On the road again

What is wrong in Thailand?

When going out the other night I found myself in some kind of club, being the only farang (Westler, Foreigner) around. My friend Syria and me had a great time- he introduced me to his approximately 1000 friends, who sang along every Thai song the band played. After several Leo’s I sang along too. I circled around in the club and noticed the following. If you are the only foreigner in a Thai club it is never a good idea to let yourself get stopped by a group of people, who are horny, drunk, male and homosexual. Ok, I’m honest, half of them where actually ladyboys. ( My spell correction doesn’t recognise that word- I wonder why, it’s a word as common as spicy food in this country). Somehow their English was very bad either- they did not understand sentences like “Don’t touch”, “Get your filthy hands out of there” or “No, I don’t want boom boom”. On the other side sentences like “I’ll kick your ass”, they got completely wrong. They threw themselves at me- why wouldn’t real girls do this once in a while? After all I escaped somehow, still having my virginity. I was very lucky!

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Good Luck for my travels

The day you decide to do it is your lucky day.- Japanese Proverb. To make sure that the luck, I had so far will stay with me I decided to do something about it. When Thai people buy a new car they let a monk give a blessing on it so that the driver and all the passengers, who use the car reach their destination safely. The blessing is an ornament that is drawn on the ceiling of the car above the driver seat.
So here is what I did: Syria and me visited a nearby Buddhist temple. Waiting for the monks to arrive, it was downing already, when the bell was ringed for their evening prayer. All the monks gathered together in the temple, kneeling on the floor and looking at us, waiting for us to say what we wanted. On our knees we crawled to the front, passing about 15 monks, and where then kneeling in front of the chief monk, who gave his blessing, on my most important means of transport:


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On the road again

After three great weeks at OpenmindProjects it’s time for me to move on! I fixed several computer and did some software, camera operating- and projectmanagement training for my friends here, and I hope that it will help them a little to face their future tasks. Everyone, who is interested in volunteer work or in having a great experience abroad, I recommend to spend some time at OpenmindProjects. When will you ever have the opportunity to stand in front of a classroom with 30 Thai kids, who are looking at you with big brown eyes and black hair, being fascinated by the foreigner, who tries to speak Thai. It’s amazing! I could not have found a better first stay on my world trip than this. Give it a try and visit http://www.openmindprojects.org. You can stay starting from one week up to two month or longer. At every age- at the moment we have volunteers at the age of 18 to 50. It’s never too late for this kind of experience.
On monday I'll leave Nong Khai for a computer to fix in Bangkok- I'll start my Cambodia- Angkor Wat adventure then.

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My USA Trip

There are a lot of places to see and a lot of things to do around the globe. But what I’m really looking forward to is to arrive in the USA. What I tell you now might sound like a childish dream, but I don’t care- here is what I’m gonna do once I arrived in San Francisco:
I’ll buy a motorcycle and cross the USA.
Every now and then I find myself thinking about this, picturing how it would be to have the open highway in front of me and my backpack behind me. I will feel the strength of the engine pulling me towards New York and the aching of my back pulling me towards the next bench to sit down and rest like an old man.
Has anyone of you done anything like this before? Will it take me longer than the 90 days visa I get? Is it hard to learn how to ride an 800ccm and approximately 280 kg motorcycle? Will I have troubles buying a motorcycle? Will I run out of money? Will I have troubles along the way?
Probably, yes! But I will try and if it is the last thing I ever do!
So if you know somebody, who knows somebody, who sells motorbikes in San Francisco- feel free to help me out :-)

picture by wikipedia

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The list- (missions along the way)

• My USA Trip
• Sky dive
• See the umbilical brothers life
• Learn surfing (this time for real!)
• Learn Spanish (this time for real!)
• Eating s’mores
• Eating scorpions (done)
• …

Feel free to extend the list by commenting (click the “comments” link below)