This is one blog you will not see on Maria's web site

My family is crazy!

I love them to death, but seriously, I'm living in a soap opera with the cast switched on hyper mode. Let's take my youngest sister, for example - very pretty, but does she really need to wear skirts so short I'm not even sure Eve would have worn before she took a bite from the sacred apple. I took a ride with her up to the dry cleaners, car all pimped out, radio blasting and seats laid back so far you have to do a constant crunch to see out the window. I felt like Puff Daddy was going to step out on to the side walk and let loose a few rounds at us. Take no offence Sis, I'm probably just getting too old.

Unrelated to my family, I'm freezing my ass here! It's summer and I have never been so cold. I forgot that it's basically like living in a desert - warm days and freezing cold nights, but I'm sure I'll be melting when the heat wave comes.

It is good to be back though. Doesn't feel like home yet but I've been away so long I'm sure it will take a while to sink in. My family may be crazy but they are great for a laugh; I don't think I have stopped since I got here :)

Accepting appointments :)

After 30 hours of thumb aching massage and 2 examinations Maria and I are now certified to give 1.5 hour Thai massage. Now I know what you are thinking and NO I don't give a Thai happy ending to my massage.

I was however constantly getting in trouble from my teacher as she would often slap my hand while I was practicing and yell "No, no, impolite, hand too close to mountain!" As soon as her supervisor was not looking though she was wiggling her bum at me and sarcastically saying "Sorry, sorry, I didn't know" but it was all in good fun.

The course itself was a grueling 5 days. I had to get up and attend class everyday from 9 AM to 4 PM with only a one and half hour lunch break and one afternoon ice cream break. They did provide a really good free vegetarian lunch though and I got to buy a fresh coconut everyday for my drink :) I don't know how I'm going to handle a job ever again.

If there are any single guys out there interested in the hippy/granola type then I recommend you enroll in one of these classes as the ratio for men to women is 1:20. They are not all granola but there is a large majority... always getting you to try feel their chi and crap. There were actually quite a lot of masseuses and masseurs studying there from all over the world but god forbid you actually call them that as they consider themselves "therapists". I personally had enough and wanted to tell them to go suck on their herbal ball. Saying that we were lucky enough to have all awesome people in our class.

PS CanSis, you are no longer the only one to have been straddled by a therapist while receiving a massage!

Family tree

It turns out I come from the Goh family not the Soon family! My great grand father who was a Goh had many many sons, his family was very close friends with the Soon family. One day they had a conversation that went something like this:

Real Great Grand Father Goh: I have so many sons!

Great Grand Father Soon: I have no sons only daughters :(

Real Great Grand Father Goh: We are good friends, here have my youngest son :)

However ludicrous this sounds they tell me it’s exactly how it happened. The kicker is the two families stayed very close and my grand father (now a Soon) had too many sons and the new generation of the Goh family had only daughters so my grand father gave his youngest son to the Goh family. This means my youngest uncle has blood from the Goh family but born into the Soon family and then given back to the Goh family!

Malaysian haircut

I had enough of cutting my own hair so I thought I would go for a bit of a trim in Malaysia while I have the locals around to recommend a hairdresser. My dad sent me to his “barber” in Penang so I went along thinking if worse comes to worse I can always just chop off my hair again. So we head to this barber which is run by an East Indian chap who seemed to love singing along with the local Indian radio station and was at the time I walked in trimming some hairy dudes beard and then turning to my dad to try and do up the top button of his pants because his stomach had popped it open, what had I got myself into?

After about 15 minutes of scissors snipping all over my head (90% of the time the scissor blades were 3 inches from my actual hair, I think he just liked the sound of the scissors snipping) and one of those old school razors which I kept thinking to my self please don’t cut me as he worked expert precision around my neck and ears it was finished or so I thought. He was brushing me down and I was ready to get out of the chair when suddenly wrapped both hands around my head so I was in a headlock position and he cracked my neck in both directions! I got out of the chair all dizzy and paid him the requested 10 ringget (4 bucks) and walked out of the shop not believing what he just did and wondering if my neck would untie itself from one big knot in the next 4 hours. I was halfway down the street when my dad finally walked out with 2 extra ringget which he had bargained off the guy after I had already paid him!

