KyleKyle’s Blog

First and foremost. The Thailand pictures are completely done. All you have to do is click Gallery in the top right hand corner of this page and find the albums in 2007. It’s listed by date, so basically every day last summer = Thailand. Hurray! If you notice any problems please let me knows

I’ve also been taking the acrobatics class I signed up for, and wowie. Not only the most fun I’ve had in a while, it’s completely beating me up. I’m really trying to get back in shape for myself and this class, and hopefully it’s going to work.

Cassidy and I went to Death Guild last night for the first time in a while. It was a good bit of fun. Good music at the end of the night, including a new Bauhaus song I’m going to have to track down. Yum.

I’ve taken greater control of my work schedule now, and hopefully it will make me a little more sane, and give me a little more time for fun. Saturdays are officially my untouchable day off! Hurrah!

As of this Saturday my matress shows up! I’ve been waiting 3 weeks for this monster to be delivered…. I’m washing all my new sheets and comforter cover items right now, I cannot wait to wrap up in this lovely new down comforter and fall onto the new matress….. bedroom heaven!

Just for fun, I’m going to insert a few pictures from the gallery!

So, I’ve done a few things to ring in the New Year. Mainly, watched 2 awesome movies: Holiday with Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn, and Stardust. They’ve made me feel a few ways, and I will describe these ways for you:

Holiday

This movie is fantastic! Not only is it cute, it has Grant and Hep falling in love! Okay, so anyways, this movie screamed at that little part of my brain that has always been jealous of people doing handstands and things of that nature.  SOOOOO, I’m signing up for Beginning Chinese Acrobatics. Seriously. I’m going to learn how to tumble and fly and all those things. And when I feel like I’m in better shape, I’m also going to sign up for tumbling, so I can learn to do handsprings. It’s going to happen!

Stardust

Stardust is an adorable movie that speaks volumes to someone who feels like they might have fallen for the wrong person in the recent past. Damn you Victoria and your wicked ways. Do you ever feel like you’ve learned to put up with far to much bullshit for the sake of trying to find love? I certainly do.  I’m certainly going to be doing it less, I freaking swear.

Besides that, my New Year has begun with little else besides a bit of hope and a sprained ankle.  I lost my picture formatting gusto, but I’m almost almost done. I just need to finish the last half of 2007, and then UPLOAD them. And Voila, several years of pictures availabl. I’m very excited.

Sometimes, just sometimes, wonderful things happen. FOR EXAMPLE, imagine you fall asleep watching season 6 of Scrubs, and you wake up near the end of disc one. Sometimes, SOMETIMES, you will happen to notice that Turk is WEARING the same AWESOME PANDA SHIRT that you are wearing at the very moment. The VERY SAME AMAZING PANDA SHIRT that you bought in Bangkok. How the hell do these things happen…. Strangely enough, this actually leads me to discovering that several of my awesome panda shirts that I bought in Bangkok were pirated versions of shirts on Threadless. Which is funny, because I like to buy shirts on threadless anyways. Awesome. Merry Fuckin’ Christmas everybody!

I just got home to my Mom’s house. Everybodies asleep. I can’t wait to wake em all up tommorow and kick the crap out of my brothers. Tonight will be spent watching my brother’s Scrubs seasons 5 & 6! Finally! I hope everyone is having a nice Christmas.

Pictures will be finished when I return to the city shortly!

…smiled on my dice tonight. My coworkers taught me a game called 1-4-24. And I won a lot. I felt bad too, since I probably made more money than all of them tonight and there I was collecting their dollars with a grin Thank you lady!

On a more random note, I just want to point a few hilarious ‘best of’ Craigslist posts:

 Seeking the Heart of the Librarian?

What Happened to all the Nice Guys? 

and of course, the greatest Craigslist ever:

Survival of the Fittest 

Enjoy compadres!

The gallery! I’m working on it feverishly. I should be done with 2006 by Wednesday, then it may take me a week or so to fix 2007, being that I need to tackle the mountain of pictures that will be the Thailand file. Good god. When I’m done though, it will be nice. I’m hoping to have it organized into 3 categories, By Date, By Event, and My Favorites. But initially just By Date will do.

