Pictures of Bali and Thailand, finally

Hello,

Here is a mix of pictures from Bali and Thailand.
Enjoy!

$2 Drugs

I had my first bout of travellers stomach illness, to use polite terms. It started yesterday and I thought it was a passing things but felt awful today so decided to go to the doctor. Turns out you don't need to see a doctor to get meds. I went up to the counter pointed to my stomach, and started crying. I'm such a wimp. It's just a little scary to be sick in a strange place where you don't speak the language and don't really know what to do. But the pharmacist took my hands and kept telling me I will be alright and how I will go see her tomorrow and tell her how much better I feel. Got antibiotics, pills to easy my stomach, and electrolyte solution for water. And I already feel much better. And the cost of all this? Yep, just $2. Now, back home, without insurance, you would have to pay maybe $80 just to see a doctor to diagnose you, then pay an astronomical amount for prescription medication. It's not even a matter of the dollar going that far, it just makes sense that you don't need to see a doctor for obvious things like this and pay up the wazoo for drugs.

Now, onto what I think is a quite amusing story:
Way back in Bali, last day there, I was sitting in a beach chair late in the afternoon and Jon was sitting nearby on the sand. A Balinese lady came up to me and of course the first thing I did was think, oh no, just leave me alone. Of course she offered to give me a manicure, pedicure, massage, anything. "good price." Suprisingly after I said no thank you, she continued to sit on the chair next to me and we started chatting. I learned her husband is a chef at a hotel, has been there 20 years, earns about $100 per month, she has 3 kids, etc. Now, I was wearing a pair of loose pants and a bikini top. I noticed she kept looking at my chest.
"I like your bra, very nice" she says
I said thanks and tried to explain it wasn't a bra but a bathing suit, for swimming. would I really be wearing my bra in public?

sidenote: for all of the kiwis reading this, I couldn't stop thinking of that advert on tv during the summers where there is a guy walking around in his tiny togs and he goes from beach scenes to city scenes, and you hear a voice going "togs, togs, undies, togs, undies, undies, togs" based upon what scene he is in. I kept thinking this is a togs scene.

"you have small boobs" she tells me, making hand motions to her own and still staring at my chest, "very small, like my daughter's. Do you have any more bras for my daughter?"
um, is this really happening? "no sorry, this is the only one I have."
"very hard to find ones for her, small boobs like yours, very tiny but she is very tall. mine come from Australia." she proceeds to lift up her shirt to show me her bra, your standard white underwire piece.
"oh, that's a nice one. yeah, from Australia. good bras." the entire time I just kept thinking, "this is one for the blogger."
the moment passed and we continued to talk until she spotted another white lady who looked like maybe she would want a manicure, pedicure, or massage.

every once in a while, an event occurs and Jon and I look at each other and say "this is one for the blogger." In a previous post he described his ledger abilities, which, I must say, he has taken very seriously. On a similar note, we had changed just enough money for our last few days in Bali so that we wouldn't have any left over when we left. We were down to $3 the day before last and went to the store for some fruit. It got to the point where I wouldn't let him buy peanuts because they were over budget by 5 cents and we wouldn't have enough to eat the next day. We planned this meticulously and we were going to stick to it. In retrospect it was pretty rediculous but amusing and we didn't go hungry.

Thanks for comments from the Eckstein camp. I'm rooting for some from my team but I keep telling Jon no one will keep reading unless we post some photos so the computer geek better get on it.


Gay

Bangkok, Thailand (and it's toilets)

We're here in Thailand waiting for our Bhutan visas to start, then we head over there for 5 days.

Bangkok
It's crowded here, it's noisy and smoggy and I love it. Food everywhere you turn and people are more than willing to help you out. Most of all I'm not treated as a potential source of someone else's income. It's a huge city and nobody cares about Gay and I and that's great. We spent a couple more days in Bangkok then we high-tailed it up north and spent another couple more days in a town called Ayuthya which has very old temples and is Unesco World Heritage sight. We then headed west and we're now in a place called Kunthanburi (or something like that). If anyone is familiar with story of The Bridge over the River Kwai, well this is where all that stuff went down. We went a museum dedicated to those events and I realize I know nothing about WWII. But fascinating stuff nonetheless. Today we went to the Erawon National Park, we went for a little walk and did some swimming at one of the tier in a 7 tier waterfall..quite nice. Tomorrow we have scheduled to goto a "Tiger temple" where a Bhuddist monk set uup a sanctuary for tigers and apparently you can, according to the guide, "get excited with live tigers" . We'll see what that means.
All in all things are going well. We're excited to go to Bhutan in a couple of days.

