The Good Times are Killing Me....

Upon Embarking on this journey, I knew I would be traveling alone. I mentally prepared for this before I even got on an airplane. I was excited to briefly meet people and learn from them and everyone move on further down their own paths when the time comes. I’ve become quite good at this.

While home, my lifestyle is a bit chaotic at times. Often I work around 60 hours a week, and if not working, I am away traveling and climbing quite a lot. Because of these things, I often keep people at bay, and I have become a pro at having acquaintances in my life, nothing too serious because what’s the point if I am to just leave again?

Well….my plans back-fired a bit.

Over the past 3 days, my world in Ton Sai has crumbled around me, and I am now forced to go back to that original state of mind I planned for. To be alone.

(The next 4 photos were taken by Terje, http://www.terjeaamodt.com/)

This is a photo of one of the Norwegians and me being a goof in the back ground...nothing new. :)

The Norwegian Mafia has left all but 3 people in Ton Sai (to watch over things for a bit-I’m quite sure).

This is a shot of Rannveig and I on our way to dinner with the rest of the Mafia.

These two photos are of the Norwegian Mafia and I having dinner in town for Lis's birthday (head of the Mafia-the totally fit Cuban woman in white).

Two days ago, 2 separate Swedish Mafia’s left, and Steve (the Canadian) and I went to Ao Nang with one group to say good-byes. I proceeded to eat 3 separate deserts before going back to Ton Sai to sulk.

This is a photo of the 'Up-and-Coming' younger Swedish Mafia that I mentioned in a previous entry, they're the crew that that swarmed the Ton Sai climbing scene shortly after the Norwegian Mafia took territory here hahahaa.

The next day was the worst blow. I literally felt that my heart was breaking when Rannveig, Maja and Terje left to go back to Norway yesterday.

This is what it looks like when our hearts are breaking...through the gift of friendship to the agony of the departure.

Rannveig has easily become one of my best friends, I don't know what else to say than that when I now think of her being gone I start to cry. I feel blessed to become so close with her, and I hate the panicky feeling I get when I think about not knowing when I will see her again.

Another hard one for me was Rannveig's future sister-in-law, Maja. She has this wonderful ability to talk though any situation and have brilliant insight as to how to take positive action. She has been my clam during the storms, and the sunshine coming through the clouds. Her fiancé and Rannveig’s brother, Terje has a way of bringing the light-hearted side of things out, and has amazing motivation in life that is truly inspiring to me. They will be missed.

This is a photo of Maja, Rannveig and I on a bus heading back from a day of shopping in Krabi Town. (http://www.terjeaamodt.com/)

Today, Steve left also. He and I have become quite good friends, and he has been here since I first arrived in Ton Sai in December. I became friends with him before I even met the Norwegian Mafia, and therefore when I did, Steve quickly became part of that group also. It was very difficult to have him go home today, but luckily he doesn't live as far away from me as Norway!

I also had become close to Sangwon, who is part of the Korean climbing team (talk about Mafia!!!-there's about 30 of the Koreans here every year-all insanely strong), and he left today as well.

I went down to the beach today with plans to climb, and was so unmotivated that I only did one easy warm-up climb, then took the boat to Ao Nang to say the last good-byes, and I have spent the day here sulking and eating too much sushi.

Its funny how you plan to keep people at bay, then in the midst of having so much fun, you grow quite fond of people and become very close. The positive side of all this, is that we all teach each other something new, and it is a blessing to even have the opportunity to become friends at all when we live worlds apart. I just hope that now since I have found such amazing friends, that we contiune to find ways to cross paths again.

Now that everyone is leaving, and my ribs are just barely getting better, I can climb more adamantly. I have paid my bungalow though the end of the month, then perhaps I will be moving on from Ton Sai as well.

Injured...ugh!

