Just cruise 35 km/h and you will be fine

Maybe your presentation skills are better than mine, but there is no way I will be able to pull off me having sex with another person is like you eating a mushroom analogy!!!



Good stuff.

yo wasup

whattttupppppppp. thailand misses you. It doesn't miss me though, back in your favorite place BALIIII!!!

So I updated last when I was in taiwan. Don't think I did a thing since then. Went through a period of working a ton which was really nice. I let myself just sleep and wakeup whenever my body wanted, then get to work. It was really refreshing, and a bit odd to wake up at midnight sometimes.

I did try MDMA and LSD for the first time. both were interesting and something I would do again... with a bit more planning for the lucy.

I'm happy to be out of thailand, and bangkok especially. I realized everything there revolves either around drinking or spending a good amount of money for activities/events. It is awesome to be in a major city where events are going on constantly, so I tried to limit myself to that - concerts, food fairs, movies, new restaurants - as far as going out and spending money goes. But all the drinking temptations are always there, and I'm not often one to say no. It's $25 per person to do just about anything it seems, and even if I can afford it I just don't agree with spending that kind of money unless its for a unique experience.

So my nitty ass is pretty happy in Bali. Go surf, book and a coconut on the beach, swim around, watch the sunset, chill in beanbags on the beach, get great food for less than $5. Skate ramps are getting more popular here with a lot of live music venues having crossover bar/resto/live music/skating all going on. All of that including transportation is essentially free. Alcohol costs a lot actually, but I only have a couple drinks as I need to drive home and want to skate a bit - the events are just fun to be at, without a strong need to get wasted like being at a club or party where I want to pregame and have a goal of losing inhibitions and gettin buck, dancing, screaming out dumb ****. it's either that or I feel socially awkward and anxious like I suck at partying.

Been thinking about that more and more lately, and its just really nice to not have the pressure to get smashed. No need to drink 15 beers to surf, skate, and watch the sunset.

I spent a couple days at a guesthouse while looking for apartments, and honestly just doing that for months on end could be fine. Most people are doing week+ stays there and you have your own nice room in a 4-5 bedroom house usually, so its not a hostel vibe at all, and normally guests are 24-35 or something for age range. I found a nice house with a cool pitbull and DJs from spain to move into, but I passed for some reason. Would be awesome to live in spanish again, have a cool dog and people to go out with - but seemed like the type of environment where I could fall into lazy and hedonistic habits pretty easily.

So I ended up in a little mini-villa community. There's like 5 1-2 bedroom homes, and then 5 more large hotel rooms basically - all surrounding a big pool and nice garden area. It's older and not as much natural light, but its nice and very spacious. People from austria, russia, france, UK, australia, and the owner with her grown up kids live here. My first day I was knocking down beehives around the place as those scare the crap out of me, saw I have 2 geckos almost as big as my arm living on the walls, and there's a giant rabbit outside. ~10 minutes by scooter to the beach, and the drive is really cool going through small neighborhoods and through rice fields. I splurged on a bigger 155cc scooter with a rack for my surfboard and am happy I did. It's fun to ride, faster and better brakes, feels safer, and more comfy for long trips. Lose some maneuverability in traffic but oh well. Some people comment 'ohhh you got the expensive bike', but its $130/mo and I'm overpaying. Apartment/villa is $400/mo including cleaning and all utilities.

Here's the pool from my porch, which has a table on it and lots of neighbors just work outside on their porch, as its covered with a big table. some kitchens are outside as well. You can see its pretty green and nature-y everywhere.

I feel content. thai gf coming in a couple weeks which will be interesting. she's not agile and couldn't run to the corner of the street, and everyyything here involves being active. Will see what happens. Sunsets, picturesque temples on cliffs, and me gettin fkn barreled pics to come


Palawan, Phillipines. Forgot to mention I went there for 2 weeks. Was fun, basically just went on a bunch of island tours everyday, checking out caves, kayaking, beach camping, hidden beaches you'd have to swim through a small hole to get to, went surfing one day, drank a lot.

Sick update! Bali sounds sweet. I want that pool.

This is amazing

good read as always brah. enjoy.

SO - been in bali like 3 or 4 months or something now. I don't do much, honestly. Lots of books, not enough skating or surfing but both come in phases. Waves too big right now to paddle out which kinda sucks, but sometimes I go alot. Skating only like once a week, oh well. thai gf visited me for awhile which was nice to kinda force me out of the house. I'm the type of guy who literally won't leave the house for 2 days in a row like all the time, and then spend whole days going on trips. Not balanced at all, but I don't mind.

