower urchin, but still I looked like a pincushion and blood began so seep out the base of the 25 or so sticking out of me. It didn't hurt nearly as much as other divers have claimed and I calmly started to pluck the skinny black spears back out being very careful to lift them straight out and not shatter them underneath my skin. My buddy Dan finned over with a concerned look behind his mask and I gave him an "OK" sign followed by a loud grunt to show my frustration. He was nice enough to take the reel, so I had a hand to hold my leg still while I plucked and hovered and tried to avoid further surge damage. Finally got myself sorted out and finished the "tape," and we even spotted a turtle as we headed back to the boat. I used a leatherman tool set of pliers to get the last of the spines and liberally coated everything with Neosporin!

By Tuesday morning the seasonal NW Monsoon winds had been blowing constantly for a couple of days, but we went out on the first dive, as scheduled. As a nice present, the wind had swept a big school of stinging jellyfish into our bay so the two trips to haul all the gear, tanks, measuring and safety equipment the 150 meters out to the boat were really exciting! The Indian Ocean was even rougher as we sailed to the dive site, whipped by spray and drenched by the waves coming over the bow. Vis at the site looked terrible, and by this time the waves were running three to five meters high so when Luke the boat captain cancelled the dives, we all breathed a secret sigh of relief. So we bounced back to our bay and made two more trips to haul in all the gear through the jellyfish filled bay again. With the day's work cancelled, we had the day free and everyone took off to town to enjoy ourselves.

Wednesday, the winds were worse and we had some slashing rains off and on. With the dives cancelled we were all free to run into town again.

Thursday, same wind and same rain. With the dives cancelled we were all free to run into town. Again.

So now it's Friday, it's windy and rainy, and all our work is cancelled until Sunday and we are all in town on free time. AGAIN! I think we are all getting a little bored, but I'm looking forward to going to the movies tonight. "I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry" is playing at the local uniplex, and I haven't been to a real theater since July. So I get to see a flick - in a theatre!!!

Saturday wound up being another day off, can't remember what we did, maybe went to hang out on a beach or something. The wind died a little and the sun was out, so that must be it. SInce I had the time, I made Jambalaya and it was a huge hit - everyone loved it and there were several requests for the recipe. I had to use local peri-peri hot sauce instead of my usual Texas Pete, but I was really happy withthe results, too. Thanks from all the volunteers for sending the recipe! Laissez les bon temps roulez!

(I'm finishing this a week later - the weather finally improved and we got in the water again on Sunday.)

That's all for now, I had an amazing dive this morning which I will try to write about this weekend...

Love to all,
C

Once In A Lifetime Experience!

2007-12-02T08:39:00.000-05:00

Hi there blog buddies,

I thought I'd share an amazing day in the Seychelles with you... It actually happened over a week ago, but with the trip to the satellite camp, the lack of internet, just generally being really busy and my excitement over the turtle encounters it got pushed back. (To be honest, I might have lost a day or so to a hangover after an 80’s party, too.)
And that’s a real shame because it was one of those experiences we all dream about having – and I got to live it. To me it’s second to the turtle eggs in the hand thingie, but I’m weird – I’ll let you, the reader, decide which was cooler.

After two dives at a site called Therese South (did two 50m transects for hard coral diversity and invert counts,) we were riding the GVI Diveboat, Manta, back to the base but suddenly noticed what looked like strange wind patterns on the water. It was actually several schools of thousands of fusiliers darting around just under the surface, and where there are schools of fish feeding on plankton, there are often whale sharks. After a quick look around, sure enough - we found one. So we threw on the closest snorkel gear handy (I wound up with someone else’s mask, but thankfully, my own wonderful fins,) hopped in and swam with it. They move slowly and gracefully, but when you are close to 10m long, slow speed is still way faster than the puny humans struggling to keep up. I was thankful for my good fins as we followed along, guessing which way they would travel when they dove and cutting the corner on any turns to keep pace. I found that the whale shark often came up just in front of the pack of feeding fusiliers, and tried to get ahead. It worked way too well several times and I had to dodge out of the way of the large mouth scooping up food. I couldn’t believe how long the encounter was lasting, and I kept checking my watch in disbelief as the time passed 5 minutes, then 10, 20, 30…

Just when I was getting really tired (YOU try sprint snorkelling with one of these beautiful creatures for that long!) another showed up, and then minutes later, another!! Three whale sharks and they wouldn't go away! I would hop from one to the other when they passed close to each other, looking for distinguishing marks, trying to catch a peek underneath for the sex, and just enjoying the awesome display. I almost got run over so many times, I couldn't count them. One of them almost bumped the boat which was just floating and waiting for us to come back onboard – fat chance! They are such huge gentle creatures, just cruising around scooping up massive amounts of plankton, barely caring that we were just a meter or two away. It must be the way it feels to be one of those little white birds perched on the back of a water buffalo. After an hour and a half (!!) swimming around and after them, WE got tired and dragged ourselves back onto the boat to head in for lunch. Can you imagine letting them swim away because you've had enough? What an experience! We laughed exhaustedly in wonder all the way back to base. There are pictures, I just haven't gotten them onto my hard drive yet - maybe I'll get them up here soon, if the internet gods allow it. Someone also got some video of me trying not to get run over by one of the whale sharks - I'll have to bring it home to show you...

I think that brings me up to date for the blogging – in other news, I only have about two and a half weeks left here, and that is making me really sad. Plus the planning for Madagascar is going really slowly (Hello in Madagascar – answer your f***ing email!!) And Canon has still not fixed my camera yet so I’m worried where it will catch up to me or if I will be without my supercam for the rest of my travels, grrrrr. Sorry, just letting off some frustration.

Ciao until next time!

Stay Wet and Warm,

Clement

Turtle Pics

2007-12-02T07:52:00.001-05:00

Hey, I had a fast connection today, and managed to upload a pic of me and a hand covered in turtle love juice. Icky and super-cool at the exact same time! Happy Thanksgiving!

I'll try to add a couple more and then do a blog about a whale shark encounter

Here is a flattering shot of me counting the eggs - note the look of concentration as I try to keep track of all the slippery ping-pong balls dropping through my fingers. We always try to guess how many she will lay - Price's Right style - so there were beers riding on the count! I think this one laid 165.

Here is another closeup pic of a nest, right before the Mom started to cover her clutch with sand and beach debris. She really tried to do a good job and there was sand and palm fronds flying everywhere for a long time! This nest contained 123 eggs and was the last one we found before returning to the main camp on Mahe. The Mom actually flicked several coconuts on top of the hidden nest to really make it hard to find. She got done as the sun was setting and it was hilarious watching her take the most difficult route back to the water - over logs and bouncing around some large boulders, instead of the straight-line, direct all sand route to the ocean's edge. Maybe they try to leave confusing tracks?

Seychelles Thanksgiving

2007-11-28T02:22:00.000-05:00

Happy late Thanksgiving everybody!

Last week I got to work at the GVI Satellite Camp on Curieuse Island. Just off the much larger island of Praslin, (home of many resorts and picturesque beaches,) Curieuse is only occupied by a ranger station with a tortoise sanctuary, and one local family, and the Sat Camp. The island was a leper colony, and the ruins of their settlement are scattered around the island - it sounded like the setting for a gruesome horror movie, but was actually very quiet and wonderful. GVI has renovated one of the abandoned buildings with two bunkrooms, a kitchen (sort of,) and a great front porch where we ate and hung around in between projects. It's even more basic than the main camp - balky generator for about 4 hours a day if it's running, water that needs to be boiled, and the obligatory cold shower.

It sounds tough but I had a blast all week long. There were five of us, (Erika, Mike, Sarah, Vicki and me,) led by Luke the Aussie Staff Member and we took a ferry from Mahe to Praslin where Charlie who runs the camp picked us up in Dexter Crabtree, GVI's RIB. It's a short sail across the channel to Curieuse, and we were settled into the house in no time. I lucked out and got the bottom bunk, no midnight dark climbing for me!

Our week consisted of daytime beachwalks, snorkels, and a couple of afternoons of coral research diving. We walked all over the island, along most of its beaches (climbing some great hills and through mangroves to get there,) looking for the telltale sign of turtle tracks coming up out of the sea. A track up and back meant she had tried to nest and we would look to find it and mark it for future action. Best of all were tracks with no return set - that meant she was still working on her nest! Being very quiet and careful not to spook her, we would watch her digging, then when she went onto her egg laying trance, we'd sneak up behind and try to count the eggs. After digging a little opening behind her tail, we'd carefully insert a hand underneath and into the chamber she had dug, trying to feel the eggs dropping across our fingers and counting each one. Of course, like all the best body processes, there was lots of what we called "turtle love juice" along with the ping-pong ball size eggs, but I tried not to think about it. It sounds gross, but is one of the most amazing things I've ever experienced! I cannot begin to describe how enthralled I was, lying there Thanksgiving morning with my hand under a hawksbill's cloaca, counting the sloppy eggs as they trickled between my fingers! Wow! Wow! And again Wow! That's how I spent Thanksgiving.

The other really cool project we did was turtle captures. We went snorkeling off of Dexter, and when we found a turtle, we just grabbed it by the shell - behind her head and at the base by the tail - careful to avoid their bites and holding on with all their flippers thrashing, and steered them back to the boat. Once hoisted aboard, we measured them 20 differdent ways, weighed them, and tagged them or recorded their tag numbers if they already had one. We caught six, (one short of the GVI record,) and I personally got two! I also caught one of the heaviest at 27Kg, he was a big struggler and I was wiped out by the time I got him back to the boat.

On Turkey Day, Erika (the other American, from SC,) and I were in charge of the meal, but it was a group effort and I was personally thankful it came off really well. We had Barbecued chickens (no turkey here,) mashed potatoes, papaya salad, glazed carrots, flatbread, rolls, apple turnovers, roasted pumpkin, pumpkin crumble, and a bunch more dishes I cannot remember right now. All cooked on a two burner propane cooktop and an open fire. Try that at home.

Before eating we went around the table in the typical tradition, and everyone shared what they were thankful for. I was thankful for my family and its newest members, the chance to travel and the experiences I've had, and finally all the wonderful new friends I've met.

My Curieuse week was one of the best of my life: we saw nesting turtles every single day, I got to feel them lay eggs in my hand, I got seven dives, we caught six turtles, and I hiked and walked all over an almost deserted island. Now I'm thankful for Paradise.

That weekend, I joined Vicki and Erika and we rented a house on the nearby island of La Digue where we enjoyed a beautiful weekend away - acting like tourists.

Happy Thanksgiving!
-Clement

How To Recommend A Good Book

2007-11-16T09:37:00.000-05:00

I’ve written before (back in September, maybe?) about Derek and Melinda from Colorado, the couple I met on the ferry from Lombok to Bali. We spent a long afternoon together on the three hour crossing – which took seven hours. I’ve been noticing that when you start a conversation with any fellow foreign traveller, a few topics always come up. Of course there are the “Where are you from? And where are you going?” questions and if you’ve been away from home for more than a month, “What food do you miss?” The talk I always love to have is “What good books have you read?” and it was no surprise when Derek and I started comparing books we’d been through on our travels. I’m not sure if long term travellers tend to be readers at home, or if they are just taking advantage of their free time on the road to indulge in books. My thought is that people who take the time to poke around distant corners of the world have an open and curious mind, something book lovers also have, so it’s no coincidence when you find both traits in one person. Fortunately, if someone is going to stuff a book or two, (with their relatively high weight to size ratio,) into a bag to drag around the world, they choose good ones more often than not. So there are some real gems lurking on the shelves of used bookstores and the exchange piles in hostels and guesthouses. Oh, there’s plenty of crappy straight-to-paperback books floating around, but I’ve been very pleasantly surprised at the variety and quality of lit I’ve been finding.

Since I’m such a bookworm, (semi-closeted,) and often find myself talking lit with all kinds of people, I know that sooner or later, we are going to trade reading recommendations. But there are so many books and so little time, how can you decide which ones are worth pursuing? To answer this dilemma, I’ve started to rate fellow readers to decide how seriously I will take their advice and try to find their “great read.” I admit it’s a very subjective process with all kinds of difficult to define values and seemingly unrelated whims involved. How do you know someone is a real reader or just a literary tourist? Education, background and the way they speak about books I already know might clue me in. I look for clues in the other choices they make in music, art, movies and food. Sorry, but I’m not going to try very hard to find a book recommended by a Britney Spears fan who would never try anything as “gross” as sushi. Not that I don’t want to, it’s just that there are so many others I’m burning to get to. Mostly, I try to divine by the passion in your voice and the glint in your eye while you describe how the author spoke right to you, whether I might be moved also by the read you’re recommending. Ultimately, I judge the endorsement by the reader, and I have to categorize somehow. Lowest is the “take no action unless I find it for pennies at a yard sale,” group. Some I might seek out at the library or try to borrow if I spy it on a shelf somewhere. (And yes, when I visit your house and seem to be idly browsing your bookshelf, I AM judging – sorry. Don’t you know you are what you read? Why else would you keep that complete Shakespeare from college? I did.) There are just a few people in my highest rated category – some who might love reading books as much as I do and probably have better taste and a more discerning eye, too. If they plug a book, I’m at Borders that day or Amazon.com that night ordering it.

Derek was in that category just two hours after I noticed the Colorado patch on his backpack and started up a conversation. He couldn’t say enough about a book titled ”Ishmael,” and its author Daniel Quinn and if I had been staying anyplace long enough, (or if Amazon could have shipped it for less that $60,) I would have gotten it immediately. It just sounded like a book that would touch me and look at the world in a whole different way. Derek made the book sound,… important. But I resigned myself to waiting and ordering it next year when I get back home, (well I’m technically homeless, so just someplace where I can get a reasonably priced delivery.) Sure, I wrote the info down in my little notebook and kept an eye peeled for it on every bookshelf I scanned, but I was not hopeful. I mean, come on? What are the odds?

Well, I should have put a lot of money on it. Skip forward a couple of months and I’m here in the Seychelles on a volunteer project, sitting around talking meaningful books with someone I’m starting to realize has pretty good taste in lit – Vicki, an Australian surfer and world trekker type who currently lives in Barcelona. Reaching deeply into the cargo pocket of my shorts, I drag out my battered little reminders notebook, now splayed by moisture damage and also singed by the subsequent attempt to dry it on a lamp (long story.) I flip back through the stained pages to the note I added on that ferry from Lombok, “Have you ever heard of some author named Quinn?” I venture.

“Do you mean “Ishmael?’” is her surprised reply in an accent I wish I could somehow write, “I love that book. In fact I carry my copy when I travel! It’s right upstairs!”

“You’re shitting me, I’ve been dying to read it!” but it's true and 30 seconds later, her copy is in my hands. Two days later, I’d finished it for the second time and had to just stop and think about it for a while. I didn’t even feel like starting another book for several days. It was amazing. How I’ve never heard of this book, published back in 1993, until this summer astounds me.

It begins with a classified ad:

“Teacher seeks pupil.
Must have an earnest desire to
save the world. Apply in person.”

The first person narrator, a little jaded and upset at the thought of finding exactly what he’s always been searching for in such an unheralded place, answers it. He’s expecting a scam or a practical joke, or at least to find the address overrun by “… two hundred mooncalfs, softheads, boobies, ninnyhammers, noodleheads, gawkies and assorted oafs and thickwits…” but instead finds exactly what he is looking for from the teacher, an enormous full-grown gorilla named Ishmael. The rest I leave to you to discover.

I’ve read many great books, and they don’t have to be world-shaking to be great, some are just amazing stories with vivid characters, extraordinarily well-told. But there are some that touch me and mean more. These are the special books, ones I give copies of away to people I love and then buy myself another copy. What these authors shared with me is sometimes plain to see. “On The Road” revealed the nature of true friendship to me. “Catch-22” made it plain the world is senseless and not to be taken too seriously, that’s there’s always a catch (quite a catch,) and we can’t let ourselves be driven crazy by it. “Eat, Pray, Love” gave me a way to step outside my emotions yet still feel them, and comforted me that someone else shared my doubts and felt as lost and small as I did. “Zen, And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance” contains not just instructions on bike repair and a story of a man travelling with his son, but a blueprint to handle life on all different levels.

If “Zen” is about how to live in this world, “Ishmael” shows us a new way to look at it, and a way to change it, or at least live here in a different and better way. It’s a whole new kind of book for me, one that pushes me to take a step, make a difference, and try to change things. I really hope you get touched by Ishmael the way I did, and if not, at least like the story and tell someone about it. Who knows? It might put me in your top book-recommender category.

Thank you, Derek. And thank you, Vicki.

Live as if you belong to the world.

Yours,

Clement

The Nature Of Change

2007-11-16T09:21:00.001-05:00

I've been doing some thinking and lots of writing lately, I was sitting at a borrowed laptop when my mind wandered a ways and this spilled out. Maybe it's TMI or overly introspective and naive. But here it is...

Things had been changing in my life that I could not control. Changes are constant in everyone’s life and I can accept that they happen – sometimes for the good and about as equally for the not so good. What the changes happening to me were don’t matter here, but they all seemed to be, well, let’s just say not good at all. And to make things worse, they were the kinds of changes and setbacks I couldn’t do a thing about. I felt as powerless as a broken down boat tossed on a stormy sea – blown this way and that by winds of change and threatened by the growing waves pushing me onto some implacable rocks. There seemed to be no solutions and I was getting more and more out of control until it struck me – what is the sailor’s last resort when his boat is foundering and the situation seems hopeless? “Abandon Ship!” It seems crazy to jump into stormy waters, leaving the ship behind. But the ship was sinking, and swimming on my own, while seeming more dangerous, offered a better chance at making it to safety. “Yes, abandon ship,” I thought, “Embrace the change. Go on and make even more changes. Change everything, shake it all up and see what sorts out.” I was at a point in life where I could use some changes, but I needed some I could control. You know, go to some new places, meet new people and do some different things, at least for a while, and see what happens.

I spent some time thinking about the nature of change - how it happens, the ways it affects people differently, and how to stay on top of it when, despite all my efforts otherwise, it pops up and surprises you. I discovered nothing earth-shattering, but in a broad way, I decided this: Change happens every day - most of it out of my hands and the only way to deal with that is to give up human illusions of control, and be calm, flexible, and accepting.

Instead of fighting the changes, I accepted them. I sold my house without finding a new place to live. With no place to put it, it was a little easier to sell, give away, and trash all the furniture, clothes, and things I’d accumulated. I quit my job of five years without having a new one waiting. And hardest of all, for the second time I had to let go of someone very special to me who decided her future lay elsewhere.

There is a certain calm to be found when what’s done is done and all there is left to do is wait for the result. Like when you just handed in that huge project and you’re waiting to see what the professor or boss thinks. When you are standing there with a bat in your hand and the owner of the shattered window is looking out at you with your ball in their hand. Imagine that feeling multiplied by your house, job and all previous plans for your future. There is a calm that arrives when there is absolutely nothing you can do to change the course of events, and I felt at peace about it. Some might call it equanimity. I call it terrorized calm.

Part of me still strives to change things around me, though, and I decided to accept that too and see how to make something positive out of it. “What next?” became “Now that I’m free, what have I always wanted to make happen?”

Since I can remember, I’ve always been drawn to water and wet activities. Pools, swim teams, sailing, snorkelling, canoeing, rafting, life-guarding, scuba diving, beaches and tropical destinations beat like a pulse through the story of my life. I had lessons so young that I cannot remember a time when I couldn’t swim. It should come as no shock to anyone knowing me that, about six years ago, I found my happiness as a Dive Instructor. While I quit my job I was only quitting where it was happening, I don’t think I’ll ever quit diving and teaching in some form or another. One of my realizations was that I really like certain kinds of change - changing things for other people by helping them achieve their personal goals underwater. Positive change that they as students controlled and I controlled teaching it to them. “Hmmmm,” I thought, “What else can I do that involves water and change in a positive, do something for others kind of way?”

The second passion in my life is travel. Industrialized world, Third World, kitschy tourist or deep soul-moving, natural beauty, if it’s something I haven’t laid eyes on before, it’s probably on the ever-changing mental list I keep of places to go see. Diving has taken me to some of the most amazing places on the planet – places I thought I’d never get to see with magical names like Buenos Aires, Bora-Bora, Antarctica and Galapagos. And I still hadn’t been diving much in the Indo-Pacific yet – Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Seychelles, Maldives – all more mystical names to see and experience. I decided to take some of that house money and make the most of being homeless and jobless and become a citizen of the world for a while, diving almost everywhere along the way.

