heraclio

A Thai monk on Dutch wooden clogs
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Amsterdam, Schiphol International Airport.
16-01-2009.
A young Thai man dressed in vivid saffron robes, bald head and shaved eyebrows disappears among the crowd of rowdy English passengers. Even through the noicy din that rules the departure lounch of any airport in the world, despite the rowdy semi-drunk English passengers, I can clearly hear the typical sounds of his yellow Dutch wooden clogs on the tiled floor.
For a short moment I`m mystified. Thai Buddhist monks are supposed to live a life of austerity, poverty to the max, a plain and simple life dedicated to the worship of Lord Buddha, dedicated to finding the righteousness in their earthly ways to live their life by, maybe hope for treasured enlightenment and a ticket straight to Nirvana.
So what is this young Thai bloke doing here so far from his native soils and on Dutch wooden clogs no doubt bought in an Amsterdam tourist shop?
I shift my attention to the English lagerlouts who are in front of me in the queue waiting to check in and loudly discussing their unquenchable thirst for cold Chang beer much stronger in alcohol content than that weak good for nothing catpiss they serve in English pubs - their words, not mine - , their cherished experiences with Thai Hot Mommas they met during earlier trips.
Two young blond haired ladies in faded blue jeans pushing a airport provided trolley with enormous backpacks whispering to each other in German, discussing places to stay in Bangkok found in the blue colored Lonely Planet guide on Thailand.
A tall man in his early sixties, short greyish beard and a massive beer belly, already dressed in a pair of hawaii type shorts despite the cold of the Dutch winter, is smiling broadly at me while his young Thai lady-friend - not even half his size despite her high platform shoes - high heeled shoes you know, Thai women call them platform shoes - and probably in her mid twenties, gives me modest but friendly stares reminding me of the thousands upon thousands of mixed race couples I have met during my previous trips to Bhumipol`s Kingdom.
Usually older European males with local Thai ladies, much younger and practising a docile female behaviour, holding hands shyly with him like young couples in love, willingly serving a role of Love-You-Tender in exchange of what to him is a hand-out and to her a small fortune.
Destitute can do that to you!!!
written by  heraclio on April 1, 2009 from Amsterdam, Netherlands
from the travel blog: Farang Chronicles.

600 km. to Berlin
Amsterdam, Netherlands
In the forest near Emmeloort,
02-04-2000.
Five months sice my last trip cycling all winter as a bicycle messenger in the Amsterdam city centre. Unusual for me to winter in cold and rainy Amsterdam, most winters I spend in Southeast Asia hating the dutch cold.
But then most of my friends consider me crazy leaving Amsterdam on a bicycle trip for Berlin while it is still cold and miserable weather.
Not that my time in Amsterdam these last five months was all that bad dating a whole bunch of weird and strange women.
Each and all of them a good case for a physciatrist. No big surprise there I met them all at my job but Miss Zelda Sabayo but she was only being of surinam descent and an illegal imigrant who was after me for the dutch papers, get married and run away after five years with a dutch pasport.
A bit like the thai ladies who ply their trade on fat bellied farang males with lonely hearts and who have heard all these stories about beautifull and husband-devoted young asian ladies.
So I leave Amsterdam early in the morning carrying my tour bike, my tent,
my sleeping bag and the rest of my gear down the steep staircase of my house dressed in my old cycle gear, putting on my gloves and cycling out of the city leaving the hustle and bustle that comprised the centre of any big city the world over, behind.
Soon enough I'm in the middle of farm land, dutch farms and small old villages, entering the Flevo Polder which is full with birds, mostly water fowl, following the coast of the Ysselmeer which used to be an inland sea being connected to the dutch Waddenzee but has been turned into a huge sweet water lake since the construction of the Afsluitdijk, protection against the wild and unpredictable North Sea.
With the huge flat fastness of the Ysselmeer - the Lake of Yssel - I'm besieged by heavy wind in the face, a cyclist's nightmare but I enjoy the challenge pushing it hard.
Just outside Emmeloord, a dutch city just outside the Flevo Polder - Polder is the dutch word for land we won from the sea - I find myself a quiet wild camping place in a small patch of forest realising wild camping will have to
be my destiny all the way to Berlin and beyond due to my limited funds and the early time of the year, most campings still being closed.
written by  heraclio on February 4, 2000 from Amsterdam, Netherlands
from the travel blog: 600 km. to Berlin

cycling the Dutch hinterland
Amsterdam, Netherlands
In Natuur Gebied De Klencke,
03-04-2000.
As nearly always during my cycle trips I try to wildcamp experiencing the best part of my day....at night in front of my tent, my belly full with good food, my sleeping bag inside my tent a-waiting my exhausted body for the night, promising my gray haired guarding angel a safe heaven for the night, not an evil soul in this wedland nature reserve in the dutch hinterland will devour my immortal spirit.
Yeah, sitting there in front of my tent in a small dune and surrounded by the blackness of a night not wasted by the big city light polution of a nearby town, the sounds of small nocturnat animals all around me while working on a six-pack of cheap
and luke warm Liddle supermarket beer one can get very phylisophical.
The beer goes slowly and the sounds of the forest - feeling very much protected here by my gray haired aforementioned and highly prised guardian angel - slowly invade my
body massaging my overused muscles, the smells of the fesh pine trees surrounding me waking up after a cold winter to the time of the coming spring, have the soothining effect on my strained mind like swee insence liquid burning in a small glass pot.
Early in the morning I wake up by the small shafts of sun light invading the privacy of my battered old tent.
The part of Holland between here and the border with Germany will be extremely flat, a bit like the proverbial dutch pancake and dotted with farms and old villages, the accents of the locals - despite being dutch myself - will be incomprehesible to my ears, in these small God fearing communities life centres around the catholic church right smack in the middle of the village`s main square.
My lunch and dinner times are often spent in a small restaurant or bar nearby the church, a place at the window will have my preverence, I will eat my meals quietly not looking for small chitchat with other clientêle whose curious and often suspicious eyes will send a clear message in my direction.....
......YOU ARE NOT LIKE US, WE BELIEVE IN GOD AND YOU ARE A DRIFTER........
They do accept my dutch guilders when I pay though, there is no higher standard when the color of money is involved I guess.
written by  heraclio on March 4, 2000 from Amsterdam, Netherlands
from the travel blog: 600 km. to Berlin

My poor TILAK
Calcutta, India
I looked at you there and then but I don`t seem to remember where and when.
You lady from the night, belonging to the Isaan clan of females, playing the game hard and with determination.
The only thing you have to do is earning the Thai Baht for your kids back in your home village, back in the poor north of Bhumipol`s Kingdom.
You`ve come to the beach resorts, Nana Plaza and Soi Cowboy in Krung Thep, you work the bars, you walk the Pattaya boulevard, the seedy streets of nighttime Bangkok, your young oriental mind full of hope.
Maybe a foreign husband who will support you, a trip to Europe, a way out of you wretched life.
You look with amazement at the rowdy punters populating the GoGo-bars, drunk english lagerlouts and rowdy Aussies holding big bottles of high alcohol content Chang beer
in sausage-like pinkish fingers, they eye you with obvious lust.
You look at yourself one more time in the mirror, mascara and lipstick where they belong, manicured eye lashes in place, your high heeled platform shoes waiting in front of the door to the ridiculously little room that you share with several of your contemporaries, your "sisters in arms".
You`re ready to play the Game one more time, another night of putting up with rowdy boozing s*x starved farangs. There is no hope for you, you little poor creature of the night. Even Lord Buddha himself has turned his back on you.
You are out there on your own realising that your upbringing has taught you a responsibility to the baby that your Mum is looking after back in Thailand`s northern provinces, back in that little dusty hamlet where your younger sisters are still working the rice paddies twelve grueling hours a day under the scorchingly hot Thai sun.
I looked at you there and then but I don`t seem to remeber where and when.
With a sudden jolt I wake up realising I was reliving The Dream again, The Dream that though various different ways was always the same in its very essence, The Dream that has followed me through all these years of my life since my first trip to Thailand.
Not a dream that is really negative, nor has it ever been really positive.
The Buddha pendant I wear is burning on my chest while I slowly get my act together, flying over the Indian sub-continent, well on track to my destination.
I NEED A BEER!!!
written by  heraclio on April 2, 2009 from Calcutta, India
from the travel blog: Farang Chronicles.

My resignation as a farang boyfriend
Bangkok, Thailand
It is early morning and I`m on the local bus from the Suvarnibhumi New Airport to Pattaya. I was supposed to be on the back of Nik`s scooter heading for downtown Bangkok.
Nik is Mag`s younger brother who she send to the airport, not to pick me up and bring me to her appartment as she had told me on MSN, no he was there to inform me I had been fired as a farang boyfriend to his elder sister!!! "She have English Tilak now", as he dutifully told me.
Haaa, I was madly in love with her last year, long and tenderly hot hours together walking the raucous streets of nighttime Pattaya, eating at street food stalls while losing myself in her beautifully brown eyes, the magnificence of her open oriental face, waking up in the morning and feeling the warmth of her light brown colored body next to mine after a night´s out at one of the many discos on Walking Street. I still remember how she told me `me phone boss in Bagkok, me sick this week, stay with you all week` after our first night together. She was in my mind, in my very essence all summer while waiting anxiously to return to Krung Thep - as the Thais call Bangkok.
I`ve plenty of experience with the fickleness of Thai ladies. I know of no nation on Mother Earth where the locals are so much in love with FUN, where people love to live life to the MAX, no thoughts for tomorrow when you can have fun today. Why wait for a crazy Dutch farang boyfriend when the city is full with blue eyes males.
Anyway honesty forces me to say that I`ve not exactly been loyal to her during these long months apart. I`ve accepted my resignation as a farang boyfriend with the same quiet acceptance the Thai use to accept bad luck.
Outside the long rows of appartment buildings glide by, the bus assitent told me they house airport staff. They all look alike, similar in size and height, laundry hanging from balconeys giving the dull grey colored concrete monsters at least some colors. I see dogs scratching their behinds and slim cats staring back at me with the feline eyes of any hunter. I see old women washing a small babyboy in an abandoned oil drum, families having breakfast together in the cool of early morning.
Everything looking RIAP ROY, the Thai word for orderly!!! The sort of orderly society the Thais are so good at. But beware... underneath all this easy go happy, the big smile and their so-called riap roy society is a strong and unbeatable Asian soul, so alien to the Western mind it might as well come from another planet, another universe.
My english lagerlout "friends" are also on the bus - no big surprise there - drinking green colored cans of Chang despite the still early hour, loudly expressing their pathetic need for cheap Thai working girls, infantile behaviour brought about by a certain cultural collision.
written by  heraclio on April 3, 2009 from Bangkok, Thailand
from the travel blog: Farang Chronicles.

Cycling in cold Germany
Berlin, Germany
Germany, Natürpark Nörclicher,
I cross the german border early in the day just after breakfast, I`m now fully in The Land of the Sauerkraut and Bratwurst people. T
This dutch german border is a big phycological border as well, almost like a point of no return, a bit like from here on things will get serious.
The mornings are still cold and allready at the moment of breaking down my tent, rolling up my sleeping bag, my fingers go numb and cramp together in the last of a winter`s embrace.
Luckily the german version of the american Mc Donalds have followed their american tradition of offering free coffee - as much as you like - over breakfast. Needless to say "I linger over breakfast" is getting a whole new defionition for me.
I`ve taken NO gloves, NO bonnet....and I did that for a reason...I wanted to get it rough, rough and physically tested, wanted to experience the rough side of life just one more time.
So I sit on my bike early in the morning, my gloveless hands allready dumb by exposure, my feet deperately trying to move up and down on the pedals of my bike feel like a clump of ice from my frigo, my heart beat bonking away in my chest while I can feel my teeth clattering in my mouth cavatity.
I allow my body and mind the luxury of the occasional cafe au lait in an obscure bar of a small german village that has not been bombed to rumbles during the last great war, a bar belonging to a village that could easily house the infamous story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, a fable maybe but one that feels very real to my exchausted body and tested mind while drinking my coffee, eating my lunch.
When evening approaches I start looking around for a suitable free camping spot knowing fully well that my frozen hands will have the touch the ice-cold aluminium posts of my tent, roll out my sleeping bag......all these uncomfortable things preparing for the night....a small campfire might come in handy to fry over these cans of bratwursts I bought in the Lidle today
written by  heraclio on May 4, 2000 from Berlin, Germany
from the travel blog: 600 km. to Berlin

A colony of rooks
Berlin, Germany
Germany, Natürschutsgebiet Femke,
Whether my wild camping place last night was badly chosen or not is maybe better left to prosterity.
The tree I was camping under last night was an ancient oak tree whose old and wrinkled branches were spreading out in all directions and made me feel like sleeping in a cradle while this ancient wooden grand mother was watching over me.
A large group of rooks must have thought so too arriving just before darkness while I was busy putting up my tent and preparing for the night.
I have a strong suspicion that last night`s ancient oak tree might very well have been their favorite sleeping tree...all evening while I was trying hard to get into a phylosofical mood, trying hard to contemplate these past five months in Amsterdam, reliving my non-travelling life back in Holland....these blue black crow-like birds were busy screaming at me....I was in their realm...camping under their watchfull grand mother, wooden or not....a bit like a finding a stranger in your bedroom I presume.
Waking up in the morning I found my noicy neighbors gone and the outside of my tent covered with their chakly droppings.
Point taken.
written by  heraclio on May 4, 2000 from Berlin, Germany

A farang`s life story
Bangkok, Thailand
I look down on the perfect half moon of Pattaya's boulevard from the hill that houses the Wat Kho Phra Bath - Wat means temple in Thai.
Down below a heavy cocktail of farang high testosterone and hormone levels rule the veins and arteries inside white fleshy bodies dressed in colorfull Hawaii shorts, mostly belonging to middle-aged western men whose ruddy faces carry a constant grin of happiness due no doubt to the petite hard-bodied local ladyfriends holding their huge hairy hands, often not even half their age.
Indian tailors stop them in sthe street offering exclusive business suits at ridiculous low prices, s*xy bar girls giggling and secretly hoping it was them holding that fat farang hand. Russian tourists with a big thirst for wodka mingle with Saudies dressed in their long white djelebas. Hawkers constantly on the move from the police offer sticky rice with lemon, roasted chicken legs or barbequed shrimps, cooked eggs or slices of fruit.
Pattaya is a mad house at any time of the day or night. The party continues even after the curfew, though it might have to be in the privacy of your hotel room.
Up here at Wat Kho Phra Bath tranquility rules, young monks involved in whispering conversation, a scawny dog with hardly any fur left is ferociously scratching his flea ridden body, a few sleepy cats on the stairs and of course lots of gold colored Buddha statues all over the wad.
I'm actually here on a mission, I've come here like any other time I've been up here, to make Darsha, to pay my respect to Lord Buddha and the Thai people. But also to remember the past, to find the peace to let my mind flow freely without any inhibitions.
My farang mind wanders back to my first trip to King Bhumipol's nation, how I ended up in a police holding cell on fighting charges, a police cell where the cockroaches were bigger as European mice and where the mosquitos ruled your skin, where the toilet was as hole in the ground and the shower a basin where you laddle yourself with a plastic container cut in half, a police cell I was sharing with the same three young Thai males I had been fighting with the night before, where twice a day you were fed a small plastic bag of sticky rice with some miserable looking pieces of vegetable on top.
My first day in this rathole was also my twenty-fifth birthday - "happy birthday" the jailer said in terribly accented English". But this crazy experience was also the beginning of a completely new life, something changed during these thirty days of incarceration, somehow I fell in love with Thailand, made up my mind to get to understand the complicated oriental mind, learn Thai and live rest of my life according to the Buddhist rules, spend some time living at a wat as a simple monk.
It was also the time I met Jamie, another inmate and a Leuk Kreung, a Thai/Karen half-caste of my own age who made money as a Muay Thai boxer in obscure bars in Bangkok, whose body was covered in weird tattoes, strange designs and symbols as a protection, a Moordu against bad luck in the ring.
I eventually met Nong, his sister with whom I've two children, Jay and Joy, hope to meet them in Bangkok next week.
Nowadays my Thai is, despite years of dedicated study and determination, still only passable at best. My understanding of the Thai oriental mind.......sometimes at the end of yet another trip to this so-called Land of the Smile I believe I'm finally there but that "enlightenment" is gone the moment I set foot back on Dutch soil, blown away by the stormy Dutch wind. My relation with Nong something of the past, countless Thai ladies have gone her way. Living my life according to Lord Buddha's rules for Nirvana too difficult considering my passion for life itself and all the attractions that come with it, no time in a Wat dressed in saffron robes, all bodily hair gone and getting up early to ask for alms.
Jamie left this weird world swept away by the Tsunami that hit Thailand in 2004 together with his Swedish Tilak. I actually felt his watery death in my own mind being in Amsterdam at the time. The pain and grief is all gone now.
Slowly I allow my farang mind to return to the here and now coming to the conclusion I need a few cans of cold Leo beer on the boulevard after this emotional state of mind.
written by  heraclio on April 4, 2009 from Bangkok, Thailand

