Guns, rape, dead monks, explosions...

Now how's THAT for a hook of a title?

Well! It's been a while! I am now job-hunting in Australia. Sounds far less glamourous than my previous opening statements doesn't it? Well, I don't care. I'm loving it here.

I will recount my Malaysian and Singaporean highlights before moving onto my first week in Australia:

To be honest, both Malaysia and Singapore were a bit 'been there, done that' - and as transition phases they meant that I didn't really feel the full force of being back in Western society as I thought I would (although I did get very excited when I saw iced coffee, cheap sushi and John Freida Frizz Ease all within 5 minutes of one another).

In a conversation with a Malaysian the other day, we came onto the dress code.

Louise (sees Western girl): 'It's a shame that some tourists don't respect the local culture.'

Malaysian (looks grave): 'Yes, it's very bad really, all these men, Malaysian men, they see the Western women, and then, and then they get all...'horny'. And then they take it out on local women....by raping them.'

Louise: '...right.'

No, I wasn't quite sure how we got from a strappy t-shirt to blaming the poor girl for rape, either. The thing that worried me most was that I was talking to a female Malaysian. It reminds me very much of Russell Peters 'hairiness' sketch...logic loopholes abound.

Rewind to last day in Thailand and we find ourselves looking at the corpse of a monk. No, I'm afraid I didn't finally snap and go on that psychopathic monk-killing episode you've been thinking I might go on for some time. This fellow's been dead for about 50 years. A mummified monk.

He's sitting in a glass case, lotus position, wearing the usual orange robe. Looking very solemn. To counteract the seriousness of the whole affair he has a ludicrously huge pair of sunglasses on. After aome investigation, it's not hard to see why; if you wander around to the side to take a sneaky side-peek, behind the glasses you can see some very freakish gaping holes where eyes should be. I'm not sure what would be worse; mummified eyes or gaping holes? His eyelids and lips have dehydrated away to almost nothing; his skin is grayish-white and flaking a bit. Overall the effect is suitably and hilariously macabre.

There are no less than five Thais praying to this dead guy in a glass case.

Speaking of rape and corpses, did I tell you about the rapist corpses I saw in Bangkok?

We went to a pathology museum at one of the local hospitals. I can tell you I will never walk through wet grass with no shoes on ever again! Parasites abound...some lovely close-up pictures and examples of their effects. The elephantitis models were suitably gross; look up elephantitis on google pictures and you'll see exactly which body region I'm talking about. It reminded me of one of the beggars we saw in India, with the same condition. Kinda wish I'd given him some money now.

There was also a display depicting childbirth; a rural home setting, with woman semi-crouching, leaning backwards and holding onto a piece of cloth hanging from the ceiling. The midwife was gaping directly at the exit point, crouched as though ready for a high speed rugby ball right in the face. To complete the crew, there was another woman in the background with a bloodied towel who looked entirely nonchalant.

I felt twice as awkward looking at the scene when I found two monks muttering to one another behind me, curious frowns on their faces.

The highlight of the exhibition was the dissection area; lots of dead foetuses in wombs (and I mean LOTS of them), some showing healthy progression, some showing malformations (and one with an awful lot of hair). Some people had left little tokens on the glass cases, toys and incense and the like. There was a white guy with blonde hair looking very shocked, his skull halved into two cases so we could study the brain inside (my first corpus callosum!). And then, of course, the fully mummifed, fully naked corpses of two rapists standing in their glass boxes. Well, I say standing; their bodies seemed to have been frozen in a standing stance but without being strapped to the case, they had each slumped onto the pane, leaving smeary marks on the inside. There were fingerprints on the door handle.

-shudder-

Anyway, back to Malaysia; we went to a very cool science museum there. There was a F1 car racing simulator and a hurricane simulator and a helicopter ride simulator. Lots of other simulators... There was also a section with lots of interactive tests for your body, measuring your power to weight ratio and how fast you could throw a ball and stuff like that. I got mesmerised by a cool exhibit that showed a series of slow motion sequences: a gun firing, a rocket launch, a few car crash simulations, an explosion and a plane crash simulation. I am never not wearing my seatbelt again, especially if the car has airbags. Prime neck snapping material, those fluffy white pillows of doom. The best thing about the exhibit was that you could control the speed at which everything moved, from super super freeze frame slow to crazy light speed fast. Totally awesome.

Singapore was expensive and pretty dull. I was expecting Tokyo and I got Malaysia with a better transport system.

I shall update you on Australia forthwith (although I must admit, it might seem quite dull after a title like this...).

Full Moon Party on Koh Pha-Ngan

I am now in Malaysia! 24 hours of travelling, urrrgh. Not good on the sleeping patterns. Also, it's heavy and hot and has rained a lot here. Not good for the sightseeing. Aigh.

Our hotel is possibly the most impossible hotel in existence...stinks of cigarettes and you know what else, our room is the tiniest we have seen. We are staying for 3 days (they know that) and had paid for the first day...at 1am a staff member knocked on our door and tried to make us pay for the other 2 days. Yet, bizarrely, we have what is quite possibly the nicest bathroom I've seen in a long time...the shower is -perfect-...it's like a thousand tiny masseuses pummeling your skin with expert precision. I think can explain this contadiction to you now...the owner is Indian.


