Benny the Nomad

Home Again

2011-01-01T16:32:00.001-08:00

We've been home again for 10 days. I've already talked to most of the people who follow this blog, but I hate leaving this thing without a conclusion.Erin and I spent our last few days in Chiang Mai Christmas shopping and tying up loose ends. On our last day, we cleaned our bikes and packed them back into their boxes, and then we went out to say goodbye to the few people we met.We had a final

The Last Tour Part 2: the end of the tour

2010-12-18T04:54:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, Erin and I rode 190 kilometres.Note that I didn't say we rode our bikes 190 km; we only did about 130 km on the bikes. We did the other 60 or so in the back of a truck. It can actually be quite convenient to ride a bike in a country that uses trucks for public transportation.We left Chaing Rai shortly after sunrise with the vague idea that we might just try to ride the whole 190 km

Speaking Thai at a Urinal

2010-12-15T20:56:00.000-08:00

We were in a Thai tourist bar overlooking the Mekong river two nights ago, listening to a Thai band play western and Thai cover songs and watching Thai tourists from the south getting drunk as though it was a team sport, when suddenly I had to pee. I didn't exactly find this condition alarming -- it's a normal reaction of my bladder to either beer or cover bands, I can't quite figure out which --

The Last Tour

2010-12-11T06:19:00.001-08:00

10 days from now Erin and I will be on a plane home. Erin is certainly not ready to come home. I have mixed feelings. I'm sure my feelings will swiftly become unmixed when I get off the plane in Vancouver and find that the atmosphere has been replaced by a steadily descending stream of icy cold water.But that's 10 days from now; we still have enough time to go for one last tour.Where to this time

Banging round Bangkok

2010-12-09T23:10:00.000-08:00

It's always fun to return somewhere I've been many times in many different states of mind over the course of several years. Bangkok looks different every time, partly because it has changed and partly because my eyes have changed.As always, I've been haunting the area of town around Khao San road, while trying to avoid actually setting foot on Khao San Road. I'm fond of this part of the city, not

Cambodia

2010-12-07T18:08:00.000-08:00

Fifty cent draft beer.Seriously -- a decent-sized glass of mediocre (but not terrible) draft beer for US$0.50. So what do you expect us to do with our evenings?Actually, we've been having a reasonably productive time. We were able to take three days to tour Angkor Wat, Erin's been interviewing people and researching crap for her story, and I've been muddling along in my work life in my own

The Big Tour Part 3: Last day and the sad trip home

2010-12-02T06:31:00.000-08:00

Not discovering the secret to Suvarnabhumi Airport $9 for an hour of internet! $6 for simple meal of Thai food? $3.50 for a coffee? Who do these Bangkok airport guys think they are? What, they think they have a monopoly? Hell, I have a 6-hour layover; I’ll just take the 50-cent airport train into the city and I’ll show them. The train goes straight to the central shopping district… not much is

The Big Tour Part 2: the tour, days 1-3

2010-12-01T05:24:00.001-08:00

Alright, we're dashing off to Cambodia in about a dozen hours, and if I don't puke this story out now, I never will.Where was I? Right, 3 in the afternoon, cycling slowly. We wouldn't have bothered to leave town with so little daylight left, but we knew we'd be short days and we wanted to get about 50 km of flats out of the way, so that we didn't waste the cool part of the next morning crossing

The Big Tour Part 1: pre-departure

2010-11-29T01:07:00.001-08:00

Obviously, we've been back in Chiang Mai for several days. But why haven't I written about our exciting big tour? Well, we've been up to our nipples in indexing, which is also the reason why our big tour was only about half as long as I wanted it to be.What is this mysterious substance "indexing" you ask? Indexing is an activity, not a liquid, as I implied in that nipple-filled analogy in the

Mae Kuang Dam Loop

2010-11-20T21:49:00.000-08:00

Erin and I did a fun one-day ride yesterday:Mae Kuang LoopFind more Bike Rides in Chiang Mai, ThailandWe left Chiang Mai following our little rural river road that lets us avoid the highway, and then went up into the hills, where we found a very attractive and reasonably-priced (free) waterfall:Then we proceeded to the lake, where we were going to get a boat to the other

The Tallest Mountain in Thailand

2010-11-14T00:45:00.000-08:00

I'm warning you: I'm kind of pissed (in the British sense, not the American one).Our two-day tour got extended to a three day tour. We returned at about 1:30 this afternoon and went out for lunch and a beer. Erin went for a massage and I stayed and had a second beer. I intended to spend the whole afternoon there drinking beer and reading my book, but after two beers I had to leave. I was too

And we're off!

