gezeiten

2005-11-11T01:41:00.000+01:00

GOD SAVE US.......

2005-11-11T00:56:00.000+01:00

GOTT SCHÜTZE UNS
VOR STURM UND WIND;
UND DEUTSCHEN
DIE IM AUSLAND SIND

2005-11-10T16:10:00.000+01:00

2005-11-09T12:27:00.000+01:00

speeding down the autobahn

2005-11-09T01:03:00.000+01:00

sorry for not writing for awhile, have been quite depressed in the fatherland, but getting slowly out of it, thanks to a 30 year old wine cellar with some beautiful wines and an old mercedes, lent to me by a friend for a few weeks. there is nothing like speeding down the good old autobahn at 240kms/hour. it might kill you sooner or later, but what a way to go...........

the weather has been perfect, with the sun shining just about everyday and temperatures in the 20s until a few days ago. unbelievable for this time of the year.

maybe life is not soo bad after all. am just bored here, even with all the friends. would love to move on to south america, cant wait to get to buenos aires, but i just have to wait a bit longer.
maybe i need a good fuck.... will probably drive to italy in a week to meet up with a nice signorina. very very promising......

last tango in delhi

2005-09-16T20:00:00.000+02:00

arrived this morning back in delhi. staying in paharganj (a bazaar near the new delhi railway station, very dirty and indian) and loving it. i am staying at the HOTEL FANCY, and fancy it is not. have been stuffing myself the whole day with yummy indian foods (masala dosa, curd, burfies and spicy samosas) i could not get for the last 2 months up in the mountains. no more yak meat for this man. life is a feast.

spent most of the day in old delhi, bought some calenders for pressies and watched a total anarchic ganesh (the hindu god with the elephant body) parade with music bands and fireworks.... must be his birthday or something.
also watched a real crappy bollywood movie, called JAMES. a very sexy actress was throwing her body around, while the hero was beating up half the baddies of india, including corrupt police. some of it was already softporn. whats happening to this country??
took a bicycle rickshaw back and wondered why all these girls were waving at me from the second floor, for a one kilometre stretch. thought i must be some kind of stud, until my rickshaw driver told me they are all prostitutes looking for business. what a letdown....
i just have to come back to india. this country is just so full on, loving every minute of it. had real difficulties leaving manali, to say goodbye to the farmers daughter and many friends. but what the heck, 2 months germany and when argentina. i can always go back to india next year and marry her if i should feel too horny.

2005-09-16T01:58:00.000+02:00

2005-09-16T00:19:00.000+02:00

taking the high road to leh

2005-09-15T20:08:00.000+02:00

have been trying to remember what i did over the last 4 weeks, all to no avail. looks like finally all the bad habits have caught up with me. one thing i do remember is that i spent most of the time above 3500m in the land of ladakh, freezing my arse off and gasping for air like a fish out of water, thinking my last minute had arrived.

i remember i was quite happy leaving beautiful manali in a 20 year old bus, being told to be there at 5 am in the morning, only to wait for 3 hours in the rain before it arrived...ah india, always full of surprises..... the road from manali to leh is quite a stunner, going over 5000m high passes, along fertile valleys, hanging glaciers and raging rivers. of course it didnt help that a beautiful horny israeli girl was flirting with our driver sanchee, keeping his eyes off the hairpin bends, the abyss only a few seconds away. these are the times when one mutters a few prayers and starts believing in the gods.
2 days later we reached beautiful leh (3500m), the capital of ladakh, only to be greeted by hordes of package tourists, having arrived by plane from delhi, demanding facilities that are almost impossible to provide, in a high altitude desert area which is short of power and water. for the next 3 days i had a mind blowing migraine and felt very sick: altitude sickness had caught up with me. of course that didnt stop me to fantasize about the highest motorable pass in the world (5602m) leading to the beautiful nubra valley and only 4 hours away from leh. being so near to the border sensitive area of pakistan and china, one needs a permit. a few hundred rupees solved that problem. 2 days later i was in nubra, staying in a beautiful small village called hunter (3100m), in between gurgling streams and surrounded by fruit orchards and fields. truly a shangri la. i was invited into the houses, drinking chang (fermented barley beer), the locals starring at me, and of course me starring at them.

