Georgetown, Malaysia

Hi Folks
I have travelled onwards to Malaysia. Took me around twelve hours and one boat, one pickup, one bus, one minibus, one moped (for the border crossing, I didn't even had to get of the moped to get my pasport stamped, it was more of an drive-thru border experience), one train and one ferry. At the end of that I arrived in Georgetown on Penang island. Lovely town with an extensive oldtown. But I will not stay for long. Tomorrow I will press on to Kuala Lumpur and then to Singapore, where I will meet my sister for Chinese new year.
You may have noticed that I did not speak of longboarding recently. The reason for that is that my board is broken beyond repair. The delaminations that had started in Vietnam happily continued in Laos and Thailand to a point where they jumped from the nose/tail section to developing longitudinal cracks in the center area. Although the board remained somehow skateable after the roughly 1500km covered with it through Asia, the boardfeel had changed, and I did not trust the board to last for the remainder of my trip, especially in the damper climate of the next big leg, New Zealand. That is why I decided to retire the board and send it home to Switzerland with Kyra. I will probably change back to the trusty board that carried me the 1200km through the Baltics, whose full bamboo construction will better withstand the challenge of moisture. At least that's what I hope.
Cheers

Thailand

Hi Folks
As you have read in Kyras last blogpost, Thailand was exhausting but fun. Without a doubt the hottest skateboarding so far, temperature wise. Not the food though. Contrary to what we had expected the Thai food has not been very spicy so far. Nothing compared to China. But ok. You definitively could feel that Thailand is way more touristically developped any of the countries we travelled through so far. This doesn't mean we did not have a awesome experience. I think thanks to longboarding we got of the beaten track and had some insights outside of beachside resort Thailand. And the snake. That thing was huge, judge yourself from the pictures.
To give all you folks at home the ease of mind, we are not in Bangkok anymore. Although we didn't see or feel too much of the protests when sticking around the touristy tracks, uncomfortable news of shooting and bomb throwing started to drop in and we decided to head to the calmer countryside. I hope the Thai people manage to get this crisis over in a peaceful and democratic manner.
And a last bit of sad semi-news for you. This was the last episode of skate a while with Kyra. She has to go home soon to continue studying in summer and figure out what to do with the next half year of freedom before that. I was glad to have her on board (and on the board) and I hope you guys liked our stories as much as we did.
On my side, I will continue to Malaysia, to deliver you guys with more awesome skateawhile stories.
Cheers

Problem with posting pictures

Hi Folks
I am very sorry, there is a misterious problem with my blogging account that prevents me from uploading any pictures, independent of the way I try. So you will recieve the text of a post that I try to upload since some days and the picture somewhen in the future.
Sorry about that. And if anyone has a clue what the problem might be, send me a message.
Cheers

Skate a last while with Kyra

Guys, we are in Bangkok!!
After four hard days skating on hilly highways, through huge industrial areas with "ready built factories" for rent, next to heavy duty lorries (which accelerated you a bit with their draft if they passed near enough), along hundreds of pick-up-cars of Thais enjoying Saturday at the sea, and today also through Thailand's most beautiful parts: bright green rice paddies with small rural villages and nice people honking and waving. All that agaist head wind (yes, my last kilometers skating were more challenge then sweet dessert).
We almost were done with the Thai skate leg in a city called Lat Krabang but decided then to do the extra 10 kilometers until we reach the Suvarnabhumi International Airport. That sounded more like Bangkok city and it really was, as we skated through busy suburbs to get there, crowded with the rushhour traffic.
And now we're sitting in a super relaxing guesthouse in Bangkok, salty, dirty from head to toe and tired but happy.

Skating Thailand was various. We had both perfect and nearly unskateable streets. Nicest seaside and ugliest industry. Rural roads and 5-lanes highways.
But always very friendly and animating people, even the police wanted to take pictures with us  instead of guiding the traffic. We ate the perfect papaya salad in a cozy restaurant during our siesta, one of Thailand's national meals. Another one, sticky rice pudding stuffed into a bamboo tube, brought me an unwanted surprise: as it was already dark when we ate it before dinner, I didn't recognized the frog which shouldn't have been in there (it tasted most of all bitter). The frog also included its last meal, another cricket, which, this time, didn't taste crispy and fried...
Except of one evening, in the godforsaken ugliness of the backland of Pattaya, we always found a Wat, where the monks kindly let us camp and use their toilettries (a real luxury after a hot day transpirating about 3 litres). We never had any incidents with snakes, even tough we saw a lot flattened ones an the street. One was massive, about three meters long! Afterwards we regretted not having cut out a piece of the muscle meat for dinner...
Thanks (whatever) God, we also haven't been bitten by one of the lots of fierce dogs that attacked us.