The makings of a perfect marriage
Bangkok, Thailand
The raucous sounds of nighttime Pattaya are all around me while I've my second meal of the night, my favorite Pla Neung Menau, steamed fish covered in lemon sauce - an acquired taste, really - at one of the many food stalls in Soi Post Office.
Young Thai women sit at iron tables dressed in cloaks having a quick break in between their erotic shows at the GoGo-bars that dot the street, dressed in sparkling cloaks they eat their noodle soup while discussing the gossips of the night.
Beef is cooking at the next food stall producing big grayish clouds heavy with the odour of hot thai spices.
"Dürfen wir uns hier vielleicht mal niederlassen?", a tall German wants to know. He is dressed in the habitual shorts worn by all farangs in Thailand. and a sweat drenched T-shirt that spanns over a gigantic beer gut, big drops of perspiration dropping off his nose while he instantly starts raving to me about all the evils and woes of farang women, not bothering to ask if I can actually understand his gutteral Deutsch.
The stench of Chang beer is heavy on his German breath and while he continues his anti-farang female tirade I try to zoom in to the converstaion his two young lady companions start in Thai after ordering food.
One wants to know form the other how they do "ït" with that big farang tumpui being in the way splodging all over her belly during Bam-Bam as the Thai call s*x, is his male organ as big as his big tumpui and is it just as white as the rest of his massive body.
I've a hard time to control my amusement while the subject of the ladies' gossip raves on about European bitches and Thai hot mommas chucks of noodle protruding from the corners of his mouth, drops of soup mixing with the sweat on his T-shirt. This bloke is a real slob!!!
"Guck toch mal freund, mit dieser Alte bin Ich schon zeit Jahren zusammen, die werde Ich noch mal heiraten und mit zu München nehmen". His Tilak realising she is being discussed gives him her sexiest smile while patting his big gut lovingly meanwhile telling her friend it is not really a big problem because most nights he is too drunk and will fall asleep so she can watch TV ands order food up to the room and yes his male organ is really white, quite smal and bright red after Bam-Bam.
Hahaha, the makings of a perfect marriage are well in place here.
written by  heraclio on April 5, 2009 from Bangkok, Thailand

A meeting with a stray cat
Berlin, Germany
In Der Nähe von Beeden Bostel,
Some of the things that impress me most during these cycle trips and camping out for free in the forest, are the beautifully heavens lit up by countless stars whose cold light reaches me down there in front of my tent, drinking a few beers and waiting for bed time.
No big city lights out there, no artificially produced light polution in these dark green german forests.
Out there in the darkness surrounding my tent I can hear the presence of the original forest dwellers.
A stray cat on the prowl. I had allready seen him cicrling my camp while darkness appoached, probably checking out what I was doing on his territory.
He came back several hours later using the blackness of the night to approach my tent, his shadows lighting up in grotesque figures in the flames of my little fire.
With my head full with natural highs like dopamine and adraline caused by a whole day of cycling and slightly drunk due to several cans of Weissen brew I imagined I could actually sence the mortal fear radiating out of the little gray mice that too got attracted to my campside.. for other reasons though....most liky by the old smelling cheese I used on my banquette.
After five days of cycling I feel once more very free cycling through the "Land of
the Bratwurst and Sauerkraut People".
Avoiding as most as posibile contact with other human beings, mostly being to myself exploring the inner sanctum sanctorum of my private mind and soul.
written by  heraclio on June 4, 2000 from Berlin, Germany

Two versions of turkish culture
Im Wald in der Nähe von Seehausen,
I cycle all day under an overcast sky feeling ready to jump off my bike and put on my rain suit. The animal kingdom around me doesn`t feel the need for protection against Mother Nature`s occasional bouts of pissing down her heavenly waters on us the mortal lower beings down on earth`s surface.
No, the animal kingdom is busy preparing for the fast approaching spring, the tradional mating season and reproduction time. All day I see male peacocks slashing it out with the competition meanwhile trying to herd together a flock of females.
Whenever the poor sod is distracted by females still on the loose or other males, someone or other will steal a few females out of his treasured flock.
Even in the peacock world all is square in love and war!
It is late afternoon when I decide to have my midday break in a small german village with the difficult to pronounce name of Pretzier. Cobble stone streets and old stone houses that date from well before the second war, I presume this place must have been too small for the Alleid Forces to bomb to pieces, mabye it was not even on their maps.
I enter a small turkish coffee house whose front window told me "Wir verkaufen Dönner und Bier".
Upon entering a wave of sweet nargileh tabbaco approaches me while I try to adjust my eyes to the dank and dark interior. Eight or nine tables are placed on each side of the small oblong room, a nargileh - turkish waterpipe - on each table.
detecting the sweet sugary smell of turkish mint tea among the nargileh odour I take a table at the window...yeah a turkish dönner kebab with beer and a mint tea to top it off.
A group of older turkish males in pale and dusty suits play cards at one table, each of them looking relaxed and occasionally talking a drag from the nargileh. Small cups of expresso and mint tea for them while soft chitchat rules the conversation at their table.
It is a bottle of Raki, the turkish version of the greek ouzou, on the other table that has customers, a group of rowdish young turkish males playing dominoe, no nargileh for them but a ashtray full to overflow with sigarette butts, no pale old suits for them but blue jeans and black leather coats.
Their banter is loud, excited and jumping from turkish to german and back again.
Interesting to see this complete change in culture in what are in essence one and the same people but different in age
written by  heraclio on August 4, 2000 from Berlin, Germany

Weird late night sketches
Im Wald in der Nähe von Friesack,
With the early morning cold doing a serious attack both on my gloveless hands and mental stability I cycle fast and with determination. Most of that mental deternination comes from the fact that by now I have a mental map of the Mc Donalds restaurants between here and Berlin.
If there is anything good about the fatty food coming out of Mc Donalds roadside restaurants is must be their american breakfast with is unlimited coffee.
While away the first hour of a cold morning in the Land of the Bratwurst and Sauerkraut people before I`ll have to do my daily 80 to 100 km. of the day, on the way to Berlin.
I watch my maps planning my route for the day ahead while sipping pitchdark and strong Mc Donalds coffee. I make some secret sketches of a business man in a five hundert dollar Armani suit, black attache case in one hand, dragging nervously from a filter sigarette in his other hand....hurrying to the counter...quickly take a early morning bite before the stress of the coming day will consume him.
Two young teenage ladies come in dressed in blue jeans and chatting gaily, probably from the nearby village.
I make a secret sketch of them too while every so often I glance back to the sketches I made last night in front of my tent.......Haaa, beautifull how phylosofical I can get and then try to capture that in drawings....an old lady friend stark naked while a horrible face shrouded in a veil looks over her shoulder....of course the roman cross is nearby too. Can`t by the love of God remember what inspired me to this one but I sure love it.
I`m pulled back from my last night`s reverie when the two Blue Jeans Girls leave their table shooting me quick looks, I think they realised I was sketching them.
written by  heraclio on August 4, 2000 from Berlin, Germany

She is my poor Tilak
With the Thai sun setting over the ocean my mind goes on an endless narrative trying to understand the hidden structures of the oriental mind, trying to make sence of my own involvement, the very influence this strange Asian society has got on my farang way of thinking.
"Hans, me choi-choi you here, Hans, you tell me what happen Joseph, what happen me luuk chai, me luuk saaw?, bitte Hans me poor Moo, Ich will wissen bitte".
Moo`s head is on my shoulder while she goes on and on in a strange and weird mix of Thai, German and english, mostly to herself not really expecting an answer from me sipping every so often from the straw that sticks out of her can of Chang beer - Thai women like to sip their beer from a straw.
How can I possibly answer her questions when I don`t even know myself how all this sh*t came about...her boyfriend Joseph she has got two Leuk Kreung with, who was so much in love with Thailand he decided to make take a suitcase full of coke back to Germany...make big money, stay Thailand long time...who got caught at Don Muang Airport...who ended up in Yard Lao Prison and went Kingdom Come two years into the process because of HIV related physical complains.
I`m back in that little interogation room where I saw him only weeks before his sh*tty death, back at Yard Lao where the cockroaches were the main source of proteine for the inmates, where huge rats were roasted for dinner...where I had to bribe the guards to see him privately though he was already three quarters on the way to Lord buddha`s kingdom...Joseph sitting opposite me, a shadow of his former self, no more big muscular blond blue eyed German but a miserable little sh*t reduced to a nervous wreck not even half his former weight wetting the end of his Marlboro sigarette...I still remember his pleading eyes and his words "Ich werde hier sterben Hans, wie muss dass weiter mit Moo und unsere kindern?.
Poor Joseph died two weeks later and I still remembered the words of his sister screaming at me over the phone when I ask her about the kids "Wass habe Ich mit seiner Hure zu machen oder mit dieser scheiss Kindern?.
I my mind I`m still in the Happy Years when we used to go to Jomtien Beach, went dancing at Marine Disco, when life was fun and uncomplicated, when I was back with Nong.
How can I possibly answer Moo`s questions when I don`t even know myself how all this sh*t came about. Moo sleeps on the beach now selling her body to s*x starved farang drunks every night, her mind destroyed by Yaa-Baa and Thai whiskey.
She is my poor Tilak.

An old and deserted army barracks
With my hands still nimb early in the morning after leaving my last illegal campground, I can nonetheless sense the fast approach of spring in the misty air.
It is only 60 km. more to the big metropole Berlin, the goal of this trip, but out here I am still surrounded with the wild harshness of Mother Nature. Wedlands with shallow lakes at both sides of this secondary road, lakes full with fish that attract all sorts of birds, herons, kingfishers, ducks in their thousands, coots and migrating geese.
The green fields of grass are alife with mice and I sea a big bussart sweeping down and grasping one from their mids. I guess that poor mouse didn`t expect to be on his menu today.
I`m getting closer to Berlin arriving at a cross road situated at what looks like an old army barracks. Big gates at both sides of the road and beyond sleeping barracks, big and ugly buildings whose broken windows give me a creepy feeling. The whole place looks like it is a state of serious decay.
Surrounded by these decayed and sinister looking buildings, not a living soul in sight, I realise for the first time I am in the former Eastern German state, a state that completely surrounded West Berlin, I realise that these two Germanies were exactly on speaking terms at the time.
This eerie looking place must be one of the army barracks surrounding Berlin, some thing they called the Ring Of Defence Against The Capitalist West, Throw in a few more words like Kapitaist Decadency and assorted stuff and you are getting the point.
The unsettling mental energy surrounding this former army site is disturbing the peace that has started to rule my heart since having come on this trip so I quickly leave this graveyard of the past behing......cycling, cycling, cycling.....
....cycling untill I reach Berlin, it is not far any more, I am nearly there...a dream I had in the further and darker recesses of my mind is about to become fulfilled...and the only thing it took was six very enjoyable days of cycling.
written by  heraclio on September 4, 2000 from Berlin, Germany

A little act of jai-Dee
I`m here in [[Myanmar-(Burma)/Pattaya]] because in my life staedy relationships do not work, I`m here because I`m reaching my middle age years, I`m here because I do not have to live on low substitute levels like the young members of the Isaan clan of womanhood.
Either you work these rowdy bars in Soi Eight for a meagre 5000 Baht a month entertaining the Brigate of Lonely Farang Hearts..or else the rice paddies back in the north, a baby strapped to your back, the hot Thai sun beaming down on you while your husband is out having fun with his Nia-Noi, his second wife or maybe philandering in the local bordello with his mates while getting Mau on cheap moonshine whiskey expecting you to have dinner ready when he will get home.
My bottle of Kloster beer is cold to the touch, the Doors are blaring away on the sound system, Manchester playing the English League on a 60 inch flatscreen, bar girls giggling when their behinds get pinches by drunk Scots in kilts. The beer is flowing in amounts that could well compete with all the water in the Mekhong river.
A young blond German, not yet twenty probably on his first backpack trip in Asia, is watching one of the bar girls shyly. He better be carefull or his budget for the whole month will go down eager female throats. If he came here to loose his virginity he has come to the right place!!!
I`ve given the key to my room to Miss Tuan earlier on the boulevard where we met while she was collecting empty cans and bottles for the deposit. "Me old lady now", she told me adding "farang not like old lady". Actually at 45 she still looked quite attractive despite all the grease and stale sweat covering her body. "Sorry sleep beach, not have money for room".
So I gave her my key telling her to go take a shower, wash her greasy clothes amd leave the key with the reception.
My heavy farang Karma will hopefully be a bit lighter with this little act of Jai-Dee - good heart in Thai.