Well as some of you know…this blog has been a bit quiet lately, and so have emails. What oh what has Heather been up to since New Years??
I’ve been laid up injured!! AHHHH!!!!
So my ‘project’ that in all actuality, is not really a project because I know I can do it when I am warmed up, but I keep getting to excited for it and just try it.
Point being, is that on January 3rd, I got back from my visa run, and the first climb that I decided to try was this climb. No warm up, no yoga, no nothing. Just saddled up and started climbing. I don’t know what the hell happened but I will try to explain anyway.
I fell at a lower hold, and a friend that had climbed it before hand told me to try a good upper hold if I wanted to when there. Falling at the lower part is nothing new, the other 2 time I tried the climb I fell there also, and this day I wasn’t even warmed up and hadn’t climbed since the 23rd of December. Not TRYING to make excuses here, just setting the scene. I decided to try out the hold because I had already fallen on the climb and I wasn’t going to get it clean this go anyway. So I decided to investigate it and see if it would help me at all. When I got to that part of the climb, the hold was a bit out of my reach and I had to lean really far to the right to grab it. When I did, somehow my harness managed to slip behind my protruding ribcage as I was leaning so far and they were sticking out. Then my feet cut off of the rock and I held on with my right hand and locked off on the hold. However, when I did this, my core flexed, and pushed my muscle forward….pushing the harness forward….and my ribs with it. Basically the ribs stacked on top of each other and were out of place for more than a day. I was able to finish the climb with moderate pain, and then clean the gear off of it also. It hurt to move, it hurt to breathe, it hurt to lay down, it hurt to eat. Pretty much everything caused pain. I then felt a bit dizzy and went back to my bungalow to lie down. I slept until 1pm the next day, 27 hours total.

When I awoke, I sat up and sneezed, so painful!!! Then there was a cracking noise and then I sneezed again and it didn’t hurt as bad, I also could finally breathe easier. The ribs were back in place! I didn’t take any pain medicine because of my previous ulcer from all the medication from when I was hit by the car a few years ago. I can’t risk the ulcer coming back. So I slept a lot over the next week and tried to heal. Then the next week, I was able to at least walk down to the beach and buy a book at the shop there, and lie on a mat and read all day by the waters edge. What better place to be injured than on a beach in Thailand!?! Much of week 2 went in this fashion, not better enough to venture to Railey or Ao Nang because it hurt to do too much of one thing, but well enough to socialize and read a lot. Then this past week was even better, I swam a little bit, went with some of my climbing friends on a snorkeling trip to a nearby island, went shopping and to dinner in Ao Nang, and doing things again was so great for me!

This week I tried to climb again. Its been a slow process, and still quite painful for me, but I’m happy to just be moving around using my rusty muscles. I climbed 1 climb my first day back, then 2 the next day, and 1 today. I am just Top-roping them as I don’t want to re-injure myself again, but do want to be active. At this point, I don’t care if I finish a climb, or if I do it 5 times in one day, nor do I care right now what the climb is or how hard it is. I just need to be climbing something while I heal.
I don’t think the ribs are broken, I suspect the muscle is just badly damaged. And possibly the connective tissue also.




Taking the boat over to Ko Phi Phi to snorkel on a rest day.

Steve, Said and I on the island Ko Phi Phi about to get our snorkel on.

New Years 2009 from Kuala Lampur, Malaysia!!!!

Thailand changed the free tourist visa law from being 30 days when entering the country by land to a meager 15 days. Not cool...not cool at all. This has created some civil unrest within the climbing community because people come here to spend their winters getting strong, and we cant be bothered to travel to Malaysia every 15 days in order to renew. I'm talking about people who will be here 2 months....that’s 4 trips! The other option is to leave the country and then to fly back in to Thailand where you can then be issued a 30 day free visa. But that’s expensive and also only 30 days.

The visa application process takes 2 days to complete in order to apply for a 2 month visa. You turn in the application in the morning one day and then get it back in the afternoon of the next day. I arrived in Thailand on November 29th, therefore my free 30 day visa was up on December 29 because I arrived by air.

This law change has been really REALLY bad news for the climbers because the world of easy border-runs to re-new your visa has now officially ended. I was not sure how long I would be in Thailand overall, so I decided to get the 2 month visa which would give me more time to climb in Ton Sai, as well as head to northern Thailand to climb for a bit too.
I had a couple options, go to the border town and spend a couple days there, or go to Kuala Lumpur. Unfortunately, New Years was just a few days away, and the border town had some bizarre holiday for a political figure and would be closed on of those days, and not to mention that the weekend was coming up and the offices would be closed then too. So by my calculation, if I went to the border, with the weekend, that holiday, travel and new years, it would be a 5-6 day process. My choices were then to go to the border and spend New Years there, or go to KL and have much more fun. I chose the border.
JUST KIDDING!!! Kuala Lumpur is where it’s at!