It’s weird looking at all the ex-girlfriend photos. To what extent does one include them in a public gallery? What will one’s theoretical future girlfriend think about them? I usually believe that everyone you date has an effect on you and thus, whether things end bad or good, they deserve to be acknowledged for the time they spent with you. But it’s certainly debatable. Maybe they don’t even want to be included in the gallery? Just thoughts…

With so much work these days, I haven’t been doing much but renting movies and staying indoors. Today is no exception. With work at 5:30, I decided to spend the day in the most amazing way I could think of. Prancing around the living room in my boxers with the music loud and the heater on full. It’s downright tropical in here and I love it.  Time for more prancing!

I just want to point out that I have redone my website yet again. Hopefully this time for good. It is now harder//better//faster//stronger. And I like it. I’m going to start bloggings more, and I’m completely redoing my gallery with new higher quality pictures!!! Hooray!! So check back, even though you are only in my imagination (because nobody real is gonna read this shit). Ha.

I’ve been lazy lazy lazy…. But I’m sleepless at 3:30am, jet lag is terrible. Time for stories!

When we left off, I was heading across the Burmese border into Tachilek. Burma, for me, was a fantastic experience based completely on fortune. It took 1 hour in the immigration to fill out the paperwork, acquire travelling papers, and recieve a temporary Burmese passporr. It was mandatory for my passport to be left at the immigration office in Tachilek, to insure that I left by the same way I entered. At the bus station I observed a Burmese fellow I thought to be some kind of drug dealer. His rings, necklace, bracelets, tatoos, and sunglasses all contrasted with the burmese around him and lent to his affluency. Since one of the few ways to gain such affluency was the afformentioned trade, I wondered! The bussride was quite eventful. We stop at no less than 10 military checkpoints in the course of our 6 hour busride to Kentung, all of which required copies of my travelling papers. We stopped at a travel stop type of restaurant on the side of the road where nobody seemed to speak English and I was terribly confused as to what to do. Then a voice yells out “Do you want something to eat? Come join me!” It was the affluent looking Burmese boy! I sat down, he ordered food, and we started talking.

Wow. Meet David, he’s 21, and Burmese of Akha tribe descent (identical tribe to one of the ones I visited in Thailand). It turns out he’s not a drug dealer, but something quite similar. He’s a hip-hop musician. He left Yangong, the biggest city in Burma, to visit his father who happens to be a political prisoner in Kentung. He spoke excellent English, and I spent the remainder of my time in Kentung with him. David taught me everything about Burma. He explained the politics to me, and taught me that most people will say Myanmar in public and Burma in private (they don’t like the evil government renaming the country). He taught me all about the music scene of Burma, which is rather amazing. He took me out to eat at several ‘unlabeled’ resteraunts that were so feared by my Burmese guidebook, and the food was phenomenal! We went on a craftsman tour, which was incredible because the craftsman had litterally never been visited by an American and they were very excited to see me. I saw laquerware, pottery and knives all being made in very old fashioned low-tech ways. As a side note, I was the only traveller I saw the whole time I was there. He introduced me to his Ahka tribe friends, and we drank Burmese tea at a tea bar and he did all the translating. Its hard for me to describe how impressed I was by David, with his English, his political views, his passion for his music, and his complete willingness to help me and teach me. It was amazing. I promised him we would meet up again someday, and he agreed.

After a few days, David helped arrange with the immigration office for me to move on to MongLa as I had originally planned. I was sad to go, and I wish I had just stayed a few more days in Kentung. Mong La turned out to be complete hell. It was abandoned, impossible to get by on English, overrun by joyriding Chinese, and just had the appearance of being completely run down. Everything was shabby, and faded, like the hayday had been 20 years ago. The animal market had seen better days too, i  was now 4 guys with cages of snakes and weird muskrat like animals. There were a few shops with tiger skins on the walls, but they refused to let me inside. I guess the failure of the animal business is a good thing however. I tried to eat at 2 different restaurants and failed. The language barrier proved impossible for these people to work past. I ended up eating wannabe oreos and watching subtitled Hong Kong action movies in my hotel room. I looked around the next day for a bit, was completely crushed by the depression of the city, and left immediately.