Cycling under Branderburgerturm
Berlin, a campground 20 km. from Berlin centre.
I leave my tent and most of my gear behind on the campground where I spent last night being the only customer for only 4 Deutch Mark a night, and cycle the last 20 km. to Berlin.
I could have reached Berlin centre late afternoon yesterday but I had no idea as where to stay, didn`t realy fancy the idea of a hard park bench, or worse the holding cell of a nearby police station after getting myself arrested over vagrancy charges.
At least the campground has got public toilets and...more importantly....hot showers, a place to wash my dirty body, use lotions on the hard muscle of my legs, a chance to shave off my week old beard, shampoo my ragged hair.
Leaving the campground early and in good spirits, my hair smelling of fresh shampoo, my body having been treated to the luxury of hot water and cheap soap, still wearing my battered old cycle gear but at least with clean underwear, I do my last 20 km. to Berlin.
The transition point between big city and rural country side, between the tranquility of the open land and the hustle and bustle, the stress and confusion of any big city`s traffic, is gradual.
The road is straight bringing me on a big boulevard with plenty of place for cyclists, I see plenty of tourbuses and big groups of rowdy and ederly people dressed in their sunday clothes and many carrying camaras.
I realise I have made it to the famous Berlin, the goal of this trip, when I cycle under Branderburgerturm.
written by  heraclio on October 4, 2000 from Berlin, Germany

A lazy day in Little Istambul
Berlin, Little Istambul,
Looking around while I lock my bike I know for a fact why this part of town is nicknamed Little Istambul, an area east of the famous Unter Den Linden Boulevard and home to a huge turkish immigrant population.
Short rotunt women near middle age walk by carrying head scarves and long pale dresses over woolen pants, rowdy kids in thier early teenage years hang against an old automobile giving me curious but bored looks. Most of the cars parked at the curb look on average about ten years older as cars elsewhere in Berlin.
The three to four storey houses look in a serious state of urban decay, glum windows with gray colored dirty windows radiate an uncertain future to those who live here.
I enter a small turkish coffee house that also does kebab and beer. Food and Warsteiner beer is what I am after, but also some interesting rustic scenes for my sketchbook would come in handy...maybe while away an tranquil afternoon in a turkish coffee house while drawing in my sketchbook and smoking the sweet tabacco from the nargileh.
Rustic scenes are all around me in this small but cozy typically turkish neighborhood gathering place.
Old bearded men in turkish djallebas eye me friendly from nearby tables while suckling contentedly on their nargileh pipes and playing dominoes or card games.
Males in their late fifties dressed in dusty suits sipping mint tea and involved in a heated conversation in turkish, smile at me benignly.
The cloud of nargileh smoke in this joint is overwhelming but I stay most of the afternoon nonetheless making sketches and participating in smoking nargileh.
written by  heraclio on November 4, 2000 from Berlin, Germany

The Dutch Farang Bench in Pattaya
There is that Western side of my stupid farang mind always looking for rational explications to an unsolvable dilemma, always wanting to knop that which it shouldn`t question, 24/7 in conflict with itself and trying hard to get rich, stay in the picture fast and furious.
There is also the Oriental side to my mind, divine since it came later in my life instead of the childhood trained Western and better capable to withdrawn to its inner sanctorum where peace and stability rule my mental chemical processes , shrouded in sleepiness when I`m in the West, a consumer`s paradise where a big Mercedes is not just a transport mode but also a show-off to the neighbors.
It`s near nightfall and the ladies are busy trying hard to convince the punters a shorttime before the night will really start is surely worth considering, clickety-clack their high heeled platform shoes go on the boulevard`s pavement. dressed in short skirts or even shorter jeans showing off shapely female legs the color of cafè-au-lait.
They are all around me asking me every so ofen for 20 Baht "me hungry Hans", now that was Moo. 35 Baht for a can of Chang, now that was Tuan, "not have man tonight, Hans", now that was Nang I remnember from last year. 12 Baht for a coffee, now that was Lek who has been walking this boulevard longer than I care to remember.
I`m sitting on the Dutch Farang Bench right in front of the 7/Eleven, conveniently close, just have to cross always busy Beach Road if you want another beer, and the gathering place for the farang population of Pattaya. People from Holland who have saved up enough dough to sit it out here untill there pension, small time criminals who spent their black money on cheap booze and even cheaper s*x, but also the hard *sses like Johnny Mieremet - one of the notorious Heineken kidnappers and who got shot in neighboring Bhanglamung some years ago.
This is the hang-out bench of the Dutch in Pattaya and therefore off limits to the fat-bellied Germans, rowdy English, Belgiams that are rumoured to be child molesters or French entrepeneurs but the countless Hot Mommas are more than welcome bringing a bit of entertainment to otherwise boring Dutch conversation topics, send them across the road to the 7/Eleven for beers and sigarettes.
Yes, that is The Dutch Farang Bench in Pattaya.

Old german villages with old german people
Im Wald, in der Náhe von Liebenwalde,
¨Wird Regen geben im Nachmittag¨, an old ameteur cyclist told me this morning while we cycled along under am ominous looking overcast sky.
Looking up at that gray mass that spanned the heaven I knew for a fact that he was right.
The first drops started around two o´clock in the afternoon and by now I can only hope my tent will stay as waterproof as it has so far!!!
Berlin is surrounded by fast stretches of oak and fir tree forests that are inhabited by moose, elk, deer and even wolfs. The many lakes must make these forests a mosquito nightmare but this early in the year I expect no problems in that department.
Though I liked Berlin very much cycling all over the city these last few days, Brandenburgerturm, Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtniskirche, Tiergarten, Bahnhof Zoo, the different city districts which each one often had its very own admosphere due no doubt to the many different people inhabiting Berlin, each ethnic group clinging to its own neighborhood.
Yeah Berlin was fun but I am longing to cycle a bit around the former Eastern Germany, spend time in front of my tent at night after a long and exhausting day on the bike, drinking a few cheap beers, light a campfire to heat up my cans of Bratwurst and hear the sounds of the dark nightly forest surrounding my tent.
The cycling is easy today passing through small villages where most of the younger population has moved to the west, only the old men still sit around in the village one and only surviving Kneipe / bar in German / playing cards and sipping schnapps, reminiscing the old times when they were still young and powerfull.
I see their wives sitting in front of old brick houses chitchatting and drinking cups of watery looking tea. Their children living their own lives in big western german cities now far away from the tranquility that still rules the villages where they grew up and where their parents are now living out their lives. Old and worn-out people...by the time they die these old villages will die with them.
written by  heraclio on January 13, 2009 from Berlin, Germany

The voices of wolves
Im Wald in der Nähe von Templin,
With a start I wake up feeling disoriented and confused. For a moment, just a short moment in the eternity of time I was back in the heat of Thailand hearing the voices of Thai women chitchatting outside my room while washing the laundry by hand.
Slowly their melodious Thai is being replaced by the constant patter of the heavy rain that bangs down on the outside of my tent and it becomes clear to me that I`m camping in the dark-green forests that surround Barlin.
My body is shivering and I`m covered in clammy sweat despite the warmth of my sleeping-bag. I`m scared beyond believe but find it hard to figure out why. It is not like I`m new to this, wild camping on my own in the middle of nowhere.
Trying to get my act together and find comfort in the realm of Lord Morpheus I
try to return to the dream that I was just in before my rude awakening when I hear a weird howling through the drumming of the rain outside.
Do I realy hear wolves? Hard to believe but the fear that gripped my heart earlier is now being replaced by the excitement of hearing the voices of those that rule these ancient forests.
Maybe the are preparing for the hunt and are warning the other inhabitants of the forest that their time has come....they beter hide and take cover or else.... they might find themselves on the pack's menu this rainy night.
When I wake up in the morning the rain is still heavy and incessantly drumming away on the outside of my tent forcing me to delay my departure. Sticking my still sleepy head outside my tent I discover a thoroughly wed small owl sitting only meters away on the low branch of a fir tree eyeing me curiously.
written by  heraclio on March 16, 2009 from Berlin, Germany

Walking with my daughter in Bangkok
How make Karma work, by paying free Tiger Beer to Hot Mommas on Pattaya`s boulevard, give them the key to your room so they can have a much needed shower, a quick nap on the bed, let them have the worthless bunch of second hand T-shirts that I put in my backpack just for that occasion?
The hidden structures of an oriental society of moral and evil, Jai-Dee or Cheap Charley. I`m not really sure about my farang status in this mystifying nation with its superstitious people whose bodies often carry the weirdest tattoes of chinese dragons and other non-excistent animals from the world of the myths and Asian legends, their crazy fascination with animal behaviour, their total and complete devotion to spirituality as a whole with every house having its own spirit house.
I can make no sense of male chauvinist local views on women. They talk about them like they are only around to be used but at the same time as a society they give them more personal freedom than quite a few countries I could mention. Where every local male should have a Mia-Noi or else he is not considered a real man but at the same moment don`t care a temple rat`s *ss they sell their nubile bodies en masse to degenerate farang males.
The endless narrative churns through my farang head while I work in Lumpini Park in Bangkok, an oasis of green in an otherwise gray concrete jungle of skyscrapers, a super-jammed traffic flow at any hour of the day and often at night, with more food hawkers then there are restaurants in the whole of my native Holland.
This is a busy city, one of the biggest in the world!!!
I`m holding hands with a twenty year old Eurasian female of a rare beauty who is talking happily to me, who keeps giggling about the photos of baby Charlotte, her half sister "ay, she beautifull have uncle Jamie`s eyes, me like photo with she sleep", and on and on she goes.
I`m acutely aware of the mental gossiping going on in the minds of an elderly farang couple just passing us, another European s*x-tourist with a local girlfriend not even half his age, she could well be his daughter so young she still is.
Well guys, I have news for you....SHE IS MY DAUGHTER, the product of me and Nong whom I`ll meet later tonight.

On the way to a dinner date with Nong
Nighttime.
All Bangkok taxi drivers are superstitious to the max, often orinating from Thailand`s poor north, wearing several Buddha pendants around their necks, go to the wat every morning to make an offering of rice, garlands and moonshine whiskey, cuban sigars and sigarettes to the spirits that rule their fears, the spiritual world of the goddess whose image adourns the inside of Bangkok taxis, whose pendant hangs around the necks of the countless motorbike taxi drivers in this huge staeming metropole.
I try to concentrate on the powerfull Buddha pendant hanging around my own farang neck, my tighs clasped tightly against the upperlegs of the taxi driver while he skillfully wringles through the Bangkok traffic jams. I fear for my kneecaps with only centimeters to spare at both sides, mere inches to the cars we pass at both sides, we round a corner at a 45 degree angle paying no heed to all the people who crowd the streets of Bangkok`s China Town.
Bangkok`s Chinese population preparing for the upcoming Chinese New Year. The admosphere is festive with many farangs mixing with the crowd of mostly in red dressed locals, elefants marching down Charoen Krung Thanon, the Chinese dragon dancing in the street while fire crackers go off at an deavening sound, farang tourists desperately trying to capture it all with digital camaras, endless rows of chinese shops all having a small spirit temple nailed to the wall, the bony faces of Khatoes disapaer behind me while my driver carefully avoids two fat Americans tourist ladies, white cotton dresses spanning over large layers of pink behinds "wow, did you see the elfants?"
Then the mayhem is behind me when we leave the Chinese District. We pass the Wat Traimit were I tell the driver to stop, I want to make a quick offering to Lord Buddha before my dinner date with Nong.
The expensive five star Shangri-La Hotel is set on the bank of the Chao Praya River and while I pay my driver, tipping him generously and wishing him a safe night with many customers so he can visit the girly bars tonight - I know the Thai after all - I watch the hotel`s security guards dressed in their heavenly blue uniforms, handcuffs and battons dangling from their belts, playing Thai checkers at a wooden table with Chang bottle tops.
I enter the gigantic lobby, my heat heavy like a whole brick wall is pressing down on it, trying to think about the good Thai food I will soon eat, trying to ignore the stupid fact I`ll in mere minutes meet the most important woman in my life.
For a moment I feel like running away as I`ve been running all of my life but then I see her, a bit more full in the face, a bit more weight on her once lith small body...she sees me too, walking toward me slowly...we wai each other politely, she carefully holding her clasped hands a bit lower down her face as mine and therby showing me respect, no embraces and public shows of emotionsas is common in the West but frowned upon in King Bhumipol`s Nation.

A care centre for the terminally sick
Im Wald in der Nähe von Neustrelitz,
I'm in a small bar in Blankenförde, a small settlement in the Nationalpark Müritz consisting of narrow cobble-stoned streets that are lined with mostly empty two storeyed houses that look in a serious state of decay, many of the red colored tiles missing from the roofs, windows broken with the incessant rain slashing through the jagged holes.
No parked cars anywhere in this old and derlict Eastern German village, just a few ancient looking rusty bicycles parked in front of the village's only bar that doubles as restaurant where old and wrinkled men with unkempt beards play checkers nursing small glass cups of Schnaps called Asbach Uralt.
Nobody paying me any heed despite my ragged and worn appearance due to nearly two weeks of living rough and wild-camping in the woods. I drink my weak coffee quietly while working on my omelettes and stale bread, my orange juice looks watery while the glass it is served in, is opaque with use, the table cloth is full with sigarette burns and dusty to the touch.
Everything in this bar and the rest of the village is despodence to the MAX, glum and hopeless, a place where the remaining population is old and without inspiration. I feel like I have walked into A care centre for the terminally sick!!!
After the collapse of the Wall the younger generation ran off to West with big dreams and hopes taking the souls of these Eastern Germany villages with them.
The families they started far away in Koln or Düsseldorf, big German cities in the rich industrial part of the Suaerkraut and Bratwurst country. No joy for these despondent old village people most of whom have never been to the West, to see their grand children grow up and replace the old village populace.
Leaving this darkly lit bar and unlocking my bike - why did I ever bother to lock my bike anyway? Not like any of these old sods is gonna run away with my iron travel partner! - and cycling out of this miserable place I can`t help but feel sorry for them.
The constant rain that has been my companion these past two days only adds to my glum mood!!!
written by  heraclio on March 17, 2009 from Berlin, Germany

Nong`s life.
The Somtam with sticky rice I had during my dinner with Nong is slowly and pleasurably being digested ny my belly`s digestive juices which I`m rewarding with Black Cat Whiskey mixed with cubes of ice and a generous shot of Red Bull energy drink - not a combination to try unless You wanna get drunk fast and furious!!!
I`m lying on the massive bed of her room at the Shangri-La Hotel courtesy of her Norwegian sugar daddy who is presently presiding in Oslo, due back in about a week.
The room is nearly as big as my house in Amsterdam, the bed four times the size of the cot that is in the little room I rent back at Bangkok`s rowdy tourist district Khao Sarn Road, the Nat 2 Guesthouse.
Big mirrors beaming my own reflections back at me, and a private fridge stocked with Singha Beer and bottles of whiskey and wodka, a box of expensive Cuban sigars on top of it.
Nong is on the bed next to me making photos of herself with my digital camara - the Thai love modern technology!!! Her eyes happy and full with life still, talking to me, analysing my Farang male soul, goiing on and on like the endless narative inside my head that by now is getting quite drunk I might add.
Nong is a woman who started her life back in the Isaan minding water buffalo and playing with her contemporaries in the dusty sandy streets of just another little
third world hamlet, a down trotten Karen mother, yet another erfugee from the brutal and insane regime that still to today rules Burma, her father a Thai boozer on moonshine whiskey and a frequent visitor to the local pool-hall which is the Thai equivalent of a wh*rehouse.
She came to Bangkok when she was 15 together with her one year older brother Jamie losing her virginity the same night to a drunk - mau to the max - Farang who beat the cr*p out of her because he couldn`t get it up due to the heavy amounts of Mekhong in his blood.
Thausends of Farang males followed suit, a shorttime or a longtime, taking her to exotic paradises like Kho Chang or Kho Phi-Phi, a trip to Paris and another to Koln, using her body like there was no tomorrow.. and at times more aggression, more beatings by mau farangs with incompetence problems due to alcohol related causes.
But tonight she is choi-choi because we`re back together drinking Black Cat Whiskey and she can amuse herself with my digital camara, she can analyse my Farang soul again, discuss our Dek-Dek and Jamie`s Phii which she is sure is housing in little baby Charlotte`s body. After all baby Charlotte was conceived three months after Jamie`s watery death in the 2004 Tsunami.