We came to Malaysia on a night boat then a bus. The night boat runs from 10pm to 6am. It has two tiers, each around 4 foot high, with flat foam matresses lining the floor (eighty beds on each level). You semi-scramble along, berating the intelligence of whoever decided to put two different numbers on the tickets (which could both plausibly be a bed number). Then you settle down next to complete strangers and sleep. I can't say I had an incredibly night but it was quite relaxing to lie on the rolling waves listening to the rumble of thunder in the distance.

In the final days of my Thailand adventure, I wanted to finally get round to several things I hadn't had opportunity to do. After the unfortunate leech incident, I have now finally managed to go swimming in a waterfall. I enjoyed it but it was bloody cold. Also, too many Thai men around (including one who decided to go skinny dipping despite already wearing a pair of speedos). I'll have to go looking for a less well known waterfall next time...although I'm getting the feeling there aren't any left. I think Thailand has had it for travellers. It's for tourists now.

I have also been snorkelling - spent four hours in absolute awe, mesmerised by shoals of fish, and stalking the colourful loners...although how stealthy one can be whilst wearing bright blue fins I'm not really sure. Anyway, it was soon the turn of the fish to get their own back. A particularly large and colourful shoal kept swimming around nearby, gradually getting closer and closer. Nice stripey ones. I swam over to meet them. Hi, nice stripey fish. They took to swimming around me, letting me follow them, then turning round and swimming straight at me, eyeing me up with beady, somewhat intelligent looking eyes. This continued for maybe ten minutes or so? (It's hard to tell, time passes weirdly down there). Then, I felt a pinch on my leg. Then a pinch on my arm. A little confused, I brushed whatever the pinching thing was off me, thinking it was some of the debris floating on the surface of the water, a twig or something. Then, a beady eye swims up to me...and promptly jabs at my finger! I was being nibbled on by fish! Reluctant to become their next meal, I swam away pretty sharpish. Sneaky beggars.

Also managed to get to the legendary Full Moon Party, which was pretty amazing. Lots of fire dancing (including a giant skipping rope of fire). Buckets of alcohol for 3 pounds (with 8 shots of Smirnoff in each) - so you're suitably slaughtered after spending less than a tenner. Lots of music, dancing...a pool party also...music, dancing...with a pool of course....I recall neon paint. Also, a burger and Family Guy. But of course, most of the night is blissfully hazy...I'm sure we all had a jolly good time.

Koh Lanta

After a few more days of sun, sea and sand, my tan lines are now so dark that I have acquired an lovely white anti-bikini. Which looks pretty ridiculous I must admit but, luckily, only I can see it. Although now of course, you all know about it so I expect merciless teasing from some of you.

John has been deaf, on and off, for the past few days, so we decided it was time to get that sorted out and headed to Koh Lanta Hospital...if you can call it that. It was, ahem, 'open plan'...no outside doors. Pretty primitive - grimy, spiders on the walls, cats running through the place, no privacy. Rat droppings on the soap dish in the toilet. The X-Ray unit is separated from the wards by only a sliding wooden door (no metal lining as far as I could see anyway). Not much in the way of walls really...heard a kid yelling out in pain as his blood was taken , sharply reprimanded by his Dad. They weigh parcels and babies on the same set of scales.

Having said this, this is nowhere near as primitive as the hospital in Pokhara, Nepal...the grime is you have to buy your own sterile equipment, including the doctors gloves (if you can afford it of course; otherwise you just have to make do with what's going). Bed bugs on the hospital sheets. Post-operative care consists of being unceremoniously dumped off the surgery table into the hands of relatives, should you be lucky enough to have relatives to help you out - otherwise, elderly, frail, post-surgery, you're at the mercy of passers-by. In the maternity ward, newborns line the floors for lack of cots. Horrendous. 'I'll never complain about the NHS again' says Ann, whose profession was once that of a nurse.

So yeah, not as bad as that, but you wouldn't want to be seriously sick here. Luckily it turns out that John's ear only needed syringing and he can now hear perfectly. Phew.

Have been to a couple of parties, one of which turned into a spontaneous jamming session when the power went out. I was rather inebriated at the time and, as the guitarist was playing flamenco, decided I'd improvise a song or two with him. A couple of my new friends came up, in awe, 'Wow, Louise, you speak Spanish?!' I smiled enigmatically; I hadn't the heart to tell them that I was not only improvising the tune but also the words.

Today, I saw a bird. It definitely wasn't a parrot. It looked somewhat like a big blackbird with fluffy, floppy yellow ears hanging on the back of its head. Anyway, it wasn't a parrot. I liked this bird, and playfully 'Sawadee-kaa'ed it (hello in Thai). To my consternation, I received a 'Sawadee-kaa' in return! I wondered if I had passively inhaled the exotic scents that were circulating the bar the night before. But no. The bird, in fact, had a whole repertoire of Thai phrases, could whistle, and was intelligent enough to realise that John is a fellow worth laughing at on occasion. Hilarious.

On random pets: went to a fish farm a few days ago, and the Australian owner was keeping a tiny turtle in a fish bowl as a pet! Genius! I asked her if it had grown at all in the 3 years she'd kept it; apparently not. She'd been keeping it in the fish tank with a companion, who unfortunately met his demise in a tête-à-tête with the filter. Now,the survivor lives in solitude but safety. I might have to get myself a tiny turtle and a parrot-cum-blackbird-thing when I get back. Alongside a cat named Oscar of course. Maybe I'll have a whole menagerie of weird and wonderful creatures. How sinfully Victorian of me.

Muahaha.