Started playing poker again a bit, as I can start at like 4-5pm and normally stop at a decent time. I like it, missed MTTs a bit, and final table something every single day I play - which I mostly attribute to smaller field sizes due to offpeak hours, but hey I'll take it.

I shaved my head for the first time. That was weird, but it works. Also started going to this mega club place after a poker friend visited last month and was partying alot. Now I freakin love the place and go there solo at least once a week. It's $10 for all you can eat buffet of awesome food for 4 hours, and all you can drink in that same 4 hours. Saturday is steak and seafood night so that's been my jam lately...and then ur in one of the best clubs in the world so can go party if you meet people, or go home if not. Everytime I've been I always end up meeting people and hanging out or dancing though. Kinda proud of myself, basically never go out to party alone unless its degen strip club stuff, so its nice to know I have the ability of having a good time when alone. Not smooth in any way whatsoever, but everyone waits like 5-10 minutes in line for each free drink so I try to just find a good spot and get in line next to girls I like, then say whats up, and if they're cool then go drink with them afterwards. I drink a lot so plenty of chances to meet people that way throughout the night

thai gf coming back next week for a bit, so will get my ass out and do more things. Likely going to some islands that specialize in selling shrooms everywhere, looking forward to that, then more waterfall spots, hikes, beaches and all that.



Sunset beers at one of my favorite spots.



I eat crap like this. Bali pretty famous for healthy ass food. Also been charging McDonald's weekly though, rekindled love for that place.



View of the north side of the island from like 30 meters high in a bamboo crazyhouse with no nails or glue holding it together.



Been seeing my ex gf sometimes, she's a yoga teacher and lets me crash her classes for free, and my surf buddy. Sex is a cool bonus.



Went on a surf trip to another island for a weekend, brought my own scooter on the boat and everything. Was cool cruising around a much much less populated and more authentic part of indonesia, or at least less touristy. I switched rides and got like the medium scooter now, only $60 a month.



And yeah more waterfalls. This one was really cool. Went camping that night at a different waterfall with some cliff jumps, no idea where pics are though. maybe thai girl

Don't get me wrong, 90% of my life I'm sleeping or on a computer screen, but its nice to have healthy things to do in a beautiful place when I do wander out into the world. I still suck at surfing. Hi Karl.

Been seeing the pics and vids of the July swells. F'ing massive

Hey OP, love the thread. I'll be out in Bali from October to December. If you are still around fancy going for a skate? I used to skate a lot as a kid but need to do some more exercise (long term travelling makes it difficult!). Figured a skating buddy could help! I was in Bali earlier this year too and went to this pretty cool skatepark. I forget the name, maybe we could hit it up. It was a tad embarrassing being the oldest by about 15 years and the worst by a fair mile!!


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no lie man, been insane. I finally had a couple days where I could paddle out, think its dying down. crazy to have these kinds of waves in your backyard. Above is uluwatu like 2 weeks ago, one of the more famous surf spots. I got wreckkked going there my first day out this year. Couldn't even paddle in bc of the current and ended up paddling like a mile away to a different beach just to get back on shore. That was maybe an 7-10 ft day, and this is like 25-30+

bilesy - pretty sure i'll be gone by then, but yea there's a good scene here for skating. the larger parks are amplitude, donkey, and motion - and then there's more bowls and ramps spread out across the island but not as beginner friendly as a skatepark. amplitude had boards you can rent as well. Don't trip about being the old guy, skating is at such a high level these days man. There's girls half my age that rip twice as hard as me, its crazy

Hey are you still microdosing? And if so how do you travel with it!?

no, I don't **** around in countries known to execute people caught with drugs. On certain islands shrooms are sold freely, but those islands just got hit with multiple earthquakes and are demolished at the moment.