Over the next 24 hours I did nothing but retreat to the city of Chiang Mai again… The immigration officer in Kentung was quite friendly to me on my departure, but he said he knew   would hate Kentung. I didn’t see David again, but I have his Myspace! There’s no internet in that region of Burma however, so I won’t have a chance to express my appreciation to him for another few weeks, he was planning to stay in Kentung for 6.

Chiang Mai! My favorite Thai city! The layout is so pleasant, and there is a plethora of travellers and friendly Thai people. I spent the next week hanging out with Am, the nanny for the little boy from Florida that I had met at the Elephant camp. She took me to all the real Thai resteraunts, and the markets, and we did lots of normal things too like bowling and watching movies. She’s a huge English soccer fan, so I ended up staying longer than expected so we could watch the opening games of the season together. I spent alot of time reading and relaxing here. I really did absolutely nothing but relax and burn through Tolstoy’s major works: War and Peace, and Anna Karenina. Good job me! Eventually I decided I’d leave for an island in the south, and relax in the sun a bit. I was sad to go, I’d spent in total almost 2 weeks in Chang Mai, and I really liked the city. I new it well, I could navigate on a motorbike without problems, and the food was excellent! I said goodbye to Am, but she may come to America and visit sometime, I promised her a wonderfully friendly reception in San Francisco.

24 hours of busrides and I arrived in Koh Pahgnan as a zombie. I found a bungalo guesthouse by the sea and took up residence for a week. I had a porch with a hammock facing the sunset. What more could I ask for! The sea breeze was strong enough to keep all the insects away from my bungalo, and on several occassions I took advantage of this by sleeping in my hammock, the swaying caused by the warm ocean breaze was delicious! I met a Finnish fellow named Sauli, and we explored the island together on motorbikes and had a pretty fantastic time. We didn’t do much of anything however. We snorkeled a fair deal, but I spent a good majority of my day drinking fruitshakes and reading (I moved on to Dickens). It was exactly what I needed to end my trip.

After 7 days of island sun, I returned to Bangkok for 3 days of shopping and movies. On the bus I met two excellent British girls who were eager to employ my mastery of Thailands shopping district. This makes more sense if I explain: The big place for backpackers to stay in Bangkok is the region of Khoa San road. But its a bit of a blackhole, you stay there and you don’t leave much. I prefered staying in the shadow of the 8 story malls and skytrain tracks, because it was more conducive to my interests: The movie theatres were 5 minutes away, and the skytrain helped me avoid overcharging cabbies! So they listened to my advice, we stayed downtown, and went shopping for a whole day together. Such fun! Bangkok is very good for shopping. In the evening, I convinced them that the Kathooey Cabaret was the best way to end our trips in Thailand (they were leaving too), and so we went. It was a song and dance show acted out by some of the most convincing transvestites (or lady-boys as they are generally called there) I had ever seen. Thanks to the magics of surgery, its impossible to tell the difference between a good lady boy and a real lady. I will have pictures to prove it in the future! My final two days were spent at Chatuchak market, the massive weekend market full of amazing deals. I bought everyone presents, bought myself a fiew goodies, and had a good time with my bargaining skills!

Alas, on August 27th at 6:50am, my stay in Thailand ceased. I met Erin at the airport in Oakland yesterday, and I’m now faced with Jetlag for the first time in my life. My body wants to sleep and eat at all the exactly opposite times it should (damn you 14 hour difference). If the quality of this letter differs from the previous ones, it can be blamed on my lack of sleep!

So I’m home, sort of. I don’t have a home. I don’t have a job. I don’t have any money, and I don’t quite have the planned out future I had before. I’m a bit frightened by the overwhelming amount of things I have to deal with immediately. I don’t really want to go back to being a waiter, but I might have too…. Ugg! There’s just not much for a zoologist to do in San Francisco that covers the rent… I’m working on it though. If anyone has any ideas, or information on server vacancies, let me know. In better news, my best friend Cassidy has waited patiently for me to return, so that we might find our housing together. If there’s anything to be positive about, its knowing for sure I have a good roomate

All in all, my trip was an excellent one. It changed quite alot from what I thought it was going to be, but I learned alot. Now I just have to sort out my future, but I think it will work out! Thank you to everyone for your responses to my letters, I’m sorry if I didn’t respond often enough, but I appreciated being able to read your letters! Thank you!

