6000 armed police raids in less than 3.5 years!

This is the substance behind the claim that the Moonfisher Cafe in Christiania, Copenhagen is the safest in the World. Over the past few days I have been squatting in Christiania, it is a ex-military barrack which was abandoned in 1971 only to be taken over by squatters who promtly declared it the free-town of Christiania with its own flag and laws. However the past few years have seen the Danish officials crack down on the open drugs trade of Pusher Street and the like. Fortunately the good spirit of the locals still reigns supreme, and there is an area beside one 'lake' which accepts campers pitching tents, a good method of saving money in the currency vacuum known as Denmark.

Well tomorrow I leave my little pot smoking oasis and embark on what could be a hell of a time dealing with broken bikes and shit weather or a wicked adventure through Sweden and Denmark. I was counting on getting a bike which belongs to Perry (the American guy from the Vineyard in Hungary) which was sitting at a friends house in Copenhagen, but due to my own lack of planning (more accurately, unwillingness to plan) i rang the friend of Perry to organise the redevous that night when he advised me that the bike was locked up and he a long way away, not to return for over a month. Well, this left me at an interesting conundrum, i didnt have the money to travel the area by public or organised transport, word of mouth indicates that hitching is difficult and I dont want to head south yet as i have a course starting at a Danish university in Arhus (Denmark) at the start of August... To use the words of Grant Dalton after a recent America's Cup loss, "it's the kind of situation when you just kick the cat".

Walking back to my tent after that conversation I think I could have been hit by a car and not even noticed, my mind was so far detached from my being, concentrating on the question, what the f#%k am I going to do now? The solution came within half an hour as I was dragging my feet through a disused park, in one corner i spotted a heap of broken and mangled bikes resembling a recently crushed car. Well, I thought "I'm an engineer, if I cant do something with this pile of shit then no one can", so i got out my pocket calculator, determined a few angles using sohcahtoa and pythagoras thereom, following this a couple of well placed kicks and we were underway. Within the next day having spent only NZ$30 (about the cost of a toothpick in Copenhagen) I had a lock and owned something resembling a bike!

One thing i can guarantee you, i'll be treating this bike much nicer than the ones in Cambodia. And if I'm getting any turning heads it wont be because i am different (like on the motorbike in Vietnam) but only due to the high pitched screeching coming from every moving part!

F#%king Strawberries

So in the past few weeks while I have been slack with the blogging and not even living up to my promise to post about reaching the half way point I have still managed to conquer one of life’s ultimate goals. I have attacked (see: furiously picked) one ton of ruby red, juicy, organic strawberries. I am living on a farm, strawberry farm I call it. It’s a bit of a joke of a place. Over-run with frogs and ruled with an iron fist by ‘the Don’, a cold-blooded Danish Viking.

The mornings, signified by my tent being shook to pieces, start at 4.30am. Luckily in this part of the world summer means the sun barely disappears overnight, still fairly light at midnight and again light by the ungodly hour in which I have to rise. However the days take an early end, by midday we are back at base camp eating, drinking or sleeping. The work is menial backbreaking labour fully exposed to the elements. Treated like true minorities having to work our asses off to make minimum wage on a piece-rate system. Fortunately however, minimum wage in Danmark is far in excess of what is available in other western countries.

The social aspect of attacking strawberries is surprising attractive. At first glimpse my island (Samso) seems unable and unwilling to open itself for parties. However the scummy pickers have circumvented this unease by taking over the loitering grounds outside the local supermarket. Each afternoon the chant “Let’s go, Netto” echo’s, Netto being the name of the supermarket and ends with drunken stories being shared in the kitchen and even the occasional Medieval Horn* is taken up to announce ones dissatisfaction with any situation. One night we took over a local café / bar, managed to get my crowd surf on with less than 10 people on the dance floor, made it home that night with one hour to spare before work. The supreme quality of the night was denoted by fact that the police came to strawberry farm looking for us the following day.

In other news, my camera has recently gone man-down, I hope to replace it soon so no drunken escapades go undocumented. On that fateful night the last photo was of me pretending to smoke a massive log over a fire like it was a joint, the details are hazy but all that matters is that I’m OK.

Story ends…

*def: Medieval Horn: noun. An instrument, can be actual or imaginary, used by a person (preferably drunk) to get their hola on in the act of venting frustration.