2010-11-11T15:06:00.000-08:00

Late yesterday afternoon, Erin and I made a snap decision to take off on an overnight trip. We're going halfway up the side of Doi Inthanon, Thailand's tallest mountain, where we hope to find a homestay, and maybe a ride the rest of the way to the top of the peak.I'll post the story when we get back. The route we'll follow will look something like this:Chiang Mai to Doi InthanonFind more Bike

Unhappy Day

2010-11-10T16:23:00.001-08:00

I'm unhappy today.It's only 7:30 AM. I guess things could turn around, but they're not going too well so far.First, I did some pooping last night, and some more pooping this morning. Erin and I went out and had our first supper of western food since arriving here. We've been eating nothing but Thai and a little Indian, even for breakfast, and we've been loving it. Last night, though, we heard

Thai Chi

2010-11-09T00:23:00.001-08:00

We've been watching a naked Thai person through a crack in a fence for several days now.It's not how it sounds.We often go to the soup lady for breakfast, because she makes the best rice soup in town and she only charges a dollar for it. She also makes noodle soup for a dollar, but we've been told that Thais don't eat noodles for breakfast, (that would be absurd) so we eat rice soup. Across the

Sunday Snacking Club

2010-11-07T00:44:00.000-07:00

Okay, second post of the day! If you haven't read it yet, start with the next post. It will disgust you.Done? Good. I promise, I won't say anything about dogs in this post. I got that out of my system.Today Erin and I went for a ride with the Chiang Mai Sunday Cycling Club. They've been going for group rides every Sunday for the last 14 years, and Erin and I thought we'd tag along to meet other

Fear of Dogs: Chiang Mai to Chiang Dao, Return

2010-11-06T23:37:00.000-07:00

I was too lazy to post yesterday, and now I've got to write two posts in a row because there's so much to say! First things first: Erin and I did another overnight bike tour, this time to a town at the foot of a beautiful mountain north of here:View Chiang Mai to Chiang Dao in a larger mapI'm afraid of only three things. I covered fish and entropy a couple of weeks ago. Now it's time to talk

Cock Mystery

2010-11-04T03:56:00.000-07:00

Erin and I just realized why we can hear so many cocks crowing in the yard of the house two doors down from our guesthouse.You really don't need to keep a lot of roosters to keep a good backyard laying operation running. Vancouver, which recently legalized keeping hens in the city, has made it illegal to keep cocks. And with good cause. If one of my neighbours kept roosters in their back yard,

Elevation Profiles

2010-10-31T01:00:00.000-07:00

We stayed out all last night drinking beer and playing pool with Kiwis, so our brains are much too stupid for work and our legs are much too weak for cycling. It's Sunday, so we can't go and see our teacher Sompop to learn Thai, and drinking more beer now would just lead to a repeat of this problem tomorrow, so there's nothing much to do.I've spent this sunny Sunday mapping and worrying. Erin and

Gear Crisis Update

2010-10-29T21:21:00.000-07:00

I think I've fixed our pump problem.I went down to the only road bike store in town and found a couple of el-cheapo emergency pumps. These pumps were Giyo brand, which I've never heard of, but I've certainly come across this exact pump before. Back home, MEC sells these things under the brand Filzer, and I can truly attest that they are pieces of garbage. Erin had one of these things and the very

Chiang Mai to Samoeng to Chiang Mai

2010-10-29T02:46:00.000-07:00

View Chiang Mai to Samoeng in a larger mapErin and I just got back from our first tour. It was a little one-night practice tour. We learned some things.We learned that Thai engineers don't grade roads the way that Canadian ones do. These guys aren't afraid of 12% grades. Today we went up the most ridiculous bunch of switchbacks I've ever seen.I'm pretty organized about these rides we're doing. I