ladhaki, a language similar to tibetan, seems to consist mainly of one word, the all purpose JULE, which means hello, goodbye, please, thank you and probably anything else. for the next few days i was juleing my way through the village, always ending up drunk on the chang.
one day a travelling tibetan witchdoctor visited hunter, and i was invited to witness how she went into a trance and started "healing" by sucking out strange fluids from sick peoples bodies, filling up a 1 litre jar in about 20 minutes. i have seen a similar trick in the philippines before, a healer regurgitating the stuff from his stomach. people seemed to believe it. what doesnt kill you makes you stronger, i suppose.
i liked the place so much that i ended up forging the date on my 7 day permit, staying nearly 2 weeks, before going back to leh, just in time for the leh festival, created by the ladhakis to keep the tourists in town for another 2 weeks, as the season is only 3 months long. for the next 3 days i watched local dances by traditional dressed women, most of them in slow motion (must be the altitude), drunken archery competitions., and 2 very exciting polo games on tough little zanskarie ponies, with the players riding into the viewer crowds or wherever the ball went, injuring a little boy.
the days went cooler and i missed good old manali. i didnt feel like another 2 day trip, instead i went for the 1 day jeep trip. BIG MISTAKE.
we meet at the bus station at 2am, and of we went, myself and 5 adventurous indian gentlemen. for the next 18 hours we raced across wobbling bridges (one collapsing 3 hours later, stopping all the traffic from leh to manali), passed tar covered road gangs (mostly from bihar and nepal, trying to make a dollar or two day), police- and army checkpoints, barren moonscapes and snow covered peaks, mostly over 6500m high. one of the indians was throwing up all the way and i didnt feel good either.
amazingly since i arrived back in manali, i have this fantasy about walking the whole way from manali to leh. it would be the journey of a lifetime. maybe next year, when the snow starts melting. anyone interested in coming along?? it might kill you, but what a way to go.
in manali i have met a 68 year old english gentleman, the last "bohemian", as he calls himself. he used to hang out with kerouac and burroughs in the 50s and later on had a few joints with paul bowles in tangier, morocco....just my kind of hero. one of the survivors. have never seen anyone smoking so much of the black stuff, and the guy looks healthy like a baby. the people one meets while travelling.....also the beautiful farmers girl is back in the picture.
luckily its back to delhi, and on september 21 time to say goodbye to india. not for very long hopefully. germany is waiting....

2005-08-18T06:36:00.000+02:00

hi ho hi ho and off to leh i go

2005-08-16T12:56:00.000+02:00

i will leave tomorrow for leh. the situation here is far too dangerous right now. i might end up with no organ whatsoever. her father seems to realize whats going on. i am sure i could marry her, but do i really want to?? once bitten twice shy.
the bustrip to leh will take 2 days, over 5000 mtrs high roads. that should take my breath away in another sort of way. after that i probably will take the leh/ kargill road to kashmir. last time i was here the pakistanis shelled the shit out of this road. could be interesting if it happens again. once in kashmir i probably will take a houseboat on the lake and smoke a few chillums of good kashmiri. great......

should i stay or should i go...

2005-08-12T09:19:00.000+02:00

your friend is in a real dilemma . hmmmmmmmmm.
if i stay here much longer i will jump into bed with the daughter and thats where the trouble starts and not ends. so i am thinking perhaps the fresh air of leh might do me mighty good and keep me away from the pleasures of the flesh. its a 2 day bus trip from here along the highest roads in the world. that should give me some other ideas, hopefully.
so maybe i will take off in about 4 days to new adventures, being the eternal wandering traveller. if i should decide to stay, you are heartily invited to my wedding, in the near future. please bring lots of nice pressies and hard cash. ah the decisions one has to make in life.
take care, dear friends...........

meanwhile in the himalay

2005-07-30T21:00:00.000+02:00

right now i am living with a farmers family in the himalayas, 2300m high up, ogling their beautiful 19 year old daughter day and night. if i am not careful might end up having to marry her. hmmm, have to think about this one, people have been killed here for less.
sometimes i come down to manali, an hours walk, to get some social life, and type away if the power or internet is working.

