Well, I haven't updated this is ages, have I? Let me summarize it in a few short paragraphs. From Perth, Australia I went north a few hundred kilometers to Dongara. I don't remember this place at all really. But I remember the next few days.

I moved north to Kalbarri on the coast and attended a kite surfingf competition. That night I randomly met up with two Dutch dudes who were taking their truck around Oz. We gate crashed the kite surfing party and after-party, then camped out with other travelers and created our own party with pirated booz from the previous parties. We got in trouble with the police. Actually what they said was, ‘If there were any police around they might tell you to put your open alcohol away' - this they said from the window of their patrol car. We took this to mean ‘drink what you've got open and don't open any more'.

Hungover, I drove north through the endless outback and hit a town called Carnavon, which was a bit of a dump and not much to report from there. I met several other travelers, mostly Asian, who were doing berry picking on farms for a few months. They mostly did it for some ‘experience', whatever that means, but there were a few guys who just ran out of money in Oz and didn't have much of a choice but to settle down and pick berries for pennies.

Through the ride up to Kalbarri and Carnavon, temperatures hit at about 117 degrees for most of the day. I know this because I stopped off at every gas station and asked the clerk. I stopped at every single one because they were several hundred kilometers apart and I needed fuel, water, and a bit of air conditioning. Driving through 117 degree heat in full motorcycle uniform isn't fun. It's actually hell. Also, along the way, I kept getting asked ‘Oh, are you the American the two Canadians were looking for?' Bob and Wayne had stopped at every gas station as well a day before and told the clerks to keep an eye out for me and told them to tell me where they were headed. I don't know why they always thought Bob was Canadian as well.

Anyways, after Carnavon I kept north and hit the Fortesque River, middle of nowhere. It was just about that time of day where I start to look for a place to camp and up ahead it looked as though I might hit a storm if I kept going.

I parked under the only tree I've seen in days and setup the tent, and right then it started raining, hard. I stuffed my entire luggage inside the one-man tent and sat there a while, quite cramped, and smoked. The first lightning strike didn't scare me, but the next one did as it landed about a few hundred meters away. I thought, ‘Here I am, under the only tree in 1000 kilometers with a very large metal motorcycle just beside me. Good planning'.

Actually I was scared shitless. The rain stopped within 5 minutes so I got out of my tent to view the storms progress. I could still see it raining about a kilometer away and the lightning was going crazy striking everywhere. It was moving from east to west and I was just on the southern edge of it. I watched it move along well into the night and saw one of the best and scariest light show ever.

I remember that night quite well even after the storm because the ground was too hot to sleep on. I was sweating beads inside my tent lying on top of the sleeping bag, which quickly became soaked. Not pleasant. I finally moved my sleeping bag on my motorcycle and slept on the seat. Not comfortable, but still able to sleep.

I finally met Bob and Wayne, randomly, at some random stop off - The Sandfire Roadhouse, as is listed on the map. So random, there wasn't even a town name associated with this area. I had meant to just stop for gas and head a couple more hours north. I saw them standing there ordering some cheeseburgers. The rest of the day we sat in the hotel trying to get the air conditioning to work not daring open the door to the outside for fear of the intense heat and the infuriating hoard of flies. I was supposed to meet them in Perth but our paths got crossed somewhere. It was good to see them again.

The next day, riding with the two guys, we finally hit green grass and beautiful scenery. It was such a fast and drastic change to the brown bushes that we all three just stopped and stared at the green. As Wayne put it ‘What the hell, now all the sudden we're in Canada?' Bob was the only one who didn't like the foliage; he prefers desert, being from Arizona and all. Wayne and I loved it. Later we hit Fitzroy Crossing and stopped there for the night. I don't remember much about this place except for the Aboriginals singing along to fifties and sixties American classic songs at a bar. The three of us were the only white guys in the place.