The life of a scuba dive master/instructor on Kho Tao
Ko Tao, Thailand
No more fat middle-aged men walking the boulevard in [[Myanmar-(Burma)/Pattaya]] with a Hot Momma on their arm maybe half their age, girls that look like overjoyed pussycats that have finally nailed a fat mouse - the word "fat" goes both ways here I presume.
Instead I look at male hard muscled farang bodies in shorts with bare upper chests, well suntanned and bleaches blond hair working at one of the many dive shops that dot the island, as dive masters and dive instructors.
Young European ladies with a sarong wrapped around well defined gold colored hips and legs, a bikini top completing the exotic dress attire, proudly walking around the sand tracks on Kho Tao feeling happy with their lives, content to work here on this little tropical pearl in the Thai ocean.
Scuba diving is the main attraction of Kho Tao with people coming from all over the world to get their Padi Dive Certificate here at all over the island scattered dive schools which are with no exception managed by Farang people.
Working in this business, on this beautiful location, three times a day in the azure blue sea scuba diving, good excersize and clean air, the nights filled with laughter and fun while going out with your scuba customers from the day eating good non-preserved fresh food at one of the many beach restaurants. Fresh fish right out of 0the sea, from the pot onto your plate.
Who can blame these people they even get a "teeny bit" arogant about their paradise life style, get this thing in their stupid farang head they are on a higher level than their backpack customers with whom they often have post-coital coffee drinking in the morning after.
I should know...I lived that life myself for a while right here on this very island.
My third time on Kho Tao - which means Turtle Island by the way - and I see more dive shops, more beach front restaurants, more resorts, more tourist shops and higher prises.
written by  heraclio on April 14, 2009 from Ko Tao, Thailand

I`ve been in the presence of wolves
Im Wald in der Nähe von Boek.
I cycle - like yesterday - all day through pine forests interspersed with deep blue colored lakes that abound with water fowl, ducks, geese, coots, spoonbills and more swans as I have ever seen before in my life.
The trees of the forest surrounding me are awash with noisy finches that fly ahead of my bicycle for a while before disappaering back into the dark-green curtain that line both sides of the road.
At open places I experience the occasional bout of "Wind in the Face", every long distance cyclist`s nightmare apart from heavy rain and snow.
But this Gegenwind as the Sauerkraut and Bratwurst people in this part of the world, call it does not dampen my enthusiasm. Quite the opposite actually, I take in huge gulps of the still crispy cold air. Like the flora and fauna kingdom around me I too can feel and smell the coming of spring in the air which is hightening my spirits, heightening the dopamine levels inside my dutch skull.
It has been a good decision to up here instaed of hanging around in Berlin for another 4 or 5 days.
The smells that penetrate my nostrils is that of pine forest and lakes, what my eyes see is pine forest and lakes. Yes, I enjoy this trip a lot!!!
At some point during the day I notice the tracks of deer in the mud along the road. Getting off my bike to investigate, maybe make a quick drawing of them in my sketch book, I discover some more tracks, more sinister and ominous in character reminding me of the weird howling I heard a few nights ago.
They look like the spoor of dogs but I seriously doubt the presence of stray dogs in these dark forests. Dogs tend to stay around human habitation even when going stray. I have a strong suspicion I have stumbled upon the tracks of a very different type of canine here.
I make a photo as well as a sketch. Another photo of the greyish and very smelling droppings I discover a few meters further on.
I will have to check up on this once I get back to Amsterdam. I really like to know whether or not I`ve been in the presence of wild wolves.
written by  heraclio on March 19, 2009 from Berlin, Germany

A meeting with an old German lady.
Im Wald in der Nähe von dobbertin.
In the difuse light of the small bar where I have breakfast I try to make sence of the Berliner Zeitung I found on the table and which is several days out of date - to say the least - and a touchy bit yellowish.
The runny eggs with stale bread that seems to have to rule the menu in these Eastern German villages, has already gone down to my starving belly. The watery and luke-warm cup of coffee is still waiting for consumption. Not that I expect to really wake up seriously from this low cafeine brew that looks more like dish water then anything fit for human drinking purposes.
I`ve no doubt that an impoverished Indian or a Thai individual from the poor north of the Thai Kingdom would consider this breakfast a once in a life time five star restaurant delicacy.
However I'm far from being an impoverished Indian or a poor Thai and need my food desperately in order to do my daily 100 km. of cycling.
"Darf Ich mich vielleicht ein moment mal bei Ihnen setzen?".
Being disturbed in my mental ponderings about bad food and weak dish water I look up into the roundish and wrinkled face of a rotund old woman, maybe somewhere in her late sixties dressed in faded jeans and a woolen sweater that once must have been red but has discolored to a darker sort of brownish color with age.
Her face is open and honest betraying curiousity.
She introduces herself as Die Kerstin coming from the nearby village of Brüel having been married to a local man in this village called Dabel. "Er ist aber schon seit vielen Jahren tot und unsere Kinder sind alle ausgeflogen zum West".
Husband died many years ago and the kids have moved to the Rich West. She seems in a serious need to tell me her life story and wants to hear all about my travels across the globe....she tells me she can see from the look in my eyes I`ve seen many places....have been to the corners of the world.
"Ich kenne nur diese Wälder, war sogar noch nicht mal in Berlin, noch nicht im Leben im Zug oder Flugzeug. Das war in meiner Zeit gar nicht möglich, lieber Herr". "Die Partei gab kein Erlaubnis und jetzt bin zu alt zu reisen".
Basically she never has been anywhere in her life, no permission from the former communist party and now she is too old to go anywhere but enjoy her small pension.
I offer her a Schnapps feeling genuinely sorry for this gnarled old woman who is obviously still in the possession of all her wits drinking one myself as well mentally considering the fact that she has probably been eating runny eggs and stale bread, drinking weak dish water all of her life.
One Schnapps turn into several and while the heavy german rain drums away on the opaque windows of this little run down bar with its disfused light and stale air inside, while the habitual clientêle slowly fills the five tables oppressing the already laden air with old men`s farts and the smoke of cheap tabacco, Fraulein Kerstin tells me what it was like to life under the communist yoke. With a Lächelchen - a smile you knowe - she tells me how it feels like to be the Mum of children who have left and have Keine Zeit für ihr Mütterchen heute. No time for Mum today.
Trying to get my act together after all the Schnapps I expalin my life in Thailand, my trips to India and South and Middle America, my cycle trips around Europe.
Half drunk on all the Schnapps and with the German rain having come to an end I apologise and stagger out cycling through dark green Eastern German forests where the animal world is feeling happy with the onslaught of Spring and most definitely much more sober then me.

Programmed by a smart bomb
Ko Tao, Thailand
For a moment I believe my eyes are alive with neon light, for a moment I see a gold colored light beaming off an endless and interminable row of Buddhas whose crazy but divine smiles grin at me in a mystic way, trying to tell me something.....?
Did he know my dream, being back on that motorbike taxi deftly avoiding elefants in the hectic traffic of Bangkok`s China Town with its countless chinese owned juwelery shops, Chinese characters screaming at me in the colors yellow and gold, Farang tourists in the streets, quick camara shooting the Chinese New Year Dragon and fire crackers going off, on my way to Nong in the Shangria-La Hotel, nearly sh*tting myself with fright while the endless narrative keeps churning through my Farang head trying so hard to work out my Farang/Oriental connexion.
No neon lights but the hot rays of a not so early Thai ocean sun shining through the windows of my 300 baht bungalow hitting the gold Buddha pendant hanging from the bed post and beating off it right into my eyes, no screaming Chinese voices in China Town or the smells of numerous food stalls lining the streets in a crowded third world town.
Instead I wake up to the sounds of waves rolling in from the sea, the singing of birds in the resort`s garden, the Jamaican reggea music in the resort`s restaurant, the salty smell of a grand ocean full with tropical fish that attracts foreign tourists from all over the world bend on getting their Padi Dive Certificate and feasting their eyes on all that down under the surface of the sea, beautifull sea life created by Mother Nature.
I walk through small sandy lanes lined by souvenir shops, clothes made of silk and cotton sold at rediculous cheap prices, restaurants that have wooden signs outside proclaiming the movies they will play on their VCR systems tonight. But most of all I see dive shops, more dive shops and even more dive shops with fancy names like The Big Blue, Calypso Diving, Grand Coral Diving and the like.
It is not diving I am after today though....I wanna go out and enjoy the tranquility of the azure blue mighty ocean, be on my own while the sun overhead my Farang head will build up a nice suntan on my still white European skin. No doubt it will be a sweaty skin today considering I wanna go out there under my own force, rent an one-person kayak, paddle and paddle with a soft refreshing sea breeze in my face blowing away that d*rned endless narrative in my head, that smart bomb that is programmed to go off inside my skull every time I set food on Thai soil.
written by  heraclio on April 15, 2009 from Ko Tao, Thailand

A paddle trip around Kho Nang-Yuan
Ko Tao, Thailand
I`m still suffering from a lethel dose of heart burn after my night together with Nong in Krung Thep - as the Thais call Bangkok. Maybe a Farang lady-friend for a week or so could take care of my emotional stability, a week of passion on this tropical paradise where the main topic of conversation is scuba diving, where the food at the numerous beach restaurants is excelent and cheap, a light constant breeze coming in from the ocean keeping the temperature warm but not unbearable hot.
I`m out at sea now with my kayak working myself into a sweat while the sun is watching my progress in a hot sort of way.
I want to circle the privately owned tripartite island Kho Nang-Yuan, three little rocky islets connected at low tide by idyllic looking sand banks and a favourite day trip from Kho Tao.
The first time I was on Kho Tao I moved to Kho Nang-Yuan for about a week renting a small bungalow on one island and eating my meals in the one and only restaurant on the main island. Early evening with low tide strolling across the sand bank to the main island was easy, but late at night with my poor head heavy on Mekhong whiskey and a high tide I had to cross through chest deep sea holding my clothes above my head scared that the small reef sharks I had seen during the day`s snorkling would bite off my...well, you know what!!!
I paddle between a couple of Thai fishing boats with some sleepy fishing men with blurry eyes watching my work-out. Small fish jump across the sea`s surface and seagulls in a stark blue sky trying to catch them in mid air. A big cruise ship in Kho Nang-Yuan`s bay unloading middle-aged japanese tourists each of them wearing a brightly colored life vest, snorkle in hands the hue of porcelain, all excited at the prospect of seeing the creatures of King Neptue`s watery kingdom.
I feel in love with the whole universe while I paddle on passing several dive shop boats, dive students bobbing up and down in the water, scuba bottles tied to their backs listening attentively to their instructor, a muscular blond giant with a swedish accent whose eyes are openly flirting with a petite black haired lady who is nearly hanging from his lips. I have no doubt his company for the coming night is already assured.
My love for the whole universe is encompassing the nirvanic universe as well now due to the enormous amounts of dopamine releasing themselves in my farang mind mixing with the hormonal overload that is a left over from my night with Nong.
I pass another fishing boat, a few ragged kids emerge to blatantly stare at me, "bon bon, mister, please", I hear before paddling on leaving Kho Nang-Yuan behind, having done the loop around this privately owned rocky and green set of islets, back on the way to Kho Tao
written by  heraclio on April 17, 2009 from Ko Tao, Thailand

a macho white peacock.
Im Wald in der Nähe von Rastrow.
It has been raining every night now since I left Berlin but with enough dry hours during the day time to manage my 80/100 km. a day, though last night it was hail that was being sent down to me by those divine beings that are rumoured to inhabit the clouds above my mortal head.
In the early light of a not so brand new day I break down my tent which is still wed from last night`s hail. The stretch of open agricultural land in front of me is covered by a fine whittish fog but I can still discern the small herd of deer munching away on the first sprouts of Spring grass. They eye me curiously keeping a safe distance but seem otherwise unconcerned by my presence.
A completely white - albino? - peacock is hopping busily around and among the deer proudly showing off his huge white tail every so often. Is this bird trying to impress the deer with this halo of white feathers - I mean I see no female peacocks anywhere - ,if so he is not doing a good job of it.
I`ve always thought peacocks to be native to the Indian subcontinent but these german forests seem to contain a sizeable population.
Packing my gear together and on the back of my bicycle I leave this macho bird behind quietly hoping he`ll eventually see the error of his ways trying to impress a herd of deer instead of female peacocks. His changes of getting laid the peacock way are very slight this way.

A female elefant trap
The gigantic flatscreen TV in the Flower Restaurant shows an over-muscled Arnold Schwarzenegger quick-shooting his enemies with an enormous gun, his face full with camouflage colors and set in a grotesque grin, explosions go off all around him killing off even more enemy combatants but miraculously leaving Mister Universe unscathed.
Most of the other diners` eyes are literally glued to the screen, not mine though. I try to concentrate to the sounds of the waves rolling in advocating the beginning of high tide, I`m trying to enjoy my food, fried rice with barbequed squid which I caught myself today during my second day out at sea in my hired kayak.
It is not Arnie`s actions on the screen that disturb my mental peace tonight, nor the loud "Cocaine In My Brain" Reggae music from Dillinger originating from the neighboring Cave Bar where I plan to drink a Kloster later and look for a possible nighttime partner....
In my mind I hear Jamie, I`m back in that rotten police holding cell in Krung Thep, sitting on that dark brown wooden floor full with cracks and holes through which bold big cockroaches would emerge and the dirty rats that chased them...I can hear his narrative on the Farang/Thai connection...
Zoom in...
He is effortlessly showing off his superior oriental mind over my Farang way of thinking, explainig his grasp of Farang weaknesses...how middle-aged Farang men the world over come to Thailand looking for the simplest of the simplest, looking for a lady who will respect them and give them good s*x...a life time of slaving away for the boss desperate for promotion, fustrated by stress, endless hours in traffic jams, teenage children that reject him and a nagging wife that has spent most of her adult life on the couch munching bon-bons and is presently enjoying his monthly payments as determined by a Farang jugde while enjoying the physical attentions of a young lover...
He comes to the East wondering what the heck he is doing here, he listens to the girls often the age of his own daughters tell him he is s*xy man, "me love you too much you handsome s*xy man".
For the price of a lady`s drink - not more than 35 Baht - they give him in a mere 30 minutes more female attention than his wife has given him in full life time of marriage, when he takes her home - after paying her 200 Baht bar fine and taking her back to his room, his Farang heart heavy with feelings of Typical Western Guilt, he will find out more about Coital Behaviour as he has seen during secretely watching p*rn in dirty s*x cinemas half his married life.
She will hold his hand while they walk on the boulevard, giggling in her oh-so-feminine way, telling him repeatedly how handsome, how s*xy, how good he make Bam-Bam for her, easing his guild feeling, making him feel quite the catch...
He doesn`t realise he has walked into a female elefant trap!!!
Zoom out...
I really need a beer in that Cave Bar now!!!

On the way to total oblivion
As a human I`m at the end of a Karmic cycle being in the possession of the posibility to move on to the Buddhist concept of Nirvana, the Christian belief of Heaven or maybe a one-way ticket to Allah`s divine Kingdom.
The only thing I`ve to do is listen to the morality of my eternal soul, maybe enter a Thai Wat and get involved in Vipassana meditation, look for alms early morning and reject all wordly possessions, no more power, dominance, money grapping and all that comes with it, but most importantly...no more exoticism, no more erotic encounters with a post-coital coffee drinking session the next morning in a beach-side local restaurant looking in the still sleepy but highly satisfied eyes of a backpack lady from far away Europe
I enter the Cave Bar just after midnight having erotic encounters on my mind. The door is flanked by a gypsum Fred Flintstone, a fitting doorman considering the name of the bar.
Inside I discern more members of the Flintstone family place at random around the dank interior, kersosene lanterns hanging from the ceiling spread a difuse light in which I see the shadowy figures of a crowd of mostly youngsters somewhere in their mid twenties, alternative types with long Rasta hair, suntanned blondes with Scandinavian accents, brunettes with glossy lips speaking French and a few local waitresses hurrying from table to table.
Having a Black Cat whiskey at the wooden bar I eavesdrop on conversations around me, different languages of ancient Europe besieging my Farang ears,
"got my dive instructor`s certificate today".
"wir haben heute mit einer Grupe Scheiss Holländer getaucht".
"Vädern war mycket vacker idag".
Sultry eyes when I try to make eye contact with a balk haired petite that looks like French blood rules her veins. Rejected looks from a duo of blondes that were just discussing today`s weather in their native tongue. No way I`m gonna give the Bavarian lady dive masters a go...they just called my nationality Scheisse - sh*t.
I actually realise I`m in the local dive masters` hang-out. Dominance and arrogance are floating around here. No erotic chances for me in this place...I`m after all not a dive master living on a tropical oriental paradise...a lesser human being that doesn`t deserve their physical attentions....I`ve embarked upon their private territory by simply walking into this bar...better I fall in love with my Black Cat whiskey, order some more and annoy this crowd with my mere presence in their divine Temple of Gossip.
I`m three quarters on the way to total oblivion when I stagger home, back to my 300Baht bungalow through a dark Kho Tao, an opaque moon the only witness to my drunk raving.