2005-07-29T07:28:00.000+02:00

2005-07-29T06:26:00.000+02:00

ah india

2005-07-16T12:15:00.000+02:00

arrived in india 2 days ago. this is the ultimate country for travellers. everything is an assault on your senses. the colours, smells and sounds are just unbelievable. good and bad. india is like life itself. i just love this country. there is no other place like it in the world. i am already thinking of changing my flight ticket and staying longer. we will see. right now i am in delhi, but probably will go tomorrow into the himalayan mountains to manali, a place i have been before. from there maybe to leh (near the chinese tibetan border) and then to kashmir. life is great and india is a buzz. you really feel alive here. the whole country should be declared a world heritage site.

2005-07-15T04:19:00.000+02:00

2005-07-15T01:20:00.000+02:00

taking the slow bus to hikkaduwa

2005-07-13T14:27:00.000+02:00

SRI LANKA, should i laugh or should i cry?? marco polo found it the finest island in the world. well marco, things have changed. war in the north, tsunami in the south. now its just a bizarre place with the logic of a monty python film. as for being a buddhist country, i have seen more compassion in a hen house. its survival of the fittest all the way.

what a place!! the first 2 days total culture shock. was ready to leave straight back to thailand. caught the 3 hour train, first class for around 2 dollars us, from colombo to kandy. k is a 100 000 people town. second largest in sk.during the day a rush as there is no tomorrow, inclusive pollution. after 7pm the place is absolutely dead. i wonder where they all go. conmen everywere with wonderful stories
how they lost their money and please could you help them. sometimes i hand out some small change if the stories are good. but you cant feed them all. mother theresa would have been happy here. its a bit like india but more relaxed in a way, which of course doesnt help the poor bastard who is lying on the side of the road starving. as this is the no1 tea producing country i enjoy some wonderful cups of tea in the afternoon with a piece of cake, while outside the beggars try to kill each other for a few rupees i give to them. very civilized indeed.

next stop was ella, beautiful views to the coastal plains, 1000m below. got lost in the rice paddies and was saved by a farmer. nimal spent the next 5 hours with me climbing ella rock and being disturbed by a cobra. as he was walking in front i didnt see the 2m snake until he suddenly stood still. his whole body shaking. in front across the path was a beautiful looking snake standing right up. luckily it
decided to move on after unending minute. for the next 2 hours he told me over and over how lucky we had been not be attacked by it. with the adrenalin pumping the rest of the walk was peanuts. was happy to leave ella as the locals seemed to be bent to add a service charge to anything they sold. a genuine tourist rip off.

next it was tsunami country, with the destruction still visible after 6 months. tent cities and temporary wooden huts everywhere along the coast. i wonder if there are any tents left for the oktoberfest this year. looks like every government and ngo had sent some help after the disaster. you still see their presence with young self important westerners everywhere, "volunteering" instead of letting the sri lankans get on with it. never met a more stupid bunch in my life. any
religious group you can think of made their way into tsunami country, proselytising while they give help. fucking missionaries should be shot on sight.. saw some bizarre sites, like a lonely toilet bowl, next to a palm tree with a sign: closed for renovation. half washed away buildings which were "approved by the sri lankan tourist board". whole villages and towns have been swept away, thousands of people
dying. luckily some lighter moments happened in between, like the 2 middle aged toothless prostitutes at the matare busstation, next to the urinals (just in case you are interested), rolling their tongues in desperation to get my attention.
for all you cricket lovers: the galle international cricket grounds are still closed. thank god for small mercies.

anyway for the last 10 days i found some peace in hikkaduwa, sitting on the verandah watching the waves smash against the beach and enjoying beautiful sunsets. as the season does not start until november i have the whole place just about to myself, except last weekend when the "volunteer" hordes arrived. tomorrow its time to go to colombo and catch a flight to india, the himalayas are waiting.