(The trouble is that as each one gets checked off that mental list, at least two more are discovered to replace them with. You’ve probably heard of Palau and Micronesia, but there’s more. Heard of Lembeh? Pulau Tiomann? Ningaloo? Saba? Yap? Ryuku? Sipadan? How about the Similans, Chuuk, East Timor, Bequa or most recently, Aldabra? Me neither, until I met someone who has heard something good about each of them. And that’s just part of the “to dive” list. You can add all the rest of Europe, S. America, India, the Middle East, the parts of SE Asia I didn’t get to. Hell, just prescribe me an atlas, I’ve got the travel bug!)

Just days later I met a girl buying fins for a dive trip that she seemed really excited about. Not just any dive trip - she was joining a volunteer Marine Conservation Project in the Seychelles for a couple of months, and was really looking forward to making a difference. Something clicked in me at that moment and I went home that night, did some research, and thought about what had struck me. I caught her excitement and by the next day, I had called or emailed several people, sharing what I had found (and a bit puzzled that they didn’t all get as amped up as I did.) Within a week, I had put in my two week notice, come up with a travel plan, contacted Global Vision International and mailed them a deposit. I even found a home for my dog while I was away. Now I was the one changing things.

GVI offered 31 flavors of change. It’s a chance to visit somewhere totally exotic for an extended period of time so you get to know it differently and better than as a visitor. Work with other volunteers who share my concerns for the planet and oceans. Contribute scientifically to something greater than myself. Live simply (and maybe rough it a little,) making a change from my Western luxury-driven existence. Do something positive for the environment. Meet locals and work with them to further the protection of coral reefs. Give up work, home, and for a time, family and friends while discovering something about me. Change my climate, continent, hemisphere, altitude, diet, and time zone, too.

Now that I’m here in the Seychelles, five weeks into my ten week expedition, sitting here sweating at this keyboard and going way off the topic I thought I’d be writing about, I realize it’s been everything I’d hoped for plus some unexpected things too. (I can name 14 families of hard corals and 47 genera, too. In latin! Can you?) But the most important one I’d never thought of and really surprised me. One of the first nights here, we had a camp-wide meeting and went around the room, telling the brief story of our lives, how we had come to be in that room at that moment, what we hoped to get out of our experience and what we were planning to do next. What struck me the hardest was how many of these people I’d just met were struggling with the same things I was! Unsure what to do with the life they found themselves living. Vaguely thinking that despite achieving many goals, something wasn’t quite right, but struggling to find a new direction. Drawn here to do something and make a difference, even in a small way. Looking for a change. Wanting to change things themselves. Making a change instead of letting life’s changes just happen to them. Like me, they had embraced outside change in order to effect a change within. Suddenly, I realized I’m never really alone and I felt very warm and comforted.

I don’t know where this all will lead. I don’t expect to achieve some mystical “Siddartha”-like state as a result of my travels and experiences. But by discovering the huge variety of life in all the places I’ve been and people I’ve met, now I own a bigger set of tools to deal with any changes that come along. My next step in life? Unknown. Job. School. Travel. Start a business. All good possibilities. Run away again to find some combination of the these? Who knows? But wherever I go and whatever I end up doing, I’ll embrace the changes that come along.

Seychelles Thoughts, Events & Musings

2007-11-11T02:37:00.000-05:00

I haven't done one of these in a while and my little notebook is filling up with little ideas, so I'll share some little bits with you.

Day to day, even though we keep really busy here on the expedition, I still have some random thoughts and funny things that happen to me. I try to write them down when I can, but I’m sure the best of them just slip away before I get around to it. So these will have to do.

Sharing An Earbud
What is it that is so cool about sharing an earbud with somebody? It just gives me a tremendously warm feeling, and I’m not sure why. I have a splitter, but I left it at home so when I say share, I mean two people with one ear on the music apiece. I've done it a bunch of times, on local buses, on a plane, taking a nap, while reading a book and at the beach. Is it the secret sharedness of being the only two who can hear what’s playing? Could it be the conspiratorial way you have to lean in a bit to keep it from popping out of your ear? Maybe it’s sharing with someone a song or singer you think is cool, or a chance to discover some new music you’ve never heard of. Coming from a culture that looks at a car as a reflection of the personality of its owner, I always feel like what’s on my iPod offers an even deeper look into who I really am. So it’s a little scary to open up and share it, especially on shuffle, when any of those guilty pleasure songs you are embarrassed to love might pop up on shuffle. Ricky Martin, anyone?

Goldfish care package
One of the volunteers here, a girl from California named Hilary, gets care packages from her Mom. The other week, it contained a package of Cheddar Goldfish. Not the big milk carton shaped size unfortunately, just the normal bag, and they were gone in minutes. I got my share;) but had to fight the English volunteers for it after they got to try them for the first time - they don’t have them in the UK! Sometimes it is the little things that make you re-realize we are actually from different countries. Just another taste of home I’d been missing without realizing it.

Hurtin’ Flip-Flops
I was walking around Victoria, the Capitol City of the Seychelles a weekend or two back and was feeling some serious pain between my big and first toes. Both feet. Now what could be causing that? I took them off and looked. No rocks, twigs, glass or thorns. Nothing caught in there at all. Just two angry looking red spots deep down in between the toes. What the…? Then it hit me. I haven’t worn shoes in about two and a half weeks, duh. Then I thought, "Wow, that's pretty cool..."

Bats
There are some serious fruit bats living in the Seychelles. But they are different than the bats I’m used to and not scary at all. First of all, they come out in the daytime so you can see them a whole lot better. They don’t flit and dart around in that sneaky scary way, but just cruise along, coasting on updrafts and just flapping every so often, kind of like seagulls in a good breeze. They have big light brown bodies and black wings and in the daylight, actually look kind of like little foxes – they’re pretty cute. At least until you walk under a tree and there’s one hanging upside down there, just staring at you from a foot or two over your head. Then I jump.

Nightlife
The group here is definitely not afraid to whoop it up. When we get time off, any excuse will do to have a party or run off to town to the local bars. I've raised a glass cheering on the Rugby World Cup semi's and final game (S. Africa won over England - no surprise I was rooting for the underdogs,) dressed up as a Caesar Salad for a Halloween party, and shutdown the local nightclub at 5AM. Funniest of all, I've been playing all kinds of drinking games when we hang around the base on nights that a taxi into town just seems like too much trouble and expense. Who remembers Thumper, Asshole & President, (even the Brits call it that - shouldn't it be Asshole & Prime Minister?) and Truth or Dare? I've dug into my memory and introduced some wildly popular games to the group - remember these classics: Flipcup, Spoons, and Mexican? Viking didn't catch on though. We;ve played a couple hands of 99, too, we'll see how it goes..

Blackout peeing
We’ve had some blackouts here, maybe once or twice a week for a couple of hours. It doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the weather, it actually seems much more likely to happen on clear sunny days than other times. When it happens at night it’s really fun, we break out the candles and flashlights (torches for the UKers,) and act like nothing is different. Until bedtime, when the lack of ceiling fans while you’re lying under mosquito netting is a sweltering unpleasant combo. In the middle of the night, I had to take a leak, so still half-asleep, I quietly felt my way to the boy’s bathroom, carefully checked that the seat was open and then peed guided only by sound. Straight into the water would make some loud and echoing sounds, so I politely tried to find the quieter range above the waterline, but not peeing on the bowl where it would splash all over my shins and the floor. Guided only by my ears, I found that almost silent sweet spot and did my business, correcting my point of aim slightly to stay there as I finished. Then I washed up and tip-toed back into my dorm, very proud of being such a good quiet roommate,… until I tripped over someone’s suitcase in the dark.

Coconut kicking
I was walking home from the bus stop in Port Launay this week after a trip to town to check some emails. It’s about a half hour stroll and very pretty, nice high ridges and sheer drops with wonderful views of the jungle, mountains, beaches and islands as it winds up and down some pretty good hills back to camp. Well, it would have had good views if I’d gotten on an earlier bus, one that arrived before sunset. Picking my way along on a moonless night trying to avoid those sheer drops was a bit trickier. The starlight was strong enough in many spots to make out the edges of the road, but when it cut under the thick green foliage, I was practically feeling my way along in the pitch dark. I had the bright idea to take off my flip flops (they were hurting anyway,) and get a better feel for the road barefoot. The pavement was rough in the middle, with a smoother groove on either side where most people drove down the center of the narrow lane, then at the edge was some grittier, pebbles and sand before the rocks went up on the high side, or dropped down on the low side. I figured if I stayed in the rougher center strip, easily detected by the soles of my feet, I’d be safe. And if I stepped into a smooth part, whichever foot felt it first would tell me which way to veer to get back in the middle. Makes sense, right? It worked well, with only a couple of moments of confusion and fear of the drop, and I was very glad that I’ve been barefoot so much otherwise the bottoms of my poor feet would have really been sore. When the road flattened out and the canopy spread back as I came through the gates to the base, I was feeling really good and my stride picked up a little as my confidence got a boost. After conquering such a long walk in the pitch dark without a problem, I was kind of proud too. Until I kicked that coconut lying in the middle of the road.

Thanks for reading, I miss you all and can't wait to hear from you!

Love & Stay Wet,

Clement

What are the odds?

2007-11-11T02:15:00.000-05:00

What are the chances of this happening to you?

I got an email this week from a Julian Hewitt, and opened it expecting to hear from another volunteer here at GVI named Julian, ( whose last name is Crawley, but my brain missed the difference.) When I read it, and cleared up my own confusion with the names, it was from someone wondering about this post I made back in August:
http://clementsworldtour07anewbeginning.blogspot.com/2007/08/thailand-observations-and-musings.html

His wife had googled his name and discovered my post about the Julian Hewitt who left his boarding pass in a book I found in a book-trade pile in Koh Tao. It turns out that he has the exact same name as the guy who left his ticket stub in that book I picked up AND had been to Thailand AND had been on a flight with that same flight number! But he flew in 2007 not 2002 so it must be ANOTHER Julian Hewitt. Weird. I wrote him back to see what book he might have been reading and to find out more. What do you think - does he have a doppelganger roaming around somewhere? I think it's creepy-neat to imagine there is someone else on the planet, sharing your name and maybe some similar experiences. What if you came into contact with them? I can envision the Twilight Zone episode where that person tires of their own life and tries to take over yours...

Hmmmmmmm...
Clement

Change Of Plans - Spain!

2007-11-08T08:01:00.000-05:00

Whoops, I forgot to mention this - I've added Spain at the end of my trip! I have friends living there now and since it's the southern part of Europe I'm hoping it's a bit warmer than the rest, (yeah, right.) I've been enjoying warm weather since spring hit DC last March and am NOT looking forward to the cold stuff - it's about 87 in the Seychelles today, and sunny of course. So now I've got ten days to visit Madrid, Barcelona, and anything else that strikes me. Maybe Seville? Valencia? I'm open to suggestions! My original plans are in a July post if you want to look back and laugh. Like I did.

If I've learned one thing this journey, it's that the best laid travel plans disintegrate on the ground so I'm putting myself in the hands of those showing me around. Just like I love being the best tour guide in DC, locals always know the best things to visit and the better ways to do it. I'm most excited about Barcelona - I'm not sure if it's the way those that have been there get wistful about it, what I've read, or just my imagination, but I'm a little afraid it's a city I will fall in love with and never want to leave. But that's even more of a reason to visit in my book!

So now I get home in February and then I'll figure out the rest of my life... Yaaay, I've put reality off one more month!
Wish me luck!

Buenos Tardes,
Clemente

Oh well.

2007-11-04T10:19:00.000-05:00

Couple of "Oh Well" things...

Internet here in the Seychelles is really slow at best. I sometimes get lucky with my flickr uploads but blogger pic uploading just plain sucks. So don't expect pics on this page, just navigate to my flickr page
http://www.flickr.com/photos/clementpics/sets/
and check the sets.

Also, my new wonderful camera is in Singapore getting repaired. It turns out that Canons are really great cameras as long as you don't drop them on a cement floor. Who knew? Anyway, I'm using the old camera again, (and bitching about it, I assure you,) so there aren't as many pics to put up anyway.

Had a great weekend, played all day yesterday and went for a three hour plus snorkel today and saw 3 turtles, big schools of fusiliers, two moray eels, a bumphead parrotfish, some cuttlefish and lots of barracuda. Managed to get a pretty good sunburn on my elbows, too... Must have missed a spot with the SPF 50!

More on the cooking front, my team has kitchen duty tomorrow and I'm going to make bread. From scratch. Wish me luck, my first attempt last week tasted great but was really doughy. I'll try cooler water and see if the yeast works a little better... I also made stir-fried veggies for 30 at lunch and it turned out great. I'm even eating eggplant (gasp!)

Oh yeah, even though my opinion might not be popular: vegemite and marmite are nasty. Anf porridge is really oatmeal, so there...

And last of all, I just finished "Ishmael" by an author named Quinn. Another shake up your brain, soul, and life book. It's about human and world history and our place in it... Lots to think about in this one and I strongly recommend it. I'm actually going through it a second time just to make sure it sets in. It's the kind of book that makes you not want to pick up another book anytime soon because it will seem so bland and meaningless. Like having a major gourmet Italian meal and then looking at a saltine for dessert. Get it and read it.

Love y'all,
Clement

Recipe Request And Update

2007-11-03T03:55:00.000-04:00

Hello friends,
I am having a great time on the volunteer expedition - saw another whale shark this week and turtles several times despite spending most of my underwater time with my nose in the coral. We are finished with the training phase and are now contributing actual research and survey data to GVI's research partners. It really feels good to be work diving and contributing something. Outside of the volunteer duties, I also was invited to help teach some local kids to dive this morning. So I lost some hours off my free time but who cares? The kids are so excited and into it that I didn't mind at all and cannot wait for next weekend. It was a challenge listening to the kids and understanding them through their Creole accent...

I have a special request from you - we are divided into four teams and rotate a day of kitchen duty every few days. I am far away from my "Heaven On Seven" Cajun cookbook and want to make jambalaya for 30 in the next couple of weeks. Does anyone have a good recipe (simple, please - not a lot of great market options here,) that I can scale up for the other volunteers and staff? Just send it to my email with Jambalaya in the subject heading - thanks!!!

In other news, we had a big Halloween Party last night and we partied late and long and loud... I went in a toga with lettuce leaves pinned onto it all over me - get it? Anyway, there is now a big new bunch of Mexican and Flip-Cup fans in the Indian Ocean!

All for now,
Please write and send me recipes, too!
Stay Wet,
Clement

Overdue Seychelles Arrival Update

2007-10-28T09:45:00.000-04:00

It was an interesting long journey from Bangkok to the Seychelles, it seems the best way to get here is through the Middle East! After a leisurely morning getting some last minute things done in Bangkok (one last massage, banana pancake & shake, sheets, and a haircut – 1^st one since July and I was really overdue!) I headed to Bangkok International airport (again,) and soon enough it was wheels-up for Doha, Qatar. The plane was almost empty (lots of room, yaay,) and landed after dark but the temperature was still over one hundred degrees and I was thankful for the air-conditioned bus waiting at the bottom of the stairs from the plane. I had a 7 hour layover and since the gate area didn’t open until shortly before boarding, I roamed the airport to pass the time. People-watching was a blast and I entertained myself trying to figure out other flyers’ back-stories. Wherever you go and whatever airport you happen to be in, business people all have the same look – weary and unhappy but smugly superior to all the tourists they act forced to endure. When people began to cluster in the area of my flight’s gate, I also tried to figure out which of us were bound for the GVI Project like me. The target would be solo, youngish, college graddy looking, with an excited, ready to try anything air, and practical clothes. Backpacks would be a mandatory accessory. Soon enough, a young, blonde, fresh-faced California-Girl type sat down next to me and pulled out a Sudoku book. Check on many major probable categories and it wasn’t long before we struck up a conversation, and sure enough, Sam from Malibu (but with an Aberdeen, Scotland accent,) was a volunteer too. The flight was packed, but we blatantly seat-hopped to sit together and talked for what seemed like the whole flight.

The plane landed on Mahe Island, Seychelles at 6-somehting AM and I caught my transfer to the Coral Strand Hotel where I spent a couple of days diving and hanging out on the beach before getting picked up by GVI. One by one, we gathered others from our group and by the night before the big day, there were 18 of us going out to dinner together and excitedly trading names, stories, and wondering what was in store for us the next day. Amazingly, I shared a hotel room with another American named Howard – a brand new Wake Forest Grad and DC native – small world again! One of the volunteers, Julian, was returning for the final 5 weeks of his 15 week project and the poor guy was nice enough to try to answer all questions thrown at him.

Early the next morning, taxis brought us to the Base for the project where we claimed beds in one of the three dorms, and got busy hanging mozzy nets and finding our way around. The site lies between some large rocky hills on the shore of Bay Ternay and used to be a camp for Seychellois teens, but now houses a couple of research projects and a military guard-dog training camp. Only a little bit is used for these purposes and there are abandoned, spooky looking buildings busily falling down all over the picturesque valley. It’s a 5 minute walk to the closest beach, and there is an amazing bay 10 minutes up the road, too. Palm trees and flowers grow everywhere – it’s a camera dreamscape any way you look.

Next we met the staff, got the tour and some guidance and it has seemed like a blur ever since. Daily teams cook all the meals, clean the whole camp, fill tanks, and work the boats in between classes and diving; plus there are weekly duties like checking safety equipment, shopping, and compressor, boat, and vehicle maintenance. As of this moment, not quite two weeks in, I’ve had 5 coral classes, a turtle class, 2 health and safety classes, a reef threats class, a reef protection class, a class on neighboring islands, an oceanography class, reef survey methodology classes, plus a morning and nightly briefing every day. Oh yeah, and a fire drill. Today I became a certified Coral Reef Research Diver – woohoo, another card. For those not already certified, there was a PADI Advanced Open Water Class and an Emergency First Responder Course that I didn’t need to take, so I’ve been one of the lucky ones with some free time. There are about 25 volunteers and we are split in half into Coral (me,) and Fish specialists and the amount of knowledge we needed to absorb in a hurry to be useful to the research was tremendous! Within a week, I’ve learned to spot 14 different families of hard corals and ID 47 different genera within them – in their Latin names! I can tell my Acanthastrea Mussidae from my Psammacora Siderastreidae, can you? To be allowed to do the research, we had to pass a test by a score of 95% or better. Most everybody fails it a couple of times – last phase only had one pass the first try – but four of us got it first time out and now we are doing our spot-check dives where the staff points out corals underwater and we hover as close as we can and figure out what it is. I got 25 in a row right yesterday until a tricky species of Montipora Acroporidae tripped me up. Next up are some soft corals, zooanthids, corallimorphs and anemones along with invertebrates like sea cucumbers, octopi and lobsters.

In case you were thinking this is some kind of vacation and I’m living it up out here, let me take you through my day today. I got up at 6AM, assembled my dive gear before breakfast, then went to the AM briefing. After the Methodology class, I was out on the dive boat for a 45 minute dive practicing laying two different kinds of transects, following patterns, and recording data. After hauling our gear back and cleaning everything, I helped people study for their 2^nd Coral Exam, did some laundry and then it was time for lunch. Right after, I had the wonderful job of Boat Bitch for the third dive. A quick lesson on the chain of command aboard ocean-going vessels: the captain is God and there are mates beneath him, then petty officers and crewmen with a skill, then next are the ordinary seamen and finally the cabin boys. Beneath them is the Boat Bitch. Well, on our little diveboat, there is only the skipper and the BB… I’m making it sound bad, but it’s actually usually lots of fun getting all the gear in place for the divers, taking down dive data, hauling anchors and safety gear and doing whatever the skipper needs. Today was the exception. As soon as the divers hit the water and I got my sunscreen applied perfectly, it began pouring down rain and the wind blew it all sideways under the boat’s awning. We still needed to do some repairs to the engine hydraulics and pump out the bilge (manually, of course.) By the time divers began to come up an hour later, we were soaked to the bone and freezing, but laughing about it through blue chattering lips. I manage to “fall” into the warm ocean several times and the long swim to the beach (so the boat isn’t high and dry at tomorrow’s low tide,) after we offloaded everything was kind of pleasant due to the 82F water temp. While the other volunteers were taking their 2^nd tests, I put gear away, drank three cups of hot tea and played a couple of hands of Hearts until dinner. It was lentil curry and rice (meat is only once or twice a week,) then we had some paperwork and PM briefing for tomorrow’s events. At 8, I borrowed the computer of my dorm mate Holly, and wrote this piece so I can upload it this weekend at the internet café in town, and soon, it will be bedtime when lights go out at 9. Tomorrow, I’m on tank fill duty in between two turtle snorkels and spot dives and a coral class.

