Please Don't Stop the Music

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  Paro, Paro, Bhutan
Saturday, April 26, 2008

I spent a LONG day of travel from Mabul via KL to Bangkok to position

for Bhutan. The car service for the hour route to the airport broke

down on its way to get me and there were no taxis in the village where

I was dropped off. What the hell was I going to do? Public bus of

course. I boarded a small van (think transportation for a high school

tennis team) and it was filled to the gills with locals. Here we go.

Well, there were about ten minutes of silence as I imagined they were

sizing up why I was smashed in this small bus and the lack of chatter

of any sorts was more than a little awkward. Then a sixty or so odd

man to my left shouted something up to the driver. What happened next

was unimaginable. The driver pulled on a plastic box in the cieling

and a small flat screen popped down. As if it were happening in slow

motion I watched him press the power button. The screen energized and

to reveal a placid scene of a modern apartment block and two clean

cut Asians looking lovingly at one another as they playfully cut

vegetables I knew this could only mean one thing....

KARAOKE!!!!!!! The words popped up, the music kicked in and people on

the bus started to just go for it. I was ecstatic. Why on Earth would

anone choose another form of transportation when the public vans were

cheap and brimming with Malaysian Idols. Borneo is called the Kland

beneath the wind" but the moniker should read "the land of the answer

is blowing in the wind". Huge for my life.

I met a Dutch guy named Marco at the airport who was traveling the

same route from Borneo to Bangkok. He was a fishing fanatic and had

been travelling between remote fishing villages in Indonesia,

Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand over the last 18 months to live

with the villagers and fish. Not a bad way to spend some time. We

chatted for a while and ended up geting seats next to one another,

asking about our travels and trying to see what new spots should be

popping up on my radar. After hearing his stories about the cities he

visited between villages and his "activities" there I realised he was

not only trolling for barracuda but also had a lure out for young

women of the region. Yup he was a sex tourist. Plain and simple. Things

got awkward from that point of enlightenment and I feigned sleep for

the entire second flight to avoid any other over-shares.

This blog is going to need to go silent for the next two weeks as I

leave the modern world and embark on a 16 day trek through the

Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan. "Basic" would be an understatement when

it comes to describe this hidden country. With television not being

introduced until the 1990s, internet just arriving in a limited

capacity, daily power blackouts (that is in the"big cities with the

capital having a whooping 15000 people...yup many universities are

larger) and the national past-time being archery this is going to get

intense....almost as intense of my love for run on sentences.

I'll catch you all on the other end!