Oh Crap and a Lot of Other Four Letter Words I Don't Know in French

Madagascar.  I guess it's what I expected; the unexpected.  Only hitting the capital of Antananarivo this week, we have yet to embark on our wilderness jungle trek to find lemurs and other strange flora and fauna.  I'm just now getting on board the Antananarivo train.  Initially it was enough to send me into acute travelers' shock (also see; adult temper tantrums).  Even after six months of straight travel, this is so different from anything I've even come close to experiencing.  

I've gotten used to English being the second language of all the countries we've visited.  I've made a sincere attempt to learn at least some of the local language wherever we go, supplementing with sign language and my mother tongue.  Madagascar's second language after Malagasy though is French (How do you say "oh shit" in French).  We bought a phrase book, but the language barrier in addition to this being the weirdest place I've ever been is a hard adjustment.  I'm glad to say that "bon jour" and "merci" said with a shit eating grin have been going a long way though.

Even if I could speak the language there is a popsicle's chance in hell of blending in here.  In SE Asia at least we were part of (which doesn't equal proud of) a common tourist trail, running into other nomads of a similar cloth.  There is no such commonality here.  I can count on one hand the number of white people I've seen so far.  People will blatantly point, gawk and follow you around while laughing at you.  Everywhere I go people are hollering the French word for vanilla at me.  Which was off-putting and, awkwardly, slightly flattering until, after two days here, I realized they were actually trying to sell me vanilla beans.  Who's the stupid tourist?  I mean, I can't blame them, we look weird and sweaty compared to everyone else.  I just don't know how to adjust to the kind of celebrity where people are taking pictures of you buying gum.  

If that wasn't intimidation enough, there is the outstanding crime rate to deal with in the city.  The guide books warned us you could not even go out with a bag as it you are doomed for certain robbery.  Our lovely hotel host even warned us multiple times to never leave with a bag or with anything in your pockets.  Which leaves you with the only option of using one of those stomach pooch enhancing money belts that you wear under your pants.  Besides the dork factor, it's really not that bad except it looks like you are reaching into your underwear every time you have to pay the drink bill.  Other popular seedy activities include the ever present prostitution, another reason to avoid going out at night (some Italian tourists mistook us for hookers already).  Oddly enough though, the local whorehouse is quite a popular and legitimate dining establishment.  Specializing in fancy French delicacies and desserts at a bargain, we visited for some lunch and serious people watching.  My food was quite delicious and the people watching (voyerism may be more appropriate in this case) was fascinating, gross and fun all at the same time.  When the bill came, it made reaching into that money belt all the more fascinating.  Lunch at a whorehouse, now that's another first (that I know of) to put in the travel log.

We're heading out on a two week wildlife trekking adventure tomorrow.  Madagascar is not the most cutting edge when it comes to the technology that is the world wide web and I imagine the rainforest is scant on broadband.  So it is with a heavy hart that I must warn you that you may not hear from me during this stretch.  Save your tears for the whales and Lindsay Lohan, I promise I'll be back soon.  Au revoir! 

Antananarivo

Mt. Kilimanjaro from the plane!

Dear Savings Account; If You Can't Support Me Then Maybe We Shouldn't be Friends

Let me start by saying the most cliche, but accurate, thing I can think of in this situation; how time flys.  We have officially hit the half way point of our travels.  Six solid months on the road.  SE Asia has become a comfort zone; easy enough to get around, the food is familiar/delightful and the sweet coffee cart lady knows my order.  It's hard to remember it wasn't always this breezy and after a half a year of traveling we are finally headed to a place that seems a million times more foreign; Madagascar.  But I'm not scared (just REALLY scared).  In attempts to ease the new anxiety, let's review the things I was most nervous about before heading on this trip six months ago