Sadly, the Australian stereotype about Aboriginals is, well, true. They get money from the government and do nothing but go to bars and sit around in parks. I asked one what he does, meaning what he does for work. He said ‘Oh, there is a lot to do around here'. He was either avoiding the question or didn't know what I was asking, but I didn't press the question. All that aside, I met many Aboriginals and they were all very friendly.

We kept heading east along the north of Australia, our focus on hitting Katherine. When we got there we'd make the decision to head South towards Alice Springs, the middle of Australia, and also Ayers Rock - or we'd get out of the heat and head north to Darwin and ship over to Singapore. Bob was back and forth on the idea. Wayne was going to do what Bob did, either way, but I was set on getting to Southeast Asia because I was running out of money. Oz is expensive.

Anyway, we hit a place called Kununurra, where we were told we could not go any further because the Victoria River was over 20 feet above the bridge. We were told we would have to wait a couple weeks for the water to recede. Luckily, Kununurra was a proper town - it even had a grocery store. We setup camp at a hotel and had a ‘barbi' out back. We went to the grocery store and bought some kangaroo, wallaby, and crocodile. I tried cooking some of the vegetables that we bought but I was kindly told to stay away from the grill because I don't know what the hell I'm doing. Fair enough. I sat on the patio, smoked some cigarettes and drank some wine. The food was superb and better than any restaurant I've been to anywhere in Oz, and it's about ten times cheaper cooking ourselves.

We only waited about four or five days in Kununurra and we got word that the river went down quickly. It was weird to think about - I was nearly killed in a brush fire in Tasmania and we're being drowned here in northern Australia. Anyways, we crossed the river safely and we were surprised to see that a new bridge was being built beside the old one. And the water had even reached above the new bridge, we could tell because of how dirty it was. We were also told they had to redo the foundation of the new bridge they were building because of the floodwaters.

At Katherine Bob and Wayne had decided to head South to Alice Springs. I went north to Darwin. I had planned to meet Bob and Wayne in Singapore when our bikes arrived, assuming our bikes got on the same boat. I was in Darwin less than a day and I managed to drop my bike off at the warehouse since it was a very simple process to ship the bike. The motorcycle would be shipped seven days later and would take a week to get to Singapore. So, I had two weeks. I flew straight to Singapore the next day.

On the flight to Singapore I had to fill out the entry card. On it said ‘Penalty of Death for Drug Smuggling'. It wasn't a problem for me, but I figured that Southeast Asia would be as liberal about drugs as South America was, but apparently not. I soon learned that chewing gum was illegal, as was smoking within fifteen feet of public entrances to buildings. All cigarettes are highly taxed and had to be purchased within Singapore or else you got a two hundred dollar fine. Strict. A police state for sure.

Singapore is modern and on the top ten most expensive cities to live in the world. A hostel was forty dollars, and a beer at a club was fourteen. The only cheap thing in Singapore was the food - and good food it was.

From Singapore I took a train to Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, and stayed just a few hours. I had enough of the city life in Singapore so I took a bus up to island of Penang (the fourth largest bridge in Southeast Asia connects it to the mainland), the colonial capital. Penang was okay - lots of culture, languages, and neat architecture, but still very busy.

At the hostel I was staying at I met a guy who was riding my same bike, BMW 650 Dakar and we became pretty good friends. He was a forty something English fellow. I also met another guy on his motorcycle. This was a guy from Belgium, late twenties, and he rode a small thirty year old 150cc motorcycle. He went from Belgium, all across Europe, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, India, and shipped his bike over to Bangkok, Thailand and headed south. I thought I had balls until I met this guy. His motorcycle can hardly go 50 miles an hour and it looked like a scooter. I don't know how he fit his bags on it. He was headed to Australia and I told him he'll have trouble with the distances across the outback because of his small tank. He smiled and said ‘I'll manage'. I didn't doubt him.

