first days of bali. we started of to rent a scooter and two surfboards at kuta. the day after we headed to a lonely beach with the most perfect wave rolling a couple of hundred meters day in and day out. layed back people, no regular annoying tourists and we have surf for as long as we like every day. and we only have to spend about 50 swedish krones a day for good meals, a room at the beach, surfboards, and a scooter.

yesterday we took a random road up the mountains and found some really cool sceneries and temples. and houses with an architecture that makes you feel like you are dreaming the weirdest dream ever.

wow this is sweet! we have found the bali we have been looking for.

Driving off from the big road (N2) to the small shitty road that Petter wrote about feelt like driving into another country. Green hills, small villages with small blue huts, running children, cows trotting along the road. And it actually was an independent country until 1994. It was called Transkei and apertheid never existed there. That means that you see no after effects of the problem. It was a huge difference from Jeffrey’s bay where the white man still ruled in the luxurious beach villas and the black we’re sleeping on the streets or in the township Sex Wale.

The first night we were up on one of the hills drinking Savanna Dry and eating oysters and mussels, an awesome sundowner! Suddenly we saw a HUUGE fin popping up from the water. It was a whale!

Coffee bay and the whole ex Transkei, now called wild coast, really is the black mans land, because as a white you can’t own land. It is ruled by a chief and he obeys the king. If you want to live there you can rent a house but you need to have the whole village approval and the chief.

We met a guy who had done that for almost 10 years. His name was Phil and he tried to explain how the whole system worked. While we were in Coffee Bay a good example occured. A white man had come to the village and bought some land from a black man, then he had put up electric fence all over the place so that he was intruding on the neighbors land. First of all its forbidden to buy land, second thing it’s not okey to interrupt on other peoples land. The citizens in Coffee bay went mad and called the chief. Phil said that this was the chief’s chance to prove that he really was a man of the people (apparently lots of chiefs are corrupted and etc). The chief informed that on the 24 December 18:00 he would have a meeting on the hill with the black man who sold his land to a white and the white man who bought it. That’s how it works! No paper works, no municipality office and no complaint letters.

Back to Phil, who was an amazing man. We had a jewelry workshop with him. It was supposed to be a morning thing but when we left the time was 17 pm… And all this time we were just talking, talking and talking. About life, Africa, jewelry, dogs, society, home made fridges.. Petter made a beautiful necklace and I made earrings and a dog necklace to Malibu. Which later became fashion and Phil got loads of new customers because of that. He himself have a big dog named Milo and I think he would have been a good man for my Malli. Actually I think that Phil would be a god man for my mum too.. Haha. Eight hours felt like one and we decided to celebrate Christmas together.

The hostel we stayed at, Coffee Shack, were arranging a huuge Christmas party but since the staff were so extremely rude and the backpackers who stayed there so incredible boring we were more that happy to skip that.

We ended up on the local pub/pizzeria Papazelas! With the best pizza I ever had i my life, cosy people like phil and dave mandelas ex security card, pool play and cuba libres. So nice! Tough a phone call from home made me extremely homesick..

We ended up there next day too.. And while I was sitting there eating my pizza, with the fantastic Papazela home made chili on it, I almost thought there were some funny mushrooms in it because I was hearing swedish reagge! I ran over to the bar and got the answer that is was the locals iPod. And the locals turned out t be BIG Swedish reagge fans and had been to Uppsala reagge festival loads of times. Summer 09’ eleven people from small, small coffee bay had went there. The more beer they drunk the more Swedish they talked and we were shaking our ass to Svenska Akademien, DJ Andy and Kulteration. “Jattebraow!” Never thought that would happen in a local pub in South Africa..

hey! they  got free internet here at  suvunburrnunur-what’s-the-name airport so I tought I was just gonna tell you guys that we’re alive and well. Can’t wait to  see what bali is like.. So many people all saying diffrent things! I’m hoping for aloot of waaaves, sweet sun and cheap food!

okey laos really chocked us. such a cool place! and everything is green. totally green. the busride was horrible tough. tonight we crossed the border at the mekong river and after that we changed buss. and what a bus.. me and linn had to take turns to sit on a blue plastic chair in the middle of the bus. the baggage hatch under the bus opened itself all the time so they had to stop every 10 kilometers to tighten the screws. and on top of that the aircon broke down so that they had to open the door just next to us. and after riding for abouth 20hrs sitting on a plastic chair we where pretty tired. staying awake was almost impossible. everytime we fell alseep on the and started to lean at one direction or the other a leg on the chair got bent. resulting in one of us and the chair falling together in one big mess. and wakening up falling on a plastichair, in a bus, with and open door, on creepy roads and in high speed wasnt comfortable at all.. but hey here we are and damn its beautiful!

man kan nog inte undvika bangkok. ingen vill leva eller vara här men ändå har staden 12 miljoner invånare. eller 18. ingen vet riktigt. vi ville inte tillbaka hit. ändå sitter vi här i en park mellan några buddhistiska tempel. vi har hittat vårt smultronställe och här känns det verkligen inte som bangkok. linn ligger under ett träd och får massage av en doktor i reflexology jag sitter och skriver lite i ett annat hörn. från templet är det någon som sjunger och det ljuder musik över hela parken. det är kinesiskt nyår och det tänds rökelser och görs massa konstiga offerbål lite här och där. ikväll sätter vi oss på nattbussen till laos. ska träffa en gammal polare till pappa. han heter urban och äger en halvö i mekongfloden. han verkar ha en rolig historia och mer om den kommer sen. nu ska vi gå och köpa kyla. linn ska få en mangoshake och jag ska nog ta en iskaffe. livet är gott med god mat!

this road deserves its own post. not beacouse its great scenery, even if it is pretty cool. its because of how shitty it is. the area of all the potholes it has is probably bigger then the area of the reamaining road. and there is so much people trying to make a living on the road, with the road or ON the road. there is the kids with shovels filling up the potholes and hitting towards the cars to get theis part of the deal. we called them the roadtax kids. the farmers with their animals running loose all over the road. the fruitsellers. the football kids. the taxidrivers, which probably are the worst by the way.

the first time it took us about 3 hours to go the 80 kilometers towards the coast. thats a speed less than 30 km/h. the taxidrivers probably kept a minimum speed of 100 km/h throughout the whole stretch. we thought the animals and people on the road was dangerous in all the traffic but we was so wrong. the taxidrivers was the real danger. because of the potholes we had to drive sicksack and the taxis where passing us on both sides without reducing thier speed at all. and on top of that it felt like we where driving the wrong way all the time. the road went up and down, back and forth, to the north and to the south, to the east and to the west, it went everywhere but to to ocean.

and yeh, we had to drive the whole road back and forth two times cuz where we arrived they had no such thing as an atm.