Signing off

Hello Hello Hello!

It has beem quite a while since I’ve written anything, but my mother inspired me into action thanks to an earlier conversation we had. So here goes…

We left off and I was in Chiang Mai for trekking and elephants and that sort of thing. That was about two weeks ago or so. As far as trekking goes, I did that, and it was a little unspectacular. Basically, a ‘trek’ in Chiang Mai is a 3-7 day adventure in the surrounding countrysides consisting of several miniature adventurous episodes. I decided on a three day trek because I had nothing better to do until I went to the Elephant Conservation Center, and it seemed like fun. At first it seemed like quite a lot of fun. We climbed up a waterfall that had carved its way into stone and was very grippable when barefoot. I took some pretty pictures and got excited about the rest of the trip. Sadly, this was the highlight of the trip and it happened within the first 2 hours. Thereafter we did a lot of hiking in countryside completely devoid of wildlife. The hilltribes of the area, roughly equivalent to the native tribes of the USA, had hunted every huntable species to regional extinction. It is also worth noting that the definition of huntable species in Thailand extends far beyond the range of huntable species in America; the land was truly devoid of critters! Other activities of the trip included visiting hilltribe villages, riding elephants, and a river trip on a bamboo raft. Each of these endeavours was a new low in my trip.

The hilltribe visits are interesting to say the least. What is supposed to be a glimpse into a less technological society is instead a disinterested song and dance number providing a reasonable cover for the massive drug operations carried out by the tribal villages. As far as I can tell this isn’t a gross generalization either. To the delight of my trekmates, the opium was as readily available as the handicrafts. I could care less about the drugs, but I’m not a fan of the completely hollow cultural prostitution. The Elephant ride was more like the ‘watch your elephant get screamed at’ ride. I like being around Elephants, but I don’t like watching their abuse. Oh right, and the raft ride was just a 30 minute trip down a sewage pathway. Summary: Chaing Mai treks are good for people who want to experience th  greatoutdoors in the form of prepackaged tourist garbage. On to better things!

The low point of my trip thus far was immediately followed by the high point. Go figure. The Thai Elephant Conservation Camp is the most amazing place ever. It is a sanctuary for all the elephants of Thailand, situated an hour from Chiang Mai. They have free veterinary facilities for any elephant, they do free veterinary checks ups every year on elephants in Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia, they have shows for tourists to learn about elephants and get close to them, and they offer courses that give one a glimpse into the life of an Elephant trainer, or Mahout. I went for the latter! I arrived at the center at 8:45 am in the morning, and by 9:00 am I was climbing onto the bareback of an elephant. They launch you right into it there. My elephants name was Wanalee, she was 10 years old, born at the center, and her Mahout’s nam  was Tuim. He taught me all sorts of commands by which I could communicate to the elephant what I wanted to do. For example, by a slight tug on the ear and the words Song Soom (or something like that spelling), my elephant would bend her front leg, forming a sort of step that would allow me to climb on or off her unassisted. There were directional commands for right, left, forwards, back, commands to pick up objects, pull on things, commands to sit, stand, kneel, and bend foward (so that I might slide down off her head). When riding on Wanalee, I was instructed to sit with my butt on her neck and my knees up and sor  of resting behind her ears. By the end of each day my thigh muscles were jello. Each of my three days at the center involved putting on a show for the tourists (and demonstrating my new elephant mahout prowess), bathing with the elephants several times, training and practicing commands, and taking the elephant to and from their resting place in the forest. Bathing was by far the highlight. Basically, Wanalee and all the other elephants crash straight into a lake with riders on their backs, and proceed to submerge and play. Tuim often conspired to get me soaking wet in several ways. The first way was telling Wanalee to stay submerged until my jellowy legs gave  way (I would be crouching on her back above the surface) and I would fall into the water. The second was sneakier and took me a long time to figure out. There was a command that sounded like Bong Boom, and its utterance would cause Wanalee to inhale water into her trunk and fire at any target I pointed at. I would often do this and point at fellow trainees in the water, bu  she would often fire the water at me instead. I thought I was doing it wrong, but later I noticed that every time I said Bong Boom, Tuim would tap my elephants rear in a characteristic pattern. He had trained her to shoot the rider when he tapped like this, and thus I kept getting drenched to his great amusement. After I discovered this however, I took matters into my own hands and aimed Wanalee’s trunk at him manually. This involves just reaching out and grabbing her trunk and pointing it at him. It was fantastic. The end result of my 3 days at the camp were extremely sore smiling muscles and a really deep respect for elephants. They are so smart and majestic and pretty, and strong! New paragraph!