Budgeting:  Sticking to a budget is about as mythical as a tap-dancing unicorn.  I don't even know the definition of budget anymore unless budget means to spend your money with abandon, ceasing to worry about getting home and getting on a first name basis with MasterCard.  We actually spent a lot of time researching and calculating estimated per diem expenses for every single country we would be visiting.  I even made a spreadsheet.  Typical, overly organized, annal (get your mind out of the gutter),  frugal, pre-departure Krista would have acquired a severe eye twitch if you told me I would have blown through this much money at the half way point.  The new me, however, says "To the hell with it! Who wants some Cristal?".  I don't know the next time I'll have a chance to sky dive over New Zealand, snorkel in Indonesia or commission custom made rompers in Vietnam.  "Necessity" is not the aim here and while some of my monetary decisions may not even be somewhat justifiable, it has definitely been absolutely worth it.  Just as long as someone let's me sleep on their couch when I get back.  

Homesickness:  Almost as mythical as budgeting.  Before any of you go and get your feelings hurt, let me assure you that this is absolutely true.  Sure I get nostalgic and of course I miss the accessibility of my family and friends.  Hopefully this put's this in perspective though; I'm going to Madagascar tomorrow!  I'll have visited as many countries as I am years old by the time I'm back.  I've been assaulted by monkeys, watched the Rugby World Cup live and kissed dismembered goat balls on top of lush New Zealand mountainside. Love you all, but I hardly want to come back anytime soon.  

24 Hour Buddy System:  Mine and Kelly's friendship is still intact even after spending every waking minute together for the last half year.  I sometimes imagine this might be something close to marriage only we don't get a break from each other during work or the sexual benefits.  Frankly I thought this would be a bigger challenge at this point.  Not that I ever imagined Kelly being and abrasive travel buddy, but alone time is at a serious premium.  Don't get me wrong, it's not all hair braiding and umbrella festooned mojitos either.  Just mostly.  Our occasional tiffs usually stem from some extended travel day where we've taken a taxi, to a shuttle, to a boat, to a tuk tuk, to a sleeper bus and 24 hours later we are still not at our destination.  Nobody gets the Miss Manners Award when you've been marinating in your own filth for that long.  And there is always the little problem I like to refer to as the Krista-is-always-right-factor.  This can be an issue when we are heaving overstuffed backpacks around in 100 degree heat trying to find our god damn hostel when Kelly thinks we go left and I vehemently insist (with the deepest respect) that we should go right.  Usually it's nothing a snack can't fix.  Plus, who are we to really complain when our biggest challenges include trying to find our next hammock laden bungalow in paradise.  Remember when we used to have those things called jobs?

My biggest fears being debunked, I should have no hesitations about going to Madagascar.  I'm sure we'll assimilate just as we have in every other initially uncomfortable foreign embarkment.  Yes, we will stick out like a couple porcupines at nudist colony, but we haven't exactly been incognito in our recent Asian adventures either.  I guess the only thing to worry about now is how to avoid contracting Malaria.  I hope the mosquitos have a sense of humor.

Warning: May Cause Drowsiness

It's been getting increasingly harder to write posts with any entertainment value.  My lifestyle as of late has mostly included a lot of lounging: reading, hammocking, floating in the ocean, hammocking, eating and, most importantly, hammocking.  On the eve of a new week, I voiced my concerns to Kelly and Dayna about being able to write anything remotely interesting.  Kelly suggested that I don't necessarily need to be entertaining and that I could merely reflect on my feelings for this installment.  Besides looking alike, you can tell Dayna and I are sisters based on our general state of asshole-ness.  In response to Kelly's suggestion, Dayna verbally expressed what I was struggling to suppress, "That would be BORING".  I'll try to keep my sentiments to a minimum for you.  So in attempts to spice up what the group has predicted to be a dull entry this week, I'm currently writing this naked (alright and the room has no A/C and I'm melting).  Let me know if it works.  

