Yeeees I know! Got my new Thai Visa in my pocket and leaving tomorrow morning!

See! I am not having fun at all here I wanna go back to work!

Bon beste vrienden, ik heb een klein detail niet vermeld in mijn Myanmar avontuur. Aan de grens van Thailand geven ze mij heel vriendelijk een briefke met de vermelding dat ik uit Thailand word gekickt omdat ik maar max 3 keer mijn visa-on-entry mag vernieuwen aan de grens Ik wist het eigenlijk al een beetje maar er zijn genoeg verhalen die de ronde doen dat het meestal geen probleem is en met een beetje chance nog een extra maand krijgt. Om zeker te zijn had ik vorige maand en nu toen ik het land verliet nog eens extra gevraagd of het problemen zou opleven om terug te keren voor de 4de keer. “No problem” was het antwoord elke keer… toen ik het papierke kreeg waarop stond dat ik nog 1 week in Thailand mocht blijven en ik vroeg “What is this?” kreeg ik ook het antwoord “no problem”… “no problem” is dus het zelfde als “I don’t speek englies”.

Ik MOET naar de hoofdstad Laos om een deftige visa te krijgen. Ooooh nee…    Tis zelf niet zeker of het lukt. Als het niet lukt dan trek ik door naar Tibet… of zwem ik de grens over en keer terug naar Pai… anyway, nieuwe avonturen in het vooruitzicht. En deze keer vertrek ik niet alleen …

Stay tuned!

Over the hills says a crazy old amican tourist in Myanmar. Go back to Pai “over the hills”. I am crazy too… I think… so in stead of taking the main road I take a crazy offroad part with no idea what I am getting into.

And then it started…

Don’t think I have to write a lot here. The expression on my face tells enough I think.
“Mijn gezicht spreekt boekdelen” they say in Belgium… by the way, is Belgium still there? Half of it maybe… I don’t care actually :p

And after 7h of bikeriding pushing all my limits to the max I see the Pai Valley! HOME I shout! Thank god…errrr… I mean Buddha!

Damn I am crazy indeed.

Harry’s owners try to sell me a tribe tour around the valley. I am interested but its too pricy and decide to explore the countryside my way. I walk into town and start talkin to motortaxiguys looking for a good english speaking guide to bring me to some villages in the hills. I find a old guy when I am about to get a haircut on the street. While the hairdresser gives me my burmese hairstyle “Iceman”, as he calls himself, convinces me that he is the right man for the job. He offers me a bike and a translator to go to the tribes for only half the price of Harrys. So here I go into the countryside. Once you are in it its even better than I imagined. I was so busy looking at all the picturesque scenes and huge crazy fuckin trees I had no time for taking pictures.

Our first stop is the Nat Min Khaung village( Nat Min Khaung? I’m not sure :s). A little bit spoiled by the few tourists but still quite impressive. Iceman shows me around town and shows me how they use nature to provide them everything. Water, electricity even fridges and music. Down the hill there is even a huge movie theatre with a very small tv screen for the whole village After that village we visit some more villages deeper into the jungle. More same same but different.

Iceman is Iceman because he owns an ice company and delivers ice all over town. He knows everybody and everybody loves Iceman (because thanks to him people can drink cold beer! ) Iceman ends every 2 sentences he says with a loud laugh so half of the time he is cracked up with his own thoughts and random comments. The only time he was not laughing was when I asked about the government. He says to me “Everything is fine, everybody is quite happy here, in two years there are elections and everything will change” (no laugh). He didn’t notice but I did.

There surely is something fishy living with the people there. Unfortunately I don’t know enough about the situation to ask the right questions. So I explore the villages and the valley. Visit the icefactory and a liquor factory and end the night with the one remaining American girl in the guesthouse.

I wake up in the bordertown Tachilek. As a tourist in Myanmar you don’t have too much freedom. You leave your passport at the border and get a Myanmar visa-passport that’s valid for 14 days. You have no other choice other than to exit the country again at the same bordertown. You also get a paper where they write down every step you make inside the country. You take the public transport or stay somewhere, you lose your new carton passport until you take a next step. So there is no ‘jumping’ off the bus wherever you want to. You have to do all the checkpoints and then you get your pass back at the planned destination.