Cultural differences, for real.
When traveling in other countries you run into cultural differences. These can be classified as either "passive" or "active". Passive meaning you can either participate or not depending on how you feel. Active meaning that you have to participate because this is how things are done whether you like it or not and why can't people just use toilet paper i mean really. Ok, look, I have to get real for a second. I've been wiping my ass with my hand. Sorry, I had to get that off my chest; but it's traumatic and it's just how things are done here..you can't put toilet paper down these toliets, it's impossible, I've tried! Fortunatly I've been starting to get the hang of the whole thing and also I feel like i've really crossed some kind of line as a traveller.

Bye for now...



Bye for now...Jon

Leaving Bali

Hi All,

We're leaving Bali today and heading to Bangkok for a about a week before going to Bhutan.

Bali rundown
Can't say that I loved Bali, can't say that I hated it either. Would I come back? Probably not. In my opinion the main problem comes from the fact that the infrastructure is set up for a mass of tourism when there isn't the tourism to sustain it. There are too many resturants, too many people selling too much crap, too many emtpy taxis running around honking at you and too many people in your face trying to sell you stuff. What results is an air of desperation everywhere you go. That said, there are some incredible deals to be had and if Gay and I weren't on such a budget we'd be living the high life. Also, after you scratch the surface of the commercialism the Balinese culture is incredibly robust and people live relitvly the same way they have for hundres of years. For example, most people dont live in houses or aprtments. Up to 3 generations in a single family live in thier family compound which consits of kliving areas, a comunal kitchen and a temple at the center of it all (people here are devout Hindus).

What's next
Our Bhutan visas came though as expected and we're alowd in the country starting June 1st. We're going to spend about 1 week in Bangkok before entering Bhutan. More on Bhutan later.

Money, it's a hit! (dont give me that do-goody-good bullsh*t)
I've been obsessing about money. At first I was constaintly telling myself that "it isn't healthy, that I should just have a good time and it will all work out". Well forget all that. I've embraced my situation and I've realized I can have a good time while constaintly fuixating on our budget. To that effect I've appointed myself Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of our roaming outfit. As my first act in this position I've created what we call in my new biz as a "general ledger". What this means is everytime we spend money or exchange travlers checks for local currency, we write it down. Diligently. Then periodically, we reconcile the ledger with our current cash on hand. What's that you say? I'm a complete loser? Well hold that thought, there's more! You see, with the help of the ledger I can get great statistics such as the following:
-Total USD spent to date: $760
-Total spent per day per person: $22.35
-Project duration of travel with this spending rate: 6.06 months
-Average exchange rate: 8650 Rupiah to $1 USD (all conversion below will use this exchange rate)
-Average meal price: $4.36
-Average room rate: $6.50 / night

You see how fun that is!

Ok more to come later..

Bye,
Jon

Bali is looking up

Hello from Ubud, Bali.
We've thankfully moved on from Kuta Beach to a nice village called Ubud which is the cultural capital of Bali. We've seen a traditonal dance and heard cool gamelan music, also took a small trek around beatuful rice paddies where this farmer taught us how to properly eat a young coconut. So far the highlight has been a Balinese cooking class Gay and I took. We ended up being the only people taking the class so we started out with a private tour, led by a chef, of the local market then back to a resturant where he taught us how to make about 8 traditional Balinese dishes and also got to eat all of them. I'm still stuffed. It's been cool and we got some great pictures. I'm still trying to figure out the best way to upload these things.
Anyway, we've been averaging about $25/person a day which isn't bad considering we've set a $35/day/person goal, fully realizing some days will be more than others, especially in Japan. It's hard to judge how thrifty you should be. We want to have enough to last us for the entire trip, on the other hand we want to be able to do things we want without the weight of goig bankrupt. It's a fine line we're dealing with. As for now we're pretty much just going for it. If we see things we want then we just do it, everything is so cheap here anyway. Tomorrow we're going to take a guided push bike tour around a nearby village.

Bye for now...
Jon and Gay

Hello from Bali

hi everyone.

just a quick note from kuta beach, bali. it's hot. we haven't done much but some shopping and laying around the beach. gay is the master bargainer. for the most part this area of bali is annoying becuase we just get harrassed by hawkers and we have to bargain for litterally everything. but we're going to be moving around very soon and out of the touristy areas. the good part is that everything is so cheap. we had a hard time comprehending how cheap things actually are. but we've gotten the hang of it now and we even think $3 for a meal is expensive!

that's all for now, we actually haven't even taken 1 picture yet.

more coming...
Jon and Gay

Leaving tomorrow

We're leaving! Seems like it's been a long time coming but our trip starts tomorrow. We managed to get all the important stuff done with time to spare to have dinner with our friends. Thanks guys, we'll miss you!

Next post from somewhere..hopefully Bali.

Jon