If you are starting to suspect I love this you are very right! I’m having a blast! It is such a great experience and I’m lucky to be here doing this – it’s good for the earth and good for me, too. I’ve met all kinds of cool people on the project, from DC to South Africa and all kinds of places in between The group seems to be gelling pretty well and I genuinely really like just about everybody here. The GVI staff is enthusiastic, helpful and great and makes our participation seem important and valued. It’s not all work though, there have been some days off and they seem to include lots of the local beer and rum. Last weekend I watched the Rugby World Cup in town with a bunch of staff and volunteers then we hit a local dance club and tore it up until 5AM. Sunday was a beach day and I played volleyball in the water with some local kids and volunteers for hours. We even have a couple of soccer, (ahem – football,) games every week so you know I’m in heaven. The first time we played was sure a shock for the European volunteers when the team with the three Americans on it won 6-2! While I was far from the best player on the field, I got two goals, two assists and afterwards I was so proud when another volunteer asked me, “Who knew you could play like that?” Today’s game got rained out, but I have hopes for tomorrow or Thursday…

While most of the diving has been limited to coral spotting and I almost never get my head up off the reef, I have still seen some cool stuff. There are lots of nudis around, I’ve found turtles three times (including a beautiful Green turtle,) seen dolphins, and been snorkelling with whale sharks! The neatest of all was when, on a morning dive, we saw an octopus swim way up off the reef pursuing a lionfish! After an epic but one-sided struggle, the 8 armed victor settled back on the reef for its lunch and another octopus came over to check things out. I could have watched for an hour, but we had coral work to do, damn!

This coming weekend, we have both days off and half the volunteers are doing their Rescue class in Beau Vallon, so the rest of us are trying to find lodging nearby and have a nice break from camp life. Hot showers! Things are pretty crowded in the area because there is a Creole Festival going on, but I’ve got my fingers crossed… If you are reading this, it means I got somewhere with internet so maybe I got lucky.

OK, it’s getting late (9:50!! – and I used to be a nightowl,) so I’m going to finish my book (Vonnegut’s Thank You Mr. Rosewater,) it’s really good and calling me.

Stay Happy And Wet,

Clement

Bangkok - Part Deux Et Trois!

2007-10-06T17:56:00.000-04:00

(It's been awhile since I've put anything up so I'm going to post this now, and then add pics in the next day or two, when I post about my volunteer project in Seychelles, so check back!)

I have made Bangkok sort of a hub for my SE Asia wanderings. Central, fun, cheap and modern - it has worked out great stopping in here for a day or two between expeditions. The first time back, before Cambodia, I replenished toiletries and bought my super new camera on the advice of Theresa, whose cool cam I'd envied in Koh Tao and Sulawesi. (For a demo, check out my flickr page and notice the quality of the photos from that point on...) This recent time I've also gotten a lot accomplished.

First off, I took two days of Thai Massage lessons. The academy was very thorough, I got all kinds of illustrations of the body's energy lines and what parts of the foot can be massaged to affect all the specific parts of the rest of the body's organs. I received a bunch of demonstration massages, watched some and got to work on the masseuses who had free time. By the end of the second lesson I was exhausted! I don't know how those slim, tiny girls have the strength to give massages all day, my arms and shoulders were aching - I needed another massage!

For my last full day, I decided to play tourist and booked a day-trip. On the schedule were a famous floating market, a visit to The Bridge Over The River Kwai, and the best was saved for last - the tiger temple!

I got an early start on a full mini-bus (only American again, of course,) and after two hours got a transfer to a longtail boat which took us to the market. It's a riot of color and noise with sales people parked in tiny skinny boats all along the sides of the canals, hawking a thousand different nifty souvenirs. Even better were all the little old ladies paddling around in tiny canoes selling fruit and cooked food. Many were even cooking right in their boats and I stopped to sample all kinds of new Thai treats.

Then we were off to the famous River Kwai Bridge, where the Japanese put thousands of Allied POWs to work as slaves to build a railway connecting Thailand to Burma. The officers and guards were brutal and ruthless and thousands upon thousands died completing the project - which was prompltly and repeatedly bombed by the Allies. The whole affair was just another example of the beastly way the Axis acted in WWII and would have been forgotten but for a successful movie and a catchy little whistled tune. It was interesting to see and the cemetary was respectful and moving, though the museum was kind of a disappointment.

Last of all, we took a two hour visit to a Buddhist Temple that has tigers roaming all over it. Well, not exactly roaming, but they definitely have a lot more freedom than you see in a zoo. The monks walk them on chain leashes like some overgrown striped Lab,... one that can rip your arm off if it feels like it! They had several tiger cubs around and they are really playful, I had one gnawing on my hand for a minute and I can tell you, it's not exactly like playing with Voodoo! There were also herds of wild pigs, antelopes and some cattle and water buffalos too. The monks really had to hold on tight when the tigers were led near the herds.

After a long minivan ride home, we all went out on Khao Sahn Road for my last night and then after a banana pancake and a quick hairtrim the next morning, (which was waaaaayyyyy overdue,) I headed to the airport (again,) for a long day's travel to the next stop on my adventure - the volunteer expedition in the Seychelles!

Some final Asia thoughts:

Sometime last week in Bangkok, right after I hopped off a river taxi and headed to my next discovery with barely a glance at a map, swerving through the packed crowd, crossing a crazy street while dodging wrongway scooters effortlessly, and checking out street vendors for that little bite of something I craved, a sudden wonderful feeling came over me. "I love it here," I realized. The crowds, smells, noise, language, strangeness, and mayhem had become second nature and I realized I am thriving in a very alien land. I felt really at home while being comfortable with the fact and knowing that I am very far from home.

My travel epiphany is that home and happiness is where and what you make of it. There is so much to the world, more than one person can ever hope to see, and that's OK so don't sweat it. Travel is not about where you go, the point is you see what you can and don't worry about what you might have missed, meet whoever you can and really pay attention to that person and learn a little something about their life and their world, see what is in front of you instead of missing it while looking ahead. THAT is the point. As it's been well and often said before - Life is a journey. And I'm really learning that it's all about the Journey, not just the destination...

On a lighter note, one of the best things I've learned is a way to fool the electric system in hostels. On the wall of almost every room, right next to the door is a plastic housing that you must slide your room key into to activate the electricity in your room. When you leave and take the key, all the power shuts off including the fan you are using to dry your recently hand-washed clothes. Simple solution - fold up some currency from the previous country (so no loss if it gets stolen,) in the shape and thickness of your key card and voila - dry clothes!

All for now, Ciao!
Clement

The American War

2007-10-06T15:04:00.000-04:00

If you mention Viet Nam to any American, we all probably have visions of Apocalypse Now, Platoon, and all the hippie anti-war protests of the 60's. Our "involvement" here was our longest war, (so far,) running from JFK sending in advisors to Nixon's pullout. From the Vietnamese perspective, their recent wars, (ignoring centuries of fights with China and other neighbors,) began with WWII and the Japanese, then continued against the French until it turned into what we think of as the war - The American War. It didn't end there as the Vietnamese have had pretty major regional wars with Cambodia and China since we left in the '70's.

As an American visiting this country, I must admit I have been feeling conflicted about Viet Nam - a touch of guilt for all the dead and some of the things we did (massacres, Agent Orange...) a touch of hurt pride that we lost, and a touch of curioisity how this country would treat a visitor from the USA... I needn't have worried - it seems to be completely off of everyone's radar screen. The people don't care at all and if anything, act like the war is something we all suffered through equally. Oh, the museums have all kinds of information that I'm unsure of since it conflicts with what I learned growing up and how I believe Americans would act. But then again, My Lai happened, B-52's happened and made mistakes, and napalm and Agent Orange were thrown around pretty liberally, so what do I know. One of the most important lessons of the period for Americans is we discovered for the first time that we shouldn't always trust our government. I just remind myself that there are two sides to every story and what is history but a story told by people who wind up in the position to tell it. I can accept that there are just two truths about what happened here.

In the end, the kids are listening to MTV and American pop, American fast food is here, the place is as capitalistic as NY City and the dollar is preferred above the dong (the local currency,) by all the vendors and businesses. I wonder whatever happened to those Communist dominoes I learned about in International Relations...

I visited the War Rememberance Museum (government built and full of American war crimes,) and the Cu Chi Tunnels where the Viet Cong guerillas hid and fought and lived west of Saigon. The tunnels are an amazing feat of determination - over 250Km in length, three levels, and even under American military bases. Dug mostly by hand beginning with the war against the French, even the most modern military technology barely scratched their surface. We were lucky enough to have Billy Binh as our tour guide. He had fought on the American side (he even was stationed in Philadelphia and San Diego for a while,) and paid for it with four years in re-education camps when the Communists won in 1975. He told the stories of the tunnels with enthusiasm, grace, diplomacy, humor and a unique viewpoint as someone who had battled against the VC living there. We capped it off with a journey through these tight, (very tight - Vietnamese are tiny people,) dark passages. I was happy not to be first, but when the guide stopped to wave tourists around a confusing corner and a bunch of people bailed out an early exit, I wound up in the lead in the pitch black! I just kept waving my hands in front of me to keep from bumping into something, trying to encourage and describe what I was maneuvering around to those still behind me, and just kept on going until a dim light showed me the way out. Once out, it was pretty cool!

Some of us took the long way home on a speedboat through the Delta and then down the Saigon River back home. As I stood on the deck winding through the rice paddies and tiny towns, all it needed was a blaring 60's soundtrack to make the mental movie complete!

All in all, I loved the small part of Viet Nam I got to visit. The people are very friendly, even the taxi drivers bug you for a ride in a joking nice way and are not annoying and relentless like so many other places I've been. As I've written the food is awesome (and only got better since I last wrote,) the city is beautiful and I had a great time.

Next up: a couple of days in Bangkok before jetting off to the Seychelles for my volunteer project. The group of volunteers seems fun and enthusiastic - my inbox is full of meetup, dinner and diving plans for those of us arriving before the project starts on the 10th. (Or maybe they all just love "reply to all" a bit too much...)

Bon Soir,

Clement

Saigon Adventure!

2007-10-02T09:06:00.000-04:00

I'm in Saigon (actually it's Ho Chi Minh City, but only the bureaucrats call it that,) and having a completely different time than in Phnom Penh. It's rainy season and crowded, loud and crazy - and really wonderful!

The traffic here is absolutely unbelievable, it is actually so bad that years ago most citizens got rid of their cars and bought motos since they are much easier to get around and park. As you can see, there are no traffic signals or signs, (they would get ignored anyway,) so if you waited for traffic to stop you would literally never get across... What you have to do is just step out and, no matter what, keep moving at a reasonably slow pace and they will flow around you. You must not lose your nerve or get rattled and speed up or stop because that will mess up the ones aiming to miss you and you will get hurt. I tend to just look for a slight gap right next to the curb and go, then don't look at oncoming traffic - I just saunter gently across, trusting that I will make it alive. It definitely takes a little getting used to! Even more amazing is that there don't seem to be any accidents. There are no glass fragments in any of the intersections like I see at home, and none of the vehicles have dents or dings. Maybe it's something VDOT should look at...

For those of you who know me, it should come as no surprise that for my first meal here last night, I went for Pho! I got hooked on this beef noodle soup years ago when I moved to DC, and if I haven't had some in a while, I get cravings. Those of you who I have introduced to Pho know what I mean, (and I'm sorry.) To the Vietnamese, who love Pho even more than I do, this national craze is like Hot Dogs, Mom, and Apple Pie all rolled into one - if you visited your Mom every day and she offered hot dogs and apple pie for all three meals. Maybe it's more like Coca-Cola... Anyway, I walked the entire neighborhood where I am staying twice looking for the perfect bowl. There are SO many options: little shops, family places, chains, push-carts and gourmet - all on every block. Plus, all the other restaurants have it on their menus as well. If I went into the local KFC, (and sadly, there are a bunch,) I bet I'd find Pho on the menu there, too! I finally picked a place named Pho Hung, right around the corner from my guesthouse and ordered a bowl. You get to choose your cuts of beef, and I went with eyeround, well-done flank and fat brisket. Moments later it appeared steaming in front of me and I took a deep whiff, "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, this is gonna be good.." The waitress put all the additionals in front of me: limes, chili peppers, whole stems of basil and lemon grass, sprouts, hoisin sauce and spicy sauce, and I quickly added just what I like. I grabbed my spoon and chopsticks, gave it a couple of stirs and hoisted a stickful... Wow, what flavors! What taste! It's so damn good! Sadly, this bowl was the best pho I've ever had. I say sadly because I don't know how I'm ever going to repeat that experience when I get home. I'm ruined. I guess I'm just going to eat a ton of it while I'm here and then suffer forever...

I walked all over town today, trying to get a good feel for the people and visiting several markets, museums and pagodas. I also tracked down a coffee shop mentioned by Lonely Planet. Yes, that's right, I said coffee. I've managed to avoid my genetic pre-dosposition for caffeine dependency for a long time, but I've been hiding something that happened to me in Bali: I had a cup of coffee I loved. Don't worry, Mom, it's under control, (he says - hands jittering as he holds the blackened spoon and fills up the needle...) it's just part of this "explore the world" trip I'm on. I felt like doing the authentic local experience like I've seen immigrants do in my pho places at home and I tried something new with my awesome meal at the Pho place last night. But things took a turn for the worse, and it's name is Iced Milk And Coffee. French press Vietnamese coffee and condensed milk in a tall slim glass over ice - yummy! So when I read in my guidebook this morning about a super place named Seranta near a museum I was about to visit, I tracked it down and took another hit. I think I might be in trouble.

I like more on the Vietnamese menu than just Pho, and the cuisine here is excellent. It's hard to describe, but very special - kind of like Chinese with attitude and a French flair. Their liquor is interesting and different, too. I'd heard about the cobra liquor and while wandering from neighborhood to neighborhood and museum to pagoda today, something in a shop window caught my eye. There were some huge glass jars, (the kind that you see in museums with medical horrors inside, preserved and staring out at you,) with rearing cobras and scorpions floating around. I stepped in to get a closer look, and when the shopkeeper approached, I pretended to be looking for a bottle of water while I worked up my courage. He was really friendly and I suspect he saw right through me, but he was way too polite to mention it. When he gave me my change for the water and saw me slyly examining the jar on the shelf behind him, he waved towards it and said in seriously accented English, "I have every day. It makes me healthy and strong..." and then he made a certain hand signal which would the makers of Viagra would probably love to be allowed to put in their advertising. Seizing the opening, I asked some questions (not about that, pevs!) and learned that it's real snakes in some kind of rice liquor or wine and there is cobra blood in there, too. We talked for a while until I finally worked up the courage and asked for a shot or glass, however it came. Too bad, he only sells it by the bottle, but when he realized I wasn't going to buy a whole one, (can you imagine getting THAT through customs???) he went in the back and returned with his jar (a cobra, a scorpion, and several other unidentified snakes thrown in for good measure,) and two shot glasses - "Well, there's no getting out of this now," I thought. He dipped a glass in and handed it to me and then filled his own. With a clink and a deep breath on my part, down it went. A little fiery, slightly sweet, but it didn't taste anything like cobra. Of course I have no idea what cobras taste like anyway, but it was definitely better than the Italian grappa I tried one time. We laughed and talked for a bit, "where you from" kind of stuff, but he wouldn't let me pay him when I tried to. As I walked down the street, I took a mental inventory of how I felt - maybe a little tingly in the extremities, but I could just be imagining it. I'll have to get back to you on the long-term effects. Maybe;)

As I sit here in an internet cafe at almost 10PM, the place is packed with Vietnamese kids playing World Of Warcraft and some Kung Fu fighting games. But the most amazing part is the little boys on either side of me who are linked online and madly (and loudly,) playing some kind of Covert Ops shoot-em-up... One looks about six and I just asked and found out the other is three!!! He's not doing that great, his older brother keeps popping him the way Martin always toys with me at Halo, but I'm still impressed he's even capable of getting it at his age.

That's all for now, I'm off to meet up with some people to go out... I'll write about the Cu Chi Tunnels and the Mekong Delta later.

So Long,

Clement

Not Sure About Cambodia...

2007-09-30T08:17:00.000-04:00

I've been in Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capitol city, for a couple of days now and, for the first time on this trip, I'm not really liking a place. There are all kinds of reasons why I should like it - broad avenues, good food, friendly people, lots to do and plenty of culture; but for some reason it's not moving me like other places have.

My first day here, I toured the Toul Sleng genocide museum also known as S-21. It was a local high school that the Khmer Rouge turned into a torture prison and holding area for the Killing Fields 15Km away. Of the scores of thousands who were imprisoned here during the five years of insanity that swept this nation, only seven survived. Seven.

Right after, we were taken to Choeung Ek also known as The Killing Fields where thousands of truckloads of peasants, teachers, ex-soldiers, politicians, businessmen, women, children and the elderly were made to kneel down, then clubbed and had their throats cut, then dumped into pits and buried in mass graves.

Sounds like the same old 20th century story, doesn't it?

Maybe part of why I don't like it here is the shabbiness of these two sites. I guess I was expecting something more moving, more feeling, with more of a sense of import. The museum where so many were betrayed, tortured, (including waterboarding interestingly enough,) and condemned to mass execution, is falling apart and looks like crap, and the exhibits are thrown together without any apparent care. The fields where all those people died is covered in mud, weeds and litter, with open pools of nasty water, and there are beggars and livestock roaming all around. It's like they don't even care, but I know that can't be the case.

Maybe it's the way the same people who take you to these chilling places try to convince you to go to a shooting range immediately after to fire AK-47s, toss grenades, and I've even heard rumors you can shoot a rocket at livestock for kicks. I have no problem with guns and I like target shooting, but the thought of firing a weapon the genocidal killers might have used right after visiting the grisly results of their insanity is distasteful, to say nothing of what an RPG would do to a cow. What kind of person would be in that business and who would want to go do that?

Sick people.

I try to tell myself that it all happened just a couple of years ago, (the Khmer weren't completely eradicated until 1998!) the wounds are still too fresh and the people are still dealing with the horror of their own government killing about a third of the population. It must be some country-wide case of PTSD and I should give them some slack, I know...

Maybe it's the way the local population mistreats their own world. There is a huge amount of rotting garbage and flies everywhere - much more than any other place I've been. And it seems that everyone, with no effort to hide what they are doing, just goes to the bathroom anywhere. Now I've done way more than my share of taking a leak in nature or behind a dumpster after a long night out, but here I see it 20 times a day, at least - and no one even turns around to do it. One little naked kid almost peed on my feet, and I was walking in the road at the time!

(Wow, I sound like a prude!)

I know that poor farmers are flocking to the city to try to make money and they might not know about basic sanitation, but why isn't the government trying to do some education just for health reasons?

Things I like:

I went out to dinner last night at a beautifully decorated restaurant named Romdeng, it's a training restaurant for street kids but you would never know it. The food was wonderful - all authentic gourmet Khmer, and the service was, well, perfect.

I like the way so many Cambodian and International Organizations are here helping the homeless, limbless, parentless, penniless, and hopeless learn trades so they get make a living and don't have to just beg until they die.

I've walked all across this city these last two days and absolutely everyone is friendly - my smile is always instantly returned and people rush to help me if I look lost or struggling to communicate something.

Phnom Penh reminds me a of a city I love, Buenos Aires, there are lots of wide boulevards with parks running down the middle, and European architecture and balconies with plenty of green plants hanging down. There are lots of cute little art galleries and native music performances, and they seem to really be doing a good job of preserving and supporting local handicrafts, too.

I really love roaming the local markets, trying to figure out the meats and produce, (trying to ignore the blood and smells,) and everyone smiles at the lone white man squeezing through the crowds along the narrow walkways. I try very hard to keep my size 11.5 hobbit feet out of the displays;)

My hostel is nice, the other guests are super friendly, and the staff is fantastic.

I really like the cafe culture around the city, lots of rattan, ceiling fans, and cool corner balcony bars where you can sip G&T's and watch the Orient slip by... I just need a linen suit and a planter's hat!

So why am I feeling such antipathy? I thought maybe I'm just in a little mood because my fun in SE Asia ends in less than a week; but I am REALLY looking forward to the Seychelles, so that's not it.

I guess in the end, it doesn't much matter. Just becasuse a place is new and exotic doesn't mean I have to fall in love with it. A place is just a place like any other - some good, some bad - and I'm off to Saigon in the morning!

Good Night,

Clement

Three Days At Angkor Wat

2007-09-29T07:15:00.000-04:00

I just got to Cambodia's capitol city, Phnom Penh, last night after spending almost three days in Siem Reap, home of the ancient Khmer temples known as Angkor Wat. The first thing I learned is that it's not just one temple, but over two hundred spread all around the countryside. The one we always see the pictures of (like in my last blog entry,) is the Angkor Wat, but any of the others are just as notable, old, and magnificent.