The Craic in Ireland

It started with meeting my parents in a small little town that consisted of two main streets but it was good to just sit and relax after the constant sight seeing for the last few months. They were great as usual, never really seem to change although I get the feeling my mum is guilty of something because every time she came within arms reach she was shoving money in our pockets... not that I'm complaining ;)

Everything was so stereo typical and it was an absolute blast. We took a tour to check out the Celtic history and had a hilarious guide always yelling "Jesus, Mary and Joseph" and whenever he saw road workers would say to him self "oh Paddy and Seamus, slowly slowly". He pointed out slowly slowly was necessary as when a rush job was needed to convert the road signs from miles and hour to kilometers an hour road signs were erected that point to three separate directions for the same location on the one post or other signs that didn't contradict but were pointing in the totally wrong direction.

One thing they don't do slowly is drink. We decided to take some locals up for a drink on our last night and in the morning I woke up with a shocking head ache nauseous and a bad after taste of oyster in my mouth. Who would have thought the Oyster stout I ordered was actually brewed with Oysters! It had to be done though and we weren't about to let our 18, 19 and 20 year old hosts out drink us veterans..... yeah right :s

I did learn some Irish though. Here is a translation of a greeting (I'm not joking)

Hi, how you doing?
Irish:Well?

good
Irish:well (with a smile)

How are you doing?
Irish:well?

not so good
Irish:well (with a frown)

Patisserie Redemption

A little bit of history, when I was 11 or 12 I had some good friends who were studying French. Every few months they would go on a field trip to a French patisserie store and come back gloating about the most amazing pastries. I wanted to switch from Indo to French just for those field trips but my language skills were really bad and even custard filled pasties couldn't persuade me to take on the work load of learning French.

Now I'm in Paris the pastries are coming left right and center. Of course my language skills are still no better so when I see Individualle Citrone Tarte I call "Maria! lemon tart, please love" or Millefenille Fraise "Maria! Vanilla slice, please love" and she would go ahead and order in French for me. It works out beautifully!

Nigel: This is backpackingMaria: This is hell!

One shower, one change of clothes, two overnight ferries, one overnight train, a combination of 5 trains, buses and ferries, 9 hours of sleep and 57 hours later we arrived in Stromboli one of the most active volcanos in the world. It was just in time too since we had booked a guided trek up to the creator of the volcano leaving in 30 minutes time. We had no accommodation booked and took the first guy to approach us who hurried us away in his golf cart with us clinging one hand to the cart and one hand on our bags that were swinging wildly from the back. Once we got to the accommodation we checked in and started running to the trekking outfit that was twenty minutes away. Lucky for us our golf cart driver spotted us running down the street and caught up with us to give us a lift to the office. In no time we had our helmets and were starting our 1000 meter climb to the top of the volcano.

We watched the sun set from two thirds the way up the volcano and with amazing speed dark clouds surrounded us and reduced visibility to a few feet. With the wind howling we continued but got stuck just before the summit because there was too much methane in air all we could do was wait it out as it was too dangerous to go back the way we came in the dark.

Finally after a four hour climb we made it to the top. I was surprised we made it given the lack of sleep over the past few days since we where to cheep to buy couchettes on our overnight ferries and train. Maria was fairing worse than I was and curses were flying every few minutes and at one point there was a guy whistling at the top of the volcano at which she told me “I’m going to kill him! and I’ll listen to him whistle as he falls from the mountain.”

All in all it was definitely worth it. We sat at the top for an hour and waited for the clouds to part where we got to experience the deafening explosions in the cone and watch magma shooting out the top like fireworks while the guides would run up and down the line yelling DON’T LOOK INTO THE SKY! as ash was falling on our heads.