just a bit of catch-up

When I first started writing this blog I had this idea that once a week or every two weeks, I’d have some time free, sit down and bust out a new post. Wishful thinking for sure. I get an idea into my head to write about, sit down and then just get distracted and can’t really be arsed to do it. Motivation dies and I potter around doing something else. I think the main reason is that there is so much to go through and I can’t get it all down in a compressed version that makes any sense. It’s now been weeks since I’ve posted anything, Japan has come and gone and now, 3 weeks after getting to Bali I’m finally typing this.

Nozawa Onsen – a great little ski town with hot spring bath houses scattered throughout and a relaxed peaceful atmosphere. If only the mountain was what I was expecting. I looked it up, saw that it was in Nagano prefecture, amongst the Japanese Alps and just assumed that we would have open bowls, massive chutes, killer terrain park and classic Japan powder. How wrong I was. Don’t get me wrong, it can be a fun hill, but after about 3 days, Snaz and I were getting sick of cat tracks and mogul runs with no decent kickers in the terrain park and definitely no open bowls. Add to that rain, warm days of plus 7 and a quickly receding base, not the perfect picture we thought we were in for. Having said that, it’s still snow and we managed to have a great time learning bits and pieces, shuffles, spins and all kinds of trickery messing about. It all seems so long ago, so skip ahead now to Bali, ‘Island of the Gods.’

Warm sunny days, fun surf and great food. Out of the 3 weeks Joel and I have been here we’ve surfed all of them bar 3. It’s easy to see why people get stuck here for far longer than they expect (or come to escape reality). Had we held to the original plan we’d be in Lombok by now, but the days just blend in. Wake, coffee, surf, eat, rest, surf, eat, drink, sleep, repeat. Throw in some ukulele and massage (no happy endings…yet) and that’s the daily grind. We’ve managed to get a scooter to cruise around on like our own version of the Motorcycle Diaries, board rack on the side exploring the breaks. Staying in local places for about $50 a week including friendly Mamma looking after us, brewing up coffee, mixin up Nasi Campur and hanging out our increasingly smelly clothes is great, but wait till you see what we’ve landed in now! Some friends we’ve made here live in a villa with pool, massive king size beds, day beds, all the works and we’re house sitting for 5 days…livin Deeeeeluxe. And that brings us up to the present. We’ve had nights on ‘jungle juice’ dancing up a storm, paintball skirmish acting out all our trigger happy fantasies, loads of street food and scenery to put some of China to shame. This has been a bit boring I know, but thenext post will be more exciting to read, I promise.

At the end of the middle kingdom

The last entry was one of things that seemed like a good idea at the time and also at the time made so much sense…alcoholic ramblings are definitely not one of my strengths. It’s hard to express so much of what’s happened through a few words and I definitely don’t have the patience to sit down and punch it all out over the space of about a week. That’d be like a job and I’m no paid writer. New things are always popping up so I’m not going to get into any details of the past few weeks in China, so I hope you’ll be content with this overview. Before the last night on the town in Nanning we left off at Christmas shenanigans. December 31st was spent in a place called Yangshuo, north of Nanning and in the middle of some very picturesque countryside. I unfortunately peaked far too soon and was in bed by about 9am (2 years running now!!) but from the many pictures and bandages I saw the next day, the crew seemed to have a pretty good time, but not quite what we had expected…no real big celebrations and no late night snogs with the opposite sex…how boring, 1 Jan we made up for it with roman candle wars, our own fireworks displays, crackers, whizzers, poppers and all sorts of things that go fizz, bang or pop. Everyone had a little pyromaniac trying to get out…especially Dave.

Escaping from a crowded city is great, but getting stuck in a tourist trap is pretty bad so we legged it to a one horse kinda town called Xingping and spent a few days roaming the riverside, mandarin orchards and doing a bit of climbing and caving..ahh the serenity. No traffic, less hassle to buy trinkets and bamboo boat rides and a slower pace of life. Things never seem to go smooth on these trips, but where’s the story in a seamless journey? After thinking that we got a bargain to catch a bamboo ferry raft up river, we get ditched and stranded half way to the destination in a one shack village and no one speaking any English. After a bit of await we finally get help from a friendly Chinese tourist, pay more to get to the end, only to miss everyone’s planned train back that night and we end up in Guilin for 2 days instead of none. This turns out to be a great chance to see the city, some of the crew stay out till 6AM and we find out they wandered into a sex hotel – swiss ball, bondage gear and gyrating bed included. Never a dull moment, even if they didn’t stay there.

Finally getting back to Nanning, my visa is about to expire, but in classic form, I leave it to the last minute. Thursday was my birthday and I’ve decided to take the passport in on Friday for a 7 day extension. Well it turns out now at 10AM Friday I don’t have the right forms, the office closes at 12:00PM for the weekend, my visa expires Sunday and I’m in no state to go home, get the forms printed, filled and peddle my way back on my busted bike. “Yes” I promise, “I’ll be back soon to have it all sorted.” Unfortunately the moment I get back home I just pass out from exhaustion, not to mention a skull that’s carrying around a mess of shit, no longer a brain. Deal with it on Monday. We had a great weekend of bbq (normal meats this time) in the sun, a 20km roundtrip bike ride to some hot springs that turn out to be a holiday resort, but very posh..ahh such a hard life.

Monday rolls around, I have all the forms, printed, copied, ready to go and am then told I need to write a statement as to why I didn’t return on Friday. I’m not going to go through it, but lets just say whatever it was I wrote worked, no be then told “Your passport can be collected on Monday.” Umm, no, I leave on Monday, from a city 5hrs drive away...stressed? you know it. With a bit of persistence Wednesday I get my passport, get to Guilin on Saturday, receive a lovely bout of food poisoning from a place that actually looked sanitary (oh the irony) but make it to Singapore in the end, just in time to get some washing done, re-pack the snow gear and now here I sit in Narita airport, waiting for Snaza to arrive so we can go meet Swami in Nozawa Onsen for 8 days of pristine Japanese powder snow. Don’t expect much writing until Feb, when its time for waves in Indo….happy happy days.