I arrived from Bangkok in the afternoon, found a place to stay and got some lunch at the local pushcart lot, (the ones in Cambodia look waaaaaay scarier than those I've visited in previously, but my fear factor is also much lower - no major intestinal problems yet...) As I crossed the street to get there, I almost got run over by a flock of scooters - after two straight months of British style left-side driving, I was looking the wrong way for traffic when I stepped into the street! Amazing how fast you can get used to something. Once I was safely across, I roamed the lot, looking in all the carts and noticing what the people were already eating, then I pretty much ordered by pointing. It's been working for two months, why change now?

Next up, I found myself a driver named Sahmboy, (sp?) hopped on the back of his moto and headed to the fabled temples with plenty of time to catch a sunset. Entry is $20 a day or three days for $40 and I was already regretting getting Riels, the Cambodian currency at the airport. Everything here is in $US! I got a decent 3800r to the dollar exchange rate, but the street rate is 4000r so I was losing money, oh well.

I knew there were a bunch of temples, but I had no idea there were so many and that they were so spread out. Sahmboy was cruising right by the picture book one to get to the one popular with the sunset crowd and I had to ask him to stop for some evening pics. Drivers are not allowed to accompany tourists around, (maybe to make sure we hire guides and double the employment...) so I hiked up on my own - dodging Chinese tourists all the way. I arrived in plenty of time but the temple was still crawling with tourists, all looking for that perfect spot. The steps up were as steep as any on the Mayan temples I've climbed and when I saw pools of blood on a couple of steps, I helped some poor lady who had skinned her shin pretty good a minute or so before I got there. Then I roamed the top of the temple, snapping pics in an effort to figure out the new camera, and looking for a good spot. As far as sunsets go, it was not the best - some low clouds on the horizon got in the way and it fizzled a bit, so many left early. But I got to poke around in the dusk and quite enjoyed myself.

After a ride back, I invited my moto pilot out for a beer and we made our plans for the next few days. We got along really well, it turns out we were born about 3 weeks apart and we wound talking for a couple of hours, comparing lives. He was just seven when the Khmer Rouge came to power and began their reign of terror that eventually killed over two million men, women, and children around him. His story was pretty harrowing and he reminded me of a Jewish Holocaust survivor who gave a talk at my High School one time. But for a geographic luckout of birth, I could have been him...

The next day, Sahmboy showed up bright and early with my guide for the day, Siya, and a tuk-tuk - a little three-seat cart hitched to his motorbike. I sat with Siya in the back and we got to know each other a bit on the way to the temple complex, making our plans for where and what to see. I could tell he was feeling me out a bit, figuring what kind of info and sights I wanted. So I cut to the chase and said, "Skip the dates and King's names, I like all stories and explanations of the lives of the people who lived here and built the temples. Describe what they and their society were trying to say with these huge stone works. I want to see as much as possible so go ahead and try to wear me out!" Siya came through big time and by the end of the day, I almost felt overwhelmed. He described building practices, explained the meaning behind the carvings, the history of the re-discovery and preservation efforts, and told me all the story-behind-the-story type stuff I like. We raced all over, barely stopping for lunch and saved Angkor Wat till last where we wound up running the length of the causeway in pouring rain to finish the day. My team did such a great job that once again, I treated everyone to beers to wind down from our day.

There is a lot of nightlife around Siem Reap, and I had a good time each night. Any town with streets with names like Bar Street and Pub Street is definitely a place for fun! Maybe too many people have a good time as one "professional" lady actually offered me "boom-boom!" Where was I? Saigon in the '60's? I wound up hanging out with a Chinese girl, a German guy, and two Indian sisters from Oslo who were all going to school in Singapore. Whew, talk about a worldly bunch! But alas, the only trouble I got into was at a fantastic used bookstore, where I somehow limited myself to just three.

The next morning, it was just Sahmboy and I at 5AM on the moto to go catch the sunrise over Angkor Wat. First we stopped for gas - not at a gas station, but at a little roadside stand where the fuel is dispensed from old Johnny Walker Scotch liter-sized bottles. Since there were no pumps, I guess this is the way everyone knows exactly how much gas you are buying and there is no hassle over measuring. Then we took a 36Km ride to the little visited but very beautifully carved Banteay Srei and then hit three more complexes on the way back to catch my noon bus to Phnom Penh.

I definitely got the most out of my short visit and I was so happy with Sahmboy that as a big tip, I had him take me to the Cambodian equivalent of Staples to stock up on school supplies for his five kids.

If you ever go to Angkor, give yourself lots of time and make sure you get a great driver and guide like I did!

Stay Wet, (I'm sadly dry,)

Ciao for now,

Clement

Random Indonesia And Travel Thoughts

2007-09-26T13:26:00.000-04:00

It was my Grandmom's 94th Birthday this week and you wouldn't believe how thrilled she sounded when I called to wish her all the best and give her my love.
"You're calling from Bangkok!!??!!"

The topic of what favorite food we miss came up the other day in Bali.
Fast Food? Nope.
Burgers? Nope.
Pizza? Nope.
Italian? Had some spaghetti bolognese and it was lame, but nope.
Mexican? Nope.
An hour went by and as I was replaying the conversation in my mind I thought, "Wow, I really don't miss that stuff..." Then I suddenly realized - "CHIPOTLE!!!!" and couldn't stop thinking about a nice Barbacoa Burrito fixed just the way I like it. More than ten days later, I'm still thinking about it... Shit.

Ok, so I found something I really miss.

People in Indonesia react and reflect on the Bali Bombings there in 2002 & 2005 the same way we look at 9/11. It's a kind of defining moment in both cultures and everyone knows where they were and what they were doing the moment it happened. The difference is they want to talk about it (while I don't like talking about it,) and make sure we realize a horrible thing happened to them, too.

In the airport at Ujung Pandar the other day, I saw three women in chadors, (full-length black veils with only their eyes showing,) huddled together playing a PSP, making noises and fighting for their turn at the game. It made me feel good to know that even though we seem very different, we are all still very similar. I wonder if they like Halo2...

I love spicy food. The hotter the better. I like it like the locals like it and I have been in heaven here in SE Asia, trying all kinds of new tastes, ingredients and spices. But I have met my match in Indonesia and it's called (phonetically,) "Booga Booga." Don't laugh, that's the name. This Bunaken home-made condiment looks like a cross between salsa and the regular pepper sauce, but it really packs a wallop... The sweat popped out on my forehead, my nose ran like crazy and I was drinking glass after glass of water as it wrecked my mouth for a day!

I ran around Bangkok, setting up my next journey to Cambodia and Viet Nam. To make room for all the extensions I did, (Koh Tao, Phuket, Perhentian, Sulawesi,) I had to cut 'Nam back to just Ho Chi Minh City and drop Chiang Mai altogether. But no worries, I know I'll be back.

My camera semi-died in Gili T. and has been limping along ever since, but it was definitely on its last legs. Having lived in Bangkok for a while, Theresa sent me to the five floor electronics-only mall where she bought her awesome camera and housing and I decided to splurge and wound up getting a new Canon G9 with its own underwater housing! Much cheaper than in the US, but still a lot, though I feel better remembering that I found my first camera on the bottom of Lake Rawlings and am ahead of the game in the Grand Scheme Of Things.

I arrived in Siem Reap, Cambodia today and caught the sunset over the ancient temples of Angkor Wat. Wow, just - wow.

The book count is now at 27 and I just started on Milan Kundera's "Book Of Laughter And Forgetting." Just a little lighthearted story about the Prague Spring of '68.

And with that, I am now caught up with my posts! Hooray!!

Now I just need to figure out the new camera and get my pics updated...

Stay Wet And Stay Warm - I know it's autumn,
Clement

The Most Amazing Reef I've Ever Seen -

2007-09-25T11:15:00.000-04:00

...is in Bunaken, North Sulawesi.

I left Bali on the 18th for this remote part of Indonesia to visit my German Buddy Theresa, who had invited me along to dive with her where she was finishing off her DM classes. Now, I've known that Indonesia diving is supposed to be the some of the most abundant, colorful, and diverse on earth, but seeing sure is believing! The life here blew my mind - every dive was like something from the cover of a dive magazine, and I had trouble recalling all the cool stuff for my logbook.

Beyond the fact that all the dive sites were amazingly colored walls that seemed to descend to the far side of the planet, there were clouds of vibrantly hued reef fish everywhere along with sharks and plenty of turtles. With the constant currents doing all the work carrying us gently back and forth along the vertical reef, my shortest divetime was 75 minutes! The special things that really made my dives were all of the exotic small animals we found - pygmy seahorses the size of 1/4 of your pinky-nail, all different kinds of strikingly colored nudibranchs, mandarin fish, lionfish of many different species under every rock, 5 different kinds of moray eel. Do you want me to go on? OK, I will. Flatworms, mantis shrimp with powerful claws, super poisonous kraits and seasnakes, tiny anemone crabs and finally on my last dive, the one tiny little strange creature I'd always hoped to see - an ornate ghost pipefish!

What? You want more? OK, try to imagine a boat speeding across a glass-calm ocean to the next dive site when a gigantic pod of about 130 dolphins & calves starts leaping out of the water all around and playing in the bow wave. And they play with us for about 15 minutes!

If you're still not impressed, I quit.

The dive op was Two Fish Divers,

http://www.twofishdivers.com/

run by an English couple named Tina and Nigel, and everyone was really friendly. All the meals were local food served family style and every night we hung out and sang along while the DMs and staff played guitars and sang. While I was there we celebrated two birthdays and a successful IDC, but we never really needed the excuse to pull out the palm wine (think sweet and toxic,) and Bintangs and start a party...

My bungalow was up the road a bit and it was back to the old nightime-only electricity, mosquito nets, and cold showers again; but frankly - it was absolutely perfect. I walked home each night up the islands main road (which was noticeably less substantial than some driveways I've had,) guided by the bright moonlight and nearly deafened by the chorus of crickets, geckos and tree frogs. Pelan, pelan, (slowly, slowly) is the refrain for the musical life these Bunakens lead and we should all take note 'cause they are doing it right: the island is a big mix of Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, and animist and everyone gets along and respects each other just fine. The pace of life (and lack of internet,) could make you forget there was even a world outside and I felt so at peace. I loved it - though I think Bunaken might actually be too quiet for me to live, it's still one of the best places I've ever been.

The week flew by and once again, leaving was very painful, but I headed back to Bangkok to salvage whatever I could from my tattered schedule.

(I'll try to add more pictures later - my hard-drive is acting up, grrrrr.)

Ciao,
C

We'll All Be Planning Out A Route...

2007-09-25T09:12:00.000-04:00

...We're Gonna Take Real Soon...

If you realized that's the opening line to a Beach Boy's greatest hit, then you also easily guessed one of the super cool things I got to do in Bali! That's right, I climbed on an eight foot long board in breaking waves and tried to balance on it and avoid the (many) bad things that can happen to you when you are surfing. I couldn't help noticing all the various coral shreddings and bruises around town...

But first, let's talk about Ubud.

I arrived in Ubud kind of late in the evening, but Derek & Melinda from Denver had spent at least a week there so they had me prepped and ready to go. I checked into the Hotel Ibunda - faithfully following their recommendations (and since she runs a spa back home, I felt very safe trusting her.) My room was cool, artsy, boutiquey, centrally located and best of all cheap - I was liking this town already. (Actually, the best part of my room at Ibunda came the next morning when I got into the hot shower, my first since staying in Omar's posh passion pit in Phuket (say that 5 times fast,) almost a month ago!) After checking in, I wandered around and found something to eat (difficult with so many interesting choices,) then hit the bed after booking my next day's adventure.

Derek had recommended an all day biking tour of Ubud and the surrounding towns and country-side that also included breakfast at the Batu volcano, a tour of some botanical gardens, lunch, and a trip to the Monkey Forest. My pickup was scheduled for 8:15 and after a long long hot shower I was just about ready at ten past when there was a knock at my door. It seems the group had been waiting out front since 8 - I was OK since they told me quarter past, but since some had been picked up an hour before while I was still snoring, I still felt kind of bad. But the whole day wound being even better than it sounded, the tour leader knew so much about Balinese culture and was very eager to share as much of it as he could. By the end of the afternoon, my head was so stuffed with new knowledge, I was dizzy. One of the coolest details is how they name their children - by birth order, one through four plus a personal name and then repeat with a prefix if there are five or more kids. For example, as the oldest, I would be I (long e sound,) Waiyan Clement - first brother Clement. Neat huh? We also learned a ton about Hindu and Community or Banjar culture - very complex with everyone belonging to temples for family, village, avocation, and specific gods, too. Biking through was a wonderful way to really see and connect with the area, plus it was so fun waving hello to EVERY kid we passed - they were all so overjoyed to see us!

After, the monkey forest, (ho-hum, beautiful park and spoiled little animals,) I wandered around town and checked out all the galleries and artists' studios - I could fill a huge home with all the amazing paintings, statues, and beautiful wood furniture I saw. Ubud is really a thriving culture center, with lots going on. In the evening, I discovered a local community theatre that was performing gamelan music and traditional dances. The next day was more of the same, exploring the countryside and rice terraces and enjoying the art, music and architecture of the area.

Then I was back on the road for the hour long ride to Kuta beach, center of Bali's beach culture and a magnet for surfers from around the world. Now if you think Dive Instructors are laid-back and chilled out, you must meet the team at Prosurf! After an hour of theory and practicing hopping to our feet on surfboard shaped mats next to the pool, we hit the waves to try the real thing. Ade, Jake, and the rest must have done a great job because I rode a wave all the way to ankle deep water my first try! I wish I could say every wave was that easy, but I definitely had my share of silly slips and gnarly wipeouts too. By the end of the afternoon, I was venturing out further and further on my own, catching 2 meter waves and starting to make some turns. I was more exhausted from paddling out through the fairly heavy surf than the surfing itself, but we all had to be practically dragged in by the end of the day. I know I personally begged "one more wave," at least four times - one from each of the instructors with us. After we cleaned up, a bunch of brand new surfers hit the beach for beers and the sunset, telling hours-old surf stories and using our hands to describe our experiences in a way that every real surfer would instantly recognise.

While it won't replace diving in my life, surfing is a sport I will be doing again, as soon as I can...

I had planned to head back to Bangkok next to head out to Viet Nam and Cambodia, but then Theresa, my German friend from Koh Tao, e-mailed me several weeks before to invite me along to dive Bunaken Island. For those of you like me who don't have the 17,000 islands of Indonesia geographically memorized, it's off North Sulawesi, on the South side of the Celebes Sea. T was completing her DM course, so I changed plans again. Sulawesi is reputed to be some of the absolute best diving on earth and I was not disappointed!

Until Next Time -

Stay Wet,

Clement

Does It Get Any Better Than Diving In Bali?!!!?

2007-09-18T03:17:00.000-04:00

I flew in to Bali after midnight after a long night and day travelling on a train from Malaysia to Singapore, taking a whirlwind taxi tour of that city, then flying out after dinnertime. Since I arrived at the train station in Jerantut at midnight, it had been a 24 hour plus day! First thing on my long list of things to do (very long, Bali has a huge array of "must-see" places and "must-do" activities,) was to leave again. But I didn't go far, after a quick stay at a guesthouse in Sanur Beach, I was hopping on a ferry to the nearby island of Nusa Lembongan - a secluded surfer's haven and where the elusive mola-mola (oceanic sunfish,) can be spotted if you're lucky.

The boat dropped us knee-deep in the surf and I hauled my stuff up the beach to Bali Hai Diving Adventures, which, according to a show I caught on the Discovery Channel, was THE dive shop to find these huge, gentle, strange fish. Andy, the Brit working in the dive shop, got my kit sorted out and I was all set to catch the afternoon dive with hours to spare so I went to find a place to stay, (gotta love my priorities,) and got lucky. Oka 7, right next to my dive shop, had one room left and I talked them down to 120,000 Rupiah a night (sounds bad but because of a 9300Rp to the dollar exchange rate, it's actually less than $14 - you should have seen me almost freaking out when I withdrew 2 Million from an ATM, I thought I'd misplaced the decimal and emptied my account!) The grand room had an upstairs ocean view with a shaded outside room large enough to have a daybed and a living room set to match my double queen beds and own bathroom inside! I felt silly bouncing around that huge space by myself and had to spread all my stuff out as much as possible to make it homey. It was wonderful to gently come awake to the sound of roaring surf in the mornings. All the other guests were a group of German surfers, and weren't too interested in making friends with a solo American diver. Not to worry, I had a chance to spot Mola-Mola, one of the "Big Five" sea-creatures to spot, (I'm not sure what the other four are, but I would imagine whale sharks and manta rays are two of them - anyone know? Post a comment if you do.)

In no time, I was backrolling into the water at Crystal Bay, the "best" site for an encounter, and instantly found it was COLD! Andy had told me this, and made me wear a loaned 5mm wetsuit, but it was so beautiful and tropical looking, I hadn't completely believed him until that first rush of water into the suit quickly convinced me. Once my heart re-started, (on its own, thanks,) I consoled myself with the knowledge that the 19C water temp was the reason those funny-looking big fish could be found here as they usually prefer cooler deep water, but take advantage of upwellings around Lembongan to rise up to the reef to visit cleaning stations where smaller fish pick the parasites off of them. It should have been a great dive - excellent vis, clouds of colorful reef fish, all kinds of new ones I'd never seen before, massive healthy coral all around, but I felt like it was a bust because there were no Mola. After a repeat shutout the next morning, I was beginning to wonder if I was fated to miss out when "Bingo!" I saw one ahead and above us, just hanging in the sunbeams with cleaner fish flitting all around. We watched in awe for a while until it gently and weirdly moved away. That was like the floodgates opening, and as the dive continued I saw 6 more. At one point, there were 5 right next to me, patiently waiting for their chance to get cleaned. And of course, I saw them on every dive after that, even on one drift where we were looking at Blue Ribbon Eels in a spot where the Mola didn't usually show up, we saw one.

Diving with the Mola-Mola at Lembongan is one dive experience I will definitely treasure...

Gili Trewangan is one of three small islands off the coast of Lombok, a major island east of Bali and my next destination. I had to spend a night in Bali after taking an afternoon ferry back from Lembongan, and I stayed at Hotel Sorga in Kuta Beach - a fun but busy beach in the islands SW side. With a crowd, I sat on the broad white sand beach and watched the sun plunge into the sea, then got dinner from the worgan, or pushcarts you find everywhere, and headed to bed since I had to get up at 5:45AM to catch the fast ferry to Gili T. After another knee deep noon-time surf landing (think MacArthur,) I found myself on Gili T.'s main "street," a mostly unpaved beachside path. Instantly, this island captivated me - no cars, scooters, bemos, or pick-up trucks anywhere! No internal combustion engines! (I found out later no power at all!... until that night, when they got the lights back on.) The taxis were actually tiny pony carts like you ride in when you are a kid - so cute! At least until you step in a present late at night in the dark... I walked no more than 25 meters to Manta Divers, a place a friend had recommended - a great operation and a friendly bunch of folks and once again I managed to get on that afternoon's dive. The only downside was that the Manta agent I talked to in Kuta claimed their rooms were 150,000Rp a night ($16) and when I got there it was 450,000!!! Bit of a shock, but I wasn't upset, I just made the point they needed to straighten out the guy in Kuta. So I walked down the beach a bit and found a good room for 100,000Rp at Big Bubble.

I really liked the diving at Trewangan - nice long drift dives, good reefs with lots of fish, whitetip and blacktip sharks, and at least a turtle on every dive. The eagle-eyed DMs found all kinds of amazing tiny and camouflaged stuff from see-through Leafy Scorpionfish, to juvenile blue-ribbon eels, 2mm long baby squid, to a tiny banded pipefish, plus some amazingly well-hidden crocodile fish and stargazers. The dive groups were kept very small and we had all the time we wanted, as long as that was an hour plus a little... The local DMs were especially amazing as the Muslim Holy month called Ramadan started while I was there, and the practicing DMs worked without food or water until sundown! Kind of neat being awakened by the Muezzin's singing call to prayers, but it got old fast as the holiday seems to call for praying at all hours of the night!

The group a Manta Divers was very welcoming, and I soon found myself at a birthday party for one of the DM candidates where I was introduced to Indonesian vodka (the Polish and Russian industries are safe,) and the local firewater called Arak. I think it's made from rice somehow and even though its rough taste is easily disguised by mixers, it really packs a punch! I soon met a bunch of divers and there was always someone to pal around with the rest of the time I was there. One of the coolest was Becks, a new DM from England who works winters running a ski school at Mammoth Mountain in California, (I've promised to keep up my newly rediscovered skiing, and she has offered me more snowboarding lessons if I visit!) Before getting into diving, she also worked crewing on super yachts - and y'all thought I was the one leading the interesting and glam life!