So that was it, my (not so-) longdistance skateboarding. I let Robert pushing the rest of the world without me to wait for, so that he sooner is done with all and comes home (-;

see you soon
kyra

The coast of east Thailand

Yay folks. All good on the skateboard front. Skateboarding in Thailand has been a breeze so far, not one day with bad pavement. On the other hand it's scorching hot. Dripping wet shirt scorching hot. From around eleven thirty on it's way too hot for skateboarding and we usually have our siesta (or still skate on for a while, depending on how far we already reached). From three on the temperature goes down again and skating continues.
In the evening we had the luck of finding a Wat (a buddhist monastery) each day that kindly allowed us to camp on their grounds. Very very hospitable those monks. To balance the heat, we usually tried to start our day rather early, and we hope to succesfully pull through this plan in the future... Being on the road at seven would be nice.
The landscape is a mixture of fish farming, shrimp farming, clam farming, conventional farming and in small parts, forest. And of course sometimes the ocean blinks through and tempts us with its blue, cold and refreshing looking waves.
Eventually we gave in and declared a one day break in a small beachside town, also because my feet have accumulated an impressive amount of blisters, even two on one toe! And paradoxically to the heat, Kyra somehow managed to get a cold.
Wildlife wise we saw a plethora of different snakes, all flat, numerous birds, all colourful, and many many dogs, all with healthy hindlegs for sprinting and a full set of white, clean teeths, which they showed to us proudly. So proud they even ran after us if they thought we didn't appreciate them enough.
If everything goes according to plan, we will reach Bangkok in another three and a half days skating, we'll report on that soon.
Cheers guys

  

Cambodia to Thailand; back on the board

Hi Folks
Glooooorious street surface. Yeehaw. The Thais got it how to build nice skatefriendly roads. The contrast could not have been bigger. We left Cambodia through a huge national park area in Koh Kong, where we camped our last night. And had our last lifts in Cambodia, once in a minivan full of sweet potatoes, and once by two lovely American ladies who took us all the way to the border. And the exact moment we crossed the border to Thailand, the streetsurface became nice and smooth.
We took the chance, and ceremonialy opened the Thailand skate leg. That was two days ago. Since then we pushed through a modern looking country, with a lot of fish farming. And full of friendly people. And temples. Speaking of temples, that is where we spent our nights so far. As soon as the sun would start to drop, we would pick a nice looking temple and ask the monks if we can put up our tent at the edge of their land. So far we were cordially received and allowed to camp, with the very helpfull monks giving us a hand when putting up our tent. Or being totally stunned by our small pyrolysis woodstove. They liked how one can make a fire with only a few sticks. Judging from the amount of photographs they took and how carefully they studied it, I am almost certain that soon there will be pyrolysis woodstoves made in Thailand.
All in all we had some amazing first days here, let us see what this country has up its sleeve for us.
Cheers

Christmas holidays on the islands

We're back! After a very relaxed week on the island of Koh Ta Kiev, where our days were completely filled by the strenuous tasks of buming around on the beach, hanging in a hamock, fishing (succesfully), eating delicious food and swiming in the phosphorescent ocean (phosphorescence of course only visible by night). It was good, wearing bermudas and a shirt and already feeling dressed up, very relaxed vibe on the whole island. Oh and the absinthe, delicious... The only action we had was that, after having spent the first half in a treehouse, we decided to camp at the shore and underestimated the tides. This led to the situation that the tallest waves stopped less than one meter away from our heads. This gave some extra suspense while sleeping, plus it was quite loud. From the second day camping on, a masterly designed and expertly crafted wall of sand helped keeping the waves away from our tent.
And now we are back on the mainland, planing to enter Thailand soon, where we will pick up skating again.
Cheers