Let me get right to describing a typical day over the past week.  We've taken up residence on the ultra mellow island of Koh Lanta in the Andaman Sea.  After the standard two hour breakfast, leisurely swim, followed by an extended lunch we went to the "sports bar" across the street to watch some Super 15 Rugby.  My favorite.  More accurately described, the bar is simply a minuscule thatch hut equipped with several TVs and a few dusty bottles of liquor.  The place is run by a gay, pot smoking, super generous, French ex-pat.  Admittedly he is not even a huge rugby fan, but enjoys anytime he gets to see Dan Carter on TV.  His complaint during the halftime, when the coverage cuts to the locker room footage of the shirtless athletes, was that the players were not actually fully stripping down to change into new uniforms.  God bless him for paying the exorbitant subscription fees for the sports channel on a secluded island.  Exhausted from the entertainment and indulgence, we managed squeezed in an afternoon swim before dinner.  While all of this adds up to be an amazing day, it's not quite the knee slapper.  Just a day full of happiness (see, I did talk about my feelings!).

This pre-blog discussion was perhaps a slight wake up call.  For the love of blog, have we become so lazy that we are failing to take the bull by the horns?  In attempts to break the cycle of complacency, we did you all a little favor and packed in a few activities in the last 24 hours (you're welcome); Muay Thai Boxing, Kayaking and, the highlight of the day, Kelly getting herself locked in the bathroom.   

Muay Thai Boxing is about what you'd expect; a bunch of dudes beating the shit out of each other.  I find these events to be a most captivating and they frankly inspire me in a way that encourages drunk fighting.  The drunk part inspired by the arena's bucket cocktails.  Why Thailand is opposed to a simple pint glass is mind boggling.  In the end peace was managed by the little voice in the back of my head reminding me that I had to get up and go Kayaking the next day.

Despite the Thai affinity for making drinks in the same vessel you would use to construct sand castles, we made it to our Kayaking adventure.  In the blazing heat, that causes you to sweat out more alcohol than you actual consumed the night before, we hit the water.  Dayna and I smirked as we got our own Kayak and Kelly was forced to pair up with the tour leader.  Looser.  We then quickly realized that paddling is hard.  Forget the heat, forget the lingering booze, our sisterly connection apparently does not extend into the realm of synchronized paddling.  We spent most of our efforts laboriously spinning in circles with occasional breaks to ram ourselves into the shore.  The guide, who doesn't speak a lick of english, makes a point of tapping Kelly on the shoulder every time we get stuck so they can have a hearty laugh together.  By the time we actually reach our destination, I'm so exhausted that I couldn't give a flying fuck about the wild monkeys, various varieties of crabs or the mudskippers, the fish that can walk on land (it's what I imagine evolution looked like all those years ago).  In the end Dayna and I miraculously found our groove and successfully, if not almost athletically, made it back alive.  

Upon our return home for a much needed shower and a drink, Kelly found herself the victim of a Thailand bathroom.  Thus, inherently delaying the critical drink part of the plan.  So selfish.  Forgetting the bathroom doorknob in our bungalow was only half up to code (there was only a knob on one side of the door), Kelly in a crazy notion of privacy firmly shut the door to take her shower.  Freshly showered and fully naked she realized her mistake.  As hard as we pushed, jiggled and manipulated the would be handle, it was no use.  Dayna ran to the front desk to explain the predicament and solicit some help.  A funny thing trying to explain that your naked friend is trapped in the bathroom to someone who doesn't speak english.  That one didn't make it into the Thai phrasebook.  Eventually Dayna's sign language skills paid off and rescue was on the way...only they didn't know how to break her out either.  A lot more jiggling ensued before they brought in a wrench, a razor blade and what can most accurately be described as a pokey object.  After another 30 minutes it was the pokey devise that finally prevailed.  A liberated Kelly later and I finally had something to write about.  