Back on track to Amsterdam.
Im Wald in der Nähe von Wietzetze.
Flashes of lightning light up the inside of my tent while I work on a couple of cans of Weissen brew. The rain is once again coming down like a tropical downpour reminding me as always of my trips to Thailand and the little family I have there.
Thai voices ring inside my head drowning the steady patter of rain on top of my tent. I`m slowly getting into phylosofical mood brought about no doubt by the alcohol and several weeks of wild camping in German woods, living it rough, shunning human contact as much as possible, living a solitary life of cycling all day on a bare excistence, my only luxury of the day my runny eggs and stale bread served with luke-warm watery dish water that qualifies as hot coffee in these lonely Eastern German villages.
The rain is slowly subsiding and the sounds erupting outside my little one-person tent in this dark and mysterious forest are at the same time fascinating and scary bringing my farang mind back to the here and now from the far away Land of the Thais, from the sociable and always smiling Thais to my self chosen life of solitary.
I`ve spent all day cycling through the beautifull Nossentiner-Schwinzer Heide National Park with groups of sparrows and wood pigeons in the Fields, deer running away ahead of me, dozens of swans in a Field. An owl sitting on a barbed wire pole looking at me cycling by, a big brown buzzard sat only a few short yards away from me in the grass. I had no idea what he/she was doing there and when I stopped to investigate the bird flew away loudly shrieking his/her protestations.
Today I also reached the river Elbe which means I`m slowly leaving the former East German Replublik behind and am back on track to Amsterdam.

A Ting-Tong victim
Ko Samui, Thailand
on the ferry from Kho Tao to Kho Samui, Na Thon.
Primitive sorcery, superstitious beliefs and a fascination with the animal spirituality are rife in the head of any Thai, be it male or female. Even the ferry from Kho Tao to Kho Samui has a small spirit house with burning insence that brings some relief to the air inside which is heavy with sigarette smoke, the crying of a baby that competes with the blaring on the inevitable TV system right next to the spirit house, showing a movie that I am unable to concentrate on.
Half an adult life of coming to the Kingdom of the Smile, experiences and events, incidents, all dismantled and stored somewhere in the darker and deeper recesses of my Farang mind, Asian images and oriental thinking colliding with a Western trained soul.
The primitive sorcery of undereducated peasant daughters from Thailand`s poor north grasping my Phii, taking hold of my emotional state of mind, no Karmic benefits to win by falling in love with a Thai Lady of the Night but a ravaged heart confused by cultural differences and a Western cultivated Guilt Complex.
"I love Thai girls", a young skinny English Bloke with a Cockney accent tells me eagerly, his adam`s apple bobbing up and down in his throat nervously while he sipps coke from the straw sticking out of a transperant platic bag. His big hooked nose and protruding horse teeth give him the appearance of a mouse, or maybe a skinny rat.
"Mon, I tell you, for a few hundert stupid Baht they give you more fun than any b*tch back home", he continues while his small frame seems to be wrestling with the upholstery of his seat, his pale blue eyes scanning the the other passengers constantly in an irritant sort of way.
"Hey, mon, Kho Samui, that is where all the scum of the world lives", "I should know, I live there".
Trying to ignore this Ting-Tong - crazy in Thai - victim of a continueing s*xual war, trying hard to shut out the on-going noicy video on the monitor, I return to my mental pondering.
There are moments that this Endless Narrative inside my head is welcome after all!!!
written by  heraclio on April 20, 2009 from Ko Samui, Thailand

A Chinese receptionist lady
Ko Samui, Thailand
Thailand, Kho Samui, Na Thon,
01-02-2009, early afternoon.
I leave the ferry with my English Ting-Tong travel buddy in hot pursuit telling me repeatedly that we need to find a cheap guesthouse. Now I have no intentions to share a guesthouse, let well a room with this little young and hyper-active s*x tourist from Jolly Old England so I head to the Nathon Residence, big and spacious rooms all with satelite TV and a balcony for 300 Baht.
The female Chinese receptionist Wais me the moment I walk in, heavy backpack strapped to my shoulder, sweaty T-shirt and greasy old jeans notwithstanding I seem to deserve the Thai Wai - what is that makes the Thai feel so apologetic to us The Farangs? Her clasped hands in front of her jiil face - Chinese in Thai - go up even higher when her ink black eyes discern the buddha pendant dangling on my chest reminding me that the Chinese minority in Thailand are even more ferociously superstitious as the Thai.
I Wai her back politely carefully keeping my own clasped hands a bit lower down my face as hers and thereby acknowledging her show of respect.
The old Chinese man sitting in the lobby, small frame dressed in a drab white singlet, wobbly leathery legs sticking out of a pair of grizzly white shorts watching the free show from over his newspaper, chinese characters screaming at me from the newspaper`s front, approving looks from beady eyes than he returns to his main source of entertainment...his newspaper.
I wonder how come Chinese hotels anywhere in Asia always seem to have old Chinese men sitting around in their underwear reading Chinese newspapers???
Walking up the stairs in front of me bringing me to my room of me chatting gaily in a weird mix of Thai and English I see the small but elaborate Tattoo of the Chinese Ryu on the back of her calf.
She sits on the massive bed in my room watching me unpack, wanting to know "you have lady"? Out in the street a Chinese festival is in full swing, Chinese dragon dancing, fire crackers going off, people in weird Chinese costumes and masks going from Chinese shop to the next Chinese house...tables outside with offerings...a pick-up truck carrying Burmese day workers back to their hovels dirty towels wrapped around their heads...I wanna get out and watch the festivities but instead I find myself captured by the shapely legs of a Chinese receptioniust lady who seems in no hurry to return to her reception.
My English Ting-Tong friend would have loved this hotel!!!
written by  heraclio on April 21, 2009 from Ko Samui, Thailand

A birth explosion of magflies.
Im Wald in der Nähe von Lünenburg.
A brave but still weak sun greets me when I wake up and stick my head out of my tent.
I`m surrounded by literally thousands upon thousands of tiny mayflies buzzing around my head while I break down my tent, bury the five half liter cans of Kranenborger Beer I consumed last night in front of my tent and prepare myself for yet another day on my bicycle.
A real birth explosion of these tiny one-day creatures that are rumoured to live only one day. One single day of life during which they have to go through the whole process of creeping out of there eggs, find a partner and reproduce and then die.
Pushing my bicycle through the forest in the direction of the road I`ve to frequently navigate through huge spiderwebs that are hanging between the trees full with the early morning dew and unfortunate magflies trapped in the web`s sticky threats. For these unfortunates life was already over before it even started!!!
The masters of these webs, cross-spiders whose hairy backs proudly sport colorfull crucifixes, look fat and big though they too can only have been born recently.
I presume a diet of careless magflies must be good to a young spider`s physical development.
Not that I really care about magflies buzzing around my head or sticky spiderwebs blocking my way....I too have the early sun of spring in my head feeling happy at the prospect of cycling during what will obviously be a sunny day, with probably many yet to come.
Cycling under a german early spring sun during the day and sipping cans of Kranenborger beer in front of my tent at night, getting philosophical while keeping a small campfire going and eating german bratwurst bought in the Lidl supermarket.
No more nordic god Thor causing big thunderstorms while his magic hammer Mjölnir will light up the night sky with rowdy flashes of lighning forcing me to hide in my tent, smiling down on me with malicious content in the morning while I pull down my tent in pouring rain.
From now on these last five days of cycling back to Amsterdam will be absolute delight!!!

I`m back in the real world of mankind.
Im Wald in der Nähe von Soltau.
Having my breakfast in a small McDonalds roadside restaurant I realise that my time of cycling through these dark-green and mysterious Eastern German forests has come to a definite end. Long and solitary days on the bike cycling under overcast skies that never promised anything positive, endless showers of sleet and rain, thunderstorms at night with flashes of lightning lighting up the inside of my tent at night.
Ancient small nearly deserted villages where time seemed to have come to some weird sudden end, devoid of young people, where old people looked like they were under a strange and mystical spell, live energy gone from dull old rumy eyes.
The sounds of animals at night adding to the overall feeling I was in some sort of fairy land cunjured up by the brothers Grimm.
So now I sit here in this German version of the American born McDonalds, an unruly week old beard covering my face, disheveled hair that could use a serious visit to a hair salon, smelly old clothes, drinking inky black strong McDonalds coffee and eating greasy omelettes contemplating this confined world of an american fast food joint on German soil.
People hurriedly entering and impaciently queueing up while dragging nervously from Marlboro sigarettes, no time to sit down and relax while having a bite...instead they hastily eat their hamburger on the way to the exit, unsure of sipping from a cup of hot coffee or having another drag from their still burning Marlboro provided cancer stick, preparing themselves for slave driven life at the office.
Shappy dressed teenager girls gossiping about the hottest looking hunk at school, giggling while they sip their strawberry flavoured milk shakes with bright red lipsticked mouths.
Two young women at the other table eye me with disgust and when I give them my warmest smile look away with hauthy faces. I have no doubt that my bodily odour has a serious say in this matter.
Yes I`m back in the real world of mankind.

Female Asian Witchcraft
Ko Samui, Thailand
Kho Samui, Na Thon,
01-02-2009, early evening.
Showered and in fresh clothes I walk down the stairs of the Nathon Residence, my eyes scanning the lobby for possible Lady Recepcionist related "problems". The old Chines man in his grizzly white underwear still reading his Chinese newspaper eyeing me knowingly from over the top, though his d*rned newspaper hides most of his wrinkled yellowish face I know for sure he is wearing a dirty grin on his mouth, having all sorts of s*xual images in his old man`s head about what happened upstairs when the lady receptionist showed me my room.
Bending over the reception to hand her my key I notice she has changed from her knee short skirt into a tight fitting jeans, her hair has gone from a pony tail to modestly hanging across her breasts. Her smile is at the same time modest and provocative, shrewd and assessing my Phii for a possible romantic opening, a combination I only know in oriental women, the sort of smile that will instantly steal my Farang heart.
I realise if I don`t leave this place quick I`ll crumble under Female Asian Witchcraft. With the stern eyes of His Majesty King Bhumipol in full regalia inmidiated above her head looking down on me I leave in a hurry confused and out of this world, going out in the street still hearing her excited girly giggles in my ears.
The Chinese festival is still in full swing, tourists making pictures of tiny Asian bodies in grand costumes, a bare chested Thai/Chinese with a white iron stick through his cheeks big pomgranates hanging from the ends forcing him to support the stick with one of his hands, old Chinese shop ladies in extacy when her table full to overflow with offerings for the spirits gets a visit from Mister Big Mask, cooking pots exhaling huge clouds of spicy smelling smoke, excited local kids....
I`m in a haze while walking out of the village leaving all the mayhem behind, following a beach strewn with rubbish, fishing boats unloading the day`s catch, women sorting out the fish while chatting gaily exchanging the usual gosip of the day while handling slippery scaly bodies, yellow baskets full with ice and fish.
Just outside Na Thon and under the shadows of coconuts trees, near the beach where the waves roll in peacefully as the have been doing for eternity I sit down to contemplate the sunset and let this Female Asian Witchcraft do its number on my Jai-Dee and my Phii.
written by  heraclio on April 22, 2009 from Ko Samui, Thailand

A window of clarity
Kho Samui, Hat Lamai,
I find myself back in a local Song-Thaew from Na Thon to Hat Lamai where I wanna spend a few days of relaxation. Some days on the beach to work on my suntan and spend the evening visiting the many open-air bars that dot Hat Lamai like fleas on the fur of Thai street dogs.
It is still early morning with the Song-Thaew stopping every so ofen to pick up more passengers, a couple of young girls dressed in light blue blouses and dark blue skirts modestly falling just over their knees - school uniforms you know - small backpacks holding their schoolbooks and lunch.
An old local woman getting on, bend with arthritis and several baskets full to overflow with durians, no doubt she`s on her way to some village market to sell this typical Asian fruit which has never been a favorite of mine.
I get out to help her with her baskets together with the driver, the old woman waiing me politely. With her sitting opposite me and the baskets occupying the space between the two benches she gives me a curious look before asking me "parlez-vous Francaise, monsieur?"
She has lived here all her life being somewhere in her mid forties when the island first got visited by a couple of long haired farangs who came by local coconut boat from Bangkok. How life was hard for the people then living on a bare braedline excistence...how first the pot smoking alternatives arrived living in self made huts and small wooden bungalows they rented from samui`s local population, dressed in shabby clothes and having no morale whatsoever...how the building of the airport changed everything...planes leaving Germany coming straight to Kho Samui with only a short break at Don Muang Airport in Bangkok.
While I listen to her Samui life story wondering where a woman like her never having left this lush island, has learned such fluent french, her eyes and mind a window of clarity on what happened to this island, realising how strange life can be meeting this woman who somehow mastered an alien language as difficult as French is still at her avanged age selling durian fruit at a local village market, never ever been off the island.
When she gets off at Hat Bo Phut and I help her once again together with the driver to unload her durian filled wooden baskets, she gives me the strangest of smiles from a mounth that has long ago lost its last teeth, telling me in her accentless French "vous-avez Jai-Dee tres bon, monsieur main attention avec sous Karma"., and gone she is swallow up by Thai mysticism. the busy streets of a Thai early morning market, or maybe it only happened inside my Farang head.

Ordnung ist Ordnung and Befehl ist Befehl
Im Wald in der Nähe von Nienburg.
Ever since I left Eastern Germany`s dark-green forests behind me, goodbye to the weird fairy tale land of the brothers Grimm, things have turned for the better.
I cycle all day under a nice spring sun. No more rain and sleet slashing into my face all day. No more cold wind whipping against my frame trying to slow down my hard work on my bike, instead I experience a nice but easy breeze in my back gliding me along all the way back to my beloved Amsterdam.
Gone are the nearly abandoned ancient German villages where the aged left-over population looked downtrotten with dull eyes that betrayed no hope for the future, whose clothes where moth eaten, old people sipping Schnapps while waiting for eternity`s bony fingers to come and get them. Instead I cycle through small cities that are full with life, , the hustle and bustle of a hard working population, where people hurry to and fro, where the stinking exhaust fumes of passing cars invade my nostrils making me cough.
I cycle through countryside dotted with farms where locals are busily plowing the earth with massive tractors, fields with grain and maize glide by while my legs do the work....up and down they go on the pedals of my bicycle.
Small little roadside cafes and bars provide me with the occasional cup of strong coffee and disapproving looks from the other clietêle. I`m a drifter and these are frowned upon by the highly organised culture of the economic powerhouse called The German Republic.
Ordnung soll es geben and Befehl ist BeFehl.
Their obvious but quiet disapproval does not bother me...in mere days I`ll be back home, back in my own appartment where I can shower and shave off my bushy beard, where I can step out of these smelly cycle clothes, visit a hair salon and get my disheveled hair cropped....but then I mere days I`ll be like them again...a working stiff having to slave away for a dominant boss to pay my rent, my bills and my taxes.