Some examples of the extreme intelligence of elephants: When Wanalee was thirsty on the training grounds, she would walk up to the faucet, turn it on, drink, and when she was done drinking, she would turn off the faucet. All this was accomplished with her extremely dextrous trunk. Before bathtime, I would drop my shows on the ground at the edge of the lake. After bath time, she would return to my shoes and hand them to me. Anyone who had their sandals fall off while riding always found them promptly returned as well. Another highlight of the elphant camp was the baby elephant, named AI. He was 4 months old, and the first elephant in the world born of Artificial Insemination (hence his name). 4 month old elephants are the cutest things in the world, both in looks and manners. I could not stop adoring little AI. Little is a bit innaccurate though, he’s quite big and strong already. At 4 months old, a game of tug of war (trunk instead of rope) resulted in my being smashed into his fence (his strength is probably the reason for the fence). I took quite a few pictures, and there is a link to them at the end of this letter! I could go on and on and on about how amazing the Elephant center was…. I would fly to Thailand JUST to go there. I want to go back someday. I would say it is the best thing to do with one’s time in Thailand, and well worth the expense.

After the highs of the Elephant Conservation Center, I decided to returnto Chiang Mai and relax for a bit while I decided what to do. The food, and atmosphere of Chiang Mai is perfect for that sort of thing. I spent a fair bit of time with a 9 year old boy from Florida that I met at the Conservation Center. He was visiting his grandparents, who were more than happy to let me go bowling with him and goto the movies. Sadly, I embarassed myself a bit when a bad reaction to Doxycicline caused me to throwup in their planter box outside their apartment. Sorry! I guess it was fate however, because on seeing my reaction to the cheap Malaria medicine they aquired some Malarone for me, the expensive medicine unavailable in Thailand. They were really nice people. The malaria medicine relates to my newest plan, Burma. I’m at the border town of Mae Sae right now, and I plan on crossing into Burma tommorow. My interest lies in the northern city of Mongla, which lies on the Chinese border. It is basically a Chinese city, few Burmese live there, and it caters to the Chinese across the border with casinos and markets of illegal goods. Here is reputed to be one of the worst wildlife markets in the world. This is the sort of place where baby leopards and rhino horns and other rarities are sold to the detriment of the environment. Its the kind of place I need to see with my own eyes. Just thinking about it makes me sad, but I’m resolved to do it. Getting there will be a bit of a pain in the ass however. Foreigner travel to Mongla is regulated and requires paperwork in several locations. Should be interesting!

If you are interested, elephant pictures are to be found here:

http://www.kylekyle.com/pics/elephant

I think they are pretty self explanatory That’s all for now, I hope you are all well, and I promise to write when I return from Burma!

Hello Everybody!

When I left off, I was about about to see a soccer game in Bangkok… I’ll continue from there! The soccer game was a blast! It rained the whole time and I left the stadium drenched to the bone, but my seat was fantastic! Australia beat Thailand 4-0 which was a little sad for all the Thailanders around me, but I was close to Thailands goal in the second half and got to see 3 of the 4 goals in great closeup detail. What a rush!

The next morning I left for Cambodia, on what would turn out to be the ride from hell. The companies working the transportation did everything in their power to take the passengers money, often outright lieing about various things. I’m sad I fell for some of it, but its hard not to when you don’t know anything about the country you are entering! The trip lasted about 5 hours longer than it was supposed to as well, making it difficult to not stay at the hotel they tried to force on us. All in all, I left my hotel at 7:30am and arrived in Siem Riep, Cambodia, at 11:40 PM… ouch. The road between Poipet, the Cambodian border town, and Siem Riep, the Ankor town is literally the worst major road in the world. The pictures I took hardly did it justice. I think I’ll do better describing it in person. So anyways, lessons learned here: Get yourself to Cambodia. Don’t charter with a travel company.