2005-07-13T14:00:00.000+02:00

2005-07-13T13:30:00.000+02:00

apocalypse now

2005-06-16T14:04:00.000+02:00

bloody hell,... 2 days in bangkok and i am already missing northern thailand. had such a wonderful time there, even got offered a few hilltribe women for marriage. had to decline, but might come back to the offer in future years/months. have to say the north is the highlight of this trip so far. it will be hard to beat. dirt cheap, friendly and honest people. the scenery wild, stunningly beautiful and very mountainous. for the last 3 days i rented a chopper (honda 250 cc) and raced up and down the mountains over some roller coaster hills, luckily surviving without a crash.

was hard to say farewell to all the friends i made in pai. first of all willow "the sadhu", a 75 year old american hippie who dropped out in the 60s and never came back, still munching acid, magic mushrooms and 5 joints a day as if there is no tomorrow. 5 days on his permaculture farm brought me back to a saner reality and slowed me down considerably, after buzzing for nearly 3 months in singapore. his discussions about life and the universe will be missed. realized my journey has just begun.
there was dang, a jolly 35 year old thai woman who cooked like a real pro and opened her heart and house to all kinds of weird people, including myself. one day i came back from a motorbike trip with some forest mushrooms, bought from 3 lisu girls on the side of the road, and dang made the most delicious meal. i will miss her smile.

spent my birthday getting back from pai to chiang mai in a weather beaten bus, with half the locals vomiting after the hundreds of hairpin bends. had dinner with a swiss friend and then to the railway station to get the night train to bangkok. fell in love with the female train attendant. some of these thai women are just stunning. as soon as i arrived in chaos city i realized i wasnt ready to leave thailand. luckily i was able to change my flight to sri lanka once more, thank you sri lankan airlines.

now i am back at kaosan road in bangkok, after not having been here for 6 years. the place has changed a bit, more commercialised. the big money has arrived. still the crowd is the same, a meeting point for travellers from all over the world. at night you just sit back and watch the circus in front of you, the different tribes of travellers parading up and down THE ROAD in colourful outfits, usually a telling sign where they just came from.

i am staying just off kaosan, in a real fleapit, the room wallsstained and live wires coming out from the light switch, the heat is unbearable, a huge fan hovering above my head, reminding me of martin sheen in APOCALYPSE NOW..... and loving it. just waiting for marlon to come through the door at any moment.

will be going to pattaya tomorrow and maybe check the area along the cambodian border, might find a few khmer rouge still hiding in the jungle. ah life is exciting....

2005-06-16T13:00:00.000+02:00

2005-06-06T15:40:00.000+02:00

tried for the last 2 weeks to write up on my adventures since the big poker game. no such luck. instead i got stoned on homegrown weed freshly picked in northern thailand, not far from the burmese border. as my friend willow would say: the arrow that never aims always reaches its target. so here i am giving it another go.........

after losing S$ 300 in 5 days, my friends decided to dump me in johor bahru, just accross the border from singapore, only to meet another crazy crowd, whom i hung out with for the next week or so. meet habibi, former sarawak headhunter and animist, now a proud converted muslim and to be married soon to his 26 years younger malay wife suriyani. he has a wonderful backpackers in the middle class suburb of jb, far away from the sleazy site of this great city. his place feels like a malay kampong, including chicken, dog, rabbit and cats.

on the first night i woke up with bottles being smashed, a female voice shouting. reminded me very much of my former wife. anyway out of experience i kept away. habibi turned up the next morning with a badly scratched face. nothing was said about it.

meet omar, a tunesian, not much cash and an invalid passport, ready to go illegally across the border to thailand, god knows what for. his girlfriend rose, a filipina barmaid in jb, milking omar for his last money and turning up with new clothes every day.

meet a japanese guy, who never talked, just once. his question was: what does spitfire mean?? maybe his grandfather was shot down in wwII by a spitfire, who knows. just some of the interesting people hanging out at habibis place.

for food i usually went down the road to vedhas (advertised as: for the best northern & southern indian cuisine) stuffing myself with dum briyani, tandoori chicken and naans. life couldnt have been any better. realized after a week that i will never make it to the perhentian islands. urgent measures had to be taken. decided i might as well fly up to chiang mai in northern thailand, with an air asia ticket, cheaply booked on the net.

advice to a female friend in india

2005-05-25T19:00:00.000+02:00

just wanted you to know that i'm in northern india. so far, i have not fallen in love with india as i had hoped. it seems that all of israel is traveling here. i've met only one girl who is nice enough for me to travel with. overall, i have no clue where to go, what to visit and i feel like showing the men a boob so at least they have a good reason for staring at me all fucking day! send me some inspiration!