A storch family
Im Naturpark Dümmer.
I make camp in a small forest of birch trees just before sunset. There are several farms nearby but I don`t expect any problems wild camping like this. Not like the inhabitants of the nearby farms will phone the police and I`ll end up sleeping on the hard wooden bench of a German police office holding cell on charges of vagrancy.
One of these farms is actually so nearby that I can hear the clatter of storches that live on a nest overhead the farm. I have heard that storches are soundless, that their throats can`t produce sounds so instead they clapper their beaks together.
They fly to and fro their nest carrying half a forest for nest building purposes and in the last of the day`s light I see them mating, a quick and rowdy affair with feathers flying around and the male repeatedly slipping off the female`s back due to his long legs.
The farmer`s children watch the whole proceedings with just as much interest as me if not even more. Even the farm dog is looking up with keen interest in his canine eyes
When it is all over the storch couple rearrange their feathers and continue working on their nest. Small and bigger pieces of wood, branches and boughs are moved from side of the nest to the other. the nest itself is on top of a man made construction on top of a twenty-five meter tall wooden pole.
Slowly working on my cans of Weissen brew my mind wanders back to my childhood in the south of Holland, to a time when storches where still plentyfull with every farm having a similar storch nest construction, each farm having its own storch couple - sometimes even two storch couples. People used to believe that having storches inhabiting these nests would bring them luck, People used to believe they would bring fertility to the farmer`s wife.
Even today it is custom in Holland to put a wooden storch in the garden when a baby has been born.
Human superstition which served the storch clans well but eventually the storches stopped coming to Holland and became extinct in our country due to extensive hunting during their winter migration routes.
Like always mankind can be a blessing or a curse to the world around him/her!!!

A visit by a benign Spirit
Around Kho Smaui,
The amount of farang people on Kho Samui with medical bandages wrapped around elbows and knee caps is staggering. Victims of traffic accidents on Kho Samui`s curvy roads caused by a combination of factors...People going home on a rented scooter after a heavy drinking binge at one of the island`s many bars, slippers on white feet that make it difficult to shift gears and , of course, the state of the roads. The Kho Samui Hospital must be in constant full-time overdrive.
Feeling in the mood for a sweaty day of cycling under a scorchingly hot Thai sun I decide to hire a bicycle longingly rememebering my last time on this island, my last stay in Hat Lamai when I had a local ladyfriend who rented out scooters and two Harley Davidsons. When the Harleys wheren`t rented out by mid afternoon I could take one and go touring often with my lady on the back clasping her slender arms around me tightly while one of her friends would look after her little scooter business.
I seem to remember I felt quite the MAN then...hehehe.
I cycle up north in the direction of the airport planning to cycle all the way around the island following the coast which should take me the better part of the day. Cycling up low hills with white sand beaches full with bikini clad farangs, local boys trying to sell mangos, jet skis out at sea leaving a white trail of fibrating sea water behind them.
I stop frequently to drink ice-cold cans of coffee at 7/Eleven supermarkets sitting outside in the sun. If it wasn`t for the heavy traffic, scooters, Song-Thaews, busses and trucks, this would be a paradise island and a perfectly beautiful day.
I stop at Na Thon to watch the fishermen repair their nets and dry their laundry in the sun, have a bowl of Johk with big chunks of Kai floating in it - thick rice soup with chicken chunks - for the necessary energy.
I stop at Hat Bo Phut to inquire about the old French speaking lady I met yesterday on the Song-Thaew showing people the photo I made of her sitting at the side of the road. Blank stares and total incomprehension meet my questions in halting Thai. Eventually a cop tells me in English "she good spirit, sir, but sometime she like have fun with Farang", his face deadly serious while his colleague nods his head agreeing totally...knowingly.
Sh*t, I really wanted to know more about that Karma she warned me about!!!
My last stop is at Wat Khunaram to see the famous Mummified Monk but after the little Benign-Female-Spirit story having a bit of fun on my behalf, the monk`s mummified body wrapped in saffron robes and a pair of ridiculous sunglasses on his still grinninhg face, seems minor in comparison.

The concept of Sanuk
Around Kho samui,
0402-2009.
Wether it be your first visit to His Highness King Bhumipol`s Kingdom or you`re a seasoned traveller in Southeast Asia having been to Thailand on numerous occasions, one can`t help but notice the big beaming smile adorning the light brown colored face of any given Thai be it male or female, be it a twenty year old bar lady entertaining fat and overweight grey-haired Farang s*x tourists or a male Muay Thay fighter getting his *ss kicked in the square ring, the Thai smile is unbeatably there.
This famous smile they even use to promote their country with nicknamed Land Of The Smile could well be a direct result of the Thai obsession with the concept of Sanuk, or its opposite Mai Sanuk. Sanuk rules the minds of the Thai people, perhaps even more thas their other fascinations like animal spirituality or superstition and basically means "FUN", have fun to the max!!!
Whatever you do in this life, whatever bad luck might assault you, good luck blown by the wind in your life direction....you really should have Sanuk!!! Be it backbraeking work in the North`s rice paddies twelve gruelling hours a day under a burning hot Thai sun you will still observe the locals having Sanuk, flirtations take place, women giggling while good naturedly exchanging the latest gossips.
I`m on my bicycle again on my second tour around the island, in a reversed direction though, we need to keep things interesting after all, have a bit of Sanuk here...hehehe.
I keep a wary eye open for a possible chance encounter with another Female Thai Spirit out to have a bit of private fun on my Farang behalf though I have a strong suspicion that it might very well be these d*arned Thai cops in Hat Bo Phut pulling my legs. Still when the Spirit World is concerned I`m unwilling to take any chances, especially so in Thailand where every house, hut or whatever manmade structure, public bus or private car has a Spirit House.

Breakfast with a twist
Im Wald in der Nähe von Meppen.
I`m cycling...cycling...and even more cycling, I`m on a mad and crazy hunt for envelopes and packages, ordners and photo albums, the portophone that hangs with a leather string from my neck is cackling away in dutch - a strange and gutteral language that I seem incapable to understand though it is my native tonque.... but then I tune in....
"Shiva, hoor je mij? we hebben een spoedje bij Lettergrafica voor de rechtbank".
It`s Bart from the planning, from the Fietsdienst - the bicycle messenger company I work for in my beloved Amsterdam telling me about this Hurry-Hurry deliverance I have to make. Thirty minutes I`ve to pick up an envelop in the heart of the city and bring it to the court of justice building in Amsterdam South.
"Wel door fietsen, Shiva, het heeft super haast!!!", my phortophone keeps cackling.
With a sudden start I wake up, not in my own bed in Amsterdam as I believe for a short moment, not somewhere in a cheap hotel room at the other end of the world, a third world place where the locals always love to hear my travel stories, see the drawings in my sketch books, can only dream of the crazy and free life I live...no, nothing like that at all...I wake up inside a dirty sleeping bag, the smell of stale sweat all around me produced by unwashed cycle clothes haphazardly strewn around in my little one-man`s tent, my bicycle bags under my head being used as a impromptu pillow, several empty cans of Deutsch Weissen beer within easy reach, my last clean pair of underwear wrapped around my farang hips and already several days in need of a washing machine job.
Outside my tent I hear strange growling noices..am I still in the brothers Grimm fairy tale land of dark-green forests where the thunder God Thor throws his magic hammer Mölnir around just to make the cycling difficult for me? Is there a pack of wolves outside my tent ready to devour me, rip me to bloody pieces and thereby bringing my cycle trip in this land of the Sauerkraut and Bratwurst people to a sudden end and with it my very life???
With s certain tripadation caused both by mortal fair and a Weissen brew induced hangover I stick my still sleepy head out of my tent, knife in hand, you never know.
No wolves outside but the farm dog from last night greets me his tongue trying to lap my face in a friedly but very wed way. A few meters away I see the farm children, open and curious faces I remember from last night watching that storch couple mating.
"Mutter fragt ob Sie vielleicht Früchstück haben wollen", the oldest and bravest of them, a maybe 15 year old boy wants to know looking a bit rough around the edges but then we are talking about a farmer`s boy.
Hot coffee, fresh bread, omelettes and beacon and the kids hovering around me while I stow it all away sitting at the farm`s kitchen table and uncomfortably aware of the stench of stale urine hanging around me produced by the aforementioned since several days unwashed underwear, the puking smell of dirty laundry while I show the kids the drawings in my sketch book, tell them about my trips around the globe, their Mum filling my cup with yet more inky black strong coffee.
When I leave "Mum" puts a plastic container in my hands telling me "Hier haben Sie noch Ihr Abendessen Sauerkraut mit Bratwurst für wenn Sie Heute Nacht wieder im Wald pennen, können Sie es aufwärmen mit dem Microwave", heating it up with my microwave when I wild camp in the forest tonight. Like I carry a microwave on the back of my bicycle??? Not really sure wether to be amused or bemused but the offer is positive in its very nature I presume.
Only when the Farm of Hospitable Locals is far behind me and the Dutch border in my sight do I realise this friendly "Mum" actually gave me a Sauerkraut and Bratwurst meal, the very nick name I always give the German people when travelling in their country.

Back home in Amsterdam with a final word
Amsterdam,
I watch the sunny Dutch countryside gliding by from the closed confinement of a Dutch train. I listen to the conversations around me, other passengers speaking Dutch, outside I read the steet and traffic sign in Dutch, the headlines of the newspaper the elder gentleman in front of me is hiding behind, scream at me in Dutch, the train conductor checking my ticket "mag ik uw kaartje zien meneer?" too in Dutch.
Goodbye to the Sauerkraut and Bratwurst People and hello to the Land of Wooden Clogs and Smelly Cheese. Hello back home, back to my job and my house in Amsterdam.
These were the last lines I found in my sketchbook. I remember I had to take the train back to Amsterdam instead of two more days of cycling which would have been fine with me.
I made the mistake of phoning the company I worked for at the time from a small bar where I had breakfast informing them of my return in two days time. They informed me I was two days late for the job but were willing to compensate the trainfare which they never did.
As for this trip....like the other trips I`ve been uploading to the internet, rereading my own stories and editing them in my house here in Amsterdam, looking at the drawings..it brought the whole trip back full circle, the rain and sleet and even more the Mystic feeling I felt surrounded by there in these dark-green forests of Eastern Germany - sh*t, I wouldn`t have been surprised if I had seen an elf or a gnome running across the road.
I still vividly remember that total despodence in the dull rumy eyes of the last inhabitants in these decayed villages.
When I left Amsterdam I set out on this trip to visit Berlin, a city I had always wanted to visit and ended up cycling through Eastern Germany enjoying it to the Max.
Thanks for reading my stories and I hope the God of Thunder Thor with his magic hammer Mjölnir will smile down on you a bit more benignly as he did on me.
written by  heraclio on March 30, 2009 from Amsterdam, Netherlands

Adrink and a smoke with a Chinese lady
Kho Samui, Hat Lamai,
I'm watching the girly bars opposite the road from the 7/Eleven while working slowly but with determination on a small can of Leo beer, my favorite brew in this part of the world, how the Hot Mommas do their best to lure a hamburger fat 300 pounder, still a young bloke who probably feels like King Rat in this part of the world. He must be on burdensome mission, I mean the lust in his eyes is pure and obvious while he blows them kisses but quickly moves on down the road. Maybe he is the possession of an empty wallet or else has had his satisfaction already several times today.
From what I can see his Karma is not lashed yet by a life time of Western introduced Guild Complex, still a young man who has come to Asia his head full with all the Hot Momma stories, having been ignored by his female contemporaries back home, probably even ridiculed most of his short adult life while all the other boys knocked down big pints of cider in the local bar while boasting about their latest conquests, where the ladies sat at tables together in small groups, lipsticked and polished nails, producing excited giggles at the prospect of getting picked up tonight.
None of all this for him though, he was after all just the Fat Boy!!! Here in Thailand the roles have been reversed...Hot Momma bar girls all over him telling him how s*xy man he is, easy days on a sunny beach and evenings full with girly giggles in the bars, the man is obviously a HAPPY MAN here!!!
My German neighbor on this bench is quite the opposite, big and muscular and of my own age, all his front teeth gone, intoxicated to the max he has spent the better part of this still early evening creating an ever bigger expanding feeling of irritation inside my head verbally charging me with stories of "Diese verdammte Thaise H*re sind alle verdammte Scheisse!!!", for him it must be a Karma-laden night but I presume that even a thug like him has got culture, wherever he has hidden it inside that Mau/drunk German mind of his is beyond me though.
Still with all this gutteral screaming Thai bashing I can no longer meditate on the world around me while making quick notes in my scap book. I still hear his German worlds of anger against Thai female society when I leave him to his own frustrations.
Good decision too because I find myself back on another bench in front of another supermarket and with another conversation partner, Letitia from Beijing dressed in s*xy shorts and shapely long legs that somehow seem to go for ever, a sharp well-educated mind and speaking perfect English. I feel a strong mental kinship with her within minutes while we chat and share travel experiences, I could have met her ten years ago instead of ten minutes ago, we klick as the Dutch say, sh*t I could drown in her love if given the time. I feel selfconscious about the Burmese sigars I smoke...an unusual feeling for me!!!
I follow her around while she does her final shopping telling me she will fly back tomorrow, back to Beijing, back to her work. We return to "our" bench for a last drink and then she is gone...in and out of my life for just a few hours but leaving a lasting impression
I hurry back to my bungalow to make a quick painting of her on a piece of driftwood I found on the beach today, while the image of her Jiil face is still fresh in my mind.
Hey Letitia, I know you're reading this story, hope you like it...hehehe.
Hans from Amsterdam.

A benign spirit that turns evil
Kho Samui, Na Thon,
I awake to a familiar ghost gnawing at my inmortal Phi, my Western Farang soul being devoured at an alarming rate leaving me clammy and sweaty in my bed, grayish sheets wed to the touch with my perspiration.
In my mind`s eye still half inside the dream world I see that Benign Female Spirit I met on the Song-Thaew last week, somehow she seemed a whole lot less benign in my dream, wild-eyed and and her gray hair standing out in a crazy halo around her old woman`s head, stark naked with wrinkled old t*ts resembling empty crumbled Dutch tabacco bags, hanging down her percament like body , bony fingers with long split nails pointing at me accusingly, her voice shrill and full with hatred scraeming at me in Isaan accented Thai, all sorts of vulgarities I find hard to understand though the meaning is unmisstakeable. Didn`t she tell me she had never left the island, so where did this Northern Thai accent come from?
I don`t even bother with a shower getting dressed quickly, strapping my bulky backpack to my shoulders, leaving the key on the table of my bungalow`s balcony and hurry out to the main street.
The still early morning sky is crimson red with the rising sun out at the ocean, long shadows and motorbike taxi drivers in shabby jeans and T-shirts sitting cross-legged in the street having breakfast, fried chicken with sticky rice, three monks in their orange colored robes walking down the road asking bleary eyes bar girls for alms, they sit listlessly on bar stools while handing over a twenty baht note, they don`t need to worry about their Karma for the rest of the day.
A Song-thaew honking at me while passing by. I presume the driver expected the first business of the coming day seeing me with my backpack.
No way though will I go back to Na Thon by Song-Thaew after my Evil-Spirit-Nightmare. I`m still shivering, big drops of clammy sweat dropping down my big Farang nose, my shirt getting drenched by the perspiration coming off my large Farang frame, sh*t, I can feel it streaming down my legs in rivers, this is truely embarrasing!!!
I decide to travel to Na Thon by motorbike taxi trying to ignore the bottle of Sang Som Thai whiskey, the plastic cups they drink this heavy stuff from. I normally make it a point to never engage their services when they are intoxicated but right now I feel paranoid and desperate to get out of Hat Lamai, make it to Na Thon where I plan to take the ferry tomorrow and cointinue my trip, away from that d*rned Evil Female Spirit that scared the living daylights out of me.