Snakes, Snails and Elephant Tails

I have two words to summarize my life over the last couple of weeks: Island Hopping.  And this lifestyle is living up to it's stereotype; fan-fucking-tastic!  The majority of our days has been spent soaking in the glassy turquoise ocean.  The waters are almost too warm.  I don't have the audacity to suggest that this is a complaint and it is certainly not to rub it in (well, perhaps a little), it's just that the water is so warm that it doesn't quite have that refreshing effect you strive for on a scalding hot afternoon.  Luckily their are other amazing island things to do besides bathing in the ocean such as lounging in the sun or perhaps playing with some baby elephants. 

My hippie sensibilities won't actually allow me to ride the elephants due to their lack of ethical treatment, illegal poaching, forced eating, all of the bullet points on the P.E.T.A. website, the rapid decline of the elephant ratio in animal crackers, etc.  That is a soapbox rant for another time on my less entertaining blog.  This doesn't mean, however, that I won't go and pet their adorable little baby elephant trunks and giggle at their ridiculous pachyderm antics.  For christ's sake, they look like they're wearing permanent feetie pajamas.  You're just a bad person if that doesn't make you slightly giddy inside.  They don't actually even have to do much of anything and I still will coo over them like a pigeon with tourettes.  One of the babies produced a baby elephant sized bowel movement, turned around, smelled it, shook his head with dizzying disgust and I just about teared up over the pure cuteness.  Forget what state I was in when they let the little guys out for their bath and one of them escaped and ran into the nearest restaurant.  A toddler elephant in a restaurant!  Trust me, you can't imagine anything more darling then seeing the caretaker having to lure the little guy out with a bag of crackers (part of a complete herbivore breakfast). 

Speaking of morally questionable activities, we traveled to Koh Phangan this week to throw down at the ridiculous festival that is the Full Moon Party.  Ranked as one of the Top 10 Parties in the World (yes, they officially rank parties in addition to the Top 10 Natural Wonders, Ancient Wonders and Man Made Structures) the Full Moon Party is part of the prestigious list along with Brazil's Carnivale and New Orleans' Mardis Gras.  Haad Rin Beach explodes with tens of thousands of whities sporting more neon than was ever produced in the early 90s.  Some drunken beach activities include fire limbo, fire jump roping and fast paced water slides; each of which at least one of us participated in.  Dressed in our best neon and sparkles we hit the beach armored with tubes of glitter, our objective to leave Koh Phangan just a bit shinier than we found it.  Witness to inevitable drunk fights that evening, I lurked around the perimeters for the right moment to dump a sparkling vile of peace and happiness onto the confrontations .  The water slide, however, proved to be the most effective way to mass sparkle bomb the beach though.  In order to load myself into the slide properly I had to have Kelly fill both my fists full of sparkles before launching myself into the abyss.  As I flew through the air, the surrounding crowd on both sides got a flash flood of twinkle and shine.  My glitter bombing skills are notorious in many countries, but even I must toot my preverbal horn here and say this was some of my best work yet.

As it turns out, Kelly and I have different strengths when it comes to these drunk-tivities.  I may be the glitter queen, but Kelly is the fire goddess, braving the fire limbo AND fire jump rope.  She even made it out relatively unscathed with only a couple minor burns.  Turns out jumping is much harder in the sand when compared to solid ground (and sobriety).  Later that week when we were getting tattoos (is this a passive agressive enough way to tell my mom I got another tattoo?) the tattoo artist told us the locals actually refer to those Full Moon injuries as the real Koh Phangan tattoos.  The day after the party an outstanding number of tourists were liberally bandaged from burns accrued from the previously mentioned activities, cut feet from broken beer bottles and nasty road rashes from motor bike skid outs.  My favorite siting being the guy who's entire left side of his body was heavily wrapped in gauze.  I'm talking his head, arm, chest, legs and even his toes were bandaged from an apparent motor bike incident.  He was spotted astride a motorbike, mummified up to his noggin and yet, he still chose to ride sans helmet.  I wish I knew what kind of grudge he was holding against his brain.  At least I paid a professional for my injuries.   