PS. The reason that I have not blogged about reaching half-time is that I wrote an extremely intelligent, insightful and witty account of my travels thus far on my computer and had it ready to post when ‘a serious error occurred’. I have since not been able to turn it on and feel too aggrieved to re-write. The gist of it was that I am having a good time, will come home when the money runs out and that I look forward to sharing a keg or two with you all when I do.

brown dog churns out europe

In true Westy fashion our original meeting plans went up in flames, however, this would not have been a surprise to those around the brown dog. Sitting in Spanish bar on the Tuesday morning as he began to open the flood gates of fury before boarding (in theory) his flight to Prague where i was eagerly awaiting the grand arrival, telling anyone with ears how my friend was arriving and we were going to teach this town a lesson it wouldn't soon forget. However, in Barcelona the thirst was only growing and the perception of time receding. Needless to say, 'there was a mix up with the airlines, long story, tell you later bro...' and two and a half days later, still sitting on one hand with a beer in the other brown dog arrives in Prague, 'BROWN DOG' gets holla'd across a 4 lane highway from the nearest bar and we're away.

His first night in Prague, i had us lined up a party to go to. The instructions read: Get a tram to Kobylisy, followed by a bus to Veltrusy. From the Vesltrusy stop, walk to the bridge over a canal and you will see a tent underneath with a party inside. Probably the second worst (for the record, Liam you own the worst) set of instruction i have ever had, however we managed to find the bus stop (one of three Veltrusy stops) and walked around for a couply hours until dark with no luck and retired back to the bus stop for a good catch up session while consuming our rations. The desired effect was had but a bit more of a mission in the making than each of us desired.

At the start of the second week the TDU-1 (Brown Dog and I) found itself camped at a friends place in Brno, Czech Rep. Brno has the distinction of having the most amazing and almost completely tranquilising open-air homo sapien wildlife reserve. The quality of the specimens is quite astonishing. Any man looking for some high quality tusks to mount above his fireplace combined with low quality local hunters is urged to visit the reserve. One fateful night the hunt ended with one member of the TDU-1 dancing with two high quality specimens only to return home empty handed, while the other much more concentrated on a single target ended the night with a glancing shot but also empty handed, and then as to rub salt in the wounds was unable to penetrate the living quarters and slept on a polystyrene block outside the front door.

Very short stops in Poland (Krakow and Zakopane) and Germany (Berlin) followed Czech Rep. However no matter how short a stop, the brown dog couldn't keep his nose out of the game. I came back after making dinner one night and he had made buddies with a middle aged gentleman sleeping in our dorm. The middle aged gentleman took a liking to the gypsy skinned Maori boy from NZ and let it be known the last night we were there, ha. Ask Matt for further details, if he even has to mention my name to finish the story I ensure you he is completely distorting the truth.

That's a taste of the journey we shared, let the good times roll. My hope of working in Denmark has all but totally evaporated, still considering a terrorist attack on the danish embassy just for good measure (joking!). All travel plans are in the air at them moment but as I am coming up the 6 month / half way point I will put up another general post soon.

Egészségedre (Cheers!)

Hungary has a very beautiful countryside, however most people are content with visiting the capital Budapest and nothing more. Well not me, having spent a good long weekend in Budapest and taking photos of all the castles, statues and architecture I went to one of the train stations and surveyed the board trying to decide where I would like to go, Nagykanizsa, yeah that sounded like good name and my guide book didn't have anything to say about it so it was on!

Well, I arrived in Nagzkanisya approaching dusk greeted by two plain clothed officers wanting to see my passport, they looked pretty shady so I was fairly rude and was asking him some questions (although they could not really understand) to make sure he was actually officer and then stood in front of the door while he had my passport. That turned out OK and then I looked to the information desk to find out about accommodation, she could not speak English but I managed to communicate that i wanted a hostel, she sent me walking in the direction of town with no more information than a pointed finger.

Very quickly I had the suspicion that Nagykanisza didn't attract too many tourists. And after two hours of walking around town it was confirmed, hostels didn't exist, the English language was never invented and it was getting dark so i began looking for a sheltered place to sleep while walking back to the train station in the hope of more information.

