The last days Dinsdag, 11 juni, 2002 Being back in Holland for three weeks already makes it a little weird to write about stuff that happened to me on the other side of the world. However, it does make a nice round up of the trip so here we go one more time. The last posting I wrote on Koh Samui. From Koh Samui I took the bus and train back to Bangkok. Waiting for the train I met Lyse, from the UK but living in New York. She suggested to share a beer so it's really all her fault because she started it: we almost missed our train and on the train we had 'a few more beers'. Although I consequently also blame her for the bad hangover the next day I still thank her for a really nice evening of drinking. Saturday Lyse and I shopped at Chatu Chak. So far I managed to resist but this was the perfect moment: get a new bag and buy all the (useless) stuff I declined for 6 months. At the airport I checked in 32 kg, 12 more than I was allowed to. The weight was no problem, some of the content might be.... Funny Australians, somehow they are absolutely paranoid about what kind of stuff comes into their country. One of the things is wood: apparantly wood can contain stuff that will instantly kill everything and everyone in the whole of Oz. As I carried heaps of wooden souvenirs I figured I should do the honorable thing: declare it and hope to get it through customs. Reasoning: if I did not declare it and they would pick me out of the line (which they tend to do with backpackers), the chances of loosing everything on the spot were too big. So I walked over to Goods to declare and told the woman I had some wooden souvenirs. Well, I have to admit it: she did her work very, very thoroughly. I thought my honest face would be enough when I told her only this one bag contained goods that were candidates to be examined by quarantine. No way, this woman became (too) enthousiastic: she examined each and every item in all my bags; the toothbrush, every T-shirt and boxershort has gone through her hands. The only thing she (very, very luckily) omitted was a strip-search. The whole thing took over an hour, so long to make my pick-up very anxcious and ready to leave (naturally everyone of my plane was long gone). Luckily Geoff met another traveller who told him there was one guy with a backpack left (the lady from Customs he asked before had the guts to tell him no one was left in examination). Welcone to Australia ! After this welcome ceremony things got better very quickly: I met up with Geoff and we drove home. Geoff and Nicky are a couple I met in Vietnam and they were kind enough to let me stay at their home for a couple of days. They really made me feel at home, showed me around Cairns and the beautiful surroundings of Cairns. Boy, is this living. Cairns was heading towards winter but still it was a good 26 degrees. No wonder the balconies are almost as big as their house, they live outside 95% of the day. Casual remarks like: "Yeah, we leave the doors and windows open all the time, there might be the odd 5 days per year that we have to close them because it gets too cold." really make a guy living in the Netherlands quite jealous. After 2 nights it was time to move into Cairns because I was going to be picked-up to go: SCUBA DIVING ! Yes, yes, yes: 3 days and 2 nights on a nice vessel cruising and diving the Great Barrier Reef. In order to prepare myself a little bit I attended a session at Reef Teach the night before I left for the reefs. At Reef Teach they tell you a lot about the reef and the life in it during an entertaining 2-hour session. This is a must for anyone who wants to get the most out of the dives. At the vessel you meet the nice and professional crew and a bunch of very nice people who all share the same passion for diving. The first dive of the day starts at 06:30 (yes, in the morning) so the wake-up call is at 06:00. Upfront I thought "Yeah right, like I'm getting out of bed at 6, I'll skip the first dive". Well: NOT. The diving is so cool you easily get up, have one coffee and sigarette and get ready. During this trip I also did my first night dive. To tell you straight away: that was not a huge success. As it was my first night dive I decided to go with a guided group (costing me 10 Aus dollar). When we went down it was pretty dark (not really surprising), visibility was crap, so everyone was sticking so close we were all kicking each other. On top of that my mask got blurred heavily so I saw less and less. After about 10 minutes it happened: I looked around and my buddy Nelly was gone, nowhere to be seen. This was weird because I just checked on her 5 seconds earlier. Not only did I loose her, I also lost my group and the guide, nice one..... So what did I do? Panic => no way, what you learn very quickly is that hardly ever something bad will happen to you as long as you keep breathing and keep your calm. So I swam around a little bit untill I saw some light from torches. When I came near it turned out that these divers did not belong to my little