Reunited and it Feels so Good

We made it!  Back in Bangkok in time to pick up the next character in our cast, Big White Girl #3.  I may also refer to her as my sister, Dayna, but I know it must be hard to keep all us broads straight at this point in the story.  

Besides retrieving the third musketeer, returning to the big city this week was good timing for us.  Not even halfway through this trip and I am all out of passport pages.  I read the guide books, I promise, and thought I had plenty of pages left in my book.  It turns out that every bloody country has adopted the gargantuan visa sticker that monopolizes a full passport page normally reserved for four stamps.  Near experts at international bureaucratic shenanigans at this point (customs, extensions and visas, oh my!), I was unfazed by what now seems like another day at the office.  Plus, I was secretly looking forward to a little visit to the U.S. Embassy for some American soil action where upon seeing our blue passports they would surely greet us with open arms and a grande soy mocha.  The U.S. Embassy welcome wagon almost lived up to my expectations with a full body pat down and the confiscation of nearly all my personal belongings.  The passport augmentation was actually fairly painless with the exception being that after months of traveling in foreign countries, this time I could actually understand the assholes who were complaining in the waiting area.    

After taking care of business we were off to celebrate our reunion properly.  The last time Kelly and I were in Bangkok we were still drying out from New Years and completely forwent the tourist bar scene.  Bolstered with our shiny new livers and younger sibling to boot, we took to the bar lined street that is Khao San Road.  Known as the party strip of Bangkok, the clubs laugh at the idea of a typical American sized cocktail and choose to serve all beverages in a bucket...and at a  bargain: 2 for 1.  My pristine liver was no match.  After a solid attempt at dancing (my robot was on point!), it was time to go home.  

Three fried street snacks later, we hailed a tuk tuk to take us home.  For unknown reasons the driver assumed we were drunk and thought he could pull one over on us by taking us to a bar across town instead of our requested destination.  Some of the less reputable drivers receive commission from the bars for bringing in business in the form of drunken tourists.  Apparently he didn't know this fact though: Three inebriated girls equals approximately one Mensa member.  Unfortunately the genius was a bit slow to kick in and we paid the douche before realizing we were nowhere close to our hotel.  Fortunately though, Dayna did have enough wherewithal to jump back into the tuk tuk to demand our money back.  Shockingly, the small asian man did not think zero fare and no bar commission was a good deal.  Dayna wasn't budging.  He retorted by taking off with Dayna in tow.  Let's make something clear here; no one kidnaps my baby sister (ok, slightly dramatic, but who doesn't love drama?).  In a moment of pure athleticism that can only be achieved by several buckets of mojitos, I was able to dive into the moving tuk tuk.  A shouting match ensued as Dayna and I demanded our money back from the slight man (who at this point is clearly on something and the paranoia now showing in his dilated pupils) and him flat out refusing as he hit the gas.  How he thought he was going to get away from us while we were still physically in his vehicle is beyond me.  Occupying the tuk tuk with the one person with whom I can have a full conversation without words, Dayna and I looked at each other and, with our still alcohol enhanced reflexes, pinned the petite driver from behind to his seat.  That sure stopped him.  Realizing he was the size of my right thigh and desperate to get the behemoths out of his vehicle he conceded to giving us our money back.  Panicking, from what is surely known as Giantphopia, he conceded to giving us our money back and accidentally returned more than we had originally paid.  Bonus!

A few days later when renting motor bikes, the lady at the rental office made a point of telling me to pump up the tires before heading out for the day.  Spreading her arms wide in the universal "you're a huge bitch" sign, she over emphasized the tires' need for extra air in order to haul my ass around.  While normally a self esteem killer at least I can take solace in knowing that it was this precise characteristic that got me out of the sticky situation with the tiny tuk tuk tweeker AND earned me a profit.  Advantage: Big Girls.  

Don't worry, the tires held up after all