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Wednesday, July 28 And thankfully enough, no one carelessly left their passport behind this time round. Blah. Too tired to post anything substantial. We were supposed to meet up tonight for a post-tour sort of gathering but both Josh and Ken seemed to be coming down with a cold or something, and I guess Beef was just being his lazy self. So instead I met up with Stephane, Yee, Mei and Gladys to fill them in on all the juicy tour gossips, whereby I then proceeded to fill myself with video arcade smoke and Hui Lau San mango dessert. Then everyone had their own plans and I was too worn out to meet up with Jo for some karaoke, so I'm now in my local cyber cafe hangout instead. It's going to be a busy week or two. Since the rent for my ghetto public estate flat will commence on the first of August, I should really make the effort to begin transferring my personal belongings over and start adjusting to life in Choi Hung - my first experience of living on Kowloon-side. Luckily enough, this coincides perfectly with the arrival of the carton boxes that I had squeezed my London life into a couple of months earlier. And then of course there's the trip I need to make to Amsterdam for tstgu's appearance at Flevo Festival, which means I should start learning the new material and refreshing my memory with the oldies. That about sums it up. Sorry to all the people I failed to meet up with in Singapore and Malaysia. One thing led to another and I just ended up with hardly any time to myself, nevermind being able to see as many people as possible. But now that I'm back in HK for good, I should hopefully make a more laid-back and casual visit in the near future. And sorry also to the people who've sent me emails over the last couple of months... I still don't have my own computer and being on tour definitely didn't improve the situation. You WILL hear from me sooner or later :)
Monday, July 26 Words will only go so far to describe the wonderful experience/adventure I've shared with Buddhistson and Whence He Came, so hopefully the 12-13 rolls that I shot across Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia will do a better job of conveying the many things I saw, felt and tasted: cutthroat taxi/tuk-tuk drivers, majestic Wat temples, incredibly effeminate ladyboys, roti canai + kopi o ais at 6 AM, waking up on a train to vast regions of lush paddy fields, falling in love with the crumbling 50/60s architecture of SE Asian chinatowns, sound engineers who don't believe in the existence of stage monitors and DI boxes, communicating with Buddhistson via broken English and butchered Japanese, going to toilets and discovering a water hose in place of where the toilet paper should be, learning how to apologize for having a boner in Japanese, being surprised by my cousin Su Wern whom I had not seen in about 13 years, fresh mangoes, fresh coconuts, fresh starfruits, ice kacang, getting my mee goreng order 'misplaced' at two difference places... the list goes on. Thank you Shima, Yumi, Marcy, Yoshi and Ito for being the nicest bunch of people I've ever had the chance to tour with and for allowing me to stand in for Yas with my wobbly basslines. O genki de! Thank you Baybeats, Shah and Sterling for making this tour a reality. Thank you Gori and Michi for being such wonderfully quiet travelling companions. Thank you Dinesh for being a mighty damn fine host in Singapore. And last but not least, a big fat sloppy kiss to my girlfriends Josh, Ephraim, Ken and Stephane for the music and the love - my stomach's kinda had it with all that spicy laksa nonsense so let's try a steady diet of bread and cheese in Europe this fall and enjoy a little constipation instead ok?