The Livin' is Easy

2010-10-26T22:40:00.000-07:00

If anyone from the Thai immigration authority asks, Erin and I are most certainly not working.But we've kind of been working. I don't think it's any kind of work that the Thai officials would be troubled with. It's not like our presence here is stealing jobs from hardworking Thais who would love to be editing our book for us. Believe me, if I thought I could hire a Thai guy to do this stuff for

How You Move a Bike From Canada to Thailand

2010-10-25T03:41:00.001-07:00

So how do you get a bike from Canada to Thailand?You might not be interested in the answer to this question, but I am proud of how I managed it, so I'm going to answer it anyway.The answer depends on the bike. If you don't care much for your bike, or you think you can repair or replace it cheaply, you deflate the tires and trust it to the airline and let them take care of it. That's what the

Fish Spas

2010-10-23T15:37:00.001-07:00

A minor miracle occurred immediately after my last blog post. Erin came back to our room after her interview and suggested that we pretend to sleep. It worked. We slept for another four or five hours and it was after 9AM when we woke up! It was like we were normal people from this time zone. We'd finally left Kamchatka.Then a minor catastrophe occurred in our professional lives, which will

Photos

2010-10-22T13:50:00.000-07:00

Mekong is a Thai whisky that isn't quite as good as Canadian Club, but is also not quite as good as V.O. or Royal Reserve or Black Velvet or... what do they have on the gun down at the Legion? Whatever it is, it's a little better than Mekong whisky.Erin and I were having a beer at a bar at the night market last night, fighting off our urge to go to bed immediately and speculating about what

First Ride!

2010-10-21T14:48:00.000-07:00

Got up at 4:00 in the morning again. I'm glad my body adjusted so accurately and regularly to an Asian time zone; I just wish it was this time zone and not the time zone of the Kamchatka peninsula. Seriously, I had to make an adjustment of 10 hours and I fell about 3 hours short.I went for my first ride yesterday. I went west out of Chiang Mai and up to Wat Prathat Doi Suthep, which is a temple

Arrived in Chiangers

2010-10-20T15:21:00.001-07:00

Erin and I have safely and successfully arrived in Chiang Mai after what was one of the least painful crossings of the Pacific I have ever pulled off. Hooray for scientific drinking! I never got anywhere near drunk, but I never had any trouble falling asleep when I needed to.The layover in Bangkok involved very little laying. In fact, it involved a fair bit of running. We couldn't check our

The Secret to the Airport

2010-10-19T01:55:00.000-07:00

I have uncovered the secret to Vancouver International Airport.I've noticed in past passings-through of this airport that there is absolutely nothing open in international departures after about midnight. Well, nothing that serves alcohol in anything other than a Duty-Free bag, that is.Oh, I know: poor Benny the drunk can't get any booze until he's on the plane. Cry me a river.Yeah, yeah. This is

Too Sick for the Desert

2009-02-27T02:21:00.000-08:00

Luxor, EgyptWe had ambitious plans, let me tell you. We were going to take our overnight sailboat trip from Aswan to Luxor, stay one night in Luxor, have one day of vigorous sightseeing and then take an overnight train to Alexandria, where we would get a bus off to the Western Desert. It was going to be whirlwind fast; we were going to see this whole damn country in about a week.We were just too

Ride a Train Like an Egyptian

2009-02-19T00:15:00.000-08:00

The Train to Aswan, Egypt“Pyramid!” Nate shouts, pointing to something out the window of the train. “Oh, no. It’s just some mud,” he says, disappointed.It’s a thirteen-hour train ride from Cairo to Aswan. It’s a quite comfortable train if you go it in the daytime without a trainload of French teenagers, but we went at night, with a trainload of French teenagers. It’s morning now and we’re still

Jerusalem

2009-02-09T02:05:00.000-08:00

Erin and I are in Petra, Jordan. We've been doing loads of stuff lately, like looking at more awesome ruins and hiking around in the desert, but I don't want to write about any of that stuff right now. Right now, I only want to talk about Jerusalem.Jerusalem Jerusalem is easily the weirdest place I’ve ever been. It’s weirder than Las Vegas, weirder than Bangkok, and weirder than Phnom Phen,

