random thoughts

things you learn after doing some tramping
- the more you eat the lighter the bag
- one can never pack enough bread when one is hiking alone
- eating two candy bars a day + supplementary chocolate is not very exciting after two weeks [high fructose corn syrup is shitty, rather than the shit]
- taping your feet in the dark
- removing the tape before you go to bed is just as important as taping the feet in the first place
- the socks are much more important than the shoes [you really gotta splurge on thick woolen socks; my best pair was marked at ~$40 [thank god for easter sales]; the second best was $20; no point getting cheap thin socks. you should always buy thicker socks than you think you need]

things you appreciate when you travel with a car after two months of traveling on the bus
- not having to book your hostels in advance
- being able to shop for food every couple of days rather than every other day [:")]
- having a food box instead of a food tote bag
- having a box with all the extra stuff it was too expensive to send home at the back of the car rather than in your backpack

things you appreciate after three months of traveling
- staying for more than one night at the same place
- not having to wear jandals to the shower
- not having to hang your toiletries in the shower
- having a real towel to shower with
- having your own shower, in general
- cheap singaporean food :")

and my extra sad discovery - you lose a lot of muscle mass when you travel for three months.

frankfurt

the time does not pass here. the light is consistent from 6am till 8:30pm.
there is no time here, it is The Twilight Zone [Written in the Death font from Discworld, of course. you gotta imagine it yourself, though].

anyway, it seems the world is shining a little brighter after you leave the cinema. it has to do with either pirates or sitting in the darkness for two hours. i think it has to do with the pirates.

frankfurt

the flight from singapore to frankfurt was tweleve and a half hours. luckily, i spend most of those hours unconcious, sleeping it off. there was a lot to sleep off after three days or running around singapore.

on our last day we spend four hours exploring the zoo, where orang utans run freely in the trees above your heads, they have white tigers, lot of exotic monkeys and even komodo dragons [which are not intimidating when viewed from a distance]. we went downtown - one last really cheap lunch, got a pair of adidas on the really cheap and we were on the way airport [on the way we took a shower, had dinner and re packed our bags. you could say we had a small detour on the way].

this flight was very uneventful [i.e. - i didn't throw up]. my dad picked us and our excess luggage up - after singapore we were up to a big backpack, a daypack and a seperate sleeping bag each. and i was carrying a box of shoes.

i was and still am amazed by the amount of "unneccessary crap" i have in my big pack. clothes were a pretty minor item. besides the fact the i spent the last two months living inside my icebreaker sweater and in one pair of shorts, anything made out of cotton did not even make it back from singapore. just one t shirt. the rest was thrown out after three months of constant washings, stains and wear and tear. come to that, my rain jacket was too stained and smelly to wear, but i actually washed it up.

so, my backpack was weighing in at 12 kilos, with only one pair of jeans inside. the rest was cookware, survive-ware, first aid, really first aid, mabe half a kilo of sunscreen, bug block and apre bite stuff, all sort of other assorted sanitary staff. lots of cables abd adapters as well.

luckily, most of this junk only accumulated to this proportions just before renting a car. i only spent a couple of days lugging this [and my kitchen. you have to carry around your kitchen bag] around new zealand in busses.

i have left some stuff here before i left. i definetly remember i did. it was all waiting for me. but i think the amount of stuff doubled itself over the past two months. you learn to appriacte having less - less to carry, less to lose, less mess.

the least useful item i had with me was my fleece. i don't know how fleece became this popular, but someone in advertising and the whole travel gear industry is making a lot of money. really, it has lots of static electricity. mine was not even hot. it's very bulky and heavy in comparison to merino wool. and if i were to go to bulky synthetic - there's a wonderfull not too expensive material called technocore. Mammut does amazing stuff with it - shirts which keep you toasted when a fleece hardly keeps you warm. no reason to use fleece. medicore results for not too cheap of a price. i could not ship mine home, too heavy and expensive, so i was stuck with lugging it around new zealand. damn them indeed.

civilazation

so, singapore is just one big disneyland really. they do not have a lot of wild nature. they have lotsa malls. lots and lots of malls. the malls are very big. the shops are very shiny. they have weird shit in the supermarket:

















we started the day with some light browsing, about three hours in a book shop.

we then checked out a hotel straight out of a james bond film:


we went to a bar. we had a $20 drink. it as pink and sweet. you got to peel your own peanuts and throw the shells on the floor.

next on the list was the local disney park . they called it sentosa island. it was, in fact, disneyland. a disneyland where you pay seperately for each ride. everything was synthetic. especially the nature.

the beach was out of a Caribbean resort ad.


to finish the day off we spent about two hours exploring yet another mall. they had all sorts of israeli brands. what the hell? and a really big croc shop.