The locals have almost similar restrictions. I heard one say that if they move for any reason to another town they have go to a checkup every 14 days and pay a little fee for their stay. No freedom, no human rights they whispered to me.

Tachilek – Kengtung

also spelled Cheingtung, Chiang Tung, Kyaingtong or even something else, nobody knows exactly. So Kengtong is my destination and the farest you ca go over land from Thailand. Like I didn’t really know what I would find there in Kengtung I expected everything. The first half of the ride is quite dull compared with the amazing scenery from North Thailand but once the ‘ok’-bus got over the hills and reach the Kengtung valley I could not wait to jump out of the bus and go explore that amazing countryside. The valley was with the many little streams, lakes and green ricefields and bleu sky with fluffy clouds a bit like teletubby land. It was even more beautiful than the Pai valley mostly because it all looks so untouched by civilisation and most of all untouchd by tourism.

I have seem some crazy shit in India and actually I thought to see crazy shit in Kengtung. You never hear about the good sides of Myanmar on TV. But in reality you don’t see much of whats going on on TV. Here in Kengtung people are going on with their life, having good times, working or going to school having a pretty normal life. The towns where not overcrowded and the kids played football on footballfields, the adolescents go to nightclubs, the working class is working and after work go play some tennis and women work in the shops till late at night while men sit in the bars and watch TV.
So I try to get lost in Kengtung hoping to see “something” that would really jump out. Unfortunately there was nothing really unique or special. Although the feeling that everything is untouched was quite present with me all the time and I can’t wait to go into the countryside again the next day.
I was not allowed for a tourist to take a Myanmar guesthouse so I had to take a touristy place. I find Harry’s guesthouse where I get the best bed in 7 months for 5dollar (inclusive a good breakfast). I meet some other backpackers at Harry’s and that night we decide to go out to a Myanmar Club. American hip-hop and Linkin Park mixed with Myanmar covers of American pop songs all night. Fun.

… and the ladyboys in Myanmar? 

Guys to the left, lady’s to the right, here I am stuck with some ladyboys in the middle :p After some flirting with the most sexy ladyboy I have ever seen(yeeees I knew it before I started) my friends thought it was about time to stop drinking that cheap wisky. They didn’t believe that I was the most sober of all! -”Denial”, the american girl replies… but but…:( The ladyboy is just one of the most beautiful girls I have ever seen! And while my mind said “you stupid arse, she is a he”, all my senses said Rooooaaarrrrr . Anyway, mind over body, right? So I go back to my friends and with NO ladyboy back to the most comfy bed in all of Asia.

From a Pai party….

So here I am in Pai. One month passed by and I have to make another visa run to the border. Because my urge for adventure grows stonger every day I decide to leave Pai with a few rules just to fully experience the unexpected wonderful surprises of life.

1. Leave Pai with max 3 people for maximum flexibility.
2. Do the whole road on the Honda 125 to maximize the freedom.
3. NO planning and let the randomness of life lead the way.
4. NO luggage on the start and buy everything you need on the road.
5. Don’t listen to second hand information and follow your heart, intuition and experience.

I put my trip on the CouchSurfing calendar and wait. After a week we are with 3. A week before we leave there are 8 people thinking about joining the trip. During that week we hear all kinds of crazy stories about Myanmar. The internet tells about dead kids on the street, foreigners getting shot, problems with American visas, etc… Hey that’s exactly why I wanna go there I say. And so… the randomness of life, bacteria and the fear and paranoia about the long trip on the scooter and Myanmar as destination leaves me, 1 minute before we are about to leave, back all alone on my trip. A bit disappointed I grab the first book I see ‘the alchemist’ and take my Ipod for company. I select my ‘best off all time’-playlist pump up the volume to the max and here I goooooo. Total freedom!

I get a Honda from the rental shop where the daughter of the owner has a crush on me. I tell her I wanna do a big trip and need a good bike. She gives me a bike, does a full check up and ask if she can join. I say, hell yeah, why not, I go all the way into Myanmar… She shakes her head and gives me the keys… damn…

VroooOOOOOoooom…. Here I do the 762 curves out of the valley in 2 h. After 762 curves I feel (and also cross my fingers) my Honda is a trustworthy steed to face the next 600km with!

