Apologies, but this blog will not be exciting. I've been in one place for the longest time ever in almost eight months. Not much is happening besides doing the Muay Thai training. My youngest brother Derek came out to joing me in my "travels" but so far it's been pretty lame for him and there's been no travelling. After training in the morning I'm too tired to really do anything cool. Everyone just sleeps. Then we get up again for training in the afternoon, shower, eat, watch a movie or something and go to bed. Some of the guys are taking [View Full Entry]

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Well today was day three of my Muay Thai training. It hurts to move. I actually fear the walk home from this internet place. But, for beginners it's not as strenuous as I thought. They know you don't want to get hurt or anything so you just kind of do what you can do and build up from there. I don't go for the 8-12 kilometer mountain runs at 6:30 in the morning. That distance would kill me on level ground let alone uphill the whole way. I run a few k's in the afternoons. I just show up at 7 [View Full Entry]

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Bloody Bangkok! Man. I tell ya. So hot here. I guess it turns out my younger brother Derek is coming out to meet me for some travels before he has to start school. I am going to meet him here in Bangkok but in the meantime I'm going north to Chiang Mai (again) for Muay Thai boxing training. It's a big ripoff to do it in Bangkok and in Chiang Mai I can actually live at the gym for about a quarter of the price. I guess I haven't been keeping anyone intersted with the blogs lately and that's understandable. I [View Full Entry]

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Ok well I made it to Jakarta, all the way across Java without getting myself killed! However when we were in Pangandaran, where a month ago they had that brutal tsunami, there was an earthquake. Nothing too major, a 5.1 on the richter scale. I was sitting on our balcony at around 10pm drinking tea and all the sudden it felt like someone had grabbed my chair and started shaking it. I knew what it was right away because I had felt an earthquake years ago in Mexico. The crappy part was that this earthquake was offshore. Again. And our hotel [View Full Entry]

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Well I think last time I wrote I must have been in Surabaya. We've been working our way west and have seen the places affected by the latest disasters in Indonesia. We stayed a few days in Solo, a nice quiet town with tons of nice scenery. I even did a Batik painting course for a day in which we designed and made t-shirts. Mine turned out pretty good and it was surprising since it is a long difficult process of applying wax and then colours. I'll have to put on some sweet pictures when I find a decent internet place. [View Full Entry]

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Allright, I'm out of Bali and I'm recharged to do some hardcore travelling again. But we needed to extend our tourist visas, which means we would have to fly to Singapore and back....or does it? We got a phone number from this American guy we met. He said he'd called a guy who has a shoe in at immigration and got his appropriate (and somewhat illegal) extension without leaving the country. Ok, it was cheaper than flying and the American guy said it was legit. Rhiannon and I felt like a boneheads as we watched that little brown man cruise off [View Full Entry]

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Ok so I'm just putting this up so you guys will realize I put pictures on. The last blog was a half-assed effort at Bali and Gili Trawangan off the coast of Lombok. The pictures on this one are from Kuta Lombok and Sumbawa. This is taking hours so I'm having a (some) beer (beers). Hope you enjoy. [View Full Entry]

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A lot has happened since the first time I was in Bali. I'm back! Firstly I would like to mention that this part of the world is getting rocked by natural disasters like crazy but I haven't been near any of them. There was a devastating tsunami that hit the western coast of Java a week ago. Java curves up nothewest from Bali and is quite large. I think so far the death toll is around 340 and there are around 200 missing. Lucky I wasn't there because knowing me I would have been sleeping on the beach. Around a month [View Full Entry]

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Well I'm in Bali, of course!!! Nothing could have been more of a relief than the beach. I've been surfing the past few days away. I took a lesson the first day and I guess I caught on pretty easily. Definately not a pro though. It made me realize how unfit I really am. I think after a week of surfing a guy would be in OK shape. Here's the scoop. Borneo was just not set up for backpackers. It's a place for people who are on a holiday to go and hike in the jungle (or up southeast Asia's highest [View Full Entry]

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Man where did I leave off? Well I went to see some orangutangs at a wildlife sanctuary. It was cool because they were wild and they would bait them in with fruits so we could have a look. They were kinda boring though, really lazy and slow. Rhiannon and I also went to Similajau National Park along the coast. It was really great for hiking and supposedly to see some wildlife, although we saw nothing but insects. They have crocodiles, sea turtles, five species of dolphin and loads of other stuff like birds. Don't know how we missed them all, we [View Full Entry]

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