It started a long time before 2017…33 Paises
Paises is Spanish for country. Not that any of my adventures do not count before 2017, it’s just that after this I really ramped things up a notch. For starters I was newly single for the first time in a number of years, I had very little fear of the unknown that had sort of sparked out of 1 idea, and I had no concern about money. Money really destroys adventure honestly. More on that later.
This first post will be a short recap on the travel I made between the ages of 19 and 30, which I will call the “travel cognitive development stage” or “TCDS for short. This was when I only went to Asia based on other people’s plans or around New Zealand of which I am a natural citizen.
Thailand 2004. This trip is the most vague in my memory, not only due to the length of time since, but also because I really was still a child. At 19 I was very much still shy and timid and I went here with friends from my church I really didn’t know that well. They were very cool, but it was a strange experience because I went with a couple and the sister of the woman whose boyfriend didn’t come because he just couldn’t. I cannot remember why. I think he had other priorities. They broke up eventually anyway.
This was a typical touristic trip around a South East Asian country. Bangkok I remember none of, Chang Mai I remember a cooking class and somewhere in between the massive lying golden Buddhas. Also a mosquito infested hotel room on a river. This was the first of two trips here in the 2010’s so I will revisit Thailand later!
Malaysia 2007. Again. Went because my first girlfriend in Australia (actually she was Swedish and had booked it before returning home to her dog Volvo in Stockholm). Her dogs name was not in actual fact Volvo. Sorry, but again my memory has failed me. Maybe it was one of those difficult to pronounce for bilingual illiterate people names, given by the Vikings.
Highlights of this trip were Malacca despite being sick for 5 days and visiting a hospital where 5 student nurses encircled my bedside while they tested for something major. The travellers sickness was strong with this one. All of that time in the Holiday Inn with most hours spent on the toilet made for a good introduction in to holiday nightmare territory. Good view though! Such a clean and orderly country really. Pulau Pangkor is very nice – slow and sleepy villages, where Pavarotti used to have the private island off Pangkor called Pangkor Laut. Very cheap on that island… first time attempting to hirer a moped failed here when I basically lost the bike from underneath myself and crashed on first acceleration during my initial testing with a man who spoke on using a vibrating tool held up to his trachea. Bicycles it was for the day! Probably contracted the sickness from ice on this island I feel. But I will never know. You never do…
KL was great. Except the part where a guy basically followed us most of the way to our booked hotel/hostel through the city and was trying some sort of scam. He was hella freaky but he gave up in the end. We shared basically a single bed in a pretty average room those few nights. The butterfly/bird zoo is not bad actually in Kuala Lumpur. The bus from Singapore up is really nice too. Great highways. Friendly people. Excellent food. Shandys at the convenience store go well in the heat 👍Related and far away – Fast forward 9 months and I was off to visit Jenny in her big village (Stockholm). Her father expressed gratitude that I had accompanied Jenny in that country for obvious reasons. In Australia Jenny had two friends she had cruised the backpacker trail with before meeting me. God knows why she wanted to work in a ski resort in Australia. Actually Sweden doesn’t have the best hills either but I digress… the reason we got close was due to some lazy ass Aussies who lived in the share house down the mountain and who were basically locals from Shepparton. They would always sod off and skipped a lot of work. This is when Jenny and I were able to share a room, get extra hours and get awarded time share nights from the manager of the hotel to use later in Cairns and NSW. There’s really not many stories from the winter season of ‘07. Ah well apart from the quick trip I took down to Tasmania only a few weeks into the season. Another Jen from 2006 who is the most epic human I know had invited me down and I met a friend from Chicago I had met in New Zealand because my other friend basically bailed on me 2/3 nights I was in Christchurch?! So this friend from Chicago and I went to Mt Wellington and it snowed. Then I guess went up to meet Jen. No!.. Jen was living in Hobart and we went to Freycinet. I swam in the beach, and well winter swims in Tassie I wouldn’t recommend… So going back to after winter, you would find Jenny and I in Port Macquarie painting the breakwater rocks with seasonal memories and afterwards heading up to Brisbane where I was based. Drove up to Cairns. I tried to cook beers down with a string and tape in to sea water 1/3 of the water up. Yeah nah.
Slept the second night on top of a mattress inside my Ford Fairmont in a random park near the main road. Not a great sleep. Cairns was nice, 7 bungy jumps in one day. Forward, backwards. Forward elevator, backwards elevator, forward lean forward sudden drop. Backwards lean forward sudden drop and tandem.
Watermelon picking in Bundy went alright. Bundaberg that is. Lemon picking was the worst. But making love in the back seat of a car in a new place, that’s always good…
If you go back to 2006 I can tell you about getting..stranded in Australia tbc and photos to come
Kiwi To World 