As I began my journey south, it became strikingly apparent it was not going to be as simple as I had hoped.
Talk about a hassle because of the proximity to New Years. Basically it was impossible to fly into or out of KL around this time period. Taking a train was the same story….booked out for 4 days after New Years. Busses also. Imagine trying to get transportation last minute into the largest city in a country around a world wide holiday. Not happening.
Every bus, and train, I tried was booked up for at least 4 days, and the only flights I found were about $300. Ridiculous considering it’s normally about a $60 flight. So I didn’t have much of an option except keep trying to go further and further south to make it out of Thailand before my visa was up, for if I didn’t, there would be ghastly fines incurred for going over my visa.

I took a bus from one bus station to the next because there was no hope of getting direct buses into KL.


It took me 3 days in total to arrive there. Just in time to put my application in to the Embassy before the holiday and the weekend, both of which they would be closed for. It’s a 2 day process to apply, and I did get the visa and my passport back before New Years, but still couldn’t get out of the city to get back to Ton Sai, so I stayed for a couple more days then took the sleeper train back to Thailand.
KL is a beautiful city, but a lot of pollution and not much to be done about it. The New Years celebration was intense to say the least. SO many people, and everyone….and I mean EVERYONE that was there was completely obsessed with that silly string stuff in the cans. They were selling bags of the cans for next to nothing. Kids, teenagers, adults, elderly….EVERYONE was spraying that stuff everywhere, 2 cans at a time even! I could barely breathe, as well as most other people, I felt dizzy the entire time, and at this point I hadn’t had anything to drink! Eventually I sat at a table and enjoyed the festivities of the evening with some other travelers that I met at the hostel I was staying at in Chinatown.







This is a photo of me sitting at a bus station. I waited 2 hours for a bus that would take me to the next town an hour and a half away. 3 days, 4 towns and a border crossing later I made it to KL by 6am, in order to just have those 2 days to get by visa processed before they would be closed for the holiday. I had just enough time to check into a hostel and put my bag away before heading to the Thai Embassy by 9am.






This is a photo of the town Hat Yai not far from the border between Thailand and Malaysia. They had a massive New Years market going on. Alot of roads were closed, and a majority of the people there shopping were from Singapore beacuse it is so much cheaper in Thailand to shop.
















This is a photo of me about to leave Thailand.

I walked alllllll the way to Malaysia. Hahahaha.

This is China Town, in KL. My hostel was located just a stones throw from where this photo was taken. Quite lively at all times of day and night! It was alot of fun!

This photo is of the Petronas Towers. They are the 2nd and 3rd tallest buildings in the world. Google them if you'd like. They were pretty rad.

This is the ‘Golden Buddha’, it is the Tallest standing Buddha in the world. The stairs lead to the Batu Cave where worship can be done and tributes paid.

The Batu caves is the name of a climbing area not far from this site. In this photo I am sitting at the climbing area checking out the lines before we climbed.

New Years in KL was a bit chaotic to say the least….to say the most…it was fun.
I have discovered….that Malaysians are particularly OBSESSED with ‘silly string’ in a can! Its completely nuts. New Years in that city was like continual voluntary asphyxiation!

I spent a total of 7 days traveling; 2 days to get to KL, 2 to come back, 1 free day where I shopped a little, and ate some Italian food since I was not home to have the traditional Italian food on Christmas, and an epic attempt at climbing there.

It was nice to take a hiatus from climbing scene in Ton Sai for a little while. You so easily become engulfed in the climbs, the climbing, and the climbers. It was a good reality check to once again realize there is a whole world outside the small penninsula where I spend so much time.

Christmas Update!!! A Bit late!

Christmas for me in Ton Sai was full of relaxation and fun for 3 days. Here is why. The Scandinavian Christmas takes place on December 24th, while Christmas for the rest of the world is December 25th. Further, due to the time difference, Christmas at home in Idaho ends on the morning of the 26th here in Ton Sai. I celebrate all of my holidays this way in Asia….my birthday was also a 2 day event!

Anyway, the Mafia and I (and some Swedish-whom might I add have come back strong with a Mafia of their own, but Sweds and Norwegians can understand each other because the languages are so similar, so they tend to just overtake the Ton Sai territory as a team…it wasn’t always this way…
I have become friends with a group of young strong Sweds, guys and girls. By young, I mean they are early 20’s. I became friends with 2 Swedish guys over coffee and breakfast at a place called the Pyramid bar one morning. They asked who I have been spending my time with since I am traveling alone, and I went on to explain ‘The Norwegian Mafia’ to them. Now the thing I learned about Scandinavian people is that when they don’t know someone they tend to observe and assess the situation and the person. They tend to all be very quiet and calculated until they get to know you. They thought it was a humorous story, but one of them looked at me with such certainty it made me laugh and said ‘There is a Swedish Mafia also…you will see, it’s coming.’ He explained that some of their friends would be arriving within the next few days.