My first impressions of Krabi
Krabi, Thailand
Krabi is quite a busy affair these days, small budget hostels where a weary backpack traveller can rest and sleep untill the ferry to Kho Phi-Phi will depart, cozy restaurants serve sweet pancakes for breakfast while long-tail boat owners approach any Farang face looking for business.
The universal power of money even in mystical Thailand!!!
Despite the sheer number of Farang in Krabi, the place is still laid-back, no girly bars or rowdy nightlife, instead flatscreens showing the latest pirated DVD releashes in any of the many restaurants, young backpackers sitting behing computer monitors checking their e-mail.
A enormous German of indefinite age holding hands with a petite local female whose belly is even bigger as her sugar daddy`s fat gut betraying her avanced state of pregnancy. The Thai genome is enriched by literally thousends upon thousends of Leuk Kreug/half-caste babies.
Lone Farang males possessing a fat wallet and a terminal love starvation probably rule the genes of several Thai generations yet to come!!!
Souvenirs shops, ATMs and tourist travel agencies, small little dank Sois - alleys in Thai - with even more shops with their junk spilling out on the pavement, less room to stroll but more vistas for my eyes to feast on.
Krabi has definitely changed from a small laid-back fisherman`s village when I was here last in 1994 to a still laid-back but quite a bit busier small coastal Thai town.
I check in at a cockroach rich hostel where the lobby doubles as a garage for the scooters they rent out. The strong smell of benzine and machine oil heavy on the warm air.
I try to ignore the shrewd and assessing hazelnut eyes of the lady receotionist still vividly remembering the Chinese receptionist lady of the Nathon Residence on Kho Samui.
written by  heraclio on May 5, 2009 from Krabi, Thailand

A Thai wife`s secret weapon
Kho Samui, Na Thon.
The main weapon of married Thai women on the notorious philandering outside the marrital bed of their cheating husbands is severing their partner`s male organ, often tying the now useless but in the past highly overused male equipment to a hot air balloon, let it fly across the Thai countryside, maybe get picked up by a malignant ghoul or else a benevolent entity from the spirit world.
Dumping this particularly male piece of pride on the family`s garbage heap is also a serious option. Let it rot with the household rejects and when it has become a stinking swollen yellowish shadow of itself, get eaten by the rats and cockroaches. No wonder rats and cockroaches are the only lifeforms that seem to be bigger here in the East than back home in ancient Europe.
As a Farang I`m not supposed to know these little shames of Thai society. Though Thai English written newspapers like the Bangkok Post and the Bangkok Nation are good and informative you won`t find stories relating to the P*nis Severance hobby of Thai wives that have little horns growning out of their heads, horns that seem to grow and grow. By the time the poor thing is old she can hardly keep her head up because of the sheer weight.
Move to the Thai written newspapers and these stories seem to be all over the second and thrid page often with accompanying gory and bloodily detailed photos of the male victim.
Prostition in the Land of the Thais is not one-gender victimised!!!
However allow me to be non-judgemental on prostition in this weird Asian nation. My male Farang spirit, my Phii as the Thais call it, has already long ago lost its capacity to deal with the world as a whole, let alone this crazy sh*t!!!
Back in Na Thon I take up residence in a small no-name guest house for a meagre 80 Baht, I presume I could return to the Nathon Residence but I would rather not get "brutalised" by the Chinese receptionist lady who had an obvious interest in the shorttime trade and could very well get furious when she finds out I might have certain romantic feelings for a Chinese lady from Beijing but no interest in a Chinese receptionist lady with aspirations as a full time h**ker!!!
My new accomodation might be a dump with a thin matrass that, I have no doubt, is full to overflow weith bedbugs waiting axciously for me to switch off the light switch so they can do their bloody work on my weary body that contains a mind by that time to drunk to notice.
At least this place is situated above an internet cafe so I can surf to www.gameknot.com to play some games of chess, challenge me if you dare.
written by  heraclio on May 1, 2009 from Ko Samui, Thailand

A game of Takraw
Kho Samui, Na Thon,
Takraw aka Siamese Football and introduced to the Southeast Asian Games by Thailand, is played with a woven rattan ball of about 15 cm. in diameter, is played like volleyball though the hands are taboo in this game, just the feet, chest and head.
Amazing aerial pirouttes can be performed by more experienced players kicking the ball across the net with a certain style known only to the Thai.
A game is in full swing when I arrive at the local police station with young cops dressed in white shorts and sweaty T-shirts - police issued - and my polite request for joining a team is enthusiastically accepted.
I used to play this game nearly every night with Jamie and his mates when I still lived in Bangkok with Nong. Needless to say that Jamie`s mates where young strong bucks from the Thai capital`s seedier neighborhoods, hoodlums involved in shady deals and even shadier businesses that I never bothered inquiring about, young muscular oriental men whose bodies where covered in weird tattoos symbolysing their superstitious nature, a Noordu, protection against bad luck.
They happily accepted me in their midst, just as easily as these young Thai cops allow me to join their game of Takraw. Yet another part of the communal Thai mind I`ve come to admire so much, come to love!!!
My body soon goes into overdrive while I try hard to keep up with these well-trained locals who, I have no doubt, play this game every night, lots of laughter and loads of chemicals releasing themselves inside the gray mass that makes up my Farang braincells, the game gets more spike and the other participants pay me no sacrifice, no rest for the weary.
I make a near complete sommersault scoring a main point for my team and even stronger points for "FACE" with my athletic abilities. I catch the rattan ball with my chest and knee it to a team player while my mind is back on that play ground back in time, back in Bangkok, back to Jamie and his rough friends.
When it is all over I sit around with these young Thai cops and their older colleages drinking Heineken beer straight from the bottle, icy cold to the tough reminding me nothing in the whole wide world can beat the taste of ice-cold beer after a good work-out.
written by  heraclio on May 2, 2009 from Ko Samui, Thailand

Travelling with the locals
Krabi, Thailand
Travelling in Thailand as a Farang I have two options. I could enter one of the many travel agencies that dot the streets of any Farang rich tourist destination in this oriental Kingdom. In which case I`ll travel either in air-conditioned mini-bus or else by a big huge tourbus with comfortable reclining seats, a built-in smelly toilet and a monitor above the driver blaring away most of the trip surrounded by backpack travellers from all over the world swapping travel stories in a multitude of languages while the driver himself is knocking down small bottles of Red Bull energy drinks to stay awake after a night`s partying.
My other option is local buses with wooden seats of the non-reclining type and surrounded by locals on a visit to relatives and exchanging the gossip of the day, politics always a serious topic in Thai conversation. No airco here but open windows for the necessary ventilation, food hawkers at any stop entering the bus offering barbequed chicken legs and carpers, fried shrimp and a varity of fruit, bottles of mineral water or small cans of cold Heineken beer. A rooster tied up in a rattan wooven basket under a seat screaming his protestations while I try to eavesdrop on on-going conversations around me.
Two monks in front of me chanting softly in ancient Pali dressed in orange robes. Two young women, one heavily pregnant discussing the possible name for the soon to be born infant, another serious conversation topic in a medieval society where a name is supposed to be protection, a moordu against bad luck, against attacks from evil spirits and mean unpredictable ghoulds, where a name is supposed to have magical powers!!!
I once again realise my Farang mind is poisoned by Asian magic, preindustrial superstition that has over all these years become an illogical labyrinth inside my Western trained Phii and mind. Listening to these locals talk about the matters of their Asian world my Western Logic is like a distraction to my Farang thinking. My own Dutch world all of a sudden seems like a cultural defilement. I`m experiencing a spiritual and cultural attack on my Farang background, a Thai contamination of my very essence.
Apart from the fact that travelling by local transport instead of farang popular mini-bus or monitor blaring tourbus, is but a fraction of the price, it are those intence feeling that make me opt for these rusty old buses where the wind blows in dust and sand, where smells and sound remind me I`m far away from home, backpacking in a country that is unversally different from my own.
written by  heraclio on May 3, 2009 from Krabi, Thailand

Wat Tham Seua aka Tiger Cave Temple
Krabi, Thailand
Wat Tham Seua aka Tiger Cave Temple is not like most Wats in Thailand. A temple might be a place of worship but still a dusty place with scrawny dogs lazily scratching their flea ridden behinds, temple cats desperately and in vain trying to keep the temple grounds free of small mice, bold house sparrows eating from the small bowls of rice offerings like dignitaries from Lord Buddha himself sampling the sincerity of the faithfull. Sleepy monks still dozing in the shade after early morning's alm round.
Wat Tham Seua on the other hand has slowly turned into a serious tourist attraction with new hotels being build all around the Karst stone rock formation which is the centre of the Wat and visible from Krabi centre about four km. away.
Long lines of VIP tour buses parked at the entrance greet me when I arrive by hired bicycle watching the construction workers at the side of the road sitting on bamboo mats eating fried chicken, white plastic cups go from hand to hand. I don't need the sour smell of fermented rice boiling in a food kettle over a small fire to know they Burmese day labourers are having themselves a ball not caring much about the five star hotel they are supposed to work on.
Sabai, Sabia and Sanuk, Sanuk are all I need to know the motorbike taxi guys will let nobody near my unlocked bicycle while I tour the Temple ground. My sketchbook and pen, my water colours and a small mineral bottle in my bag ready for action I buy myself a ticket joining the many tour groups that wander from one building to the next listening to local guides explaining everything in a variety of different languages, camaras snap while umbrellas are closed upon entering a temple, opened again outside as a protection for vulnerable white skin against a harsh Thai sun.
More than 1200 very steep stone steps will bring me cherished peace at the top of the weirdly shaped karst peak, no more rowdy tour groups of mostly elderly Europeans hung with expensive camara equipment and sweaty T-shirts - not that my T-shirt is still dry after these 1200 steep steps up - just a few local and Farang die-hards who must have felt as fit as me at the beginning and look just as exhausted and perpiration drenched as me now that we have made it to the top.
Our rewards are more than just worth it though, apart from peace and tranquility that rule up here, vistas all the way to the Andaman Sea, a huge Buddha statue and a gilded stupa, friendly young monks hand out much needed bottles of mineral free of charge.
written by  heraclio on May 6, 2009 from Krabi, Thailand

A cycle trip to Bokkharani National Park
Small little mozzies look for a safe spot on my sunburned legs to roost, suck away on my sweet blood. They better be carefull though! I got my eyes on them and will most definitely squash them the moment they will settle down on my reddish flesh.
I might be an animal lover and female friendly, totally aware that in the mozzy world it are the females that NEED my blood due to their reproductive purposes....
Still if I detect them anywhere on my sore and hot skin they can be reasonably sure of a one-way ticket to Mosquito Kingdom Come free of charge!!!
I am once again on my rented bicycle though today I wanna cycle to Bokkharani National Park nearly 40 km. north of Krabi, 40 km. of cycling through a slightly hilly terrain, both sides of the road flanked by dramatically shaped karst Stone formations covered in lush rain forest jungle.
A whole day of cycling under the harsh and hot Thai sun means I`ll get drenched in perpiration so I`ve given up on my long blue jeans - I must be one of the very few Farangs in Thailand not constantly dressed in colorfull shorts 24/7 - and instead put on my own shorts and a old T-shirt.
The weirdly shaped karst rocks are interspersed with big plantations of rubber trees and coconut groves.
I stop at karst Stone rocks to check out the caves inside being guided around whether I like it or not, by ragged looking village children hoping for a few coins in return. I stop at roadside shops for not so cold bottles of Coca Cola "sorry sir not have electricity for fridge", I pass small groups of local boy scouts dressed in light brown calling Sabai Dee, Sabai Dee sir while disappearing behind me. I get overtaken myself by farangs on rented scooters, their local girlfriends on the back glamoring me on.

Welcome to the Third World
I wake up in my 120 Baht room, a windowless box with with green colored tarpaulin on the floor sticky to me feet because of the dirt, the only furniture a metal frame supposed to be a bed with a thin dirty matrass on it. The sheets gray with age I had to put on the matrass myself - the petite receptionist lady who doubles as a cleaning girl was porbably pissed off I ignored her obvious advances when I checked in.
She gave it another unsuccessfull try last night when I returned slightly intoxicated from next door`s reggae bar.
Having a hard time to overcome my hang-over while making it to the communal bahtroom for a cold shower, no shower head here just a metal pipe sticking out of the wall from which a steady but not so strong stream of water approaches provided the tap is turned all the way on.
Dark brown cockroaches comfortably walking up and down the not so clean tiles of the shower walls, yeah, these monster probably live on what quite literally lives on these walls!!!
Not sure if the grunting noices originating from my neighbors last night were the result of love making or a physical premarital dispute. Good thing I was intoxicated enough to fall right into the hands of Lord Morpheus instead of having to listen to all that sh*t!!!
Walking through the lobby on my way out trying to ignore both the smells of machine oil as well as the flashes coming out of Miss Receptionist I wonder why I always insist in staying at these dirt cheap dumps where the word dirt in dirt cheap has got an obviuous double meaning!!!
I wanna experience the real Souteast Asia where people have not as yet been corrupted by Western greed, where the locals have not yet been poisoned by the power of money, where Farang logic has not yet invaded the Asian way of thinking.
Well think again mate! The partiach of the family managing the dumphouse hotel is smashing drunk on moonshine whiskey down in the lobby most of the time, his pot belly getting bigger each day with fermented rice liquor while sonny love in the scooter business during the day, is busy spending the dough at the local pool hall - remember the double function of a pool hall in Thailand? - during the night.
Mum never comes downstairs, way too doped up smoking Yaa-Baa up in her cockroach rife room, on her flea ridden matrass while the daughter of the family is in charge of the reception pocketing the dough quick and fast before dad can get his greedy hands on it for more riced whiskey, not much interested in cleaning rooms but always in the mood for a 300 Baht shorttimew with any of the guests.
Welcome to the Third World, mate!!!

