of fertilising crazy lithuanian guys and suspicious border guards.

in london now, some downtime inbetween post-eastern europe and pre-spain. downtime involves doing a lot of laundry. here's a quick summary of my adventuresome frolicks in the former soviet bloc:

PRAGUE- Czech it out!!
prague, city of a thousand spires. it was beautiful, if a bit rainy. like i said before, group of asian girls = minor celebrities, photographed and filmed. it was a bit creepy. went clubbing in the largest club in central europe- free entry- got stuck in with some very high-spirited italian guys who did congo lines thru our little group and once danced around me and hannah, very tribal. it was fun though, they were so happy to be there.

POLAND.
i didn't expect to enjoy poland so much. and to enjoy polish food so much. i thought it would be bland, stodgy and boring- both the country and the food, but it wasn't at all. there's so much history in the place. we were all pierogi-ed out by the end of it- overdose of dumplings, but that's cuz we ate so much of it. sauerkraut and mushroom, spinach, meat, russian, potatoes and cottage cheese, plum... from krakow to wroclaw, from wroclaw to warsaw, we left a trail of dumplings in our wake. all the holocaust sites were sobering, but perhaps we need to constantly remind ourselves of that period of history, to ponder the whys, the hows, the consequences, so we don't forget, and so we can remember for the next time that hate and intolerance threatens us.

LITHUANIA.
vilnius, the capital. like i said before, i didn't really think that vilnius would be that affluent. D&G, cavalli, gucci... all the high-end shops were there. and, of course, the mark of a true shopping city, a city that has arrived on the world stage... there was a zara.
i have fond memories of vilnius, cuz we had a good night out there. we went out that night, and met some crazy lithuanian guys. we had a 'rolling pin', 6 shots of herb liqueur. they were all pretty gross. some tasted like chinese medicine soaked in whisky.
one of the crazy lithuanian guys asked me where i was from. i said malaysia. he said that he couldn't even imagine what malaysia was like, it was so far removed from his existence. that was me paraphrasing. what he actually said was, 'malaysia- to me it is like a wild country, u know?' then he asked me if they had higher education. but then, this is also the guy who, in a drunken state, exclaimed- 'I AM THE MOST FERTILISING MAN IN THE WORLD!' and then. in the next bar, told me he had made a porn film with some chinese people.

klaipeda, a little town on the coast of lithuania. we went to the beach in winter. our ferry sliced through the ice that still remained in the sea, sheets of ice bobbing gently on the surface. the sound of the ferry cutting through the ice, the rasp of little icy shards brushing against the boat, is one of the most soothing sounds i have ever heard. a soft, crunchy, soothing sound. i would make a tape of it, and sell it as one of those sleeping aids, like whale noises and rainforest sounds. it would be labelled 'the sound of a ferry cutting through sheets of ice off the coast of lithuania'. that doens't sound marketable. but walking along the beach in winter, i touched the waters of the baltic sea, we strolled along, huddled in our winter coats, looking for amber washed up on the shore.

LATVIA.
the border patrol woman had blue eyeshadow and blue nails. whenever i leave or enter a country, my malaysian passport draws some undue suspicion, while my travelling partner's australian one merits only a cursory glance. from prague to krakow, the border control guy looks at my passport for 5 minutes. he enters my details into a thick book. he asks for the name and address of where i was staying in krakow and entered that into the book. he talks to a police officer about it. they check that i dont' need a visa. then he stamps my passport, presumably so they can track my movements, for the ease of the next suspicious border petrol guard. div's aussie passport is thrown back at her after, literally, 2 seconds. she doesn't get a stamp. the blue nails woman flips through my passport, trying to trace the route that has brought me to the latvian border. i think she gives up.
riga- the most big-city-like city in the baltic states. a popular destination for stag nights. i hate the bands of british men roaming about the city. we suffer culture shock. we have heard few people speaking english on the streets for 2 weeks, and now, everywhere, everyone is speaking english. whaddup with dat?!??!?! and the latvian currency, the lat, is slightly higher than the pound!!!
still, the last city, the last nights.... we part from vicki, laura, edward, gene. me and div head back to london. 16 days of travel, i'm out of underwear. i had to go back.

but always onward, on to spain. the thing about travel is that it's never enough. it's almost an addiction. where am i going to next? when can i come back? how long till the next trip? where to? where to? where to? i'm already considering where i want to go in the summer, before i head back to malaysia and melbourne. too many places i want to go. greece. croatia. turkey. hungary. i haven't set foot in the scandinavian countries- norway, finland, sweden. i toy with the idea of a weekend in paris. i know i will not had have enough of spain. always onward, always another place to go. flights to new york are relatively cheap from here, but i have not exhausted europe. now i want to see more of australia and asia. i want to travel around australia, do trips around asia when i'm back in malaysia. i want to explore the indian subcontinent. i want to go on safari in kenya, see the sunrise in mongolia- my latest plan is to go to beijing for 6 months after my degree to do a language course, then take the trans-siberian to russia. i want to go to capetown. i want to go to south america, i want see the aztec temples deep in the jungle, i want to work in new york for a year or two, feel the energy of the city. london and shanghai will do as well. i have to get to the maldives before they sink, and go to antartica just for completeness' sake, why not finish all the continents in the world. travel is something u can't get enough of.

it's a very expensive addiction.