great god almighty, i was up all last night with the T.D. (travelers dirrehea)
i had to cancel my transport to antigua today.
oh, what fun.
gotta go. NOW.

tikal

well, tikal pretty much lives up to the hype. i spent 6 hours running around the massive grounds, and could have easily explored longer, but i was stupid and bought a round trip minivan ride.

one of the best things about tikal is its jungle setting. i saw (and heard) toucans and monkeys and a lemur and some sort of crazy giant rat. you can climb on most of the ruins. and tikals vastness meant that i never felt in any way annoyed by other tourists. unforutanately they tripled the price last year i think, apparently attempting to cash in on "survivor guatemala". now i hate that show even more. still, it was worth the $20.

i am now on ruins hiatus for a while, i think.
i am basically taking the day off today, with no real plans.
flores, though a bit touristy, is a nice place to not do much.

btw, my room is about $5. and thats with a bathroom and hot water shower. i paid $5 in el remate too, and i had a beautiful, peaceful lake across the street, where i went for a long swim. i think guatemala will suit me just fine.

i need some alone time

i had my first instance of vaguely-familiar-person-who-i-cant-quite-place syndrome last night. and only 10 days in.

im walking along the coast here in flores, and some fat topless dude pounding beers at a cafe shouts "hey, you made it out of san ignacio without being shot, huh?"

i stared at his massive whiteness. nothing registered. was he talking to me? shot?! finally it dawned on me that he was doing the exactly same thing in san ignacio when i checked into my hotel there. sitting around, drinking beer, and spewing friendly nonsense. but with a shirt back then. thats what threw me off, i think.

he was refering to the fact that the day before i arrived in SI, there was a bank robbery one block from my hotel, directly across the street from my favorate panades shack. a shootout in the streets ensued and two people were killed. which is pretty weird considering san ignacio seemed like such a mellow, friendly place.

the other more common occurance is running into people ive met before who i DO remember. i ran into the "no foreplay" girls again, for example, deep in the bowels of ATM cave. i have run into "new york couple cycling around the mayan sites" several different places, and had dinner with them twice.

i meet nobody at home. but on the road even when i try to sneak off and find time to myself, my plans are thwarted. 2 nights ago i was supposed to have a quiet night in laid back el remate, but a group of germans who had lived there for 4 years invited me to join them forced me to drink ridiculous amounts of gallo (the local beer). (this didnt make tikal @5:30 am particularly easy). and last night i specifically sought out an empty bar/restaurant with the plan to have a drink as the sun set over the lake and then run off to use the internet. instead i ended up having dinner with sophie from quebec and talking until late. another night in san ignacio, i got corralled into a trivia constest joining 2 canadians and an expat american kid. we won, by the way, and i made some dough. largely thanks to a deep knowledge of movie trivia that i had no idea i had.

i guess this post is for people who think that traveling alone is in any way lonely.

mayan ruins visited thus far
chichen itza (overrated)
tulum (nice location on the coast, but touristy)
lamanai (deep in the jungle, required 20 mile trip by river, this one deserves it´s own post)
cahal pech (weak)
xunantunich (an obscure gem)
the actun tunichil muknal (atm) cave (in a class by itself)

when my children (or more likely, your children) ask me where i was when obama became president, i will say i was swimming amonst the bones of dead mayans, in ATM cave.

yes, yesterday i hiked through the jungle and crossed 4 rivers before finally entering wet and rocky ATM cave, where much swiming and scrambling was reqired. soaked to the bone, i finally reached the place where the bones of mayan sacrifies remain in their original positions, undisturbed. lots of pots and other mayan junk too, oriented in ways that mayan gods apparently appreciated. folks around these parts are very proud of their mayan hertiage, but i am not really sure why. from everything i´ve been able to gather, the mayans were awful people. it would be sort of like germans being proud of their nazi hertage 1000 years from now.

today i pieced together 3 forms of transport and a border crossing to find my way to el remate, guatemala. it was really quite easy, though of course cabbies on the guatemalan side tried their best to lie me into expensive rides. i was, however, extorted at the border by guatemalan immigration, and forced to pay a $3 bribe. those belizian bastards nailed me for $18.75 upon exit, but that was actually an official charge. sometimes the bribes are more palatable.

i will miss speaking english.

tomorrow: tikal @ 6am

belize

i have already fallen behind.

maybe 4 days ago, i crossed over from chetumal mexico to orange walk, belize, on a noisy chicken bus. belizian buses (which are all converted school buses--thus very little leg room) seem to be in a competition to out boom each other in terms of their bus-stereos.