Suddenly, on the main road to the north, I see a big sign “monkey school and snake farm” and hit the breaks. I never slept in a monkey school I think by myself so I go ask the monkey trainer if they also have rooms. Yes she says but she had to clean it first. Good thing because the room smells of monkey and bananas… Ah well… they offer food, show me around the snakes of the farm and show me the dancing monkeys. I end up spending the night playing old Nintendo video games with a monkey trainer and her kid on a snake farm… Life doesn’t get any more random than this

In my bed I start reading ‘The Alchemist’ by Paulo Coelho. A story about a boy who travels following his heart and the “omens” on his path not listening to anybody who tries to stop him or convince him to go back… Sounds familiar . Grabbin this book is a very good ‘omen’ I think by myself.

…to a Myanmar border-town brothel

7 am. I wake up early and get a spaghetti bolognese Thai style for breakfast because I’m a farang(foreigner) and the lady thinks that spaghetti in the morning is a normal thing in the west. I’m not complaining, today I will be driving at least 5h to the border so I need a kick-ass heavy breakfast. I make a little stop at the Chang Dao Buddha cave and continue to the golden triangle of Thailand to cross the border of Myanmar. I cruise through the mountains and valeys and some hours later go over more even more beautifull mountains and cut through even more gorgeous valeys. Time flies and I don’t get tired at all. The roads are perfect and my faithful I-pod and Honda give this trip just the perfect vibe to cruise on.

At 3pm I arrive at the border. I give my bike to a local and cross the border as fast as possible hoping I would be on time to catch the last bus to Kheng Tung. I stop a motorbike taxi and ask a lift to the busstand.
DAMN! Too late, fuck Im stuck in this shitty border-town. Well actually it was not that bad. On the way to the busstand I saw this bordertown is getting better the further you go from the border. I ask my taxidriver to bring me to a cheap hotel.

He stops at a gloomy garage port. “Hotel?” I ask but my taxidriver seems too busy with his bike. Inside there is a guy staring at a candle. When he sees me he points at a door and says “waiting room”… owkey… Slowly I enter the room and see a pink painted room with two comfy leather sofas, a big tv with surround system and pictures of cute ladies on the wall. What is this… I sit down and decide to take a picture before someone enters the room. I just didn’t expect such a nice and comfortable room anywhere in this town.
A girl enters the room and stands in front of the Tv. “Euh Hellow… I need a room…” I ask. She just smiles back and says nothing. A few moments later another girl comes in, and then another, then another. The six girls in front of me are not very talkative and their expressions dont look really bright either. None of them responds to my “room, bed or shower” questions. Only gigling and smiling. Then an older lady comes in and I try again. “Hiiiii, euh… I think I am in the wrong place here but I am looking for a room. Understand? Room? Hotel? Guesthouse? Bed?” … No problem she responds. “Room, bed, shower & boom boom all night, very cheap cheap”. Hilarious moment with the girls who only understood the word boom boom. “Yeeeees… I am aware of that part already but thats why I am here” …silence… the smallest girl breaks the silence and says pretty proud ” I had today” and shows me 4 fingers. “Gooood for you” I say while I stand up, grab my stuff and give her a big thumb up. ‘I have to kick my taxidrives ass’ I say to the lady and keep my “stay in school” and “keep up the good work” jokes for myself. I pass the guy with th candle and run to my taxi driver, hit him on the helmet and ask him to bring me back to the center to a real hotel.

I roam a few hours in the town and notice that all the women are working and all the men are sitting in the bar playing pool or watching TV. Its still like Thailand but different… “same same but different”.

Do noting in Pai?
Bon, een gewone werkdag begint voor de meeste van mijn vriendjes hier om 10u ’s morgens. Tegen 12 is iedereen aanwezig voor ons lekker Thais middagmaal. De werkdag stop voor sommigen na het avondeten maar het is niet ongewoon om rond 2u snachts nog mensen hard zien doorwerken of nog enkele belangrijke telefoontjes te zien doen naar collegas op een ander continent. Iedereen geeft zich 100% en de productiviteit kan je gewoon opsnuiven. Waaaw!