Articles

2009-02-01T11:27:00.000-08:00

Hi friends,Erin and I are in Amman. Today we went and saw yet another set of amazing Roman ruins at Jerash. Unbelievable. Basically, it was a lot of rocks arranged in a particular way that made me think of Romans. No point in trying to describe them further.We are leaving Jordan soon, to take a quick trip to Jerusalem. I'm sure I'll have lots to say about that. I'm extremely excited about

The Albertan Embassy

2009-01-29T08:37:00.000-08:00

Damascus, Syria Last I wrote, I had seen nothing of Syria. Now I’ve seen everything. I am replete with Syrian observations. Erin and I went on a serious high-speed sightseeing binge, interrupted only by that day and a half when I couldn’t stop pooping in Palmyra.Above: Palmyra I saw that awesome citadel in Aleppo that I posted those groovy photos of; we went and saw the ruins of

Aleppo Citadel -- Photographic Representation

2009-01-20T18:27:00.000-08:00

Things to think about when you look at these photos:It's friggin' hugeThe only way in is over that steep bridge hanging over the moatThe moat is at least 50 feet deep from the street side, making it way the hell deeper from the other sideThe hill the thing is on is manmade! Note the scale on the satellite shot from Google Maps. Each full measurement unit is 100 metres.

Syrian Men Look Like Murderers

2009-01-19T17:51:00.000-08:00

Aleppo, SyriaSyrian men look like murderers — not just any murderers, but your murderers. They look like men who are about to pull a curved dagger out of the folds of their robes and open a window in your abdomen through which your entrails will spill onto the sidewalk.Syrian men have huge noses, deeply set eyes, eyebrows like black feather boas, and three days’ beard fifteen minutes after

Beirut Photos

2009-01-16T07:03:00.000-08:00

My real web-log post for today is below -- these are just some photos from Beirut, starting with Beirut Christmas, then a couple of photos of the rebuilt historical center in Soldere, followed by just a few of the dozens of construction cranes hanging over that city, and finally, some shots of parts of town that haven't been fixed up just yet.

Lebanon

2009-01-16T06:14:00.000-08:00

If Lebanon were located in another region, if it had a different reputation and a different recent history, it would be inundated with tourists, all of whom would be happy. The historical sights here are spectacular, the travel is easy, the food is fucking amazing, and the people are more welcoming than any I’ve encountered anywhere in the world. The streets are often dirty and you do have to put

Free Lunch for Canadians

2009-01-11T07:23:00.000-08:00

Beirut, LebanonThere is a widespread belief in Canada that people throughout the world love Canadians just for being Canadians, because we’re a big, peaceful country, an honest broker, a peacekeeper and giver of foreign aid. This belief is untrue. In the developing world, most people have never heard of Canada, and in the developed world, they’ve heard of us, but usually only as the punchline in

So, we're in Beirut

2009-01-09T05:13:00.000-08:00

Beirut, LebanonSo, we’re in Beirut.I was going to write about Jakarta and then we were going to have a week to hang out in Java and wait for our flights to Beirut, but we were getting tired of Indonesia and we didn’t have anywhere particular in mind to spend that week, but it was clear we didn’t want to stay in Jakarta any longer, so we changed our flight and now we’re in Beirut.Beirut is amazing

Indonesia on the Street

2009-01-02T04:01:00.000-08:00

Jogjakarta, Java, IndonesiaErin and I have just arrived in Jogjakarta and are staying in an actual hotel room, not on the street. Thank you, thank you, we do deserve your applause. The Indonesian Christmas/New Year’s rush is abating and things are returning to normal — meaning that we can now drift around without ever making plans or thinking anything out more than a day in advance, and find all

Muslims Behaving Erratically

2008-12-29T07:01:00.000-08:00

Solo, Java, IndonesiaSo here I am in a Hotel Ibis in Solo (formerly Surakarta), Indonesia. Ibis is a reasonably nice European hotel chain, which in Indonesia is priced like a shabby small town motel in Canada — meaning, several times our normal budget of $10 to $20 a night.View Larger MapOur room looks European. It’s slightly smaller than is reasonable, so all of the furniture has a decidedly

Fish Fear

2008-12-19T20:16:00.000-08:00

Candidasa, Bali, IndonesiaI ain’t afraid of nothin’, except for fish, dogs and entropy.I don’t jump out of my seat when I watch horror movies. Generally, I identify with the protagonists so little that I can’t wait for them to feel the bite of the chainsaw’s teeth. If a horror movie is on TV, I spend most of my time either laughing at the idiocy of the thing, or shaking my head in disgust.