orange walk is not a very nice place. i arrived at night, when it had a slightly sinister feel, with lots of folks loitering about, staring menacingly at me. the two asian-american californian girls i befriended on the bus had me escort them to dinner. the woman who ran the chinese restaurant we found warned us to beware of the crack heads who loiter around the cemetery. i would have tried something with the asian-american chicks, but there was a sign in the chinese restaurant that said "no foreplay". i kid you not.

orange walk does sugar cane refinement and rum. i have tried both. the rum was just sort of a tasteless alcohol, but it was pretty smooth. orange walk also seems to do unemployment.

belize is quite the melting pot. lots of folks speaking spanish (even thought it is technically an english speaking country), many of african descent who speak creole (i think), and then odd groups like the mennonites, who i saw wandering around town running errands. the mennonite men dress like gayish cowboys and the woman dress like they are out of little house on the prairie. they are whiteys and apparently speak some kind of low german. different sects in the area have different rules regarding the use of electricity and technology and such.

oops. my time is up and belizian internet is ungodly expensive. in guatemala i will really pound the keyboard.

chichen itza

well, i did the famed chichen itza this morning. i was the first person in at 8am. i felt kind of bad about it, but it only took me 2.5 hours. you can´t climb on any of the ruins, including the big pyramid. i´m a ruins climber from way back, so this really sucked. not only that, but several of the paths out to the outer reaches of the ruins were closed. i was so fed up that i tried to sneak in, only to have an angry mexican chase me out. at least it didn´t rain.

tomorrow i will hit mayan ruin #2, tulum, along the mexican coast. though i have a feeling i might have to wait until guatemala to do anything cool.

have i mentioned mexican busses yet? they are extremely nice, fast, fairly expensive, and the coldest form of transport on earth. apparently there is only one a/c setting: torture.

i hopped into a collectivo (shared van) with the locals and found my way to a few nice swimming caves this afternoon. actually a lot of what i did was float. the water must be chock full of minerals or something, since i could just lie there on the surface without moving. heres a picture of one of them (i took pictures but am too lazy to upload):

http://picasaweb.google.com/el.sangre/PVLtour4ValladolidCenotesYAONuevoEnCancN#5157016346339261058

unlike this picture, there were no people for a good portion of my swim.

tomorrow i am determined to see chichen itza no matter what the weather is like.

other random observations:

so far 3 meals and no ill effects. hooray.

im burning through mucho dinero at an alarming rate. mexico is not cheap. most of asia is probably a third of the price. belize (my next destination) will be worse.

my spanish is improving. but i am still an idiota.

wet mexico

(i apologize for the lack of apostrophes, but mexican keyboards are seriously messed up)

its day two in mexico. this is the dry season and "the best time to visit". i should exploring chichen itza right now, but it has been raining constantly, so i thought i`d rest a bit and hope for better weather tomorrow.

in the meantime i am stuck in vallalodid. vallalodid is supposed to be a nice place. however the niceness seems to be hidden by the rain and the mud and the gloomy skies. citywide construction has turned the roads into muddy rivers. the famous ex-washington senator (the baseball team) antonio aguilar who "is always glad to help touristas" was very unhappy when i stopped in to say hi and ask for advice.

no one speaks english. my spanish will improve quickly, i think. im off to explore a nearby cave, if i can convince someone to take me.

greasearching my trip

i'm actually reading my guidebook in advance of the trip, which is a bit unusual for me. i'm trying to piece together a rough itinerary. i'm not really sure why.

here's a research highlight from today:

the el salvadoran town of suchitoto is considered to be the cultural capital of the country.

famed suchitoto festival #1: smear grease on poles. then try to climb those poles.

famed suchitoto festival #2: smear lard on an agile pig and send him running through town. whoever catches the greasy swine gets to keep it.

cultural capital indeed.

about 5 weeks to go until departure

The map above represents day one of the trip. monday, januaury 12th, i fly into cancun. my goal is to spend NO time there, and instead make a beeline (mexican bee suit simpsons guy image stuck in my head) from the airport to the bus station to find transport to vallalodid. from there i'll probably hit chichen itza the next morning, the famed mayan site. then the rough plan is to meander toward belize, and leave north america behind. mexico is really just a way to ease myself into things...

as the trip progresses, i'll fill in the map. the only other time/place combo i know in advance (to the extent that one can ever know), is Panama City, Panama, April 10th, to catch a plane home.

btw, this map widget it pretty sweet. go ahead, play with it.