on the way back home we checked out the night life area. we were offered to eat eels, shark fins, crabs [and really big ones, too], prawns and all sorts of stuff which should really stay in seaworld. we got to watch the seconds Pirates movie on a big screen in the middle of the street for free [the third one is coming out here tomorrow, just before we get on the plane to frankfurt]. they really like Depp here. on the way home we saw the local Hooters. only problem is, asian chicks are pretty flat all over.

i should really upload some photos of the room we're staying in [a really thin futon in a room hardly bigger than the futon]. and the bathroom doors which you need to fold in three different directions to open and close. i guess i have to photograph it first.

singapore kicks ass!
i [heart] singapore!

singapore

so, i'm skipping about five weeks ahead of my journaling, and here i am, 5:56 am, sitting in singapore opposite an out-of-focus computing screen, sweating a bit in the 80% humidity and 20-something degrees and ruining the work of the past three months.

i had the second worst flight in my life yesterday.
the first intresting thing that happened to me when i got to singapore was to bump my upper lip against a trash can.
the second was throwing up three times into said trash can. horizontally.

it was the best thing that happened to me yesterday, as i could hardly walk more than fifty meters before the date with said trash can.

after going to the toilets and some diet coke [i will seriously miss Coke Zero, the upgraded diet coke they have in NZ] we got into a cab and out of the airport with a driver who does not know where our hostel is. so awesome! brand new highways, rainforest, malls and people queuing up in fast food shacks. out hostel is japanese style, which means we're sleeping on the floor. i just got into our compartment [i wouldn't exactly call it a room because there's not a lot of room in there] and slept everything off. the toilets' doors fold in three different directions.

i can't wait to go out there.

taupo

not much to tell about taupo. met a really cool girl from boulder, colorado. i was expecting to wait for good weather on the tongariro crossing, but as usual, i sset out earlier than i thought i would. i almost always feel shocked if i'm setting out before i expect it.

i went to Craters of the Moon. the craters were kinda small. not very intresting at most. pretty landscape though. not connection what-so-ever with the moon, as fas as i know there's no atmoshpere or vegetation up there [unless, of course, Luna City is real and hidden from us]. i saw the Hukka falls and spent a couple of hours lazing around in the sun in a free thermal stream running in the park near taupo, with the rest of the backpackers. people were walking around on the bridge above us, looking at the weird bunch of people lying on the rocks in swimming suits. next to the thermal stream was a very cold river. when it got too hot i took a swim to the river. some crazy japanese people were doing tandem bunjy jumps in a pretty awesome gorge. some crazy shit. they were bouncing up almost as high as the platform they jumped from.

they ended with me running around between the supermarkets trying to find a Square Meal for the tongariro northern circuit. they were hidden way up. i had to go to bed early, the bus was leaving at 5:45am the next day.

Abel Tasman

the abel tasman was overrated. seriously over rated and over exposed.
nonetheless i managed to have lotsa fun on the track, thanks to two couples of americans and some shellfish.

day i
the first day i walked a lot. probably another 25km day. it should have been an easy 5 hours 20 km day but i took a detour via a high tide route and a 20 minutes of walking turned into an hour and a half. nothing intresting happened in the hut that night. there were some awesome beaches on the way, but they were a. far b. few and c. there's not much to do on the beach when the water is too cold to get in and you have another 15km to walk that day.

day ii
it was a really wasy day. maybe 11k's. i ran into an english couple i met some month earlier on an atomic shuttle out of arthur's pass. they were finishing to walk all of the great walks. we walked for a bit together. i was amazed of the system they had going - working for a year and a half, then travelling for six months. saving enough money to have their own house. tramp a lot in the UK. they walk in diffenent paces, so each one walks alone.

i reached the hut early that day, wanted to continue walking. but since huts are booked in advance, i had to laze around all of the afternoon, watching the late arrivals from the last hut. i met a couple of americans who live in alaska in a tiny house out of a village. the guide heli skiers for a living. some talk regarding the high cost of helicpoters followed. another couple of americans were just nice. and cooked mussles. then i went to bed.

day iii
i had to wait until 1pm to get across the tidal crossing. i set on the porch of the hut in the sun and proceeded to lighten up my bag [eat all of my food]. i also dug some mussles from the crossing, threw them in my pan and cooked the hell of them. i wasn't sure if i were going to be brave enough to eat them. they looked like snot. they were chewy. i ate some. the americans ate the rest.

1pm came and went and i had a bus to catch. i proceeded to pack my bag and ge tmyself to the bus. after donating my stove fuel to the good of mankind [ i had a flight the next day] i hopped on the bus to meet the british couple again. after much mucking about inside the shuttle and wobbling from one side to the other for a few hours we got back to nelson and the free internet connection in the backpackers. and a warm shower. and some food which was not nutella on tortillas.