what can i say,... you make me cry and scared. of course i wouldnt mind either to see one of your boobs (or even two), but in the middle of india.... very scary indeed.
yeah i know from there you are coming. india can be a fucking hassle and all the israelis dont help it either. but my dear friend, be strong. india always brings it out in you, good or bad. if it gets too much just go down south, so much more relaxing. but i suppose its the monsoon down there. hmmmmm you are in trouble. just let go and relax. maybe go to an ashram, but with all those gurus wanting sex it might not be the right idea either. now you got me all confused and i really dont know what to advise you. maybe just leave the fucking place and let them all rot.........

anyway hope you settled down by now and had some good things happening to you.... will write more soon

disneyland with death penalty

2005-05-18T10:00:00.000+02:00

Shanmugram Murugesu, a Singaporean, 38, was arrested on the 29 August 2003 at Tuas Checkpoint. A search was conducted on his motorcycle and was found to contain 6 packets of cannabis.
The 6 packets of cannabis contain 1,029.8 grams of cannabis, and 880.89 grams of cannabis mixture.

At the trial the prosecution proceeded on a capital charge of importing 1029.8 grams (nett) of cannabis under s.7 of the Misuse of Drugs Act, Cap. 185. After the trial at the High Court in April 2004, he was convicted as charged and sentenced to suffer death. His appeal against conviction and sentence of death was heard in the Court of Appeal on 26/10/2004. The appeal was dismissed.

Background:
Shanmugum had served in the Singapore Armed Forces for 8 years and in other government sectors like the Singapore Sports Council for another 4 years. He had also represented Singapore in water sports events like the 1995 World Championship Jetski Finals in Lake Havasu, Arizona, USA. Before his arrest, Shanmugram worked as a taxidriver and a free-lance window cleaner to support his sons and mother. He also contributed income to his sister and her 3 children. He did not have any previous convictions except for a minor traffic offence. After his divorce in 2002, he was awarded custody of his twin sons, now aged 14. After the divorce he had lost interest in life and became a victim of drug abuse.
Shanmugam came from a poor Indian Singaporean family and had a younger sister and 1 younger brother. His sister is divorced and has 3 children and his brother is a police officer attached to the Marine Police. He was in desperate financial circumstances which led him to commit the offence. The financial burdens on him were heavy as he had to look after the financial needs of his sons, nieces, nephews and mother. His parents were divorced and the mother who is in her 60's, is in poor health. She is unable to work and is financially supported by him and the brother. Since his arrest, the mother has been looking after the sons who are both studying in secondary three.

Plea to save from execution
Twins Gopalan and Krishnan Murugesu, 14, distributed more than 500 flyers detailing their fathers Shanmugam's plight. They plea for help to save their father, Shanmugam Murugesu, from being executed after he was convicted and sentenced to hang last April for drug trafficking. They are collecting signature for a petition against the execution, saying their father's death would make them orphans. The petition will be submitted the president of singapore requesting the death sentence be commuted to imprisonment. The presidential clemency is the final mechanism for appeal. Shanmugam is due to be hanged on or before the first week of May 2005. (from www.thinkcentre.org )

anyway it didnt make any difference the poor man was hanged.
paul theroux, who once lived in singapore, called it DISNEYLAND WITH DEATH PENALTY

2005-05-16T14:40:00.000+02:00

pokerfever in singapore

2005-05-14T10:00:00.000+02:00

life gets crazier by the day. met up with these rich singaporean friends to go by aircon car to malaysia. never happened. we sort of slackened and started to play poker for money instead. thought i corrupt this innocent singaporean couple and win lots of money from them. no such luck. have been losing ever since. so here i am sitting in my underpants, very much poorer. have until monday to win it all back, or lose even more. is this a singaporean scam or have i just been plain unlucky??? at least they are treating me like a high roller and i get everything for free. so to pay them back i try hard to empty their great wine collection, can recommend the polz hochgrassnitzberg 2001. try it if you can. with a change of luck i could even possibly win their condominium and could live happily ever after. tomorrow we will do a jungle walk, which i used to do with all the travellers. as both of them are not very fit it might kill them, and everything will be mine. one can always hope.

with or without luck (money) i should be in johor baru by monday and hopefully hit the perhentians by wednesday. if you dont hear from me it means my body has been dumped in the singapore river, near the wharf.