Friday, July 23 After a hassle-free rendez vous with one of our Thai contacts at the Bangkok station, we dropped our bags off at our promoter Sterling's house and proceeded to make our way to the backpacker's haven better known as Khaosan Road. As is often the case with managing and moving a large group of people from point A to point B - in our case 12 - we were left with little more than 45 minutes to blow our money on cheap fake goods before it was time to once again head back over to the house. We disappointedly walked away with HK$35 Birkenstocks and other bits and pieces, determined to return later on in the evening. The gig itself is worthy of a blog of its own. In short, it took place on a boat, consisted of acoustic sets from both bands and basically was filled up with rich middle age folks who took far more interest in the abundant supply of Thai finger foods than either of the bands' songs. But in all fairness, the event was held in honour of a handful of AIDS awareness organizations so it made sense that we took the backseat for a change and humbly provided a little evening background music or something. These days it seems that AIDS and condoms go hand in hand, and tonight was no exception. A couple of girls walked around the boat handing out free fruit flavoured condoms to everyone in attendance. Most of us got one whilst Josh received a couple - I guess one for him and another for his ladyboyfriend. Hehe. Towards the end of the evening, Gori one of our Japanese boy roadies was spotted walking away with a huge bag of free condoms... maybe a couple hundred held tightly between his arms and the widest grin across his face... whether he can successfully use them all before they melt in this tropical heat is another thing. The real excitement to the evening began when we returned to Khaosan Road. The difference compared to when we were there earlier in the afternoon was as drastic as night and day. Gone were all the stalls we had hoped to find cheap fake goodies, and in their place instead were a few dozen of Bangkok's infamous ladyboys, walking seductively up and down the sidewalks like predators on the prow. Height and the blatant overuse of make-up gave a fair number of them away immediately but there were some whom I honestly thought were women. The other group that dominated the street consisted of your stereotypical white anglo mid-20s backpacker/sexpatriate who could either be seen sporting those tasteless things you call braids (which for some reason are all the rage on Khaosan Rd) or walking around pissed as a newt, acting like they own the darn place. We stayed well away from either groups, finding amusement instead via a statue of Ronald McDonald in Thai greeting position and making balloons out of Gori's lifetime supply of condoms. Then came the bugs... Since we had no interest in becoming best friends with the she-males, we decided to head over to Arab Street and stuff our faces with some middle eastern cuisine instead. On our way to the carpark we spotted a girl pushing a snack cart. Upon closer inspection the cart turned out to be loaded with a mixed assortment of fried insects - crickets, grasshoppers, cicadas, silkworms, scorpions, cockroaches and maggots. Upon even closer inspection, we noticed that the girl selling the insects was in fact a boy. His/her face, dimly-lit by the small cart lamp, definitely played tricks on the eyes, but then in kicked the deep and lispy voice and we immedately knew what we were dealing with. Upon Josh's semi-hesistant urging, we ended up sharing a scorpion, the price (20 baht) being a much bigger stumbling block than the insect itself. In all honesty, it tasted little different from the crispy fried snacks that you can buy from Chinese shops of baby crabs and prawns, but pretty darn delicious of course! With the scorpion out of the way, we proceeded to sample other bits and pieces. In the end we settled for a 20 baht bag of crickets, cicadas and silkworms. The entire group of us definitely got a good laugh out of daring one another to try the different bugs and I'm sure plenty of disgusting photos will surface on the band and personal blogs at some point. The crickets were probably the easiest ones to swallow whilst the silkworms definitely took a bit more of an effort due to the appearance and the soft, powdery texture. In the end we drew the line with the box of maggots since it was already rather brave of us to purchase fried insects from a complete stranger, and which the origins we know nothing about. And as if this experimentation with insects wasn't enough, the less tired batch of us stuck around in Arab Street to eat and, more importantly, to kick back on the floor couches with a shisha. Having never touched a cigarette in my life, I was somewhat apprehensive about the shisha to begin with but giving it a bit of thought and seeing how much everyone else was enjoying it, I arrived at the conclusion that a night like this with a good bunch of friends in Bangkok is like a once in a lifetime opportunity, the experience of which should be savoured and enjoyed above anything else. So in the end I too joined in on the shisha but the apple fumes weren't quite as intense as I had imagined. I felt nothing when I inhaled the smoke so I thought I was doing it all wrong but then the white puffs did come out of my nostrils. But having said that, it was all a bit of an anti-climax, kinda like loving the smell of coffee but not quite getting into the taste itself. Maybe I'll try it again when the moment is right but for now I'm quite content with just the memory of sharing that one shisha with Marcy, Michi, Ito, Gori, Ken, Jan, Sterling and Pong Kei. And I still have a apple smoke scented t-shirt to remind me of the night.
Wednesday, July 21 I've been meaning to post about our hilarious week and a half in Japan for quite some time but internet access was rather scarce and I thought time could be better spent exploring the country instead. Hopefully a ragged collection of disjointed photos and words will serve as a half decent photojournal at some point in time. We (Buddhistson + Whence He Came) are all currently typing away like madmen in front of two rows of sluggish PCs in a dimly lit internet cafe located in a run down part of Penang island tormented by decaying British colonnial architecture and
Friday, July 2 |