Faded Paradise

2008-12-14T23:18:00.000-08:00

Kuta Beach, Bali, IndonesiaThe motto of Lion Air is, “We Make People Fly”. Seriously. What is this, the airline Stalin used to transport prisoners to the gulags? Personally, I prefer all of my flying to be voluntary, not coerced. What is with these dodgy Indonesian airlines and their mottos?Nate’s theory is that the motto is short for “we make people fly on planes they’d normally never consider

Into Indonesia!

2008-12-06T03:11:00.000-08:00

Samarinda, East Kalimantan, IndonesiaZzzzzzzzip across Sabah and into Indonesia!A few nights in Kota Kinabalu eating nice food and visiting with a few of Linda’s innumerable but individually immensely memorable siblings and then jump onto a night bus for Tawau, Sabah.View Larger MapThe bus is as comfortable as can be expected, but the road is windy. Each of us has friends. Erin has a book that

Anti-inflammatories

2008-12-01T21:54:00.001-08:00

Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, MalaysiaIt has been four days since we descended Mount Kinabalu. I’m up to four anti-inflammatory pills per day, trying to quiet my raging knee and make it behave itself as an instrument of locomotion once again.My knee has been bothering me for the last couple of months; I fucked it up landscaping, and then helping Erin move her office. Every now and then something pops out

Could be Worse

2008-11-24T17:49:00.000-08:00

Kibbas, Sabah, MalaysiaIt has always pissed me off when people say that something is the worst thing in the world, or that things couldn’t be worse. Things could always be worse. If you think they couldn’t, then you suffer from an extreme lack of imagination.How about this: You borrow a friend’s expensive car and you accidentally crash it into someone else’s even more expensive car. You find out

Monkey Monkey Monkey

2008-11-19T01:42:00.000-08:00

Lahad DatuThe attention we get when walking down the street strongly suggests that few tourists ever come to Lahad Datu. Erin was getting a little more attention than she wanted from the local men when she wore shorts the first time we went out for a walk. Malaysia is Muslim and it’s a little conservative, so we thought that maybe putting female knees on display in a backwater like Lahad Datu

Rice Planting

2008-11-12T20:30:00.000-08:00

KibbasI confess: I lied to you two posts ago. It was a lie of omission, but that doesn’t make it any more forgivable in this strictly factual web-log that will one day form a major part of the historical record on the subject of... whatever it is that we’re doing here.I didn’t tell you about a very heavy part of my luggage in my luggage description. It was a gift to Linda’s brothers and sisters (

Revolution by Souvenir

2008-11-06T00:56:00.000-08:00

PenangMere hours after I wrote a web-log post about my luggage because Erin and I weren’t having any adventures, we had an adventure. We did something that the government of Thailand hasn’t been able to do for six months — we visited Thailand’s parliament building.Thailand is currently going through some political turbulence. I don’t have the time or the knowledge to explain it properly, but I

Travel Gear

2008-11-03T01:29:00.000-08:00

BangkokErin and I have just returned to Bangkok from our trip to Ko Samet, the island where we met five years ago. Our tour included such nostalgic stops as the bar where we first danced (I’ve danced on about two other occasions in the five years since) and the beach where Erin’s friend Bess received her eyeball scratch that was subsequently invaded by a parasite, causing her to go temporarily

Bangkok is Still Here

2008-10-30T01:26:00.000-07:00

BangkokThe fastest way to Bangkok is not to fly first to Beijing; going to Beijing would be like stopping for gas in Boise, Idaho, on your way from Vancouver to Calgary. Air China was the cheapest way to get to Bangkok, however, and Erin and I are extremely discourteous to our future selves when we’re pricing out flights, so we had a very long journey yesterday and the day before, and —

A New Journey

2008-10-22T15:34:00.000-07:00

VancouverEveryone's favourite nomad is hitting the road again, on an uncharacteristically purpose-driven 4 1/2- month tour of (probably) 9 countries, from Borneo to Beirut and points in between.I'd love to say that I have a gimmick, like, that I am walking across Asia as the title of this web-log implies, or that I am at least using only surface transportation to cross the southern end of the