A few days later Rannveig, Steve, and a few others were walking along the beach of Railey when I noticed a large group of very attractive people walking our way. Now imagine a scene out of a teen movie where the popular kids come walking up in slow motion, guys with beautiful bodies, and the girls dressed perfectly, and hair blowing in the breeze…that’s exactly what it was like. It was the young Swedish Mafia. They came back strong. There are 9 of them. They walked up to us, we chatted for a bit, laughed over some jokes, got introductions and continued on our way.

That week it was raining a little, and I was done climbing and lying on the beach under the overhung rock watching the Swedish Mafia climb a route called ‘Mafia Connection’. Over dinner that night with the Norwegian Mafia, I mentioned to Lis (the Cuban woman who is head of the mafia) that I watched them climb it that morning, because it is a rather difficult climb, and I was impressed. She then told me that the Norwegian Mafia climbed it that evening. Hahahaha! So funny!

Over time, there has been more and more Sweds showing up, and they are stong. They have united with the Norwegians and its one big happy group. They are dominating the climbing scene for sure. And I am the adopted American.

Anyway, back to Christmas….We had 2 of them one for the Scandinavians and one for everyone else. It was raining on and off during those couple of days, so there was alot og eating and lounding around. We all had such a great time!

Round 2 Update

As some of the people my group of 8 people left me, I branched out and made friends with a a few people from Norway. They in turn introduced me to a few more, and a few more. Next thing I know I am surrounded by Norweigens! It became a joke that they are a Mafia. The Norwegian Mafia is what I began calling them, now everyone calls them that. They are a really great group of people, and I am fortunate to have found friendship with them. Many of them have been coming here for more than 10 years, and some of them have established alot of the climbs, as well as maintained them for everyone to use. They are a wonderful group of people.

There is a couple that is the 'head of the mafia' although the woman is a fiery cuban and the man from Norway, they both live in Norway now.

Then there is TJ that used to run a climbing school on a near by island. He is a very strong climber, and knows as much about the area (if not more) than locals. There is a really amazing photographer that has been long time friends with the rest of the mafia, his name is Terje Aamodt, his fiance is Maja. His website is http://www.terjeaamodt.com/ Check out the BLOG section, it has photos from Ton Sai and all of us...it will take your breath away.

Terje's younger sister came to Ton Sai a few days after I met them, and we have become very close. Her name is Rannveig, she is as beautiful as a model, with a heart of gold, and climbs F-ing strong! She has cared about me alot, and watches out for me always. She gave me my only christmas present this holiday season while barely knowing me yet. I am certian she has quickly become she one of my favorite people on the planet.

This is the dog that sometimes graces me with his presence to sleep at my bungaloo, and often walks me home in the dark. And lets not forget-hangs out on the beach all day while we all climb. :)

This is the view from a climb I did at a place called 'The Keep'. Apparently it is named that because it was a well kept secret due to the quality of the climbing there. It truly is an amazing crag.

This is me laying down during the afternoon lull where the temps are too hot to climb. The best time of day to climb is in the morning, then later as cliffs become in the shade, the climbing is possible. So we move around from cliff to cliff depending on where the sun is. This area with the tables in the back ground is from the 'Tonsai Roof' climbs. Its only good in the morning, or if you are lucky, on over cast days.

This climb is called "Missing Snow", so so SO much fun. It was tricky to assess the sequence of moves, but once you got it, it is a super stellar climb.

Morning yoga sesh on the beach to stretch out before climbing in the afternoon. Ton Sai beach has alot of rocks and shells on it, but Railey beach is the beautiful one with white sand. Its funny, accomidation on Ton Sai is thousands of Baht cheaper than on Railay, so all of us climbers go over there on rest days and use the beach there. They have less jelly fish, and the enviroment feels like a fancy resort. Besides, every one on Ton Sai is extremely fit, and the average person on Railay is over weight and on holiday. Walking around over there you feel like a bad ass....everyone checks you out. Men, women, everyone. Good for the ego. Then at the end of the day all of us climbers crawl our way back throught the mosquieto infested jungle to the thatch huts of Ton Sai where we belong. Figures it would be epic to get back there....thats how we stay so fit!!!

This picture is from Railay beach taken by Terje Aamodt. His photo of me doing yoga is totally better hahahaha!