The nighttime Krabi food market.
Like any other town in Thailand, be it small, average or big, Krabi has got a nightly food market, these places are apart from excelent Thai food also great for meeting locals as well as fellow travellers from the Asian backpack scêne.
Krabi`s night food market can be found at the Khong Kha pier or you could consider following your nose, chances are that particular part of your bodily equipment will get you there!!
I arrive just after darkness has settled on the Thai Kingdom, smelling the strong odour of strong spices, huge gray clouds emerging from the many food stalls, rowdy Scottish voices mixing with raucous laughter coming from German throats, shy female giggles interfering with a raspy swedish tonque.
Nothing in the world as far as food goes can beat the Thai Kitchen and as always I have a hard time to make up my mind what to eat tonight...Tom Yam Kung, a Prawn dish served in a mushroom soup with lemon-grass added or maybe a plain noodle soup with beef, pork or chicken, spicy, sweet, salty or sour, take you pick.
Iron tables and plastic chairs, kersonese lamps or electric lighbulbs loosely hanging from the food stalls, black electric cables dangling like jungle veins from stall to stall providing the necessary energy. Scrawy dogs lazily wandering among the tables looking for scraps of left-over beef, a discarded chicken leg or maybe a bit of pork.
Five young Thai girls busily working on their fried rice and noodle soups while blatantly discussing the benevits of having a Farang boyfriend against their Thai contemporaries. Even the Farang male equipment is under heavy scrutiny producing more gay giggles. These ladies have no idea of my shamefull eavesdropping and I have a hard time keeping my face straight.
Five young Scots in kilts alraedy three quarters on the way to total intoxication due to big pints of Tiger beer, on a stag party and rowdily talking about the merits of Thai prostitutes.
A Thai family of five sit a t a table full with satay dishes, a big condensed bottle of Chang beer for Mum, bottles of Coca-Cola for the kids and a bottle of Mekhong for Dad who is gnawing away at a big chunk of chicken leg, big sticky drops of satay dripping down on the table.
For 50 Baht I have noodle soup, a cup of coffee and a sweet milky Thai dessert, the entertainment provided by my fellow diners comes for free. I just find it dificult to understand why so many backpackers take their meals in the Farang restaurants where Arnold Schwarzenegger hops across the screen, the bang-bang sounds of his many guns making conversation with other travellers near impossible!!!
Meanwhile my female Thai neighbors have shifted their conversation topic from Farang Boyfriends to whether or not my Scottish "friends" wear underwear under their kilts.....hehehe, these guys could be in for a nice surprise tonight.

Lord Buddha please tell me...
Waking up on my hard cot with the thin old matrass in my windowless hovel, I`m instantly remembered of the two small cans of Singha beer I consumed last night before allowing my Farang mind to drift off the the dream world.
No hang-over can beat the weird feeling inside your skull after drinking Singha beer or Mekhong whiskey the next morning, a hang-over caused by a certain conservative forbiddewn in the West but a main component in Singha and Mekhong here in Thailand.
Drink Heineken or Kloster during your trips to this Asian Kingdom dear reader, take it from me!!!
Though it was a mistake these two cans of Singha did their job and knocked me out for a couple of hours, no Thai Hot Momma induced nightmare that have plaqued my Western trained mind since my very first trip to Southeast Asia. A punishment from Lord Buddha Himself for falling in love time and again with these Thai Ladies of the Night, or else an unconscious self afflicted torture over a Western cultivated Guilt Conflict that has no right of excistence.
I waste no time or effort taking a shower or even brush my teeth some how treasuring the layer of clammy sweat covering my shivering body, the stale and superdry taste lying inside my mouth cavity, going down the stairs and crossing the garage that is the lobby of my dumphouse guesthouse, ignoring the strong smell of gasoline and the heavy snoring originating from Mister Dumphouse Patriach lying on a old bench against a wall, his potbelly heaving, no doubt having a hard time trying to digest all the Mekhong he consumed last night.
I seem to remember he was drunk - Mau as the Thai call it and quite a usual word often used - out of his head last night when I returned home, sitting on his cot with a green colored sari wrapped around his hips, raving loudly and throwing empty dusty beer bottles around the place, one of them narrowly missing my head, Miss Receptionist-Parttime-H**ker guiding me up the stairs fast and furious while Sonny-Love was hiding behind one of his treasured scooters...Lord Buddha, please tell me what am I doing staying in a madhouse like this, for a meagre 50 Thai Baht more I can stay across the road in a quiet and friendly Farang owned hostel!!!
Outside in the street the Asian sun has just emerged from the horizon turning the sky into a spectacle of orange colors, a scêne I would normally enjoy but right now the soft pastel colors hurt my poor head even more while walking over to the waterfront looking for the boat people fully aware what they will be doing at this early hour.
And yes...I`m right seeing them sitting in a small group around a bottle of Black Cat Whiskey drinking the stuff straight without ice from white plastic cups. I wai them politely asking them in my halting and badly pronounced Thai for a cup of this sharp heavy stuff, the perfect medicine for my hang-over. they laugh softly at the 50 Baht note in my poffered hand and thereby actually saving me face though you need the know the Thai ways to realise that!!!

In the heart of Muslim territory
Hat Yai, Thailand
Songai Kolok is supposed to be the heart of muslim territory in Thailand, within walking distance to the Malay border and - as rumour has it - the place of origin of the masterminds behind the Islam uprising in Southern Thailand. Basically this small and claustrophobic town houses a hotbed of islamic fanatics that are bend on total independence, create an Islam state in Buddhist Thailand, no matter what the cost!!! Blow up a police station, roadside killings or maybe a mortar attack on a public school...all that in the name of Allah, never mind the innocent, unschooled local farmers whose main concern is trying to feed their families.
I spend most of the day changing Song-Thaews, looking from the glassless windows at an endless array of rice paddies, women working the rice paddies covered in long black dresses and muslim headscarves, constant police road blocks with camouflage clad soldiers entering the Song-Thaew, their black heavy military issued boots banging heavily on the metal floor, their big guns slung around their shoulders looking menacingly, checking papers of passengers.
The always festive air that rules King Bhumipol`s Kingdom and for so many Farang the main reason for falling in love with this mystic Asian kingdom, GONE!!! Instead I sense a strange mixture of hate and fear at the same time.
We pass small dusty village where I can hear the call of the muezzins coming from hidden mosques, quick stops for food hawkers trying to sell vegetables and bottles of mineral water, other passengers getting on, getting off, men with skullcaps and thin grayish beards covering their chins look at me in a non-commital way, gone are the friendly Thai smiles beaming from friendly and open faces, gone is the gay and colorfull Thai dress code. I feel like I have been parachuted into a hostile and non-Farang friendly dictator ruled state of fear!!!
I try to concentrate on what goes on outside the closed confinement of this sweltering hot local bus where the oppression of angst has providence over the ever importance of the concept of Sanuk in the Thai Buddhist mind, a lone dark black buffalo with strangely shaped horns relaxing in a mud pool and looking at me with what seem warning eyes... a warning from Lord Buddha himself??? Near naked kids dressed only in their underwear playing in a river, pointing brownish little fingers at me excitedly...more warnings involved here???
A serious young Thai male reading an Arabic Koran a few seat ahead of me, skullcap in place, long pale pastel blue colored Djalleba covering his slender frame, long single black hairs prodruding from a thin chin betraying a serious effort of growing the necessary muslim beard in a race where bodily hair is sparse, his dark brown eyes looking up from his Holy Muslim book whenever the fancy strikes him, trying to lock them with mine...menacing...threatening....
written by  heraclio on May 14, 2009 from Hat Yai, Thailand

Hypocrisy of the faithfull!!!
Hat Yai, Thailand
Songai Kolok, same day in the evening of 13-02-2009.
Muezzins call the faithfull to prayer, attend the many mosques in this ach-typical border town while I disembark from my last Song-thaew, shouldering my bulky backpack feeling worn out, sweaty and semi-frustrated after a whole day of travelling on local chicken buses, road blocks with severe looking police men and soldiers getting on sometimes taking people out for frisking purposses outside the Song-Thaew with the driver patiently waiting for the - to him no doubt - daily procedure, unfriendly and at times even outright hostile stares from my other passengers.
Leaving the bus terminal my eyes are under a strange and constant attack of contradicting impressions, sights so unusual for me in this part of the world. women pass me in the street dressed head to toe in mostly black islamic gear trying hard to avoid my eyes, looking down at the dusty street modestly never daring to meet my blue Farang eyes, men with the inevitable skullcap and in pale djallebas share the same sidewalk with slutty dressed young women whose Thai accent betray their place of origin, memberes of the Isan clan of females, literally thousands of them populate the streets, standing in front of small seedy looking hotels, outside Hallal restaurants, their dark oriental eyes assessing me openly and bluntly. Their profession is easily guessed, no mistakes here, no room for error.
If I wanna have a good restfull sleep tonight I might very well give up on my determination of staying at rock bottom dirt cheap hostels but habit as well old time`s sake make me decide to give it one more time.
Steep steps bring me to a small guesthouse based over what must be the one and only real Thai food restaurant in Songai Kolok, darkly lit corridors with thin doors giving access to dingy rooms, girls are everywhere following me to my room, asking me repeatedly "you like have girlfriend, mister"?.
Outside I see buses with Malay number plates unloading hunderts of Malay males, typical Southeast Asian Muslim garb covering their excited bodies, skullcaps trembling in anticipation, I see them arrive on scooter and motorbike, in jeeps and pick-up trucks but whatever their mode of transport their excitement is inevitably easy to recognise. I am starting to get a very strong idea what the economy of this border town is based on.
S*x!!! With prostitution forbidden and no s*x before marriage in Muslim Malaysia because of Islamic rules...so they come to get it here, conveniently close just across the border. This small chaotic city a hotbed for Islamic fanatics???, maybe in the bedroom of sleazy ans seedy hotel rooms, yeah!!!
Talking about the hypocrisy of the faithfull.
written by  heraclio on May 16, 2009 from Hat Yai, Thailand

Night in Songai Kolok
Hat Yai, Thailand
Songai Kolok, 13-02-2009, nighttime.
Lord Buddha is supposed to frown on prostitution while rumour has it that Allah Himself forbits the public s*x trade nor is any of these two holy dieties especially keen on the consumption of King Alcohol.
Maybe Songai Kolok might excist in a state of limbo, has been turned a blind eye to by either Lord Buddha or Allah or morer likely by both. At least both these holy entities can agree on one thing!!!
It is close to midnight and I have placed by white Farang behind on an old sofa in the lobby of my hotel, sketchbook and acrylic colors close at hand, watching both the going-ons in my hotel as well as the spectacle outside where once pious young malay men have by now become semi-professional drunks being approached by sluttily dressed women whose age I guess from early twenties to mid thirties, all of them from Thailand`s poorer Northern provinces, no Thai muslim ladies here to satisfy these hordes of s*x starved malay men.
The cavernous Karaoke bar just across the street is spilling out male brown colored bodies in various states of intoxication blatantly looking around for female companionship, ready for action after boozing and male drunk boasting all evening, building up courage for an act against Malay law and religion induced fear.
Huddles of Hot Mommas willing to be of service, a handfull of Ringit changing hands, a short walk to one of the many shorttime hotels where the rooms go by the hour and apart from a towel and soap, condoms are issued for free.
My quick pen sketches of the world around me attract the attention of Hot Mommas going or coming from one of the many dingy rooms of my guesthouse, despite the Light My Fire from The Doors blaring out of and ancient juke-box behind the reception there is no mistaking the obvious grunts coming from these rooms!!!
I pay several ladies a can of Chang while sketching them in my scrap book.
I don`t consider coming to Songai Kolok a mistake, I mean I knew what to expect, I had heard the stories, the rumours circulating on the boulevard in Pattaya, Sodom and Gomorra all in one and right smack in the middle of the Muslim South of Thailand and apperently also the headquarters of the Muslim uprising in this Asian Kingdom...
Good joke, these Isaan ladies of the night would most probably kick out Mohammad himself if He had the bloody nerve to show up here!!!
written by  heraclio on May 18, 2009 from Hat Yai, Thailand

The different world of Malaysia
Kuala, Malaysia
Malaysia, border crossing, 14-02-2009.
I leave my dingy liitle room early morning at first light, bulky backpack strapped to my back and dressed in my last clean clothes, I`ve a border crossing to do today so it`s best to be dressed in clean clothes or else I might get refused entry on the grounds of looking like a worn-out pennyless tramp.
The lobby of my hotel is a complete mess, empty cans of Chang beer and equally empty big bottles of Kloster lying around at random, an Isaan lady of the night asleep on the old sofa with the cracked leather upholstery where I was most of last night "admiring" both the going-ons in my hotel as well as the mad spectacle outside in the dimly lit street. The receptionist lady is fast asleep snoring loudly with her head resting on the reception. I leave the key in front of her deftly sidestepping the big pool of stinking greenish vomit right in front of the reception.
The scêne outside is equally depressing, empty beer bottles and cans littered around the sidewalks, a few Hot Mommas asleep on wooden vegetable crates put together and covered with some old blankets, the air already sweltering under the hot Thai sun of an early tropical morning - somehow the temperatures in Southern Thailand are always a few degrees hotter than up north - , a motorbike taxi driver is resting peacefully streched out on a wooden camping chair but happy enough, when I wake him up, to bring me to the border for a meagre 50 Baht. Early morning business, 50 Baht... more than enough for two cans of Chang or a few shots of moonshine whiskey with the day still having to start.
At this early hour the border crossing is nearly deserted, just a couple of bleary eyed hang-over Malay men queueing up, passport in hand a reddish colored 100 Baht note sticking out of it...a bit of baksheesh for the border officials in a country where corrupotion is as rife as the population of rats and cockroaches - maybe all this vermin is reliving their first life`s Karma as Thai officials involved in ripping off whatever they could get their greedy hands on, not enough offerings made at the local Wad to pacify the Buddha for the sins of greediness, too busy going to the girly bars spending that "well-deserved" corruption tainted dough!!!
I`m in Malaysia now, a completely new and totally different world, no more Buddhism here but Islam is the name of the game, no more Thai Baht but Malaysian Ringit, no more Thai but Malay is spoken here which is closely related to the Indonesian Bahasa, much easier to pronounce!!! Muezzins calling the faithfull to prayer at one of the many mosques five times a day. Put your immortal soul in the hnads of the Almighty, the holy entity called Allah and Mohammad is his profet, and you`ll leave behind the notorious Thai superstition. No more Thai spirit houses or ghouls that rule the minds and fears of the local population...the Malay people even look different...the only thing I had to do was crossing the border and nada mas!!!
written by  heraclio on May 19, 2009 from Kuala, Malaysia

Adios to Lake Toba
Medan, Indonesia
Sumatra,Medan.
Back in Medan, this dusty typical third world muslim town full with stinking open gutters, heavy traffic of the rusty type and people evrywhere going to and fro on a mad quest for Allah only knows what.
For the sake of convenience - and still having lots of local tatty notes of Rp. still in my pocket that need to get out of there - I decided on an airco minibus to Medan - 25.000 Rp. for a local bus and 70.000 Rp. for a airco minivan with the added advantage they drop you off in front of the hotel of your choice which in my case was Hotel Residence near the Meshid Raya, the main mosque an the location of the tourist district in Medam.
The Meshid Raya is also the only real place of interest in an otherwise very boring Medan unless you fancy walking around traffic congested dusty streets full with people, risking the health of your lungs breathing in all these exhaust fumes that cloud the air.
So it was goodbey and muchos saludos pero el tiempo de regresa a Bankok ya viene muy pront yesterday to all these willing to marry a ferringy male Batak ladies yesterday with the cleaning ladies from the Carolina Hotel waving me off and a SMS tekst message from Mamma Cesca on my phone while I was already well on the way to Medan.
Provided I wake up in time I`ll be on that ferry to Penang tomorrow. Another five boring hours surrounded by dozing locals dressed in thick coats because they can`t stand the ferry`s airco.
Two days in Penang, twnety hours by train to Bangkok/Krung Thep and on to that Male Kingdom that keeps coming back - one way or another - in my tormented dreams when I sleep in my own bed, in my own house, in Amsterdam. it is waving at me, gesturing me with obscene vistas to come back, to return each year. False promises of REAL LOVE with wintered prostitutes.
And after Pattaya is over, back to my beloved Amsterdam where I will slug it out another summer with the drunks, the hopeless and the lost souls in Westerpark!!!
written by  heraclio on June 9, 2009 from Medan, Indonesia