One of the funniest things I experienced happened at a local bar/restaurant named A Beautiful Life. It has a big theatre type area where you can watch the movies of the night for free if you order a drink or food, as well as little cushioned cozy beach huts where you can pick your flick. It features current 1st run movies such as The Simpsons, Evan Almighty, Bourne Ultimatum (there's that flick again,) and Rush Hour 3; as well as some classics like Halloween. I caught the Simpsons Movie and the scene in the opening credits where Bart is writing over and over on the blackboard, "I will not illegally download this movie," got a big laugh.

Another interesting part of Asian life is all the interesting flavors of potato chips you can find. Of course there is the normal BBQ and Sour Cream, but I've also seen Curry Chicken, Squid, Durian, and Salted Seaweed. Tried the chicken ones but I don't think I have the courage to try the seafood flavors, we'll see...

One morning at breakfast, all the European divers' cell phones started buzzing and that's how I found about the most recent Indonesian earthquakes. They were many hundreds of miles away in Sumatra and we never felt a thing. No risk of a tsunami either, but thank you for all the concerned emails - I definitely felt cared for and remembered!

This trip of mine is all about discovering new places, but it also seems to also be about leaving great places and new friends and soon it was time to head back to Bali. I had taken the Mahi-Mahi fast ferry to Gili T., but it made more sense to take the regular ferry back to Pedangbai and transfer to Ubud from there - either way, I would arrive around 5PM and the fast boat method costs 5 times more. Or so I thought. Best part was the interesting modes of travel - outboard to Lombok then pony cart to the minibus to the big slow ferry to Bali where another minibus was waiting. Trouble was the crowded docks which kept the big ferry floating
just outside for three hours! Luckily, on the line to the ferry I had met Derek and Melinda from Denver - the first Americans I'd spoken to since Bangkok! They had gotten a bunch of time off work and were doing the Bali area for 3 or 4 weeks and made some suggestions for Ubud. We spent the long ride and wait talking and sharing the ferry's crappy junkfood and swapping book recommendations. They made the day fly by and I was sad to see them off when I caught my mini to Ubud at 8PM... I hope the weather in Denver isn't too cold just yet!

Next installment will be all about the artsy mountain town of Ubud and my surf lessons!
(Hint, I'm still picking sand out of my butt...)

Ciao,
Clement

Exploring An Ancient Rainforest In Malaysia. And Then A Whirlwind Singapore Tour!

2007-09-15T08:27:00.000-04:00

After I sadly left the wonderful Perhentian Islands, I reassured myself that amazing experiences always lie ahead of me. And I was right.
I caught an early morning ferry back to the mainland and transferred to a minibus for a long drive halfway down the peninsula of Malaysia to Taman Negara - the oldest continuous tropical rainforest on earth!
Scientists have determined that the forest dates back around 135 million years and the Malaysian Government (despite a very questionable environmental protection record,) made it a National Park in the 30's to protect it and its inhabitants from logging.
I was travelling with Maartje, a Dutch friend I met on Perhentian Kecil, and just before dinner time we arrived at Kuala Tahan, the small town at the edge of the park. It is situated right on the river bank and in fact, many of the town's buildings are river boats that have to move up and down the bank as the water level changes! The river is the most major road in town and you get around on these skinny looooooong boats. I got pretty good at getting in and out without capsizing, but the boats are so easy to tip, it always felt like it was about to go over.
We got a really cheap dorm-room to stay in and luckily the place was deserted until the 2nd to last night, when two more Dutch girls moved in. It seemed that everyone we met in the park and in the local town was Dutch - it became a running joke that got weirder and weirder the more true it became!
Malaysia is a pretty seriously Muslim country, and there are no bars or alcohol in the restaurants. At dinner one night on a riverboat, the owner came over to us and said in a very "on the down-low" kind of voice, "Do you want a beer?" We jumped at the chance (withdrawal symptoms from Long Beach possibly?) but the catch was you had to keep the (expensive) can wrapped in a napkin all the time. It felt like college drinking all over again, hiding your drink when everyone with half a brain knows what it is, and I wondered when the RA was gonna bust in!
We went trekking, climbed a mountain, did a canopy tour, and shot the rapids (that's one American phrase that didn't translate well - "Bang bang at the river???") There was also a visit to an aboriginal village where we made blowgun darts for monkey hunting and I even got to do some target practice with one. A blowgun, that is, not a monkey... Along the treks, we saw some wild pigs, all kinds of lizards, milliions of cool bugs, and some massive ants - by far the biggest I've ever seen! On my last day, I had planned an afternoon solo trek to a bat cave, but the skies opened up and the rain kept me in.
Sadly, Maartje needed to head to Kuala Lumpur and back to Amsterdam to go back to work, and I needed to take the overnight train to Singapore where I'd booked a plane for Bali, so the jungle adventure had to end.

The 1:30AM night train turned into the 5:30AM morning train, so I didn't get much time in Singapore. I had an upper sleeping berth, and managed to scratch out a couple of hours before waking up for good to the sound of Muslim prayers at 7AM. I spent the next xeveral hours standing in the open doorway between the trains, watching Malaysia slide by - very cool and I doubt you would be allowed to spend a minute there in the US. We pulled into the city around noon and had to go through the usual immigration and customs, then get back on the train to go to the actual station. After getting cleared, I was snackless and ravenous but a family of Malay women in pretty headscarves noticed my longing glances at their breakfast and shared it with me - one of the warmest and nicest feelings I've had on this trip - or maybe I was faint with hunger and exhaustion. I tried all kinds of unidentifiable things they offered and since they knew about as much English as I knew Malaysian, we communicated by sign language, smiles and a couple of easy phrases - "Terima Kecih," means "Thank You" and the response is "Samo Samo." When I tried what looke like a round tortilla chip and discovered it was an anchovy chip, no language was necessary and they laughed at my expression.
When I got out of the train station, I had about 5 hours until I needed to head to the airport and I hopped into the first cab I saw and made him an offer. "What are you doing until 6:30? I've got $50 US for you if you'll drive me around all day and show me the city..." too bad he got off shift at 5PM, but he found a friend who was willing and we drove all over the city, stopping for me to run around and quickly see the sights. It seemed like a great city - modern and efficient with lots of shopping. I really like how clean and green it was, trees lined every street and there were large parks everywhere. Best of all was their answer to the Sydney Opera House - built on a grand scale of shimmering steel, the shell was covered in points to make it look like a durian fruit!
My cabbie got me to the airport with plenty time to spare and I jetted off to Bali!
Check my flickr page for all the pics as the computer I'm now working on seems to not like my portable hard-drive...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/clementpics/sets/
Daag!
Clementje

Holy Smokes!

2007-09-10T07:17:00.000-04:00

I just took a quick count in my pocket notebook and realized I've read 18 books since I left home!!!

From Hannibal Rising on the plane to Sydney to some crappy tattered 70's Western I picked up in a guesthouse in Bali yesterday, I've been burning through the lit - some bad, but mostly good. I guess if you are gonna drag a book halfway around the world, it might as well be something you like...

Most hostels have a pile of discarded books and the policy is leave one - take one, but I've had fellow travellers give me one they liked and I've made a gift to others of the ones I found special. There are always lots of really good-looking ones in German, wish I knew the lingo!

The best so far have been Shadow Of The Wind, a story about a bookseller's son in post-war Barcelona (it was awesome - drop what you are doing and go buy this book right now!!) Next best are First They Killed My Father, about Cambodia in the 70's (light reading,) and two books by Bill Bryson the humorous travel writer, In A Sunburnt Country, (Australia,) and A Walk In The Woods, (about the Appalachian Trail.) I also really enjoyed John Irving's Until I Find You, (but I always love Irving,) which was a bonus as it was more than a thousand pages long and got me through a tortuous train ride to Singapore!

The most fun have been The Devil Wears Prada, (yes I like Chick Lit too,) and The Beach, the novel that Leo DiCaprio's movie was based on. Kinda cool reading that book in a Thai Island Hostel on a beach reading about a guy in a nearby spot.

That's all - nothing earth-shaking, just thought I'd share. I'm off to meet some German surfers for Bintangs!

Prost!
Kliment

Perhentian Islands - Paradise Found! Again!

2007-09-10T02:42:00.000-04:00

(...When we left our hero, he was hurtling south along the road to the port town of Kuala Besut in Malaysia, loudly singing Elton John, Rod Stewart, The Eagles and Stevie Winwood with a madman cabdriver - dodging goats and Muslim Prayergoers along the way...)

The fast ferry to the Perhentian Islands was exactly as advertised - fast! 2x200Hp Yamahas attached to a 35' boat can really move. Made the crossing in about 30 minutes and as we approached the pair of islands around noon, I realized I was in for a treat. They are a pair of islands, named Pulau Perhentian Kecil (Little,) and Pulau Perhentian Besar (Big,) set half a Km apart about 19Km off the East Coast of Malaysia, in the South China Sea. They are gorgeous - green hills, rocky cliffs separating dazzling white sandy beaches, and just bits of progress showing here and there. After dropping some folks off at Big, we crossed the channel to Little's Long Beach - where the fun crowd (ie not honeymooners or families,) is supposed to hang out. After carting my bags through the minimal surf, I looked up to find Spice Divers right in front of me, and made my way across the sugar sand and up the steps onto their big shady deck. The first personn I met was a Canadian DM candidate named Bree, who coolly appraised my backpack and asked me if I needed a room or a dive.
Easy answer: "Can I get on an afternoon dive?"
Bree helpfully replied, "Boat leaves in 10."
I dumped my shit in the office, threw on a pair of trunks in the compressor room and waded out to the open boat for a dive on Sugar Wreck. What is there to say? Vis was mediocre, but that was the only possible complaint as the water was warm, my 3 Danish buddies a bunch of laughs, and the wreck and its tenants were awesome. Lionfish, puffers, big schools of jacks and razorfish (my new fave,) swam all over the the real wreck. Razorfish are small fish that are always oriented head-down and swim around that way using their pectoral fins. A school looks almost like turtle grass, swaying in the water.

Once back on land, I checked out a couple of guesthouses (or as they call them "Chalets," don't be fooled, they were at the low end of basic,) and wound up at Chempaka for 30 Ringgit ($8) a night.

Gappy wood floors and walls, mosquito net, no electricity, and a slimy communal bathroom/shower across the lawn - but it was the nicest one I saw, and it quickly grew on me. Right after I moved in, I opened my back shutter to find myself eye-to-eye with what looked like a Komodo dragon! Nope, just a 5' monitor lizard that roams the area glaring at anyone who crosses its path. I'll tell you this - I sure made good use of my flashlight heading to the bathroom late at night!

The three Danes, who were winding up an 8 month tour, invited me to dinner and showed me around. It was not a big tour - just about 600m of gently curving beach with simple guesthouses, open-air restaurants, and some snorkelling and dive shops sprinkled among the palm trees at the edge of the sand.
The next day, I did three dives, the best was just me and Bree having a good long, slow wander along a beautiful reef, finding turtles and blue-spotted rays in the rocks and coral. It turns out Bree arrived here in April for three days, took her Open Water Class, got hooked and has never left. I bet that story sure sounds familiar to some of us... Considering she is from chilly Alberta, I guess it's not that surprising.

Late that afternoon, I was hanging around on Spice Divers huge deck, having some of their tea and cookies, when I noticed a raucous beach volleyball game going on right out front. I did my usual stand on the sidelines looking hopeful routine, and was soon invited in. It felt like my kind of group - laughing, good-natured trash-talking in 5 languages, diving for hopeless balls and a big cheering section - I had found the Perhentian Volleyball Society! Next thing I know I'm invited out to dinner, then drinks, then it's 4AM and I'm diving in 4 hours!!! Made the dives of course, and all the following days were more of the same - some moved on, but new people always arrived to replace them, most stayed an extra day or two and I wound up extending my stay twice, I was having so much fun. It was about 25 or so Germans, Dutch, English, Norwegians, Italians, Irish, Spanish and me - the lone American. (Honestly, other than Shan who has lived in Koh Tao for 7 years, I don't think I've met another US citizen since Bangkok! I didn't realize that until I met this group on Little and one of them mentioned they hadn't seen many in Malaysia... I wonder if I'm just lucky?) My best memory was at Palm Tree Bar, late one night - an Orangutan and Coke in my hand, (don't ask!) dancing up a storm to Bob Marley with a real rainstorm pouring down outside. I was trying not to think about the laundry that had been almost dry on my porch railing when Pop! the power went out, and no one missed a beat, "Could this be love...? And be lo-ove." We replaced the music with our own, and the power was out so long, it finally devolved to TV theme songs, Happy Days and The Flintstones among them. But the party never even slowed until long after the electricity came back with a cheer.

One day, as I was at lunch, dawdling over a book and a curry at a place called Tummy Rumbles, perched above the beach on the side of a hill - I heard a growing roar and looked up as two Malaysian fighter planes buzzed the beach! They made at least 6 passes during their mini-airshow, one low enough that I was looking down at it as it buffetted the taller palm trees. Turns out a group of Malaysian pilots had taken their leave there 2 weeks previously and had such a great time, they come back every couple of days to check things out again! I know how they feel!

Perhentian Kecil has such a warm, welcoming vibe, and is such a beautiful little island with a perfect balance of wild green jungle, wild life, great diving, a tiny settlement on the edge of the water and cool visitors, it definitely is right at the top of my list of favorite places so far.

Eventually though, the reality of my schedule (in tatters now,) forced me to ignore some pleas of "Just one more day..." and get on the morning ferry to connect to a mini-bus headed to my next stop. Time to play Indiana Jones, and explore the 135 millionn year old rainforest named Taman Negara...

Tune in next time and see what happens...

Cheers!
Clement

Uncle Clement - Just Has To Share This Pic!

2007-09-08T05:47:00.001-04:00

This pic was taken just before I left for my grand adventure - classic looks from all three of us!

Hard to believe it, but I'm even more tan now. And I haven't had a haircut since (Gasp!!)

More Beautiful Spots In Thailand - Krabi, Ao Nang & Railey Beach

2007-09-07T01:52:00.001-04:00

I've been in Malaysia for a week now and internet access has been a bit harder to find than it was in Thailand. But I've got some time waiting for a bus to Jerantut and then a train to Singapore, so I'll try to get down what I remember of my post-Phuket experiences.

I visited Krabi town briefly - the whole area is called Krabi and the actual town is just a simple place about 15Km from the water. The day I arrived we visited several local beach communities and I liked Ao Nang the best and decided to stay there. I had planned to stay in Railey Beach, but it is only accessible by longtail taxi boat and it was raining so I took the easy (and dry,) way out. Shopped a couple of hostel/guesthouses and settled on a cheap one on a block full of similarly forgettable flophouses. Bed - lumpy. Bathroom - damp. Lighting - dim fluorescent. Ambiance - well.... Anyway, it was right next-door to a fun bar named The Irish Rover and that's what I remember best about it.
A quick check of the local dive shops revealed they dove mostly Koh Phi-Phi (which I dove from the Phuket side already,) so I decided to relax on the beaches and do some exploring.
During the days I visited up and down the coast, places with names like Hat Tonsai, Hat Rai Leh, Ao Phai Plong, and Nopparat Thara. All were seriously laid-back beach towns with amazing sand and water views, picturesque rock islands offshore and verdant cliff formations surrounding the bays. Tonsai is so overhung with rocky heights that it has become an Asian tropical mecca for climbers and there are schools and services everywhere for the vertical pilgrims.
At low tide, it was possible to walk around the rocky headlands to the next beach and I discovered a secluded beach resort right next to Ao Nang exotically named Centara Grand. It was a little larger than I like, but the location was perfect! Look it up if you are headed that way for a romantic getaway. I walked under the cliffs and had a drink at the beach bar, then cleared out before the tide's return closed off the way back.
Railey Beach (or Hat Rai Leh,) wound up being one of my favorites. It's actually two beaches (named East Railey & West Railey for the way they face,) on a southern trending spit of land that ends in another of those huge jungle-covered limestone formations. East is the backpacker side with funky places to stay, nifty restaurants and the nightlife. West is connected by a 150m footpath and is the home of the beach resorts, the boat taxi drop-off and a wide wide beach with amazing sunset views. The tiny town in between has cute little restaurants, a used book shop (got a John Irving - couldn't help it,) and two dive operators. On my trek across, I stopped to watch a local volleyball game and soon got invited in. I was the sweaty Westerner, but had a blast anyway and I'm now working on a theory of "volleyball diplomacy" that I'll expand on in a later post. After a spectacular sunset I caught a longtail taxi back to Ao Nang for dinner and to get ready to head off to Malaysia.
While in the area, my meals were mostly road-side stalls and carts (really a la carte!) which are one of the best things about Thailand. Great food, tons of variety, super cheap, and you get to order by pointing as you graze down a row of them. As I sat on a stool at a communal plastic table, I wound up talking to an English girl who has been on the backpacker trail for 20 months! For those of you who think I tell tons of stories (and even repeat myself a bit,) you will be impressed to know that I listened enthralled for a couple of hours at her tales of Australia (all of it - really,) North Africa, Nepal, India, China, New Zealand, Fiji, Vanuatu, and every part of SE Asia. She had a month or two left on her journey, but wow! What a trip!

Here's a funny dumb Clement travel story:
I was supposed to catch a 6:30AM bus to Krabi and on to Hat Yai and Sungai Kolok on the Malaysian border where I planned to walk across and catch local bus 29 to Kota Baru. When I got home from talking to the Super Traveller, my guesthouse office was locked up for the night with my important stuff like $$, iPod, and passport still locked in their lockers which were now behind a metal pull-down garage door. Security is a great thing, but they didn't open until 8AM so when my ride appeared, I was hopefully packed - but without a passport, I was stuck. They left without me and when the hostel opened at 9AM I rescheduled to the 11AM Bus. Advertised to arrive at the border at 7PM, reality was closer to 9PM when the border closes so I was stuck in the scariest hotel I've ever slept in for the night. It was 6 stories and I'm sure I was the only tenant. I've never seen a dirtier rug, the door had an actual fist-sized hole through it, and it took two hands to move the uranium density pillow. The one piece of art on the wall..., well you'll just have to check my flickr page for it. It's a classic. I crossed the border bright and early in the AM and caught a cab to Kuala Besut where the ferry boats to Pulau Perhantian Islands collect their passengers. I was lucky to find a cab at all since I had decided to enter Malaysia on the 50th Anniversary of their Independence, whoops! - Imagine trying to find a taxi in the USA at 9AM on July 4th! The cabbie had zero English, but that was fine, as I managed to get him to find me a place to change some money and used a map to point out where I needed to go. He was so nice that he played his one tape of western music for our 2 hour ride to the port city - I'll always treasure my new memory of Elton John's "Tiny Dancer" (or as I sing it - "Hold me tight now, Tony Danza...") that we both sang at full volume down the coast road in sight of the South China Sea.
Very surprisingly, I was the better singer...

Falling Behind In My Posts, Sorry!

2007-09-06T07:30:00.000-04:00

I know, I know...
I still need to finish my Thailand Postings and I've already been in Malaysia for a week! Perhentian Islands were great and I'm now in Tanam Negara - a huge 135 million year old tropical rainforest! It's the oldest forest on earth and so lush, rugged and achingly beautiful it takes my breath away.

Here's another cool quote I came across:

"There is no plan. We plan, the Universe laughs. It's that simple.
We only win if we buy Murphy a beer."

[Marc Viola, February 2007]

Yeah Marc, I feel you.

Daag!
Clementje

Living Large in Phuket!

2007-08-29T09:42:00.000-04:00

All I can say is Phuket has won me over, though anything would be a great change after Koh Samui! This gem of the Andaman Sea looks like a peninsula on the map, but it is a good size island in the same way Manhattan is an island - separated from the Bronx by a skinny river.

Things got off on the wrong foot here when the deluxe bus I was on dropped me off an hour plus late in Phuket Town. It was a good long crosstown walk, lugging my gear to the local jeepney pickup area, and when I got there, they had stopped running for the night. After being hassled and almost cheated by every tuk-tuk driver and scooter pilot (like I could fit myself, my divebag, and a backpack on the back of a scooter!) in the downtown area, a local woman took pity on me and browbeat them until one relented and gave me a fair price to get across to the west side of the island where I had a reservation at a guesthouse.
Lesson: When you are in a hired vehicle in a foreign country and you think your driver is clueless and lost, just trust yourself. Even though I only had a black and white tiny map in my SE Asia Lonely Planet Guidebook that I could barely catch glimpses of in the passing streetlights, I had a funny feeling I'd been seen some familiar looking buildings and waterfront - it didn't matter because it was a set price with no meter, but after he asked some guy directions for the third time and tried to convince me to get out at the wrong guesthouse twice, it was obvious I needed to take a stand. We wound up at a verrry expensive looking resort hotel and asked the security guard for help, he got the concierge involved and the problem was soon solved. By the time I got checked in it was almost 8:30 and I needed to hustle to find the dive shop that had been recommended to me before it closed. After the delay due to my run-in with the dog, (see Thailand Observations & Musings entry from August 23rd,) I just slipped in the door just a minute or two before they closed and got my diving set up easy as pie.