Got an opportunity to go sailing for 1-2 months, mostly around northern indonesia along with an australian couple. Their boat looks awesome, a catamaran which i've never spent any length of time on. They seem mellow, not big drinkers but more into reading/writing and big into diving. I'm 80% gonna join along with em, everything checks out and is perfect timing. Would be fun with a party crew but I've been drinking enough lately and have a million books I want to read anyways. Pretty excited for this chance, will post pics once I'm there of a bunch of weird indonesian islands i've never heard of like lembeh, tiogan, halmahera, derawans. Ultimate chill mode sail life would be starting in 2 weeks

Awesome man, enjoy!

literally stayed up till 3am reading this whole thread...you got me hooked on the lifestyle..really impressive you can grind(and profit) as much as you do with all the partying and traveling you've done over the years..

im in ecuador now for a month and plan on coming back to live for an undetermined amount of time around February..crappy situation where you cant come back here though. really inspirational thread though, love it..keep living the dream for us!

I checked out Pretty Poison last saturday. Left early cuz it's not really my scene (i'm not at all into skateboarding) but was a cool experience. Holy **** the amount of too cool for school looking people there was off the charts. Ridiculously hot people, I felt like a toad going in there "hey wassup homies im here to partayyyyyyy"

yeah that place is crazy, I still tell people to go once and check it out though, plus there's a bunch of nightspots very closeby. I'm stoked for the skating obv but its a cool scene to checkout once or twice.
And yeah that part of town is where the super cool kids hang out, it can get overwhelming. Across the street is a liquor store that looks all janky inside - one of the fridge's says broken on a sign, but you can open it and go into this secret bar that actually goes off. Pretty cool they don't advertise it at all. I've been in there before to buy stuff and never even noticed

Nice man, where in ecuador? I didn't have such a great time living there, but think it was a lot of my own fault and just not living to the fullest. Def some nice smaller cities there and cool people.

Red sky in the morning, sailor's warning.



Whatever, this **** looks cool. I wake up at like 5:30am for some reason and figure I should pop my head out the hatch to see if anything cool is outside. We aren't sailing today anyways, but going to see some affectionately called 'dick faced monkeys'. It's been just over a week of living on SV Savannah, a 40 foot catamaran sailboat, and we haven't done much yet besides spend a day prepping the boat and another 5 days crossing the Java sea in Indonesia. I'm 15 miles up the Kumai river now, on the island of Kalimantan, also known as Borneo, in a small amazon-esque town. The only beer available we have to pay a hefty surcharge for and go to the government ran brothel 10km away to get it. As-Salaam-Alaikum. I'm still so surprised that muslims get a bad rap. They're just boring and trustworthy with some backwards ideas on how to treat people, but that's inherent in any religion.

After 12 hours travel from Bali to get ONE island over, I see one of the boat's owners, Leah, running in the rain to meet me in a ****ty port city outside of Jakarta. She's embarrassed that the boat is covered in ash and silt from a mixture of volcanic eruptions and lax pollution laws causing industry in the area to spew mass clouds of debris into the sky 24/7. Some pleasantries and I'm off to bed after a long day, anchors up at 6am to set sail to Sianyang island for a test run. I stick my head out of the hatch in my roof to watch the lightening for awhile, wondering if we are 'dragging anchor', one of the only sailing terms I know from watching youtube vlogs constantly over the past few years. Nahhh, captain knows his ****, we're fine. Almost asleep, I hear weird buzzings, which I ends up being the engines turning on. We've dragged anchor over 1km in a crowded harbor, surprisingly not hit anyone, and are maybe 100 meters away from the boat being smashed into some rocks. Par for the course? Not at all, this is extremely sketchy as Leah throws on a heavy jacket and runs up to the front of the boat. I don't wanna get wet, so I just chill with captain Chris and try to assess the sketch factor for awhile, still rubbing the tired out of my eyes. Succumbing to the fact that we are indeed in the thick of it, I grudge up front in the pouring rain and wind to act useful in pulling up the anchor. We should be trying to help the captain navigate around all the other boats, moorings, buoys, and rocks in the harbor, but its impossible to even look up before getting pelted in the eyes with rain. The storm is loud as ****, drowing out any communication from one end of the boat to the other, so my contribution is being able to stand on deck and yell-relay messages back and forth to people doing the actual work. I'll take it, point for Bryan. So that was my first hour aboard. Rain cleaned the boat off nicely though, so saved us some deck scrubbing.



I'll get better pics of the boat in time, tough to get many good shots when you're inside it all the time. Climbed up the mast yesterday which is 70 feet high, will bring the gopro or something next time I do that and snap some shots.