About a kilometer back from the train station I found an abandoned vintage train, i was certain that this was my fate but I continued back to the station anyway. As I approached I saw a girl playing hacky, she looked foreign so I asked if she spoke English. Fortunately she could and quickly she enquired with "what the fuck are you doing down here?" After talking for a few minutes and she realising my predicament offered me to stay at her brothers vineyard out of town in one of the small villages (Liszo). The following 5 days are history, a rather blurry and hazy history due to over consumption of home made wine...

Being philosophical, only thing i can say i learnt from it is don't use the 'next train leaving the station' method to dictate your travel plans. But then it all turned out well, so perhaps that is the ideal method. oh well i don't know I'm confused and tired.

my near religious experience

For the past three weeks or so I have been moving from bar to bar around London and a few selected towns in Ireland. Europe is fucking expensive, my record to date is NZ$60 for a single local phone call of duration 10 minutes to an embassy in London. However the highlight of London was on the first Sunday, I found an establishment called ‘The Church’, however at this church you wont be a finding many bibles. It is a pub/club that opens at about 1pm and features live entertainment (Freddy Mercury impersonators, Strippers and Boat races) reasonably priced drinks and a massive atmosphere. However its not all fun, I saw some scientific research being conducted as I walked through the dance floor (over empty cans of beer and Woodstock) I saw a group of guys trying to answer the age old question as to whether hman flatulence is combustible. Sundays too are a big day in London, The Church, was followed by live music and beers at a pub near my hostel. Summary – the only thing that would make me want to live in London is The Church, God bless it!

Arriving in Ireland a few days before St Patrick’s Day was the best thing I’ve done in ages. Dublin was a buzz with Irish spirit. I met and stayed with an Irish bloke that I met while travelling Thailand, this turned out wonderfully, we spent four nights out in town in a row, three of them in anger (on the Guinness not other people). I’ll put up some photos but the atmosphere in Dublin for the Saturday and Sunday were off the hook, almost indescribable. Streets lined with drunken people in good spirit and plenty of ladies. In the city about every second buiding is a pub and the best thing is that they are all full, Guinness flowing and traditional music bleating...

PS. It's pointless to ask me about the street parade, I was nicely tucked up inside a pub.

Myanmar

Thanks to those of you who took the time to email me over the past month and let me know that my blog has recently nose-dived. Well the reason for this are two fold, I have been slightly lazy with writing and I have been in Myanmar where the idiotic military government have placed massive restrictions on internet use, sustained access to most email and blog sites becomes a total pain after about 10 minutes of continually logging in.

Also there hasn’t been much to write about over the past three or so weeks. Recently I went out to a small town just slightly off the tourist trail and found a local (informal) guide to take myself and a Swiss girl hiking into some remote villages for four days. The guide I met at the bus station got my attention with a post card from NZ sent from some kiwis (from TE PUKE of all places) he met 7 years ago, the guide was a 40-year-old dude who knew more about the mountains and villages than anyone. He was part of the rebel Palaung tribes people who fought the Government in 1988 when they assumed control of Myanmar. They subsequently surrendered but all the people in the area (at least) resent the Government and are hoping for change.

The Swiss girl was nice, albeit violent. She didn’t really like the way I would frequently answer NO WAY! When the villagers asked if we were married. Another wicked thing about these villages is that you can just turn up and go directly to the Chairman’s (similar to a Mayor) house to eat and sleep, and not only is this OK but it shows respect. I will put up a photo of the first Chairman that we met; he was only 29 and the youngest one our guide had ever met.

On the final morning of the trip we had stayed at a very rich (by local standards) Chairman’s house and he invited us to come with him on his jeep to the top of a local mountain to see the progress of renovations on a Buddhist pagoda, this was cool, saw heaps of locals cutting down trees with machetes but we spent too long and missed the bus out of the village. We decided just to start walking and hitch-hike, luckily after about two hours we caught ride with a truck, I got to sit on the roof of the cab for the 4 hour ride while Silvia had to sit down the back with the cargo because it is not acceptable for woman to sit above men (i.e. the ones in the cab.)