The diving was very good, vis a little worse than Koh Tao, but they do three dives a day off the boat and give you three square meals to boot!
www.diveasia.com
First day out we went to Koh Phi Phi, (where they filmed Leo DiCaprio's "The Beach") and my next day we went to Racha Yai, south of Phuket. I got buddied up with an Italian named Omar who lives in China (for 15 years,) and imports everything from shoes to steel and we really hit it off. His family owns a vineyard and makes wine outside of Venice so we had a great time talking grape, it's a good thing I got so much enological experience this spring! He is a pretty new diver, just about to start his Rescue Class and we had a good time diving together. There were six of us in the group, and the DM trusted me to lead the last two around after the rest went up when their air got low, so my streak of all 60 minute + dives is still alive. I saw a bunch of lionfish, some green turtles, all kinds of morays, big grouper and three big cuttlefish. The topper was all the octopus (Octopusses? Octopi?) - I don't think I've ever seen so many outside of a night dive, and on one of the Racha dives, there were two about a meter apart! I was in heaven and spent a good chunk of that dive right there.

After the first day of diving, Omar invited me to stay with him in his Villa at the Marriott - and once again I busted up my schedule to have some fun and spent the next four days hanging out with Omar and his Chinese girl-friends. The Marriott has to be one of the nicest places I've ever stayed, the villa had two bedrooms, two baths with big soaking tubs, a full kitchen, huge deck and was decorated lavishly. The resort itself has to be seen to be believed, so here's the website:
http://www.phuket.com/marriott/
When we weren't diving, we drove all over, (well Omar drove, the rest of us just held on! No wonder Italians love F1 so much.) visiting Koh Phang-Nga (site of James Bond's island in "Man With The Golden Gun,") Khao Lak and whooping it up all around Phuket in the evenings. Omar's been visiting Phuket for 15 years and is even friends with all the "entertainers" at the Ladyboy bars. (Where I had a blast, by the way. Don't worry Mom, I somehow resisted them but Omar and I had a hard time believing some were really men!)

Sadly, the road was calling me and after getting some meetings changed, Omar drove me to Krabi (setting a new land speed record along the way,) and we spent the day poking around before he went back to Phuket around sunset.

Two funny Phuket stories, (well there's more, but these are the two I'm telling now...)
Story 1:
On my first night, I was desperately looking for a place to have a Chang and unwind, but every bar was covered with Thai hookers and I knew that as a loner, it would be impossible to just have a beer without getting constantly hassled. Make that harassed. So I walked by a bunch of bars, examining the patrons and debating my options. I figured I'd introduce myself to some total strangers, explain my predicament and ask for some company and cover. There were lots of couples, and I didn't feel comfortable barging in on their possibly romantic evenings, there were several guy with two girl combos and I knew they'd just think I was hitting on the single girl, and all the other groups included the previously mentioned working girls. Finally, I spotted the perfect group - five western girls with lots of empties around. They turned out to be English & Dutch and laughed at my tale then invited me to sit with them and when I bought a round, they promised to "protect" me. Fat chance. Never, ever, drink with anyone from Holland. And then accept a lift home from one on the back of a scooter in an absolute pissing-down, blinding rainstorm.
Story 2:
You might remember from my Bangkok posting, that I've been trying to see the new Bourne movie and I've finally found some success. Walking up the street in Phuket, I noticed Matt Damon pointing a gun at somebody on a small TV and didn't recognize the scene. Is it? Could it really be? Yup, movie piracy at work, depriving hard-working Hollywood millionaires of their royalties, but providing me with the opportunity I'd been waiting for. So 80 Baht later, ($2.40 US,) Omar and I were watching Bourne Ultimatum, and except for someone's head blocking a bit of the bottom of the picture, it was great. Can't wait for the next sequel.

That's all for now, I'm in Ao Nang, near Krabi which is back on the mainland south of Phuket. Tomorrow morning I have an early bus/train to Malaysia and I hope to be in the Perhentian islands off the east coast of the Malay peninsula sometime tomorrow...

Ciao,
Climenze

Koh Samui, meh.

2007-08-24T11:12:00.000-04:00

Did a couple of days in Koh Samui and as I was warned - it wasn't really my scene. It's about 2 hours south of Koh Tao by ferry and I arrived around noon and got a cab over to Chaweng Beach, the busiest spot on the island. After staying at secluded Tanote Bay, I felt like being in the center of things for a change. Whoops. It's like I was at the Jersey Shore or Ocean City. It seemed to be all Italians in D&G roaming around being rude. And the Speedos!! Mama Mia!
So I grabbed a day trip to Ang Thong National Marine Park for a day of Kayaking, Trekking, Snorkeling, and an elephant ride. I had a blast on the boat full of fun people from all over. England, Germany, Barcelona (NOT Spain,) Austria, Iran, Canada, Israel, Australia, Czech Republic, Japan and China. And oh yeah, me, the lone American. It was like a mini-UN and really made me feel part of the world.
The kayaking was the best - around and under these huge limestone rocks whose cliffs rose straight out of the water like skyscrapers. At times we had to lie down in the kayak and pull ourselves along with our fingers!

Next was the snorkeling, which after a quick assessment of the vis, I smartly skipped to spend the time diving off the upper deck of the ship with some other guys.
After lunch, we journeyed through the park to Mae Koh island which has a marine lake at the middle - all you have to do is climb a huge bunch of steps almost straight up and then back down, and you are there. Great views too, and it was funny the way two separate groups of people dropped batteries and crawled under the boards to retrieve them...

Then we hopped back on the boat and chugged back to Samui and were herded into minivans for the ride to the elephant compound - witha "quick" stop at a souvenir store on the way. The baby elephants were very cute, but I didn't really like the conditions they were kept under, they were on a pretty short chain in a small enclosure. But, thinking back, I doubt they were kept there all the time - just when people like me came to gawk and feed them bananas. The 20 minute elephant ride was funny, you rock all over the place with no discernible rhythm and just when you get used to it, they go downhill and I was hanging on for dear life again!

I left Koh Samui on the ferry the next morning and headed to Phuket. The funniest thing about the ferry ride was the international red circle with a slash "No Durian" signs on the cabin doors. It's a local fruit that is really smelly but tastes completely different and I guess the management was trying to protect us from rude durian eaters! There's a funny pic of the sign on my flickr page. The bus ride across the mainland to the western side of Thailand was exquisitely beautiful. Huge jungle covered vertical mountains thrust up out of the forests and fields. I have absolutely no idea how they were formed! It had rained heavily here in Phuket the previous few days and I arrived as the weather broke and the green of the wildlands shone and glowed in shimmering wet wonder. Such beautiful light, I wish I had the camera skills to capture it.

I'll write more about my Phuket experiences in a few days, right now I'm off to the beach!
Ciao,
Clemente

Thailand Observations And Musings...

2007-08-23T12:28:00.000-04:00

Here are some musings and amusings I've collected so far roaming around Thailand.

Fruit Lassi and a Banana Pancake - Breakfast of Champions! And only costs less than 100 Baht...

Why is it that when I drag out my Thai Phrasebook and work really hard to memorize a phrase or question, the object of my effort always speaks perfect english? And when I'm not prepared and approach someone who looks like an English speaker they have no idea what I'm trying to communicate?

Bad News:
Don't worry but I got bit by a dog tonight. Came barking out of an abandoned lot and latched onto my left hand as I tried to ward it off. Blood everywhere and some nice dings to my index finger and the back of my hand...
Good News:
It happened about 50m from an open Pharmacy and the Betadyne and couple of bandaids only cost 45 Baht. Plus, they let me use the bathroom in the back to clean it up.

Been reading a lot - on boats, beaches, buses, planes, and ferries and even occasionally in bed. Lots of decent book piles at the guesthouses and some nice used book stores in every town - I'm finding it hard to limit myself to one at a time for weight reasons. In one, I found an old boarding pass, forgotten as a bookmark. Julian Hewitt of seat 6D, Thai Airways flight 4141, what did you experience when you landed in Koh Samui from Bangkok at 12:45 and what has become of you since August 12th, 2002? I think of all that has gone on in my life since that date, and can't help but wonder if he is still the same person he was then... And did he like the book? I've made up several stories in my mind for him and I'm sure they are no better than his reality.

All the ferries and buses I've been on seem to have DVD players that endlessly show videos of Thai Pop Stars. There are more Justin Timberlake, N'Sync and NKOTB flirty wannabes than I'm strictly comfortable with, and they are all trying so poutily hard to appeal to the young female crowd. I've taken up playing more hardcore music, (rap, alternative, house, etc.) on my iPod while I watch the videos. It's hilarious! I love it when the words and pictures match so strangely, the humor is inescapable and I'm sure the other passengers are wondering what I'm snickering about...

Thailand is known as a country for sex tourism and it's pretty sad the way poor country families sell their teen and pre-teen daughters out of desperation. The AIDS epidemic is still going strong here, and I've read that 30%-40% of Thai sex workers are HIV+. Plus, the Thai strain is really contagious and drug resistant. All the bars have women in packs out front enticing you in and knowing that 2 out of 5 will most likely be dead in a couple of years is pretty depressing. On top of that, the number of older farang men I see walking around holding hands with a very young Thai girl like they are 13 and on the way to the movies makes me feel sick inside. Let's not even talk about the Ladyboys...

As an American, I'm conscious of the perceptions the rest of the world holds about us, and am very amused that while they claim to be so tired of us and wish we were less imposing, I still heard it from a German four days after the fact that Karl Rove had quit.

I write this as I sit in an internet cafe in Phuket, site of the Tsunami that came ashore on Boxing Day, December 26th, 2004. I got here early in the evening after a breathtakingly beaufiful journey across the Thai peninsula from the ferry port near Surathani. Considering what happened that day to this part of the world, it is amazing how hard I had to look to spot any indication it ever happened. Sure, there's a small pile of rubble here and there, but that could be due to the construction going up on the same lot. It makes me embarassed at the state New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast is still in... How can this little country recover from such a larger blow better and faster than we can?

Off diving tomorrow early - I'll have to write about Koh Samui and the Ladyboys another time..

Goodnight and Sweet Dreams,
Clement

Dammit, Who Stole My Flip-Flops?!?

2007-08-23T11:07:00.000-04:00

To solve the crime, I used my CSI - Koh Phangan skills to pinpoint the guilty party, but more on that later...

All the guidebooks on Thailand take lots of time to describe the wildness known as the Koh Phangan Full Moon Party. And then spend another page trying to warn the reader away from it, too. Always interested in a party, I consulted Angie & Shan, my two beautiful and experienced Thailand party veterans.
"Skip it," was the instant consensus, "It's too overrun with tourists, and way overdone."
"But I kind of wanted to experience it, anyway..." I tried not to sound too disappointed.
"We're planning to go to the Black Moon Party, anyway - it's way better & cooler and more for those in the know!"
So that's how I ended up on a ferry to Koh Phangan early one afternoon - still feeling the effects of a couple too many Singhas, Changs, Tigers and buckets of God knows what the night before. I was still a little fuzzy on how I got back over the mountain and remembered stumbling around the hill trying in vain to find my hut. Shan helpfully reminded me how one of our group, Lex, had drunkenly dislodged a boulder that rolled down the hill and narrowly missed us in the pitch dark. Yeah, that sounded familiar.
Once off the ferry we gathered the group for a quick local meal and then rode the back of a pickup to Mac Bay Resort, the site of the shindig and also where Shan had procured us beach bungalows. I had the furthest one from the center of the party and it was still right behind a bar - if they needed that much room, I knew this was going to be big. When I found the reservations were for two nights I was knowingly assured they would be necessary and, oh, how right that was...
The music cranked up around 10PM, rousing me from a power nap and the fun soon began. The night soon was a blur of bodies moving and sweating up and down the beach to the house/rave/trance/whatever music spun by a team of DJ's working in shifts. I felt an instant bond with every person there - it seemed we were all in it together trying to make the party bigger, brasher, and wilder. Buckets flew by as I drifted in and out of the crowds, making new instafriends and re-connecting with our group, it seemd the night went on and on. Then, sometime between Angie seeking revenge on some rude guy and my 20th bottle of water, I realized the sun was up and the music ground to a halt at 9AM. A ragged cheer rose from the large crowd still dancing in the rising sun to the bitter end, then people drifted off, picking their way around the wreckage left on the beach.
All night long we had been checking on the guy we had nicknamed "Drunk Guy Passed Out On My Porch" at my bungalow, and when I was heading off to bed I realized he had rolled onto the beach into the mid-morning sun, and we got him moved back onto the porch and into my hammock.
I awoke with a start around 2PM and staggered outside, hungry and parched. I foggily wiped my eyes and realized my flip-flops were gone! The cool ones with the bottle opener in the sole! I wandered over to the open air restaurant in disbelief and Angie laughed, "Welcome to Thailand - everyone loses their shoes here!" Hoping to avoid a shoeless day and night before getting back to Koh Tao, I noticed the Thai men cleaning up the party debris from the beach had thoughtfully left a good-sized pile of abandoned shoes on the beach as they bagged all the other trash. It was like they knew, and I suppose they must have seen it all before. I poked around the pile, hoping to find mine - even though I knew I had left them right outside my door, and finally realized I had but one option. I settled on a newish looking pair that fit OK and gave them a quick wash in the Gulf of Thailand before taking them on a test drive. Problem solved. On the way to dinner that night at beautiful Had Riin, we passed a T-shirt shop and with a laugh, I noticed in the display front and center was one with the saying - "Who stole my sandals?" So I guess I've had a truly "Thailand" experience...
Then it was off to the After-Party, (you didn't think the party would only last a night, did you?) and eventually, I was very glad Shan booked the bungalows for two nights.
Almost a week later when I downloaded the pictures off my camera, my suspicions were proven as in the picture of Drunk Guy Passed Out On My Porch clearly show my flip-flops under the table right next to him. Now if I could just figure a way to track him down... Anyone recognize him?

1000th Dive In Koh Tao, Thailand

2007-08-21T06:06:00.000-04:00

Koh Tao is a tiny island, placed like a jewel in the beautiful Gulf of Thailand. Named after the green turtles that nested here, I knew this was the place for me the moment we docked. The built up areas of Mae Haad and Sairee Beach are on the west side of the island, and it's a hell of a trek over to the east side and Tanote Bay, (check my Flickr pics for a view of the so-called road,) where I stayed and dove at Blacktip Diving.
Shameless plug, but they are fantastic: www.blacktipdiving.com
Shalini is part-owner and a friend of a friend, but she immediately took me under her wing, introducing me to her friends, dragging me to all kinds of parties, (kicking and screaming, but more about that later,) and even putting me to work leading dives! Overwhelmed by her hospitality and the non-stop fun with her UK friends Angie-Pangie & Rob, I wound up staying 4 days longer than I planned with absolutely no regrets except that I had to leave at all.
The diving was really good, despite lots of rain in the week before I arrived. Vis was mostly about 50', and the coral looked nice and healthy and there was lots of good life to see. The coolest sites were Chumphon Pinnacles and Sail Rock. On my first dive, I got buddied up with Theresa, a Berliner working in Bangkok and down for her 6th (I think,) visit. Now, most dive operators, when a solo Instructor or other very experienced diver shows up, will pair that poor unfortunate with some newbie or complete underwater fool. But Blacktip did me right as T is a great diver and a fantastic buddy - we shared the same pace, interests, air consumption, and had that instant ESP connection you sometimes luck out and have with another diver. Above water was really great, too as she had all kinds of great insights into Bangkok and Thai life. Even better, the groups they gave me to lead were all advanced - no newbies!! Heaven.
Now not every dive went perfectly, I had a girl panic and try to shoot up from 80' and needed some soothing words and a tow back to the boat. By the time I got back down, the group was long out of sight, so I just hung out by myself next to the mooring with a school of batfishes and eased into their group. By the time the other divers returned, I was in the family. I also spent time getting a manicure at the local cleaning station where fishes go to have the tiny cleaner wrasses pick dead scales and parasites off of them. One wrasse kept trying to get into my ear, making me jump every time it nipped me.
On one dive, we wandered into the territory of the feared Titan Triggerfish. Well, now it's feared, but when we were told about them in the briefing, I thought about the Trigger we have in the Baltimore Aquarium, which mildly defends a 5' area when nesting, and wasn't exactly worried. What a mistake! Titans are ferocious and all of a sudden this BIG fish with BIG teeth is all over me! It seemed poised to take a large, bloody piece out of me so I kept swivelling to keep my fins in between us, and accidently kicked it in the side of the face when it was trying to get at me. That just made things worse. Plus, the radius they claim is so big, I couldn't figure out which way I needed to flee and we went round and round for a good long time. I finally got clear and turned to see Theresa being accosted by TWO! She looked a little freaked with huge clouds of exhaled bubbles swirling upwards and was ascending a bit too fast without realizing it, so I went over and (Bravely? Stupidly? You decide...) waved my bright yellow fins at them to lure them away from her and got into it with them again. Finally got clear and mentally resolved to never, ever go near one again, whew.
Did my 1000th dive as a shore dive with Theresa and her Swiss friend Catherine and it turned into a looooong 1:52 dive, trending up from 58'. Saw tons of reef life, two turtles, a Titan Trigger I kept way away from, (fool me once, umm, don't get bit again?) and just had a long, leisurely beautiful time - a nicely memorable milestone dive!
My last day of diving was a pair of dives at Chumphon Point, one of the premier sites in Koh Tao, known for its sharks. Well the first dive was one of my worst ever - weird vertical thermoclines, horrible vis, changing currents and about a million and a half stinging jellyfish. Picked the perfect dive to skip the wetsuit! Dodged them as long as I could, but they were so thick, I got trapped and stung bunches of times, but getting it across the lips was the worst. (I completely felt like that scene in Finding Nemo - "Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming...!") Cut the dive at 40 minutes and the group fled to the boat for vinegar baths. At the end of the surface interval, Shan stuck her head in the water, (bravely, I might add,) and we found the currents had blown all the jellies away so we went back in again. Honestly, I had half a mind to skip it, but my fear of missing something good drove me into the water, and Thank God I went - it was one of my best dives ever! It's amazing what a difference an hour can make - water warmer and clearer, currents quieter and no more jellies! Absolutely huge schools of jacks, barracuda, fusiliers and other smaller baitfish were everywhere - my buddy's dive plan: "Let's hang out with the bait!" sure paid off when we saw Blacktips and some really big Bull Sharks. They cruised through every 5 minutes or so along with some really large tuna and I was in Heaven. We were so reluctant to leave, we wound up going into a couple minutes worth of deco just enjoying the view. What a great last dive in Koh Tao.

Above water, Koh Tao is absolutely beautiful, wild and rugged, but with a pretty developed area called Sairee Beach, with lots of cool restaurants and some awesome bars. In Thailand, they serve drinks in buckets and even have a concentrated form of Red Bull, so you know I had some long nights.

Speaking of partying, we took a couple of days and headed over to Koh Phangan for a Black Moon Party... But that's a whole 'nother story so I'll save it for later.

I grudgingly left Koh Tao this morning and am now in Koh Samui, a larger and way more built up island about two hours south. It's not really my kind of place - think Jersy Shore with more speedos and languages, but with way better food. Tomorrow, I'm taking a trip to Ang Thong National Marine Park for some snorkelling, (!) sea kayaking, and hiking. After that, I'm outta here kind of quick and off to the west side of the Thai peninsula, visiting Phuket, Krabi and Koh Phi Phi.

Stay Wet,
Ciao,
Climenze

Deep Travel Thoughts

2007-08-19T07:35:00.000-04:00

I never read the dedications at the front of books, what do I care if the author's sister's cousin's gardener's dentist contributed anything? But on the next page was this astounding quote:

It seemed to me that by a long journey to some far distant country I might renew myself... I journeyed to the Far East. I went looking for adventure and romance, and so I found them... but I found also something I had never expected. I found a new self.
-W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

I love it when the world sends you a little sign.
It's about the journey, my friends...

One Night In Bangkok...

2007-08-15T00:45:00.000-04:00

...makes a hard man humble, as they say, and this city is definitely humbling. It's huge - about 12 million people, loud, and the traffic makes DC look like South Dakota.

