I am lazy

So to combat this I use my friend Josh's blog as my own. Wanna know whats up or see some pics? Check out Josh Hegarty's blog at http://flyer107.blogspot.com/

Ill try to be less lazy and update again soon.

West Africa Preview

Hello Evan's Journey followers!

I soon embark on a new journey; this time through West Africa. Follow the maps below:

I begin my trip with an overnight stay in London (not pictured) with my friends Hala and Adam. From there I fly south to Marrakech, Morocco on October 22. Here I will couchsurf, meet my friend Josh who flies in a day later and get used to the fact that I'm traveling again. A few days after, Oct 25, my friend Sjoukje (loyal Journey followers will remember her from Vietnam and Laos) flies in to visit and travel for a couple weeks.

November 5, the final two members of our party, Hala and Adam arrive in Tanger, on the north coast of Morocco. From there our plans are uncertain. A few things we know or have options for:

1. We are going to Cameroon before Christmas. A close friend of ours, Brian Bragg, is in the Peace Corps near Bamenda in Cameroon and our whole trip has evolved from plans to visit him.

2. We may stay in Morocco until flying to Cameroon or

3. We may have to fly from Dakar, Senegal depending on availability of Cameroonian visas in Morocco. This decision will shape the first two months of my trip.

4. Another option is that shortly after arriving in Cameroon I may head to Uganda to volunteer with a friend, Sheela, who is going to be doing an internship there with an organization doing work with antiretroviral treatment on AIDS patients and also making a documentary about AIDS in the country.

5. I also plan to stay a few months in Cameroon with Brian.

6. There are two organizations I have contacts with in Ghana that both sound like great opportunities to volunteer for solid nonprofits.

7. I want to see a lot and help a lot.

Balancing the two aspects of #7 will be a major problem of this trip. Also negotiating the group dynamic involved in traveling in 4,5 or MORE at some times.

Because of the money I've saved, and the freedoms I've awarded myself, there is no time limit set on my trip. I may be gone 6 months. I may be gone 2 years. Even if I run out of money, I have options to make more, or stay in one place for free for awhile. With all this, I am liberated to say, that although I will miss my friends, family, nachos, and toilet paper, I will not be returning to the US until I am ready.

SE Asia wrap up

It happened again and I am sorry.  Since my last post I got lazy/ busy/ unmotivated/ depressed and didn't post again.  Truthfully there is no incredible story that anyone is missing out on.  I left from the national park with all my leech fun and headed to Kuala Lumpur (known as KL).  

I couchsurfed here with a great guy, Mo, from Kenya.  I spent a week there hanging out with other couchsurfers and relaxing.  We gave free hugs one night which is growing in popularity especially among the community of couchsurfers in SE Asia.  

Mo from Kenya, Jason from NY, and Nash from Malaysia at Batu Caves outside KL

Basically we walk around with home made signs announcing our offer to passersby and anyone that wishes to take us up on the offer receives a sleeze free, content smile inducing embrace!  In the relatively social conservative muslim nation of Malaysia, we ended up hugging mostly men.  But I did manage to reach my goal of a car hug when I embraced the driver of a car through his window while he was stopped at a red light.  

Free Hugs in KL!!

After my week here I traveled to Singapore for basically one day and one night.  I again couchsurfed, got taken around the city by a fun girl, Nhazean, and then we met up with a whole bunch of travelers and locals for dinner and laughter.  

A huge gathering of CSers in Singapore!

Then I hightailed it back up to the north of the city and crossed back over the bridge into Malaysia where yet ANOTHER couchsurfer, Chris, met me around 11pm.  

Nhazean, my Singaporean guide, and myself at the biggest mosque in town

Since it was Saturday he decided we should go out for a drink and we did, inviting Alan, a more active CSer from the city.  They treated me to my first beers since Bangkok two weeks before- since beer is so expensive in this predominantly muslim country- and we stayed out late chatting at a high volume club.  Finally around 3am Chris drove us back to his place and set me up in my own extra bedroom.  

Alan and Chris, CSers in Johor Bahru outside of Singapore

After a glorious 2 hours of sleep, at 5am we drove to the airport outside of Johor Bahru and I flew over to Kuching, the capital of the Malaysian state of Sarawak on the island of Borneo.  Here I was picked up from the airport by Teck, yet another CSer and we drove around all day with his photography club.  I wish I could say I enjoyed myself but I hadn't slept and I was exhausted and there is only so long that I felt I needed to watch him and his friends take pictures of orchids at the orchid farm or crocodiles at the croc farm outside of town.

Idealized picture of the croc farm near Kuching

Adrian and Barry, our incredible host in Kuching

Eventually we met up with Adrian, my Canadian friend who I was meeting in town, and we went back to our CS host, Barry's, home.  After a couple days we took a night bus  and a series of river boats down river into the more wild parts of Borneo only to find out the wild parts are significantly less wild than we had hoped.  