Motorcycle diaries

I hired a motorbike, it was Russian and it called a Minsk, they have a bit of a cult following amongst overland travellers I understand. They ain't the most reliable machines in the world but when you hire them the shop knows this and they give you a bag of spare parts, some tools and a quick tutorial on how to change each one and how to diagnose common problems. The aim of this excursion was too get a good experience of solo travelling after seeing Matt depart for NZ on 01/02, I wanted to get off the well beaten track and see some of the 'real Vietnam'. I have been thinking about it and I think I have succeeded, I list the reasons as follows:

1. I didn't see another western tourist for the entire time I was away (6 days).
2. I haven't had an English conversation or seen a menu featuring English in all this time.
3. Riding the Minsk through the village roads (where the term road is used loosely to mean any surface made up of mud, gravel, land-slides, tar seal and streams where motorbikes, cars and trucks share a single lane, and no section of 'road' is straight for more than 100m) it feels like I just won the tour de France and I am doing a victory lap with children running out of houses yelling hello and waving. Generally they hear the Minsk coming as it sounds like a tractor.
4. As riding into the first town one man (middle aged) with a very young (~2yo) passenger on his lap was riding into town beside me and so surprised to see me there tried to start a conversation at about 40kph. Well it ended shortly after that with him slamming into the back of a woman on her motorbike, after impact he glanced in my direction and I swerved to avoid him and he just clipped my back wheel, however luckily we both managed to stay upright, the same could not be said about the poor lady.

The Minsk has actually performed fairly well considering the treatment I have been dealing it. We have done over 1,300km taking 36hours of riding (for those of you non-engineering folk without a pocket calculator handy, this is really slow an average of about 36km/h and that is not because of my riding, trust me no-one was passing me that's just how bad the roads are!).

However, the following recommendations are made to Minsk (aka: stuff I broke):

• stronger clutch cables (the locals had a good old time gathering around right behind me to watch me change this)
• more durable clutch handles

That is all.

PS: bufty was the best striker in the team!

Bicycles

We made the first enemies (that we know of) of our trip while in Siem Reap, Cambodia innocently attempting to explore the Angkor temples. The guest house we found offered free bicycles, these bicycles are the idea means of exploring Angkor Temples which are about 5km from town.

The carnage started about 2km from town when I gave the power house a brake check (apply heavy brakes while someone is following too closely behind, common amongst boi-racers in cars), to ensure, for his own safety that his bike was in good working order. Unfortunately his brakes weren't optimal and his concentration less so and he ploughed into the back of my stationary bike. After 10mins of head scratching, standing on rims and bending mud guards beyond recognition produced a bike which was again ridable, however the front wheel had a sizable buckle and was still getting intimate with one side of the forks on each rotation.

If this was the end of it all would be fine and I would not be writing this post. But it was not, because the power house's bike was such a dog to ride, him and I were taking turns. We were navigating around the perimeter wall of one large temple and I was on the damaged bike and came to a down hill section (which I should have walked down), I was one tree root from the bottom when the buckled front wheel was clipped and I was thrown over the handle bars landing in pain with my shoulder meeting the road. I opened my eyes to see a group of Cambodian woman sitting on the deck of their hut pointing and laughing. This continued for about 5 minutes, at which time I had reassessed the bike, my injuries and devised a story to tell the owner of the bike. The ladies came over with some tiger balm to rub on my shoulder and into my grazes (in the photo).

For me the funnies started here, I promptly returned the bike (now completely unridable) to The Power House. He was forced to carry it over his shoulders for about 2km with everyone laughing in his face and turning and steering and pointing, assuming he was just a donut that gave up and could not be bothered riding back to town. If this wasn't enough he engaged a motorbike rider to take him back to town while he straddled the bicycle in one hand and the motorbike in the other.

The traffic was bad so Matt and I arrived back to the rental store as The Power House was trying to break through the language barrier and explain that he was riding a flat track when the front wheel hit the root of a tree and disintegrated around him (all in sign language), I don't know if they understood but when we turned our backs and walked away I think they got the idea that we took no responsibility for the untimely failure of their pathetic bike.

Seasons Greetings

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all! I hope you all have some wicked parties lined up to take advantage of the break. Take heaps of photos of you all in your messed up states and send some through to give me some entertainment.

Adventures of The Power House

We are just chilling out with the guy formerly referred to as Nick or Skidder but now exclusively known as Power House or more formally as The Power House. So yeah he is now at night four and each night has brought a new adventure.