I got here early in the morning Thursday and figured out the Public Bus system and got into town. Traffic is scary - the best way to get around is on the back of a motobike as it weaves between the lanes of stuck cars and buses. Pedestrians be wary - they even hop onto the sidewalk sometimes and traffic signals are only considered "suggestions," it's hilarious to watch the group psychology at work as first one, then two, then a flood of scooters decide a red-light is too long and just gun it across! It works, but it's quite exciting. My hostel is fine, not 5-star, but then again it's $8 a night with full American Breakfast! Walked all over town all day, and realized just how big it is! Finally gave in and took their elevated Metro home, it's better than DC Metro - no surprise there.

I had found a website which recommends places and routes for runners in cities all over the world and went for a run in Lumphini Park, it's pretty with some lakes and lots of runners. I talked to an expat running alongside and it's the only place in town that won't destroy your lungs. When I went back in the afternoon and took some pictures, there was a uniformed class of girls singing their lessons and I sat and listened for awhile. When the class broke up to head back to school, I got some fun posed shots. Around dinner time I met a girl staying at the hostel named Sofia (from Woodbridge, VA, of course. That's my second small world story - I met a girl on Magnetic Island from Herndon!) and we went to dinner then grabbed some others and went to the infamous Khao San Road for a night out. It's a really big scene, with mostly backpackers packing into hostels and lots of bars and nightlife.

The next day I played tourist with Javier, (from Mexico and Texas,) taking a city bus across town to see the Grand Palace, Wat Pho, and Wat Phra Kaeo. Then I took a longtailboat up the Chao Phrya River the throughout the canals of the Thonburi neighborhood. These boats are long skinny things with car engines balanced and mounted on a long pole that angles down to the water about ten feet behind the boat. On the way home, we took some time to shop around the Siam Square shopping warren, and that night we grabbed Sofia and it was back to Khao San again. On the way home very late at night, we also took a spin through the Soi Cowboy redlight district. And to all who warned me about the "girlie boy" hookers, so far they've been pretty obvious and easy to avoid. All in all, it was a very busy day!

Some Thailand observations and sweeping and probably inaccurate generalizations...
Thais are some of the happiest, smiliest people I've seen - willing to stop and help, patient with language difficulties and very understanding. Case in point - Bourne Ultimatum - I bought a ticket and soon found that the despite being advertised as being in English that it wasn't, whoops! No worries, got a refund and a written list of other theatres and times I could find the version I needed. Can you imagine that kind of help from the sullen teen at the local mega-plex?
Thais are also proud of their culture, and are so very willing to share it with you. I've been exploring the food, (I'm in heaven here,) gotten a massage and taken in some traditional street performers.
Sometimes they are too helpful - constantly bugging you to get a taxi, steering you into shops and offering all kinds of tours and, ummm, services. When I was walking out of the Grand Palace on my way to Wat Pho and the famous reclining Buddha, I was advised that it was closed for "Buddha Day" and that I should go see the Lucky Buddha instead. It sounded fishy so I checked out Wat Pho anyway and it was open as normal. So much for my planned "Buddha Day" celebrations...
My favorite thing is all the street food vendors and sidewalk portable restaurants, (imagine if the local hot dog cart carried around a bunch of plastic outdoor tables and chairs...) It's all ridiculously cheap and very good, though they are serious about the spice here as I've painfully learned. I've been trying all kinds of weird things and found lots of great new tastes.
My favorite funny thing is that instead of chemical cakes in urinals, they just toss in a handful of lime slices. Cheap, effective, and good for the enviroment!

Saturday I ran errands, got a traditional Thai massage, and got set to go south to the islands for some much anticipated scuba diving!!! Took an overnight bus, then a ferry and arrived bright and early in the morning. I'll post about Koh Tao and Koh Phangan later, now I'm off to catch a dive boat!

Stay Wet,
C

SS Yongala Diving

2007-08-09T07:53:00.000-04:00

In 1911, the SS Yongala was due to port in Townsville, but disappeared in a cyclone and never arrived. When the body of a racehorse she was transporting washed up on a beach days later, it was realized the worst had happened and she was lost. Nobody knew where she was until the wreck site was discovered in 1947. The 100m ship lies listing on her starboard side in 30m of water, she's in one piece with her masts lying over in the sand.

They say you can still spot some coral-encrusted bones in the hold, but I couldn't tell. It's a three hour cruise out to the site, but completely worth it! We did two dives, about 50 minutes each. The wreck is literally teeming with fish of all shapes and sizes and at least three turtles, sea-snakes, eels, and a quartet of giant potato cod (local name for a goliath grouper, I figure.) Jenn thought she saw a shark when we hopped in but couldn't tell the species... The other divers were a great bunch - some marine bio types and lots of trekkers so I got some great advice for my future wanderings. It also helped keep my mind off the 71F water temp - brrrrrrr in my 3mm! Jenn was toasty in her 5mm PLUS hooded vest and I just know I'm gonna be hearing some "Remember when Clement called the dive because the poor baby was chilly?" comments in my future.

The dive crew from Adrenalin Dive was very sharp and they had meals and snacks galore for the long ride home. When you consider they picked us up from home at 6:30 AM and dropped us back off around 7PM, it's a looong day for those guys...

Off to Bangkok next, I'll keep you posted!

Ciao and stay wet,
C

Hello from Oz!

2007-08-05T23:26:00.000-04:00

I don't know why the nickname for Australia is Oz, a tornado from Kansas would be a much easier and quicker way to get here. I left Newark, NJ on Monday and landed in the morning of Wednesday, August 1st. Tuesday, July 31st never existed for me and never will. That day is gone forever.

So I was thinking, if two days passed in my frame of reference and three days passed for the rest of the world, I am now a day younger than when I left. This has happened to me before, (and all travelers, too,) when I've crossed the International dateline, but I've always gained the day back upon the flight home. But this time, I'm never heading east, my plans are to continue west country by country until I get home next year, so I'll never regain that day! The world has left me behind by a day. Since my birthday is supposed to arrive 365 days after the last one, from a personal biological perspective, my birthday is now March 28th!! The rest of the world will be celebrating the 27th, but I will know the awful truth - that I've now come unglued from my Birthday. I expect some therapy will help me with this... The good news is that I have now discovered a fool-proof, (but expensive,) way to stop the aging process - get your airline mileage points programs ready!

Australia is a wonderful country - scenic, friendly, and so much to do, and Jenn has made me so welcome. I cannot thank her enough. She has housed me, put up with me falling asleep at odd moments as my body adjusts its clock, and taken time out from a really hectic post-grad study schedule to play tour-guide and dive-buddy with me. We've trekked into some beautiful wilderness, dove one of the best wrecks in the world, and ferried out to a scenic tropical getaway isle for a day of secluded beaches, hikes and VB's at sunset.

And I'll write more about them later when I've got the pictures out of my camera. For now, I thought I'd entertain you with some Aussie observations and stories, OK?

First, something near and dear to my heart - beer.
They've got it good here - lots of variety - Victoria Bitter, XXXX Gold (my fave)XXXX Bitter, Toohey's, Carlton, Cooper's, (and I'm sure I'm leaving some out,) and they all have been really good. And Foster's which is the only Aussie beer I don't like, is nowhere to be found. I guess they ship the crap to the Americans with a slick ad campaign. No hard feelings, there's a bunch of KFCs and McDonald's here so it's about even.

I expect that when Starbuck's arrives Down Under, the Australians will have to retaliate in some way, and I'm afraid I know what that will be... The men here sure like shorts. Short shorts. Reno 911! shorts. Almost hotpants shorts. And they wear them with dark socks, too. And it's not just an old man thing, it's everyone. Imagine this coming to America and catching on !

On Thursday, Jenn and I rented a car to explore some of the "Bush" nearby. (It's not a lame president here, it's any wild areas that are not quite the Outback, which is REALLY out there.) As Oz is a former UK penal colony, they drive on the left and the steering wheel is on the right side of the car, which led to some entertainment. Oh, don't worry, the driving went fine (traffic circles are hair-raising, though,) the pedals and dashboard are all the same, but there are some definite differences. The stick shift is in the middle, so you use your left to (try to) find gears. I got used to that easily, probably thanks to my Dad who used to let me shift from the passenger seat as a kid. The rearview mirror is now on the windshield to your left (weird feeling,) and the most aggravating difference of all was that they flip the turn signal arm and windshield wiper controls, too. So anyone driving around us was under the clear impression that I was pursued by micro rainshowers every time I tried to make a turn. This never got better.

Another driving related peculiarity was that the taxis here have a light bar across the top as if they were the police. Once again, drivers around me were probably wondering what I was doing hitting the brakes at (to them,) random moments.

Finally, the scariest driving moment of all occurred late in the afternoon as we were playing rally car down a dirt track after a beautiful hike to Jourama Falls on our way to a town called Ingham to find an Italian restaurant for dinner (or any restaurant... We failed by the way. Jenn's guidebook was wayyyy wrong.) Our little (really little!) Hyundai was doing 100, (don't panic - it's metric!) power sliding around corners and drifting through the gentle turns and leaving a hugely satisfying dust cloud behind us... Suddenly, from the corner of my eye, I catch a glimpse of something approaching from the left and bounding into the road!!! Literally bounding because it's a kangaroo! (Which are not small animals!) In a second Jenn is making strange noises and I'm standing on the brakes as much as I dare as this terrified looking 'Roo completely cuts us off and continues up the track right in front of us! Luckily, I've slowed us enough and it's fast enough that we miss by about five feet and the kangaroo hangs a right and disappears into the sugarcane. Back in the Hyundai, there is some heavy breathing and startled, nervous, adrenalin-fueled laughter as we contemplate what the rental car would have looked like with a marsupial hood ornament. Then Jenn decides to educate me, "Yeah, you've gotta watch out around dusk - that's when they come out!" Thanks for the timely advice, Jenn.

I'll do a whole entry about the scuba diving tomorrow if I get the pictures downloaded, but I wanted to mention that we took a ferry over to Magnetic Island yesterday. Captain James Cook named it on one of his voyages when it affected his compass, maybe he was into the grog because noone since has had a problem, but the name stuck. What a beautiful place! Two thirds National Park with a couple of small villages and resorts sprinkled around, I was strongly reminded of St John's in the US Virgin Islands. We hiked to some picturesque and romantic deserted beaches, took a guided nature hike and saw Koalas, pythons, crocs and all manner of exciting wildlife. I even got to eat an ant! (Citrusy and subtle with a touch of earthiness, must have been a good year...) Then we settled into a beachside cafe and toasted the beautiful sunset before catching the ferry back to Townsville.

That's all for now,
Ciao and take care,
C

Leavin' on a jetplane... and a story from NYC!

2007-07-30T11:14:00.000-04:00

Well, today is the big day - heading to the airport in a couple of hours with loooong flights ahead of me on the way to Sydney & Townsville, Australia, in the state of Queensland.

JP popped up at my parents in NJ this weekend and dragged me up to New York to go out and visit some old friends. She has an awesome apartment right on Central Park West at 107th St., but is giving it up to go work in LA next month. Something about working at the LA Philharmonic, sheesh. Very Cosmo!

So anyway, as many of you know, I read and was amazed and deeply touched by the book "Eat, Pray, Love," by Elizabeth Gilbert. Bought several copies and gave them away, read it twice, and it's now in my top three books all time.

So we're all chatting while walking to the bars and it turns out, JP's friend KNOWS the author!!! Calls her Liz!!! So she whips out her cell phone and makes the call to get her to come out and meet us. I'm thinking that after years of hating famous person kiss-ups, I'm about to turn into one... But she gets the voicemail and has to leave a message. And we never hear back. Oh well. Probably better that way, I'm sure "Liz" would have been weirded out by the parallels in our stories - divorce, next relationship gone wrong, interest in yoga, and the fact that two of the three countries she visited (Italy & Indonesia,) are on my trek. I would never be able to convince her that this was all in place before I read her book, and she would think I'm some stalker.

Wound up having an excellent evening at Le Monde (across from the Seinfeld diner for you sitcom fans,) and some other bar or two I'm not very clear on. The ride home the next morning was a bit oogie.

Now two days of frantic prep and a long fight with the cell phone company later, I'm paying my last bills and about to hit the road.

Please stay in touch, I miss all of you and I cannot wait to hear from you.

Stay Wet, Happy & Safe -
Ciao,
Clement

Hiking Pics!

2007-07-18T22:43:00.000-04:00

Just a couple cool pics from last weeks Appalachian hike. It was about 5 hours long in a loop along the AT and Mau-Har trail, and yes, I sure got rained on!

Bonus - added one of my parents and I at Monticello right before the 4th.

Oh, the irony!

2007-07-18T22:07:00.000-04:00

Just a quick funny/ ironic story to tell from last Sunday.

Another beautiful summer Sunday morning in the quiet southern college town. Listless locals and summer students dawdled over their Bloodies and brunch, chatting aimlessly, people watching, and keeping an eye on the thermometer... My friend and I savored the Tex-Mex brunch at Mono Loco under their broad, fan-swept awning. Stoli Bloodies, so large fresh and cold, the condensation left Olympic Rings on the table as they disappeared sip by sip. Afterwards, a stroll down C-Ville's pedestrian-only Mall led to the local movies and we decided to watch SiCKO, a documentary about the problems with Health Care in this country. (Don't judge, I started watching MM's movies when he released Roger & Me, and like him or not - he makes some strong, if not very subtle, points!) I liked it, and it made me think but that's not the point of this blog so I'll go on.

My plans for the rest of the day included lounging by the pool reading and doing some relaxing laps in the coolish water. It's summer in VA, even the pools warm up!

Afterwards came the event I look forward to all week - pickup soccer at the local Middle School. Usually 20 or so show up, ages run from 22 - 45 (guessing) and while there is a god bit of talent and accents there, games are not too competitive. (At least it seems to me - I'm so competitive, it's hard to ramp down and I really feel like I'm coasting, I hope the others think so, too.) This week, only 11 show up so it's the 6 old guys, (of which, sadly, I'm one) playing 5 on 5 with a sub against the younger guys. You know the old adage, "Age & Treachery will always triumph over Youth & Exuberance?" Well, it was in full effect and we won 7-4. I got three goals and a swwweeeeet assist. Man, I love scoring goals - the decisive run, controlling or redirecting the ball, the magic moment when you realize the ball is not going to be stopped by all the defenders vainly striving for it. A quick fist pump as the net ripples and I turn to head back to mid-field for the restart. I like a quiet goal celebration - one that says "I'm not making a big deal because it's routine - I've done it before and I will do it again. I will score on you and you should expect it too." But inside I'm bounding and it's hard to keep that broad shit-eating grin off of my face!

So here is the ironic part - after seeing a movie in the morning about health care and how those who pay in don't always get what they hoped for, I get in a huge collision with (naturally) the biggest defender on the other team while we were both going for a loose ball. No foul, but I went flying. Literally. I must have spun around in the air horizontally twice before landing on my knees. The Pain!! My ankle is killing and the whole lower leg is numb - that popping I heard was either the bone, or tendons in my ankle snapping out of and into place.
"What a great time to have quit my job and be without health insurance!" I think, gritting my teeth. "I wonder if that bearded bastard Castro will help ME out?" Every time I have played in recent weeks, I've given a quick thought to my (lack of) Insurance status, but playing is so fun, I just take the risk. It could have been worse, for sure.
With my ankles, I expect it's just a bad sprain and it is. it happens all the time - I'll walk it off and play on the tenderness, but tomorrow it will stiffen and swell obscenely and colorfully, and the next week or two will suck.

Here's is where i am today - Running and hiking and yoga plans are now out the window. After two days of ice and elevation, I'm walking on it and the swelling is going down, but thank God I didn't need a doctor! Went to the pool today, and laps are fine, whew! I'll be fine.
I'm glad that while my ankles sprain easily, they also heal quickly - it would be an inauspicious beginning to leave on this great world-crossing adventure on crutches.

So it goes...
Clement

I set a new diving record - 13,500 feet!!

2007-07-13T23:58:00.000-04:00

As Ron Carmichael, my Cave-Diving Instructor once said, "as long as your descents equal your ascents, you're doing fine." Well, today I wrecked his theory. My airplane takeoffs now outnumber my landings - I took a shortcut down!
This morning, I drove to SkyDive Orange, got a little bit of training and did a tandem jump!! Wow, what a rush!! I was buckled to Nick, my Instructor, when we went out the door at 13,500' and freefell (freefalled?) for almost a minute down to about 6000' where I got to open the chute. Then Nick taught me how to maneuver and we did some dizzying spins and swings before coming in for a nice soft butt landing... High Fives and wobbly knees all around as the other 4 students completed their dives, too. "Wow!" is all I can say. Freefall is amazing, but it goes so fast! It seemed like about 10 seconds and I'm still trying to remember all of it as the adrenalin wears off. My comment to Nick was, "When can I go again?"

Do we still party? Well, Dewey? Hell Yeah!!

2007-07-11T22:08:00.000-04:00

What an interesting weekend.
Went up to DC to help out my best friend JP with some stuff on Friday and wound up doing some neat things that I haven't in a long time. Went out in Bethesda on Friday and bounced to a couple of bars - met some new fun people and caught the US Under-20 soccer team beating Brasil!! Saturday morning saw me hopping into a pool to test a new dive gear setup before my big tripola. Pretty light and it works well,, just the bulkiness. Hard to plan for the backpack. Don't know what I'm gonna do...

Then JP drags me to Dover to hang out with his Mom and his Brother's family. Now I love JP's Mom (I even call her Mom,) to her I'm one of her boys and she is the absolute nicest! But they were having a crab feast and that always makes me feel bad. I like crabs, it's just I never learned how to get the meat out and every time I try, I get all cut up and go seriously hungry. So I usually just let people think I don't like them and eat something else while sneaking the occasional claw - even I can open those! But, in typical Filipino Mom style, she has to cook all sorts of special stuff to take care of me - so she makes about three different meat options for starters and it gets worse from there. I feel so bad about her effort I wind up trying to eat everything!
JP warned me his two nieces - Julianna & Sofia - don't like strangers, and I just smiled but didn't say anything (how dumb would I look saying "all kids love me," and then they don't?) Of course, Uncle Clement became the human jungle gym. Plus, instead of playing with matchbox cars and legos like with CJ, I was in Barbie-land. How fun! Seriously though, they are two wonderful and beautiful little girls.

That night, we're sitting around and JP decides we are going to Dewey Beach to catch some bands and have some fun. I used to love Dewey, had great times there, got drunk, toasted, wasted, and seriously laid there all through college. But if you haven't noticed that was quite a while ago. "Don't worry," JP says, "there's lots of people older than us acting even stupider..." Soon after we're rolling into the B&C after finding parking (!!! - good karma!) and Love Seed Mama Jump is playing! This is a band that got popular right as we were graduating and they were back on kind of a reunion thing. Good times. We poked around the Starboard, too and had just missed the Running of the Bull. Had a f**ing great time all-around - good music, drinks, people - the works. Just like old times except now I'm 39. Swell.
Roll back to his Mom's place after 4AM, I think, and crashed out. Up early to get JP to work and I hung at the pool with his roommates and did some laps.

Monday was my last vaccination before my trip, Yeah!! Those Japanese Encephalitis germs don't stand a chance! And then I drove back to the Lake just in time for my Dad's interesting Mahi-Mahi with green peppers and blueberries. Seriously. I love jazz cooking, I think I must get my knack from him, but even I would never have tried that one. It was fine btw.

Today I went for a loooooong strenuous hike on the Appalachian Trail with about 40 lbs. in my pack. Did some pretty good ups and downs for 5 hours, got rained on hard for 2 and I'm really whipped now. Saw several families of deer crossing the trail, some woodchucks, and got the shit scared out of me by an old tree rubbing or creaking in the wind - hey, it sounded kind of like Chewbacca who looks sort of like a bear... Anyway, off to bed soon.

Last thought - I'm doing something BIG on Friday, so stay tuned...

So it goes,
C

July 4th Competitions - No medals, just great feelings.

2007-07-09T00:22:00.000-04:00

Greetings Friends & Fam,
For me, one of the best things about being unemployed is the time I've discovered to get back into some things in life that have dropped by the wayside as I got so busy with home, career, and marriage. Working out is probably the biggest of these, but getting a chance to read alot is a close 2nd. Minus a couple of days to nurse injuries, I've been active in some way almost every single day since I left Splash. Mainly running and swimming, but I've managed to do a bunch of canoeing, play some pick-up soccer (my fave, but opportunities are rare,) mountain biking, hiking, and a bit of yoga. I'm really proud of my progress...