De sfeer onderling is alles behalve serieus of professioneel. Iedereen is meer dan vriendelijk met elkaar. Op onbewaakte momenten wanneer je je het minst verwacht krijg je hier soms een verwarmende energie knuffel of een “good work”-schouderklopje. Het is onmogelijk om hier een depressie op te doen want elke dipje wordt tegengegaan met het beste medicijn: een gezonde portie welgemeende affectie. Persoonlijke gesprekken doe je samen in de hangmat of tijdens een wandeling in de velden onder de lekkere zomerzon.

Mayday couchsufer down!
Vorige week had een van de meisjes een kleine voedselvergiftiging en eindigde een nacht in het ziekenhuis. Er werd onmiddellijk een beurtrol opgesteld van mensen die haar gezelschap wilden houden zodat ze zich nooit alleen moest voelen. This is teamwork people!

It doesn’t get any better than this?

Het harde werken wisselen we af met allerhande activiteiten in Pai en er zijn er een hele hoop. Yogaklassen, Thaise les, Thaise massages, motoritten in de Paivallei, trektochten in de jungle, gaan niksen aan het zwembad, lekker eten in de lekkerste restaurantjes van het dorp, djembesessies tijdens de power aerobics, vuurpoi bij het kampvuur, frisbeeen op het voetbalveld, filmpje gaan zien in een van de afgehuurde privé kamertjes van de lokale cinema, kortom… teveel om in detail te gaan en we hebben dus nooit de tijd te hebben om niks te doen.

* for the lost and unknowing opencs people: All of this was for free and if it was not it was not paid with CS money (except for the antfight)!

Aaah en mijn liefdesleven….

tjah… “its complicated”. Moesten sommige frustros niet zo zitten geilen op mij blog azend op roddels/nieuws over de mensen hier in Pai dan had ik graag dieper ingegaan op wie mijn collegas zijn, wat hen drijft en wat hen allemaal zo speciaal maakt. (bijna) Niemand heeft hier een normaal leven achter de rug maar jammer genoeg kan ik sommige details die belangrijk zijn voor hun persoonlijkheid niet posten omdat deze in de verkeerde handen serieus wat schade kunnen aanrichten. Jammer want ik zou over sommige mensen hier wel een hele blogpost kunnen schrijven.
Maar dus mijn liefdesleven… hahaha… Shonali… awel… [censuur] … jammer van de censuur want het is eigenlijk wel een plezant verhaaltje om te vertellen. Klote openCS. Kortom’ t komt er op neer dat we niet meer samen zijn maar dat we het nog steeds goed met elkaar kunnen vinden. (Ik doe een knipoog, Simon rolt met zijn ogen en Anne zegt terug “tsss tsss tsss”)

Voila dat was het voor deze maand. Mijn Visa zit er weer op en ik moet de grens terug over.

Ik vertrek vandaag voor enkele dagen naar het land waar ze op vreedzame monniken schieten en waar de regering in oorlog is met hun volk. Wel, moeder, tis allemaal zo erg niet, EN Ik mag van papa! *gniffel*

Birma/Myanmar here I come!

Deze moet ik in het Engels schrijven:

This post, I will write in my beloved Flenglish.

People who know me and followed this blog know that I am not scared that easily. In my adventures I have done things and have been in places where you only go if you have lots of guts, are crazy or have nothing to lose. In my case I have a little bit of all of the above. I think I pushed the limits and the most crazy stories are even not on this blog otherwise my dear mom would never close an eye at night and even some of my less closer friends would not understand my behaviour.
I have been really scared only twice so far, once when I was facing a pack of raging street dogs in the middle of the night and the other time when Chris and me got lost hiking in Nepal and we needed to use our socks and underwear as torches to see the path on the ridge of the mountain. Not much of our male ego left there :p

but last night I didn’t sleep because of opencouchsurfing.org.

What is opencouchsurfing.org:

on opencouchsurfing.org homepage: “We believe in the spirit of CouchSurfing, of creating a better world through understanding. We believe this purpose is best served by a truly Open Organisation, one that is representative of the CouchSurfing community as a whole. We believe information should flow freely through an Open Organisation.

We have realized that this Freedom will not come from within the Couchsurfing core itself.”