Night 1, a couple of beers down and I decided to put myself to bed (~2km away) after telling matt and power house that I was just going toilet. They caught me a few hundred meters down the road getting a feed. That aside back to the adventures of power house, some time in the middle of the night he made a trip to the toilet and locked himself out of our cave, so he proceeded (in vain) to wake us up by yelling, climbing the wall and breaking the mosquito screens to the windows about 2.5m off the ground. At this point he accepted his fate (at the advice of the unhappy neighbours) and went to sleep in the hallway.

Night 2, power house got drunk and again woke up to piss in the middle of the night; however this time he learnt his lesson from the previous night and didn’t leave the room.

Night 3 and power house made a bed for him on the beach while we were drinking, then on my advice made a stagger for home. Later that night he was man down again due to his inability to balance himself on a double bed (while lying).

Night 4 and power house is down, I repeat its 7pm and power house is down. Cause: overdeveloped boy syndrome, effect: full system failure, prognosis: hassle, torment and abuse for the next two weeks.

Northwest Thailand

Over the past four days I have done two four hour van journeys followed by a four hour local bus and yesterday a six hour Sawngthaew (on the back of a Ute) trip. We have travelled south along the western Thai boarder with Burma (Myanmar). The scenery has been amazing, it is an elevated area with high mountains, hot days and very cool nights. Heading into the area the bus was searched by a machine gun clad officer verifying the Thai’s documentation (thank god he didn’t check my body board bag!) In-case they were attempting to join the conflict at the Thai-Burmese boarder. Yesterday we were checked again into and out of the Mali refugee camp just before coming into Mae Sot. Today we hired some 125cc motorbikes and adventured around the city, after about an hour Matt was sick of his bike misfiring and stalling so he took it back and demanded a replacement, the guys at the shop just laughed at him when they discovered he had been riding it around with full choke on all morning. Tomorrow we are back to Bangkok on an 8 hour bus ride to meet my brother, then heading south to the beach for some R&R.
My favourite place of this little trip has been Mae Hong Son. It provided dirt cheap, lake front accommodation. Shortly after dropping our bags we were off to one of the many local watering holes, after our first beer we made friends with the local police officer who then escorted us to a near by club. Three large Chang’s down and one of my travelling companions was making himself known (intimately) with some of the local wildlife, while I was doing my best job convincing a pommy bird that trying to haul into me in front of her boyfriend and father is not conducive with a happy family holiday.

PS. I wrote this two days ago, since then we have met skidder and been on the hammer pretty hard. One good funny to report back, on the trip from Mae Sot down we (Me and Matt) went through at least 5 armed check points heading back for Bangers. At one of the check points an armed officer found it necessary to give matt and inside thigh rub on the way past then a cheeky little hug on his way out while matt sat there in disbelief. Shortly after this some glue sniffing old prick got on the bus and proceeded to abuse matt in Thai for the following 20 minutes until the bus driver pulled over at the police station and kicked him off!

Bus Bangkok to Chiang Mai

More issues… We decided to leave BK and travel north to Chiang Mai to trek through the jungle and meet some local tribes. Arriving at the travel agent at 5pm I almost gave our knob of a taxi driver a heart attack when I opened the passenger door into traffic and narrowly missed having it taken off my a Mercedes Benz. I don’t know what he was worried about, there were millimetres to spare (don’t forget engineers are very precise people). We were then whisked to the ‘bus station’ (read: side of the road), our “VIP” [I suspect “Very Important Prisoner”] bus arrived 3.5 hours later and we were away on our ‘dinner included 12 hour – over night journey’.