group. I did not manage to make clear to them what happened (what are the hand signs to tell someone you lost your buddy, group and guide??) so we surfaced so we could talk. Poor divers, they did the right thing and came up with me, although I was perfectly fine. The bad thing is I screwed up their dive because they couldn't go down again after surfacing. As of today I still feel bad for them because no matter what I tried, they wouldn't let me buy them a drink afterwards. The next day I was so sure I was going to skip the night dive, but this diving thing is addictive: the last minute we decided to go down again. This time it was only the three of us and the diving was a lot better. But then again: it was dark, visibility was less then during the day so I didn't see that much. I guess night dives are not my favorite kind of dives. All the other 8 dives were perfect though, it was a really cool and relaxing trip. Almost time to go home, the very last day. There was one thing left to do. I intended to do this in New Zealand because they have the biggest one there but as I skipped New Zealand I had to do it here. I've had the idea for a long time and already told Ian about. Ian told other travellers about this lunatic guy from Holland who was going to do it and take his video camera with him around his wrist and tape it (my little camera also takes videos). Even if I didn't want to, I had to do it in order not to make Ian a liar (why does this guy talk so much?, telling this story to everyone upfront. Well maybe because I started it..). So thee was no choice, I had to do my very first BUNGY JUMP. The jump in New Zealand is 150 meters so the one in Cairns is a small one with only 45 meters. Still nuts enough: voluntarily jumping down 45 meters with only a piece of rope around your ankles. Bastards: they wouldn't let me take my camera on my jump, according to them it was to dangerous (?????). Nice: I've had the idea for 5 months, bragging about it, and now two of those macho boys with too much power up on their tower kill my nice little idea. Too dangerous; I think they were just trying to protect their own business of selling tapes of your jump. The alternative was to have one of the other jumpers operate my camera. Was I nervous for the jump? => not really. Even standing on the ridge I was not really scared. I feel that in the last 6 months I put my life in the hands of so many lunatic minibus drivers with little or no control over what was going to happen to me, I easily give it a rest now. Feeling like: "allright, there's nothing I can do now, let's just take the odds nothing will happen". The only point is where you actually do the jump: bend your knees and dive. This is where you very clearly say "you're nuts, why are you doing this?". The falling down and the bouncing up again is really cool. Somewhere I read that after the jump the adrenaline is rushing through your vains for the rest of the day. Well, I didn't have that feeling at all, making we wonder what does get my adrenaline rushing these days (now that I'm back home I know: the motor cycle). Alltogether is was a cool experience. The journey back home was a nice one: Cairns - Brisbane - Auckland - Los Angeles - London - Amsterdam. I got up at tuesday may 21th 03:00am (Oz time, in Holland it was monday 20:00pm) and arrived in Amsterdam wednesday 22th at 18:00pm. 46 hours of travelling: either sitting in an airplane or hanging around airports. Crossing the date line is really weird. When we left Auckland it was tuesday 17:00pm Oz time and I set my watch for Los Angeles time: monday night 23:00pm, meaning this whole tuesday 21th was starting all over again. On the other hand: on long flights I set my watch to the time of the arrival city and live by my watch: I don't 'feel' what time it is: night, morning, afternoon, I really don't know. We had a nice approach to Amsterdam, flew in via IJmuiden. My first thought was: "OK, it's raining and the A9 is stuck with traffic, nothing has changed". Now I'm back in Holland for 3 weeks already. Do I feel sad to be back? Well: Yes and No. Yes, I'm sad because I had a really great time and I wouldn't hesitate for one second to do it again. I met so many people and saw so many beautiful, ugly and touching things. To that respect the travelling is really intense. Next to that it's a very easy life: the travelling itself is very easy, you're only doing things you want to do and there basicly are no worries whatsoever. No, I'm not really sad to be back. It is good to see family and friends again (especially my niece although she refused to recognize me at first, it got better after I gave her presents). There's many friends I still have to see but now that I've got the pictures ready I'll be around soon. No, I'm not sad because now I can start saving up for a next trip (quickly overlooking the fact that I need to pick up a job which is a totally different subject). In Malaysia I bought a T-shirt with the print: Live your dreams, face your fears    ... back