Slowing down in the small town of Belaga far downriver we basically played with the local kids for two days straight.  We had an offer to do a "trek" to some longhouses but we don't regret turning it down.  The longhouses here are less a unique cultural experience of jungle tribes and more relatively modern houses that happen to be long and accessed only by river.  They are expensive to visit, require a guide, and we took a pass.

Borneo: green jungle, brown river.

From here we decided that since we are relatively disappointed in our high expectations of what the tropical jungles of Borneo are truly like, we decided to hitchhike the rest of the way of our route for our last 10 days or so.  We hitched to Miri, near the border with Brunei which we really didn't like.

Hitching a ride across Borneo

 From there we got a short bus to the border, crossed immigration and needed 4 rides to take us into Bandar Seri Bagawan, the capital city of the tiny sultanate of Brunei, an oil-rich independent nation at the north of Borneo.  

Here we couchsurfed with an older Australian woman, Gillian.  She is a lifelong traveler recently returned from a trip to Mongolia and on the cusp of taking a long slow trip through SE Asia where Adrian and I had just spent months.  We were able to give her a number of tips and information and I think she appreciated that a lot.  

Spending an extra day in the city was a mistake.  There is nothing to do here.  We walked around, hung out in the mall (because it has AC and it is HOT and HUMID outside) and I read an entire 300+ page book, The Devil's Double, about the unwilling body double of Sadam Hussein's son Uday.  

The water village in the capital of Brunei

From the city we took a couple of ferries to reach the northern Malaysian state in Borneo, Sabah.  The capital city is Kota Kinabalu (KK) and we hung out here for a few days, staying for nearly free at a hostel owned by a young CSer, Hazmillah.  She showed us around, took us to see a movie, and basically just hung out with us in our laconic state for a few days.  

Hazmillah, our CS friend in KK

To break up the time in KK Adrian and I hitched up into the cooler climates of the mountains near Mt. Kinabalu National Park and stayed in the nearby town of Kundasang.  Here we ate delicious food, played badminton horribly in front of curious onlookers in the town center and watched WWE wrestling in cafes.  More of the same for our time in Borneo, just relaxing, chatting with people, singing to them, and wasting time.

We hitched back, spent another day in KK and then we parted ways on April 26.  Adrian flew back to Canada on May 3 from Bangkok.  After hearing of my time in Singapore, he spent a couple days with the couple that hosted me and also hung out with a lot of CSers.  While he flew to KL first, I flew back to Vietnam to visit some friends there for my last 9 days.  

I hung out with a number of CSers during my last week and even planned my first official CS gathering at a water park in town that was successful despite the rain that pelted us all day.  Turns out that in tropical areas with hot rain, water slides are still really fun! Unfortunately my camera was broken on my second night back in Vietnam and so I have no pictures from my last week.

A representative picture of CSers on my first visit to Saigon

I think I will write one more entry for this trip with some final notes, and a preview of my upcoming trip to West Africa this fall.  Stay tuned for that!

Taman Negara

So after a relatively comfortable overnight train from Bangkok to the border with Malaysia, I spent a couple days recovering in the city of Kota Bahru.

From there I took the famed jungle train through the interior of Peninsula Malaysia. Both coasts are the main populated areas with the mountainous/ jungle packed interior being far less populated. Right in the center is a national park, Taman Negara, that boasts to contain the oldest rain forest in the world.


The jungle train lasted all day and dropped me off in Jerantut, a small city near the park. Here I stocked up on essentials since I was intending to spend a few nights in the jungle. So I bought a bunch of water, instant noodles which I intended to eat cold, and peanut butter and a loaf of bread. I also had a strange and a little creepy encounter with a man at the grocery store.

The next morning I took an early local bus before dawn to Kuala Tahan, the village at the entrance to the park. Before the ride I met an enthusiastic group of five 30 somethings from Kuala Lumpur coming to the park to spend three days fishing.

Upon arriving, and after catching a few more hours of sleep in a dorm overlooking the river that separates the park from Kuala Tahan, I took a ferry across and booked a couple nights in the park. There a few trails leading to different places, and I booked the furtherest hide away that didn't require a guide. A hide, in this case, is a freestanding stilted wood hut that is set in the jungle near water sources or salt licks and is used by tourists to view wildlife. I also booked one close to the park HQ for a second night.

After making my plans starting the next day, I took a short hike into the jungle to get a sense. There is a popular "Canopy Walk" that takes the visitor high into the trees, and across bridges in between the tree tops overlooking the jungle and river more than 100 feet in the air! It was a pretty cool experience, especially since I somehow avoided the lines and was basically there alone.

Treetop-spanning bridge.


View of the river from the Canopy Walk

After another short hike up a steep hill, I headed back to the village to rest and sleep. I felt confident that the trails were clearly signposted and dry, so I wouldn't have to deal with mud and leeches the next day. But conditions can change.

View from on top of a hill in Taman Negara. I laid my shirt out to dry, I was a little sweaty.