Well on July 4th, I had the opportunity to participate in two physical events, luckily enough, two of the very things I'd been doing! I wondered how I'd do - I know I'm up to running an hour and a half at a time, and swimming a mile in the pool, but that's just against myself. So I signed up for an AM 5K road race and an afternoon mass swim across the lake (about 650 yards as near as I can figure,) with the added bonus that my Dad was giving the swim a shot too!

I had no idea how many people would show up at 6:30AM on a Holiday - especially since I rarely see anyone running when I'm out and about - and was amazed when over 200 runners showed up. And some sure looked fast. Luckily I'd run most of the course as a smaller part of my runs so I knew what the hills were gonna be like, and no surprise, the race was gonna end on a decent uphill sprint. I knew I was never going to win anything, I would be happy just to run a decent time and not be last. Started gently and just figured on keeping a steady pace and not letting anyone older than 70 pass me. Found out on the back half I had a lot more wind than I thought and reeled in a bunch of runners, especially on that final hill. Well, I managed a 27:02 (and started about 20 seconds behind the line so I know it's better,) not anything great, but I am really pleased with the results. Surprised, too.

For the afternoon swim, Dad and I were chauffered around the lake and dropped off at the starting beach. Did the paperwork and got the numbers inked on our backs and arms (above the turtle if you were wondering, it was funny watching the lady try to decide where to put it,) and joined the other 300+ at the water's edge. Overheard and met a woman who had forgotten a rubberband for her hair and loaned her the bungee off my wrist (once a Dive Instructor...,) to help. They divided us into two groups, one competitive and the other recreational which would follow the faster swimmers a minute later. I chose to swim with Dad in the non-competitive group (haven't had a swim race since college, and never in a lake - can't see and no flip-turns!) As soon as the "fast" group churned away heading for the far shore, I knew I should have gone with them - I might be a bit overly modest and under-confident how I would stack up, but it was obvious that many of the 1st group were a bit optimistic, too. Our group was held back more than three minutes and then we were off! I didn't want to be dodging other bodies in the murky water (when oh when am I going to be done with low-vis freshwater lakes??) so I started strong to get in front of the thrashers. Picked out a colorful umbrella on the far destination beach and grabbed a quick look every 5 breaths or so to navigate. It was really weird swimming on and on and on without a wall to turn and push off from. Just the occasional safety boat and kayaker cheering "Go! Go!" Suddenly, a pair of feet popped put of the gloom in front of me and I started almost running people over - it was those optimistic stragglers from the 1st group! As I felt a great burst of confidence I turned on the burners a bit, dodging bodies and then my fingers were scraping sand and I rose to my feet and jogged up the beach. What a great feeling to look back at a long stretch of open water you have just conquered and also realize I'd also overtaken at least half of the 1st group, too! Met my Mom, sister, nephew, and Aunt & Uncle on the beach and then cheered Dad in. Then I felt a tap on my arm and it was the girl returning my bungee - I figured with that many swimmers, it was just gone when I loaned it out.

That night the family had a cookout, a local friend joined us and we played some soccer with CJ. I finally capped it off sitting in the grass with CJ watching a really good firework display.

"What a great day," I thought as I dragged my tired & sore body off to bed.

Thanks for reading...
C

The Itinerary!!!! (Cue dramatic kettle drums...)

2007-07-06T02:53:00.000-04:00

You know, it's just a bunch of copying to get this in, but even now, I'm resisting the urge to write about other stuff - 4th of July at the lake, sightseeing Monticello, the results of my 5K race and Cross-Lake swim. But, no - I've been getting bugged to share this so all that other fun stuff will just have to wait until the next time...

July 30th
Newark to San Fran, then to Sydney on United. Arrive the 1st!!

August 1st
Sydney to Townsville on Virgin Blue

Visiting Jenn at James Cook University. Diving Great Barrier Reef and renting a car to go trekking Aussie wilderness in Queensland.

August 8th
Townsville to Brisbane on Virgin Blue

August 9th
Brisbane to Bangkok on Thai Airways Intl

2 months of diving and touring Thailand, I also plan to hit Cambodia, 'Nam, Malaysia & Indonesia. Not sure if I have the time... 2 months isn't enough!!??!! Definite Chiang Mai for cooking class and massage class (sign up now for demos when I return...) Definite Phuket, Ko Tao, Ko Samui & Ko Phi-Phi. Definite Angkor Wat and Killing Fields. Def Ho Chi Minh City, Hue and Delta. Def Singapore, and surf lessons in Bali. Def dive somewhere in Indonesia...

October 7th
Bangkok to Qatar on Qatar Airways (should be a fun flight.)

October 8th
Qatar to Seychelles on Qatar Airways

10 weeks volunteer project counting turtles, tagging whale sharks and doing coral reef surveys.
You wouldn't believe the amount of homework I need to do to prepare!!
Here's an overview of the expedition:
http://www.gvi.co.uk/pages/expeditionDetail.asp?expedition=57
I've pretty much decided against extending here and trying to get a job like I'd talked about. They make it hard - no guarantee ahead of time so planning was hard and if you are accepted, plus there is a three week gap I'd have to fill before it starts - and I've had to make plans for after the project ends. Maybe I can come back months later...

December 20th
Seychelles to Mauritius to Madagascar on Air Mauritius (hmmm!)

Plan to dive Nose Be and see some rainforests.

December 26th
Madagascar to Kenya to Tanzania on Air Madagascar (parachutes thoughtfully provided...)

Dive Zanzibar, climb Kilimanjaro and make way overland to Nairobi visiting Olduvai Gorge and safari parks along the way. Ship Dive gear home (and pray) and buy/rent some warm stuff for Mountain Climb and next stop...

January 18th (CJ's Birthday!)
Kenya to Rome on British Air (end of roughing it for six months!)

Gonna get some warm (and fashionable!) clothes and visit Rome and Naples and Pompeii - staying south this time.

January 25th
Rome to London to JFK on BA again.
Land late at night and stay with friends in NY - any volunteers? Email me!!

January 26th
Get home to parents somehow and start to figure out what to do with the rest of my life - any suggestions?

If you have any thoughts on the trip or suggestions what I should see or do that I haven't put in here, please let me know.
Dates and destinations are set - I've got a big envelope full of airline tix - but I welcome any input!

Ciao and Stay Wet,
C

Guilt

2007-07-02T22:43:00.000-04:00

Ok, Ok, I know I promised to get my big trip itinerary up soon, and really, I meant to... I was going to do it tonight, but all this other stuff just flowed out of me!
How about a pic of Leeanna, Ripple, Gary and myself rafting in Costa Rica just about a year ago, will that make it better? Here ya go.

Family Time

2007-07-02T22:06:00.000-04:00

This week has been low key - spent part at my sister's in Richmond playing uncle. Got to watch my 5 year old nephew CJ at soccer camp (so so, SO proud, my heart was literally bursting watching him dribble down the field - mostly headed in the right direction too!) Lots of pool time and did some shopping at Blue Ridge Mtn Sports where I got some great info for Shenandoah hikes, I cannot wait to try out the suggested trails. Looks like maybe next week before I get to go as I've had lots of company here in C'Ville.
I also have something really big that I'm excited about in the works, might be the coolest thing so far this summer if the timing works out - stay tuned.
JP came down for the weekend and we canoed, drank too much, and had a very memorable night in town with Jason, a guy who just moved to town three weeks ago and lives about 3 miles from the lake. Quote of the evening, "Hey girls, listen up..." those of you who know JP must press him for the details!
Hours after JP left, my parents and my Aunt & Uncle from Colorado showed up for the 4th of July week. Went back to Richmond today for a visit/cage match with CJ (where do they get their energy and how can we harness it?) and we plan on sightseeing Monticello & Ashlawn tomorrow. Amazingly, I've never been before! My parents were strong believers in US History as I was growing up so most of our vacations included the local colonial villages and the like. From the Independence Trail in Boston to the Liberty Bell, Fort Ticonderoga, Valley Forge, DC & the Smithsonians, Mt. Vernon, Williamsburg, and Mystic Seaport, I thought I'd seen every hot, bored teenager in breeches and a ratty tri-cornered hat on the East Coast being forced to dip candles or run a spinning wheel for a minimum wage summer job. But how could I have missed the site of Tom Jefferson's cross-cultural liaisons with Sally Hemming at his fabulous plantation of Monticello???? Tomorrow that will be rectified.
Wednesday is the lake's July 4th celebrations!! There is a 6 block long parade (3 blocks each way!! More sizzling details after I witness the extravaganza...) the across the lake swim, and we are also cooking out at the house with my sister's fam that night. I'll be sure to let you know how the swim goes.
Read "London Fields" by Martin Amis, Jacques Cousteau's book on inventing scuba diving named "The Silent World," and laughed my ass off reading Maartin Troost's "Sex Lives Of Cannibals." The last book is a hilarious look at a young DC man, kind of drifting in life, who whimsically wanders out to the South Seas to live for a couple of years; hmmmmm. It's kind of a "Don't Stop The Carnival" for the present day. He has a sequel titled "Getting Stoned With Savages" which explores his further island adventures, I'm hitting Amazon next...
Been running hard and swimming, (runs are up to 7-8 miles now,) and getting ready for my races. Funny thing happened yesterday as I was struggling up the hill with about 5 minutes to go on an hour long run, a passing SUV full of teenaged girls catcalled and sexually harassed me! "Hey, sexyyyyy!!" strange guttural noises, and comments about my butt!! I'm shocked, and I feel so violated and ashamed. If only I'd gotten a license plate, I'd tell them what I think of their degrading antics,... and ask for more.
That's all for now,
Ciao,
C

Summer Update

2007-06-27T01:01:00.000-04:00

Wow, I cannot believe two weeks have gone by - time sure flies when you are doing not much... Actually, I've been a lot busier than that. Still in VA, right now I'm holed up at my sister's house for a couple of days, helping out with the nephews and enjoying TV and internet for a change. I am loving staying at my parent's house at the lake but the no TV or internet thing is a big switch from Reston where I had high-speed wifi, every cable channel and a DVR... I got out of the TV habit (no Entourage!) in a week but the internet addiction is much tougher! I heard on NPR a year or two ago about a study that paid people to give up all internet for a period of time (maybe 2 months or so,) that ran into problems because almost all the subjects cheated or tried to pay their way out of it. At the time I laughed, but now, not so much. I've been trying to pirate neighborhood signals to check email! I have to drive in to a bar in Charlottesville to watch soccer games and have met some soccer junkies there. Cheered on the USA in a HUGE victory over the dastardly Mexicans... We're planning on meeting on Thursday for the US vs. Argentina game, go USA!!
So what have I been doing you ask? I've been up to DC a couple of times to root for my beloved DC United, get shots, and visit friends. A couple of parties there and just last week I wangled my way into a rec-league soccer game. They were short a goalie and I modestly offered my services to avoid the forfeit (neglected to mention to my teammates that I haven't played that positiion since I got addicted to scoring goals at age 8.) A bunch of borrowed gear later, I was all set and even managed to keep the ball out of the net. After half-time I offered, "If anyone's tired, we can trade shirts and I'll go play the field?" And before I knew it, I was laughing my way up and down the field, having a blast!!!! Only downside was the lavender jersey, (who chose this??) We held on to tie a much more talented team and I came close to a goal or two, but Oh The Feeling! I forgot how much I missed it - looking back and trying to put it into words I realize I sound like Frank DeFord getting a boner over baseball so I'll spare you. Let's just say I will be finding a team wherever I settle.
My best friend came down to the lake last weekend and we had a great time, cooked out and cruised around - even went into C'Ville for the nightlife.
When in Richmond I've been hitting the pool every day with my nephew, playing with him and doing laps during the Adult Swims. I think the playing may be more of a workout - diving after toys, racing around, and throwing him all over might not be Gold's Gym approved, but whew! It's hilarious but every day, some woman looks at me, looks at CJ, looks back at me and says "You're Melissa's brother the Dive Instructor!" all these Moms have heard about me from CJ or school or something. I think they realize I'm not CJ's Dad, note the turtle tattoo and connect the dots. Then the best part is they all say "I'm ____'s Mom, " while I've got 6 kids in the pool draped over me and I have no clue the names of any of the kids. Interesting how when you have children your name changes.
Other than that, I've been reading, running, biking, canoeing and just started hiking. I've bought a big backpack for my big backpacking trip, (go figure,) and am taking advantage of the nearness of the Shenandoah and the parks around. Nothing overnight, just some strenuous day hikes with about 40 lbs. in the ruck. Trying to get ready for Kilimanjaro, I guess, but not sure if it will help since that will be in January and I've got lots of flat islands and diving between now and then.
Only other athletic plan of note is a 5K race coming up and a swimming race across the lake set for July 4th, I'll let you know how it goes. My sis asked me the other day if I was going to get into triathlons (smart ?, I've been running hard for a couple of months, swimming now that pools are open and just got a bike,) and I actually wondered if I might. But then I imagine triathlete bodies - lean, sinewy runner types and I'm more the broad shouldered swimmer type - and laugh at the picture.
I just realized how much I've gone on without writing the biggest news - I've got my whole itinerary for The World Tour '07! I will put it up in another post, you'll have to check back and tune in but here's a hint (other than the Kilimanjaro thingie,) I may have to rename the blog "Clement's World Tour '07-'08!"
Hope you enjoyed the pics of the pool and hiking...
Ciao and stay wet!
C

Hiking and Pool Pics

2007-06-27T00:55:00.000-04:00

Karrie sent me a great Antarctica Pic!

2007-06-14T22:10:00.000-04:00

I was in Antarctica on a dive trip back in March and on one day, the sun came blazing out and on the side of the ship sheltered from the wind, it was beautiful! Had to be 60 degrees in the sun, but if I walked around the corner back into the wind --- look out!! Frostbitten knees would not be pretty. The crew thought I was crazy anyway, but it was soooo nice out there...

Done the Wine Trail!

2007-06-14T21:44:00.002-04:00

After almost three continuous weeks of driving and wining, and months of trips, the great wine expedition has come to a close. I should probably sit down and total up the miles I've driven and wines I've tried, but there's just too many and I think my brain cells need to time to recover anyway. When my friend's book is published, I'll let you know.
I have realized a couple things:
Virginia is beautiful. From the Shenandoah Valley down the Blue Ridge, from quaint towns like Staunton, Abingdon and Middleburg, all the parks and forests and the thousands of miles of winding back country roads that connect it all... after living in the NoVa DC suburbs for seven years, I've finally discovered the beauty surrounding me and wished it had been sooner. Oh, I knew it was out there - I took some great hiking trips and a wonderful romantic long weekend driving my open-top jeep down the Blue Ridge Pkwy to a B&B at the height of the autumn colors, but there was so much more that I never knew! I'll never regret all the travel I did farther afield, but there was great beauty and experiences in my backyard, too! These past two months I've said over and over that I want to come back and just drive and explore all these out of the way places from a convertible, just enjoying the ride and the view...
Virginians are some of the friendliest people anywhere. Everywhere we went, talking to fellow tasters, getting help or directions, or just trying to find a good place to eat or a safe place to go running in a tiny town - I encountered nothing but helpful friendly smiles and a genuine interest and willingness to share.
Here are my favorites, (please remember I like big, dry, vibrant reds and try to avoid the sweet and blush wines.)
In no particular order - Valhalla, Pearmund, Fabbioli Cellars, Villa Appalaccia, Linden, Horton, Abingdon, Gabrielle Rausse, Gray Ghost, Gadino, DelFosse, and Savoy-Lee. Some others were really pretty or friendly, but these had my favorite wines!
If you want to find them, check here:
http://www.virginiawines.org/
But don't worry if you like the sweet stuff - every winery had at least a couple of these to "satisfy the locals."
Right now, I'm back in Charlottesville and heading to DC tomorrow for a DC United game and a vaccination visit as I prepare to head to Asia.
More on that later...

the Voo

2007-06-06T01:10:00.000-04:00

I can even grab photos from iPhoto!! Isn't "His Royal Furness" regal?

Whoops, old post out of order.

2007-06-05T23:53:00.000-04:00

All right, here's my first rookie blogger mistake - I couldn't get this to post a couple of days ago (it's supposed to be my 2nd post,) and now it's out of order. Hmmm, learning experience I guess... Anyway it's from June 3rd and I've already updated the first one to today, grrrrrr, so take that into account if you get mixed up like I obviously am!

In Manassas - just did two days at Vintage Virginia, a huge wine festival with something like 60 wineries!! I even ran into my old head brewer from Cap City days, Bill Madden, who is brewing out in Leesburg. Random meetup! Tasted most of the 17 wineries we hadn't hit before and hung out with Anne & Marianne who are roommates and work around here somewhere. Hot and sunny so much I thought I'd die Sat and then rainy and cool on Sunday, so there was a big difference in the crowds each day. Lots of bunches of friends having a party and couples sharing a cool experience - I'd definitely recommend this activity for either group, just make sure you have a driver, there are cops everywhere!!!
My fave? = Fabbioli Cellar's "Tre Sorelle" and Villa Appalachia's "Toscanella" Also tried a great Sangiovese, but cannot recall which winery right now. I'm definitely into the Italian Reds, big feel, dusty dry and exploding flavors. Yummy!
Other notes, did a 1 hour rain run this morning and saw "Mr. Brooks" starring Kevin Costner this evening - disturbing look into the mind of a serial killer, the people they encounter and their cult of personality.
Tomorrow, I'm going to try and get a vaccination for Japanes Encephalitis and then head to Lake Monticello for the night... after that it's up and out for a looooooooong drive to the far corner of SW VA as we finish up the winery visits for this book. I think there's like 139 in the state and I must have done half of them with my friend the author. We're down to the last 20 or so so it's home stretch time. They are all starting to run together in my mind and I don't know how she is keeping them straight - maybe I should have learned that lesson in school and taken some notes?

Cuisine in Abingdon

2007-06-05T23:00:00.000-04:00

So here I am in the far side of VA looking at some wineries and we ask the hotel desk clerk (who can't be more than 17, but that's another story,) for a restaurant recommendation, and he talks up this place called the Pepper Mill, "They have great Bourbon Pecan Pie!". We check it out and it looks like a BBQ joint - with the requisite visible dumpster and "Use side door" sign taped to the obvious door out front. I go into full DC snarky restaurant snob mode and try to talk my dining companion into looking for something better. But it's getting late, it's been a long drive and longer day and I don't feel like wandering all over town, so we stay.

And it's FANTASTIC!!!

Decent, reasonable (really reasonable!) wine list, and the food is phenomenal! Just like I would open - high class food in a funky casual atmosphere. Service knew what they were doing and the owners were great. I had a ginger lime salmon, she had a balsamic sauced ravioli (true,) and got to taste a roasted pork tenderloin from this great table of ladies next door. And was impressed by all - this was definitely the best meal I've had on the road.

I would link their website but when I checked it, it doesn't work - oh well, it is SW VA after all... But if you are ever near exit 19 on I-81, stop in.

Some fun ones for practice - isn't my nephew cute!! At least our feet. I hope he doesn't get my hobbit feet...

2007-06-05T21:45:00.000-04:00

The infamous "Uncle Clement" Crocs!!

Multiple pics, too!

2007-06-05T21:21:00.000-04:00

Hey look, I can add a post under a picture! I'm so smart...

Let's see how this works...

2007-06-05T18:16:00.000-04:00

OK, Friends - you know how useless I am with computers, so we'll see how this works. I figured that with some really interesting times coming up in my life, I might as well start a blog so everyone can check in on me, I can be creative and let my pen, (errrr keyboard,) flow. Also I will post pics and any cool stuff I find about my travels. I'll check some sites...

A word of warning, I don't plan on holding anything back - so take heed: Count on reading strong language, graphic descriptions of 3rd world diseases, and scary dive and travel stories, oh my!

This journal is not totally ready to go just yet, I don't plan on leaving the country until July 31st or so, (starting to worry about getting my new pages-added passport back, actually...) but since I AM homeless and have been travelling since about April 16th, I figured I'd get started with the US stuff - and get my blog feet wet, so to speak...

I will keep this blog mostly travel related, I've debated doing the personal thing to share my mind and heart - but I think I'll do that one anonymously elsewhere. So don't worry Mom - no personal laundry to be aired here!

In other news, I'm on myspace.com, too!! http://myspace.com/clementberard

I'll get started with the wine tour later - right now it's brought me to Abingdon, VA, in the very bottom left hand corner of the state. (Though judging by the bumper stickers, they would HATE to be described that way!! I doubt anyone even admits to being left-handed.) I'm maybe 10 miles from my beloved Old North State, and maybe 20 from Tennessee. Tomorrow is mucho driving and 2 wineries. But I'm off to dindin!

Ciao, Stay Wet, See Y'all and I'll make another attempt later

-C