new ball of dirt entries

i've started filling in the end, and i think i'll work my way backwards. go to the very end for bangalore entries.

http://www.ballofdirt.com/journeys/5262.html

my new home

i moved into my furnished bangalore apartment today, the place i'll be living for the next 4 months or so. i splurged, shelling out the big bucks for a huge place smack dab in the center of town. the best restaurants & bars are all easily reachable on foot, as is the office. if you could see the traffic jams here, you'd know how important this is. most of my office mates spend 1-2 hours a day commuting.
i also have a maid who comes daily; she does my laundry and dishes as well. i might as well live it up at these prices.

bangkok yet again

one of my goals of this trip was to avoid passing through bangkok. and sure enough i have failed. i'm here getting my indian visa so i can work in bangalore for a few months.

my ankle is definitely getting better, but i still hobble around a bit. i am certainly not ready for the trekking i wanted to do in malaysia.

4 new journal entries

http://www.ballofdirt.com/journeys/5262.html

see the last 4

my 5th country

i'm in malaysia, my 5th country on this trip, thanks to tiny singapore being the 4th. this is my first visit to an islamic country. i can't keep pork in the fridge at my guesthouse.

my ankle doesn't seem to be getting any better, but i use it too much.

today, malacca. tomorrow, kuala lumpur.

a shocking second opinion

i combined a visit to the indian consulate with a trip to a western clinic this morning, just to let them have a quick look at my crappy cast and my ankle and tell me how things looked. they x-rayed my ankle several times and decided that they don't think my ankle is broken at all. yes, according to them, my break was misdiagnosed, or at least they're 95% sure. how do you look at an x-ray and declare a break where there isn't one? and the other doctor seemed so sure. i'm not sure who to believe. perhaps they were both right and i have superhuman healing powers.

anyway they've removed the cast, which they declared the worst cast they've ever seen. walking still results in pain and my foot is still badly swollen, but i guess i'll see how the next few days go. oh and thanks to the cast, i now have additional bruises on my foot as well.

interesting facts:

my charges at the filthy vietnamese hospital:

exam, x-rays, cast: 140,000 dong, or about $9.

at the clean, air-conditioned western clinic:

exam, x-rays (they only charged me for one of the several), cast removal, a few ankle supports (stiff socks really): 1,200,000 dong or about $75.

and i assume the price at home would go up one order of magnitude.

more rotten luck

i tried to reach singapore today, but a tropical storm delayed my flight from phu quoc island to siagon by 2+ hours and i missed the connecting flight to singapore. attempting to purchase a flight on the spot increased my $6 flight to well over $300. i balked at that price and headed into the city to reevaluate how best to get to bangalore. all the old familiar hustlers and street urchins remember me and seem happy for the second opportunity to sell me their wares, while sharing their curiosity and concern over my leg of course. i found this strangely comforting.

i wonder if i should call hong or my other siagonese contacts.

new post

http://www.ballofdirt.com/entries/5262/46861.html

bangalore or bust

thanks everyone for the concern. i fly to singapore tomorrow, where medical care is on par with the west. there i'll probably have my leg checked again just to be sure things are ok. my cast is already falling apart anyway, and i need to buy some proper crutches.

as much as i'll miss hong, it's looking like i'm going to go with the bangalore option, so i'll be working with some of you again shortly, just a bit indirectly.
i'm not sure how long it will take to arrange the visa.

perhaps my indian fiends can give me some advice on how best to set up life in bangalore.

what the hell do i do now?

i broke my ankle. my leg from knee to toes is encased in a shoddy vietnamese cast and according to my "doctor", it will need to remain on my leg for a month. i hope it heals correctly given the shoddy medical care in these parts. it took me two more days to find some tiny and uncomfortable crutches, but now i can finally get around.

i spent yesterday sitting on the porch of my beach bungalow staring at the sea and mulling over my options.

1. go home - this would be the obvious choice, but is complicated by the fact that i have no home. and do i resume my trip at some point?
2. go to bangalore and work from my company's office there for a month or so, and resume my trip afterwards. i'd need to see if my company would be willing to let me do this.
3. go back to saigon and enlist my vietnamese girlfriend, Hong, to assist in my convalescence (i haven't told this story yet).
4. go to cu chi (home of the infamous vc tunnels) and stay with the kind elderly woman who has declared herself my "vc guerilla mother" (i haven't told this story yet).
5. continue on my trip, maybe staying put in a few comfortable places for a while.

3 & 4 are probably bad ideas.

i need to look into what my travel insurance policy pays for...