Cambodia itself was fantastic! The ruins are countless, and all amazing. I watched every sunset, and forced myself awake for 2 of my 3 sunrises because they were just tooo good to miss! The hard thing to see was the effect of all this tourism on the people. Outside of every temple is an army of children trying t  sell you the same stack of things you don’t want, and everytime you say no it almost seems like they take it personally. I learned that the kids only go to school 4 hours a day, in shifts, so there are always children to sell things at the ruins. The older merchants aren’t any better. The drivers everywhere harass you nonstop about rides, the women yell and fight over the right to sell you a bottle of water, and it all adds u  to one big headache. The only way to overcome it really is to block it all out. Its a shame, but the ruins made it worth it. One thing I really enjoyed was hiring a driver for the day. At about 8 dollars for a whole day, my driver zipped me about on the back of his motorcycle to anywhere my heart desired. He knew all the ruins and planned out oy itinerary perfectly. Afer the second day though, I ended up sharing a motorcyle dranw carriage (seriously) with 2 people I had met at the border and continued to meet throughout the first and second day, until we decided to join forces. In summary, the detail of the ruins was spectacular, the scale immense, and the heat harsh. My pictures will do the place a lot more justice I assure you.

A few other activities caught my eye as well: The floating village of Tonle Sap was quite interesting… Everything you can imagine, floating on the water. Fish farms, schools, houses, bars, churches, stores, resteraunts, and even a pool hall were to be found floating in that river town. It was fascinating to see that, even out on a river with no electricity, every house had a TV (run on a car battery). In Siem Riep proper, I joined my two companions in giving blood at a children’s hospital. They were very happy about foreigners coming in to donate, and it was perfectly sanitary and acceptable (so don’t worry)!

I left Saturday morning, and annoyed my hotel to pieces by refusing the return bus trip (they were one of the organizers of it). Instead, I booked a car with a friend of the motorcycle carriage driver belonging to my two companions. For $25, he drove me to the Cambodian border in 3 hours. Compare that to the 9.5 hours it took the bus from the Cambodian border (that cost about $15-18ish), and you can see how I learned that sometimes spending a little bit more goes quite a long way. In Thailand, I booked a bus to Bangkok hoping to make the Vietnam vs Iraq soccer game (Not a game you’d see held in the U.S.A. I suspect), but the bus I booked had a few problems. It wasn’t an express bus, and somehow my backpack got placed on the wrong bus. Uh-oh. I ended up waiting at the busstation for another 2 hours until my bag showed up, and I had missed the soccer game. Considering my situation, I made a quick decision, and hopped on a VIP bus to Chiang Mai. VIP busses are great, they are hugely comfortable, include pillows an  blankets and seats that recline extensively. So rather than staying in Bangkok for a few days, I found myself arriving in one of Thailand’s northernmost towns at 5am. Phew. I think I’m going to settle down for a few days…

In fact, I have a mighty plan. There’s an Elephant sanctuary about 2 hours away. Not only do they harbour and care for abused elephants, they offer free veterinary care to all Elephants, give tours and educate tourists, enrich the elephants with things like music and painting (I may have mentioned my desire to see this place in person before), among other activities. Well, I learned a bit more about them and I think I’m going to spend the rest of my time and money there. They offer a ‘mahout training program,’ which is in essence a sampling of what it is like to be an elephant mahout, or trainer. He is the guy who lives with and cares for the elephant from birth. So, for as many days as you like, they will teach you how to talk with elephants, ride them bareback, lead them around, bathe them, play with them, and everything else involved in the captive elephant life. I’m thinking of going and experiencing this for 9 or 10 days. Its expensive, enough so that it will burn through the rest of my money, but I’ve thought a while about it, and I don’t mind trading a few weeks travel for this experience. It’s going to be worth it!

So I may be coming back rather soon, in less than 3 weeks probably, but I don’t mind one bit. I’ve done so much and seen so much in the past 2 months, it’s been incredible! I’m very excited about this intimate elephant experience, perhaps it will be the inspiration I need for the future? We’ll see!