Although I didn't hear any rain the night before, isolated showers are common all year round in this near equatorial country and when I crossed the river and began my trek the next day I found the same path that I had taken the day before was now damp and even quite muddy in some places.

Worse still was what the wet conditions meant: leeches.

A trek through the Malaysian jungle is a unique one, at least for me. Never before had I felt like I was hiking in a sauna. The humidity was incredible, and the temperature was hovering around 80-90F. Basically within the first hour on the hilly trail my clothes were completely soaked head to toe. I looked like I had jumped into the river instead of just following its twists around. I felt like it too.

A little sweaty but enjoying myself!

A jungle-shrouded bridge.

I first discovered my little green friends after my first short sitting break about an hour and a half in. I'd had a little experience with leeches before in Nepal, so I checked my ankles. Yep, about a dozen little leeches had grabbed my passing shoes, inched their way across the leather and laces and attached to my socks around my ankles and the tops of my feet and some had successfully penetrated the layer of white cotton socks to reach the delicious smorgesbord of blood beneath. I didn't think much about it at the time, I pulled the slippery creatures off and flicked them away, and five minute later I was back on my feet and down the trail.

Lunch on my only sitting break of the day. A big mistake.

The rest of the day went this way. Every half hour I would bend over and check my ankles and feet and had to continually rip away leeches that had begun to attach themselves to my skin for a quick liquid meal. Once I felt someone on my right hamstring, and had to pull down my pants in the middle of the trail and found half a dozen leeches that had somehow journeyed all the way up my legs to reach the delicious delicacy that is my white ass. After that, I didn't sit down any more until I reached the hide.

By the time I arrived there, five hours later, I had removed nearly a hundred leeches from my body and clothes and had 25 bites on my left half alone. The great thing with leeches is that they inject a anticoagulant into the blood so it won't clot and continues to bleed for hours.

In the hide, waiting for me, was a young German guy who had studied at USC and was a good guy to converse with. I stripped off my wet clothes, attempted to dry them by hanging them out the open windows (but clothes don't dry in a sauna) and was down to my boxers with a dozen bleeding sores on my feet and legs. I had to clean up the concrete floor of small puddles of blood later.

A Czech couple joined us later- actually the girl was Slovakian- and after hours of staring out the windows at the small clearing below us had revealed no wildlife, we went to bed. The others had brought pads and sleeping bags to sleep on top of the wood plank bunks, and the German guy had a mosquito net. I brought only my small backpack, so I used it as a pillow and slept in my wet clothes. I didn't really have a problem except that I had a horrible headache that woke me up in the middle of the night and prevented me from getting much sleep. I think it was from the dehydration.

The wonderful accommodation.

The next day I followed the couple on a different path back to the headquarters and across the river to Kuala Tahan, forgoing another night in the jungle since I didn't have much food left and truthfully didn't feel like dealing with the discomfort of sleeping on wood with no pad, soaked clothes and open sores on my legs.

The young Czechoslovakian couple

Yes, I am about to ford this river.

After eating my weight in salt, and taking a much enjoyed cold shower and putting on dry clothes, I caught an afternoon local bus back to Jerantut. Also riding with me was the same group of five fishermen from KL. I thought it was cool that they remembered my name and we chatted a short while about our respective trips.

The next afternoon I caught a bus to KL where I've been since, couchsurfing with a really cool guy. I guess I am a little ashamed at not sticking it out in Taman Negara and staying the second night which I had already booked and paid for. But leeches are just not as cute as some people think they are. And because of them I had to throw away two pairs of socks and now one pair of boxers and my favorite backpacking pants have large blood stains on my legs and butt.

My blood soaked socks. Had to throw them out.

I can update my past few days in KL when I update about my impending short time in Singapore. Tomorrow I head there for a day and a half and have a bunch of couchsurfers lined up to hang out with. Then on Sunday I fly to Borneo and meet up with Adrian! I can't wait. I hope my shoes make it the rest of the trip or at least to Saigon. (They are in BAD shape. Read: duct tape.)

Coming home plans

For all interested parties,
I've made my plans to return to Seattle. The magical day will be May 30th. Parties will rage and champagne will flow to celebrate. Unfortunately local authorities across SE Asia anticipate angry mobs and riots at the news that I've left their continent. I can't make EVERYONE happy ALL the time.

For those of you fond of messages of the textual variety, I will actually be back in the US on May 6th, and back manning my cell phone around May 10th. I will spend a few days with Danielle in San Francisco first. Then visit my parents, and spend 12 days breaking my back and making money in Hawaii.

So the day is set, write it down. I think Josh is the only one in Seattle that reads this anyway. So Josh, write it down!

I made it to KL (Kuala Lumpur) and I'll be here for a few days. I'll update you in the next couple days on my short battle with leeches in Taman Negara National Park here in Malaysia. I also plan to visit Singapore next weekend before I fly to Borneo and will most likely visit Brunei also! Then my last 9 days I will spend back in Saigon with the lovely Miss Natasha.

So lots left to discuss about traveling, no more talk about coming home!