After a couple days in Penang I took a boat up to Langkawi Island and chilled on the beach for a few days at this backpacker central spot. I met a few guys there and we rented a couple cars for the day. They were English style stick shifts so the driver's seat was on the right hand side. I took a turn and drove about five kilometers and decided it wasn't a good idea. We went around the whole island. We visited some waterfalls that cascade down smooth rocks and we invented an awesome ‘rock-slide', like the Slip ‘n Slide from my childhood.

I went with a friend on a bus ride over to the Perhentian Islands on the east coast after Langkawi and hung out there for a while but soon got tired of the beach. I can only stand the beach-bum life for so long before it starts to get old. I prefer mountains over beaches.

Anyways, I flew back to Singapore and spent some more days there hanging out with new friends and trying desperately to get my motorcycle out of Customs. They wouldn't accept my paperwork from the USA and told me I was allowed to import my motorcycle but not allowed to ride it. What?

Bob and Wayne I met for only one day in Singapore and they had no problems getting their bikes out. I, however, spent several days there trying to fight the system to no avail. I ended up getting a tow truck driver take me from the port in the south to the bridge that connects Singapore and Malaysia. Malaysia was a breeze to get into.

I went straight up to Kuala Lumpur and was stunned to see how rich people were. I figured Malaysia would be a third world country. I thought wrong. They have so much expendable income. People were driving Mercedes, BMW, Ferrari and other expensive cars all down the road. I met a friend at the hostel there and we visited the Petronus Towers. I think they are the tallest buildings in the world, or they were, and have a massive bridge connecting the two. They were featured in that movie Entrapment with Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones. The towers are quite a site in the evening, lit up and all.

We went out to a club one night because the hostel owner was friends with the owner of the club and we all got free drinks. All the girls there were tall Eastern European and Russian models that are featured on the shampoo commercials or something that requires tall, hot, anorexic, white girls. Apparently companies want the face Westerners on the product instead of Asians for some reason. Anyways, they were all several inches taller than I was and never smiled so I didn't talk to them. I don't know where that story was going but I just thought I should mention it for some reason. Anyways.

In Kuala Lumpur I got the bike serviced because it was overheating on the way up. So the bike was all clean and tuned up when I picked it up from the BMW shop and I headed north. Bob and Wayne were already days ahead of me and I wanted to catch up. I had already visited a few places in Malaysia so it wouldn't be completely out of reality to just head straight for Thailand, and that's what I did.

I took the main highway north and entered Thailand a couple days later. There are only a couple things I want to do in Thailand:

Number one is go rock climbing in Railay. The sheer cliffs that peak out from the water is world renown for rock climbing and I've seen a few rock climbing videos that were filmed here.

Number two on the list for Thailand was to go to the Full Moon Party on Ko Pha-ngan (you say it like Ko-Pan-Yang). Anyways, it's the largest party in all of Asia and obviously takes place on the full moon, which isn't until April 9^th.

Number three on the list to do in Thailand is visit Bangkok. I don't really know what's there to see but I've heard pretty cool things about it.

Anyways, I missed out on Railay already. I need to make it up to Bangkok and get some work done on my website because I'm running out of money and I owe people money. Hopefully in about 10 days I am able to take a cheap flight down from Bangkok to visit Railay and Ko Pha-ngan.

Right now I'm two days into Thailand in a place called Chumphon. Out of all the countries I've visited on my motorcycle I'd have to say that Thailand has the worse drivers. They don't check their side mirrors (if they have any) and never look behind them while they drive; like a proper third world country. They also have no respect for motorcycles. None. Just today some guy rammed me on the side and I hit another car. My foot is a bit messed up and the bike, like a rock, is perfectly fine. The guy who hit me just kept driving. Other people got out of their cars to help me pick up the motorcycle. Don't worry, Mom, I'm fine. Just a flesh wound.

Anyways, that's my summary for the last two months. Sorry it's taken so long. And if you've read all my rambling sentences down to here then give yourself a pat on the back, you've earned it.