2005-05-10T18:55:00.000+02:00

its a mad mad wife

2005-05-01T10:00:00.000+02:00

as i just went through the biggest scare i had for years. one of my australian friends wrote me a mail that my former wife is in singapore. as she is a bloody paranoid and even madder than your one and only blogger friend i really was shit scared of having her jumping out of one of little indias dark corners, with a huge machete in her hands. so i really worried my arse off the whole day, until i got another mail 12 hours later that she had arrived in sydney, luckily on the other side of the equator. it looks like she was only in transit and didnt even realize that her once and only squeeze was residing at a singapore backpackers. there is a god after all.

i dont want to keep on going on about those bloody americans, but lately i have met quite a few nice ones. 4 of them were just young innocent girls. i gave them a quick tour of little india and they followed me like little ducklings all the way. could have sold them easily to some chinese into slavery. i bet they wouldnt have realized what hit them until some old bearded arab would have started to molest them. how the fuck they are going to survive in asia i really dont know. may the gods keep an eye (or two) on them.

anyway my fate has been sealed. i will be leaving this wonderful island on the 11th as i have been invited by some singaporean friends to travel with them in malaysia for one week, of course all in an aircon car. should be interesting. after that i should finally hit the perhentians.

2005-05-01T06:47:00.000+02:00

2005-04-11T17:30:00.000+02:00

working in a singapore backpackers

2005-04-10T10:00:00.000+02:00

i am still in beautiful singapore, having survived this far. for how much longer i really dont know. i am living the life of an 18 year old, different women every week (this place is a fucking brothel),working for peanuts, sleeping on average about 4 hours a night. sooner or later i will get a heart attack, but who cares.

i am still not sure about singapore. people are more puritan and anal than a monkeys arse and are just so different to westerners, you might as well live on the moons of uranus. well toto. we are not in kansas anymore. singapore reminds me very much of STARSHIP TROOPERS, one of my favourite movies. just shut up and let the government decide whats good. you consume consume consume, make money money money and let us worry about the rest. all this subtle propaganda everywhere. be a good citizen. we protect the homeland (our sacred soil) for you. do not criticize the government. a modern germany under the nazis would have looked similar. you actually dont see much police during the day. only at night seem groups of them patrolling the streets of little india. but i have the suspicion there are plainclothes cops everywhere at anytime. then again one has to ask, whats better, a sterile boring fascist country like singapore or a corrupt shithole like the philippines?? depends what you are after i suppose.

i had a small interlude with one of the female staff for a week or 2. before i knew it i was involved into the politics of staff relations, shit coming from all sides. fucking hell why didnt anyone tell me that you never mix business with pleasure. now everything is back to the status quo and we are all nice to each other, bitching behind each others back.

besides working at the reception and doing the bar i am also in charge of bbqs (making yummy salads etc) and do once or twice a week JUNGLE BOBS TREE TOP TOUR, which takes us through a rain forest and over a hanging bridge, 25 metres high up over a canopy of tree tops, right in the centre of singapore. but as always on this beautiful island, rules and regulations everywhere. one of the highlights is to get the wild monkeys excited by feeding them right under a sign which says: DO NOT FEED THE MONKEYS. FINE $ 10 000. as you can see there is still fun to be had in singapore. one of the social highlights so far was our easter DEATH BY CHOCOLATE PARTY. included was chocolate punch, which i was able to master by raiding the owners stock of spirits. i even found some filipino rum which i had given to them a year before. so in went a bottle of vodka, rum, some strange looking sri lankan arak and thai mekong whisky, all refined with chocolate, sugar and a few litres of cream. a beautiful punch was made which got everyone totally sloshed. a few people vomited later and couples seemed to use the toilets and showers for a bit of bonking. but no one seemed to complain too much. in fact the place has been booked out ever since. the owners also suggested some easter egg colouring. hello!!! can you imagine hardened backpackers who just survived the perils of southeast asia to colour eggs?? instead i invented a game: beautiful coloured hard boiled eggs were mixed with beautiful coloured raw eggs. people smashed them on each others head. the winner with a whole egg left got a chocolate price, and the hostel made a fortune in doing laundry. so in the end everyone was happy...........

2005-04-10T09:07:00.000+02:00