Where is Matt right now?
DECEMBER 23, 2011 - Today I'm learning to dive at Fun and Sun Dive and Travel on Malapascua, Philippines (http://bit.ly/vAoQjP). In three days, we be swimming with thresher sharks. Merry Christmas to me :)
The Wang Yeh boat burning festival occurs once every three years. Disease spreading ghosts, or Wang Yeh, are lead onto the boats by priests and mediums. The boat, sitting atop a mountain of ghost money (money burned by locals for the benefit of their dead ancestors) is then burned, sending the spirits back to their world, hopefully taking their plagues with them. This year, I believe, there was a special focus on H1N1 (the Swine Flu).
The Crocodile King Farm in Taiwan’s Madou Township is the most bizarre zoo I’ve ever seen. Exhibits include a random cross section of exotic animals from Taiwan and around the world, an extensive collection of reptiles, and a large number of mutant animals including two mutant goats, several mutant ducks and chickens, and a two-headed turtle. The main attraction, though, is an enormous crocodile, which may well be the fattest crocodile in the world, on which visitors are invited to sit. You can view a gallery of my pictures from the zoo here.
A photo essay I shot on a trip to the Madou Crocodile King farm, a small private zoo in Tainan County, Taiwan, that features various exotic and mutated animals and one gigantic crocodile. The crocodile, stuck in a tiny pen for several years, has become extremely fat. Seriously. The largest crocodile ever recorded was 8.6 m long and weighed 1,350 kg. This croc, according to the sign, was 5.2 m long and 1250 kg, which puts it in the running for the fattest croc in the world. It’s so fat and slow that you can walk up behind it and sit on it. We did. Check it out.
A short photo essay that I shot on a trip to the the world renowned National Museum of Marine Biology & Aquarium in Pingtung County, Southern Taiwan. Unfortunately, the light in the aquarium is very low, and flash photography is prohibited, so was a tough shoot, but I got some good pretty good pictures including some manta rays, penguins, and a massive whale shark.
My mother, brother and sister.
Well, since leaving Taiwan things have gone pretty much as planned. Since arriving home in good ol’ Cranbrook I’ve:
Shoveled the driveway like nine times
Been subjected to more country music than any living creature should ever be exposed to
Purchased travel insurance and been vaccinated
Helped my friend catch her dog when it ran away
Eaten steak almost day
Seen all of my friends’ children for the first time (and they all have children)
Started reading O’Henry, who is fucking badass, you should totally check him out!
http://www.literaturepage.com/read/thefourmillion.html
Jumped on some redneck who started swinging at my buddy for no reason in the bar and held ‘em till the bouncers came
Subsequently went for a drive to smoke a joint in our other buddie’s new $60,000 Ford truck, which, while doing giant fishtails in the snow, he accidentally drove down a steep embankment and through a fence made out of 6′ by 6′ beams. We then spent an hour and a half in the sub zero night getting him unstuck and back up the embankment
Got up after three hours sleep to go snowboarding on a perfect powder day. Was shakey at first, but stuck both front and backside 360′s on the last run
Explained the difference between Taiwan and Thailand like ten million times
Not been asked about Chinese culture once, but was told volumes “’bout them Asians” by scores of people who have never traveled farther than the dump
Watched the new Hunter S. documentary
Drank Jack Daniels with my father, who is having heart surgery again in two weeks
Drank Budweiser and watched hockey with my buddy who lives with his twenty year old girlfriend, and her child, and their child, in a trailer behind the gravel pits
You know, basically everything that you’d expect to do in Cranbrook.
Well, I finally arrived in Guatemala. When I say finally I mean that I arrived after:
- A twelve hour bus ride from Cranbrook to the Calgary airport (don’t even ask why it took so long).
- Two hours of sleep.
- Two hours detained by a mongoloid U.S. customs officer for no reason. The guy said he was afraid that I might try to stay in the USA because I didn’t have an ongoing ticket. I wittily responded, “Actually, I’m an American citizen,” which I thought would sink his argument. But he countered with the ingenious rebuttal: “That doesn’t matter,” and sent me off to the Customs Time-Out room to think about the consequences of being witty to a customs officer. I subsequently missed my flight, and had to take a later one.
- A beautiful, and expensive, but all too short four day layover in LA on Venice Beach.
- A two day car ride halfway across Mexico with Mike Sanchez, who I found on Craigslist, and who turned out to be like the smartest living creature in the universe. Really. He was Google personified — except for Google stops belching meaningless shit at you if you ignore it. So, I basically drove halfway across Mexico with an auto audio-Google machine on repeat constantly spewing whatever popped into his little search engine brain to fill the silence of his radioless car.
- A twelve hour bus ride to Mexico City, which arrived at Mexico City Central Station at 1am, and then a 10 hour wait for my next bus during which I didn’t sleep for fear of my bags being stolen, which was still way better than being stuck in a car with Mike Sanchez.
- A twelve hour ride to Tuxtla Gutierrez in Chiapas, which arrived at midnight, just in time to connect with my bus, a six hour ride to the Guatemalan border.
- A 10 minute wait in Guatemalan customs during which I saw a guy ingeniously talk the border guard into letting his buddy cross into Mexico even though he had no passport and was not a citizen, based only on the promise that they’d “be right back”.
- A four hour bus ride on an infamous Guatemalan ‘chicken bus’, during which I really had to go pee.
All to arrive in this beautiful little Guatemalan City of Quetzaltenango, which is situated in the western mountains beneath an active volcano that gushes a beautiful plume of smoke across the sky. I’ve been in touch with the Lonely Planet writer for Guatemala who lives here, and who I will meet in a couple of weeks to see if he can help me get in with them. And now, I just came home from eating a four dollar steak dinner, and I’m sitting in my six dollar room, which is attached to a Spanish school that’s currently having a graduation party in the central patio.
But tomorrow I’m leaving. I’m going to a small town on Lake Atitilan, which I can probably only get to by ferry, where it’s even cheaper. Lonely Planet speaks of rooms for two and three dollars per night. Spanish lessons for two dollars per hour and a bar that servers Cuba Libres for 30 cents apiece!
I can wake up every morning and go swimming in the lake and then I can go for a for a run up the volcano next to town and come home and study Spanish and write.
Where else could I possibly go?
A short humorous essay by Matt Gibson about the nature of travel, independence, freedom, travel scams and chicken busses.
DECEMBER 23, 2011 - Today I'm learning to dive at Fun and Sun Dive and Travel on Malapascua, Philippines (http://bit.ly/vAoQjP). In three days, we be swimming with thresher sharks. Merry Christmas to me :)
 |
 |
 |
 |