We sail 4-5 hours to Sianyang island closeby. The rudder had fallen off on the previous attempt to cross the Java sea weeks before, and the owners had made the prudent decision to return to the ****hole port near Jakarta in order to ensure they got it taken care of properly. We seemed to be ruddering correctly and I was none the wiser to any previous mishaps. Pulling into a bay of an island with maybe 100 inhabitants, we would officially be setting sail the next day for a 4-5 day crossing. I had to scrape the prop first of any sea gunk that accumulated on it, and then wipe down the top half of the hull which was covered in a slime which decreases speed. Dirty, but water is warm so wasn't so bad at all.

Leah preps a ton of food and I kinda wonder why. My last time on a sailboat was so chill. I was the bartender and kept everyone drunk the whole time, smoked weed 10 times a day, had an aussie girl cooking for us so ate nonstop, and did maybe 15 minutes of actual work. Now we had what looked like a weeks worth of veggie burgers, pizza, cookies, stew, rice, veggies, and unlimited amounts of top ramen to be ready when we needed it. After the first day or two of getting pass the protection of nearby islands, fairly rough seas start. Wind is only 15 mph, but I guess catamarans feel more movement with less weather, yet also kind of max out when it gets heavy. Makes sense, I could imagine a monohull rocking like 90 degrees side to side as well as up and down. At least we are like a big square in the water with lots of bouncing but nothing major. Regardless I feel nauseous and am curled up in the fetal position next to the captain, splashing cold water on myself every 10 minutes from the shower. Back of the boat rocks the least so I spend awhile there and feel okay enough to take over when its my turn to go on watch. I understand why so much food was prepped, because spending more than 3 minutes down in the kitchen is hell. We have 3 people working in 3 hour shifts to make sure we don't hit anything, day or night. That's 3 hours on, 6 hours off - anytime we are on passage. It sounded so chill at first. Hardly. None of us sleep in our proper beds very often, as there's more boat movement the lower and more forward you go. Immediately after every shift I crash on the couch in the salon for 6 hours and wake up to the captain jiggling my foot - 'you're up Bryan'. ****, again? I have 16 hours a day technically of free time, but am probably sleeping 12 and then spend a couple lounging in the sun and eating. Anyways its not too bad as I know its ending soon. Really not sure I would be up for 2+ weeks straight of this though, or in any rougher seas. To pass the time I stretch, listen to hiphop, floss, and stare at stuff. Listened to a Dalai Lama audiobook. Dude is kinda jank and boring af. Nicki Minaj ftmfw. Shoutout Kyle and J Cole, wow.



Being on watch is actually kinda cool though. Your job is to not hit anything, keep an eye out for weather and wind changes, and use the GPS to plan routes around all the other traffic in the ocean. There's a computer system called AIS that tells you some of the other boats in the water, their speed, and your closest point of contact, so you just adjust auto-pilot to give a solid mile of leeway to any passing ship. There's also tons of fishing boats who don't use that system, who may or may not even have lights on, so you just guess what they are doing and try to go around them. It reminds me of crossing the street in Vietnam, everyone just kinda moving around each other and informal systems in place to keep things cordial and not die.

5 minutes into my first night watch I think I see something behind the boat, but too dark to tell so shine a light on it and sure enough we're dragging some piece of white crap behind us. I tell the captain and he shuts down the engine (we're not under sail yet, still in shipping lanes so stay on motor for more maneuverability). I feel great, I'm on watch so its obviously not me who has to go deal with it. Leah gets her snorkel out and then just starts whimpering saying she doesn't want to get in. We make a deal that if she takes half my watch, I'll hop in and deal with it. I strap on a safety rope, grab a flashlight, jump in, take a breath and go under to check things out. 10 seconds later I'm back on deck with rope in hand, and just bought myself an extra 1.5 hours to go sleep. Win win.



The storms come and go, I've really been appreciating watching lightning creep up on us. There's such a big difference between warm water rain and cold water rain, so I really don't mind much getting wet out here. We're stuck in Kumai for a few days, waiting for weather to look favorable to head out again across the southern portion of the island and up the eastern coast. Coming in was pretty awesome, we saw maybe a hundred lions mane jellyfish which are bigger than a basketball. Also a few seasnakes that I guess are lethal, but their fangs are way in the back of their throat so not much of a danger to humans. Today we're going up river into the jungle to see what the area is famous for, will come back with more pics of that.

