Author Archives: Jimmy Swift

What’s your favorite country?

June 15, 2007 – 11:16 am

After traveling to over 60 different countries over the last 4 years, the question i get most is "What’s your favorite country?" I have always answered by saying "It’s so hard to pick just one." But now that I’m back in Thailand I’m finding that there’s just something about this place that i love. Maybe its the friendly Thai people?…. or it could be the amazing food? or the beautiful beaches and lush jungles…. and not to forget the 2 dollar massages……whatever it is this place should make it into everyone’s list as a place to see at some point in their life.

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Posted in Thailand | Comments (0)

Weekly Update

June 5, 2007 – 1:11 am

With in only minutes of our trucks rolling off the ship in Singapore we crossed the boarder into Malaysia. We made a b-line for Malaysia’s capital city Kuala Lumpur to meet up with our new Malaysian friend Wan. After a few days in Kuala Lumpur hanging with Wan and trying to get some much needed work done, but we found it impossible to get anything done. When in the presence of Wan you generally wake up the next day not feeling so hot.

After KL we headed to Endau-Rompin National Park were we set out into the jungles to hang with the Orang Asli people (tribal people). Endau-Rompin is a beautiful untouched rain forest, and one of the few left in Malaysia. The Steve’s trekked deep into the jungles to find a waterfall as i sat back at camp nursing my everlasting headache.

We will be in Thailand in the next few days so keep watchin.


Posted in Malaysia, Updates | Comments (0)

What’s the name of that street?

June 4, 2007 – 5:24 am

Img 0071For most of us when we think of driving around the world, we think of the open road where there’s no other cars and no real traffic laws. I feel thats going to be the case for 70% of the trip but the other 30% is filled with the joys of trying to navigate in some of the worlds biggest cities. This type of driving brings me back to when i was on vacation with a girlfriend in Ireland. We rented car and proceeded to find our way to a hotel in Dublin, after spending about 2 hours driving around in circles in the heart of Dublin we ended up getting a different hotel due to the fact that we just psychically couldn’t get there thanks to one way streets and poorly marked roads. 5 years later i find myself in the same situation, this time my girlfriend is Bouey… which shouts out street names in the same tone as my x. The city is now Kuala Lumpur rather then Dublin, but the street names and stupid one way roads are the same. There really is no good way at getting better at this cause every city has a different layout. So i guess the only thing we can work on is just relaxing and remembering that tomorrow we will be back in the middle of nowhere, where the traffic laws are the ones we make up and the road is where we point the car.


Posted in For some laughs, Malaysia, Trip Thoughts, Uncategorized, Updates, Wanderings | Comments (0)

Weekly Update

May 24, 2007 – 8:51 pm

For all you guys out there that only get a chance to look at our website once a week or less and miss out on a lot of the daily updates, we have decided to start doing a "Weekly Update" post.

To start I’m going to give you the highlights from the last week or so while we have been in Indonesia.  After spending a few days relaxing in Bali, the Indonesian tourist mecca, we headed to Yogyakarta… which is pronounced "Jogja".  While in Jogja, the Steve’s and Elena climbed Mt Merapi, Indonesia’s most active volcano. Other highlights included eating snake curry which consists of Cobra and Python meat. We could have simply indulged in snake curry off the menu, but wanted to find out a little more about the tradition of eating snake so we met up with Purwo "The Snake Charmer".  Purwo showed us the art of charming a cobra and also showed us how to kill it and drink its blood. Yeah that’s right blood… both the Steves and Elena drank the Cobra blood. I decided to sit that one out but i did enjoy the snake curry once it was cooked. 

After Jogja we pushed on to Indonesia’s capital city Jakarta also one of the world’s most polluted cities. While in Jakarta we filmed a story with Australian Aid on the building of new schools and the following day we made our International Television debut on "Indonesia this Morning" which is kind of like their version of Good Morning America. 

We are now in Singapore waiting the arrival of our cars…. what a week!!! :-)



Purwo - The Snake Charmer

Indonesia This Morning



Posted in Expedition Media/Info, Indonesia, Updates | Comments (0)

Homeless

May 15, 2007 – 6:40 am

I have become somewhat attached to my new home for the next 2 years… It’s not your average size house but it does have wheels, so i guess you could call it a mobile home or a trailer. My home is a 2007 Toyota Tundra… we call her Thundra and my room is the passenger seat. It’s somewhat of a tight fit but the views outside the window always make up for that. It comes equipped with a rockin stereo that the local people are lovin when we pull into town blasting NWA "Straight out of Compton."  The Thundra is more then just a roof over my head. She is my trusty steed that will guide me through the highest mountain passes in the Himalayas and keep me cool while traversing the Sahara Desert in Africa. Unfortunately the world is not all by road there are a few points where we have to ship the cars.


I never thought I would find myself so attached to a vehicle that I would experience a sense of withdrawal when separated from it. We now find ourselves "Homeless" in Indonesia while our cars are on a boat somewhere bobbing along the ocean in route to Singapore. Without our cars we are just like every other tourist stuck on the well worn tourist path where everything is summed up in some sort of package tour where your probably the 5 thousandth person that year and the 200th person that day to see the same thing in the same way. The freedom that our cars give us is now becoming clear, I think when I see those Toyota trucks roll of the ship in Singapore I might just get down and kiss the ground they drive on.

—-Unfortunately, I wrote this blog about a week ago…we just found out today that the ship was delayed.  We will have an extra week without the trucks:(


Posted in Indonesia | Comments (3)