About an hour into it while we were still excited about the whole bus thing, the biggest storm I have ever witnesses began approaching over the horizon. We had an hour of constant thunder and lightning bolts, trees blowing over on the motorway, torrential rain and massive winds blowing the bus over the road (lucky the lane markings have little relevance in Thailand!). We later found out that the storm killed over 100 people in the Philippines. At hour four we arrived at our destination for dinner, I had a cramp I was so hungry, that is until I saw the shit on our plates. Fried sizzler type sausages sliced into strips that I could seen through and probably used and a lubricant in an engine, rice soaked in water and Bok Choi. I slanted away from the sausages in favour of the BC but within seconds was seriously questioning if I had just finished my first mouthful of dog meat. Needless to say their plan worked and I brought dinner from the solitary nearby store. An hour later and the fully laden “VIP” bus was approaching the mountain ranges of North Thailand, with this came a severe chill in the passenger compartment. Apparently stopping four times to refuel the radiator and running the air conditioning at full blast (~15degreesC) and freezing the passengers for hours to prevent engine overheating is appropriate “VIP” service in Thailand. Being the fresh naive traveller I was left unaware of this policy, the only things that kept me going over the last three to four hours were:

1. My Bay of Plenty rugby jersey with my arms tucked well inside,
2. The curtain from the window that I wrapped around my head and upper torso, and
3. The fact that Matt desperately needed a piss, he was within seconds of filling two 350ml bottles while sitting in his seat when the “VIP” bus took another water stop, to my disgust and extreme disappointment.
   

On arrival I was in disbelief (possibly shock), very cold but some how excited to get to Chiang Mai at 7am being greeted by a taxi driver holding “Matthew Wallace” upside down ready for a day to explore the town.

PS. I am having an absolutely awesome time, I have just chosen to share stories of my misery as I know it is funny for everyone else involved.

DAY4&5 (Bangkok, Thailand)

Arriving in BK around midnight (with no accom sorted) and getting dropped off in one of the main travellers streets was like diving into a 100mm deep pool head first. I would be lying if I said I wasnt slightly concerned about everyone around me. Not to mention the piece of shit stock-car that took us from the airport (pic's to come). The two days were mainly spent drinking 50B ($2NZ) big bots, eating from the street vendors for between 25B and 75B and staying a converted prison cell at 210B (~$nz4 each) a night for me and matt.

The first night we ended up getting rather intoxicated at which turned out to be one of the cheapest bars in town, when we decided to leave matt had the idea that it would be brilliant for us to get into some bugs. We ended up just munchuing a couple grass-hoppers while some other western tourists were asking us if we were on 'fear factor' or just plain crazy all the while taking photos.

DAY1&2 (Austraaalia)

Wholly fuck, I knew I would do something extremely stupid at some point on this journey and yes today was the day. Within 24 hours of embarking on my 1 year trip my passport was destroyed. Who would have thought that leaving a paper document to soak in spilt alcohol would compromise its integrity. Day 2 has just come to an end and I was on the phone all morning, the prognosis was that I needed to get to Sydney (from Melbourne) to get a replacement at the jaw dropping cost of $AUS622 (seriously, does the NZ government need to pay for this stadium with internal affairs revenue), so yeah if anyone from QBE insurance is reading this then you will be expecting a rather unpleasant call from me in the next few days!

Foundations

This is just a little outline to let everyone know my rough travel plans and a bit about why I'm travelling....

Travel Plans:
Duration of between 1 and 1.5 years, definitely want to be back in NZ in May 2008 for Graduation. I realise that I have a fairly ambitious list of countries to get around, however the plan goes a little something like this:

1. Auckland, NZ
2. Melbourne, Australia
3. Bangkok, Thailand
4. Burma / Myanmar
5. Cambodia
6. Vietnam
7. Laos
8. Paris, France
9. Europe (not sure but definitely London, Ireland, Denmark, Germany)
10. Kenya
11. Mozambique
12. Tanzania
13. Argentina
14. Chile
15. Peru
    

Time in each place is totally dependant on what I think of the place when I get there and visa restrictions etc... However as an indicator I plan to spend about 3 months in each of South East Asia, Europe, Africa and South America.

Why:
This is a difficult question that I have put to myself and am slightly struggling to come up with any solid answers. The main feelings that come through are that I have enjoyed meeting travellers and international students at uni and have wanted to travel for so long I do forget my initial reasoning. Also after finishing uni last month I have realised that I do enjoy learning and this is just another method to keep developing. I also just want to have some fun and 'let my hair down'.

After all I hope that I can look back at the end of this journey and have a good laugh, say I enjoyed myself, consider myself a better person and probably fall over laughing when I read this posting.

Contact:
If anyone does want to contact me you have a two options, email is the best for non-urgent matters danzemail@gmail.com, skype is also good skype name: daniel.tombleson