Also for randomly cool photos, the captain does mostly underwater photography and this is his site. Some beautiful **** in there.

http://www.chphotographic.com/

I guess I haven't updated anything from last month in Bali. Gf came to visit and we did a bunch of stuff. Was great being with her and we stayed busy checking out different places, I surfed a decent amount. Will likely end up back in Bali when this sailing trip is over, for lack of any better idea, I still have 2 surfboards there, and its a good place to be. Utterly surprised there aren't more grindhouses setup there.

how's internets in bali? set up a few grindhouses for the team maybe

I think everyone should move to bali honestly. but fair enough a lot of people hate it, aren't interested in as much nature/physical activities, you need to ride a moto everywhere and surely plenty of poker guys would get super rekt driving around drunk. So big thai cities work well for them anyways and are great in their own right

So, been doing lots of sailing lately, and finally have arrived at the island paradises that make all of the passages and stopovers in gross port cities worth it. Last I left we had just arrived in Kumai and were going to check out the jungle the next day. That was a great intro to some the nature that would be in store for us:



female orangutan and her baby. they have to wait for big papa to finish eating first



this dude is an *******. everyone has to wait 20 minutes for him to eat everything he wants, then the rest are allowed to swoop in. Protip - if you are a monkey, just fight everyone you can until they respect you and you become the alpha male. Then you eatin phat, loungin in paradise, with your pick of all the fine female orangutan ass you want.



Then the youngsters come in for whatevers left. These orangutans are native to this island only, and the only great apes left in Asia. So felt like it was quite a treat to be able to see these dudes in a fairly natural setting. They're all wild, but a foundation drops a bunch of kilos of bananas and sweet potatoes for em everyday so at least a family or two usually comes around.

Then it was time to head back on the river and look for probiscus monkeys. Holy **** we saw hundreds of those dick-faced mother****ers.



I guess this is the only island in the world where this type of monkey lives as well.





seriously saw so many packs of these guys.


coming back to the boat along river. was nice

Guess I'll save more pics for later, not loading very well right now. From Kumai we went to Kotabaru, some little nothing town on the corner of the island before we turned to head north. Some fisherman pulled up next to us and ended up being our buddy for the day - which was to become a common theme on the trip. It's really nice that both of the other people on board speak the local language pretty damn well. It's just another reminder that sure, we can be western tourists and go to whatever oversaturated guidebook destination and get along just fine - but if you really want to get off the beaten path in almost any part of the world - then learning the language is going to open you up to such a deeper immersion into the experience of traveling. Google translate is awesome for handling the necessities, but you aren't going to go much further than that with it. Makes me a bit ashamed that I barely learned thai at all, and learning indonesian language is almost pointless in bali - I tried but everyyyyone speaks english anyways so it doesn't accomplish anything extra or rewarding.

Anyways in kotabaru we ended up sitting at this guys house with his family for a couple hours while he loaded our boat with fuel. I was just a bump on a log while all the kids stared at me, but we learned alot from the grandparents of the house in talking with them. Then went to another city we thought would be a ****hole but I liked it a lot. Took a visa run to singapore for a few days - it made me think alot about utopian visions of the world while I was there. Everything is clean and well run and a lot of rules everywhere. Beautiful city really, but just such a sterile environment. Well to do chinese people are like perfect though. If I have a kid it should be chinese. They are just better human beings. I've always had a bad impression of them from people visiting china itself, and the hordes of chinese tourists that are known to ruin many of the more famous destinations - but being in both taiwan and singapore (and vancouver to an extent) - havens for chinese people that have their **** together and have moved on from rice paddy farming life, they are just great. go china. It was expensive as hell in singapore so I kinda hated it due to that, but whatever, I'm a nit.

http://www.chphotographic.com I pretty much stopped taking pics as the captain and his wife just are way way better at it. All credit goes to him

Dammn those probiscus are trippy! Sick update.

Awesome update. You're doing some seriously cool things.

How do you stay in Indo for so long visa wise? Are you hopping borders every 30 days?

Have enjoyed lurking your thread; couple questions:

How many people (total) are on the catamaran?

How did you find this boat, and how did you go about ascertaining the boat's seaworthiness & the captain and crews competency? Did they do any kind of background check or whatever on you?

Are you paying anything to be on the boat?

I always love SG for a few days. Just nice to be in civilization for a bit and not have to worry about being blindsided by a bus at any moment or something. People call it sterile or whatever but it's kind of relaxing for a few days to not have your head on a swivel constantly.
Nice place to visit