So, these people love couchsurfing and they want to know what happens with the money from their donations and dont want their beloved site go down because of mismanagement etc. Because a 3rd party organisation that has an eye on a non profit organisation is a good thing and because one of the most fabulous couchsurfers I know told me about this site and also supports it I took my time to see what it was all about.
On my first visit I saw that subjectiveness, boredom and ignorance where rampant on that site. It exhausted blind destructive negativity towards the couchsurfing team based mostly on misinformation, twisted logic on incomplete knowledge of whats going on or just plain stupidity or jealousy. Well, haha, no that was NOT what I was thinking the first time I was on the site Although I felt the site was extremely negative it did raise some serious questions on my side. So I,at that time innocent and unknowing, had lots of questions with only one main question in my mind: “IS OPENCOUCHSURFING RIGHT?”.

Couchsurfing changed my life and I was about to donate 3 months of my life for it so for me it was very personal and serious.

So in the first week in Phuket(yes choosing Phuket for the collective was a mistake and a waste of money, glad I was there in time to vote for Pai :p) I casually drop some of the questions/my concernes in a casual way to see how they would react. And I think asking annoying questions and be the devils advocate with a dash of innocence is one of my talents But to my own disappointment, every-time, and I hope you spying guys on opencouchsurfing read this one very well, EVERYTIME, they just gave me a complete answer on the how, the when, the why and the amount of money. They told me EVERYTING! No hiding, no lies, no far fetched excuses for mistakes that had been made in the past. So no fun for me, the devils advocate

So what happened? What scared me so much?

Yesterday my brother in law asked me about the statistics of my blog. For the first time since I travel I check them and I noticed that there was a site linking to my blog: Opencouchsurfing! W.T.F. I think. I check it out and see there is yet another negative(duh) post about CS. It talks about the crash we had and what we where doing. And then. I see a guy named Paul posting my name, my job description and you will not believe that. Parts out of my blog(that’s written in Flemish) translated, I think using a crappy online translator, posted on that site. I didn’t know what to do: laughing or being scared, well I was having both.

So this guy, Sneaky Paul, is just another guy on openCS who is spending his time looking around for dirt about cs. He put on his virtual Sherlock Holmes hat and starts investigating all the profiles from the people of the collective and stumbles on my blog. I imagine him on one of his loveless lonely nights trying to decipher my blog written in that crazy Flemisch language. Parsing the text through a online translator and suddenly “aaaahah, I got you guys. I see you are having FUN and yes… GIRLS too! Two! God damn you Doegie, you and your fellow team members, you will pay for this because you are using CS money for this”. Posting this new found information on opencouchsurfing and going to sleep thinking he made (t)his world a little bit better.

So this is the funny part. I was laughing because he used posted “Pai is just too great, I have to much work and to much fun to write something in my blog” quote and there was something about my amazingly fun first night the day before Christmas, where I got a very warm welcome from the team. So tell me… Whats wrong in having loads of fun and working very hard at the same time? Whats wrong about receiving a warm welcome from the people I will live with for the next 3 months?

What we do during our christmass holiday, in the weekends and at night we spend our own money and is not really CS bussiness but mostely it IS NONE OF YOUR BUSSINESS!

And I see posts like that all the time on openCS. Someone finds a picture, draws quick conclusions and adds that to the pile of dirt. Or someon else hears numbers and with incomplete knowledge fills in the gaps with his imagination is very happy adding this to the ever growing pile of shit as well.
It is also funny because by letting anonymous people add their frustrations doing that opencouchsurfing.org becomes a very subjective and dirty site. And, wel, sometimes there are some strong and valid arguments by people a bit more mature who are just engulfed by the pile of mud posted by their users

But… thats exactly what have me a sleepless night. My blog is for my friends and family. There is incomplete and extremely subjective information in here. Its also personal information that is public to the world but taken out of its context information like that can be twisted as hard as the mind of the people who want to abuse it. Doing that makes it personal most of all WHERE WILL YOU STOP? Yes you, hidden behind the pseudonyme Paul and your little friends? It is goddamn scary because he is not the only one on that site!

So now I know people as I am writing this are reading my blog with the only purpose of finding “something” they could use against the company behind couchsurfing.

I saw that subjectiveness, boredom and ignorance where rampant on opencs.org and negative people who are bored or have to much time at their hands can be funny, annoying and sometimes even dangerous.

I’m sure that if the people behind openCS would visit us for only 1 day they would be so amazed by the work we are doing right now they would close down their site. I know I would.

The thai collective rocks!